A Dark and Secret Place

he had been expecting. In fact, he seemed to drink in the light, staring around at the bleak landscape and the sky with a growing sense of peace. There were the woods; he had played in them once, and the leaves were turning brown and red. There were the fields, dark now with recent rain, and there were the old out-buildings his father had let fall into disrepair. Somewhere beyond them, there was a paved road, but it was a long walk. His mother’s body, which he had dragged out onto the scrubby grass with him, looked more beautiful already—away from the house she was something else. Taking hold of her ankles, he dragged her a little further, across the dirt track and into the fallow field opposite.

“Here.” He opened his mouth to say more, but couldn’t. The grass was wet, framing his mother and cushioning her, and he could feel the life of it; tiny flies and beetles, the bright interest of worms. The boy moved so that he was kneeling next to her, and he felt his body fill with an anger that was so flat and so enormous it was like a landscape inside him, a rage that filled his every horizon. For a time, he came untethered from himself, seeing nothing but that flat, red rage, hearing nothing but thunder. He did not come back to himself until a polite cough from behind him made him jerk with surprise. His arms were bloody to the elbow, and his mouth was thick with the taste of pennies. There were things in his teeth.

“What is this then? What do we have here?”

There was a man in the grass, tall and sharp-angled. He was wearing a hat and he was watching the boy with a kind of gentle curiosity, as though he had come across someone making a kite or playing conkers. The boy went utterly still. The man wasn’t from the house, but that didn’t mean the boy wouldn’t be punished. Of course he would be punished. He looked down to see what he had done to his mother, and the edges of his vision went gray.

“Now then. Don’t take on so.” The man took a step forward, and for the first time the boy saw that he had a dog with him, a huge black dog, covered in shaggy black fur. It steamed slightly in the cold morning air and looked at him with yellow-brown eyes. “You know, I had completely forgotten the Reaves had a boy, but there you are. There you are, after all.”

The boy opened his mouth and closed it again. The Reaves, the Reaves were his family, and they would be angry with him.

“And what a creature you are.” The boy winced, remembering how his mother had called him brute and beast and filth, but the man sounded pleased, and when the boy looked up, he was shaking his head gently. “You’re to come with me, I think, my little wolf. My little barghest.”

The dog opened its mouth, letting loose a long pink tongue. After a moment it began to lick the blood from the grass.

 CHAPTER2

COLD AND TIRED and in no mood for awkward pleasantries, Heather forced a polite smile on her face. A moment later she reconsidered, and just as forcibly removed it—smiling too much at a time like this would be seen as inappropriate, and she was already well aware that she was about as welcome as a turd in a swimming pool.

“Thanks, Mr. Ramsey, for waiting in for me. It’s very kind of you.”

Mr. Ramsey glowered at her.

“Well, if you had been around here more often, I dare say you would have had your own set of your mother’s keys.” He sniffed, communicating in one bronchial sound everything he thought of Heather Evans. “Your poor mother. It’s … well, it’s all very sad, I’m sure. Very sad indeed. Just a terrible situation all round.”

“Yeah, it’s definitely that.” Heather hefted the keys in her hand, looking at the towering bushes and trees that hid her mother’s house from the road. “Don’t let me keep you, Mr. Ramsey.”

He stiffened at that, the pouches under his eyes turning a slightly darker shade of gray. She kept quiet, letting the silence spool out into the overcast morning, and soon she could see him wondering if he shouldn’t give her a piece of his mind. But in the end, he turned and marched back to his own house.

Heather stood for a moment longer, taking a deep breath and listening to the quiet. Balesford was a place of residential sprawl, of detached houses and high fences, of eerily similar faces and the same accent everywhere you went. It was technically London, nestled as it was on the very border of Kent, but a very anemic strain of it—no color, no life.

She sighed, jangling the keys in her hand before taking a deep breath and marching up to the gate, half hidden by the vast, evergreen bushes. On the other side was a neat lawn with slightly overgrown flower beds and a gravel path that led to the house. There was nothing special about it, certainly nothing unusual, and yet despite this Heather felt her stomach tighten as she walked up the path. It was not a welcoming building, never had been; the bleak pebbledash merged with the blank windows to suggest a place that was closed and would be closed forever. The door was painted a dreary magnolia, and on the ground next to it was a fat terracotta pot. It was filled with black soil, and on the smooth orange surface a rough heart had been scratched, the lines jagged and overlapping. Heather frowned at it slightly—she’d never thought her mother as one for the rustic look—and why was it empty? It was very unlike her mother to leave something unfinished … which was ironic, given how things had ended. For a long wobbly moment Heather thought she might cry, right there on the doorstep,