‘I didn’t,’ wailed Madison. ‘She told me she saw him! She saw the Hungry Man! She killed herself because of the ritual!’

‘And you invented the ritual.’

‘I didn’t! Kundela told me! He told me about the ritual!’

The girl really should have chosen a better lie.

Eliza pushed on the ute again, harder. The branch creaked. ‘You know, Bree and Denni were closer than you realised. Everything you told Denni, Denni told Bree.’

‘Yes, Denni was convinced she met the Hungry Man, one night in the bush, and barely escaped with her life. You convinced Denni that the Hungry Man would never stop hunting her, that killing herself was the only way to escape. If you see the Hungry Man’s face, he’ll never allow you to escape.

‘Bree told me she was going to be your second victim – that you’d arranged for her to kill herself, too. I didn’t want her getting cold feet once they found Georgia’s body – she would realise what I’d done – so I spoke to her and simply brought forward the day . . .’ She sighed. ‘If only Georgia hadn’t been the one you gave the phone to, I might not have had to . . . but Bree’s death needed to work right. She told me all about your plan . . . you’d kept her intentions secret from the other girls: she would die on the Hanging Tree on the third day of the disappearances, like some anti-Christ, for all to see her pain and to cement the mythology you were creating . . . to bring you even more followers.

‘I arrived at the Hanging Tree just in time to watch her do it, you know.’ She scowled, waving a hand beside her ear, swatting away the discomfort that memory brought. ‘Once she died, I had to climb up after her. I dragged her body higher, using the rope to hide her in a crook of the tree, up high where no one would see. It wasn’t time, yet, for everyone to see her: I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by taking it further than you had planned, especially if the police realised she’d been using my key to hide in the school.’

Madison’s face was a sheen of sweat, stark with the horror of understanding what Eliza was truly capable of.

‘She’d already written a message on the wall at the school, so I wrote some more to throw them off further. A few days later, the day they released me from custody, I went home to get Denni’s Hungry Man warding dolls – the statues you’d made her carve – and I took one to your house, another to Bree’s body. And then I texted you, pretending that Bree had taken the phone instead of Georgia. Letting you know the deed had been done.’