‘Owwwwwllllll!’ That chilling call again. It seemed to immediately fill the entirety of the corridor and the safety of the attic, covering all else, sending a coldness waterfalling down my spine, and forcing my shoulders to stiffen again in terror. Kate whimpered softly.

Then the slow, dreadful shuffling began. I raised my hands to my head, jamming my fingers into my ears to make it stop. Breathe. It can’t get you here.

But even with my eyes squeezed shut and my fingers in my ears, I could feel the krik moving round in the corridor beneath us, could sense its scuttling, dragging footsteps vibrating through the walls. The diseased nausea of its sea stench came floating in warm patches of poisoned air so thick I could almost taste them each time I breathed.

I edged closer to the hatch, my jeans catching softly against the roughness of the floorboards beneath me. I peered down from the darkness of the loft, holding my breath to stop myself gagging.

The krik slowly turned its head upwards, out of its shell slit, so that the white balls of the extended eyes seemed to stare directly at me, thick and meaty, their stalks made from the same material as the eye itself. The shiny, moist skin around them was pulled taut, but there was no iris, just a long, black, pupil – sharp, like a slit of nothingness. The leathery lips were drawn across the shell beneath in a permanent gruesome smile, fixed and too-large, like a grotesque circus clown. The eyes swivelled on, searching for the noise. It couldn’t see me, I realized; it’d just turned its eyes towards the sound, but there was no recognition there.

I was glad I’d looked. The krik was horrifying and hideous and ugly. But after seeing it, I at least knew what we had to face. And somehow, however terrifying the krik was – and it was cripplingly awful – it was better than my imagination. The reality was bearable; the monsters of my dreams weren’t.

Next to me, I could feel James shuffling round too.

‘Hello, Big Boy,’ he called, loudly.

The krik turned its face up towards us again.

‘Watch out, Martha,’ muttered James.

And he dropped the fork straight down.

With a wet, meaty sound, the prongs struck straight through the mouth slit and into the vulnerable flesh beneath. The krik stood for a moment, suspended on the end of the weapon, but then, with a shake, James pulled the fork free, and the krik peeled away, and fell to the ground beneath us.

Chapter 35

35