The decaying farmhouse’s size speaks of better times – most of the family’s sons and daughters have moved away to the city, so the house has more empty rooms and ghosts than living souls. The farmland around it is a tangle of orchards, pastures and thickly knotted hedgerows and coppices; thick mist coils around the land, making everything unduly sinister and obscure.
It’s hard to believe that the town is only a few minutes’ drive away – there’s a primordial stillness, a sullen watchful silence, that makes the farm seem like an isolated outpost in the midst of a hostile wilderness.
A single crow perches on the house’s roof; at sight of the characters, it flies away cawing loudly.