I woke to the feeling of falling.
Not from a height, but into something thick and black.
My body jerked before I could scream. The ceiling loomed above me, grey with morning light and shadows that didn't quite belong.
It took a moment to remember where I was. The Inn. The wound.
As if reminded, pain bloomed in my arm as I sat up, sharp and dull, all at once. I peeled back the bandage in the bathroom, teeth gritted. The bite didn't look infected, but it ached in a way that felt… wrong.
Not medically wrong, just off. Like my body wanted to forget it but couldn't.
I dabbed it clean and replaced the gauze with hands that weren't steady. My reflection looked worse than I expected. Pale, eyes bruised from lack of sleep. I hadn't really rested. I'd just… gone dark for a few hours, like my brain had short-circuited.
It wasn't the dog, or the way it had attacked me. It was the dream after. I couldn't remember the details, but something about it clung to me. The weight of a voice I didn't know. A presence just outside the edge of vision.
Something watching me sleep.
I shoved that thought aside and pulled on jeans and a jumper that smelled faintly of damp. Outside, the trees scraped against the windows like they were trying to get in.
I needed air. And coffee. But mostly air.
No one else seemed to be awake and I was loathe to disturb them, so headed out instead and made my slow way to the cottage. The morning air was cold on my skin, the weak sunlight still pleasant to feel.
When I reached the cottage I hung back, not ready to go inside.
The garden was quiet, except for the wind. It combed through the grass and rattled the bare branches like breath through teeth. A crow squawked in the distance, and I shivered, eyes flicking up to the cottage roof.
But it was empty.
I walked without thinking, following a gravel path that curled toward the back of the property, half-swallowed by weeds.
The greenhouse stood crooked and broke, a skeleton of rusted beams and shattered glass. I stepped carefully over the threshold and into the scent of earth and decay. Most of the pots were cracked, overrun with dead vines. But something caught my eye near the back, a jar, half-buried in a nest of moss.
I knelt and picked it up. The glass was clouded, but inside was a thick, golden paste.
Honey? Resin? A label clung to the side in faded ink: Foxglove for binding. Burn on blue flame only.
I stared at it, then at the shelves. There were others, scattered and long forgotten. Most were empty or broken, but this one felt… recent. Or at least kept.
Binding what?
The handwriting was familiar, not from memory, but from the letters and journals back in the cottage. The same elegant loops and sharp lines.
My great-aunt had, apparently, believed in magic. Not just garden rituals and country folklore, but actual magic. Maybe even practiced it. Which gave me some insight into the journals and letters that she had written.
I was still holding the jar when the gate creaked behind me.
I turned too fast. My heart jumped.
"Hey!" Mary said, holding up two paper cups. "Thought you might like a coffee."
I let out a breath I hadn't realised I was holding. "You scared the hell out of me."
"Sorry," she said, smiling. "I thought you might want to hang out, and when you weren't at the pub, I figured you'd be here."
She offered me one of the cups. I took it. It was still warm, latte, by the smell of it. The heat bled into my fingers, and I smiled.
"Thanks," I said. "Company would be welcome." I leaned in and lowered my voice conspiratorially. "I'm not gonna lie, this place has been creeping me out."
She laughed. I took a sip of the coffee. She walked beside me as I turned towards the trees.
The woods loomed like a wall beyond the garden, dark and silent. The wind didn't seem to reach them.
"I never asked," I said. "Why are you being so nice to me?"
Mary kicked a stone on the path and sipped at her coffee. "Curiosity. Boredom." She flashed a smile, showing straight, white, teeth. "I work a lot and don't get to meet many people our age. Most work the summer then head elsewhere."
"Honestly," she continued. "I'm lonely. All my friends are down south."
"Why did you come here?"
"After Uni I needed a job, and this place had one of the few companies hiring. It was either move up here or work as a barista until something opened up closer to home." She raised her coffee in mock salute. "I love drinking it but hate making it. Wasn't really a choice."
I laughed, a short, real sound. I could relate to that.
She smiled. "Besides, this place is gorgeous in the summer. You'll see, next year, unless you're doing this place up to sell?"
I just shrugged at that. I didn't really have an answer.
As much as I didn't want to sell, I needed to know this was a place I could live.
So far, bad dreams and dog bites aside, it just didn't feel like home.
We walked to the edge of the garden, where a crumbling wall separated the yard from the tree line. The path ended near a half-rotted bench. Mary sat, and I followed, cradling the cup against my chest.
"You ever go into the woods?" I asked.
She shrugged. "I dated a guy who was really into hiking, but it's not my thing. I don't feel safe, and people have gone missing."
Her tone was light, but I glanced at her. "Seriously?"
She nodded. "Two hikers last month. An old guy the month before that. Police didn't find anything. Said it was probably bad weather, got lost. But people don't just disappear, right?"
We both went quiet. The trees didn't move. They felt… expectant.
A sound broke the stillness, the snap of a twig, heavy boots on wet grass.
"Morning," a voice called.
I turned sharply. A man was walking towards us, tall and broad, carrying a shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm. He looked like something out of a bleak countryside murder mystery.
Mary straightened. "Hey, Tom."
"Didn't mean to interrupt," he said. "Just checking the lower fields. Sheep are jittery again."
"Another fox?"
He shook his head. "No. Something worse. Might be dogs, but they're not right. I saw one yesterday, and it was just… wrong. Teeth all crooked. Mange. Eyes wild."
I shifted uncomfortably.
Tom looked at me. "You're the niece, yeah? Moved into Sylvia's cottage?"
I nodded slowly. "Not quite living here but clearing the place out."
He tipped his head. "She was a good woman. Bit strange, but decent. Just… don't go into the woods. Not this week."
"Why not?"
"A few folks have been attacked. No one seriously hurt, not yet at least. Bites mainly."
"By what?" Mary gasped.
"Dogs they said. Looks like there's half a pack of wild ones hiding out in the forest. Not safe for anyone. Least of all my sheep."
I didn't know what to say to that. Neither did Mary. Tom nodded again and disappeared down the path, his boots leaving tracks in the dew wet grass.
We didn't speak for a while after that.
Inside, the cottage felt smaller than before. Warmer, though, once I got a fire burning in the hearth. We left our shoes by the back door and I sat in the front room, the air smelling faintly of burnt ash and old wood.
Mary walked around the room like she was half-expecting something to jump out at her, trailing her fingertips across the spines of the books on the shelves. "You've started going through her stuff?"
"Some of it," I said. "There's a lot. Most of it's weird."
"Weird how?"
"Weird like… foxglove for binding."
She raised an eyebrow.
I opened the drawer in the sideboard and pulled out the wooden box I'd found the other day. Its carved lid looked darker in the firelight; a crescent moon veiled by clouds.
Mary sat beside me as I unlatched it.
Inside: papers tied with ribbon, brittle with age. A silver pocket watch that ticked faintly even though I hadn't wound it. And at the bottom, a folded piece of parchment.
I opened it carefully.
A map. Hand-drawn, precise. It showed the grounds of the house in ink, but with more detail than any surveyor's plan. Underground shapes. Circles marked in red. Symbols I didn't understand; a compass that pointed to something marked only with a single rune.
"What is that?" Mary asked.
"I don't know. But it's under the house."
She watched me closely. "Have you looked?"
I stood and led her to the hallway. She glanced quizzically at the bookshelf sitting in the centre of the hall, and I put my shoulder against it and shoved it aside before kicking the rug away to reveal the hatch.
"Okay…"
"It won't open," I said.
"Then why did you have that bookshelf on it."
My cheeks heated. "There was noise, the other night."
"Noise."
"Yah." I shrugged. "It freaked me out."
She crouched beside the hatch and reached for the iron ring. Her eyes flicked up, meeting mine, and she grinned. "This is like King Arthur, right? Whosoever pulls the sword from the stone becomes the king of England."
"Like in the Disney film?"
Mary rolled her eyes and laughed. "Wow."
I had no answer to that.
Her fingers tightened around the ring and the muscles in her neck went taut as she strained to lift the hatch.
I held my breath.
It didn't move.
I began to breathe.
"See," I said. "Won't open."
"Is it stuck, or just really bloody heavy?" She grabbed the small ring with both hands, barely able to do so, and pulled again, throwing her weight back as she put her back into it.
Still no movement.
"Crikey," she wiped her brow with her sleeve. "Maybe we should ask some of the guys at the pub to come try."
"Maybe," I said, though I wasn't sure I liked the idea of anyone actually being able to open it.
There was something about the hatch and whatever lay below that filled me with unease. As curious as I was about what was below, I was almost scared to find out what that might be. Which was silly, of course.
I had no reason to fear.
A rational part of my mind suggested that the scariest thing down there would be the state of the pipes. While, another part of my mind, whispered that maybe great-aunt Sylvia was a witch, and that whatever the symbols on the map meant, they pointed to something beneath the house.
And that might be something she didn't want to meet.