The passage was wreathed in shadows. A blurred arc of light below was enough to see down the stairs. He stepped quietly, trying not to make any noise in case Christie’s parents were sleeping. Perhaps she was watching TV or had crashed out on the sofa. If the last were true, he’d leave and call in the morning. A sudden loudness erupted from the television, something about the vote that caught his attention. He tried to descend fast without making a sound. At the living room door he stopped, peeking around the frame, self-conscious. He didn’t know these people, barely knew Christie. White light flooded the room. Farage filled the screen, baring teeth amid flashing lights and bouts of applause, saying it was Independence Day for England, and he listened, feeling that falling sensation again, only quicker and now, inside his own body, solid, rooted, causing him to slump against the door frame.

His eyes were drawn away from Farage’s face towards the sofa, which seemed to be moving. It wasn’t the sofa that was moving: it was three strange, writhing masses in a row that were on it. Not matter, not as he knew it, these were spheres of persistent energy, patterns shifting and swelling on each surface like plasma on the photosphere of a star, waves rippling, tendrils emerging, testing the air every so often before receding into the central mass. When he dared to take a step closer he saw discarded flesh laid in a draped pile beneath the rounded balls of energy like snakeskin. Fanned hair and glimpses of clothes flopped from sofa cushions onto the carpet. He realised the husks were the shed carcasses of them – Christie and each of her parents, the skins creased and partly inside out, veined and pale.

The spheres eased into deeper colours, darkening. Somehow, they rotated. The closest ball to Aaron reached out a slow, probing tendril. It curled like smoke, stretching towards him.

He ran. Out of the door and into the street, down the empty orange-lit road. He sprinted across roads, feet slapping pavements wet with morning dew, night buses bathing him in stark light. He didn’t stop, and didn’t pay any mind to whether they were following. There was no point. They knew where he lived. They also knew where he was right now. He and the creatures were for ever linked. He’d thought he was smart, the leader, the one who’d called them all, when really, from the start, it was her.

He collapsed against a lamp post, slid to its concrete root and when he could stand again he walked. His lungs burned, his legs weak. The streets were shimmering lake water. The high road stretched into the distance.