Sublime

Mutely the chapel looked back at him across a car park glossed by rain. Its door was closed, and newly painted green; beside the door a green bay tree flourished like the wicked in the thirty-seventh psalm. An east wind blowing up the Alder moved the cold illuminated air, and the bay tree danced in its small black bed. The chapel did not dance. Its

And Detective Inspector Hobbes knew then: the house had taken possession of him. The spirits of the family, the occupants. If he made his way back downstairs and peered out through the back door, the garden would be empty; and if he walked across the lawn and looked up at the third-floor window, the same woman would be there, looking down at him, w

Streaming in through the window, the moonlight cast long shadows and splashed the walls with a touch of diluted Indian ink.