There he saw their bodies thronged together; their faces all turned eagerly towards the altar. They were dressed as the one who spoke before them. Some held aloft torches of fire; wooden stakes with a lump of peat stabbed through the spear, their smoke billowing into the sky. Waves of light splashed across the high walls, leaving the church’s lower reaches in darkness. Shadows were many, feeding on the firelight and dancing everywhere like devils.

What Ben saw defied any Christian conventions he knew of. The wasp was no makeshift clergyman. And those standing gaunt and wild-eyed in front of him held no spiritual ties to Christianity.

They were, each of them, dressed as the creeper.

Ben watched as the Tír Mallachts removed their cowls. The impression of all those faces – ill-proportioned and malformed – was startling to behold. No single countenance had been born without some defect of the bone or misplacement of feature. Alone such flaws instilled a sense of pity, but together – unified and beaming amidst the shadows with rapturous zeal – they were truly terrifying.

Ben retreated as any one of their many eyes could have seen him.

Chloe’s face emerged from the darkness. ‘We’re out of time.’

Night’s awakening was complete. The dim glow by the wall’s debris was all that broke the black. Ben reached for her hand – fingers cold as his own – and held it tight. Squatted together, amidst the lank weeds of Tír Mallacht’s cemetery, they would await the end.

Was the creeper out there, watching them, savouring in their last moments? Chloe buried her head in Ben’s shoulder. The eerie chants echoed all the louder with his eyes shut.

There was a rustling, back from where they had slipped by the church’s corner. Somebody was there. Whoever it was, their step was silent, but branches could be heard to bend and whip.

They were getting closer.

The creeper was upon them.

This is it. This is how it ends.

‘Found you!’

It was the girl from the village. She sounded as though she were standing right beside them, but so lightless was the night that Ben couldn’t see beyond the glowing crevice.

‘They’re here!’ the child screamed, like a siren to all those inside.