‘I could move to Donegal and start afresh. I’m not exactly leaving too much behind me here, am I? I hate my job. I hate my house.’

‘You could always buy a little cottage in Tír Mallacht.’

‘Yeah, I should renovate that black one on the hill.’

Chloe’s smile dissolved at the mention of it.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘Do you think that that’s the cottage Sparling told us about?’

Ben hadn’t made the connection himself. But it was there that Chloe had discovered the symbols, on a house set apart from the rest of the community, like the creeper’s cottage in Sparling’s story.

‘It’s a coincidence,’ he replied quickly, hoping to trim back the idea’s thorns, ‘or else Sparling probably picked it out from one of his maps.’

‘Ben,’ she said sharply, ‘everything that he told us checks out with everything we’ve seen. The secrecy, the shutters, even that man’s reaction when the kid told us about the creeper. You’re so convinced that Sparling is lying to us. But we’ve seen it all with our own eyes.’

‘Chloe, please,’ he said. ‘Curses and creepers don’t—’

‘You’ve seen him yourself,’ she snapped, interrupting him. ‘Three times you see him. You remember what she told us? On the third night his big ugly face is at your window.’

Ben drained his glass and slammed it down on the table. With fingers pressed to his lips – not wanting to say something he might regret – he stared at Chloe from across the couch. That fucking kid! He couldn’t listen to it anymore. Every mention of the creeper’s big ugly face was an attack on his patience. It had to stop. He struggled off the couch and muted the laptop.

The silence was essential. He needed Chloe to listen.

‘It’s the third night,’ he said, standing before her, wreathed in firelight.

She burrowed into the couch like a tick.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked uneasily. ‘Sit down, will you?’

If that bastard from the far field was outside somewhere, Ben would prove to Chloe that he was just a man. Why was the truth so hard to believe?

‘It’s the only way you’re going to believe me,’ he said, pacing towards the window.

‘Ben, stop. You don’t have to do this.’

He spread his arms wide, resembling some cheap, street-side showman teasing a reveal behind the curtain. If only Ben could have seen himself. Chloe needed reassurance. She needed a friend. Instead he was parading in front of her as though she were a child and he the all-knowing adult.

‘This is all Sparling’s handiwork,’ Ben said, wagging his finger as he took a step back. ‘He’s gotten inside your head, Chloe.’

‘Ben,’ she shouted, rising to her feet, ‘don’t you dare open that.’