Dedication

For me old mucker, Tommy Donbavand, aka Wobblebottom.

Sorry for nailing you to that ceiling in the last book.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

PROLOGUE

THREE DAYS EARLIER...

Chapter One - The Night Bus

Chapter Two - This Old House

Chapter Three - The Stakeout

Chapter Four - Cop Out

Chapter Five - Toes in the Sugar

Chapter Six - Cop Killers?

Chapter Seven - The Screechers

Chapter Eight - Trapped in the Maze

Chapter Nine - Blame it on Baby

Chapter Ten - The Not-So-Supermarket

Chapter Eleven - Damsel in Distress

Chapter Twelve - Rosie’s Story

Chapter Thirteen - Taking Stock

Chapter Fourteen - Lily the Pink

Chapter Fifteen - A Moment Like This

Chapter Sixteen - Surrounded

Chapter Seventeen - Facing the Beast

Chapter Eighteen - Alone Together

Chapter Nineteen - Battle of the Beasts

Chapter Twenty - The Final Straw

Also available in the Invisible Fiends series:

Copyright

About the Publisher

hat had I expected to see? I wasn’t sure. An empty street. One or two late-night wanderers, maybe.

But not this. Never this.

There were hundreds of them. Thousands. They scuttled and scurried through the darkness, swarming over the village like an infection; relentless and unstoppable.

I leaned closer to the window and looked down at the front of the hospital. One of the larger creatures was tearing through the fence, its claws slicing through the wrought-iron bars as if they were cardboard. My breath fogged the glass and the monster vanished behind a cloud of condensation. By the time the pane cleared the thing would be inside the hospital. It would be up the stairs in moments. Everyone in here was as good as dead.

The distant thunder of gunfire ricocheted from somewhere near the village centre. A scream followed – short and sharp, then suddenly silenced. There were no more gunshots after that, just the triumphant roar of something sickening and grotesque.

I heard Ameena take a step closer behind me. I didn’t need to look at her reflection in the window to know how terrified she was. The crack in her voice said it all.

‘It’s the same everywhere,’ she whispered.

I nodded, slowly. ‘The town as well?’

She hesitated long enough for me to realise what she meant. I turned away from the devastation outside. ‘Wait... You really mean everywhere, don’t you?’

Her only reply was a single nod of her head.

‘Liar!’ I snapped. It couldn’t be true. This couldn’t be happening.

She stooped and picked up the TV remote from the day-room coffee table. It shook in her hand as she held it out to me.

‘See for yourself.’

Hesitantly, I took the remote. ‘What channel?’

She glanced at the ceiling, steadying her voice. ‘Any of them.’

The old television set gave a faint clunk as I switched it on. In a few seconds, an all-too-familiar scene appeared.

Hundreds of the creatures. Cars and buildings ablaze. People screaming. People running. People dying.

Hell on Earth.

‘That’s New York,’ she said.

Click. Another channel, but the footage was almost identical.

‘London.’

Click.

‘I’m... I’m not sure. Somewhere in Japan. Tokyo, maybe?’

It could have been Tokyo, but then again it could have been anywhere. I clicked through half a dozen more channels, but the images were always the same.

‘It happened,’ I gasped. ‘It actually happened.’

I turned back to the window and gazed out. The clouds above the next town were tinged with orange and red. It was already burning. They were destroying everything, just like he’d told me they would.

This was it.

The world was ending.

Armageddon.

And it was all my fault.

woke up screaming. This, of late, was not unusual. The seats beneath me creaked in complaint as I sat upright and tried to shake away the memories of the nightmares before they could fully take hold. No such luck.

The faces of the fiends I’d fought leered at me – vague, half-formed shapes tormenting me from the deepest recesses of my own mind:

Caddie, make-up smeared across her bone-white skin.

The Crowmaster, his empty eye sockets alive with maggots.

Doc Mortis, scalpel in hand, blood spattered across his filthy white coat.

Other images, too. The blubbery remains of the dead man on the train; Marion’s flesh-stripped skeleton; my mum, unconscious on a hospital bed.

For a long time I’d tried to resist them, to fill my brain with other thoughts until there was no room left for monsters and horror. It never worked. If anything, it just prolonged the whole ordeal. I’d eventually learned not to fight them, to let them wash over me instead, paying them as little attention as possible.

So there, in the darkness, I closed my eyes, sat still, pulled the collar of my stolen coat tighter around my neck, and let the monsters do their worst.

Several minutes later, I blinked my eyes open. I spent a few more seconds steadying my breath, watching it roll from my mouth as shaky white clouds. Only then did I begin to pay attention to my surroundings.

It was dark, but then it was January and it was early. I never slept late any more. I was on the back seat of a bus that was parked up at the depot. We’d been sleeping here for the last few nights. Not the same bus every time, but the same depot, sneaking through a hole in the fence long after the place had been locked up for the night.

We took it in turns sleeping on the back seat. It was a padded bench, designed to take five or six passengers. This made it much longer than the other seats, and so more comfortable to sleep on. Not comfortable, but more comfortable.

Last night had been my night up the back, so tonight I’d be on one of the two-seaters. I was dreading it already.

‘Ameena.’

Her name came out as a whisper of white mist. Sometimes, my early-morning screaming fit would wake her up, but more and more often these days she was able to sleep through it. Maybe she was getting used to it, or maybe she was just too tired to respond. Either way, she hadn’t reacted this morning.

‘Ameena,’ I said again, louder this time. It was too early for anyone to be at the depot, but there was still part of me that was too afraid to talk at normal volume, in case it attracted attention. Ameena had laughed when I’d told her that. Everything we’d been through, and I was scared of a telling off from a bus driver.

I didn’t want to risk raising my voice any more, so I took hold of the cold metal handle on the back of the seat in front and leaned over it.

‘Ameena?’

No. Not Ameena. Not anyone.

I looked to the seat across the aisle. Empty. I looked along the aisle itself, squinting through the gloom. No shape curled up on the floor. No legs stretched out across the gap. No signs of life anywhere.

I’d woken up alone. This was very unusual.

We’d been on the run for two weeks. Well, technically I’d been on the run, and Ameena had just been keeping me company. The police thought I’d killed my mum’s cousin. They also thought I’d attacked my mum, beating her so violently she’d been left in a coma, barely clinging to life.

I hadn’t done either of them. But I’d confessed to both.

Long story.

I’d had to fake taking Ameena hostage to get past the police at the hospital. Amazingly, it had worked, and we’d managed to get away without being caught.

For days afterwards, our faces were all over the newspapers. The TV too, probably, although I hadn’t exactly had time to tune in. We’d kept moving, never settling in one place for long, sleeping in alleyways and in doorways and, on one particularly stormy night, a bus shelter.

It was the bus shelter that had given Ameena the idea of finding the bus depot. We’d been spending the night there ever since, going to sleep together every night, and waking up together every morning.

Until today.

‘Ameena.’

I said her name again, more for the comfort of hearing it spoken out loud than anything else. She wasn’t on the bus, and that raised one very obvious question: where was she?

The windows were thick with frost, making it impossible to see anything but the hazy glow of the streetlights on the pavement beyond the depot fence. There was nothing else for it. If Ameena wasn’t on the bus, I’d have to go out and find her.

Go outside.

In the dark.

Alone.

Recent events told me this probably wasn’t a great idea, but what choice did I have? Had I been the one missing, Ameena wouldn’t hesitate before coming to find me. I owed her the same, at least.

I headed for the door, checking each row of seats, hoping I’d find her curled up on one of them, snoring softly. By the time I made it to the front, all my hopes were dashed.

She was out there somewhere, and I had no idea where or why. I pulled my coat tighter, took a steadying breath, and reached for the door.

Before my fingers were anywhere near it, the door opened noisily, folding inwards like a concertina. I stepped back, tripping over the step and landing heavily on the floor as a figure stepped from the darkness, bringing with it a cloud of cold, frosty air.

‘Morning, kiddo,’ Ameena said. Her teeth were chattering as she pushed the door closed and held up a flimsy white carrier bag. ‘Say hello to breakfast.’

I ran my finger along the inside of the plastic sandwich-pack, scooping up the last few stray crumbs. We’d had half the sandwich each, washed down by swigs from a one-litre carton of milk.

Only when we’d finished the lot did I ask where it had come from.

‘Petrol station,’ Ameena replied, crushing the milk carton and stuffing it back in the now-empty bag. ‘Found some money on the floor when I was going to sleep. Thought I’d give us a treat.’

I suspected Ameena wasn’t telling me the whole truth, but I wasn’t about to start asking questions. The sandwich had been the only thing I’d eaten in the last 24 hours, and I was beyond caring where or how she’d managed to get her hands on it.

‘I was worried,’ I admitted. ‘Thought someone had...’ I left the sentence hanging there, not quite sure what I’d thought had happened to her.

‘Kidnapped me?’ she said.

I nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘Murdered me?’

‘Well...’

‘Fed me to their evil crow army?’

I shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

She shook her head. ‘Nope. Just buying sandwiches.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘That’s OK then.’

We were both on the back seat, facing each other, our feet almost touching. She slid backwards and leaned against the window. I did the same, then leaned forward again when the frosty glass began to bite at me through the thin coat.

‘So, what’s the plan for today? Some fine dining? A shopping spree?’ Ameena asked. ‘Roaming the streets for hours, then legging it every time we see a cop? The decision, Mr Alexander, is you—’

‘I want to go home.’

‘Oh. Right.’ She blinked, and I could almost hear her brain processing this information. ‘I dunno...’

‘I just...’ I lowered my head and looked at my hands. They were knotted together for warmth, so I couldn’t tell which fingers belonged to which hand. ‘We won’t stay long. I just... I want to see it.’

It was Ameena’s turn to lean forward. ‘She won’t be there,’ she said, her voice taking on a soft edge she hardly ever used. ‘Your mum. The papers said she was still in the—’

‘I know,’ I said quickly. ‘I know that. But that was three days ago, and it’s...’ I untangled my hands and stared down at my open palms. ‘I just need to see it.’

‘It’s a long way.’ Ameena looked around at the inside of the bus. ‘And we’ve got it good here. Roof over our head. Something to sleep on. It could be a lot worse.’

I didn’t say anything. Ameena wasn’t going for the idea, I could tell.

‘Of course, we could have it even better,’ she continued, ‘if someone would use his magic powers to—’

‘Stop it,’ I said flatly. ‘They’re not magic powers. And I told you already, I’m not using them again. Not unless it’s an emergency.’

‘But you could—’

‘We don’t know what I could do!’ I snapped, and I realised I was standing up now, glaring down at her.

I’d first discovered my “magic powers” while fighting Mr Mumbles. It started with an itchy tingling across my scalp. Next thing I knew, things I imagined started to become real. I’d used the power to defeat Mr Mumbles, but I’d since found out that it was more dangerous than I could’ve guessed.

‘The Crowmaster told me that every time I use my, my... abilities, I’m playing right into my dad’s hands.’

‘The Crowmaster said a lot of things,’ Ameena shrugged. ‘Don’t think he was the most trustworthy of sources, to be honest.’

‘Well, I’m not taking the chance. Not unless there’s no other choice,’ I replied, lowering my voice again. ‘My dad told me that one day I’d help him kill everyone on Earth, and I don’t want to risk proving him right.’

Ameena shook her head, then gave another half-hearted shrug. ‘Suit yourself,’ she said. ‘But you could just conjure us up a cake or something. I mean, it’s not like anyone’s ever been killed by a French Fancy.’

I opened my mouth to argue, but then saw the smirk playing at the corners of her mouth.

‘Shut up,’ I said, smiling on the inside, if not the outside. ‘So, are we going home or what?’

Down at the front of the bus, the door slid open with a soft hiss. We ducked at the same time, dropping to the floor behind a row of seats. The bus dipped to the left a little as someone heavy climbed inside.

Ameena mouthed something to me from the other side of the aisle. I had absolutely no idea what it was, so I just shrugged in reply. She shrugged back, leaving me even more confused than I had been. As I tried to guess what she’d said, the door of the bus hissed closed.

There was silence for a moment, before footsteps clacked along the aisle, slow and steady, like the ticking of an old clock. With every step the floor beneath us gave a slight shake. The vibrations got worse as the steps drew closer and closer, until...

‘Ruddy Nora!’

The voice was sharp and panicked. I looked up into the wobbly face of a grey-haired man. ‘Oi!’ he cried. ‘Who are...? What are...? Why...?’ His voice trailed off. ‘Oi!’ he said again, although you could tell his heart wasn’t in it this time.

Ameena stood up first. I was a second or two behind her. The man took a step backwards, eyeing us nervously. He was slightly shorter than Ameena, a little taller than me, wider than both of us combined. He wore a light blue shirt with a dark blue tie and a badge identifying him as “Dave Morgan, Driver”.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, his eyes constantly flitting between us. ‘You shouldn’t be in here.’

‘Says who?’ Ameena demanded.

‘Sorry,’ I said quickly. Ameena had a lot of strengths, but diplomacy wasn’t one of them. ‘We didn’t... It was freezing. We didn’t have anywhere else to go.’

Dave Morgan, Driver, kept his gaze on me. ‘What,’ he began, ‘you homeless or something?’

I nodded.

‘Bloody Hell,’ he mumbled. His round shoulders seemed to sag. ‘How old are you?’

‘Thirteen,’ I told him.

His eyes opened wide. ‘Thirteen? And you’re...’ He shook his head. To his credit, he looked genuinely concerned. ‘Bloody Hell. That’s not right. That’s not right, that. There must be somewhere you can go?’

Neither of us replied.

‘We could get you to the police,’ he suggested. ‘They’ll find a—’

‘No!’ Ameena and I both said it at the same time. The driver must’ve heard something in our voices, or spotted something in our eyes, because he took another step back, suddenly suspicious. He looked at Ameena for a long time, then back to me. A flicker of a frown crossed his face.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said, his eyes narrowing. ‘I know you. You’re them kids from the news, aren’t you?’ He glared at me. ‘You’re the one what killed that woman.’

Ameena swung out from behind the seat, slamming her shoulder into the driver’s bulging belly before he had a chance to react. He stumbled backwards, then thudded down on to a seat as Ameena gave him a sideways shove.

‘Barney!’ he bellowed, his fat fingers grabbing for Ameena. ‘Barney, get in here!’

He moved to get up, but Ameena pushed him back down. ‘Don’t just stand there!’ she cried, shooting me one of her looks. ‘Leg it!’

did as I was told, racing along the aisle, bounding over the driver’s legs, then hurrying to where Ameena was already opening the door. She jumped the steps, landing silently on the ground. I leapt after her, then yelped as my feet slid in opposite directions on the icy road surface.

Ameena caught me by the wrist, pulling me up and on through the grey, early-morning light. We ran along the side of our bus and sped down a narrow alleyway between two more parked coaches.

‘Barney!’ We could still hear the driver shouting. ‘Barney, where are you?’

A shape, impossible to make out clearly, moved through the gloom up ahead of us. Ameena ducked low and we froze, waiting for whoever it was to pass.

‘Come on,’ she urged when the coast was clear. We continued through the maze of parked coaches, keeping low. When we finally reached the last bus, Ameena poked her head out and looked around. The fence we usually entered and left the depot through was only fifteen metres ahead, but to get to it we had to cross an empty stretch of car park. If anyone was nearby, they couldn’t fail to spot us.

‘It’s safe,’ Ameena whispered. ‘Let’s go.’

We scurried, doubled over, towards the fence, eyes searching the darkness for any sign of movement. The driver was no longer calling for help. I guessed that meant Barney – whoever he was – had turned up.

Without the shouting, and with no traffic on the road beyond the fence, there was only the soft sound of our feet on the tarmac to disturb the eerie silence.

But no. That wasn’t quite true. There was another sound too. A rapid clicking, far away, but getting closer. Ameena heard it at the same time I did. She straightened up, mid-run, and looked behind us. Even in the dark, I saw her face go pale.

I glanced back in the direction of the clicking. Dave the driver stood over by one of the coaches, watching us. He was talking into a mobile phone, probably calling the police, but that, right now, wasn’t the problem.

The problem was about halfway between him and us. The problem was a large brown-and-black dog. And the problem was racing across the depot, its paws clicking against the road with every bound.

‘Get ’em, Barney!’ Dave cried, taking the phone away from his ear for just a moment.

Ameena and I doubled our speed as Barney the Rottweiler opened his jaws and let rip with a frenzy of angry barking.

‘Hurry!’ Ameena cried, before realising I was already in the process of overtaking her. We hit the fence mid-sprint, slamming into the chain-link metal and making the whole thing shake. Down at our feet, the hole was only big enough to take one of us at a time. Behind us, Barney’s barking rose to fever pitch.

Ameena glanced upwards at the fence, which stood about three metres high. She flexed her fingers, reached up as high as she could, and began to climb.

‘Go under, I’ll go over,’ she said. ‘Move!’

The clicking and the barking were almost on me as I dropped to my knees and pushed at the broken chain-link. It folded outwards, then snagged on the grass verge on the other side.

‘Get him, Barn!’

‘Move!’ Ameena cried. ‘Move, move, move!’

I shoved harder and the bottom of the fence pinged free. The ground froze my belly as I dropped down and wriggled my way through. I barely noticed it, or the scratching of the metal fence down the whole length of my back.

The teeth, though, I did notice. They were hard to miss. They bit into my jeans, just above my ankle. I felt the dog’s hot breath against my skin, heard it growl deep down at the back of its throat.

‘Good boy, Barney!’ the driver called over. ‘Good boy. Keep a hold of him, now.’

Ameena dropped on to the grass just a few centimetres from my head. I tried to kick the dog away, but my legs were pinned between the fence and the ground. I felt Ameena’s hands around my own as, just a few streets away, a siren began to scream.

‘Cops,’ Ameena groaned. She pulled hard on my arms, almost popping them from their sockets. ‘Come on!’

‘I’m trying!’ I told her. I twisted and the dog lost his grip. Ameena managed to drag me forwards a few more centimetres before those jaws were at my leg again. I hissed in pain as the teeth scraped against my ankle bone. An all-too-familiar tingle buzzed through my head.

‘N-no!’ I gasped, but I was too late to stop it. Fuelled by my fear, my abilities took control. I heard Barney yelp as an invisible wind sent him bouncing backwards across the tarmac.

Ameena pulled harder, dragging me through the fence and up on to the strip of grass that ran alongside the pavement.

‘Don’t want to use your powers, eh?’ she asked, breathing heavily.

‘Didn’t do it on purpose,’ I wheezed, checking the back of my leg for damage but finding no real harm done.

‘You so could have made us that cake,’ she muttered. She looked along the street, to where we could hear the police car drawing ever closer. ‘You know,’ she said, zipping up her jacket and marching quickly away from the approaching siren, ‘maybe heading for your place isn’t such a bad idea after all.’

I’d expected the journey home to be a long, difficult one with lots of walking and hitch-hiking involved. It turned out I was wrong.

Ameena had produced some more money she’d just “found” lying around, and we’d taken the bus most of the way. It was the same bus company whose depot we’d only just escaped from that morning. Fortunately, it wasn’t the same driver. This one barely gave us a second glance when we got on at the station, even though we must’ve looked a right state.

We dozed most of the way, the shuddering and shaking of the seats beneath us rocking our exhausted bodies to sleep within minutes of the engine starting.

It was the driver who woke us up, nudging us to let us know we’d reached our stop. I sat upright and looked out of the window, blinking away the sleep and trying to figure out where we were. It didn’t look familiar, and I was about to let the driver know this wasn’t our stop when I remembered we’d decided to get off at the next town over, rather than at my village itself. If the police were still looking for us – and they would be – stepping off the bus right outside my house probably wouldn’t be a very wise move.

And so, we’d hopped off the coach and taken the long way round to my village, walking through woodland and long grass, keeping as far away from the road as possible. It was slow going, and – thanks to my frequent need to rest – took us almost as long as the bus journey.

Which is why it was getting dark again by the time we reached our destination. Not home. Not quite. Not yet. We made instead for the old abandoned house just across from mine. The house where my childhood imaginary friend, Mr Mumbles, had almost killed me. Twice.

The Keller House.

It was the same height as all the other houses on the street, but it seemed impossibly tall, like a tower or castle stretching up into the cloudy night sky. I stood on the pavement, looking in. There was the garden Mumbles had chased me across. There was the pool house, where I’d almost drowned. And up there, the roof, where both Ameena and I had almost died of cold.

‘You OK?’ Ameena’s voice came at me from nowhere, snapping me back to the present.

‘Fine,’ I said, trying to smile but forgetting how. I clambered over the fence. We were round the back of the house, well out of sight, but I still felt too exposed. ‘Come on, someone will see us here.’

The grass crunched beneath our feet, brittle with frost. The last time I’d been in this garden it had been slick with mud. I’d struggled to keep my footing as I ran from Mr Mumbles. Even now, I had an overwhelming urge to look behind me. I half-expected to see him there, striding slowly across the lawn, his eyes glaring hatred at me.

He wasn’t there, of course. He was in the Darkest Corners, the hell-like alternate dimension where all imaginary friends go after they’re cast aside. And besides, he wasn’t after me any more. He’d saved my life when I’d been trapped in the Darkest Corners. He’d promised to look after I.C., the little kid I’d met over there. He’d changed. In some weird way, I suppose we were... no, not friends. Allies, maybe. Or no longer enemies, at least.

But none of that made the Keller House seem less frightening. I’d been terrified of it long before Mr Mumbles had come back, and I was still terrified of it now. But it was empty and it had a roof and it was close to home. Much as I hated to admit it, it was the perfect place to hide while we kept an eye on my house.

The front door was boarded shut, and had been for as long as I could remember. But the nails were rusty and the wood was weak and it only took two or three sharp tugs from Ameena to create us an opening.

‘Ladies first,’ she said, gesturing for me to go inside.

‘No, after you,’ I replied, and I really hoped she wouldn’t argue.

‘Chicken,’ she smirked. I took hold of the wooden board and pulled it back as she squeezed inside. ‘Whoa, it stinks,’ she coughed. ‘Looks OK, though. Come on through.’

Ameena braced her hands against the wood from the inside. I released my grip, screwed my courage up to a ball in the centre of my stomach, and inched my way into the house.

The smell raced to meet me as I crawled inside. It was the smell of the attic in my house – damp and stale – but ten times worse. I zipped the top of my jacket over my mouth and nose and straightened up. My hands felt sticky or wet – I couldn’t really tell which – from crawling on the carpet. I wiped them on my thighs, suddenly revolted at the thought of what I might have been touching.

Because I couldn’t see what was on the carpet. Nor, for that matter, could I see the carpet itself. Outside had been dark, but in the house, with the board back in place, the total absence of light left us blind.

I tried to speak, but my throat had gone dry. It was no surprise, really. For years I’d lived in fear of the Keller House, and now here I was, standing inside it in complete blackness. What made it worse was that when I was young I wasn’t all that sure if monsters were real. Now I knew they were. And most of them wanted me dead.

Something brushed against my back and I screamed – a high, shrill scream, with all the manliness of a three-year-old girl.

‘Easy kiddo,’ Ameena snorted. ‘Just me.’

‘Don’t do that!’ I gasped. ‘I could’ve... really hurt you.’

‘Yeah, in your dreams, maybe,’ she said. ‘Now follow me, I think I can see light.’

‘How am I supposed to follow you? I can’t see a thing.’

I felt her grab and fumble at my sleeve, then her hand slipped into mine. Her palm felt warm against my cold skin as our fingers interlocked. ‘That better?’ she asked.

I nodded, unable to speak again, but for different reasons. She couldn’t have seen my nod, but she took my silence as a “yes”.

‘Right, this way,’ she said, and I found myself dragged, unresisting, further into the room.

At first, I still couldn’t see anything, but as she led me across the floor, I began to make out little dents in the darkness. The outline of an armchair. The edge of a low-hanging ceiling light. A corner of a picture on the wall. It was enough to give the impression that Mr Keller, the house’s former owner, had just gone out one morning and never returned. In fact, that’s exactly what he had done, but I’d assumed the house would have been cleared out at some point since then. I’d assumed wrong.

Ameena stopped. Her warmth left my hand as she released her grip. Just ahead of us, a door creaked slowly open at her push, letting a dim orange glow seep through. A narrow staircase stood before us. The carpet that covered the stairs was tatty and threadbare. Floral-patterned wallpaper peeled in long sheets from the walls on either side.

The upstairs landing was bathed in the same orange light as the stairs. It was faint and watery, only barely lifting the blanket of shadow, but it was better than the darkness we’d just left.

‘Someone left a lamp on, you think?’ Ameena asked. She chewed on the knuckle of one of the fingers on her left hand. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her so nervous.

‘You should know,’ I said. ‘Was there a light on when you stayed here?’

She looked at me blankly for a moment, her eyebrows dipping into the beginning of a frown. It passed as quickly as it had come, and she gave a casual shrug. ‘Didn’t notice,’ she said. ‘But then I didn’t exactly hang around long.’

That surprised me. As far as I’d known, Ameena had been sleeping rough in the Keller House for almost two weeks after our encounter with Mr Mumbles. I wanted to ask her where she’d gone instead, but there was no time for questions.

With a final glance back at me, Ameena took hold of the old wooden banister, and crept cautiously up the stairs.

ust swirled up from the carpet with every step we took. It danced in the air like a swarm of tiny agitated insects. I was sticking as close to Ameena as I could. For maybe the first time ever, she was taking her time, testing each step before putting her full weight on it, in case it should crumble beneath her.

Upstairs the same threadbare carpet covered the floor and the same peeling wallpaper drooped from the walls. A bare bulb hung from the ceiling, thick with dust and cobwebs. The bulb wasn’t the source of the light, though. That seeped in through a door at the far end of the landing. It was one of four doors, and the only one standing open. Unfortunately, it wasn’t open far enough for us to see inside the room.

The smell of damp was worse up here. It reached down my throat, making me gag. Ameena seemed unaffected as she crossed the landing, making for the half-open door.

She stopped when she reached it, moved to push it the rest of the way open, then hesitated. For a long time, she didn’t look as if she was going to make any further movement.

‘Want me to go first?’ I asked, adding please say no, please say no, please say no in my head.

‘No.’

‘Thank God!’

She shot me a scowl.

‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘Didn’t mean to say that out loud.’

With a shake of her head, Ameena put her palm against the door and gave it a nudge. It swung open a little, then caught on the carpet, forcing her to step closer and give it another shove. It opened with a low, ominous creak.

The glow of a streetlight shone in through the bedroom window, and I remembered that none of the upstairs windows had ever been boarded up. I’d lain awake in bed countless times when I was younger, convinced I’d seen shadows moving within the bedrooms of the Keller House while I was closing my own curtains.

And now, here I was, my own shadow moving across the mould-stained wallpaper, and through the window, across the garden – my house. My bedroom. My curtains. I stared into my darkened room, wishing I could transport myself back to one of those nights, lying in bed, Mum assuring me the Keller House was empty.

I hoped she was right.

‘Hey, check it out!’ Ameena’s voice broke the spell and I turned from the window. She was sitting propped up on a single bed, her muddy boots leaving marks on the yellowing covers, her back resting against the padded headboard. ‘Bagsy the bed.’

‘You can have it,’ I said, queasy at the thought. ‘There could be anything crawling about in there. I’ll sleep on the floor.’

‘Oh, like that’s better?’

I looked down and winced. The carpet was a mess of mould and mouse droppings. Mushrooms sprouted from the soggier patches, all of them different shapes and sizes, all of them probably deadly.

A fat black insect with a shiny back scuttled past my foot. I watched it scurry across the carpet, through a clump of the mushrooms, and into a dark hole in the skirting board.

‘We should check out the other rooms,’ I said, fighting the urge to scratch my skin until it bled. ‘They might be less...’

‘Revolting?’

I nodded. ‘Hopefully.’

‘Right then,’ Ameena said, swinging her legs off the bed and taking a kick at the closest mushroom crop. ‘Lead the way, kiddo.’

Of the three remaining upstairs rooms, one was another equally filthy bedroom, one was a small box room with nothing in it, and the last was a bathroom so horrific we both agreed never to speak of it again.

The box room was where we settled in the end. It was completely bare – exposed wooden floorboard, unpainted plasterboard walls – and, as a result, hadn’t decayed as badly as the other rooms. It also looked straight on to the side of my house, meaning we could see if anyone came or went through the front door or the back. The perfect place for a stakeout.

I stood at the window, looking across the gardens to my house. In the past twenty minutes I’d seen just one car pass along the street. I’d ducked as soon as I spotted the headlights, but the car didn’t slow down as it continued along the road and turned the corner at the far end.

‘Anything?’ Ameena asked from right behind me. I hadn’t even heard her approach.

I shook my head. ‘No. Looks deserted.’

‘We expected that,’ she said, as tactfully as she could. ‘I’m sure she’s fine. Your mum. There’d have been something in the papers if she’d... if her condition had changed.’

‘I know,’ I replied, still not taking my eyes off the house. ‘I want to go over.’

Without looking, I could guess at Ameena’s expression. ‘That’d just be stupid,’ she said. ‘You’d get caught.’

‘Who by?’ I asked, gesturing across to the house. To my home. ‘There’s no one there.’

‘They’re bound to be watching, though. Think about it.’

‘I won’t be long,’ I told her. ‘I just want to see it. Maybe get some clean clothes.’

I stepped back from the window, still not looking at her. She caught me by the shoulder. I stopped, but didn’t turn. ‘Don’t do it,’ she said. ‘You can’t help anyone if you’re locked up.’

‘I’m not helping anyone now,’ I said, shrugging myself free. ‘I won’t be long. There’s no one coming.’

Halfway to the door, I stopped, as a blue light lit up the room. It faded quickly, then brightened again. The pattern repeated, over and over, and I knew what was happening even before Ameena spoke.

‘Cops,’ she said, matter-of-factly.

I crossed to the window. ‘Here?’

‘At yours.’

Ameena stood to one side of the window frame, leaning out just a little to watch what was happening below. I took the opposite side and peeped out.

A single police car stood outside my front garden, its blue light flashing, its headlamps blazing.

‘No one coming, eh?’ Ameena said. I didn’t meet her gaze.

‘What’s it doing?’ I asked, my voice a whisper, as if whoever was in the police car might hear me.

Before Ameena answered, the driver’s door opened and a woman in a police uniform stepped out. From here she looked young – mid-twenties, maybe – but it was hard to tell for sure.

She glanced along the street and up at my house. I pulled back, expecting her to look our way, but she didn’t. Instead she walked around to the other side of the car and opened the rear door. I almost cried out as a familiar head of grey hair bobbed up into view.

‘Nan!’ I said, wishing I could bang on the glass, wishing I could run to her. ‘It’s my nan!’

Ameena didn’t reply. I tore my eyes away from Nan long enough to see the worry on Ameena’s face. Only then did the first stirrings of panic begin.

‘Why’s Nan here?’ I wondered aloud. ‘Why would they bring her to the house?’

‘Maybe she’s picking something up for your mum.’

‘At this time of night?’

‘Maybe it’s something she really needs.’

‘But why send Nan? She doesn’t know where things are. She can barely think straight these days.’ It was true. Dementia had been devouring Nan’s memories for years now. Sometimes she didn’t recognise any of us, herself included.

‘Maybe...’ Ameena began, but nothing followed it. She was all out of maybes.

The policewoman let Nan take her arm. I watched them shuffle slowly up the path. It was the policewoman who unlocked the door. I kept watching until they both disappeared inside.

‘What if something’s happened to Mum?’ I asked, feeling the panic rise up into my throat. ‘What if they’ve come to sort out all her stuff ? What if she’s...’

‘They’ve left the lights going,’ Ameena said, cutting me short. I looked down at the car. Sure enough, the blue light was still flashing and the beams of the headlamps still cut through the gloom. ‘They can’t plan on staying long.’

‘Why’s it flashing?’ I asked. ‘I thought that was just for emergencies.’

Ameena shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me.’

We didn’t speak again for a while, just watched for Nan and the policewoman emerging. Eventually, we got tired of standing and sat on the floor, taking it in turns to raise up on to our knees and look over at the house. Lights had come on in all the rooms, but other than that, there had been nothing to report.

‘How long’s that been?’ I asked.

‘About an hour,’ Ameena said. ‘Give or take ten minutes.’

I looked at the car, its lights still burning. ‘Her battery’s going to go flat if she doesn’t get a move on.’

Ameena yawned. ‘Mine too.’ She lay down on her side, propping her head up on her hand. ‘Think I’m going to get some rest. You should too.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said, forcing my heavy eyelids open to prove my point. ‘I’m going to keep watching.’

‘Wake me up if anything happens,’ she answered, rolling on to her back and interlocking her fingers behind her head. ‘Hey, cool,’ she said, looking past me, up towards the cloudy night sky. ‘It’s snowing.’

I raised my eyes in time to see a tiny white dot drift by on the other side of the glass. Another fell a moment later, then another, and another. In just a few minutes, the sky was filled with a hundred thousand falling flakes.

‘It’s heavy too,’ I said, but Ameena’s only reply was a soft snore. ‘No stamina,’ I muttered, then I yawned, rested my chin on the windowsill, and settled in for a long, lonely stakeout.

I woke up with my forehead against the cold glass and soft January sunlight in my eyes. Several centimetres of snow were piled up on the window ledge, so white it was almost glowing.

‘Crap!’ I cursed. I tried to stand up but my legs were numb from being folded beneath me and I quickly fell back down again.

‘What? What’s wrong?’ Ameena asked, wide awake and on her feet before she’d finished speaking.

‘I fell asleep,’ I explained, furious with myself. ‘I missed them coming out!’

‘Um... no you didn’t.’

I looked down at the front of my house. The police car was still there. Its headlamps were dim and the blue light had been covered by the snow that continued to fall. The car hadn’t moved all night.

‘That’s weird,’ I said. I looked to Ameena for reassurance. ‘That’s weird, right?’

She nodded. ‘That is definitely weird.’

The lights were still on in the house. I studied all the windows in turn, trying to make out any movement within them. Nothing. As far as I could see, the house was completely still.

‘Why would they still be there?’ I asked, not really expecting an answer. ‘It’s been hours. They should’ve come out long before now.’

‘Kyle.’ Ameena spoke the word quietly, but I couldn’t miss the tremble in her voice.

‘What?’

She didn’t reply, just nodded towards the back garden. Towards the streaks of dark red that coloured the snow.

I was out of the room in a heartbeat, bounding down into the darkness at the bottom of the stairs. The electricity tingled across my scalp, and this time I didn’t resist. I imagined the board being torn from the front door, pictured the wood and the rusty nails being yanked sharply away.

The board gave a crack and fell outwards as I approached and a dim, watery light seeped in. I hurried outside and found myself stumbling, knee-deep, through snow. I hesitated, just for a moment, wondering how this much of the stuff could possibly have fallen in one night, but then I was running again, heading for the fence, no longer worried about being seen.

Ameena crunched along behind me, struggling to keep up. The snow slowed me down, but I reached the fence in no time and vaulted over it.

I plopped down into the marshmallow whiteness of my garden, staggered forwards, then set off running again, making for the back door. The snow was falling heavily, making it hard to see more than a few metres in any direction. I was running through the red streaks almost before I saw them. Their slick wetness sparkled atop the snow, slowly taking on a pinkish hue as more flakes fell.

I looked up, blinking against the blizzard, and saw the back door stood ajar. Not bothering to wait for Ameena, I crunched up the stone steps, through the open door, and into a blood-soaked warzone that had once been my kitchen.

an? Nan?’ I raced through the kitchen, past the upturned table and the broken chairs, past the blood-spattered cabinets and the shattered glass.

‘Good grief !’ Ameena muttered, appearing at the back door just as I charged through into the living room.

‘Nan, where are you?’ I called. My voice was absorbed by the silence of the house. The living room was a mess, but not in the same league as the kitchen. The coffee table was in pieces and the TV was face down on the carpet, but there was no blood. No Nan, either.

I made for the stairs, then pulled myself together enough to collect one of the legs of the broken coffee table. It was a short piece of wood – about forty-five centimetres from top to bottom – but it was thick and it was heavy and I’d be able to do some damage with it if I had to.

‘Any sign of her?’ Ameena asked, joining me at the bottom of the stairs. She’d had the same idea as me, and now carried a knife she’d lifted from the wooden block in the kitchen. She held it with the blade flat against her wrist, half-concealed, but ready to strike.

‘Not yet,’ I said. I called up the stairs. ‘Nan? Nan, are you up there?’

A groan. A whimper. Faint, but there. I was halfway up the stairs when I heard it again, three-quarters of the way before I realised it had come from the living room.

I turned, bounded back down half a dozen steps, and that’s when I realised I had been wrong. There was blood in the living room. So much blood.

It started on the wall just by the kitchen door, a metre and a half off the ground, and streaked straight upwards – a thick smear of it in one continuous line across the ceiling.

The trail stopped almost exactly above the couch. The whimper came again and I took the last of the stairs in a single leap. Ameena was already pulling the couch aside. I saw the police uniform before I was halfway there.

She lay on her back, her hands on her belly, one eye wide open, one battered shut. Blood pumped through her fingers, ran down her arms, seeped into the carpet, drip, drip, drip. Half of her face was a swollen mess of purple and black. Her one open eye stared upwards, but not at the ceiling, at something beyond the ceiling that only she could see.

Her breathing came in shallow gasps, two or three a second, in-out, in-out, in-out.

‘What do we do?’ Ameena asked.

‘Call an ambulance.’

‘What? But... they’ll bring more cops. You’ll get—’

‘Call an ambulance!’ I shouted. ‘She’s dying!’

There was a moment’s hesitation, and for just a fraction of a second I thought she was going to refuse. But then she was clambering over the couch, reaching for the sideboard, picking up the phone.

I knelt down by the policewoman, wishing I knew how to help her. Her eye was bulging, the pupil fully dilated so there was no colour left, just a circle of black. I had been right last night – she was young. Late twenties at the most.

‘It’s dead.’

I looked up. Ameena was standing over us, the phone in her hand. ‘No dial tone. Weather, maybe?’

Maybe.

Maybe not.

I touched one of the policewoman’s hands, meaning to move it aside so I could see how badly she was hurt – as if the pints of blood painting the inside of the house weren’t enough of a clue.

The moment my fingers touched hers, though, she grabbed my hand and squeezed it tight, clinging to it as if it was the only thing anchoring her to life. I didn’t pull away, just held on to her and let her hold on to me. I wanted to ask her what had happened and where Nan was, but I knew I’d get no answer.

Instead I said the only thing I could think of. A lie. ‘It’s OK. You’re going to be OK.’

I watched a single tear form in her open eye. It trickled sideways, meandering across her temple and over her ear. By the time it dripped on to the carpet, her hand no longer gripped on to mine. I carefully rested it back on her stomach, closed over her eye, and stood up.

‘Someone else dead,’ I said, after a long silence, ‘because of me.’

I hated the matter-of-fact tone of my voice. Hated the fact I wasn’t shaking or crying or screaming about the woman’s death. The cold fact of it was, I’d seen worse.

‘You don’t know that, kiddo.’

But we both knew I was right.

It was happening again. Someone – or something – had come looking for me, and another innocent person had found themselves caught in the crossfire.

I took hold of the table leg again, tightening my grip until my knuckles shone white. I set my jaw, clenching my teeth together. Someone else dead. Because of me.

The stairs passed in a haze. I was at the top before I realised I’d moved. The lights were on up here, all four doors open. I looked in my bedroom, in my wardrobe, under my bed. Nothing there, so I moved on, no longer interested in a trip down Memory Lane. I needed to find Nan and I wanted to find whoever had killed the policewoman. Nothing else mattered.

Nan’s old room, empty. Bathroom, empty. No damage to either and no blood stains on the walls. I turned to the last door and that’s when I did hesitate, taking a second to compose myself before stepping inside Mum’s bedroom.

Her bed was unmade. It must’ve been that way since the morning she’d sent me to stay with Marion. The morning she’d been attacked by the Crowmaster, beaten so badly she was still in a coma. And all because of me.

Her dressing gown lay across the duvet. She’d worn it when she’d talked to me about going away – an all-night conversation in which I’d done nothing but whinge and complain. If she didn’t pull through, that would be the last proper talk we ever had. I pushed the thought from my mind. She’d pull through. She had to.

‘Any sign?’

I turned to find Ameena in the upstairs hallway, knife held ready. ‘Nothing,’ I said, and she lowered the blade to her side. ‘No one’s here.’

‘Great,’ she said, sighing. ‘What now?’

‘We go outside,’ I said. ‘We look for her. We find her. We’ve got to find her.’

Ameena’s hand was on my shoulder. ‘We will. She’ll be OK.’

OK. Like the policewoman was OK.

‘But we’d better wrap up,’ Ameena continued. ‘Or we’ll freeze in that snow.’

‘We’ll grab coats from the cupboard downstairs,’ I said, turning from Mum’s room and striding along the landing. ‘There should be one about your—’

THUD.

The sound came from the living room. It was a single low knock; the sound of something heavy hitting something solid.

Ameena had the knife raised in an instant, the other hand on my chest, holding me behind her. But I was beyond that now. For too long I’d relied on Ameena to protect me, when really it should’ve been the other way round.

I pushed her hand aside, more forcefully than I meant to, and crossed to the stairs. I may have been desperate to find Nan, but I wasn’t stupid, and didn’t rush straight down to the living room. After creeping down a couple of the stairs, I squatted down and looked through the gaps in the wooden banister.

Nothing moved in the room below. I tiptoed further down, feeling Ameena close behind me.

I should’ve been watching out for trouble, but as I reached the bottom of the stairs my eyes were fixed on only one spot. A patch of carpet, stained with blood. A patch that should’ve been covered by the policewoman’s body.

‘Where’d she go?’ I muttered, finally looking around. The living room appeared to be exactly as we’d left it, minus one fresh corpse.

‘Maybe she got better,’ Ameena suggested.

‘What, better than “dead”?’

‘Well, you can’t exactly get much worse.’

I stepped further into the room, ready to swing with the table leg. ‘Someone took her,’ I said. ‘Someone came in and took her.’

There was silence in the living room then, broken finally by Ameena asking the question that was bothering us both.

‘Why would someone do that?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘And who would do it?’

‘Whoever killed her,’ I said.

‘Nah. They’d have just taken her at the time, surely?’

I dug my fingernails into my palms. ‘Not if they were already carrying somebody else.’

It took a moment for what I was saying to sink in, then: ‘Oh.’

Nan. Had whoever took the policewoman’s body already taken Nan? Just the idea of it made my heart race and my legs spring into action. I ran through to the ruined kitchen and hurled myself through the back door, out into the swirling snowstorm.

‘Nan!’ I shouted, but the falling flakes seemed to absorb most of the sound. I staggered along the path and out through the open back gate, wading knee-deep through snow that was now only faintly tinged with pink. ‘Nan, where are you?’

‘Kyle, come back!’ Ameena’s shout was a whisper in the distance. I blundered on, along the back of my row of houses, shouting for Nan the whole way.

The cold gripped my legs up to the knees as I forced my way on. My hands were raised in front of me, shielding my eyes from the driving snow. My village gets its fair share of snow in the winter, but this was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was too severe, too sudden to be natural. Something had to be causing it. Great. Another thing for me to worry about. Always one more thing.

I emerged from behind the houses into the street. The snow covered the few cars here like a thick white fur. Normally I’d be able to see my front garden, but the blizzard made it impossible to see more than a few metres in any direction.

The houses around me were in darkness, but the streetlights were on. For all the difference they made. It might have been early morning, but barely a glimmer of sunlight was making it through the snowstorm. I stood in the pool of light cast by one of the street lamps, making myself as visible as I could.

‘Nan!’ I cried. ‘I’m here! Where are you?’

A hand caught me roughly by the shoulder and spun me around. I found myself looking into Ameena’s scowling face. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded.

‘I was—’

‘Being an idiot?’

‘No! I was—’

‘On a suicide mission?’

‘What? No!’

‘Well, what then?’ she snapped. ‘Because, from what I can see, you’re freezing to death, standing in plain sight and making a racket that’s going to draw the attention of everyone in town.’ She stepped out of the pool of light, dragging me with her. ‘Not to mention the attention of whatever killed that cop.’

‘I have to find Nan,’ I told her.

‘I know. But here’s a suggestion – don’t get violently killed before you do. Stealth, kiddo. Stealth.’

I thought about the policewoman, and about the blood on the ceiling and walls. ‘OK,’ I said quietly. ‘Point made.’

‘Good,’ she said, giving me a gentle punch on the shoulder. ‘Now, come on, let’s go get warmed up then we’ll figure out what to do.’ She began trudging up the street towards my front garden, glancing at the houses on either side of the road as we walked. ‘It’s just a miracle no one heard you and came out to see what the ruckus was about.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, only half-listening. ‘A miracle.’

‘Didn’t even see a light come on,’ she continued. ‘Must all be deaf, the noise you were making.’

‘Deaf,’ I agreed, trudging along behind her. ‘Yeah.’

I stopped walking.

‘Wait,’ I said.

‘What?’

I looked across at the other side of the street, where I could just make out the darkened outlines of six houses.

‘Why’ve we stopped?’ Ameena was asking. I didn’t answer.

The houses on this side of the street were in darkness too. Now that we were closer, I could make out the lights we’d left on in my house, but they were the only ones on in the entire block.

There were a few vehicles parked along the street – a couple of cars, the van of the window-cleaner who lived at number five – but nothing moved in any direction along the road.

‘Listen,’ I said.

A pause, then, ‘Listen to what?’

‘To nothing,’ I said.

Another pause, then, ‘Are you winding me up? What you on about?’

‘It’s quiet,’ I whispered. ‘There’s not a sound.’

She listened, properly this time, without speaking.

‘It’s early,’ she said, offering an explanation.

‘Not that early. People should be up and about.’ I nodded across the street. ‘They should at least have their lights on.’

Ameena looked at each house in turn, considering this. Then she scooped up some snow, squashed it into a ball shape, and launched it at the closest bedroom window.

Her aim was spot on. The snowball hit the glass with a loud thonk, and I had to resist the urge to run away and hide. We stood watching the window, waiting for a light to come on.

‘Try another one,’ she said, when it became clear the room was staying dark. ‘Try them all.’

We worked quickly, making snowballs, chucking them at windows. Most of mine found their target. All of Ameena’s found theirs. We hit over twenty windows. No one appeared at any of them.

‘Empty,’ I said, voicing what we’d both already guessed. ‘They’re all empty.’

‘Or maybe...’

I turned to Ameena. ‘Maybe what?’

‘Maybe the people inside just can’t come to the window.’

I looked to the closest house, shrouded in darkness like all the others. A shiver ran the length of my spine, nothing to do with the cold.

‘Only one way to find out,’ I said.

The gate squeaked as I pushed it open and slowly, quietly, we approached the front door.

t’s open.’ Ameena drew her breath in sharply through her teeth. ‘That doesn’t bode well.’

I gave the door a gentle push and it swung inwards, revealing a shadowy hallway. A brass number 9 was screwed on to the front of the door. Number 9 was Mrs Angelo’s house. I couldn’t tell you much about Mrs Angelo, other than that she was in her sixties, and always used to give out the best sweets at Halloween. Not much of a biography, really.

I tried to call Mrs Angelo’s name, but my throat had tightened so the sound that came out was little more than a whisper. I coughed and tried again. ‘Mrs Angelo? Are you there?’

Ameena pushed past me and strode into the hallway. ‘Helloooo?’ she shouted at the top of her voice. ‘Anyone home?’

‘What happened to stealth?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘Stealth got boring. Shut the door.’

I hesitated, unsure, but then quietly clicked the door closed. Ameena flicked a switch and the hallway was bathed in light. I realised for the first time that my hands were blue with cold. Jamming them under my armpits, I followed Ameena into the living room.

A tattered armchair and a saggy old couch sat empty in the room. The TV was off. An old grandfather clock tick-tocked solemnly in the corner.

‘Not in there,’ Ameena said, and we both backed out into the hall. I tried the kitchen next. The door was ajar, and swung open at a prod from my foot.

The room was empty, but the fridge door hung open, casting a pale yellow glow across the rest of the kitchen. A mug of tea stood on the worktop beside the fridge.

‘Cold,’ Ameena said, touching the side of the mug. ‘Guess she changed her mind about having a cuppa.’

‘Or something changed it for her.’

‘I wasn’t going to mention that,’ she said. ‘In case, you know... you wet yourself or something.’

‘Funny,’ I sighed. ‘Come on, she might be upstairs.’

Something crunched softly beneath Ameena’s foot. We both looked down to find a bag of sugar on the floor, its contents spilled across the lino. Our attention was instantly drawn to the shape that was clearly visible in the scattered granules. We studied it for a long, long time.

‘What the hell made that?’ Ameena asked, at last.

‘Dunno,’ I replied.

‘Well, if you are going to wet yourself, now might be the perfect time.’

I stared down at the shape in the sugar. A shape that could only be described as an enormous, three-toed footprint. ‘You know,’ I whispered, ‘I might just take you up on that.’

‘Should we search the rest of the house?’ Ameena asked. She didn’t take her eyes from the print. It was about forty centimetres in length, and the same again at its widest point, up near the three saucer-sized toeprints.

‘Probably,’ I said, though I doubt I sounded convinced.

‘Thought you’d say that.’ Ameena gave a grim nod, then swept the sugar aside with her foot. ‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

Mrs Angelo’s house was laid out differently to mine, even though they were on the same block. The stairs in my house led up from the living room, but in Mrs Angelo’s they started in the hall. Two steps, then a sharp left turn and more stairs leading to the upper floor.

The stairway was narrow, but neither of us felt like pushing ahead. Flicking on the light, we made our way up, shoulder to shoulder, side by side. Each step brought a groan of protest from the floorboard beneath us. If anything was up there, it would already know we were coming.

‘Anyone home?’ The sound of Ameena’s voice in the cramped space made me jump.

‘Sssssh!’ I hissed.

‘Why?’

‘Um, well, giant footprint,’ I whispered. ‘Remember?’

‘Um, well, narrow staircase,’ she said.

‘So?’

She gave a sigh, then spoke slowly, as if explaining to a child. ‘Big thing no fit up small stairs.’

I thought about this for a moment. The footprint we saw suggested an enormous creature. Rhino-sized, maybe bigger. A rhino couldn’t fit up these stairs in a million years. Not even with someone pushing it really hard from behind.

‘Anyway, we don’t even know if it was a footprint,’ she said.

‘Oh, it was,’ I nodded. ‘It was definitely a footprint.’

We were almost at the top of the stairs now and began to creep even more slowly. ‘How do you know?’

‘Because I don’t want it to be a footprint,’ I said. ‘Because the worst possible thing it could be is the scary big footprint of something that wants to kill us. And the worst possible things keep happening to me lately.’ I took a deep breath, stopping my rant before it became too loud. ‘I know it’s a footprint, because with my recent luck, it couldn’t be anything else.’

She shrugged. ‘Fair point. But it still couldn’t fit up the stairs.’

We stepped on to an upper landing awash with the smells of old lady. Talcum powder. Lavender. Something that could’ve been cabbage. As I breathed them in, my memories of Mrs Angelo became pin-sharp in my mind. I remembered my last meeting with her, chatting to her for a few seconds on Christmas Eve as I’d delivered her card.

Mum was always late writing Christmas cards, but even for her, 10 p.m. on Christmas Eve was cutting it fine. I’d planned to drop the card through the letterbox and move on, but Mrs Angelo had clocked me coming up the path and had come to the door to talk to me.

She was the last person I’d seen before Christmas Day. Before Mumbles. Before any of this had started. Mrs Angelo – and her smell – were normality. They represented the last moments of my old life, a life where the only things I had to worry about were my mum’s cooking and a regular hammering from school bully, Billy Gibb. A life I’d go back to in a heartbeat.