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CHAPTER 18
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Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 19Sally looked up from the journal. Her eyes were tired from staring at so much closely written handwriting, and her back ached from being curled up in the same position too long.She had been reading the journal for hours without a break. The fire in the grate was nothing but embers. She stretched her legs and back, and blinked her eyes. Everything in the room looked suddenly strange and unreal. She’d been so engrossed in Matthew’s account of his out-of-body experience, it was as if she was there with him. Putting down the journal and coming back to earth was disconcerting. It took her a moment to readjust.If she’d read the journal before coming to Dunballan, Sally would have considered it either pure fantasy or deluded ravings, but after everything she’d seen, she was more inclined to believe it. It certainly answered a lot of her questions, but it threw up just as many. The current volume was the last of the journals, but there were a few more entries. Perhaps the answe
Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 20Eight days ago:Sally was more certain now. Certain where she was going and certain she was doing the right thing.This certainty didn’t come from Hettie, Sally was sure of that. Hettie was nowhere to be seen or heard. This certainty came from her love for David. She’d gone to extraordinary lengths for him, but she was going to have him back. She was going to free him from the Beast. Sally had forsaken all her doubt. As strange as all this might seem, she knew why she was doing it.She was deep in the forest where it was darker and cooler. The light was much dimmer as Sally stepped out of the undergrowth and approached the stream. The stream would take her to the glade where she was ultimately going.Sally lingered by the undergrowth for a moment. There was one little thing that was playing on her mind, something she had to clear up before she could go through with everything she and Hettie had planned.She stopped and turned back to look at the thicket of shrub. The d
Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 21Sally smelled the glade before she actually stepped into it. Its scents were lush, primal, and sharp. There were deep mossy undertones, like the bark of the seven ancient elm trees whose thick trunks encircled the glade. There were high fragrant notes, like the pollen and the wild flowers that grew all across the clearing. There were plants here that had flourished for millennia, plants that couldn’t be found anywhere else on the planet.Sally couldn’t help but catch her breath when she entered. The rest of the forest was often noisy, filled with a plethora of sounds. There were the raucous bird calls, the grunts and howls of the creatures that fought and foraged on the forest floor. There was the sound of the wind in the branches and the occasional rain on the leaves, and there were the thousand other unexplained noises that haunt such a wild and untamed territory.The glade was a different matter altogether. There was hardly any noise here at all. It was as if all sound
Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror EPILOGUE
EPILOGUERight now:Sally stood at the sink, staring at the butcher, with a cup of water in her hands. She was frozen into inaction by the sheer weight of her memories and tiredness. She didn’t have the energy to move.She knew she should bring the water to the boy on the sofa, maybe find more blankets and some paracetamol for his fever. He would die soon, like his mother, if she didn’t help him, but then so would most of the townsfolk.Sally was exhausted. She had been worn out just looking after David, but now she had a whole town to look after. More than two thousand people, all of them in the same state as David. She fretted constantly about David—she had to leave him alone for considerable lengths of time, and she worried about his safety. She felt guilty for abandoning him so much, but she couldn’t abandon everyone else in Dunballan either, not after what she’d done to them.Sometimes Sally fantasised about having help, a friend to share her duties or even a small group of v
Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror PROLOGUE
PROLOGUERight now:They were waiting for her on Dundooan Road.Sally turned the corner and there they were—an older woman and a young boy, who looked very much alike. They were obviously mother and son. Neither of them noticed Sally, they simply stared straight ahead with glazed eyes.The mother was short and thickset, wearing a woollen hat, a long raincoat and carrying an old cloth shopping bag. The son was about twelve years old, skinny and pale with black hair. He wore a hoodie, jeans and trainers.There was no expression on their faces, their jaws were slack and their mouths hung open. The son was standing a few steps behind his mother, his right arm swung backwards and forwards in a shallow arc. The mother was swaying slightly, as if the shopping bag was about to overbalance her. There was nothing going on behind their eyes, no mental faculties of any sort. They were completely soulless, everyone in Dunballan was. Everyone except for Sally.She walked over to the mother and
Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 1Eight days ago:The butcher shop’s door had an old fashioned bell, which rang every time a customer entered. The butcher looked up as Sally came in, and greeted her with a warm smile that had a worrying proprietary edge. Sally avoided his light brown eyes, but couldn’t help noticing the freckles on his nose and his thick wet lips.“And what can I be doing for you?” he asked, modifying his brogue, because Sally was an off-comer.“I’d like some steak,” Sally said. “The best you have.”The butcher’s smile broadened.“Romance is in the air tonight,” he said. “It’s the big man’s lucky night, is it?” Sally demurred and looked down at the black and white tiles of the floor. “As it happens you’re in luck,” he said. “I have a nice piece of dry hung tenderloin for you. How thick would you like it cut?”“An inch or so, I guess.”“An inch and a half is best, keeps it nice and tender on the inside, just like me,” he said with a wink.“Okay.”“And how many will you be wanting?”
Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 2Sally opened her back gate and stepped into the garden. She glanced at all the unplanted rows she and David had dug when they planned to make an allotment.The beans she’d planted had begun to sprout. The warm weather was good for them. The little row of canes was half-finished, and the rest of the trench was empty. Sally was sorry now that they hadn’t completed it. Like so many things in their relationship, it was left unfinished.A sudden wind sprang up from the west. It bent the trees in the fields next to the cottage, but it was neither hot nor cold. It ruffled the grass, rattled the hedges, and lifted Sally’s hair and skirt, but she couldn’t feel it on her skin, nor could she smell any of the scents that a wind such as this usually carried. It was almost entirely bodiless, you could see and experience its effects, but you couldn’t feel them.The leaves in the hedgerow made a dry, scratchy noise as they scuttled about in its wake. The hedgerow itself rustled, as if fi
Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 3Sally dropped leaves and berries into an old stone mortar. She’d collected them in the dark places Hettie had shown her in the forest on the hill that overlooked the cottage.Sally pounded the mixture into a dense green pulp with a pestle, and laid out the steaks on the kitchen counter. She scooped out the pulp and massaged it into each of the steaks as though she were seasoning them, preparing a meal for the Beast, just as Hettie had instructed her.It never felt like Sally was in the real world whenever she spoke with Hettie. It was as if someone had drawn back a curtain and given her a little glimpse of a world beyond her everyday existence, one that, for the sake of her sanity, she could only visit for a short time.When she first heard Hettie speak, a few weeks ago, Sally realised she’d been picking up bits of her voice for quite a while. It wasn’t anything she could put her finger on, merely a pattern in the noises she’d heard in the hedgerows around the cottage.T
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- Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror EPILOGUE
- Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror CHAPTER 21
- Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror CHAPTER 20
- Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror CHAPTER 19
- Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror CHAPTER 18
- Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror CHAPTER 17
- Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror CHAPTER 16
- Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror CHAPTER 15
- Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror CHAPTER 14
