Grace tries to force the trapdoor open but she isn’t strong enough. She pushes with all her might, harder and harder, screaming with a wild rage that she doesn’t recognise, but it’s hopeless. Water begins to spill into the pit and the thin wooden-slatted walls start to bend with the pressure of the flooding. She hears a crack as one slat is first to break and mud slides from the opening. A sliver of moonlight slices through, her eyes flash and she pulls and pulls with all her might at the broken slat until at last it breaks away. With a new confidence she claws at the softened mud behind it, tearing and digging with her small hands, ignoring the bugs and the scratches from the splintered shards of stone that have spent a lifetime in the soil. She forces her hands through the mud and cries out as something sharp pierces and drags through the flesh of her hand. Ignoring the pain, she slides her hands across, pulls them back and peers up to see a piece of broken pottery. Her fingers scrape the soil around it and she pulls it out. It has a round base that fits her hand perfectly. She uses it to dig into the wet soil, widening the gap, and when it seems big enough she forces her head through, ignoring the scraps that pull at her hair and the driving cold rain that pinches her skin. She feels reborn as she hauls herself out with fury spitting from every pore.

Coated in mud, worms and insects, she stands above the pit that has been her home for weeks. In the far distance she sees the headlamps of cars whizzing back and forth. She wonders how close to the real world she has actually been, considering she and Danny, for a time, believed they had been kidnapped to another realm. She could run towards the road now, stop a car and get help. She might make it and save Danny. She could see Grandad again and tell him how sorry she is for not returning home that day. She starts to run, but stops when she hears Danny’s voice. Grace turns to see him stumbling from the rear of the cottage clutching his bleeding belly.

‘Danny!’ she calls.

But it’s not Danny. It’s a man with blood-red eyes that glisten in the silver light of the sickle moon.

‘Look what you did, Grace!’ cries Jamie Blackwell.