It started with the gate. The old iron gate at the foot of Black Combe, the one that led to the abandoned shepherd’s hut. Every morning on her run, Nicola would find it swinging open. Every evening, she’d latch it shut. And every dawn, it would be open again, groaning on its hinges like a tired old dog.
The road. The new access track for the quarry. Approved last month. Set to cut straight through the eastern flank of the moor—through the old stone circle that archaeologists had just started to survey. nicola ridd
Not on her door. Inside her.
Inside the oilcloth: a photograph. Black and white. A woman in a long coat, standing in front of a stone circle Nicola had never seen. On the back, in her grandmother’s jagged handwriting: It started with the gate
She was washing the mud off her boots when she heard a voice. Not a whisper. Not a memory. A real, clear voice, like someone standing just behind her left shoulder. Every evening, she’d latch it shut
Someone—or something—needed her to open the right lock at the wrong time.
The moor had been waiting.