A gate. It was propped open some time ago, if the grass twining its way through the slats is anything to go by.

There are rivers of long grass swaying in the wind along the borders of the field, but the centre has been cut to the quick.

You have been walking forward for so long that you stop, staring at the field before you, where something runs between the squat blades of grass, making them undulate in waves.

“It’s the mice,” a voice says from behind you, and you whirl around and see—

Nothing. There is no one there.

“Hello?” you say tentatively, peering into the trees through which you’ve just emerged. “Is someone there?”

“They don’t come out during the daytime,” the voice says, and for a moment you see something shimmer in the air, just a few feet away from you, but then it is gone again.

“Why not?” You ask, trying and failing to find a form to go with it.

“It’s the owls,” the voice says matter-of-factly, and for a brief moment there is an outline of a shoulder—or maybe an elbow. “They’re most active in the afternoon.”

As though to make a point, an owl’s call, deep and low as thunder, shudders toward you from over the hill.

“I would go, if I were you,” the voice says, already receding toward the treeline, and you take off at a run; except your feet take you through the gate, toward the undulating grass.

“Not that way,” the voice shouts, as though from the other end of a telephone, the words like tin in your ears.

 But you are already gone.

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