But the image of the seated cadaver was strange enough, stunning enough, to momentarily stifle Sam’s instinct to flee. Its flesh was the colour of fresh concrete, causing it to glow like grey, smouldering embers within the lightless closet. The legs were spindle-thin, and the chest was sunken. Its head was obscured by a cowl of some kind.

What an awful way to be interred, Sam thought. He marveled at how the mind almost short-circuits when its limitations are exposed.

When the figure suddenly rose and bounded into the room it was clear it had not been left to rot in some locked farmhouse room. It had been waiting in the closet, like an ascetic in a confessional. Its face was shaded by what looked to be a flowing habit of fringed brown leather that crackled as the figure advanced, sounding like something dry, something moulted.

Sam wondered if he had stumbled into one of the improved scenes he’d been imagining.

But in the movies the dead do not move this quickly.

In a swift and seamless motion, the monkish figure reached into one of the piled trash bags, causing it to tip. The bones it held clattered out onto the dusty floor like queerly shaped dice. The skulls stared with grinning indifference as the figure clutched Sam with one hand, while the other raised the chunky femur and brought it down like a primitive club. Sam never even had time to scream.

*

The pain in the back of his skull woke Sam. It also played havoc with his perceptions. What else could explain the presence of the moon or the fact that everything else around him had been swallowed by darkness?

He pressed his hands down on the cushiony surface beneath him and slowly, achingly, pushed himself upright before slumping right back down again. The air was frigid and damp. He could see his breath forming ghosts on the blackness. Confusion over where he was quickly gave way to a sharp panic as memories of the farmhouse shuffled their way back into Sam’s consciousness like cards being dealt: the tomes and the symbols and the terrible grey attacker.

With an unsteady hand Sam prodded his trouser pockets, pleading silently that his Smartphone was still there. It was, though its screen was cracked. He mashed at it with bloodless fingers, trying to connect with the world by any means possible. But the device’s only use was as a source of weak glowing light. Its graphics were but a smear of colour.

Sam waved the phone about like a torch. What it illuminated was an upright tunnel of textured wood. Grubs and clumped soil dangled here and there. The atmosphere was uncomfortably moist.

The well…

Craning his aching head, Sam watched as clouds scuttled across the moon’s face and he wondered how long he had been down here. The light on his phone began to flicker like a guttering candle.