The blade glinted despite the lack of light, and that was when I looked at the walking stick again and realized it wasn’t that at all.

It was a rifle.

He was loading it.

60

I headed back out, along the veranda, trying to prevent the wooden slats from moaning under my weight. I ignored the cold, the fact that every inch of exposed skin was freezing and I was starting to lose sensation in my feet, but it was hard: even as I focused on what was ahead, I could feel my teeth wanting to chatter, the gentle vibration of them in my jaw as the air carved through the thin, torn cotton of my clothing like it wasn’t even there.

Ahead of me, the veranda bent around to the right and then continued for another fifteen or twenty feet. I could see a window now, dusty and opaque, and a door. The building looked a lot smaller than I’d imagined: one bedroom, maybe two at most, the living room that I’d seen Vale in, and then probably a kitchen and a bathroom. It was all built from the same dark wood, even the roof. Only the stone chimney that I’d glimpsed through the heating vent in any way deviated from the main design: it broke out like a grey finger, and – from the top – smoke drifted faintly upwards.

Beyond that, it was just forest, so dense and tall that there was no view other than the trees. On the opposite side of the building from where I was, banks of pine were so huge and close to the house that they brushed against the roof, almost seemed to be reaching across it, and whenever the wind picked up, their needles made a soft whisper, like someone was talking to me.

I moved quickly towards the front door, stopping short of the window to look inside. The kitchen was bare and stripped back: to the right, a door exited into a hallway, dark and difficult to make out; to the left, a portable gas stove was on top of one of the worktops, disconnected, a plate beside that – scraped free of food – and a plastic beaker.

Ducking under the sill, I headed to the door.

The wind came again, moving the trees, rousing the voice of the forest – but as soon as it was gone again, there was nothing. No sound at all. No traffic close by, no planes in the sky, no voices. It was eerie, as if we were above the atmosphere, drifting through space: when I moved even slightly, looking around for something I could use as a weapon, the faint wrinkle of my shirt, the soft pop of my stiff, underused joints, shattered the silence. I tensed, waiting for Vale to react, to burst out of the front door – but he didn’t.

Only branches moved.

Only the trees made any sound.