‘The earliest passage – deemed so due to its ease of readability – was written in a tongue common to the area. It spoke of age and sickness. The man was, at the time of writing, fearful for his life. He reviled the slow corruption of his body and sought out a means to cheat death, to reverse the years so intent on destroying him. No price was too high. He pleaded with dark powers that Brendan was unfamiliar with. These weren’t devils or demons – those known and repelled by his Christian teachings. In his desperation the man had turned to something else.

‘His penmanship deteriorated and the language, evident on a single entry, turned archaic and indecipherable. So frantic were his movements that blood from his hand spotted the page. Like a puppet, the evil had wielded him into writing their contract; signed and sealed without hope or consent.

‘One harrowing entry wrote of his betrayal, of a hidden clause in his soul’s agreement, of a vanity mocked and spoiled. The evil had left him deformed and hideous to the eye. He became an immortal and a slave cursed to never know love or society for time eternal. He became what we now know as the creeper.

‘The man was charged with stealing the lives of the innocent. But the kill was only part of it. His means lack the simplicity of mere murder. I suppose it was the evil’s requisite for fear and its desire to toy with our kind that set the rules. Three nights its thrall visits their home. Each time that he is seen he draws closer, until on the third they bear witness to his face. Three sightings seal their fate. The night that follows is always their last. There is nowhere that the evil won’t find them.

‘The creeper was a man. But I fear that now he is something else entirely. It doesn’t suffer the same restrictions as you and I. I wonder if it even retains a corporeal state at all times. How it moves so far and freely – manifesting where it pleases – is beyond me.

‘Brendan burned the writings before his family returned home. If the contract held the man as its prisoner, maybe its destruction could repeal his servitude. Desperate acts from a now desperate man. The cottage was secured before dark. As his wife prepared their meal, Brendan sat anxiously, his eyes straying towards the cloth guarding his window.

‘I don’t doubt that the secret of the two sightings had grown inside the man like a tumour. You’ll both come to understand that feeling – that fearful awareness of the sun’s path across the sky and of the night that is inevitable.