Chapter 0

Old Keith ducked his head as he stepped out of his cottage and into the morning light. The door frame was taller than him with room to spare, but it was force of habit to lower his head anyway. He often did when spoken to. In the years since Keith had returned to the village, he kept quiet, only making himself known when a roof slate needed hammering back into place. He made his living as a handyman here, just him and his dog. Keith's family line ended with him, but the thought never engaged the old man, as there was always a wall in need of plastering or a ditch to be dug.

'Here Holly! Here girl!'

His stocky black mutt darted ahead and across the dew-fresh grass, looking back every so often to check her master was following. All Keith knew about his dog was that a labrador jumped over a fence one day and encountered a terrier a mile away. Keith was given a puppy from that accidental union in exchange for unclogging a kitchen sink. It was Christmas at the time, and Keith didn't think hard of what to name her. The other puppies neither claimed nor sold were later packed into the boot of a van and never spoken of again. 

'Stay close, girl! Stay close!'

Into the woods strode the pair. Keith in his tweed cap, fraying windbreaker, and rubber boots. Holly panting under matted fur, happy her master was in tow. The few rays of dawn that cut through the spruce trees dappled on the two as they moved. Keith yawned and scratched his beard as was habit when by himself. Holly sniffed at random patches on the leafy floor. The morning air held little but the brushing of boots on grass, the snatches of birdsong overhead, and the trickle of a stream nearby. The pair arced a few degrees right every hundred meters, as the woods themselves encircled the village. With each passing year the forest shrank and the village grew. Keith knew that progress was inevitable, and he didn't have the energy to say otherwise. His one wish in life was that he didn't live long enough to see the forest well and truly gone.

Then Holly barked at something from afar. It wasn't a fox. It wasn't a pheasant. But it was something close in the distance that drove the dog mad. Keith shushed Holly, but still she barked in a panic. The dog circled her master, padding on the undergrowth, whining as she did. Keith kneeled to Holly's level and lay hands on her back and neck to calm her.

'Hush, Holly, hush!'

Holly whimpered as Keith brushed his fingers through the dog's course black fur. Not since when that larger hound had snapped at her did Holly whine like this. She wasn't a brave dog, but she wasn't foolish enough to stray from her master's reach. Keith cooed soft words into her scruffy ears.

'There, there, girl. It's all right.'

Keith stood up, brushing his knees as he did and turned to see what Holly was looking at. He blinked. 

'Oh, Jesus.' 

A few yards ahead there was a clearing in the forest. The break in the canopy let the morning light shine down on the branches of a prominent elm tree. One branch, in particular, was thick enough to wrap a rope around, and from it hung a figure by the neck. Keith stepped forward, his gaze shifting upwards as his eyes tried to process just what he was witnessing. Holly followed, muzzle down and sniffing the earth.

'What is this?'

It wasn't a body, but a scarecrow. Shaped like a man's torso, but with a sheep's skull for a head. Its upper body stitched and padded together from sackcloth and bone, it's lower body nonexistent. The skeletal arms by its side dangled. Along its bleached skull ran lines and swirls of either black paint or tar. The figure swayed where it hung, watching the forest with hollow eyes.

'Mother of God. Why?'

Keith tried to rationalize what he was seeing. Perhaps it was a Halloween decoration, only five months after the occasion? He didn't notice it on yesterday's walk, so it must have been erected in the meantime. A prank, perhaps? Yes, the village had its fair share of truants and jokers. But who would go through the effort of crafting something this morbid?

The sight of the skull unearthed an old memory in Keith. Back when he still worked at the abattoir in the city outskirts. Him crouching in a tiled room, wearing a stained apron. The smell of iron and salt hanging thick in the air. His partner kneeling down, holding a wriggling lamb captive. Keith pressing the barrel of the bolt pistol onto the woolly infant's head before firing. The lamb then going stiff and losing consciousness, sparing it the agony when his partner sliced its jugular with a trimming knife. Keith partook in the ritual hundreds of times, never losing his nerve. It had little to do with why he left the city, and the memory of the dark blood shooting pathetic spurts on the white tiles hadn't keep him up at night. So why did it unsettle him now?

The old man stood frozen in the clearing. His mind lost in the past. His morning walk forgotten. Oblivious to Holly who barked once more, pleading for her master to pay attention. Not to the scarecrow hanging before them, but to the fresh trail of the person who hung it there not half an hour earlier. Unseen in the distance, a figure in a fawn-green raincoat scurried away.