Famished from my lengthy hike across the Moorlands, I was happy to stumble upon the small inn and stop an hour for a bite to eat and a pint of ale. It was my first time backpacking the length of Great Britain and I was eager to enjoy every experience the country had to offer.

After studying the menu board above the bar, I asked the pretty, little waitress for a tongue sandwich and a Guinness. She smiled without showing her teeth, nodded and disappeared through the side-doors into the kitchen area.

The barkeeper, a hard-looking older gent with a scruffy white beard, brought me my drink without a word. Shortly afterwards the same petite waitress returned with my order, placing it in front of me.

Thanking her, I took a bite of my sandwich and decided that aside from it’s unappealing name, a tongue sandwich and a Guinness were a good epicurean match. Then I thought, “Folks sure don’t talk much in these parts.”

“Look,” Terrence said to his mother, “A story in grandpa’s handwriting!”

“Oh, my!” she responded as Terrence sat down at the nearby desk and started reading, while his mother continued to organize boxes filled with her dead father’s things.

It was a story about a husband murdering his wife because she was too nice, then burying her in their garden beneath the apple tree. He loved to give apples from the tree to his grandson, enjoying the thought that the child was eating his grandmother.

Terrence looked out the window at the tree full of apples and suddenly felt ill.