It was getting late.  The sun was rising, the dawn chorus was ending and very soon people all along the street would be leaving their homes to go work or school in descending order of either organisational skill or wakefulness.  Usually the first sign of a curtain twitching open would ring alarm bells in Connor’s head, reminding him that he too had to head to school soon and that he wouldn’t get paid unless he’d delivered every single paper, but today it was okay, because he had managed to get up earlier than usual, to feel awake and alive and have a spring in his step and, so, he had only one delivery left.

Glen road was a wide, tree-lined avenue of old detached townhouses and, like so many of the papers he distributed along it, this was one of those objectionable opinion rags his grandparents liked to read, the ones that tried to convince you that genetically modified foods were going to end the world, or that the most important thing happening in the country today was that Prime Minister was wearing a different coloured suit.  There were a few things about this last paper that were unusual, however.  Firstly, there was the address, 111.  It was one Connor had never had to deliver to before, which was extremely odd.  His boss, Mr. Kringle, ran a very small newsagents of the kind frequented by the same customers for decades, one where a single death in the area could result in a substantial drop in sales, so new customers were very rare.  Secondly, there was the name earmarked on the front page: Tsunamy.  Connor thought it might be Asian or something, but then again, it sounded too much like 'tsunami' to be a surname.  Did people name themselves after natural disasters?  Perhaps it was some kind of joke.  He made a note to ask Mr. Kringle about it later when he collected his pay and tried to focus on finding the address he was looking for.

It took a while.  He found 109 and 113 easily enough, but they were side-by-side on the street, separated by little more than a thick hedge.  Connor paced from one to the other, trying to see if he had missed anything.  He even checked the other side of the street, in case this was one of those weird addresses that didn’t obey the normal rules of numbering, but they were all the even numbers he had been expecting.

Back on the odd side of the road, he examined the two houses and their gardens once again.  They looked the same as every other pair of houses on the street: old, middle class, gardens full of roses and pansies.  The only thing even remotely odd about them was the hedge, which seemed too thick and unkempt compared to those in the other gardens around.  He stopped before it, peered closer and noticed something strange.  Right in the middle of the hedge, where it ought to have been darkest, he could see patches of light through the foliage.  He took another step closer, then another, until he was standing with his nose poking the privet leaves and he could see, plain as the ever-brightening day, a path on the other side.

What the hell? he thought as he followed the path with his gaze, all the way between the two houses to another garden and house right at the back.  It could only be 111, but how was he supposed to reach it?

He forced an arm through the thinnest part of the hedge and found that it parted reasonably well.  Perhaps there are really two hedges, he thought, and these have just become really overgrown at this end?  Although that raised the question of exactly why the rest of the path was clear, as well as why the current owner hadn’t done something about it.  There’s probably a back way in, he concluded, but a quick glance at his watch revealed that he was running out of time.  He really didn’t want to be late for school today.  His form teacher had promised detention if it ever happened again and he had football in the afternoon.

He made his decision and began to force his way in between the two hedges, holding his paper bag tight to his side as he did so.  It all seemed easy enough until, halfway through the hedge, he felt something sharp, like a thorn, stick into him from behind.  It hurt.  A lot.  With a cry of pain and tears welling up in his eyes he gave an extra push and threw himself through the last portion of the head to go tumbling along the gravel path on the other side, tripping once, then rolling across the ground to add a few bruises and a grazed palm to the butcher’s bill.

“Shit!” he cried, trying his hardest not to sob as he staggered to his feet and then reached around gingerly to the still-stinging place where the thorn caught him.  His hand came away slick with thick, wet blood.

He glanced back at the hedge, but could no longer see the cut he had made going through.  It seemed as thick and impenetrable as ever.  A glance in the other direction revealed the house and its overgrown garden.  There was nowhere else to go.

Feeling the pain in his back begin to numb a little, he stumbled forwards along the path, calling out as he did so.  “Help me!  I’m bleeding!”  His voice seemed to echo off the high hedges to either side and the gables of the houses beyond them, but there were no other sounds.  It was like this part of town had just decided to go back to sleep after all.  “Help me!” he called again, “Please!”

A light appeared in one of the front rooms of the house, though the curtains were still drawn and all the other windows were oppressively dark.  Connor took a few more desperate steps towards it and made it, at last, into the garden.  Here too were roses and pansies, but all had been dead some time, dried up and forgotten and choked by ancient weeds that crumbled to the touch.  In between, rusted lanterns sat becoming one with the earth, or hanging from sagging strings across the garden.  The doorstep of the house was only a few more feet away and the lights in the front room flickered as someone passed in front of them.

“Help me!  Help me please!” Connor called as he collapsed on the front steps, the wound on his back hardly hurting at all, but cold and numb and sucking the energy from every other part of him.  “I need an ambulance, I-”

The door handle above him turned slowly.  There was a click, a creak as the door began to open and then Connor found himself staring into the inky blackness between it and the door frame.

“Please,” he tried once more, his voice sounding fainter than it had before, as if the person saying it was a long way off, too remote to be of any concern to him anymore, “please can you call an-”

The darkness pulsed and a russet glow flowered within it.  Connor’s eyesight was blurring now, but there was something off about the colours he saw, about the way everything beyond the door was moving.

He might have felt the same about the tendrils of hyphae that emerged through the crack, feeling their way along the steps until they reached his body, wrapping themselves around his slender limbs to drag him inside, but by then he was already lost to unconsciousness.

He would wake once more, before the end; his last wish: only that he hadn’t.