‘Nancy took great pride in telling me of her adventures up at ringfort. Sometimes, she would take a book and read up there for hours at a time until it was almost nightfall. She asked me time and again to go back with her, but I was too afraid. I couldn’t shake the feeling there was something there, something wrong. Maybe if I had gone, things would have turned out differently.

‘The year we found the fort, Halloween fell on a Friday – I remember as easily as I remember my own birthday. Back then Halloween wasn’t like it is now. We would play games like snap apple and hope to find the ring in slices of barmbrack, but there was none of that American trick-or-treating nonsense. At least not around these parts. We knew better than to go out gallivanting on Samhain when the walls between the worlds grow thin. Once the sun went down, most of us were content to stay indoors where it was safe.

‘That day we finished school and I walked home with Nancy as always. It was a cold, foggy afternoon and all the way home I had the feeling we were being watched. It was exactly the feeling I’d had that day up in Cullane Wood. I wanted to tell Nancy, but things had been strained between us since our falling out. I didn’t want another fight, so I said my goodbyes and hurried home to help with the housework before dinner.

‘When I lay in bed that night, I heard something strange. It sounded like music, the most beautiful music I had ever heard. It made me want to get up and go outside, to follow it all the way to its source. I wanted that more than I had ever wanted anything else in my entire life. But something made me think twice. There was a coldness in my heart and somehow, I knew if I opened my eyes, it would be the last of me. I lay there with my eyes screwed shut until morning broke and I finally felt the fear in my heart ease.

‘On Saturdays I was expected to help my mam around the house so I was too busy to think about the strange sounds I had heard in the night. But the next day, the second of November, was All Souls’ Day and when I was a girl the whole town would go to the cemetery and leave a candle on the grave of any family members who had passed. I saw Nancy’s family there, but there was no sign of her. When I asked where she was, her dad told me she was sick and resting at home.

‘The following week there was still no sign of Nancy and I thought she must be very sick indeed to miss school. Finally, almost two weeks after I had seen her last, she was back. I ran right over to say hello but stopped cold as soon as she looked at me. The girl that stood before me looked exactly like my friend in almost every way, expect for her eyes. Her eyes, which had always been grey as a rock, were now moss green. I knew right then it was no longer Nancy I was looking at, but a stock.’