Their step was quieter now. They had passed into the room, treading across its rug, making Alec’s home their own. His fortress had been breached, and with such ease. He listened to the scrape of steel as the fire poker was drawn from its holder, like a brass blade unsheathed. Whoever it was, they were scratching at the grate, stirring its embers back to life. A log was heard to tumble onto the floor before the poker was dropped with a padded clamour. Still, Alec refused to turn, to even loosen his eyelids. Something was burning. The fire that he had abandoned had found a means to survive. The Persian rug touched everything that was Alec’s; his chair and desk, the tables and fittings, all those treasured things that would burn so easily.

‘What do you want?’ he called out.

Alec could hear the fragile crick and crack of bone, as though the intruder crossed a frozen lake thawing to fracture. It had to be a man. He was breathing heavily through his mouth, drawing ominously closer; ubiquitous in the blind darkness that Alec clung to.

He couldn’t risk opening his eyes. He could have caught a glimpse of the creeper in a framed reflection or in the polished belly of a silver bowl. His father had warned him of the eye. It wants to see. Even the strongest mind cannot quell its curiosity.

The man came to stand in front of Alec. An arm’s reach away. Even over the rising smoke his breath was noxious. Few knew of Alec’s existence. Even fewer knew where he lived. Was he the victim of an indiscriminate misdeed or was this some vengeful ghost from his past?

‘Is that you, Barry?’ he asked, unable to steady his voice.

No reply came, only that deep, drawn-out panting and the growl of the hot flames now chewing through his father’s rug.

‘Mr French,’ he whispered, ‘is it you? Please, tell me who you are.’

He could feel the fire’s warmth feeding greedily on the floor, climbing the legs of his chair, and cooking the contents of each drawer in his desk like an oven. The curtains had caught fire. Alec could smell their ancient mustiness. All those odours hoarded over the years were finally released as one. He imagined the windows barricaded by a wall of the blackest smoke.

It couldn’t have been the creeper. Alec hadn’t seen him three times. It was by these rules that the man had survived. Then why was the creeper’s face all that he could envisage in the timeless horror of that moment? Every description he had ever known was forced into his mind, ever-changing and yet smiling throughout each terrible guise.

‘You can’t do this,’ he said, every fibre of his being aquiver. ‘I haven’t seen you!’