‘The priest stayed in his chair after his family were asleep. In the dregs of a whiskey jar he found his courage, and with a lamentable sigh and his tired body atremble, he opened the curtain ever so slightly. Maybe he thought that the stranger’s writings were but records of his madness; idle impressions left by an ill mind.

‘I won’t tell you what he saw. Trust me, you don’t want to know. All I’ll say is that even the priest’s most diabolical of expectations couldn’t have conjured those eyes, inches from his own, mesmerised by the very sight of him. He recoiled in terror, fumbling for a God that had seemingly deserted him.

‘Brendan lay down beside his wife and son to await the dawn. His boy’s face twitched into a smile born from some wonderful dream. They needed to know. But he would let them have that last sleep and that last dream before the nightmares came.

‘The next day, arrangements were made for his family to travel overseas. Their savings were gathered up, as were any light possessions of value. Brendan shared with his wife all that he had learned about the creeper, only so that she might understand. She would go, taking their son with her, and Brendan would stay. The shore was a day’s journey. He hoped that an ocean could guard his family from the horrors he had invited into their lives.

‘His last act as Tír Mallacht’s clergyman was to warn those whose souls were his responsibility to protect. He summoned them together, the old and the young – every family that had a home there – and he told them of the creeper’s existence. He told them everything. In their eager innocence they listened. The man had never led them wrong in the past, but in this act – however well intended – he doomed them to the life you have seen with your own eyes.

‘It was through the priest’s voice that the creeper was exposed, and it is through our voices that his evil is spread. To be told of his existence – to anticipate the three sightings – is to suffer his curse.

‘I have spent a lifetime trying to understand it. And I can tell you no more than that.

‘Without a priest, the villagers’ faith over time diminished. I assume he waited for the creeper to come for him; a noble sacrifice of sorts to save his family. But he was wrong to think that the evil sought only him, that his death would bring an end to it all.