Read Twisted Winter for Free Online

shoulder. It didn’t seem nearly as long on the wayback: it doesn’t, if you’ve walked somewhere twice, I’ve noticed.
    â€œDid you have a nice time?” my mum said, when I got in. “I was a bit worried. You were ages.”
    â€œYes. I went for a walk. But I took my phone.” I showed her.
    â€œWhere did you go?”
    â€œAlong the canal. I met a man who told me about the sluice at the end.”
    She looked vague. “Oh, is there a sluice? I’d forgotten about the canal. It’s only a little one.”
    â€œIt’s called the King’s Drain.”
    â€œI can’t remember which king it would have been.”
    â€œHe said it was to hold the sea back.”
    And it was. But not just the sea.
    * * *
    That night, I woke up. I don’t know what woke me. But my heart was banging against my ribs again, and I felt light, as though I wasn’t real any more. I knew I had to go back to the gates.
    Going out at night on my own was stupid, I know that. But it didn’t feel as though I had a choice. Idressed, and then I let myself out of the back door and ran through the orchard, and down the field, and into the thorns.
    There was a full moon and the sky was full of stars. I hadn’t realised that there were so many. In Bristol, the sky is orange because of all the streetlights and you can only see a few, but now there were thousands of them. The moonlight cast sharp shadows; the thorn trees were blue and black. I’d been feeling a bit scared but now I was excited: it was like being out in a secret world, that no-one else ever saw.
    Soon, I was at the canal. The light from the moon lay along the water like a path, a silver road, and the gates were at the end, but much bigger than they actually were, really huge, like a castle. I was still excited, but afraid, too, and I told myself I had to be brave. I followed the moon path, until the black gates loomed up in front of me and then I had to stop.
    The light fell on the big wheel so that it was silver, too.
    Open the gates.
The voice was in my head; maybe I was going mad. But the thought didn’t bother me.
    â€œI don’t know how.”
    The wheel will open the gates.
    There was a ledge, on which someone could stand to turn the wheel. So I hopped onto the ledge and put my hands on it. I had forgotten to bring gloves and the metal was frosty cold. It hurt my hands, but to my surprise the wheel span easily, really quickly, as though the slightest touch would send it whirling. I lifted my hands and the wheel spun until it was round like the moon and the gates began to open. I jumped down from the ledge.
    Within the gates, everything was black. I couldn’t see the canal, or anything beyond and now I was really scared.
    Go inside.
    â€œI don’t want to.”
    You must.
And I felt my feet taking me forwards into the blackness.
    As I did so, however, I saw that there was a tiny light, a little spark like a candle. It was as though there was a very small figure, carrying a tiny lantern, walking towards me.
    â€œWho’s there?”
    No answer.
    â€œWho is it?” My voice sounded very small, too. Then the lantern flamed up and someone wasstanding in front of me, man-height. His skin shone in the light from the lantern and it was like the old mahogany chest of drawers that my mother had in her bedroom, whenever she polished it. There was a black cotton cloth around his hips and the gleam of gold. When I looked up, I saw that he had a dog’s head, like a Dobermann: long and dark-furred. His eyes had a little spark. I ought to have run screaming but all the fear drained away from me, as if out of a sluice.
    â€œWho are you?” I said. But I knew. Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead. The one who guides souls home.
    â€œThey’re waiting for you,” he said. I don’t know how he spoke, out of that dog’s face, but he did. It was the voice which had been talking to me. Without