CHAPTER 11When Sally was around nine years old, her mother had walked into the living room to find Sally, with her hands on her father’s head and her eyes closed, praying to God in a loud voice. Sally had seen a film in morning assembly about Saints and the healing power of faith, so she’d been inspired to try it on her father.She was sure that her father’s soul was still out there, caught somewhere between Heaven and Earth, waiting to return to his body. Sally wanted God to reach up and pull her father’s soul back into his body, so he could open his eyes and be his old self again. She was certain that God could do that if only she believed it hard enough and prayed as loud as she could.She was praying so loudly that she didn’t hear her mother come into the room to see why she was making so much noise. The first she knew of her mother’s presence was the sharp stinging pain she felt as her mother slapped her hands away from her father.“What on earth do you think you’re playing a

CHAPTER 13Eight days ago:Sally rooted around in the back of the kitchen cupboard until she found the largest Tupperware box she had.She put the box on the counter and filled it with all the steaks, each one seasoned, and then marinated as Hettie had instructed. The steaks had been cut into rough chunks and smelled quite strongly of the marinade. Sally was actually glad to get the lid on the Tupperware box.Next she fetched David’s old Zippo with the Boy Scout emblem on it, and a bottle of paraffin. Then she went and got the small wooden box that had been sitting on the crowded mantelpiece in the living room. It had a strange carving of a tree on the lid. Sally wasn’t an expert in trees, but it looked like an elm tree. Around the base of the trunk was a cage with its gate open. Just what this meant, or why anyone would want to cage a tree, Sally didn’t know, but she thought it would be a perfect container for the figurine.She’d made the figurine this morning out of all the hair

CHAPTER 15After the second time the Beast left:It was a warm night, but they decided to light the fire anyway and make it an occasion with a good bottle of Merlot. Sally had cooked lamb shanks, and they were feeling nicely full and a little tipsy.“I don’t know what’s up with this weather,” she mused. “One minute it’s pouring down, the next it’s bright sunshine. It’s been that way all week. Still it’s good for the wildflowers in the forest. There’ll be a carpet of them next week, I expect.”“It’s different in the heart of the forest,” David said. Then he paused, and a brief frown passed across his face. Sally and he had never gone into the heart of the forest, which covered nearly 4,000 hectares. They’d only explored the periphery.Sally sensed an opportunity and reached out to him. “Is it much darker there? In the middle of the forest, I mean.”“It’s more primal and untouched. Very few people have ever gone all the way into it, possibly a handful in living memory. There are pa

CHAPTER 17Eight days ago:Sally had only been this deep into the forest once before. That was yesterday. She’d had David with her then, or rather his mindless body.Hettie had shown her the way that time. Whispering to her from the coppice, bending the undergrowth to point her in the right direction. She had to find her own way now, retracing the path from memory. That became harder the farther she got into the woods, especially as the sun was going down and evening was creeping in.A rotting moss covered log blocked her way—she didn’t recognise it. Had she taken a wrong turn? Sally looked around the forest for any landmarks she might recognise.The silver birches were giving way to pines, which grew closer together, and the temperature in this part of the forest dropped. The cool air brought a sudden flash of lucidity. Sally thought about what she was doing here in the middle of the forest, and it suddenly seemed insane.Was she really going to save David this way, or was she p

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