ADAM L. G. NEVILL was born in Birmingham, England, in 1969 and grew up in England and New Zealand. He is an author of horror fiction. Of his novels, The Ritual, Last Days, No One Gets Out Alive and The Reddening were all winners of The August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel. He has also published three collections of short stories, with Some Will Not Sleep winning the British Fantasy Award for Best Collection, 2017.
Imaginarium adapted The Ritual and No One Gets Out Alive into feature films and more of his work is currently in development for the screen.
The author lives in Devon, England. More information about the author and his books is available at: www.adamlgnevill.com
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A stillness profound enough to be uncanny hushes a woodland glade. Trees encircle the placid water of a circular pond therein, the surface a black mirror reflecting a sombre sky.
Glimpsed between the columns of trunks and downy birch branches that ring the water, white blossom and vivid flowers erupt along the borders of a distant lawn. Beyond this mown pelt of grass, a weathered vicarage stands sentinel. An outcrop of dour stone with windows as impenetrable as the pond’s untroubled surface.
The atmosphere of mournful tranquillity is only disturbed when a cat appears upon the lawn to stalk a thrush. As it closes upon its prey, the cries of the other birds at a safer height grow shrill.
Behind a French window in the vicarage, the pale smudge of a face peers out. The surrounding void of the unlit room offers vague definition to a withered head. A woman, her white hair thinning, whose face appears disembodied, suspended in darkness. Morose yet expectant, she watches the confrontation on the lawn.
Reflected upon the pupils of her rheumy eyes, the thrush explodes from the lawn. A sudden flight inciting a fresh orchestra of avian shrieks from the wings of this outdoor theatre. The pupils of the watcher at the window quickly become busier with more black shapes, swooping upon the hunter, until a cat’s scream of rage and terror tears the air. The hunted bird’s wings flap-crack in a soaring escape.
Vicarage, garden, wood and pond grow smaller below the reprieved thrush. It sees the land become a patchwork in which the suggestion of a circular village, with the vicarage forming the hub of an indistinct wheel, assumes shape.
Black clouds cover the world.
Within an hour, the thrush descends from a sooty sky, its keen sight fixing upon a housing estate where busy roads encircle cement blocks, and the air is a brown haze. Closing claws upon the railing of a gantry in a grubby block of flats, the bird sees the face of another careworn woman, who sits in silence behind a kitchen window.
(C) Adam L.G. Nevill 2022