There is a certain, unmistakably English beauty to be observed in the Cotswolds, it is undeniable. When the sun bathes the summer-greened rolling hills, patchworked with shimmering yellow rapeseed and the lilac hue of flax. Or, when you broach a hill in the early dawn of autumn and witness the swirling mists rising from those shallow valleys. And, in winter, when the hedgerows and trees glimmer, stiff and ice-laden with bright frost. It is this and its honey-stoned charm, its picture-postcard, chocolate-box cottages and quaint villages that the tourists, who flock here, come to see.
But, scratch beneath that shiny, quasi-theme-park surface and all is not as it appears. The same can be said for many other tourist destinations; look, and you will observe things that skim below the surface, realities mostly unseen by its visitors. Indeed, many of the Cotswold towns and villages used to film retro television series have a ‘wrong end’ or a ‘bad lot’. It may not be comparable to urban degradation, the tabloid-cited inner wastelands of major cities, but it’s still there, subtly, ensconced in the background. You just have to know where to look. The division between the haves and the have nots is evident, to anyone who cares to observe it. And it’s growing.
Then scratch deeper still, put the politics, the disparity, the hypocrisy, the thrall of celebrity and status aside for a moment. Claw, if you will, tear further into the dark underbelly. Through the fleshy layers of the corporeal, to the gristle and bone of the unseeable and what lies lurking in that darkness, the fear of the unknown and the supernatural. What if something else were the arbiter of justice, of retribution? Something less prosaic than the well intentioned, and well mannered. Something darker, its beauty manifest in its chilling delivery of karma, without rules, boundaries or scale. Without fear of the need to recompense. Something twisted, unyielding and uncompromising, whose gnarled and bony hand reaches out through the veiled shadows… the cold hand of Fate and the harbingers that deliver its judgement.
The characters and events in these eight stories are fictional, but most of the locations exist in some form. After all, the Cotswolds is a real place. I may have moved them slightly, extended, embellished or renamed them, but they are there. If you care to visit the Cotswolds and, in the unlikely event, bump into me, I could show you them, or at least point you in the right direction. But, be careful what baggage you bring with you. Not that funky little wheeled number that glides under your cabin seat, but the kind you keep hidden in the dark closet of your mind. The kind of baggage you would rather not open in public. Because, you never know what might be watching… and waiting…