Saturday 27 February 2016

#YourHorror - Week 4

The world is a scary place. Every day we’re forced to make choices, no matter how small, that may be leading us along a new path. Whether that path is heading towards something good, like a promotion or meeting some special, or towards something bad, like an accident, or even death, we can never know. In the end, that’s possibly the scariest thing of all.

That’s why I need your help to guide a character, or characters, through the possible dangers that await them in #YourHorror, an interactive horror story that will be shaped by the choices you make. Even I don’t know what will happen, and I’m the writer…

From Monday to Friday, at roughly 8pm GMT each day, there will be a new Twitter poll. These polls will ask you to choose between a number of options, each of which may take the story in a new direction. Sometimes a decision will give a bit more insight into the character, setting, or backstory, while other times the decision will solely focus on driving the narrative forward. 

Excited? Intrigued? A little bit terrified of the unknown? Yeah, me too. Get involved.

Week 4



It could have been a nice dream, surrounded by friends and family, or with some far-off future where she’d won the lottery and retired herself to a life of lunching, lounging, and lost animals (with money and space to spare, it was the natural progression of things, right?). Unfortunately, this wasn’t that kind of dream.

She was alone. Completely alone in the darkness, with the world inside her head yet to take any shape or form. It was pitch black, and she reached out into the emptiness. She wanted to find something to hold onto, but snatched it back when she wondered whether something else might also be reaching out. Not worth the risk.

Endless abyss it was, then.

(Wait… what’s that?)

It was if her eyes were adjusting to the complete blackness. The darkness changed from solid black to a slightly less solid black, then grey, then gradually to a white light that was almost too bright. So intense that it forced her to squint and raise her hand above her eyes, unable to make out anything other than whiteness. If anything, this was the exact same as the previous darkness, only more annoying. No-one squints for fun.

Bit by bit, the light faded away until she could see shapes and colours, and then the shapes and colours pieced themselves into a familiar, though not quite welcomed, jigsaw. She was back in the café.

If it hadn’t been for the incident earlier that day, it wouldn’t have been a strange place to find herself, but she wasn’t quite ready to revisit this particular café anytime soon. It was dark outside now, she thought, though it was hard to tell. A thick mist had enveloped the town, or at least the café. As far as she knew, the café was the only thing that existed. The rest of the town – shops, houses, people – had been swallowed whole, or perhaps lulled into an eternal slumber, until the mist decided that they could be free.

All she knew was that she wasn’t about to take a walking tour. With one last look into the mist, she turned her back to the window and looked around the café.

It was empty now, and the tables and chairs were stacked up on one side – all except one. One table was positioned in the middle of the café. Her table. She knew because of the book. That damn book. She took a step closer, then paused.

The air around the book seemed to get heaver as she drew closer. She could almost feel her clothes pressing down around her. Even so, she couldn’t help but take another step closer. As she did, the book flew open. The pages began to turn. Unable to move as she watched, the pages turned, turned, turned, like the Invisible Woman was flicking through an ancient issue of Cosmo.

The pages stopped turning, and the café was still once more. On her table, the book lay open.

She crept closer, and for the third time that day, she saw it.

Madness.


Before she could even decide what to do next, the words on the page, most of which she didn’t understand, started to move. It was as if the ink itself was trying to decide whether it was happy with the sentences it had been shaped into. Each line, curve, dash, full stop – it all writhed and struggled against the paper. Until it didn’t need to struggle anymore.

Each letter tore itself from the page and morphed into a collective mass of scuttling insects. Ants. Beetles. Flies. Maggots. Crickets. Spiders. Termites. Earwigs. Worms. The mound of insects grew and spilled from the book to the table. All this time, the symbol on the page had remained still, but it began to move now, clearly visible inside a ring of insects. They avoided it.

She already knew what it would become. There was just one particular insect that was missing from this orgy of creepy-crawlies. Before long, it rose above the rest. Almost one-hundred legs reached out towards her as it wriggled upwards like a repulsive phoenix from its nest of slimy brethren. The rest of the insects, clearly inferior to the reincarnated centipede, dropped to the floor, now too numerous to fit within the confines of the table.

(Wake up. Please, just wake up.)

No luck. Slowly being backed up to the window by the ever-growing number of insects, she was trapped inside this nightmare. Then she was reminded that she should be grateful of her current situation, because everything can always get worse. It did.


The mound of insects began to grow upwards. Legs, antennae, shell, and pincers swarmed tightly together until it looked like a dense, constantly moving, figure. Almost humanoid.

There were no eyes to look into, no ears to hear the hammering in her chest, but a gaping hole formed where a face should be. Inside it, the centipede, like a wagging tongue. The gaping face hole closed and opened, and even though it should have been impossible, words were formed.

“You have been chosen.” As it spoke, lesser insects were impaled on the centipede’s sharp legs, now more focused in its movements. They fell to the floor, discarded.

      “W-why? By who? For what?” She rasped, afraid to hear the responses.

        “You have been chosen,” it repeated. She backed up against the window and felt the cool window pane against her back, now slick with sweat. “You have been chosen.”  
                
         “What do you mean?” she asked, almost pleaded. “Tell me.

Without warning, the figure burst into flames. Insects screamed and popped. An acidic burning smell filled the air, and the insects began to lose shape as they melted to the café floor.

A booming sound snapped her attention back to the window. In the distance, a fiery glow was burning its way towards the café, turning the mist into a lightshow of reds and oranges. It was beautiful. If it had looked like this before, maybe she’d have gone outside. Only it wasn’t light. It was fire. In fact, a wall of fire, and it rushed towards the café as it driven forward by the horses of the damn apocalypse.

(Could I have a minute here, guys? Already kind of got something on the back-burner…)

She turned back to the burning insects, and the wall of fire was forgotten.

(Shit.)

The insects had been reduced to a pile of ash and corpses. Only the bugs with harder exoskeletons had avoided complete cremation, and in one last “fuck you” had crawled into a shape she’d have been able to recognise anywhere.

Madness.

(What is going on?)

She turned to the window, placed her hand against the pane – unsurprisingly not quite as cool as before - and steeled herself against what was coming. Fire and pain. Pain and fire. Burning.

She closed her eyes as the fire reached the café, and was consumed.

(It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not r-

*

“eal,” she gasped, startled to consciousness. Alive. It was a nightmare. Just a nightmare. She raised her hand to her forehead, relieved to be back on her sofa. “Ssss-,” she sucked air between clenched teeth, surprised by the intense stinging in her hand. When the pain receded, she forced herself to turn on the light.

“No.” she whispered. “No. It’s not possible. It’s not real.”

Her hand was burnt. 

Saturday 20 February 2016

#YourHorror - Week 3


The world is a scary place. Every day we’re forced to make choices, no matter how small, that may be leading us along a new path. Whether that path is heading towards something good, like a promotion or meeting some special, or towards something bad, like an accident, or even death, we can never know. In the end, that’s possibly the scariest thing of all.

That’s why I need your help to guide a character, or characters, through the possible dangers that await them in #YourHorror, an interactive horror story that will be shaped by the choices you make. Even I don’t know what will happen, and I’m the writer…

From Monday to Friday, at roughly 8pm GMT each day, there will be a new Twitter poll. These polls will ask you to choose between a number of options, each of which may take the story in a new direction. Sometimes a decision will give a bit more insight into the character, setting, or backstory, while other times the decision will solely focus on driving the narrative forward. 

Excited? Intrigued? A little bit terrified of the unknown? Yeah, me too. Get involved.

Week 3


Going home was meant to take away the absurdities of the day, and replace them with the mundane. Cooking dinner. Watching TV. Having a shower. Unpacking. Staring into space and questioning every single life choice she’d ever made. So, the usual. Unfortunately, the absurdities of the day not only followed her home; they beat her to it.

At the end of the stone path leading up to the front door, in the exact place that the letter had been left for her to find that morning – which already felt like a distant memory – it was waiting. A centipede, perhaps the same one that had crawled from her latte in town about 20 minutes ago…

Dead.

It was laid out at almost full length, with its head or behind – who could tell – curved over, like a grotesque candy cane. Its legs curled inwards on itself, but still looked as sharp and numerous as ever. At any moment it looked like it might start stretching itself out before scuttling towards her and leaping for her face. Her eyes. Her ears. Her mouth.

Even now, it sent shivers down her spine.

(Better than urine down my leg, so that’s something to be grateful for)


If films had taught her anything, there was only one way to be sure. Kill it more.

She stalked towards the insect, trying to assert her power over it. Of course, at the sign of anything resembling movement, she was prepared to heft the book in its general direction and run back out into the oncoming storm. It was baring down on the town now.

The crunch of stones under her boots seemed too loud in this silent stand-off. She reached the centipede, and without leaving any time for it to change its mind about being dead, her boot was brought down with maximum force.

There was an audible squelch, and a dark goo oozed from under her boot. Although she couldn’t stamp on the entire centipede in one movement, she continued to stamp it into the stones until there was nothing more than a thick paste coating them. She’d been wanting to marinate the entrance to her new home in something disgusting, anyway, so this had worked out perfectly.

(I’ll wash that off in the morning, I swear)

With the clouds above finally spilling their insides over the town, suddenly so quiet, she went inside and locked the door behind her.  There was a sheen of sweat on her forehead.


As she’d learned from every family dinner, every awkward social occasion, every bad day at work or in a relationship, alcohol temporarily made everything just a little better. She removed her boots at the door, being careful to leave the Centipede Crusher on its side. There were a few spindly legs glued to the bottom in whatever hell-goo came from such an insect. A problem for another day.

She walked into the kitchen, placed the immense book onto her coffee table, and suddenly felt much safer. Amongst her belongings, even if they were in boxes, she felt the mundane and normal seeping back in. Hidden in one of these boxes was a friend that would help even more.

It took a bit of rummaging, but her hand finally grasped a cool, smooth bottle. What was it? Scotch? Something single-malt and finely aged? She had no idea what any of that meant, but it sounded great in her head. No, not scotch at all.


Whiskey. It would definitely do the job.

“I’ll take mine neat, por favor.” She laughed at her own joke, and then swigged the brown liquor straight from the bottle.

(It burns…)

She winced, her eyes watered, and she spent the next few seconds just trying to keep it down while the burning sensation in her throat subsided. Whiskey wasn’t her natural drink of choice, clearly. Who knows how she’d even ended up with it. It was probably an ex’s, or leftover from the small get-together she’d had with friends before moving. She could imagine it now.

(My party. My whiskey. Oh, are you guys still here?)

She braved one more swig, held it together slightly better the second time around, and placed the whiskey on the counter. Her head was already feeling fuzzier, and a feeling of warmth spread through her stomach. Perfect. Alcohol to the rescue, yet again.


Feeling more relaxed than she had since that morning, which had turned into a journey of the unknown and multi-legged, she settled onto the sofa for an evening of low-maintenance, mind-numbing TV. Not before grabbing some heartburn medication from the top drawer in the kitchen, though. She already knew the whiskey was going to repeat on her.

If the internet had been set up, she might have searched through Netflix for an over-the-top, awfully written, bargain bin horror film. Pill in hand, she may have even been forced to say something like “Netflix and pill,” followed by more laughing. Luckily, the provider wouldn’t be here for another couple of days, so it’d have to be terrestrial TV for now. On the plus side, that’s where most bad television shows presided.

She flicked through, avoiding reality TV at all costs. It’d been a rough day, but she wasn’t suicidal. The TV lingered on a comedy show where a group of nerds somehow seemed to have captured the interest of girls that were way out of their league. Maybe it was their memorabilia and colourful t-shirts that expressed their love for every single superhero franchise?

(Hell, that would probably work on me. Everyone likes an underdog.)

The wind whistled past the windows as the storm outside truly took hold, and rain pelted the roof. It was like thousands of tiny, persistent hands were knocking, asking to be let in. Conversations were disjointed, and scenes were interspersed with static as the storm interfered with this TV’s signal. It began to flicker in and out of conscious broadcasting, and before long, her eyes began to do the same.

Pills fell to the floor as her hand relaxed, and the room was filled was a blue glow; the TV finally gave in to the demands of the storm. With a sigh that was lost in the howling of the wind, she drifted off. The wind’s screams chased her into a deep sleep.

What else will be waiting for her there? Only you can decide.

Sunday 14 February 2016

#YourHorror - Week 2


The world is a scary place. Every day we’re forced to make choices, no matter how small, that may be leading us along a new path. Whether that path is heading towards something good, like a promotion or meeting some special, or towards something bad, like an accident, or even death, we can never know. In the end, that’s possibly the scariest thing of all.

That’s why I need your help to guide a character, or characters, through the possible dangers that await them in #YourHorror, an interactive horror story that will be shaped by the choices you make. Even I don’t know what will happen, and I’m the writer…

From Monday to Friday, at roughly 8pm GMT each day, there will be a new Twitter poll. These polls will ask you to choose between a number of options, each of which may take the story in a new direction. Sometimes a decision will give a bit more insight into the character, setting, or backstory, while other times the decision will solely focus on driving the narrative forward. 

Excited? Intrigued? A little bit terrified of the unknown? Yeah, me too. Get involved.

Week 2

When she pushed open the door to the book shop, a bell rang out.  She flinched. A few people dotted around the book shop looked over, and then went back to browsing through whatever 50 shades of vampire romance she imagined they were looking at.

The book shop was larger than she’s expected. Quite narrow, but it stretched past bookcases and shelves to a seating area with a couple of weathered armchairs. To her left was the counter, covered with more books, magazines and leaflets for a local reading club. Just behind it was what she assumed to be the owner, who seemed to be eyeing her up intently. She could have been imagining it, though.

She began wandering past the shelves, looking for some sort of categories, or even alphabetisation. It didn’t look like the alphabet had made it to this part of town yet. After about five minutes of feeling completely overwhelmed by the chaos of random books in random places, and also thinking how much she’d love to spend her spare time organising everything in alphabetical order and themes, she ended up next to the counter again.

She heard the man at the counter clear his throat and steeled herself for what she knew was coming next.

          “Can I help?”

Could he help? She wasn’t here for an autobiography of a street cat, or looking for one of the “classics,” which she’d always understood to mean “pretentious and difficult to read.” This was, potentially, much darker than that… Could she even tell him the truth?


She sighed, mostly to herself. The quickest way to get back to unpacking her things at the new place was to just be honest.

          “Um… I don’t know, actually.” She placed the envelope on the counter. “Someone left this for me to find this morning, and I don’t have a clue what it means. Do you have any books that might be able to help?”

He picked up the envelope, slid the letter out, and studied the symbol for a moment.


His eyes danced about the shop briefly, taking the browsers into account before leaving the counter.

“Follow me.” He walked towards the back of the shop, leaving her somewhat stunned, and only really able to do one thing; follow him.

She followed him past the bookshelves, past the browsers, past the two armchairs – looking even more tattered up close – and then through a door at the back. It opened into what she could only imagine was the staff room. As far as she knew, the “staff” was just him. It would certainly explain why the room had a messy, homely quality to it.

Almost every surface was covered in books, tea stains, or a combination of both. She spied a copy of IT with an entirely circular ring on its cover. It broke her heart. The owner seemed to be rifling through a drawer full of papers and books.

(Probably looking for another homemade coaster…)

          “There you are, you big bastard.” He pulled out a beast of a book, held shut with a leather clasp. “This should be what you’re after. It’s not really so family-friendly, so I keep it back here, away from the prying eyes, and sticky fingers, of children. You understand.”

She did. There was always someone looking for an argument, especially parents that felt their darling children had seen something that they shouldn’t have.

(“Mummy, what’s the occult?”)

(“It’s a type of yoghurt filled with good bacteria, honey. Come along.”)


He blew a thick layer of dust from the cover of the book, which looked like it might fall apart at any second, and then handed it to her. The book felt much sturdier in her own hands. Not even nuclear fallout would tear this book apart. It had probably been around for centuries, handed down from tea-staining book shop owner to tea-staining book shop owner. Or maybe it would have been ink-staining, before.

         “Thanks. I think. How much do I owe you?”  
                                         
          “Don’t worry about it. I haven’t seen you in here before – and I’ve seen everyone in here before - so you must be new to town, and this is hardly the warm welcome you’d have been expecting. Let this be my way of saying welcome to town.”
                                              
          “Well, it’s not quite muffins, but thank you.” She smiled. Not only because it was nice to speak to someone else and get out of her own head, though that was part of it. She’d also just avoided paying for a book that was probably more than the place she was renting, and everything inside it.

(Phew.)


Unsure of what to do next, she ran her hands over the raised pentagram on the front cover of the book, and shifted her weight from foot to foot. It looked like he was getting his lunch ready, so it was probably time to go. She somewhat awkwardly backed out of the room, leaving the owner to his own sandwich-filled devices, and walked back through the shop, attempting to keep the cover facing inwards so as not to attract any attention.

As she opened the door to leave, the bell rang, and everyone looked her way again.

(Damn bells.)

The sky outside was darker than when she’d first gone into the book shop. Large grey clouds rolled past, eager to get to wherever it is that clouds go when they’re in a bad mood. These ones clearly were. She hoped they kept on moving. Wind was also beginning to slash its way through the town, threatening to knock over signs and plants in front of shops. It almost felt like it would pull the book right from her arms. She hugged it to her chest.

She was trying to decide whether she could make it home before the clouds spilled their guts when she spied the café. Again, she’d expected to read a book here when she’d settled into the town a little more, but she hadn’t expected it to be this early, and most definitely not this book. Despite the late start, she was feeling drained. Coffee could help.

The café was quiet, and for that she was grateful. She ordered a latté from an uninterested girl that seemed to shrug and sigh her way through making the drink, and then sat at the back, where she’d be able to look through the book without fearing judgement. That didn’t mean there wasn’t some apprehension as she began to look through the book, though.


Normally, she’d have read a book like this from cover to cover. Even if she didn’t believe in this sort of thing, she’d still have found it interesting. She may even have had to leave a light on afterwards, like a good horror novel. This wasn’t like that. She only wanted to find the symbol. It obviously didn’t mean anything – nothing more than ink and lines on paper – but she had to know.

She skimmed through the pages, looking for the symbol that most matched the one in the letter, and each page she passed seemed to add to the growing knot in her stomach. Summoning. The Host. Lies. Chaos. The words and symbols began to blur. Lust. Sorrow. Greed. Pages turned faster. The Destroyer. Jealousy. Poison. Outside the window, the town was growing darker. Death. Impatience (she didn’t need a symbol to know this one was taking hold). She stopped.

There it was. The symbol that had been left for her this morning.


Madness.

She didn’t understand. Why would someone send her a letter with the symbol of madness inside? It didn’t mean anything. Wouldn’t do anything. It just was.

Something caught her eye as she picked up her latté. The foam was moving. She held the drink, fixated on the movements within, her face a picture of confusion. A pair of antennae protruded from the foam, slowly at first, but quickly followed by more legs than anything should ever have, each as sharp and squirming as the last. A centipede. Crawling up out of the glass like it would never end, heading directly for her hand.

With a gasp, she dropped the latté and it smashed to the floor. The centipede scuttled from between the glass and coffee, speedily making its way out of the door as someone walked into the café. They didn’t seem to notice. She sat there, hand still raised, and watched until the door closed. Even then, it was as if she could feel hundreds of legs running their way up her arms and legs.

(I think I’m going to be sick.)

She heard a sigh, following shortly after by the girl from the counter, appearing with a mop and a broom.

“Sorry, I… It was an accident.”

The girl shrugged, and cleaned up the mess in silence. With that, she returned to the confines of the counter, ready to serve the next customer with the same level of enthusiasm.

It was time to go home. She didn’t want another coffee, as hard as it was to believe. She wanted to go home, lock the door, and forget all about this pointless, strangely unnerving, day. She may not have unpacked any of her belongings as planned, but she’d also removed the unknown surrounding the letter’s symbol. Right?

(Wrong.)

She sighed. If anything, she had more questions than she’d had before.

I don’t know about you, but I’m right there with her…

Saturday 6 February 2016

#YourHorror - Week 1


The world is a scary place. Every day we’re forced to make choices, no matter how small, that may be leading us along a new path. Whether that path is heading towards something good, like a promotion or meeting some special, or towards something bad, like an accident, or even death, we can never know. In the end, that’s possibly the scariest thing of all.

That’s why I need your help to guide a character, or characters, through the possible dangers that await them in #YourHorror, an interactive horror story that will be shaped by the choices you make. Even I don’t know what will happen, and I’m the writer…

From Monday to Friday, at roughly 8pm GMT each day, there will be a new Twitter poll. These polls will ask you to choose between a number of options, each of which may take the story in a new direction. Sometimes a decision will give a bit more insight into the character, setting, or backstory, while other times the decision will solely focus on driving the narrative forward. I will then write these choices up every weekend, creating a story from all of the choices that you made.

Excited? Intrigued? A little bit terrified? Yeah, me too. Get involved.

Week 1


#YourHorror began with an unknown character. We didn’t yet know their name, their gender, what they looked like, what they did for a living, or even how they felt about MTV’s take on the classic Scream franchise. All we knew is that they were in their mid-20s. Let’s keep reading.


The horror specialists had decided. Our main character was a young woman in her mid-20s, and she lived in a small town. Not much about the town is yet known, but I imagine that it is the kind of place where everybody knows everybody else, and that the arrival of someone new gets around pretty quickly. What they won’t know is that some voters have already pegged her as the “final girl.” It is far too early to know if she will even make it more than a few weeks in this ever-changing story, but for now she is well and truly among the living, and recently began renting on the outskirts of a small town.

They say that moving is one of the most stressful things a person will ever do in their lifetime. Maybe if she had moved to a different town that would have been the case. She could have met a guy, or a girl, whatever she’s into, and settled down into her happily ever after. It wasn't meant to be. What was meant to be was that this girl came to this town, as decided by you.


It was for that reason that our unlucky character received an unusual letter that morning. She was taking the day at her own pace – after all, she didn’t plan to begin working immediately. She slept in until 10am, eased into the day with coffee and toast, and then planned to spend the majority of the day unpacking boxes and playing the difficult game of “keep, store, bin” with her personal belongings. Like most people, it wasn’t a game she expected to win.

Whether she used that smoothie maker in the last few years was irrelevant. At any point, she might decide she was going to be one of those people that jumped out of bed for yoga at the crack of dawn, and then blended – and enjoyed – a kale smoothie. It was always a long shot. As soon as she threw the smoothie maker away, though, the fantasy went with it. She was well aware that many of her belongings, each with their own fantasy, would go back to collecting dust somewhere until she was replaced by some sort of “morning person.” It sounded awful.

It was as she began sorting through some of the boxes that a shadow passed across room. She paused. Someone had just walked past the window. She listened for someone at the door, perhaps coming by to welcome her to the area with a basket of muffins.

(Did people actually do that?)

Nothing.

On tiptoes, she crept round to the front door and peered out through the peep-hole. There was no-one there. Had she imagined it? She opened the door and stepped outside, hoping to catch anyone sneaking around the premises off-guard, or at least get in on those welcome muffins while they were still warm.

Large hedges spanned both sides of the property, designed to give the renter some privacy, and a stone path led from the front door to an iron gate at the bottom. There was space for a car to be parked on the road just on the other side, but she didn’t own one, and the town itself was only about 10 minutes away by foot. It was then that she realised she didn’t have any shoes on. The stones were cool between her bare toes. Her eyes widened ever so slightly. There was a letter.

Her name was scrawled across the envelope, but it had no postal address or stamp. The shadow had delivered this letter by hand without even knocking on the door. Had they known that she was in? They walked right by the window, surely they’d seen her. Despite the fact that the weather was relatively mild for early February, she rubbed her arms. Almost hesitantly, she picked up the letter and retreated back into her property, locking the door behind her.

After a couple of minutes she felt normal again. It was nothing. The goosebumps that had risen on her arms returned to the things of children’s books (and apparently movies), and she decided to open the letter.


A part of her was shocked to find a strange symbol on the worn paper inside the envelope, though she also felt that this – even if she didn’t know what “this” meant – was all it could have ever been.  If a stranger delivers a letter in a strange way, you should probably expect the contents of the letter to be a little… strange.

The symbol was drawn in dark red ink that looked far too similar to blood for her liking. She just stared at it for a while, trying to figure out what the design could mean, and whether she could decipher a pattern from its deliberate lines and curves. For a brief, nerdy moment, she wished she had a Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer… he’d sure know what it meant, with his dusty books and wide array of sweater vests.


She sighed. Life was full of last-minute changes and decisions, and unpacking could wait a day. She needed to know what this symbol meant, or it was going to bother her all day, and, more importantly, all night. What if the symbol was a curse that removed the cold side of the pillow? That just wouldn’t do. In the light of day, she could joke about such things, knowing full well that her thoughts would turn darker if she didn’t look into it before then. If she still couldn’t let go of the smoothie maker after all of these years, who knew what kind of twisted nightmares the unknown symbol, delivered by an unknown person, would create in her mind.

One problem; the internet hadn’t been set up yet, and she’d used up all of her mobile data on the way over in the passenger seat of the moving van. Someone had to tweet things like “new year, new me,” and “things will be different in the new town,” so it might as well be her. At least then it was somewhat ironic. She regretted it now, of course.

There was an old book shop in town. After seeing the property and trying to hide her interest in the place, which she could only imagine made her seem more powerful and worth haggling with, she’d taken a walk through the town. She’d noted a charity shop for her unwanted junk, a café where she might occasionally stop to drink with a book, and a book shop, from which she might buy said book. It was a little darker, a little less modern, and almost seemed to retreat into itself. If anything, that made her want to go in more. She hadn’t been expecting it’d be this soon, though, and especially not for this reason. Old-school research. Giles would be proud.

She grabbed an old pair of jeans from one of the boxes, pulled on a vest top, a zip-up hoody, and some worn boots – this wasn’t a fashion show, it was research. The letter went back into the envelope, into the back pocket of her jeans, and she started the walk into town. Without realising it, she glanced over her shoulder a few times along the way.

When she reached the book shop, looking just as dusty and withdrawn as she remembered, she patted the letter in her back pocket. Still there. Nothing left to do but go in and see if there were any books covering strange symbols.

There would be, of course, but she had no idea what she was about to get into…      

Then again, neither do we.