Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror

Queit Places: A Novella of Cosmic Folk Horror

By:  Crystal Lake Publishing  Completed
Language: English
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In the quiet of the forest, the darkest fears are born. The people of Dunballan, harbour a dark secret. A secret more terrible than the Beast that stalks the dense forests of Dunballan. A secret that holds David McCavendish, last in a long line of Lairds, in its unbreakable grip. It’s down to Sally, David’s lover, to free David from the sinister clutches of the Beast. But, with the whole town against her, she must ally herself with an ancient woodland force and trace Dunballan’s secret back to its bitter origins. Those origins lie within the McCavendish family history, and a blasphemous heresy that stretches back to the beginning of time. Some truths are too terrible to face, and the darkest of these lie waiting for Sally, in the Quiet Places. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

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Anita E
Good short stories. Worth the read!
2022-09-14 08:43:03
0
user avatar
TheCalm
I follow you because your list is horror! Love it 🤍
2022-05-20 03:24:21
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23 Chapters

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
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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?”
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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
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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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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
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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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CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 6First weeks in Dunballan:David had no problem selling his apartment, it was snapped up after only a few viewings. He sold most of his other possessions and was ready to move in a matter of months.Sally did not have it so easy. She found a buyer, but got caught up in a property chain that dragged on interminably and seemed like it would never be resolved. She would have pulled out and put her flat back on the market, but the buyer was offering her so much over the asking price that she didn’t want to lose him.She gave notice at the primary school where she worked as a teacher, but there wasn’t time to find a similar position in or around Dunballan.“I’ve no idea what I’m going to do for an income,” she said to David over the phone, soon after he’d left for Dunballan. “Maybe I should wait a bit before coming up, at least until I’ve sold my flat.”“No, don’t do that.” There was a hint of alarm in David’s voice that wasn’t like him, nor was the needy undertone. “I’ve got
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CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 7The first time the Beast came:David saw the Beast first. He always did. It was like he was attuned to it, connected on some deep hereditary level.It took Sally a little while to realise that he was looking at something. They would usually be outside, near the house or the forest, and David would go quiet all of a sudden and stare into the distance. Sally would spot the change in his mood—since moving in with him she’d become acutely aware of the shifts in David’s temperament.She let it go the first few times, presuming he’d paused for thought and, if he wanted to share what he was thinking, he would. She didn’t like to pry, and she knew David still needed his own space. She’d come to expect a certain level of intimacy with him since moving in. She knew he had his own interior life and she respected that, but she didn’t want to be left out entirely. She began to scrutinise him when his gaze wandered, and she realised he was looking at something specific.“What have you
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CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 8Sally became less frightened of the Beast, but not less wary. It seemed to be less nervous of being seen, creeping closer and closer to the house.She glimpsed it at the edge of the forest, coming a little farther out from the trees each time. Then she caught sight of it behind a hedgerow in the field next to her garden. Finally, while she was standing at the back door to the cottage, looking out over the gentle slope of the garden, she saw its long, sinuous tail flicking backwards and forwards over the top of the garden wall.It never made the slightest noise and disappeared from view almost as soon as she saw it. Sally sometimes wondered if her eyes were playing tricks on her, but she knew David was aware of its presence too, even though he refused to acknowledge the Beast, let alone discuss it.Sally took to leaving knives, axes, and anything else she could use as a weapon, around the cottage and garden, hidden in strategic places so she was never far from something sh
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CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 9Sally turned back to David. His jaw was slack, his mouth hung open, and his eyes were empty and glazed.Sally tried to rouse him. “David,” she said. “David?” But he didn’t respond. Sally passed her hand in front of his face. He didn’t blink or show any expression. He was breathing through his mouth, deep, steady breaths that rattled the phlegm at the back of his throat. Sally took his hand and checked the pulse in his wrist—it was regular. He neither resisted nor responded to any of this.His body was fine, but David himself appeared to be absent. Sally clicked her fingers next to his ear and shook his shoulders, but this didn’t get any reaction. She raised her hand and slapped him hard about the face, hoping to shock him out of his stupor. She left a red mark on his cheek, but his vacant expression didn’t alter a bit.When she saw the mark, Sally regretted being so violent. She didn’t want to hurt David, but she didn’t know what else to do. She couldn’t rouse him, and sh
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