Around midday, as the heat became heavy, a low humming sound came up out of the ground, and Glynis looked around himself. The townsmen were far apart from him, slowly moving away, bent over beneath the sun as though in some mobile and communal worship. To the other side was the forest, from which, like shadows hardening in light, four men appeared, all naked, all with sheep skulls tied to their heads, walking towards him. They were not walking together, but seemed to be appearing from different sides of the forest, pulled together by some attracting force, all about to converge on Nobber.

The skulls they wore were greenish with age, some partly covered in moss and more likely reclaimed from nature than slaughter. Even the skinny men themselves had a greenish hue from the light that bore down through the foliage, the green light doubly reflected off the forest floor through which they waded. The skulls were set crookedly upon their heads, missing the lower jaws; packed rows of square teeth, each the length of half a finger, clamped tightly downwards, as though the dead sheep were eating the men’s foreheads – and the two sharp ends of the skull, all that remains once the nose cartilage disintegrates, were pointing towards Glynis, and he wondered how such a soft and idiotic animal could have so much sharpness hidden within it and how such enormous black holes could contain such little eyes. Glynis lowered his scythe; kept it loose in his hands, and watched them for another moment to see if he could foretell their intentions. They were humming, chanting something unknown and dissonant.

As they came closer he saw that all of them were dripping. Each new step would loosen drops that would splatter on the ferns below them; small, accidental sounds against softness. At first he thought they were all pissing as they walked, and then he noticed the man nearest him bore a thin switch, which he used every few steps to flick his own balls. The man’s crotch was a mess of flayed pulp, raw and dripping blood, like poorly cut meat hanging off a slaughtered beast. The misshapen genitals had swollen to almost tumescent proportions, and seemed to be only dangling from his body by a thin sliver of purple flesh. They were not humming, Glynis realised, they were moaning.

‘Stand back,’ he said.

The four men stopped, the only sound amongst them all the intermittent dripping of blood. The man who was closest to Glynis, whose skull he saw was upside down on his head, looked at him for a moment, and then, as though in protest, flicked the switch against his own testicles again. A hiss escaped from the man’s lips.

‘No,’ Glynis said. ‘I have many men with me.’

The man turned round silently, and retreated back into the darkness of the woods, the others following after.