The room is cold. An extinguished chandelier hangs from the cobwebbed ceiling. Threadbare rugs lie on the damp stoney floor and a thin, weak sunlight barely pervades through the holey curtains over the dirty window.
The trees are old, gnarled and dying. The trunks are too closely packed for me to leave the path and the ground is covered with leaves and needles which quickly kill of any low-lying plant life.
The path is wide and although it is clear and packed hard it appears not to have been travelled for a while. Puddles show no footprints, there is no litter or other signs of anyone having passed for a long time.
The river is wide, grey and cold as death. It flows swiftly round a bend to my left and upstream it is quickly lost in the gloom of the forest. The water looks like it would suck the life out of anything to fall in it. Nothing floats on it's surface.
A metal mess tin, of the type used by modern infantry. It is old, battered and poorly cleaned. Remains of the last meal cooked in it remain inside and the outside is charred black on the bottom and halfway up the sides.
The key is crudely fashioned of bone. The bone is pale and smooth with age. It could only unlock something flimsy and easily broken, and is probably symbolic more than anything.