Episode 1 - Chapter 76

“Now the rose, that threw me for a while, couldn't understand why it was dried. But it wouldn't stay fresh buried underground, would it? The rose is there to represent love. Then the wretched photograph of the two of you.”

“What about the scarf and the tin?” I asked.

He pointed to the tin. “The Warp,” then the scarf, “...And the Weave.”

“And the seven paces? The tragedy? How do they fit in?”

“Bumfluff! Distractions! Consequences of an over-active investigative mind!”

“You know what to do?”

“Of course. You balance the equation!”

Episode 1 - Chapter 75

Raven looked at Mary. “It's like an equation, do you see? All we have to do is balance the equation, and that will bring Fiona here.”

“But what about whatever it is that's outside?” I asked.

“If we can solve this quickly, we can be back in the Warp before it comes again.”

“You're sure of this?”

He scratched his nose. “Definitely.”

The lottery ticket came next. “Now this is hope, as well as the message.”

“Hope?” I asked.

“Yes, hope for a better future. That's what we all want, isn't it?”

Episode 1 - Chapter 74

“This lock of hair,” Raven said, waving it in our faces, “this represents your wife.”

He placed it purposefully at the top of the table. Looking back to the artefacts, his fingers dancing across them, he seized the peacock feathers.

“Now these, they had me confused for a while. All that evil eye nonsense. But they're simple, really. These represent your marriage.”

He placed them next to the hair, the grabbed the pound note.

“And this is a promise, an old promise.”

It went next to the feathers.

“But how will this help?” I asked.

Episode 1 - Chapter 73

Raven hurried back to the table while I helped my parents up. Dad started to push the dislocated furniture back into place.

“Give me a hand with this dresser, will you?” he said to me.

“No time for that now,” asserted Raven. “I need you all three of you over here. Help me make sense of this puzzle.”

As we joined him at the table the cats walked in, making their indirect way to arrive at the sofa. “Busy house,” they yawned, curling up.

Raven grabbed the lock of hair. “This is where we start!”

Episode 1 - Chapter 72

“Is there another?” I asked.

“I gave you a task to do and an objective to believe in. You did what I asked, believed what I told you, and thwarted the attack.”

“What was it that attacked us?”

“I'm really not sure. Something old, I think, and very powerful. In truth, I have never dealt with an incursion such as this.”

“Will it attack us again?”

“I have no doubt. Now, we have all the pieces we need.” He looked at Robert, “We must work quickly if we are to rescue your wife.”

Episode 1 - Chapter 71

“You did it” I gasped.

“Actually,” Raven replied, “It was you three that did it.”

“But it was you who told us to reset the clocks.”

“And resetting the clocks did nothing at all.”

“I don't understand, you reset the final clock and it all stopped.”

“Focal point. We are deep in the heart of the Weave. All three of you believed that resetting the final clock would make it stop, and because you believed it, it did.”

“You tricked us!” exclaimed Robert.

“That's certainly one way of looking at it.”

Episode 1 - Chapter 70

“Did you do the kitchen?” Mum shouted over the noise. “There's one on the oven.”

Raven stumbled out of living room toward the kitchen. The house was shaking violently, heavy furniture dancing judderingly across the floor.

“Ah,” we heard Raven shout, “Infernal machines.”

I was with my parents now, and we clung onto each other for dear life while this maelstrom crashed around us, louder and louder building and tearing into a thuddening crescendo.

TOCK.

Like the chime of Big Ben, resounding through the house, and everything stopped.

“There, that's better.” Raven entered the room.

Episode 1 - Chapter 69

The shudders were becoming more violent. I was headed for the stairs to do the bedrooms when I lost my footing, falling heavily to the floor, winded.

“I'll get those,” Robert shouted, heading up the stairs as Raven raced around unplugging everything. I was sure our house would be torn to pieces. “I don't think we're insured for this,” I said and we laughed in the midst of this carnage.

Robert came down. “That's upstairs done,” he said, clinging to a wall to stay upright.

The house kept shaking. “We must have missed one” said Raven.

Episode 1 - Chapter 68

I was in the kitchen with the cats when the house began to shudder. As interested as they had been in the tuna tin, when it started they both dropped to all fours, quickly crawling under the table.

I raced back to the living room as the house shuddered again and I was knocked to the floor. “What's happening?” I shouted, trying to be heard over the cacophony.

“We're resetting clocks” Robert shouted back.

“That's it,” shouted Raven, “Turn every clock to one o'clock.”

“What about the digital ones?” Edward shouted.

“Turn them off!”

Episode 1 - Chapter 67

“What was that?” I asked.

“Something is drawing closer,” answered Raven.

The house shuddered again, this time with a creaking tearing sound.

“That does not sound good,” I said.

“Don't you got it yet?” asked Raven, “Nothing about this situation is good.”

The house did it again. And again. It felt like it was being torn out of the ground.

“What kind of something?” Dad shouted. The noise was deafening.

“Haven't the foggiest.” Raven bellowed back. “But I'm in no rush to find out. The clocks! We have to reset the clocks.”

Episode 1 - Chapter 66

“Not again,” said Raven.

“Hungry” the cats repeated.

“Never you worry, Raven,” said my wife, “I'll take care of this. There's a tin of tuna in the cupboard.” She headed off to the kitchen, the ladies following with a sing-song purr.

“Why do they keep showing up?” asked Robert.

“They're cats,” answered Raven, “Might as well ask 'why is the wind?'”

“But those two do keep showing up. That must be relevant.”

“They're drawn here by the energy of something unknown. Cats love a mystery.”

As he spoke, the house shuddered.

Episode 1 - Chapter 65

“Do you know anything more about “The Woes of Alice French”?”

“Not much I'm afraid. It gets mentioned by a Reverend B Clarke in a list of murder ballads of the 19^th century, but that's about it.”

“And the Wolford Diaries? What are they?”

“The diaries of Earl Wolford, local gentry. He was quite prolific in documenting his own life, but a very boring life it was. It's in the entry for March 15^th, 1872.”

“So Alice had some notoriety by the 1870s.”

Behind us, familiar voices spoke up in unison. “Hungry.” they demanded.

Episode 1 - Chapter 64

“Or something?” Raven asked.

“It's a bit of a mystery, to be honest. It's mentioned in the Wolford Diaries. “After a moving rendition of “The Woes of Alice French” we retired for cigars...”. But I've never found the text of the song itself. But I think an Alice French did live very near the site of this house.”

“Go on,” said Raven. He was impressed by Dad, I could tell.

“Churchill Street was once owned by the Parish. One tenant of theirs was a Mr. A. French but listed later as Ms. A Finch.”

Episode 1 - Chapter 63

“Research. I need to know something about the folklore of this area, this street.”

“Well why didn't you say so?” asked Mary, “That's just Edward's thing.”

Raven looked to me. “What was it you wanted to know?” I asked.

“Tragic deaths used to get retold as stories or songs in the days before television, yes?”

I nodded my agreement.

“Is there any of that round here?”

“You mean the Woes of Alice French?”

“Maybe, what is it?”

“To be honest, I'm not really sure. I think it's a song, or something?”

Episode 1 - Chapter 62

“Look at me lad,” continued Raven. “Everything about the present situation is unreal to you, yes?”

Robert nodded in agreement.

“Well, would you go so far as to suggest it's not happening?”

“No, but...”

“Forget the buts, this is happening now. This house has been drawn deep into the Weave, for reasons I am, as yet, unsure of. If we don't work it out soon, what's real and what exists will become moot questions.”

“Actually,” I spoke, “I have one last question.”

Raven turned toward me.

“Why did you want the internet?”

Episode 1 - Chapter 61

“The Warp,” Raven began, “is what we know as the natural, physical world. Trees, flowers, butterflies, mud. The things we can touch. The Weave was created by the collective subconscious of the human imagination: every dream, every nightmare, every story ever told or simply thought, every hope or fear, since the very first men huddled in caves. All of this is what makes the Weave.”

“So things that aren't real? That don't exist” I asked.

“Are you so simple to believe that just because something doesn't exist it's not real? Or that something unreal doesn't exist?”

Episode 1 - Chapter 60

“...bathed in a light clean and warm, trapped in a room of shifting form, a shroud of clouds, a passage of stings, a bag of bones in a box with wings...

1. am lost...

...a path ahead in spectral frost, a whispered lie, a hidden cost, a pattern worn in daily cloth, a photograph of what is not...

1. am lost...

...an angel prince with peacock wings, in shadow lands he schemes and sings. A toy for ancients set for the fray...

1. am lost...

...half a promise on a broken day, spiny wheels sigh and show me the way...”

Episode 1 - Chapter 59

My wife had taken to her role as interrogator with some aplomb.

“Please,” said Raven, “We really don't have time for questions.”

“Just one or two more. You never know Mister....ah, just Raven, it might enable us to help you. The Forest is an agreement? Between who?”

“Interested parties.”

“You'll have to do better than that. What interested parties?”

“Those who would see the Warp protected from the Weave, the actual continuing unmolested by the human imagination.”

“I think it's about time you explained this Warp and Weave business to us, don't you?”

Episode 1 - Chapter 58

I fetched the tea, but left the rolling pin be.

“So then just Raven, what are you?”

He sighed, resigned. “I am an agent of the Forest.”

“Yes, we'll get to what you do, but what are you?”

“There's no name I can give. I came into being to serve the Forest, and that's what I do. I have no need to label myself.”

“Are there others like you?”

“The Forest has many agents.”

“What is the Forest?”

“It is an agreement to protect the sanctity of the Warp from the Weave.”

Episode 1 - Chapter 57

“And while you're about it, you can tell us what's going on.”

“We don't have time now,” Raven responded.

“Nonsense. In the past hour bedlam has taken place in my home, strange people in even stranger get-ups coming and going, a whirlwind in the living room, you speaking all manner of gibberish and bossing us about. And those lady-cat things. And if you don't start telling me what's going on, I swear I'll bring a rolling pin when I fetch the tea.”

“You'd better do as she says,” Dad said, “I've seen that look before.”

Episode 1 - Chapter 56

My wife looked blank, then busied herself with the kettle.

“What do you mean,” I followed Raven, “Not like us?”

“He means he's not a man, Dad.”

“Not a man? Don't be silly.”

“You heard the cats. Not a man thing after all, that's what they said.”

“Well what then? He must be a man. Look at him, two arms and legs, one head, speaks English. A man.”

“Actually Edward, your son has it right.”

“Well then,” Mary entered the room, “I think it's time you told us what you are!”

Episode 1 - Chapter 55

By this point I was sure I was about to drown in gobbledegook. I couldn't take it all in, all this nonsense. I just wanted normal.

“Would anybody like some more tea?” I asked.

“I think tea would be a champion idea.” said Mr Raven, heading back to the living room.

“Then tea it is. Then I think you should answer some questions, Mr Raven.”

“I keep telling you, it's just Raven, not Mister.”

“Why is that so important?”

“Because a moment may come when it's vital that you remember I'm not like you!”

Episode 1 - Chapter 54

“Something to play with? Like we're toys?”

“Kind of, yes.”

“But...”

“There are beings in the Weave that have been there since your ancestors huddled in caves, terrified of shadows. They were in the shadows. They are very old, and very bored, looking for amusement. A house from the Warp, full of hopes and dreams and fears right in the middle of their back yard. How could they resist?”

“And the cats are helping them?”

“Good lord no, the cats don't help anyone, it's not in their nature. They're just drawn to the pretty.”

Episode 1 - Chapter 53

“What are you doing?” Shouted Robert, “We have to help her!”

“There's nothing we can do for her right now.”

“But didn't you see her, she's terrified.”

“All the same, nothing we can do.” Raven was drawing the curtains.

“I can't just...”

“Listen lad, she isn't out there. The flickering we saw proves it. Something is drawing images from the emotional memory of this place. Whatever it is, it's manipulating those memory images, trying to lure us out.”

“Why would it want to do that?”

“To have something to play with.”

Episode 1 - Chapter 52

“Not so fast lad,” Raven caught Robert's arm, pulling him away from the door. “Not a good time to get lost.”

The child Fiona looked straight at us when Robert shouted, raising her arm to wave and smile. The cats flinched and crouched, as if they'd been startled by a loud noise, though we'd heard nothing. They hissed at the air around them, then darted in opposite directions leaving Fiona alone.

Her arm dropped then, a look of terror crawling its way across her face.

“That's enough of that game,” said Raven as he closed the door.