The stable at hollowmere

You wake on the floor of the holiday cottage with straw in your hair and no memory of getting home from the stable. Your ankles ache with a deep, structural pain, like something is being re-architected from the bone outward. When you limp to the bathroom mirror, the whites of your eyes have gone brown and warm, and along your hairline, coarse hairs have pushed through in a ridge that runs back over your scalp — the beginnings of a mane.

You tell yourself it's an allergy. A reaction to mould, to the dust of century-old hay. But when you try to write it down, your hand cramps around the pen in a way that feels less like a cramp and more like a refusal — the fingers wanting to curl, to become something else. Outside, the village of Hollowmere is quiet under grey drizzle, and down the lane the stable's slate roof gleams, patient as a held breath.

Your phone shows missed calls from the historical society, and one new text from Tom Beddoe, the farrier you met yesterday: 'You left your notes. I read them. You need to come see me before you go back there. Don't go back there.' The last four words sit on the screen, and your pulse — you notice this with detached horror — has begun to fall into a slower, heavier rhythm than a human heart should keep.