Chapter Four

The corridor is dark and wet. Black Annis drags a solid, bulky load along the new passage she has tunnelled into the ground. The sandstone walls are streaked with clay, and the smell is of earth and roots and mould. She needs no light to navigate her way; she is at home underground. Her glowing eyes penetrate the darkness effortlessly. It feels good to be deep in the earth. She is certain hers are the only feet to have trodden this damp course in five hundred years and more. The path leads to her old lair.

Black Annis pauses, resting. The burden she drags along behind her is slowing her down, and having crossed at the first weakening point of the Boundary, she needs time to adjust to being back in the mortal world. She is a long way from her full strength, but she knows it is only a matter of time before it is restored.

It is good to be back in the world of men, however changed it may be. Black Annis can feel her power flowing back to her with each meal, the nourishing potency of human children’s flesh. Black Annis heaves her burden to her shoulders once again. The delicious smell of fear seeps through the sack. Black Annis breathes it in deeply and tangy saliva floods her mouth as she looks forward eagerly to her next meal . . .

Her luminous eyes can see an opening in the darkness ahead – the entrance to her underground grotto at last. The place is exactly as she left it all those centuries before. But time doesn’t matter to Black Annis. She does not age.

She steps through the stone entrance into a large, empty cave. Her eyes glow as she looks around. This still feels like home. She sighs with relief and with weariness. She drops the heap she carries to the ground, and it stirs.

Annis decides she will hold off for a moment. Instead, she unties the fresh pelt from her meal a few hours ago from her skirts and hangs it to dry. Soon there will be another to join it.

She cannot wait any longer.

Black Annis bends low and frees the child she has carried to her lair from the covering that muffles it. In the darkness, at the light first touch of Annis’ cold, sharp claws, the child faints, its body going limp. No matter.

She marks the spot she needs with the point of one talon. Then, with one deft movement, she sinks her claw into the child’s heart.

Now Black Annis does not hesitate. She makes the first cut in the dead child’s skin with her razor-sharp talons. She slices again, deft and sure, and again. In less than a minute, she has another pelt to add to her collection.

Trembling in anticipation of her meal, Black Annis sinks her stained teeth into the flesh, and tears hungrily.