CHAPTER ONE Morning It was the summer the world stopped turning on the spiral of history, the summer we spent waiting for the world to begin again, when the sun hung above the village and poured a hot glue that slowed everything down. This idn t nothin , said grandmother in June, recalling the drought of 1976, when the earth swallowed lambs, and the electric summer after the war when people got shocks off each other whenever they touched. By August, though, both those things had already happened, and even she had to admit it was worse. Shadows were pushed back into awkward cornc~, and, ~ was there I first noticed things being moved around, as the spirits of the house made space for themselves in their dimin- ishing refuge. Gradually, though, objects themselves took on a life of their own and moved without the spirits help, rising from the surfaces of furniture through empty air that the heat had squeezed even gravity out of. Mother was unable, eventually, to ignore the autonomous flight of pillows on the landing, and salt and pepper pots that raced each other across the kitchen table. But she couldn t tell anyone because the same thing was said to have happened around Rosemary, an aunt who d thrown herself into the quarry pool long before I was born, so the village was deprived of another exorcism, last seen when one of the newcomer families claimed that their brand-new house was possessed by an incubus who was tampering with the chil- dren s dreams. A large crowd had gathered with candles. At first they felt let down as the Rector simply traipsed through the house with his mind on other things, and whispered some
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