This Frail One in the Wilderness by David Rees-Thomas

Alun looks after things.

The old railway. The willow by the black pond. The moss he presses into the joins so the arrangements hold. His mother, in the chair by the telly, who still makes his tea the way he likes it.

It is August in Caerphilly. The heat has soaked into the land and will not let go. Four old men have already been found. One has not. Alun does not watch the news for long. He has his routes, and as long as the routes are his, the house will stay as it is.

Then his mother asks if he was up by the railway again.

She should not know that.

On the higher path the walkers keep seeing a man on the lower ground. In town, a woman from the council stands too long at a charity-shop window. None of them are looking for Alun. That does not mean they will not find the places he keeps.

The rains are coming. The arrangements will not hold forever. And the question he will not answer is already in the house with him.

What does he want, if the still world cannot stay still?

A quiet, unsettling novella of care, belonging, and the edges of a Welsh town, where the land remembers more than anyone will say.

This is Book 4 of The Hymn Book. Best read in series order, after Pilgrim Through This Barren Land, Where Now the Smile…, and The Pretty Lily.

For readers who like Jon McGregor, Andrew Michael Hurley, Robert Aickman, Benjamin Myers, and the quiet end of folk horror.