Witching Hill

The story opens on a quiet, newly‑built estate office at Witching Hill, where a young, sturdy clerk spends his days watching the same commuters trudge past the same lampposts and handling the ordinary business of vacant houses and maintenance. The setting feels both respectable and a little stale, a place where routine is the rule and excitement seems impossible—until a stranger arrives.

Uvo Delavoye, fresh from a tropical climate and dressed in bright white, bursts onto the scene with an urgent problem: a perfectly round, inexplicably deep hole has appeared in the middle of a freshly marked tennis court. He describes it as a “churchyard starting to yawn,” insisting it’s no ordinary sinkhole and demanding the clerk’s help before the day ends. The mystery of this sudden depression hints at something far stranger lurking beneath the estate’s tidy façade, promising a tale that quickly moves beyond simple property management.