When the police come round, askin, they looks me up sideways. Two men, barely out of kidskin. Says have you seen the boys an girls out by the humps? Goin out there night-time? I says I hear em, tells em that old oak and the lanky birches got no beef with children, keeps an eye out for them even. With their root talk ‘n spores. Wherever them kids has gone, they gone safe. There is rules, see? Most people know that cats can’t abide no cucumbers. Common sense, that. But did you know the war between house spider an the house? That shale brick an clay, walling you all in, some two hundred years. The house spider scarries the floors, claims skirting board an plaster is his, all of em barriers between the hearth an home, the web, an that old enemy. Meanwhiles there’s that dancin cellar spider, in the damp corners an underneath toilets, in that space behind doors what don’t close no more. He works for shale rock since before it was ever dug out the ground. Old Papa Shale and daddy-long-l...
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