The carriage left me at the iron gates of Harrowmere Hall as
the last light bled out of the sky. The driver did not wait. He flung my trunk
into the mud, crossed himself twice, and whipped his horses back down the lane
as though the very hedgerows were reaching for him.
I stood alone before the house. It rose from the moor like a
black tooth, its windows dark, its chimneys leaning against the clouds. Ivy had
strangled the eastern wing so completely that the stone seemed to breathe
beneath...
