The Shadowing

Prologue

There aren't any trees in the little circular cul-de-sac where the boy lives, but there is a tall, wooden telephone pole, sprouting a wire into each house in the street. Every night before bed, the boy checks to see if there are any birds perched on the wire that ties the pole to his own house. Sometimes on winter night there are stars framed between them.
Tonight there is a full moon. The boy leans his elbows on the windowsill and stares, imagining flying off into spaceship.
Then, suddenly, the night twists.
It is the oddest thing the boy has ever seen. The view from his window wraps for a moment, as though reflect in a wobbly mirror at a fun fair. The air between the cable and the ground seems to break and reform, the way still water ripples and then settles when you touch it.
The boy rubs his eyes. He shakes his head before he looks again to see if the ripple is still there.
It isn't. Instead, there is a woman standing on the pavement.
In hebpale light of the full moon, the woman's skin is faintly bule, as though she had been nearly frozen to death. Around her shoulders is a tattered shawl, too full of holes to protect against the winter air. Her ragged leatherskirt doesn't look very warm either.
Where did she come from?
The boy at the window is fascinated. He can't look away.

Black Annis lifts her head, swivels her eyes first one way and the other. Above her stands a wooden mast with thick, Black ropes stretching out to the strange houses around it. Beneath her feet, the ground is hard as a rock.
The world has changed.
When she last crossed over and walk this land, it was field and forest. Now all that is gone. No trees anywhere only this bare wooden pole. Gone, too,  the entrance to the cave Black Annis scratched from the sandstone for Dan's Hill with her own nails. Gone, the oak that grew at its mouth, where she hung out the flayed skins of her victims to dry so that later she might see them for her skirts.
And what is that smell thick and acrid? It surrounds her, filling the cold, fresh scent of night and the aroma of warm, living things. All changed, all gone nothing remains of what Black Annis knew in this world. It is buried beneath this grey layer of grit and tar, and row upon row of of smoky human dwellings. For a moment, Black Annis knows smothings like despair.
Then her eyes follow one of the black ropes overhead. It stretch from the top of the tall, wooden pole to the bottom of a window. And in the window, moonlight shining on his while face, there is a child.
Black Annis smiles. Her pointed teeth do not gleam; they are black with age and the bloodstains of her countless victims. But they are still strong, still primed for their purpose. She looks up at the human child surely meant to be in bed and asleep at this time of night. Some things never change.

They boy watches as the cold woman turns her head, looking up at the telephone pole, and finally look at him. Straight at him. Her eye seem alight, glinting brightly. Her lips pull back over teeth that make a dark stain in the middle of her pale, bluish face. It is a smile. She sees him.
Now he notices something else. Her arms seem too long for her body, and her fingers no one can have fingers that long! Unless . . . We're they her fingernails? The boy snaps out of his trance, all fascination instantly turned to fear. He backs away from the window. Black Annie walks towards the house. Inside the gate, separating the building from the hard grey ground beyond, there is a tiny patch of grass and earth. The soil here has not changed. The Sandy Liam is soft and familiar. It Is goods to feel the earth beneath her feet again.
Black Annis reaches the house and looks up. It is bigger than the human dwelling places she remembers. The windows are higher.
But her nails are as sharp as ever they were. She is good at climbing.

Cowering away from the window, the boy can see nothing. But he can hear an odd noise outside a scratching beneath the window, growing steadily louder. The boy doesn't want to look, but he has to know what it is.
He forces himself back to the window.
He grips the sill and peers out across he street. The strange woman is gone.
But the noise is still growing louder. The boy looks down at the window ledge outside the house. Long, sharp claws are hooked into the wood. As the boy watches, the dark claws flex and grip. Behind them rise long, pale arms, blue in the night's half-light. The arms haul up the rest of the grotesque body. Black teeth and silver eyes rise into view, filling the window.
Black Annis is face to face with her victim. Her grin widens the human child dashes across the room, throws himself into his bed and dives under the covers. Black Annis can see the heap of human helplessness trembling beneath the flimsy cloth down.
The boy's terror is delicious.

Under his duvet, the boy hides, his nerves a snarled tangle of despair and hope. Surely his is safe here. The blue woman can't see him any more, and the window is shut tight  

Click.
The sound is soft and sudden. A cold draught of night air reaches under the covers and stings the boy's trembling ankles. The window is open.
The child waits, his heart pounding with fear, as he listens to quiet, slow footfall padding across his bedroom floor . . . Perhaps she's gone?Perhaps it was all in his imagination, perhaps
There was no more warning. The cover ripped from his body in one lighting sweep. It is too late for him to scream for help.
He screams anyway.