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CHAPTER 20
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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
Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 4Three weeks ago:Sally had popped into the library to cheer herself up. A coffee-morning at the community centre had emptied the place of pensioners and Jane was all by herself behind the desk. She waved Sally over when she saw her come in.“I have something for you,” Jane said.Sally wasn’t too sure about this, she didn’t feel like chatting with Jane, but she was excited to see what Jane might have picked out for her, it might be an Audrey Niffenegger or a new Jennifer Egan she hadn’t read. Jane nipped into the back room and appeared a moment later with a thick, green pamphlet.“I think you might find this very interesting,” she said, handing it to Sally.Sally found it hard to mask her disappointment. “Oh,” was all she could say looking at the battered green cover. It had an old woodcut on the front, showing a hare by a riverside, looking up at a smiling moon. The title, printed in crude block letters, was Highways, Havens and Highlands by James Hendry.“It’s by a lo
Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 5Before Dunballan:Distance had always been a feature of Sally and David’s relationship, both physically and emotionally. In the ten years they’d been together they’d never lived in the same property, not until they moved to Dunballan. When they were in London they lived in separate flats in totally different parts of the city, at least half an hour’s bus ride from one another.They weren’t the sort of people who made connections easily and neither of them had a large circle of friends. Sally had only had two other lovers and David assured her he hadn’t had many more. He refused to be more specific than that, and Sally had learned not to press him.They were comfortable with their remoteness, neither of them wanting to cling to the other or make any demands. Sally had been fiercely independent since she was a child, and she hated to be dependent on anyone or have anyone depend on her. Several days could go by without Sally or David contacting the other, and it wouldn’t wor
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