The windows of the building were broken and boarded up. Entropy and decay were slowly eating the walls, breaking the roof tiles, rusting the gutters.

“An abandoned pub?”

“You expected a cave full of bats? A mauseleum, perhaps?”

A European style pub, all the way out here? I looked at the swinging sign. The picture had faded, but the name still remained.

The Land Beyond the Forest.

No wonder it’s abandoned. They should have gone for something shorter and catchier.

She ignored the front door and we walked around the back.

“Who did that?” I asked, pointing at the work of a vandal who’d painted a fading brown message onto the wall.

Deuteronomy 12:23.

She giggled, as if remembering a pleasant joke shared with friends.

“Someone who did not take to our lifestyle well,” she said. “He ended up taking allium extract. Poisoned himself. Not painless, but better than burning in the sun, or dying slowly of starvation.”

She opened a small trapdoor that looked as if it led into a cellar.

“You coming?” she said.