The fractals churned. He ran out of the room. On the way, he stumbled into the little inlaid table and, grasping hold of it to keep his balance, found he had picked up the Shrander’s dice. At that, his own panic filled the room, a liquid so thick he was forced to turn and swim his way through the door. His arms worked in a sort of breaststroke while his legs ran beneath him in useless slow motion. He stumbled across the landing outside and straight down the stairs—full of terror and ecstasy, the dice in his hand—

They were in his hand again now as he struggled through the marram grass, high on the dunes of Monster Beach. If he looked back, he could see the cottage, a milky illumination coming and going at its windows. The sky was black, and full of bright stars; while the ocean, clasped in the arms of the bay, appeared silver, and fell upon the beach with a faint shushing noise. Kearney, who was not a natural athlete, made perhaps a mile before the Shrander caught him. This time it was much larger than him, though its voice still had the countertenor quality that made it sound like a boy or a nun.

“Didn’t you know me?” it whispered, looming above him so that the stars were obscured. It smelled of stale bread and wet wool. “I spoke to you often enough in your dreams. Now you can be the child you were.”

Kearney fell to his knees and pushed his face into the beach, where he perceived with clarity and suddenness not just the individual grains of wet sand but the shapes between them. They looked so distinct and detailed that he did, briefly, feel like a child again. He wept for the sheer loss of this: the loss of himself. I’ve had no life, he thought. And what did I give it up for? This. He had killed dozens of people. He had joined with a madman to do terrible things. He had never had children. He had never understood Anna. Groaning as much with self-pity as with the effort of not facing his nemesis, his face thrust firmly into the sand, his left arm held rigidly out behind him, he offered it the bag containing the stolen dice.

“Why me? Why me?”

The Shrander seemed puzzled.

“There was something I liked about you,” it explained, “from the very beginning.”

“You ruined my life,” Kearney whispered.

“You ruined your own life,” said the Shrander, almost proudly.

Then it said: “As a matter of interest, why did you murder all those women?”

“To keep you away from me.”

The Shrander seemed surprised at this.

“Oh dear. Didn’t you realise it wasn’t working?” Then it said: “It hasn’t been much of a life, has it? Why did you run so hard? All I wanted to do was show you something.”

“Take the dice,” Kearney begged, “and leave me alone.”