Page 9 of Dead Vengeance

Liam

The gloomy slice of England I left this morning is nothing like the world I step off the train into. There it was all soggy newspaper, pigeon droppings, half-eaten sandwiches crushed into the pavement with the heels of dirty shoes. Two hours later, and I’m in a dream.

Turns out Big Spanking is a real place. Little Spanking is a real place too, but we passed that two stops back. And it can’t be as pretty as this. Nothing could be as pretty as this.

Even the train station is adorable. Victorian, but none of the gigantic, twisting metal beams and intimidating steam power of London. This station’s metal embellishments are for show only, delicate, painted green, and without even a chip in the coat. There’s not a speck of litter anywhere, and there are actual flowers blooming right by the tracks. But it’s when I get out into the street that it really hits me.

Everything is picture perfect. Like a TV show. In fact, I reckon they must film them here. It’s the exact image of the quintessential English village, which I didn’t think actually existed in real life. It’s antique shops, tea shops, one matching honey-coloured limestone terrace after another, all of it in perfect condition. Perfect for how old it must be.

There isn’t a pothole in the road, and there are pot plants everywhere, overflowing with bright and blooming pansies, violets, lavender, and a whole lot of colour I can’t name. Fat, furry bumblebees buzz lazily from one petal to another, and something in me aches for this.

It’s an hour and a half from home. An hour and a half, and that’s it. And I’m in another universe.

A sign down the road in the form of a painted finger points to the right, an old-fashioned font across it telling me it’s that way to Bottomly-on-the-Wold. I follow the direction, trying to up my pace to make sure I’m there on time, but… it’s all so beautiful.

The trees along this road are plentiful, bringing the air to life with their vibrant early autumn displays of red and gold and orange. The ivy’s a rainbow, clinging to the sides of buildings, curling out along the ancient-looking bridge that marks the border between Big Spanking and Bottomly.

A map greets me in the middle of the little town green, wholesome as can be, laying out the few streets this tiny village contains. One big crescent around a massive green space, pond and all, by the looks of it. Then streets going off it in straight, orderly spokes.

All except one.

At the very top, at the far end of the green, one street squiggles back and forth, up and away and off the edge of the map.

Cockshoot Grove.

The buildings echo back the sound of my moving sneakers in the quiet morning air. I can’t help but feel like an outsider, which I am, but everything here is so precise, so organised. Meanwhile, my too-big ExorSquad ‘uniform,’ little ghost logo on the front, hangs low over my chest, nothing more than a pair of overalls which I’ve rolled up at the ankles so I don’t trip over them. I’ve thrown a plain grey sweater under it, because it maybe looks kind of professional? But I don’t think these people would buy that I’m from around here for one minute.

This whole place is money. Not working money. It’s I-don’t-need-to-work money. It’s I-spend-all-my-time-gardening money. It’s people who know what all their neighbours are up to all the time because they don’t have jobs to go to. It feels like they’re looking down on me, looming over me, wondering if I’m here to cause trouble and when I’ll leave.

Or maybe I’m imagining that last bit. Maybe they’re all really nice. Who knows? I’m the only person in sight.

Things don’t exactly change when I reach Cockshoot Grove, but they also kind of… do.

The trees are just as bright, just as colourful. The same stream that meanders around the village gurgles away pleasantly enough, but as I step over the threshold and onto the street, it’s like there’s a… thickness.

It’s like the atmosphere changes. Not in a way I can put my finger on. But it’s so intense, and so sudden, I almost want to take a few steps backwards—test whatever invisible barrier it feels like I’ve passed.

But that’s stupid.

It’s probably just the way the trees throw their shade across the street here, or that light morning fog rolling up from the stream, glowing brightly in the sunshine.

Yet as I walk down the road, the feeling intensifies. No sounds of birds, which I hadn’t really noticed until I realised the absence of them. My ears are met with only a heavy, disturbing silence. Because there are birds. I can see one perched on a fence post just ahead. A raven. An enormous raven. But it’s silent and it’s… watching me?

This is madness. I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t. Clearly my imagination’s running away with me already.

Faster, faster, I strike up the road. The houses are all behind me now, farmland on both sides of the lane, bright and green and gorgeous. And some way up ahead, the pale, square head of a Norman church tower. It’s the only sign of life in front of me, and my breath comes a little heavier with the almost-run my feet are tapping out.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m replaying long-forgotten ghost stories. Women in white on lonely, stretching roads. Crazed hitchhikers asking for rides, then, thwarted, appearing behind travellers out of nowhere with sharp knives. Children of the Corn. The Wicker Man. Any rural horror my mind can conjure, apparently.

So when the back of a car comes into view, parked just beyond a copse of rich, bursting, sun-ripened blackberries, enormous relief takes over me, and I’m grinning at my own stupidity by the time I turn the corner.

A head snaps up sharply, and my smile drops again.

“You’re late.”

I whip my phone out of my pocket and check the screen. “It’s five to,” I argue.

“You should have been here at twenty to,” the man counters.