Big-eyed Medusa with snakes on a thigh

You will not believe what came out of the apple store this morning. Mr Pask had gone up for the last of the Bramleys before the frost got into the boards, and I heard him shout from the yard in a voice I had not heard since the bull got out in 'ninety-one. By the time I reached the ladder he had the door shut and his back against it, and the lamp was swinging on its hook as though it had seen something it did not care for.

It was a small thing, no taller than the bushel baskets, with eyes like two wet pebbles and a mouth full of teeth nobody ought to own. Its skin was the green of new bracken, and where its hair should have been there were snakes, a dozen or more, rust-coloured and plum-purple, hissing at the rafters. They did not strike. They only looked at Mr Pask, steadily, and he said afterwards that this was far worse than striking would have been. One of them had a pink tongue it kept flicking at the lamp as if it wanted to taste the oil.

We did not chase it. Mr Pask fetched the dog and the dog sat down in the straw and refused to go in, so we left the door open and went to bed with our boots on. I half expected to find the whole orchard stripped by morning, but the thing had taken nothing except a single leaf from the pear tree by the gate. It had the same pink as the snakes.

This is the part I cannot make sense of. When I went out at first light, the apples in the store had been lined up on the sill in a neat ring, each one with a small clean bite out of its side, and the frost on the window had been drawn over with long curling lines like the ones a snake leaves in sand. Mr Pask says we should send for the vicar. I say we should send for you, because you always did know what to do with strange things that had nowhere else to go.

Write soon, and bring the good wool socks.

Your loving niece, Margaret