CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3

Sally 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.

The more she started to identify the pattern, the more certain she became that there was a conscious presence behind it, something that was trying to make contact with her. Of course, Sally had no way of knowing, at first, whether this was all in her mind. There was never anyone with her when the pattern occurred, so she couldn’t check if someone else had also heard it.

Twigs would snap in the hedgerow right next to her, and then again with her next step, and then again and again, keeping pace with her as she walked the length of the hedgerow. If she stopped, the snapping would stop, but as soon as she started walking, it would resume.

The first time this happened, Sally couldn’t believe it. She was walking through the fields on her way to the forest. She knelt down and peered under the hedge, looking to see if there was a hedgehog or a bird there. All she saw was an intense darkness lurking just below the bushes. She couldn’t see anything moving, but she still felt a presence, a brooding intelligence that didn’t belong under a bush, or in a field, or anywhere in the world Sally knew.

She stood up very quickly and walked as far away from the hedge as she could. She felt like a field mouse whose fur has just been brushed by an owl’s talon, filled with panic and a need to find shelter. She returned home as quickly as she could.

Sally avoided going to the forest for a whole week after that. She moped around the cottage, feeling bored. Apart from looking after David, she had nothing to do except read a book or visit Dunballan, and she never really enjoyed that. So she told herself not to be so stupid, that there was nothing under the hedgerow except a bird that had hopped away, then she put on her coat and went out.

Nothing happened on that walk, or the next two times she visited the forest, but the twig snapping soon returned and was joined, very shortly, by a strange breeze. It seemed to only blow down the length of the hedgerow and nowhere else in the field, rustling the branches and stirring the leaves underneath.

Like the twig snapping, the breeze and the leaf rustling kept time with Sally as she walked—it died down when she stood still and started up again when she continued. However much Sally avoided the hedges, as soon as she got near one she’d hear the regular sounds of twigs cracking and leaves scuttling.

Then she started to hear dripping. It didn’t matter whether it had just rained or not, Sally would hear drops of liquid hitting the ground beneath the bushes and the shrubs. The liquid sometimes sounded a little heavier and thicker than water. She wasn’t sure if it was sap or some other fluid that formed at the centre of the hedges.

The drips always fell in their own little rhythm, as though they were striking a counterpoint to the breaking of the twigs and the movement of the leaves, as though something were orchestrating all these noises according to its own dark design.

It was the fact that this only ever happened when Sally was by herself that really began to worry her. When David was able to join her, nothing happened in the hedgerows. She went into denial about what was happening, and blocked out the sound whenever she was near a hedge.

She told herself it was just a response to the strain of the move, that the isolation and loneliness she felt in the cottage—all by herself for days—was taking its toll. She was letting her imagination get the better of her, projecting her thoughts and fancies onto perfectly natural phenomenon.

She even made herself believe that for a while, until she heard a new pattern in the noises the hedgerow made. A pattern so carefully orchestrated it sounded like speech, not human speech, but something speaking in a language she understood.

“Little . . . sister-sister-sister . . . ” it said.

It confirmed her worst fears. Up until that moment she’d only suspected she was going mad, but here was full blown proof that she’d lost her sanity. It’s hard to deny your psychosis when you start hearing voices, even if those voices aren’t human. Sally had given up a lot to move to Dunballan, but she didn’t want to lose her mind. David depended on her too much to let that happen.

She avoided anywhere that had hedges for a long time after that, fields, open spaces, even her own garden. Sally refused to give in to the madness. If she could just stay away from it, she told herself, it might never find her again. Then she went into the library and everything changed.