bird which had just landed there, the others didn’t move. They didn’t even adjust their weight or their grip to compensate for the movement and keep their balance. We both stared at them. And we saw one of the birds lean a little and stop, and lean a bit more and swing on the branch as though its claws were locked... and then it fell. Without opening its wings at all to stop itself falling, it slipped off the branch and dropped through the snapping cold twigs and landed on the ground with a curious puff of sound... as though it weighed almost nothing.
‘Let’s go home, Chloe,’ I said to her. She was staring at the crows which were still in the willow tree. They were all motionless, their claws locked. Only one of them was moving, the scrag of a rag of a crow which had somehow kindled a spark of life when the others had died in the night. Their withered, empty husks were frozen to the tree.
Chapter Ten
‘V ERY NICE, YES. Very cosy. But is that the atmosphere you really want to achieve? Nice and cosy? For a horror bookshop?’
The reporter from the Nottingham Evening Post , who’d introduced himself as Joe Blakesley, was probably in his mid-twenties with a degree in journalism from Leicester Polytechnic, but he looked like a schoolboy, a skinny teenager conducting an interview for his social-studies coursework... earnest, with his notepad and camera and duffel-coat and his flopping fashionable hair, and a long red scarf looped casually around his neck. Before I could answer what might’ve been a criticism of the way I’d organised things, he smiled and went on, ‘But no, no it’s great, the church tower and coming through the big oak door and into this... the vestry, did you say? Tell me about the books you’re going to stock, anything about the history of the church... and the tooth, of course, I’d love to see it. I think it’s all great, it’ll make a great little piece for me, so please, fire away...’
He’d said, disarmingly, as though he knew that his bookish, journalistic look wasn’t entirely convincing, that so far he’d only done a few weddings and funerals... and last week he’d been sent to watch Notts County play Tranmere, but the match was called off because the pitch was frozen. So this was going to be his first feature. He took some shots of me and the room, and me with Chloe, and he browsed around the shelves.
Five o’clock. Outside it was as black as midnight, with the headlamps of the traffic swishing along the Derby Road. Every car that went by, on its weary journey out of town and home after work, shone an orange beam through our tall, narrow lancet windows and across the ceiling, a steady, unhurried rhythm of light. The vestry door was still open to the hallway, and the door of the church was open too, because I wanted to give the clear impression that it would be a shop, open to the street, open to the public. But the room was warm. I stood in front of the fire, which I’d built especially bright and hot, and I talked... while the young man sat at my desk and scribbled on his pad, while Chloe stood beside him and watched how his hand scurried and scratched like a mouse across his page.
I’d got the shrine ready, but I hadn’t switched on the lamp yet. It would be the climax to the interview. And I hadn’t told Rosie. Indeed, I’d deliberately arranged it so that she’d be out at work, to make a surprise for her, to reveal the article to her unexpectedly if and when it came out.
Firelight, the flicker of flames. The hiss of the traffic. The play of the headlamps on the ceiling and on the books on their shelves. The reporter writing at my desk. Chloe, so absorbed by the movement of his hand that she seemed to be holding her breath.
I told him about the church. It wasn’t very old, it didn’t have centuries of legend and spooky lore, a cemetery heaving with graves and lots of mossy headstones and such. No, it was an Anglican church, built in the 1880s, the
‘Let’s go home, Chloe,’ I said to her. She was staring at the crows which were still in the willow tree. They were all motionless, their claws locked. Only one of them was moving, the scrag of a rag of a crow which had somehow kindled a spark of life when the others had died in the night. Their withered, empty husks were frozen to the tree.
Chapter Ten
‘V ERY NICE, YES. Very cosy. But is that the atmosphere you really want to achieve? Nice and cosy? For a horror bookshop?’
The reporter from the Nottingham Evening Post , who’d introduced himself as Joe Blakesley, was probably in his mid-twenties with a degree in journalism from Leicester Polytechnic, but he looked like a schoolboy, a skinny teenager conducting an interview for his social-studies coursework... earnest, with his notepad and camera and duffel-coat and his flopping fashionable hair, and a long red scarf looped casually around his neck. Before I could answer what might’ve been a criticism of the way I’d organised things, he smiled and went on, ‘But no, no it’s great, the church tower and coming through the big oak door and into this... the vestry, did you say? Tell me about the books you’re going to stock, anything about the history of the church... and the tooth, of course, I’d love to see it. I think it’s all great, it’ll make a great little piece for me, so please, fire away...’
He’d said, disarmingly, as though he knew that his bookish, journalistic look wasn’t entirely convincing, that so far he’d only done a few weddings and funerals... and last week he’d been sent to watch Notts County play Tranmere, but the match was called off because the pitch was frozen. So this was going to be his first feature. He took some shots of me and the room, and me with Chloe, and he browsed around the shelves.
Five o’clock. Outside it was as black as midnight, with the headlamps of the traffic swishing along the Derby Road. Every car that went by, on its weary journey out of town and home after work, shone an orange beam through our tall, narrow lancet windows and across the ceiling, a steady, unhurried rhythm of light. The vestry door was still open to the hallway, and the door of the church was open too, because I wanted to give the clear impression that it would be a shop, open to the street, open to the public. But the room was warm. I stood in front of the fire, which I’d built especially bright and hot, and I talked... while the young man sat at my desk and scribbled on his pad, while Chloe stood beside him and watched how his hand scurried and scratched like a mouse across his page.
I’d got the shrine ready, but I hadn’t switched on the lamp yet. It would be the climax to the interview. And I hadn’t told Rosie. Indeed, I’d deliberately arranged it so that she’d be out at work, to make a surprise for her, to reveal the article to her unexpectedly if and when it came out.
Firelight, the flicker of flames. The hiss of the traffic. The play of the headlamps on the ceiling and on the books on their shelves. The reporter writing at my desk. Chloe, so absorbed by the movement of his hand that she seemed to be holding her breath.
I told him about the church. It wasn’t very old, it didn’t have centuries of legend and spooky lore, a cemetery heaving with graves and lots of mossy headstones and such. No, it was an Anglican church, built in the 1880s, the
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