On Christmas night, a small girl is crowned at a pageant, before stumbling into the snowy darkness, alone, to meet her greatest fan. Set in Rosewood’s forest, the “creeping liquefaction” of the dead produces a fungal harvest that casts a spell on the town. In the endless dark of winter, feral creatures thrive, and psychedelic spores infect the air. The Museum of Atheism, deep below ground, is full of hallucinatory terrors.

‘You want to pee in a red hood you want to lock yourself inside the house. You want to sleep with the wolf. You want to turn on the oven.’

Hedges, like lawns, are of no use to the witch unless they are overgrown, wild, and generative. She likes to feel overwhelmed, to feel powerless in the presence of unruly vegetation. Hawthorn is a native of this island. To cut its branches is a death sentence, to violate it is to incite supernatural wrath.

For the proper adherence to ritual we had shaved our hair ultra-close, and smeared on a square of silver zinc that morning. We shone in the pale light, our glittering scalps catching the last rays of sun.

The dark spools forward and I grip the branch. I lunge into the deep mud and my holy communion dress is ratted at the hem. In the tunnel velvet leaks down in ugly heaps. I crawl until I come to a clearing in the forest.

Anna and Melissa ate with some ceremony, taking tiny bites and washing them down with tea. They had a stomach ache all the time from eating nothing but trees.

Violence is intrinsically linked to location, and the shrines, quinceañera parties, holy communions, and seances of this book are all stained luminescent blue.

On Christmas night, a small girl is crowned at a pageant, before stumbling into the snowy darkness, alone, to meet her greatest fan

Like the experience of being on a psychedelic trip, whether you perceive bliss or horror is down to your state of mind.

In The Museum of Atheism, each chapter begins with a description of the fungus that has taken over the town of Rosewood, where the action happens. These descriptions act as field notes about real and imagined fungal forms