Over a hundred husky old miners have at one point lived and died in Temerosa and there are nights to come when it feels like a haunted wind blows through this town. Sometimes I lie in bed and think of them; sleeping cheek to jowl, hungry, frostbitten, wiring candles to their hats, boiling leather shoes and sucking on spaghetti laces as those interminable winters went by, as their bodies froze inside out and their minds slowly rotted with obsession for that one giant nugget they dreamed of holding – and they’d not been the only prospectors who dreamed of riches out here. Up until last fall, Temerosa had been owned by a conglomerate of developers from Toronto, one of whom, an old friend of Robert’s, had come to him for a loan pending a more formalized investment in the business. As a property developer, nothing appeals to Robert quite so much as the ‘big idea’ but unfortunately his feverish optimism is never tempered by much sound commercial rationale. His Toronto friend’s big idea was buying up deserted towns all over the American West then renovating them for resale. Before he got very far the stock market crashed and their funds withered. For once, Robert lucked out. He would never get any of his dollars back but instead we found ourselves in possession of a mystery 500-acre property in Arizona.

I yank back the screen and put my foot to the wooden door. Inside the big front room, wooden planks have been torn up and the floor is covered with stacks of pebbles and yet more animal droppings. A blackened burnt-out fridge stands in one corner and a sofa in another, stuffing oozing from a succession of gaping tears, as though it had gone mad from loneliness and indulged in a frenzy of self-mutilation. To the back of the room, a door opens onto a long corridor which runs the length of the building, cutting through a maze of smaller interconnecting rooms. The whole place smells rotten and musty. But there’s another smell as well, one harder to identify, which creeps up my sinuses like ammonia, some lethal mining gas about to render us unconscious. I’m about to grab the children and pull them out when, just behind me, Emmy starts to wail – a high keening noise that rises and increases in volume with each intake of breath. I’m on the verge of panic myself until I see what has spooked her. On the walls of the adjoining room, animal skins – bats, skunks, deer and even a lion – have been stretched and pinned into menacing vampiric shapes.