A bird alights from the yew tree beside the group and bursts into the air. The vicarage and the garden grow smaller below its ascent. As the bird flies higher, the earth takes on the shape of a new pattern. An eye. In the centre of a bushy copse of tree tops resembling a rough green iris, the tiny black pond of the grove becomes a pupil staring into the sky. From out of the fringe of greenery that is the grove, the faint lines of ancient green paths form spokes that pass in straight lines from the pond. They reach beyond the boundary of the vicarage and thread between the tiny buildings of Eadric.

From so far up, the pond and protective grove become the tiny dark hub of a vast spoked wheel that reaches beyond the outer buildings of the village. And if there is a wheel-rim it is visible as that ancient track, or earthwork, so far below, encircling and protecting the old settlement. The same shape as the twig-wheels found within the vicarage shrines. The same shape as the stained glass fanlight above the front door of Nerthus House. An old wheel.

Story Notes:

About This Horror

After The Ritual was adapted into a film at the end of 2016, I thought seriously about writing a screenplay for a horror film. The production of The Ritual gave me a meaningful insight into a four-year development of a feature film: how the business of filmmaking erects its pyramids, how a screenplay is produced on the creative side, how directors are sourced and chosen, films cast, locations scouted, sets built, productions organised around shooting scripts. I watched with fascination, plenty of disbelief and some awe.

It’s so hard to get these expensive entities made; so much can go wrong, so much does go wrong, so many people are involved, moving parts all move at the same time, the variables are bewildering, the stakes and deadlines are terrifying once the trigger is pulled. And then post-production can seem interminable. Why go through it?

I ask the same of people who climb mountains. But then, if you think about it, nothing worth doing is easy. But that view from the summit, and that intense, euphoric feeling of being transported by a film on a screen, becomes the equivalent of a city of gold that drove the Spaniards mad in South America. The madness is a virus, contagious, and I caught it too. Why not me? I asked myself. Why not join the expedition into the jungle? I have good boots.

Prior to this, screenwriting was something ephemeral to my eye, alchemical, requiring special techniques and knowledge and expertise that I lacked. No one had ever asked me to write a screenplay. I took that for a show of no confidence. After all of these novels, stories and a few awards, I wasn’t even on the bench: I was in the stands. A spectator.