How did he guess so confidently where they were? Wasn’t it possible that they could still be in Tír Mallacht or anywhere in between?

Ben imagined that insipid little smile on the doctor’s face. His memories of him were monochrome. He was so dull – so uniquely forgettable – that Ben strained to recall any feature but his smile.

‘Uh, yeah,’ she replied. ‘We’ve been working on the project since we got back. Ben is beside me. We’ve got you on loudspeaker.’

‘Ah, I see. Good afternoon, Mr French.’

‘Hey,’ Ben said, awkwardly looking to Chloe as he waved at the phone held between them.

The laptop was still booting up. But he knew enough if Sparling tried to gauge the return on his investment. Ben was missing a week’s work for this. He couldn’t afford to walk away with nothing.

‘Tell me, Mr French,’ Sparling said, ‘did your interviewees tell you anything of note?’

Ben considered stepping over the truth. But the lie would be too precarious, especially with the likes of Sparling – a stickler for detail who seemed to know more than he declared.

‘Well, Alec,’ he replied, feigning fellowship to soften the blow, ‘the villagers went out of their way not to tell me very much at all. And it was made quite clear to us that we weren’t welcome. So much so, unfortunately, that we were asked to leave the following morning.’

‘I see,’ he said.

Sparling hadn’t enquired about his two-hundred-year-old theory. Surely his first question should have concerned whether he had been right or not. If they had found his Atlantis, then he was only asking questions about the fish that swam there.

‘Not a single person that you spoke to mentioned anything about the creeper?’ the doctor asked.

‘Well, not exactly,’ Ben replied. ‘There was a child.’

‘What did they tell you?’ Sparling asked, slowly and intensely.

Ben’s memory hadn’t quite woken up yet, and the laptop was proving just as slow. He looked to Chloe for support.

‘Three times you see him,’ she began, reciting what the girl had said, word for word.

Never had a child’s joke been treated with such earnestness. Ben had belittled the superstition whenever it crept into conversation and now he felt almost embarrassed listening to it again. They were meant to be academics – the perfect candidates. The kid’s story made them sound like amateurs.

‘She told you that?’ Sparling asked after Chloe had finished. ‘That’s when the creeper kills you,’ he repeated. ‘This child said that to you?’

‘Yeah,’ Chloe replied.

‘And did you see him? That night did you see him?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Someone followed us back to our campsite. And then, last night—’

‘You saw him again?’ he interjected excitedly.

‘He was outside my house.’

‘I see,’ Sparling replied, and then all was silent over the line save for his breathing.

‘Who is he?’ Chloe asked. ‘What does he want?’

Click.