I might have imagined I was in a different room, with carvings on the cornices, in every corner and elsewhere. The house was too modern to have cornices, and it wasn’t the room that had changed. The objects that I felt afraid of seeing if I turned around wouldn’t be carved – the faces hovering behind me and above. I had a sense that their shapes would prove to be dismayingly unstable, and their sizes too. Perhaps they would swell to fill the room, or some would while their companions shrank. Perhaps just one would occupy the space, bloating like a malevolent balloon. I was barely able to focus on the window, to manage to distinguish that the reflection showed just the studio behind me, with no trace of the presence I sensed looming. Nevertheless I almost dropped the jars as I hastened to replace them on the sill. I swung around to confront the deserted room, and was afraid of making too much noise as I fled. Nobody came to find me – not my uncle or my aunt – but I begrudged every second I had to spend in silently closing the door. In my room I took refuge under the quilt, and as the day brightened I succeeded in believing I’d seen and heard nothing worth a mention. It was all explicable, and I’d behaved almost as oddly as my aunt did. My parents weren’t always wrong, and I knew they would want me to put the incident out of my mind. For quite a while I did.

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Old Words

Goodmanswood – fallen leaves make face. “You must turn the world over to reveal its truth.”

Monks Cross – graffiti too prominent. “The world consists of symbols few can read.”

Slatevale – eyes in cracks in rock. “If you would cease to be blind, descend into ultimate darkness.”

Priory Ford – features gather on rocks in river. “Each of us is but a stream whose wholeness it is our sacred task to grasp.”

Cloudhaven – cloud forms face. “Rise higher from the peak and breathe the atmosphere of space.”

Drummer’s Meadow – wild flowers sketch denizen. “Mistake not Spring for the season of growth, for the time of secret quickening is Winter, when Darkness comes into His kingdom.”

Darkmarsh – tussocks crawl together. “The power of the swamp restores mutability to the world.”

Dancers Oak – now housing estate – body formed of moss on trees. “Those who die on the oak may be caught and put to use.”

Brightspring – pool mouths secrets. “Become one with silence, that you may hear the songs of streams beneath the earth.”

Mountfoot – dew on grass takes restless shape. “To conquer time, contemplate the ghost that is the universe.”

Plumb Mine – large face in entrance not on poster. “The deeper it is dug, the more ancient are the secrets which the excavation shall awaken.”