Lorraine Wilson has been making a name for herself with her dystopian folk-fantasy novels, and her latest book once again shows why she is a talent to watch. Here is an extract from We Are All Ghosts in the Forest.

We Are All Ghosts in the Forest
By Lorraine Wilson
Published by Solaris

The boy awoke just as the sun began to fall towards the village. At this angle, it caught the contours of the dead houses and in the corners of their eyes, the greened, broken angles became the faces of the lost. Stefan sat beside Katerina on the bench, chamomile and lavender a cool sea around them as he leaned his head against the wall. She was watching the faces of her baba’s long dead neighbours shifting in and out of cohesion in the long shadows, but turned to study the boy instead. It was strange how he could move from a child to a young man with the angle of his chin. Now, leaning back, eyes slitted against the light, the bones of the man he would be were clear, the way he would be more capable of stillness than most. 

Fleetingly, she imagined how she’d frame the shot if she still had her cameras and if they still worked, but the habit of seeing the world through a lens was distant now, and risked resurrecting memories of a day she’d rather not think about. She didn’t know why the thought had come to her at all, only she had been dreaming again recently, the past haunting her sleep. One chicken and then another and then the whole flock discovered them then, distracting her and fussing softly beneath the bench and being steadily ignored by Stefan. Perhaps he thought these were ghosts, too, or was so used to ignoring things that it would take conscious choice to see. Which would be a problem, here. 

‘There are some things you need to know,’ she said eventually. The butterflies were settling into the last sunlit grasses to bathe before the dark, the boy tilted his head to show he was listening. 

‘One: the forest has worse things than ghosts.’ She paused. ‘The rumours are right, your average ghost doesn’t last long in there, but only fools go in looking for a cure from digital infection. The forest eats ghosts, but the things living in the forest are hardly going to turn down a wandering human, infected or otherwise.’ The marram hen climbed gracelessly into her lap and Katerina smoothed her warm speckled feathers slowly. The hen crooned. 

 ‘Two: you work otherwise neither of us eats. Three: I don’t know what you’re used to, but the dead houses here are different to urban dead spaces.’ The boy rolled his head against the brick, his eyes on her questioning. ‘In the cities, the biggest risk of the ghosts gathering in abandoned spaces is them starting fires, yes? Getting into the wiring and frying everything. Well here there’s less explosions, more… hunger.’ She thought of the storytime ghost in the meadow. Story ghosts made the best searchers in some ways, so much more willing to hunt out different endings, but the worst in others. They were more aware, strained harder against their broken edges. 

Stefan frowned. 

‘Were you ever warned against talking to strangers?’  

He nodded, perhaps aware of the irony. 

‘The ghosts that have gathered in these dead houses… there’s rarely enough wiring left for fires but instead there’s centuries of hunger and hardship and change crammed into a handful of digital fragments. It makes some of them greedy. They are like the guy promising puppies, alright? Or the stranger saying he’ll take you to your mum.’ 

Stefan flinched, the sun painting his pale skin the same colour as his eyes, and he’d burn, she realised. She’d need to watch for that, and it wasn’t something she was used to having to think about. She stifled a sigh and turned to watch the falling sun, the restless shadows that would be starting to gain mass about now. ‘First job,’ she said, rising, the marram hen falling earthward in a flurry of wings and indignation. ‘The garden boundary.’ She lifted a bag from beside her feet. ‘Witch hazel ashes. I want you to scatter them along the fence line while I check the rest.’  

He did not reach for the bag, so she grabbed one of his hands and set it within his palm. ‘If you don’t understand, then ask. But you do a job I’ve set you to. Yes?’ He nodded and straightened, but hefted the bag higher and raised his eyebrows expectantly. 

‘Dry wood doesn’t conduct electricity, so it repels most wandering ghosts. The fence line itself is strong enough really, but the ashes are a useful reinforcement.’ She smiled at his expression. His glance at the low fence then the open sky. ‘Yes, I know this is a three-dimensional problem. It’s just a reminder that this house isn’t theirs. It’s about manners. You’d be surprised how many ghosts have them.’ She did not wait long enough for him to think through the implications of that statement. ‘I’ll check the house. You get on, now.’ 

We Are All Ghosts in the Forest by Lorraine Wilson is published by Solaris, priced £18.99.