There wasn’t any real darkness to the sky, just a peculiar absence of light. It felt as if the day was dying but the night had forgotten to come down. In the valley below us, the village was still empty and dead. We’d watched the Land Rover passing through it and disappearing around the corner at the end of the main street, and once it had gone the world had seemed to stop moving again. The gypsy camp was lifeless. The gas station was still. I wasn’t even sure that we were moving. I knew we were—I could hear our footsteps. But even they were shrouded in stillness. Sound, silence, light, dark…there was something about this place that deadened everything. “What do you think?” Cole said eventually. “About what?” “Anything.” “I don’t know,” I told him. “I think there’s something weird going on, but I don’t know what it is.” “What about Abbie?” he asked. “She’s frightened. She doesn’t like us being here. I think she feels guilty about something.”
