So you've read the reviews and now want to know if Crowfield is the book for you. You may have even seen the Youtube video (which if you haven't, it is at the bottom of this page). And now, the Queen of Filth presents:
Crowfield an extract. Go on and indulge in council estate Britain (someone buy Dani Brown some new hoop earrings, she won't shut up about only having one earring from each set).
Orange sodium lights flickered in the moonless night. The council didn’t bother with the LED upgrade when they had an unlimited supply of past relics to use on forgotten sink estates.
Rumoured ghost stories whispered from online streaming services and kissed shadows in homes across the nation. It kept nameless people away from forgotten council estates. No one wanted to come see walking dead benefits scroungers without any faces.
Drone-like citizens working pointless shifts at indescribable jobs never saw the flickering sodium lights at the end of some unremembered motorway corridor that really only existed on a coffee-stained paper map. You must never drive beyond the bridge. Past the weeds. It wasn’t a rule. Past the derelict industrial estate. It went unsaid. Common lilac bushes grew out of roofs and from broken windows. But somehow, everyone just knew. The butterflies rejected mutant lilac and flew away down the motorway corridor.
Shadows stretched and twisted with each orange flicker. Distorted images and static puked all over the pictures Google Maps tried to take.
Google wasn’t allowed to log into Crowfield’s very own internal Wi-Fi and 5G hub. The signals sent from it wouldn’t stretch past the estate. It glitched external devices. No signals in. No signals out. With strict government controls on viewable websites and streaming services.
Glitches danced across the photos beamed to smartphones and computers that came too close. The little blue direction dot zig-zagged and zoomed around screens if it was asked to locate somewhere beyond that motorway bridge. Faceless Crowfield residents were none the wiser. Their video streaming service worked just fine, provided by a company no one beyond the motorway corridor had heard of.
The shadows stretched to grab at the life-worn and weary, twirling their hair and stealing their benefits payments. Sometimes the shadows seeped underneath doorframes and oozed upstairs to kiss the necks of toothless pensioners tossing and turning in their beds. You’ll be next. It was a promise the shadows could keep.
Pensioners and even younger council estate residents woke up frozen in fear. Even during the height of a heat-wave summer. Frost kissed the inside of the cracked double glazing. Ice crystals licked decades old nicotine stains and sucked it from the walls. Frozen yellowed flowers bloomed.
The old man down the road swung his legs out of bed. Joint-cracking echoes crumbled old plaster. Decades old nicotine and peeling wallpaper refused to give it up. Yellow eyes stalked him from the shadows. They followed his slow journey to the bathroom. The old man had to pause to catch his breath.
“Someone’s there,” he mumbled through semi-sealed lips, sniffing the air through narrow slits where large nostrils once sat, “I can smell you.”
He turned around with some effort, a protesting bladder and bloated prostate. Sagging jowls, only two remaining teeth and blurred features made a brave face difficult.
Mutant cockroaches scuttled up the walls. Dust and cobwebs, sick from years of grime and hand-rolled cigarettes fell onto the worn carpet. The creature stretched out his hand, stopping it in midair. The old man didn’t have the eyesight to notice.
Blackened eyelids closed over the yellow eyes. The creature stepped back into the shadows with his hand still held out. Blue frost climbed the wall behind him, choking the mushrooms that spread from the damp.
Hairs stood up on the old man’s neck. He swatted at them, knowing somewhere deep inside that it wasn’t caused by a fly. The hairs on his knuckles took on the charge.
The sodium light outside the hallway window flickered and died. Blue frost and mutant cockroaches both held a faint glow offering a little illumination. Shadows projected and moved across the peeling wallpaper where the cockroaches fluttered their neon wings.
The creature stepped out of the shadows and hissed in the old man’s ears. Thin lips puckered into a kiss. A blackened tongue rolled out of the creature’s mouth and licked the pensioner’s sagging earlobe. Faint pink neon light danced across the blue frost. The creature’s skin sucked it into a void.
The old man didn’t wear his hearing aids for a middle of the night bathroom trip. Swampy moisture pressed against the side of his head and pooled in the loose flaps of skin, searching out the merged facial features.
Cold fingers traced the old man’s spine and pulled down his piss-stained undershorts. Crows gathered on the window ledge and scraped away a layer of frost with their beaks. Nicotine and frost build-up on the inside prevented them from watching the old man’s final breaths.
The creature made a sucking sound pulling his tongue back inside his mouth. Smacking lips disturbed the dust. Nicotine held it hostage in the grooves in the old textured wallpaper. Not even an old-age pensioner without his hearing aids could miss the sound.
Shadows cast on the wall via cockroach light displayed a tall creature chewing the inside of its mouth. Impossibly long fingers curved into claws with nails filed into a point. The shadows held the pose above the old man’s head. A spider retreated into her web.
Shadow-hands moved down the man, settling at his throat. The hands they belonged to stayed still while shadow-fingers rubbed the pensioner’s neck, feeling for a long-gone Adam’s apple.
The creature whispered one word, gást, as if he had to announce his presence. A cockroach hissed. Another flexed its glowing pink wings. While a third made a different sound. Taken together, they imitated the gást in hi-fi surround sound.
Speakers on an old stereo crackled into life, blowing out dust and static. Remixed gást with the sound of thin lips smacking together broadcast at full volume woke any neighbours still trapped within their broken dreamworld.
The creature’s long tanned tongue curled out of its mouth and licked the old man’s stubble until he whimpered. It had clearly been starved of oxygen for too long.
Ice fingers traced frost down the pensioner’s spine and circled rings around his anus. The speakers spat out static timed with the precise moment of penetration.
The little girl next door screamed. Anyone still sleeping in the next cluster of houses was dragged from their dreams. Half the crows flew off to tap strange rhythms on her cracked double glazing.
The creature pulled the old man’s cowering body close. Another finger circled in his anal hair and pushed on a haemorrhoid until it erupted sticky pus and congealed blood. Thin leather lips puckered into a kiss. He left a thin layer of bog wax on the old man’s saggy jowls.
The old man fought to stand tall despite his fear. Face down death. Don’t cower before it. Out-of-tune static with the vague hint of Moorse Code travelled along the skirting boards dislodging dust and shaking mutant cockroaches from their glowing pink homes.
Heather sprigs poked through the tiny gap called by the static and Moorse Code. Purple flowers bloomed in the old man’s hallway.
A knuckle fell out of the old man's backside. Pieces of skin tanned through centuries of oxygen deprivation caught on the anal hair and haemorrhoids.
The creature readjusted to push his icy knuckle back in. His finger went further up this second time. Another finger found an oozing haemorrhoid and flicked it until it properly burst.
“I knew you were coming,” the old man said like he didn’t have half a frost-bitten fist up his arse, but he couldn’t keep the shakes out of his voice, “You aren’t really death, are you?” The old man cracked his spine to stand straight. “No, you are one of death’s more pathetic minions.”
The old man grumbled in his throat and pulled up something from deep in his lungs. It took nearly all of his strength to bring up the hefty piece of phlegm. Muscle-memory shoved it through a hole in the skin where his lips glued themselves together and merged with the rest of his face.
His body weakened, but this close to death his mind found the strength to face the minion down and spit. The chunk of phlegm landed on the faint hint of the nose where it dangled before gravity called it home.
The chill swallowed him before he could say anything else. The shadows crept closer, releasing their marshland secrets and pulling sprigs of heather through the skirting board and floor. Ice crystals tore through his anal cavity and followed his bowel north searching for veins to carry themselves to his arteries and heart. They penetrated his lungs and blossomed like cold blue roses with extra thorns.
His muscles entered a deep freeze. His mind was still sharp. He willed them to move. Each twitch brought fresh rhythms of pain and memories of long-closed coal pits.
The creature sniggered. Mutant cockroaches froze in fear. Their faint neon glows pulsated in hot pink tones, shifting between shades. The creature reached down and picked up a handful of their young and threw the hissing insects into his mouth. He made a big display of chewing, then spat their wings to the floor before swallowing.
Long tendrils from the shadows reached for the old man like the long fingers of his favourite whore before the ice crystals found his heart. The speakers downstairs spat out a fresh round of static.
The stain left on the mattress by his late wife’s mummified corpse briefly lit up. An auroral bog gas display burst into life and illuminated the Crowfield Estate. She turned her head and opened her mouth. Merged skin split open. Maggots fought to seal it back up. A cockroach fell out.
“Trevor, come back to bed.”
Her voice cut through the static and echoed through the house. The swamp lights shifted into greens with her words. Rats cowered in the loft.
The creature removed his fingers from Trevour’s anus and stuck them in his mouth. The popping sound silenced the static. Dead weight landed with a thud on the floor. Cockroaches retreated into the heather.
Multi-coloured light reflections seeped into the little girl’s bedroom next door. She pulled her thin blanket up around her scabby knees. She cried and called to a mother trapped under the dragon’s golden-brown spell.
The lights pierced through the frost and nicotine stains of every facing window on the street. The crows took off from ledges and into the night cawing at their neighbours. Announcing a new death and the creeping marshland expansion.
Trevor stood up confused. Multi-coloured lights danced across the frost and nicotine stains. Faraway voices cut across the static. They sounded like they came from an out of tune radio.
“Trevor, did you not hear me, I said, come back to bed.”
He rubbed his lower back and kicked the body left on the floor. His fingers didn’t find any pain.
The auroral swamp lights were less headache-inducing now. Static and faraway voices could be ignored.
Inky crow feathers swallowed the auroral display. It wasn’t carried over to the next street, or anywhere beyond the houses surrounding that particular green. The crows flew over the council estate, dropping shit onto roof tiles.
Heather crept up the front path of the old man’s house, twisting through cracks in the concrete and popping the paving slabs up. Shadows twisted in the eaves. Cockroaches retreated into moss-filled gutters.
Rats scratched their fleas in the overgrown hedge. Greasy water pooled through new cracks and puddled in depressions. Yellow eyes opened just beneath the surface, hinting that it was no longer shallow.
A brave rat poked its nose out from the hedge. Fog rolled off the water, underlit by glowing yellow eyes. Fingerbones held together by leather skin touched the surface. Ripples pushed the fog over the Crowfield Estate.
Swamp lights shifted colours. Shadows spread from overgrown hedges. Out-of-tune faraway voices spoke through static. Fog and shadows merged.
The rat took a tentative step forward as the lights changed from pink to green. Greasy water approached in slow ripples. More fog rolled off the water, thickening what was already there. Long tendrils of smoky shadows dropped from the eaves and kissed the top of the butterfly bushes.
A crow swooped out of the air between the dancing lights. The rat heard it through the static and out-of-tune voices, but it couldn’t see through the fog and shadows. Swamp lights flashed a disorientating effect. Orange orbs lit up across the spreading greasy water.
Rustling from the hedge tried to pull the rat back in. But it was too late. The crow had it in its beak.
The rat let out a maddening squeak. Faraway voices and static swallowed the sound. Not before other crows heard.
Crowfield an extract. Go on and indulge in council estate Britain (someone buy Dani Brown some new hoop earrings, she won't shut up about only having one earring from each set).
Orange sodium lights flickered in the moonless night. The council didn’t bother with the LED upgrade when they had an unlimited supply of past relics to use on forgotten sink estates.
Rumoured ghost stories whispered from online streaming services and kissed shadows in homes across the nation. It kept nameless people away from forgotten council estates. No one wanted to come see walking dead benefits scroungers without any faces.
Drone-like citizens working pointless shifts at indescribable jobs never saw the flickering sodium lights at the end of some unremembered motorway corridor that really only existed on a coffee-stained paper map. You must never drive beyond the bridge. Past the weeds. It wasn’t a rule. Past the derelict industrial estate. It went unsaid. Common lilac bushes grew out of roofs and from broken windows. But somehow, everyone just knew. The butterflies rejected mutant lilac and flew away down the motorway corridor.
Shadows stretched and twisted with each orange flicker. Distorted images and static puked all over the pictures Google Maps tried to take.
Google wasn’t allowed to log into Crowfield’s very own internal Wi-Fi and 5G hub. The signals sent from it wouldn’t stretch past the estate. It glitched external devices. No signals in. No signals out. With strict government controls on viewable websites and streaming services.
Glitches danced across the photos beamed to smartphones and computers that came too close. The little blue direction dot zig-zagged and zoomed around screens if it was asked to locate somewhere beyond that motorway bridge. Faceless Crowfield residents were none the wiser. Their video streaming service worked just fine, provided by a company no one beyond the motorway corridor had heard of.
The shadows stretched to grab at the life-worn and weary, twirling their hair and stealing their benefits payments. Sometimes the shadows seeped underneath doorframes and oozed upstairs to kiss the necks of toothless pensioners tossing and turning in their beds. You’ll be next. It was a promise the shadows could keep.
Pensioners and even younger council estate residents woke up frozen in fear. Even during the height of a heat-wave summer. Frost kissed the inside of the cracked double glazing. Ice crystals licked decades old nicotine stains and sucked it from the walls. Frozen yellowed flowers bloomed.
The old man down the road swung his legs out of bed. Joint-cracking echoes crumbled old plaster. Decades old nicotine and peeling wallpaper refused to give it up. Yellow eyes stalked him from the shadows. They followed his slow journey to the bathroom. The old man had to pause to catch his breath.
“Someone’s there,” he mumbled through semi-sealed lips, sniffing the air through narrow slits where large nostrils once sat, “I can smell you.”
He turned around with some effort, a protesting bladder and bloated prostate. Sagging jowls, only two remaining teeth and blurred features made a brave face difficult.
Mutant cockroaches scuttled up the walls. Dust and cobwebs, sick from years of grime and hand-rolled cigarettes fell onto the worn carpet. The creature stretched out his hand, stopping it in midair. The old man didn’t have the eyesight to notice.
Blackened eyelids closed over the yellow eyes. The creature stepped back into the shadows with his hand still held out. Blue frost climbed the wall behind him, choking the mushrooms that spread from the damp.
Hairs stood up on the old man’s neck. He swatted at them, knowing somewhere deep inside that it wasn’t caused by a fly. The hairs on his knuckles took on the charge.
The sodium light outside the hallway window flickered and died. Blue frost and mutant cockroaches both held a faint glow offering a little illumination. Shadows projected and moved across the peeling wallpaper where the cockroaches fluttered their neon wings.
The creature stepped out of the shadows and hissed in the old man’s ears. Thin lips puckered into a kiss. A blackened tongue rolled out of the creature’s mouth and licked the pensioner’s sagging earlobe. Faint pink neon light danced across the blue frost. The creature’s skin sucked it into a void.
The old man didn’t wear his hearing aids for a middle of the night bathroom trip. Swampy moisture pressed against the side of his head and pooled in the loose flaps of skin, searching out the merged facial features.
Cold fingers traced the old man’s spine and pulled down his piss-stained undershorts. Crows gathered on the window ledge and scraped away a layer of frost with their beaks. Nicotine and frost build-up on the inside prevented them from watching the old man’s final breaths.
The creature made a sucking sound pulling his tongue back inside his mouth. Smacking lips disturbed the dust. Nicotine held it hostage in the grooves in the old textured wallpaper. Not even an old-age pensioner without his hearing aids could miss the sound.
Shadows cast on the wall via cockroach light displayed a tall creature chewing the inside of its mouth. Impossibly long fingers curved into claws with nails filed into a point. The shadows held the pose above the old man’s head. A spider retreated into her web.
Shadow-hands moved down the man, settling at his throat. The hands they belonged to stayed still while shadow-fingers rubbed the pensioner’s neck, feeling for a long-gone Adam’s apple.
The creature whispered one word, gást, as if he had to announce his presence. A cockroach hissed. Another flexed its glowing pink wings. While a third made a different sound. Taken together, they imitated the gást in hi-fi surround sound.
Speakers on an old stereo crackled into life, blowing out dust and static. Remixed gást with the sound of thin lips smacking together broadcast at full volume woke any neighbours still trapped within their broken dreamworld.
The creature’s long tanned tongue curled out of its mouth and licked the old man’s stubble until he whimpered. It had clearly been starved of oxygen for too long.
Ice fingers traced frost down the pensioner’s spine and circled rings around his anus. The speakers spat out static timed with the precise moment of penetration.
The little girl next door screamed. Anyone still sleeping in the next cluster of houses was dragged from their dreams. Half the crows flew off to tap strange rhythms on her cracked double glazing.
The creature pulled the old man’s cowering body close. Another finger circled in his anal hair and pushed on a haemorrhoid until it erupted sticky pus and congealed blood. Thin leather lips puckered into a kiss. He left a thin layer of bog wax on the old man’s saggy jowls.
The old man fought to stand tall despite his fear. Face down death. Don’t cower before it. Out-of-tune static with the vague hint of Moorse Code travelled along the skirting boards dislodging dust and shaking mutant cockroaches from their glowing pink homes.
Heather sprigs poked through the tiny gap called by the static and Moorse Code. Purple flowers bloomed in the old man’s hallway.
A knuckle fell out of the old man's backside. Pieces of skin tanned through centuries of oxygen deprivation caught on the anal hair and haemorrhoids.
The creature readjusted to push his icy knuckle back in. His finger went further up this second time. Another finger found an oozing haemorrhoid and flicked it until it properly burst.
“I knew you were coming,” the old man said like he didn’t have half a frost-bitten fist up his arse, but he couldn’t keep the shakes out of his voice, “You aren’t really death, are you?” The old man cracked his spine to stand straight. “No, you are one of death’s more pathetic minions.”
The old man grumbled in his throat and pulled up something from deep in his lungs. It took nearly all of his strength to bring up the hefty piece of phlegm. Muscle-memory shoved it through a hole in the skin where his lips glued themselves together and merged with the rest of his face.
His body weakened, but this close to death his mind found the strength to face the minion down and spit. The chunk of phlegm landed on the faint hint of the nose where it dangled before gravity called it home.
The chill swallowed him before he could say anything else. The shadows crept closer, releasing their marshland secrets and pulling sprigs of heather through the skirting board and floor. Ice crystals tore through his anal cavity and followed his bowel north searching for veins to carry themselves to his arteries and heart. They penetrated his lungs and blossomed like cold blue roses with extra thorns.
His muscles entered a deep freeze. His mind was still sharp. He willed them to move. Each twitch brought fresh rhythms of pain and memories of long-closed coal pits.
The creature sniggered. Mutant cockroaches froze in fear. Their faint neon glows pulsated in hot pink tones, shifting between shades. The creature reached down and picked up a handful of their young and threw the hissing insects into his mouth. He made a big display of chewing, then spat their wings to the floor before swallowing.
Long tendrils from the shadows reached for the old man like the long fingers of his favourite whore before the ice crystals found his heart. The speakers downstairs spat out a fresh round of static.
The stain left on the mattress by his late wife’s mummified corpse briefly lit up. An auroral bog gas display burst into life and illuminated the Crowfield Estate. She turned her head and opened her mouth. Merged skin split open. Maggots fought to seal it back up. A cockroach fell out.
“Trevor, come back to bed.”
Her voice cut through the static and echoed through the house. The swamp lights shifted into greens with her words. Rats cowered in the loft.
The creature removed his fingers from Trevour’s anus and stuck them in his mouth. The popping sound silenced the static. Dead weight landed with a thud on the floor. Cockroaches retreated into the heather.
Multi-coloured light reflections seeped into the little girl’s bedroom next door. She pulled her thin blanket up around her scabby knees. She cried and called to a mother trapped under the dragon’s golden-brown spell.
The lights pierced through the frost and nicotine stains of every facing window on the street. The crows took off from ledges and into the night cawing at their neighbours. Announcing a new death and the creeping marshland expansion.
Trevor stood up confused. Multi-coloured lights danced across the frost and nicotine stains. Faraway voices cut across the static. They sounded like they came from an out of tune radio.
“Trevor, did you not hear me, I said, come back to bed.”
He rubbed his lower back and kicked the body left on the floor. His fingers didn’t find any pain.
The auroral swamp lights were less headache-inducing now. Static and faraway voices could be ignored.
Inky crow feathers swallowed the auroral display. It wasn’t carried over to the next street, or anywhere beyond the houses surrounding that particular green. The crows flew over the council estate, dropping shit onto roof tiles.
Heather crept up the front path of the old man’s house, twisting through cracks in the concrete and popping the paving slabs up. Shadows twisted in the eaves. Cockroaches retreated into moss-filled gutters.
Rats scratched their fleas in the overgrown hedge. Greasy water pooled through new cracks and puddled in depressions. Yellow eyes opened just beneath the surface, hinting that it was no longer shallow.
A brave rat poked its nose out from the hedge. Fog rolled off the water, underlit by glowing yellow eyes. Fingerbones held together by leather skin touched the surface. Ripples pushed the fog over the Crowfield Estate.
Swamp lights shifted colours. Shadows spread from overgrown hedges. Out-of-tune faraway voices spoke through static. Fog and shadows merged.
The rat took a tentative step forward as the lights changed from pink to green. Greasy water approached in slow ripples. More fog rolled off the water, thickening what was already there. Long tendrils of smoky shadows dropped from the eaves and kissed the top of the butterfly bushes.
A crow swooped out of the air between the dancing lights. The rat heard it through the static and out-of-tune voices, but it couldn’t see through the fog and shadows. Swamp lights flashed a disorientating effect. Orange orbs lit up across the spreading greasy water.
Rustling from the hedge tried to pull the rat back in. But it was too late. The crow had it in its beak.
The rat let out a maddening squeak. Faraway voices and static swallowed the sound. Not before other crows heard.
