A man takes a sunlit shortcut through an English wood and finds that something is missing. There is no thrush, and no blackbird, and no rustle of wings – only a strange dimming of the light, and a silence that feels willed, and watchful, and almost hungry. At his friend's house the dogs will not cross the tree-line, and they bare their teeth at empty air. In the evenings, that grey band of trees seems to lie under a shadow that falls from nowhere anyone can see.

There is something in the wood, something that makes the dogs keep away and the birds fall silent. His friend suspects it, and his friend's wife avoids talking about it, and neither will say what they believe it might be.

First published in Woman magazine in December 1926, and later collected in Spook Stories (Hutchinson, 1928). Public domain text sourced from Project Gutenberg Canada.

Edward Frederic Benson (1867–1940) was an English novelist, and biographer, and master of the uncanny short story. Best known for his Mapp and Lucia comedies and his eerie tales of the supernatural, he wrote across nearly every genre of early twentieth-century popular fiction.

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