The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

explain to Elsa in the morning.
    Suddenly, he stopped and stared behind him. His skin had begun to prickle uncomfortably. He could feel eyes watching him. In the thick pillars and banks of shadows, anything could lurk and he wouldn’t see it. Maybe it was just one of the farm cats watching him, or maybe even a rat? There must be hundreds of rats around here. Turning he carried on up the slope. Goosebumps ran over his skin like an angry rash. He strained his ears to listen. Movement, something shuffling over to his right beyond the bushes at the end of his garden. It’s only a badger, or a fox; something like that, he told himself. His feet began to move faster. His ankle complained bitterly, making his limp more pronounced. He could just make out lights in the distance. A twig snapped, loudly, like the crack of a whip. He found himself drawn towards the sound. Peering over the fence his eyes scanned the murky garden. Something moved. A shadow darker than the shadows, bumbling across the lawn, low to the ground. As if sensing him it stopped and then vanished.
    “Who’s there?” he demanded. He found himself feeling unexpectedly angry. Someone was playing games with him, and he didn’t appreciate it. It was probably the twins, sneaking out to get up to mischief. Vaulting his fifteen stone bulk clumsily over the fence he landed heavily on his injured ankle. Muttering a string of expletives, he lumbered across the garden, in the direction where the shadows had moved.
    Without any warning, something leaped out and grabbed him around the throat. Spinning him round, it cruelly tightened its grip, cutting out the startled cry that was jettisoned upwards, before it could be launched in a blood curdling scream from his mouth. His hands flailed upwards, his fingers trying to grapple with his unknown assailant as it dragged him thrashing, onto the ground. He felt the damp blades of grass against his face, tasted them as they were forced into his open mouth as he landed heavily against them. Rolling onto his back and kicking out for all he was worth at the blackness, his frenzied fingers locked on the cold, snake like creature that had wrapped itself around him. The moon chose that moment to break through the clouds, peering down at him solemnly in his moment of impending doom. At some base level he registered that where his assailant should have been there was nothing, and yet the nothing was squeezing the life from him. Unable to breath, his eyes beginning to bulge from their sockets like two huge boiled eggs, he tore at it, snagging his own flesh with his nails. Suddenly, incredibly, it came loose. Grappling with it, he managed to fling it upwards and over his head. He hurled it away. Scurrying to his feet, gasping painful mouthfuls of the cold night air, eyes wide and damp with terror, he looked down. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when he saw ‘his creature’. He had almost been garrotted by a length of washing line. Lifting his aching arms, he rubbed his fingers against his tender neck. He was going to kill the twins for not taking it down as he’d told them.
    Brushing himself down weakly he limped home, looking neither right nor left, drawn by the light from the kitchen.
    Meli was the first to see him, amazement registering in her expression when he entered through the French doors, and not the front door, before being replaced by a look of panic. “Cal,” she exclaimed in alarm, launching herself across the room, “are you all right?” His short hair was packed against his scalp like the coat of a tennis ball left out in the rain overnight, his face as white as a bleached tablecloth beneath a sprinkling of mud; his jeans were grass stained, and his jacket was hanging half off his shoulder. He looked like he’d been in a fight. Surely not with Elsa?
    “I’ve just been attacked in the garden.” His statement brought a gasp of shock from everyone in the room. Now he was back inside, away from the darkness and unseen eyes, in the safety of his own home, with his wife and friends, he felt calmer, and he could almost see the funny side of what had happened. Almost. When Meli took him by the arm and led him across the room, her eyes wide and filled with concern as they stared into his face, he took the opportunity to order his thoughts.
    “Here, sit down.” It was Myra who pushed her husband out of his chair so Cal could sit there.
    “Who attacked you?” Meli asked, still horror-struck. She wanted