CHAPTER TEN
December settled silently over Lynnwood one night and with it an awareness; the worst kind, not of monsters or evil but the nature of the self, penned between the pages of a diary.
Night emerged from the Forest. It spilled from the dark spaces between the trees as much as the skies, rolling out across the village. There were no carols to commemorate its arrival, no children playing in the streets, no sounds at all, in fact, save for the muffled coughs of lonely silhouettes, bent low as they struggled home. Counted among them, Freya moved swiftly through the night. Her old Parka was zippered to her neck, so that only the tail of her scarf fluttered with the wind.
She should have returned home hours ago. She should have been there to meet George and Lizzie after school, to gat
