The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

WHERE’S THE HARM? ^{REBECCA LLOYD}

When we first arrived back home to fix our parents’ house, we were eager for the money we’d make on it; my brother’s latest venture was going bust, and I was despairing of ever making a living from my photography. We reckoned the house could fetch a handsome sum even though it was a bit out of the way down the wooded lane. Our plan was to re-decorate, fix the garden, replace parts of the veranda, put the thing on the market, and get back to our normal and very separate lives in Holesville Nine—my brother and I had never learnt how to get on together, he drank too much and gambled too often to be any real use to me as a brother. At my cruellest I used to describe him as one of those guys who are overly proud of themselves, the type that endlessly pontificate about their honourable natures.

We’d agreed to complete each room before we moved onto the next. Eddie was to remove layers of wallpaper, fill in the gaps and holes beneath it all, then wash the walls down and paint them in some pastel colour that the eye could ignore and that a buyer would not be offended by. I was to remove many years of chipped paint from the skirting boards and the window frames, and re-paint them in simple white gloss.

The evenings had turned chilly and we’d taken to lighting the old log burner in the kitchen. Apart from its heat, it gave us something to focus on because conversation between us was so difficult. Being younger by five years, Eddie felt a peculiar impulse to compete with me, but I had no interest in being drawn into whatever crazy infected jumble was going on in his mind, and whenever I suspected he was attempting to manipulate our interactions, I clammed up. But I have also to own up to the fact that when we were kids, I scared him a lot and he was, deliciously for me, dead easy to scare. It’s how I kept him under control, I now realise. I often wonder just how cruel I really was to him, but he’d be the last person I’d ask.

Each morning, before starting our work in the house, we walked down the lane into the beginnings of the wood, to collect supplies for the log burner. There was one other dwelling that we knew of for certain further on from ours, and in it lived a very ancient man, who, even when we were kids, looked far too old to still be alive. Mr. Ratchetson—that was the name, and I used to tell little Eddie that he was a night-creeper who crawled up the wall and stared through our window while we were asleep. He didn’t believe me until I told him about the noises Mr. Ratchetson made as he clung to the side of our house and moved disgustingly in and out like a fire bellows.

“What noises does he make, Ross?” Eddie asked, wriggling down further into his bed.

I had to think quickly, so he didn’t see my lie. “Like the noise Mum’s door makes, Eddie. Just like that… squeaking and groaning at the same time.”

“What does he do it for?”

“It’s Mr. Ratchetson’s way of talking to you.”

“What’s he saying?”

“How would I know, it’s a different language, silly.”

Eddie gazed at me for a long time that evening, his eyes steady on my face and widened, and the next morning I saw that I’d convinced him, and felt the grim pleasure of my deceit. Because we now live in the same town, we come across each other every so often, and he still looks at me that way sometimes, so I like to think anyway—but perhaps the uneasiness is mine for my cruelty towards him back then. I don’t know.

As we drew level with Mr. Ratchetson on one of our wood gathering trips, he was at his gate looking away from us towards the darkness of the trees. “Oh God, look! That’s old Ratchetson, isn’t it? Must be way past a hundred by now,” Eddie whispered.

“More like two hundred, and still peeping through windows,” I said.

“Thank you, Ross. I don’t want to be reminded of that stuff. And by the way, I never did believe you.”

“Like hell you didn’t.”

“You don’t know, do you?”

“What?”

“That to keep you happy, I perfected a certain way of looking that convinced you I’d fallen for your crap.”

“Yeah?” I half-turned to look at him, but my attention was on Mr. Ratchetson. “Why do old people do that?”

“Do what?”

“Stand and stare into the distance like that?” I said.

“They’ve got nothing better to do, I expect.”

On hearing our approach, Mr. Ratchetson turned his head slowly towards us, tortoise-like and blinking. “Why are you down here?” he asked. “Town is the other way, up on the tarmac road.”

“We’re the Marshall brothers,” I explained. “We’ve come here to sell Mum and Dad’s house.”

“Marshall kids?”

I nodded, and he inspected Eddie and me closely. “Selling your mother’s house?” I nodded again. “Why, what’s the matter with it?”

Eddie laughed. “They’ve passed on, you know. Died… and someone has to do something with the house.”

“They died,” Mr. Ratchetson said, and I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement. He turned his head to the wood again and I had the distinct impression he was waiting for something, or at least thought he was—maybe something out of his long and very distant past.

“Do you have relatives yourself, Mr. Ratchetson?” Eddie asked in a nice voice.

“They died.”

“Ah, of course they did.”

I wanted us gone now and I tugged at Eddie’s arm, but remembered suddenly something my father once said which I’d found so intriguing that it’d become a fixture in some part of my mind. “We’re going into the wood to get fuel for our log burner. It’s chilly in the evenings now, isn’t it, Mr. Ratchetson?” I began, thinking to lead him gently towards my question.

“It is.”

“What’s the best wood to pick up do you think?” I asked.

“Ash if you can find some. Most of it’s further in towards the middle of the wood, though. Did you have it in mind to go right inside there?”

“Yes. We were never allowed as kids, so it’s time we did.”

“Right inside,” Eddie repeated, and I could hear an echo of the night-whisperings of our childhood in his voice.

“You might find a house in there,” the old man muttered. “But if you come across it, you should move on in haste.”

“What house would that be Mr. Ratchetson?” I asked trying not to show my interest, for here was the point of my questioning.

“The last one along this stretch,” he answered, raising his thin arm into the air for emphasis.

“I thought yours was the last,” Eddie said.

“Lots of folk did,” he answered.

“Dad spoke about that house to me once,” I said. “He reckoned it got swallowed up by the encroaching wood, and when I asked if Eddie and I could go and see it, he said if we did, we’d be swallowed up by the wood too, and never find our way out again.”

“You didn’t tell me that when we were kids,” Eddie said, frowning at me.

“I didn’t think there was any point.”

“Dad liked to know exactly where we were, you see, Mr. Ratchetson,” Eddie explained, and I could hear a tiny scraping of anxiety in his voice.

“You’re the Marshall boys, you say?” the old man asked. “Ann Marshall was your mother?” We nodded. “She had glorious hair, but I’m glad she cut it off; it put my mind to rest. Mightily to rest.”

“I remember Mum’s hair when it was long,” Eddie said. “It used to swing about when she had it loosened on Sundays. I really loved it; I was heartbroken when she had it all shorn off.”

Mr. Ratchetson shifted from one slippered foot to the other. “Wisest thing to do, son; it was attracting a great deal of attention.”

I glanced at Eddie and was startled to find myself moved by the emotion on his face. I too had been sad when Mum cut off her hair. I’d asked her what she did with it and was puzzled when she whispered that Dad had taken it into the field behind our house and burnt it. She wouldn’t say anymore, and Eddie and I could tell by our parents’ faces that we were not to ask about it, and not to stare at Mum’s raggedy shorn head, or at the hundreds of little cuts on her arms and neck.

“So, the house, Mr. Ratchetson?”

“Try to sell it to decent people,” he answered, “if there are any such left in the world.”

“The other one; the one inside the wood.”

“To collect the ash, you mean?”

“Yes, exactly… where we can get ash.”

“I know where a big old oak has fallen down,” he said, turning his head first and then by small shaky movements, his body, in the direction we’d come from. “Walk along the railway to the old shoe factory. Whole tree down just there.” He stared at us for a short intense moment, and then, without saying more, turned, and made his way to his open front door.

“Wow,” Eddie said, “did you see the way the pulse on his skull was twanging?”

“I want to find that house,” I murmured, somehow fearful of the words as I spoke them. “I’ve been curious about it all my life.”

Eddie shrugged. “Let’s not waste more time then; half the morning’s gone already.”

Moss had formed vivid green pillows along the route into the deeper wood, some of them huge and glistening with moisture, and although we didn’t see fungus poking out anywhere, I could smell it above the odour of wet rotting leaves. As we walked on, the tree trunks began to take on an unfamiliar slimy look and I was disinclined to reach out and run my palm over them, as had always been my way with trees.

“It’s a little ecosystem all of its own in here,” I said, “moist and dripping.”

“What’s that stuff growing in the rock crevices with black stems?”

“Maidenhair fern, Eddie. Or Venus’s hair.” We could see that it had grown lushly and undisturbed for a long time, and it made me shiver despite its beauty.

“Quaint,” Eddie whispered, and walked towards it. “It’d make a great shot, or have you given up nature photos?”

“Let’s not stop,” I said. Time’s getting on, and we’ve got stuff to get in town later. As I spoke, just at the corner of my eye something attracted my attention. “How weird is that?” I whispered, pointing it out. “Who do you think did it—kids?”

“Must be, I suppose.”

“It’s on both sides of that path, look.” We stood close together, and stared; the vegetation and wood grasses on a small side track off the main path had been neatly plaited and their ends bound together with some kind of delicate twine. “Shall we see what’s further on?” I asked.

“Let’s just stick on this path and find the ash,” Eddie said.

I’ve never forgotten those words of his, and each time I think of them, my heart seems to plummet downwards and fall away into a great void of pity, and longing, and grief, for I said, “No, come on, let’s just take a quick look down there. Where’s the harm?”

We turned off the main track and walked down the tiny dark and plaited pathway before us. We came to a bend pretty soon and as we rounded it, both of us cried out. We’d found the house, and it was huge with many shabby, grey glinting windows.

“Abandoned ages ago by the looks of it,” Eddie murmured.

I could understand why he thought so; trees and spindly saplings had grown right up against the peeling walls of the house and across what once would’ve been a handsome pathway to the front door. But some of the windows on the upper floor were curtained and they weren’t in ribbons or covered in filth, but clean-looking and made of the same shiny fabric that the haberdasher in town kept on a roll at the front of his shop.

We stood in silence for a long time and gazed. I was just thinking how distracting the wind was, when I saw movement. “Eddie,” I said, gripping his arm tightly, “that place is not abandoned. I’ve just seen someone in the top room on the left.”

A while later, the same figure moved across a different window.

“Whoa!” Eddie said loudly, “it was a woman. How can she be living out here? Look, no cars in the front, no road down here anyway.”

There comes a strange pricking sensation, almost like a weight has settled on your shoulders. It’s not a sensation I’ve experienced a great deal, but as Eddie fell silent, I was compelled to turn around, and in the dappled shade of a large tree behind us on the track some thirty yards away, two women were watching us. The smaller one had her arms crossed and was balancing on one foot. The other had her hands on her hips and was stooped forward slightly, the better to see us, I felt. Eddie had turned too, and joined me in my scrutiny. The wind had whipped up the leaves of the tree the women stood beneath and caused changing patterns of moving light on the path, so that we had to blink and look away several times. No words had passed between the four us, and perhaps it was that small oddness more than anything else which alerted me to the peculiar nature of our situation.

It was Eddie who brought an end to the staring. He moved forward a pace or two, and put his hand up in greeting. “Hi there,” he began. “I’m Eddie and this is my brother, Ross.”

The women looked at each other and moved slowly out from the shadows. What I’d taken to be cloaks of an old-fashioned kind draped around their shoulders, were no such thing. Their hair hung about them concealing much of what they wore, and it stopped a few inches only from the ground itself. I felt quickly nauseous and assumed, knowing Eddie’s sensitivities that he would too. But he walked straight over to them and although they would not take his outstretched hand, they were, within minutes, smiling up at him. I hadn’t moved and it was as if I was irrelevant, and that unsettled me further.

I stayed put and studied them for several minutes, before Eddie beckoned me over. My very guts seemed to have shrivelled and my breathing was shallow and raspy. Absurd thing to describe, I dare say, but I was acutely alert and conscious of a vague but persistent danger of some indefinable type. I can’t remember what Eddie said to them, the tone of his conversation, or its subject matter. I’d never come across women like them before and I quickly concluded that they were part of a cult. They had that same quiet and thoughtful look that religious women sometimes have. Most of the women I knew laughed too loudly and talked for too long about nothing of interest and in squeaky voices. They had fussy hairstyles and fidgety hands, and were always far too eager to agree with what I thought. These women had a curious melancholic air about them that wasn’t exactly a state of sadness, more as if they—and this is crazy—carried within them a sense of all the isolated places on the earth.

I would describe them as beautiful, the smaller one in particular, the one Eddie could not keep his eyes off, but I can say for certain that I didn’t like those faces. Several times I squeezed his elbow to try to get him to come away. He glanced at me once and frowned. His eyes were literally shining, and I shivered.

“We were just talking, Ross. You were standing right there!” Eddie said on our way home. “How could you not hear us?”

“I wasn’t paying attention to their words, but their hair…”

“Fantastic wasn’t it?”

“Freakish,” I replied. “Freakish.”

Eddie laughed. “Not your kind of women, eh?”

I moved my sack of wood onto my other shoulder and quickened my pace. We’d wasted a good part of the day and I was irritated and feeling shuddery. “Did you see their clothes?”

“A bit Amish, I agree, Ross. But so what?”

“Not the kind of women who’re asking to be touched,” I replied, “and you’re a bit keen on that, aren’t you?”

“Does that mean you’re not coming?”

“Huh?”

“They invited us to that old house tomorrow afternoon.”

Our argument when on into the night. I couldn’t persuade him not to go. He suggested we both take a day off as we’d been working on the house for a couple of weeks with no breaks, and were beginning to get fatigued. In the end, I decided I was going to walk around town and see if I could find anyone I knew from when we were young, and he could do the hell what he liked. I watched him go. I watched him walking fast down the wooded lane, and when he disappeared into the first of the trees, I picked up my coat and headed for town.

I spent the rest of the day arguing with myself. I sat in the park for a while and then followed our old route through the back streets. I didn’t meet anybody we used to know, although the place itself hadn’t greatly changed. It was only when I became aware that I was walking aimlessly and with very little interest in anything other than what was in my mind that I returned home.

A great jumble of contradictory thoughts battered my head. The most part of me was seized with horror made more terrifying because I had no idea how such a powerful reaction had come about. I could almost feel the reasoning voice I’d conjured up as Eddie walked away that morning fading into silence: so, my brother had met a couple of deadly strange women and found them to be charming, while I thought they were grotesque. Was it not just evidence of how differently we saw the world? Maybe… but what had they done to him in those moments that we stood with them that he should be so eager to return? I tried repeatedly to bring their faces to mind so I could search for expressions on them that would explain something… explain anything. All I remembered was a curious blandness of expression, while Eddie’s face was alight with interest and pleasure. The bloody fool.

I left the kitchen and went to stand on the veranda, dusk was falling and the local frogs were beginning to get noisy. Eddie had not returned. God damn it! I wasn’t going after him. What was the point? Soon it would be pitch black. Just as I was thinking that, I saw him.

He was wandering towards the house, taking his time—and he was whistling.

“For Christ’s sake, where the hell have you been?” I shouted at him, and I realised by the expression on his face, that I’d badly over-reacted.

“I told you. You know. You were invited too. What’s the matter with you?” he asked, almost whispering at me and with such as dismissive expression on his face, that I felt curiously ashamed of myself.

“Sorry,” I said, following him into the kitchen.

“I’ve eaten already. Have you?”

“No. I’m not hungry.”

“I ate with them.”

“What?”

“I said I ate with them.”

“Those women?”

“Don’t call them those women.”

“What did you eat?” I asked, moving around the table to get a better look at him.

He seemed startled all of a sudden, and he frowned. “Hey, guess what? I haven’t a clue, Ross; isn’t that strange? They are so… engaging, I don’t think I noticed the food.”

“You must be joking!”

He seemed tired, and before I could get anything much out of him, he edged towards the door. “I’m whacked, Ross. See you tomorrow,” he said, and closed the door extra quietly, and was gone.

I remember shaking my head in frustration about him for some few minutes after he’d left; he’d seemed so calm, almost luminous, as if he’d risen slightly above the normal dirtiness of human life. I made the decision not to talk to him about it the following day. We’d just get on, each with our separate work, and stop for short coffee breaks when the time seemed right. But I didn’t sleep that night, only roamed about in my thinking, ricocheting from one awful thought to another.

We were working on the living room the following morning and I had a lot of shabby-looking window frames to deal with in there. Eddie was priming the opposite wall. We hadn’t spoken at breakfast, but every time I glanced at his face, he seemed perfectly normal, as if somehow he’d come down to earth during the night. I well knew that if I brought up the subject of the women directly he’d take pleasure in thwarting me. Back in Holesville Nine he had a girlfriend. She was as different from the women in the wood as could be. Her clothes were ill-fitting and badly chosen and often garish, she walked with little tittering steps as if about to topple, in shoes that looked as though they’d been deliberately designed to harm the wearer. Yet, her face was childish and kind of sweet and I know she adored Eddie.

“Cherie doing okay?” I asked after some time.

“She’s good. She’s doing good. Yeah. Thanks.”

“She’ll be glad to see you back,” I suggested. “I was wondering if we should forget the upstairs. Sometimes people are keen to get hold of places they can do up themselves.”

“Not what you said when we first talked about it.”

“Yeah, but how long have we been here now, three weeks isn’t it?”

“Ross, I think we should do what we planned to do. What’ve you got to get back to in Holesville Nine?”

“Nothing in particular,” I agreed. I turned my head to look at him and was surprised to find that he was no longer priming the wall, but standing facing me with his arms folded and his face pale in the poor light. “Nothing,” I said again. “Hey! How about asking Cherie to come and visit us? She could cook for us; I’m tired of scrabbling about trying to make our meals.” Eddie stared at me with an expression so hostile, that for the first time in my life I felt afraid of my little brother. “It was just an idea, Eddie. I mean, she used to help out in Cygnet’s Café, didn’t she?”

Eddie shrugged and seemed to relax. “I’ll tell you what, Ross. How about, after this wall, I start on the upstairs. I’m way ahead of you now anyway, since you’ve got those windows to tackle.”

“So no Cherie, then?”

“She wouldn’t like it here. She doesn’t care for trees.”

“No?”

“Insects, mosquitoes, things like that. She’s a woman, after all.”

“Are you serious about her?”

Eddie laughed, and stooped down to move his painting gear further along the wall. “I can see where this is going, Ross. D’you think I’m an idiot?”

I turned my back on him and stepped up to the window. The wood was of course no closer than it had been before we stumbled upon those women, but now it was omnipresent in my mind.

“It was gritty stuff,” Eddie said suddenly. “It came in little balls.”

“What?” I turned about again.

“I don’t know what it was. And then we had fruit of some kind… sour.”

“Sour?”

“Like gooseberries or something. They grow their own stuff behind the house; they’ve even got a stand of corn. They’d like to see you too, Ross. Why don’t you come with me?”

“Look, Eddie… they gave me the creeps.”

“You should open your mind to them.”

“Fuck off!”

“You’re so closed. They thought you looked like a mean and sad person. Are you a mean and sad person, Ross?”

“What the hell would they know? They’re freaks, Eddie. How long have they been living there?”

“The family has been there for some generations. People in town know about them, but no one bothers them. And that’s as it should be. Free country, you know.”

“Fuck!”

We left it on that note; he’d taken my breath away. I had no idea what to say to him. He took his stuff upstairs in the early afternoon, and from time to time, I could hear him whistling.

I moved Mum’s old radio into the living room and listened to whatever jumble came out of it and worked on. I’d stripped all the outer frames, and the paint was coming off well with my tungsten blade, before I became aware of the quietness upstairs.

I knew even before I pushed the door open that he wouldn’t be there, and sure enough, he wasn’t. Eddie must have climbed out of the window, slid down the little tiled roof below, and jumped to the ground, just as we both used to do as children.

I didn’t know how long he’d been gone for, and although I was sure I could find my way to the house in the wood again if I wanted to, I didn’t fancy the idea of turning up there unexpectedly. I was really angry with him; he was beginning to fuck up our work plan. So I sat on the step of the veranda and stared down the lane, and it was exactly then that I discovered we had woodworm. When I understood the extent of it all along the veranda on the east side of the house, I knew we had to get it treated immediately, or we’d have a lot of trouble selling up. So while Eddie hung out with the hairy forest women, as they had become in my mind, I went into town to see what could be done about the house.

He turned up late-afternoon shortly after I’d arrived back.

“What the hell?” I said.

“She called me,” he replied, “and I went.”

He looked peaceful—slightly disengaged. I shook my head slowly at him. “We’ve got woodworm in the veranda, and no one can get here to treat it for two months,” I told him, as if it was his fault.

He didn’t laugh, but I could see some sly calculation on his face about it. “Oh!” he said. “Now, that’s a shame. How much will it cost us?”

I shrugged. “We have no option, we can’t sell the place untreated, so it doesn’t matter what it’s going to cost. So, what have you been up to?”

“I was helping Domescia and Carboh turn some earth over.”

“No kidding; so our work just becomes nothing because of those women?”

“I’ve asked you before, Ross, not to call them those women.”

“What did you say their names were?”

“Domescia and Carboh.”

I realised I was trembling, but I didn’t think Eddie could see it. He was standing some fifteen yards away. “God damn it, Eddie, what’s going on with you?”

“No. What’s going on with you, more like. Carboh says you’re haunted by your own meanness.”

“Which one was that, Eddie?”

“The smaller one.”

“I thought so. The one you kept staring at.”

“The one I’m going to be joined with, Ross.”

“God damn, Eddie, God damn! What the hell has gotten into you?”

I could not speak further. I stared at my brother, and if I’d thought all along that I never really knew him, I could not have wanted a heavier, more sinister conviction of that fact now. I turned and went inside. It was getting towards early evening and I set to lighting the kitchen stove with shaking hands, when a thought struck me. Eddie had come in and was looking in the fridge for something to eat.

“What d’you mean she called you?” I asked. “You don’t have a mobile and the house phone is disconnected.”

“Hard to explain, Ross.”

“Try me,” I replied.

“I don’t think you’d get it, and I don’t want to make you madder than you already are with me.”

“Damn right, I’m mad with you. What about Cherie?” I asked.

“Well, now you bring her up. But really, you’ve always been dismissive of her in the past.”

I could feel my face heating up and I rubbed my hands over it to control the redness; he was right. “Yeah, that was mean of me,” I murmured.

“There you are you see—mean.”

“Hey now, look here, Eddie, have you gone crazy or something, you’ve only met those women a couple of times, you can’t be thinking of marrying one of them. You hate the idea of marriage, you’ve always said that.”

Eddie looked at me evenly and I could tell he was enjoying my dishevelment. “Come and dine with us tomorrow night, Ross. Domescia is going to prepare a grand feast, the five other sisters will be there, and their mother will be joining us for a short while too.”

“Dine with us?” I repeated, “come and dine with us?” I could do nothing but laugh.

“You’ve been invited, and the other sisters really want you to come; they want to see you,” Eddie explained.

So far I’d understood there were a whole bunch of women in that scratchy old house and somehow living off the land. Who the hell lived like that in the twenty-first century? “The others—have you met them?” I asked, trying for all I was worth to stay calm.

“Yes, Carboh took me to them. They were in one of the upper rooms.”

“And?”

“And nothing, Ross. They were engaging. Really engaging.”

“Engaging, Eddie? Where are these weird words coming from all of a sudden?”

“Well, are you coming or not? I mean where’s the harm?”

“Where’s the harm, you say?”

“Loosen up, big brother, why don’t you?”

Domescia and Carboh were to meet us on the bend of the main track, by the plaited path at around nine. We found Dad’s old heavy duty torch and set out in good time. I was frightened and angry, and could not bring myself to look at Eddie or talk to him. I was intent on examining these curious women and looking for evidence of cultism, so I had some ammunition to lob at the stupid jerk who was my brother.

When we reached the stopping place, I really did not see the two of them standing there although I’d shone the torch all around slowly. But they were there all right. I think their hair must have made them resemble the trunks of trees. As we approached, they turned abruptly and made their way down the plaited path, with us in the rear. I kept the light from the torch on the ground, not wanting to shine it on all that swaying hair. Nobody spoke, and it wasn’t until we stepped into the hall of the house that the atmosphere between us all changed. Domescia and Carboh turned to face us and bobbed a neat little curtsy, and Eddie inclined his head gravely in return. I stared at them and then at my brother and I must have been frowning hard, as finally Carboh said: “Ross, you will frighten my sisters if you look that way at them, it is not friendly; it is mean.”

Caught by some faint movement on the wide and elegant staircase behind us, I looked up and saw, standing in a line, five women of different sizes, all of them sheaved in curtains of hair that gleamed in the faint light as if they’d dressed it with something oily. The sight of them was worse than the thought of suddenly disturbing a snake’s nest and discovering a coiling mass of vigorous young when you least expected it. I stared upwards in horror and my heart began a shuddering thump that I could not make quiet for a good while, although later, I believe the women connived in rendering me calm.

Eddie raised his hand and showed his palm to them, and in return, they each curtsied as the first two had done, and as they did, they made a flurry of small noises—squeals and sighs and whisperings that pitched my stomach over.

I turned to look directly at Domescia and Carboh to find them studying me with keen intensity, and at that moment my impulse was to run from the house, but as much as I despised Eddie, I could not leave him there alone.

The five at the top of the stairs shifted away and us four moved through a wide doorway and into a large, poorly-lit room. The windows in there were tall and curtain-less, and through them I could see the moving forest trees and the different ever-changing shapes they were making. I kept close to Eddie on one side and was aware that Carboh was sticking close to him on the other, while Domescia guided us to the centre of the room and had us all sit down together in a nest of cushions. I could see no other furniture, and its absence alarmed me further.

I decided that Eddie was getting off on the novelty of the situation, it being so opposite to his normal life of bars and drinking and gambling with men who had big opinions but led sloppy, repetitive lives—and the whole woeful mess propped up by restless, troubled women who waited vainly for the men to morph into guys they could admire.

Domescia was touching my arm. I cringed, and she saw that, and took her hand off me. But I felt the imprint of her fingers all through that evening.

“Domescia was asking you if you were hungry, Ross,” Eddie told me.

“We have plenty of food tonight,” Carboh said.

I looked from my brother’s face to that of the woman beside him and could not abide the closeness I felt there. Her hair was now arranged so that very little of her was visible. In the shadows of the room it was like looking at a mask-like disembodied face.

“It certainly is hungry work fixing that house,” I exclaimed, attempting to smile at her. “Eddie had thought of asking his girlfriend, Cherie, to come and help us out with the cooking.”

Although she regarded me steadily, it wasn’t consternation that flickered across Carboh’s features, but pity. It was as if I was very far behind in this game. She knew about Cherie and didn’t care, perhaps. Ross laughed in a light and happy way, and taking Carboh’s hand in his, he played with her fingers, while she gazed at me with what I took to be distain.

“Our mother will come to meet with us later,” Domescia announced. “She doesn’t eat any longer, so she does not attend when we gather, but she was concerned you might think badly of her if she was absence at our feast.”

I found myself shrugging in a surly kind of way. “But this is the first I’ve ever heard of her,” I said, “… and she doesn’t have a clue who I am.”

“But we have talked to her about you at length,” Carboh said, “and she has a great desire to meet you.”

“Me?” I asked, “to meet me?”

“In particular, you.”

“Why?”

“You don’t know our ways. She would like to help you with them.”

“And Eddie does know your ways?” I asked, pointing at him.

“He senses them rather than knows them; in that regard he is generous.”

I could feel a surge of fury rising in me at her words. Eddie senses them? Eddie is generous? I clenched my jaw and studied my own hands so that I could get a moment’s relief from looking at the faces of those women.

Before I could think of what next to say to them, the door opened and the other five entered, and with them came a perfume—a scent—so exquisite and lingering, that I could scarcely help myself, I threw my head back and inhaled deeply and the long drawn out sigh that I heard came from my own lips.

I try to remember the moment often. The women came in, walking one behind the other, and arranged themselves, cross-legged on the floor in a circle around the cushion nest. At what point Domescia and Carboh shifted to join the outer circle, I cannot be sure, but it ended up with Eddie and me facing each other within the circle of women. The drowsiness that overcame me was utterly delicious, and the only other time I can remember smelling a scent as compelling, was when I was taking photographs in the concrete suburbs of Tangiers, and the scent of the Night Queen wafted across the neighbourhood. Someone told me that on the night the single flower blossoms, dogs and quarrelling lovers become silent in the hypnotic miasma. I tried to read my brother’s face through my curious other worldliness, because surely it was happening to him as well. He seemed very composed, but nothing about his expression told me he was wallowing in the same way I found myself to be.

We ate things; how and when it happened, I do not know, but we ate things. We ate sticky messy unidentifiable stuff, and I found myself so ravenous that I didn’t care to question what it was I was putting into my mouth. Eddie and I were talking, I know we were, and from time to time, one of the women made a remark, or someone laughed behind us. But I don’t remember the details. At a certain point, a change occurred; the mother entered the room, and however mesmerised I’d become, her presence demanded utter attention. I sat up properly on the cushions and looked above the heads of the daughters to a tall, gaunt woman in dark clothing. She had no hair. I glanced at Eddie who was smiling up at her in an obsequious way that made a flare of anger arise in my belly.

“You should be happy for your brother, Ross,” the mother whispered as if she could see instantly what I was feeling. “He has discarded his earth bonds so he can forever float.”

After that, I know a conversation took place, and I believe it went this way with me replying: “You’ve just said something that means diddly-squat to me, Mam.”

“That is no more than I expected,” the mother murmured, “I was told about you.”

I looked quickly at Domescia and Carboh, the only two of the seven weird sisters I had met. They smiled benignly at me between their curtains of hair. “You will forgive me, Mam, but I cannot see how it could be any concern of yours what and who I am.”

“But my daughter Carboh is winding with your brother, so of course you are interesting to us!” She laughed then, and it really, really frightened me. In my panic, I wanted to claw my way out of the cage of scent, because that’s how it seemed to me then.

I grabbed hold of Eddie’s arm, but he shrugged me off. “Don’t do that, Ross,” he whispered.

“Stand up Sissiol,” the mother said, “where you can be seen.” One of the seven arose and walked around the outside of the sitting women until she was facing me. Like the others, she was sheathed in hair, and hers was the colour of river mud. Her face was angelic, her lips embarrassingly sensual. I glanced at the other women, at their glinting eyes, their white brows, their delicate hands. Each was smiling at me, in the way a woman does at a baby, full of warm love, openness and delight. Sissiol slowly extended her hands through her hair and held them open to me in a manner that suggested that I should rise and go to her.

I stood up suddenly, and kicked my brother on his ankle as hard as I could. “For Christ’s Sake, what’ve you got me into here, Eddie?”

The women swayed and sighed and seemed to me to squeak, almost. Sissiol lowered her arms and turned her mouth down in a parody of disappointment and went to lay her head on the breast of the bald-headed horror.

Eddie stood up too, and gestured to Carboh to stay where she was, and then something between him and the mother took place, some unspoken understanding, because the circle of women parted, Eddie pushed me forward, and we were outside the… enchantment. It was as if the extraordinary perfume had surrounded us in a bubble that we’d broken out of. Sissiol and the mother shifted away from us into the far corner of the room, and I, with my brother, headed for the door. Outside the nest of cushions and the circle of women, the change in temperature was startling—inside had been beautifully warm, outside it was cool, and I was thankful for it because my brain began to awaken from whatever mesmerism had taken place in that company. We did not speak on the way home through the wood, and it didn’t even occur to me to use Dad’s torch to guide us back.

I stayed in bed in my old room the next day. Fuck the decorating, I thought. I stared upwards at the familiar crack in the ceiling that, as a child, I used to imagine was a road that would take me on wonderful adventures. I would visit as many countries in the world as there were to visit. I’d yearned to be a traveller, but I’d ended up struggling for money no more than forty kilometres from this house in Holesville Nine, a pit of a town. As I reached my arms out from beneath the blankets, I noticed a yellow-coloured indentation on my arm. Rubbing did not change it, and I realised it was where Domescia had gripped me the night before.

Eddie came into my room with coffee and doughnuts. I could scarcely look at him.

“I thought you’re like Sissiol,” he said, putting the tray on my bedside table. “She’s really intelligent you know. You like intelligent women, don’t you?”

“Eddie, they’re not women,” I answered, “what is the matter with you?”

“What is the matter with you, more like? Do you know how rude you were last night?”

I sat up and stared at him. “How the hell did you get involved with them, and so quickly?”

Eddie smiled at me and then frowned as if he was dealing with a wayward but much loved child. “When we were with the sisters, Ross, were you aware of time passing?”

I shrugged. “No, I can’t say I was.”

“So, what did you feel like, until Mother came in?” I didn’t want to tell him. I wanted to remind him that our mother was dead and that bald-headed freak woman was not “Mother.” “Did you feel good, Ross?”

I swung my feet out of bed and began to dress. “Yes, damn and blast you to hell. I felt ecstatic. I felt as if I could be there forever in that… perfume. Where did it come from, Eddie?”

“Where did what come from?”

“That perfume. Is it something those women put in their hair?”

“They don’t put it in their hair, Ross.”

“What then—was it some kind of incense?”

“No. It is their hair.”

I repeated him, stupidly. “Their hair does that?” I sat heavily back on the bed.

“Wonderful isn’t it?” my brother whispered.

“How about we change plans, Eddie? How about we sell the house as it is and split the money. Get back to normal life, eh? Don’t you miss Cherie just a bit?”

“I don’t care what we do with the house in all honesty, Ross. And as for money… .” He sighed and stretched as if delirious with pleasure.

“What about all your debts you were so intent on paying off with your share?”

“Ah! That was before.”

“Before you met those women, you mean.”

“Please don’t call them that, Ross. Anyhow, didn’t you say they’re not women?”

“I’ve never met women like them in my life before! And what was going on with that one called Sissy?”

“Mother wanted you to meet her, to see her beauty.”

“Fuck off, Eddie! Just fuck off!”

I left the house, got in my jeep, and headed for town. I found a café with hardly anyone in it and ate a good breakfast. I didn’t know what to do, and I found myself crying without caring if I was seen or not. The night before I’d experienced the most pleasurable dream-like sensations I could ever have imagined. I could’ve stayed and stayed and stayed. I could’ve given myself; I could’ve gone with that ghoul of a woman with hair the colour of mud. Yet in me, deep and powerful, was some instinct that must’ve been entirely missing in my brother. I feared for him. Yet, I argued to myself that he was a grown man and he could do what he liked.

I stayed away from the house for most of the day, and when I got back, Eddie was there, in the kitchen, cooking something. “Well, little brother, you’re full of surprises!”

“I went to the new shop on the tarmac road, they sell pies and stuff, thought we could do with a good meal.”

I set about lighting the old stove as the air was getting cold in the falling light. I glanced at him; he seemed relaxed and cheerful, the slightly troubled look he habitually had was gone, and it came to me in a rush of feeling that I loved him… after all and after everything, I loved him. “Thanks for doing that, Eddie,” I said.

He shrugged and laughed, and turned his head to smile at me. “So, are we okay?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Let’s get back to work, eh? Let’s finish the house, and leave. I’ll come back for the woodworm guys, you don’t have to worry.”

“Whatever, Ross. I’m happy.”

I straightened up and stood looking at him. “You look it.”

“It puts everything in perspective, you know.”

“What does?”

“Being happy; feeling content with all about you, feeling… blithe.” I laughed. “Blithe? I couldn’t have guessed you even knew a word like that.”

“Well, one of the things living and working together has shown us, is how little we do know about each other, Ross.”

I turned away to check the stove. “How about when we get home, we make an effort to do things together from now on… like we could meet for a meal once a week. You could bring Cherie. You’re wrong to think I don’t like her, Eddie. Actually, I find her heart-breaking the way she adores you.”

“I’m not going back to Holesville Nine, Ross. I couldn’t take Carboh there, could I?”

I curbed the impulse to fling insults at him; I laughed as if we were engaged in pleasant chit-chat instead. “Hey!” I said, maybe you could buy my half of Mum and Dad’s house and move in there with your…”

“No. The sisters must be together. They must not be separated. I’m moving down into their house. There’s plenty of room and they struggle a bit with chores and so forth, and now that Mother is ill, it’s very hard on everyone.” He laid one bowl on the table, broke up some bread pieces and invited me to sit.

“You not eating, Eddie?”

“No. I look at it and don’t quite see it as food. I cooked it for you.”

“Thank-you, then. It looks good. So, tell me, are you really planning to marry Carboh?”

“I’m winding with her, that’s what they call it.”

“Ah! You mean that’s what they call it where they come from?”

“I guess.”

“So, where do they come from?”

A moment of discomfort moved across his face, and a flicker of the old Eddie was visible. “They’ve been in that house a very long time, so they’re more connected to this area than anyone else around here. They know Mr. Ratchetson well.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it, Eddie, it’s just that their ways of doing things are so different. “So when you wind with Carboh, am I invited to the ceremony?”

Eddie shook his head. “I’m afraid not, it’s intensely private.”

“Really?”

“You could wind with one of them yourself, Ross. You could wind with Sissiol; she’s ready.”

I felt my stomach lurch, and I put down my fork and drank some water. I glanced at my brother over the rim of the glass. It was as if all his anxiety had vanished; he seemed almost noble. “When are you going there again, Eddie? I need to know because we did have a plan once about how we were going to deal with this house.”

“You needn’t worry, Ross. I’ve discussed the matter with the household, and they’ve agreed I should carry on with the work, and visit them at night time.”

“They’ve agreed, did you say?”

“Yes, Ross. They’re generous like that.”

I stared at him. When did I lose him? What happened that I didn’t see?

I stood in the hall for a long time with Mr. Ratchetson as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to lead me into one of the rooms. In the end, we went to the kitchen, where he, with painful slowness, prepared some foul-smelling coffee. I was happy to see him reach for a bottle of whiskey and with badly shaking hands, pour a tot into each chipped mug.

“I could see from the outset that your brother was in danger,” he told me. “He’s the anxious type, isn’t he?”

“You were telling me how long those women have been down there in the wood, Mr. Ratchetson, and I didn’t quite catch what you said. I think you might have been joking, but seriously, has the family been there a long time?”

“Family, you say?”

“Yes, mother, father, children,” I said loudly.

Mr. Ratchetson shook his head. “That’s not the way it is with them.”

“Well…”

“It’s just women always.”

“A cult of women, then.”

“What’s that?” he asked, turning to face me.

“Just women in the cult,” I repeated. “You say my brother is in danger. Can you tell me why?”

“My guess would be that they’ve already got to him. I don’t know how close you two are; you were always together when you were boys, so he might let you in on a few things.”

“Eddie said the women knew you, is that right?” Mr. Ratchetson drew in a deeply-wheezing breath and laughed, and at the end of it his mouth was still open. “It was their house you told us to avoid when we first met you, wasn’t it?”

He nodded and his reptilian eyes blinked and stared, blinked and stared. “Your brother will be for a winding,” he whispered.

“He is, Mr. Ratchetson. He’s going to be wound… winded… to one there called Carboh.”

“So, it’s her turn now, is it?”

I stood up, and taking my mug to his kitchen window, looked out at the dark line of trees and the track that led down to them. I felt as if I was getting nowhere with the old guy. “You knew my parents, Mr. Ratchetson, right?”

“Nice pair.”

“Yes.”

“She was in some danger though.”

“My mother?”

“Lovely woman.”

“How in danger, Mr. Ratchetson.”

“Billy.”

“Pardon.”

“You’re old enough now to call me Billy.”

“Okay, Billy. My mother…”

“All that hair, you see.”

“She cut the whole lot of it off, one day.”

“I know. It was my advice. Lovely woman.”

“You advised her to cut her hair off?”

“Competition with those in the wood, you see. They were taking too much interest in her. Following her to the brink. I used to see them hankering to get at her. She started going in there to pick berries and fungus. I told her. I said they feasted their eyes on her.”

“The brink?”

“The wood’s edge. They don’t come out farther.”

“But she was okay, my mother?”

“One time they chased her hard. She came hurtling out of there and fell down by my garden gate. I thought she was going to explode with terror. I looked over yonder and the one called Domescia was standing as boldly as you please just under that first tree with the split trunk. They think they’re camouflaged you see. They think if they stand against the trunks, they can’t be seen. But I got used to picking them out, living here so close by.”

I went to the old man’s cupboard and brought out the whiskey. He was shivering badly and I was feeling nauseous. I poured a good glug-full into our mugs and sat down opposite him at the table. “It would seem,” I said, “that Domescia has a daughter or granddaughter also called Domescia. I’ve met her, her and Carboh, the one my brother is interested in.”

“No. There’s just one Domescia. You say he likes the one called Carboh?”

“Yes, and when I was in their house…”

I saw Mr. Ratchetson blanch. He swallowed hard several times with an alarming amount of effort, and lowered his head. “I told you to walk on by if you came across that house, you stupid young idiot.”

“We found it by accident down a plaited path, and Domescia and Carboh where there watching us from the shadow of a tree. My brother was drawn to them more or less on the instant.”

“Thought he would be,” the old man murmured, “he’s just the type.”

“What type, Mr. Ratchetson?”

Oh, you know; a wastrel with big ideas and a lot of self-regard. They’re the ones who fall the fastest. But I’m warning you, they can get just about any man if they’re minded to.”

“How would you know what my brother’s like, Mr. Ratchetson?” I whispered.

“Well, it’s plain on his face and in his expressions, is it not?”

“I didn’t think it showed,” I answered. “Anyhow, are you saying other men have got themselves involved in that cult?”

“Cult, you say—what gives you that notion?”

“Weird stuff happened when we went to visit them,” I mumbled. I wanted to talk again about my mother, and it was as if Mr. Ratchetson realised that. He stared at me for a while, and reached his ancient hand across and rested it upon mine lightly.

“Your mother, Ann, was stubborn, that was the trouble. I believe she even befriended those creatures for a while. I think they laid in wait for her and wanted to play with her hair. But she got frightened of them, especially the mother, whose own hair dragged along the ground for a foot or so behind her. There was a time when your father had to go in and pluck her back from them—the winders had set about her on the forest path one afternoon when she’d gone in there for wood, and they were lashing her with thorny branches until she bled.”

“Christ Almighty, Mr. Ratchetson… . Christ Almighty.”

“That’s what I used to say too. Not that church would’ve done any good where the winders are concerned.”

“Winders?”

“Yes, because of what they do… the foul stuff they do in the wood.”

“Do other people round here know about them?”

Mr. Ratchetson shrugged. “I don’t go talking to people in town, so I couldn’t tell you. Maybe some do, and maybe some don’t. You should get your brother to leave.”

“I’ve tried. He doesn’t want to. I can’t force him. If that sort of life is what he wants, why should I stop him anyway?”

I sat bewildered at Mr. Ratchetson’s table, and for a good while neither of us spoke again. “But my mother was okay in the end, wasn’t she, so maybe Eddie will be too,” I said finally. I stood up to go, as I sensed rather than saw the coming of the dark and the walk back to our house was a bit of a stretch. I was feeling frightened. Mr. Ratchetson looked upwards into my face, but all I could see in his eyes was pity.

I cursed myself on the way home; I’d asked the old guy far too many questions and come away with hardly any answers. “… because of what they do… the foul stuff they do in the wood,” is what he’d said, and I hadn’t pressed him on the point. I stopped on the track and looked back at his weathered old house, but could not bring myself to return and bother him further.

Eddie was on the veranda reading the local paper when I arrived home. The air had darkened and the first bull frogs were beginning their rasping croaks. I felt utterly forlorn and deeply troubled; it was as if I was watching my brother teetering on the edge of a cliff. I’d considered contacting Cherie myself and asking her over to spend some time with us, but she’d have wanted to talk to Eddie, and I could see only confusion and anger as a consequence.

Eddie patted the seat beside him and I went to sit with him gladly and in the hope he’d changed his mind about Carboh. “Anything in the papers?” I asked.

“No. There never is. I was just whiling away some time, waiting for you to come back. Wondering where you’d gone, actually. This business with the house isn’t really working out too well is it? We’ve got three rooms finished, that’s all, and those windows in Mum and Dad’s room will take a fair bit of work, won’t they?”

“Let’s pack up and leave, Eddie. We can hire some painters to do the work for us, it’d be worth the money and we’ve got to pay the woodworm people anyway. I say let’s skedaddle and get back home.”

“So where did you go, Ross?”

“To Mr. Ratchetson’s.” I paused, but saw immediately how I could use the moment. “He told me about the time Mum cut her hair off.”

“Oh, wow! I never thought of asking him that.”

“Yes, well it’s a pretty terrible story and you should know that it directly involves the women that you’re intending to hang out with.”

Eddie shook his head. “That was, what? Thirty odd years ago, so you’re talking rubbish, Ross.”

For a moment, I was floored. “Well it was the same family, at any rate,” I said.

“Carboh and the others can’t be responsible for things that went on in the past. You’re being illogical and really mean to them.”

“Mean,” I repeated. “Look, I’m worried about you, Eddie. You’re behaving as if nothing you’ve ever known before matters now.”

“You’ve got it in one. That’s exactly how I do feel.”

“So when’s the wedding?”

Eddie laughed and slapped his hand down hard on my knee. “You won’t let up on that one will you?” he asked.

“The winding, then?”

“Windings happen at dawn, and I don’t think Mother has decided the day yet. Carboh will let me know.”

“Will there be a party afterwards?”

“The winding itself is the big celebration, they tell me. But I’ve already said, Ross, it’s a private affair, and you’re not invited.”

“So, supposing I get in some drinks and a bit of food, sandwiches or something, pizza slices, and you both come back here afterwards?”

“Yeah. Maybe. But where goes one, goes all.”

“Huh?”

“The sisters and Mother, you should invite them.”

I could not bear to turn my face and look at him, so I stood up and turned to go inside. “Of course,” I answered over my shoulder, “of course.”

I believe that it was only by chance that I awoke as the sun came up on the morning of my brother’s winding. He was using Mum and Dad’s old room while he prepared to paint his own, and the squeak of that door had never been dealt with. I think I heard it in my sleep and woke up on the instant. I heard the soft click of the front door and went to the window. Sure enough, Eddie was out there heading towards the wood. I knew I could easily lose him if I didn’t move swiftly and by the time I was also on the path, he’d just disappeared into the first line of trees. I sprinted. My shoelace was untied and whipping itself around my bare ankle.

Once I was in the wood proper, I stood for a moment to catch my breath and listen out for sounds. There was nothing but the whispering of wind through leaf. I stuck to the main path for a good while, hurrying, then slowing down, then hurrying again. My heart felt wretched and I knew I was badly frightened, yet just as it was when we first encountered Domescia and Carboh, I couldn’t describe the nature my terror or explain the reason for it.

I made my way towards the plaited path, supposing that I might be able to locate them in the surrounding area, as surely, if they were having a version of a wedding no matter how peculiar, there’d be noise, and particularly if the activity was as foul as the old man had said. I stopped and started many times, wanting so badly to call out to my brother, but not daring to. I could hear nothing, no birds even, and it was only the sight of some broken stems that sent me off down a meandering track to the left of the main pathway. I blundered along it, suddenly convinced it was the right way, and sure enough, I came to a wide circular opening in the forest with few trees, and there they all were. When I try to tell Cherie this… when I try to describe it to her, she starts her uncontrollable sobbing, and yet, she is so fierce to know about it that she never gives up making me describe it. She often says, “you say Eddie had no clothes on, Ross. Are you sure?”

“I could see his legs sticking out under that mess.”

Fact is, after I’d both seen and understood it, I retreated to Mum and Dad’s house and holed up there for many days, and it was only when Cherie arrived noisily by car, that I tried to connect again with the outside world. I came out to the veranda to meet her.

“Hey, Ross! How’s it going?” she asked. She had on those shoes poised on a mountain of cork that some women are drawn too, and she was trying to see where best to put her feet as she made her way towards me. “I got this idea you might like someone to cook for you while you’re doing up the house, I mean where’s the harm? So I came over,” she said, just as she read something on my face that alarmed her.

“Where is he?” she asked.

I shook my head. “You know Eddie. He’s gone off, Cherie. He suddenly took it into his head he wanted to go travelling. He’s gone.”

“You’re kidding me,” she said. “The fucker.”

“Yes. In any case, I’m not sticking around either.”

“Why do you look like that, Ross?”

“Like what?”

“Like the whole world’s gone to shit.”

“Do I?”

“I think you know you do. Something’s happened, and if you try and bullshit me and say it hasn’t, I’m going to shoot you, right there on that veranda.”

However wrong it was of me to involve someone as child-like and innocent as Cherie, I couldn’t help myself; I didn’t want to carry what I’d seen around with me by myself any longer, and so I think I was brutal in the way I handled her.

I told her as much as I knew before saying anything important, before describing what I actually saw. I thought I could limber up to it, if in the end I had to tell her, and it would be easier that way… and I cannot say at what point I did begin explaining what happened to my brother in that clearing—at least what I could see of it.

“He’d been really restless and snappy before he left Holesville Nine,” Cherie declared. “He was worried about working with you because he reckons you always look down on him.”

I shrugged. “You know yourself what he’s like, you’re forever bailing him out of one situation or another.”

“Yes, but I love him, so it’s my job.”

“Don’t you ever worry about yourself, Cherie, instead of about my brother?”

“You think I’m such a small person that I don’t have enough of what it takes to worry about the both of us?”

“No. Of course not; I didn’t mean that at all. I’m talking about the futility of it.”

“That’s just mean of you, Ross. Who exactly were the women you say you saw anyway?”

“A bunch of weird women with very long hair who lived in an old house in the wood, Cherie. That’s all I know.”

“Hippy types?”

“Well, I had the idea they were part of a cult at first.”

“Are you saying Eddie got involved with them or something? You can tell me, I don’t mind; I’m used to him. What you don’t realise about your brother is that he knows he’s got a soul, so he’s always interested in anything that he thinks shows him the meaning of life.”

Which of the sisters was sitting astride my brother’s chest was difficult to see at first, but after some long minutes standing there at the edge of the clearing, I saw that it was Carboh. She was sitting astride his body with her head close to his face, and her hair, all the long length of it was wound, cocoon-tight around his neck and upper chest. I could see my brother’s face, pale and slack. Below Carboh, and also sitting on his body, facing in the opposite direction, was Domescia, and she had her hair wound tightly around his middle section. I could see the top of his bare thighs. Domescia kept yanking her head up in little jerking motions, although there were no sounds. Sissiol was attached to one of his legs, her hair wound down the whole length of it, and she was lying face up with her head near his bare feet. Likewise, one of the others was attached to his left leg, and at his two arms, women had wound their hair round and round him. The seventh of the sisters was rocking backwards and forwards a few feet away in the arms of the hideous mother. Beyond my terror and revulsion, I registered that this seventh was not yet ready to feast.

Eddie looked like a gigantic brown cocoon, and I knew he was dead by the striking whiteness of his feet and face. “Let’s just stick on this path and find the ash,” he’d said on the first day we ventured into the wood proper, and I’d said, “No, come on, let’s just take a quick look down there. Where’s the harm?”