She continued to dab at the window with increasing feebleness as her arms started to fuse with her torso, and then I watched her concentrate her struggles on her mouth, which had shrivelled to half its width under a pair of noseless nostrils that were visibly labouring to breathe. She chewed at her lips and poked them apart with her tongue to prevent them from wholly closing up. “Please,” she said in a withered voice, but I didn’t know to whom. Perhaps she was addressing the denizen of the valley, because she floundered away from the car. Although she was naked, having abandoned the illusion of clothes, her gender was uncertain. She staggered towards the figure at the edge of the light but faltered as her legs became a single fleshy pillar. Her attempt to take another pace threw her face down at the edge of the river. I heard a final cry – a plea or a protest – but it fell short of forming a word, and I thought her mouth had gone. In a very few moments her remains lost all their shape, and sank into the mud before the river took them.

I raised my eyes from the dismal spectacle to find that the figure I’d summoned had vanished. The mirror was deserted too, and there was no intrusive voice in my head. I moved the car forward before I’d quite stopped shivering, and drove up the slope. It took altogether too much time for me to feel I was on the way to daylight, and longer still to see it up above. I could have thought that the darkness of the valley was resolved to drag me down, or that my climb was no more than a delusion. At last the louring rock gave way to walls constructed of stacked stones, and sunlight touched the car. I was turning onto a narrow lane between fields when I heard the voice catch up with me. Although it sounded distant despite inhabiting my skull, I couldn’t mistake the single word it spoke.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Safe

“Dr Semple, that was magical.”

My student reached out a hand but didn’t quite touch my arm. “Well, thank you,” I said, only to feel the need to ask “In what way?”

“It made me want to read the book again.”

I tried to find neither of his comments ominous. “That’s what it should be about,” I said. “We’ll carry on tomorrow.”