Excerpt: The End of the Beginning

It had been a strange month for Roselle.

She couldn't quite pinpoint when it had started- that night at the movies? Heading home through the park after school? - but things were defintely not going according to the normal schedule of her life. It hadn't been anything major, not at the start. Just the occasional chill wind; a shadow flickering across the wall in a well-lit room; a window breaking as she walked past. But it wasn't long before things started to turn more serious. She almost thought she'd broken her arm when the stairs had broken underneath her, but it turned out to be nothing but a heavy sprain... one that healed in less than two days. And the animals... the animals were coming around far too often. The rats in the building were the first to go, swarming out as she left for work. And the stray dogs. Almost every night, she caught sight of a stray dog passing by the street just as she was laying down to bed, but by the time she got to the window to check, all she found was some stranger turning the corner at the end of the block and leaving. And worst of all, there were the voices... the hideous, rasping voices that whispered to her at night as she slept, at her ear just as she woke, babbling incessently in a language she couldn't even begin to understand.