She slipped in beside him and together they peered into the pitch-darkness of the cottage, both leaning in to listen, as though waiting for some ancient horror to break into the light.

‘What’s that smell?’ she asked.

‘It’s probably best if we don’t think about it,’ he replied, handing her back the hammer. ‘What’s the story with the symbols?’

‘Not a clue. They’re all low down on the wall and not especially well drawn. I think you might have been onto something when you thought that it was the kids’ doing. It makes you wonder why they’re hanging around the creeper’s cottage if they’re all so scared of it.’

‘That little girl didn’t seem so scared,’ Ben replied.

Chloe hummed in thought. ‘Good point.’

‘Shall we?’ he asked her, switching on his torch.

‘You first,’ she replied, moving further back, eyes watering from the stench. ‘I need a minute.’

Ben took a wary step forward. Never, before that moment, had he been so mindful of his heart; its thud, its tempo, and the courage it strained to muster. Since daybreak he had narrowed his focus on each consecutive action, ignoring their chilling culmination. Now it was all Ben could imagine – the creeper eyeing him from the darkness.

This was where the evil had been created, where a sick and desperate soul had spoken to the shadows and from their impossible depths something spoke back.

‘You all right?’ Chloe asked him.

He was terrified. He was anything but all right.

‘I’m fine.’

Ben crept inside, carefully negotiating the wreckage of his labour. He fought back the overwhelming urge to vomit, to reject the foulness that embodied the air. It bubbled below his throat as he panned his torchlight around the room. The walls within, like those outside, were blackened, as though some dark soul had left its stain upon them. He directed his beam around its corners, eyes stinging from the fumes undisturbed since its door was sealed. Wherever the white light fell he found only soil and stone.

There was nothing. They had travelled all that way – wasting their precious, last hours of life – for nothing.

Chloe’s torchlight fluttered around the room. ‘What have we got?’

‘It’s empty.’

‘Ruins are never empty. Let me have a look.’

Ben kept his light on the ceiling; some idle attempt at being helpful. The planks that reached across it looked as mouldering as those that had blocked the door. If one of them split, they would have been buried alive. Death seemed to hound them wherever they went.