‘We’ve got the barricade here,’ said Lana, pointing to the stairs. It was securely blocked now, with a second bed in the way, and a wardrobe too. Anything trying to climb over that pile would take a while, and would be vulnerable.

‘We’ve got James’s garden fork,’ she added.

‘We could have the curtain poles too,’ said Kate. ‘If we need them.’

‘And we’ve got the petrol,’ said James, pointing to me.

I set the cans down on the carpet. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the matches. He put the box on top of the petrol.

We faced each other, grimly, just as the first heavy thump of a krik hit the door.

Chapter 33

33

We crouched behind the bed barricade, frozen and silent. The exposed wood on the bottom of the beds was scratched and rubbed. What were those marks? Was it Lana and James who’d made the marks when they moved the beds? Or was it the kriks themselves who’d shredded the back with their constant, constant scrabbling, their need to attack and kill and destroy? Or was it the people who had lived here, who’d been pulled away screaming and struggling to their painful deaths?

I could feel the fear pulsing through my veins in bursts of angry energy. But there was nowhere to go. We were trapped. I focused on the beds and tried to calm my breathing.

‘Owwwwwllllllll’ came a sudden scream from outside. We all jumped.

‘What the hell is that?’ whispered James. There was sweat on his forehead, and he was jiggling his leg up and down. When we were on the Jellyfish we’d have slapped him for that, but here you couldn’t feel the vibrations of his leg through the carpet.

‘Owwwwwllllllll’ It came again. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before. Like no animal voice or emotion I’d imagined: twisted, haunting, pained. A cold, ugly noise. Chilling.

We stared at each other in horror.

The wailing calls came again, but quieter, unearthly and more sinister. They were like the wind against the Big House in winter, with that same undertone of danger and power; a storm was coming, somewhere. And there was the slow dragging of something heavy bumping against the windows; they were walking round the side.

‘They’re talking to each other,’ I said.

‘Do you think they’re calling more of them to come?’ said James.

‘I don’t know. Are they loud enough to do that?’ I said.

‘I don’t know. We didn’t hear that noise from the Jellyfish,’ he said.

‘But if there are others in this town they’ll hear, won’t they?’

‘Owwwwllllll!’