By Max Blagg

The boy hopped a turnstile at the edge of a field that skirted the river, quickening his pace as he passed opposite the worn brick chimney of the tanning factory across the water in Bolham Butts. There was always something vaguely rude in that appellation, Bolham Butts, and the factory itself was tinged with a raw and sinister quality, the dilapidated Victorian buildings, great piles of skins curing in the yard, infested with rats and giving off a powerful odor of putrefaction. A slimy, brownish purple liquid constantly leached into the river at that point and it was said that eels of enormous size congregated there, coiling and writhing in the murky depths. → Read more