Source: http://www.fairyist.com/fairy-sightings/joshua-coslet-meets-the-corpse-candle-carmarthenshire/
We, now that the final tweaks are on Vigil and it’s off on its journey, there’s no reason not to start writing the sequel. Corpselight is the second of the Verity Fassbinder books. The first draft of the opening is below.
Corpselight
by Angela Slatter
She took a longish time getting out of her car, smoothing the workday creases from her Donna Karan suit, collecting her handbag and the briefcase. She jingled the keys in the front door of the house, as if the noise might ward off evil spirits. As if it might let them know she was home and they should disappear. The hallway looked fine, but the smell hit her before she got even two steps inside. Steeling herself, she followed the stench.
Mud.
Again.
On the expensive silk at the base of the rocker-recliner that had replaced the last one; oblongs of insufficiently jellified gunk, almost like footprints but lacking definition. Up close, the odour got worse, and she noticed the whole chair wore a thick coat of the same crap. And it wasn’t just mud. It was filth. Ooze. Fetid, decayed, contaminated, liquefied death.
She was, perhaps, less surprised than she should have been.
It was the third such occurrence in as many months. Always on the fifth. Always when she returned from work, as if they’d waited until she was gone in the morning. Always in the same spot. None of last night’s precautions had done a damned thing; she’d be having words with the bloody hippy chick at the West End spook shop.
She couldn’t imagine the insurance company would pay out. Not again. Not even under the Unnatural Happenstance provisions.
The first time this had happened she’d been unnerved; yes, even afraid.
The second time, she’d been annoyed and thought, Tricks. Shitty little tricks. Shitty ghosty little tricks.
This time, she thought, Fuck ‘em.
‘It’ll take a damned sight more than this,’ she told the empty room. Shouted, actually, made sure her anger carried the words all through the house. She moved on by way of the dining room to find an answer of a sort; or simply a variation on a theme.
The kitchen was awash with brown.
Slither marks patterned the linoleum as if a school of middling-sized snakes had run amok. The biggest puddle was in front of the fridge. She picked her way across, stepping on the cleanish patches, careful not to slip, careful not to get crap on her expensive new shoes.
The handle of the fridge door was pristine and she grasped the coldly sweating metal with her own heated palm. She pulled.
There was a moment, one of those frozen seconds when things stood still. In theory, in that moment, there was time to step away, to jump to safety. In reality, the chocolately rectangle filling the matt silver Fisher & Paykel quivered and slid out onto her feet with an obscene sucking sound, leaving her shin-deep in muck.
Then the doorbell rang.
***