Witch’s ladder. I don’t know how I know, but I know that this is the name for what I am holding in my hands right now. A thin braid of hair tied together at the top and bottom with what looks like garden twine. Entwined in the cord of hair are black feathers – some tiny, others large and ragged, the fibres coming away from each other into uneven clumps. These are accompanied by several tiny bones, all tied to the braid and similar to the ones I found hanging in the trees. I drop it as if it has burned me, and I fancy I can feel the branding of it on my fingertips, an oily film left on my skin. The hair is dusty, but the same bright, pale blonde as mine. My hand creeps to the base of my neck and I finger my hairline, sure I will find the stumpy ends of tresses snipped clean off. An image of myself, sleeping the thick, heavy sleep of painkillers on the sofa, while Naomi looms over me with a pair of scissors in her hand rises bright and clear in my mind and I shake my head, feeling my legs begin to tremble. Naomi wouldn’t do something like this. I don’t know where the image has come from, but it has the same suffocating feel as the dream. The dream that feels like a memory.

‘Allie?’ I tear my eyes from the coil of hair on the floor, something sinister emanating from it. Something almost solid and real on the air. A smell, thick and haunting, worse than anything emitted by the bones. ‘Allie. What the hell is going on?’

Rav is standing over me, his hair mussed up and wearing only a pair of striped pyjama bottoms. Glancing towards the window I see the darkness outside is no longer thick and complete, purple and peach hues rest on the horizon as the sun begins to climb in the sky, another day breaking.

Looking at up him from where I crouch on the floor, I say, ‘It was in the chimney.’

‘What?’ Rav crouches next to me, seemingly not caring about the dust and grit under his bare feet. ‘All this was in the chimney? Allie, it’s four thirty in the morning, what are you doing down here, poking about in the chimney?’

‘I heard … the noise, I heard that scratching sound that I told you keeps coming from the chimney.’ I glance down again at the heap of dust, the witch’s ladder laid on the top. ‘I thought if I shoved the poker up there, I could dislodge whatever it was that was making the noise.’ It’s driving me crazy, I want to say, but don’t.

‘What the hell is that?’ Rav’s hand reaches for the witch’s ladder and I grab his arm, my fingers locking over his tanned skin.