“I know not why I am so sad; I cannot get out of my head a fairy-tale of olden times.” ― Heinrich Heine, ‘Die Lorelei’

  “The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.”

  ― W.H. Auden

  “Once upon a time – for that is how all stories should begin – there was a boy who lost his mother.”

  ― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

  Remembering is a kind of magic...

  Part 1 Homecoming

  Yesterday

  Everything was perfectly normal. Another English summer’s day. A little cloudy, but the sun would burn through soon enough. At least it wasn’t raining. From across the dunes, a salt breeze reached the trees, rustling leaves, as Agatha Whishaw emerged from Hernshore Wood, calling her dog’s name.

  ‘Eddie!’

  She was growing indignant. Eddie, ever the terrier, disappeared chasing a deer. Agatha could have sworn it was snow-white, and despite Eddie’s errant ways, concluded that it was an auspicious sign. She could feel it in her arthritic left knee. Regardless of that lift in her mood, it was bound to take an age to track down the little bugger Eddie.

  Sure enough, for the best part of half an hour, she’d trampled ferns and received lashes from hawthorns. Finally, she concluding that Eddie would have to make his own way home. He was a serial offender, ending up whining at the back door, bright eyed, tail wagging as if his dear mistress had forgotten him. The cheeky sod. She called his name one more time as she ambled back onto the path at the edge of town.

  King Street was deserted. Most of Hernshore was still asleep. Agatha enjoyed these quiet moments. She thought back to the white deer. There had been much grumbling since Lady Lorimer passed on a year ago. The old folk felt it in their waters. They couldn’t say what exactly it was. Though, they talked of the Lorimers. Where might they be? Many years had passed since they step foot in town. But so long as they stayed away, the signs couldn’t mean what people thought they meant.

  That’s what Agatha thought too until she approached Sandyford Row, the avenue along the town’s far edge that skirted the dunes.

  Sand... in the street.

  Agatha didn’t live on Sandyford Row; she wasn’t that down at heel. Not that she turned her nose up at folks who did. Her home sat several streets further back: a tidy little terrace she kept neat as a pin. A job much easier since her Henry had passed more than a decade ago, Herne guide his soul. The man never could put dishes in the sink, let alone wash them. None of that mattered anymore, if it ever did. The important thing now was that sand had blown from the dunes into the town. Oh no, that wasn’t good at all.

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  She wanted to call for Eddie but didn’t. There was no need to wake everyone because she was having a bit of a wobble. It was a bit of sand, that was all. A stronger wind during the night. Surely.

  But the dunes were so much closer. They were right at the back of the play park’s slatted fence, spilling through it. Far too close. Agatha had been almost middle-aged the last time that happened. Back when Henry was in his prime of leaving coaster-less teacups on windowsills.

  Agatha wasn’t even aware that she’d stopped walking, until Eddie burst out of a bush under the trees to the left. He sprinted pall-mall across the bottom of King Street and disappeared down Sandyford Row. Now, her feet moved of their own accord.

  ‘Eddie, no!’ she called. Be damned if people heard her.

  She turned onto Sandyford Row at a hurried walk. A hot gust of wind blew sand into her face. Tears brimmed in her eyes and fractured her vision.

  ‘Eddie, come back this instant.’

  She heard him bark, a crazed machine gun yap, yap, yapping, pausing only to reload with a growl.

  Half blinded, Agatha stumbled on. The wind blew harder, forcing her to shield her eyes behind her arm. The sickly-sweet smell of decaying seaweed was fetid in the air. She followed the frenzied barks of her dog, leaning into the surging wind, and turned into a side alley. From behind, Eddie whined. Somehow, she’d gotten turned around. She threw down her arm and blinked into the maelstrom.

  The little dog bolted from the mirk and shot between her legs.

  ‘Eddie, wait!’

  But the little dog didn’t. Tears streaming now, Agatha tried to see from where the little dog had run. A pair of shuffling shapes swayed in the sandstorm, engulfing Sandyford Row.

  ‘No... no. That can’t be,’ Agatha said, taking two faltering steps back. ‘They aren’t here yet.’

  Turning, she felt a small trickle of urine leak into her knickers, hot as shame. The sand was shifting under foot. Eddie was still barking, and she followed his cries, hoping he was leading her away from the shambling figures pursuing her. All the while her mind gibbered: It can’t be. Not yet. We’re not ready. They won’t be ready. Herne help us!

  When her walking shoes hit the drift, Agatha sprawled forward. She scrambled on hands and knees, buffeted by gusts rough with particles. Eddie barked and barked. Getting up, she choked on the dry air, calling for him in vain.

  And then there he was, standing taut on all-fours, hackles raised, making a racket of pure fury like only small dogs can.

  Falling to her knees, Agatha scooped him up in her arms. He squirmed, his short legs scrabbling in the air, barking ceaselessly.

  ‘Shush, now. That’s enough.’ Agatha tried to sound stern, but the swirling dust dried out her words to little more than burnt paper scattering in the wind.

  From down deep, vibrations rose. Her heart skipped as the reality of her situation—how foolish she’d been—slammed home. Eddie wriggled free and pranced stiff-legged, gunning for a fight. Agatha looked down; soft, warm sand cushioned her knees. She was in the dunes.

  The terror stripped away gravity for an instant. Her stomach dropped and her head swam vertiginously. She dropped to her hands as if for balance. It didn’t help. It only made the vibrations more perceptible, more real.

  ‘Eddie, come here,’ she pleaded, crying and staggering to her feet once more. As she did, the sand lost what little solidity it had, and she sank in down to her calves.

  Frantically, Agatha struggled to pull her legs free, which only made her sink deeper. The vibrations were now accompanied by a deep rumble, like the distant rolling of thunder.

  Tears streamed, and the sand sucked her waist deep. Blind panic gripped her. She clawed at the soft, yielding ground. Something was rising from the deep. No, not something. She knew exactly what it was. Who it was. Her mind just didn’t want to give it more reality by naming them.

  Hands slipping through the myriad grains, she dropped further to her chest, then her shoulders. Surface particles were dancing now, like heavy rain bouncing up from pavements in a summer storm. But there was no water here. Not in the dunes. If there was one thing every man, woman, and child in Hernshore knew, it was not to go into the dunes. How stupid she was.

  Buried to her throat, arms submerged below the elbows, Agatha made one final plaintive call for Eddie. The little dog stopped barking, as if finally hearing her. Except, instead of turning, his ears flattened, and he whined. The last thing Agatha saw was Eddie fleeing into the dunes. The sandstorm wallowed him, just as the quicksand, or rather the thing beneath it, rising unstoppably from the deep, swallowed her.