They followed the shaft of Chloe’s light as it scanned slowly across the distance. So vast were the surrounding fields that they couldn’t see their far walls. The beam just petered away into nothingness. They pressed their bodies into each other to steady their shaking. One last time, Ben kept chiming in his head. Even his internal voice chittered from the cold.

The light skimmed over the sparkling ground. That’s all there was to see, the same unbroken sight fading into the distant dark. No trees. No hedgerow. There was only frost-tipped grass, and then the torchlight passed over something; a shape too far away to make sense of in that second. Chloe grabbed on to Ben’s arm.

‘There,’ she shrieked, ‘did you see that?’

There was somebody out there.

The torchlight strained to reach him.

He stood inert and unaffected by the bitter cold that caused Ben’s limbs to dither in spasms. The distance between them and the faltering light obscured any detail beyond his shape. His body looked incredibly tall, but it was impossible to truly tell as there were no features in the vicinity to use as reference. His long arms arched out slightly and were set rigid by his sides with their fingers spread apart; visible only because they were so long and pale.

He was clad in black, under a tight-fitting cloak or coat that pronounced his skeletally thin limbs. In the dim, wavering light his whole frame looked somehow misshapen; wrong for reasons the eye couldn’t define at that distance. The man’s head was hairless like a fleshless skull. No features were discernible. But he was watching them. Ben knew that much without having to see his eyes.

‘What does he want?’ Chloe whispered, one hand still clutching on to Ben.

The cold was too painful to bear. Her fingers were practically frozen to the torch, its light fluttering uncontrollably. And still the man in the field remained as a statue set deep into the earth, unmoving, his intent towards them unknown.

Ben tried to focus his screwed-up eyes – to extract some detail so that he might identify him from earlier. But in that waning light, he hardly looked human at all; more like some hideous insect that had crawled up from the cold earth. And that silhouette alone was chilling to face down, no matter the distance.

‘What are you doing out there?’ Ben shouted. ‘What do you want?’

The man’s menacing shape remained unchanged, and the icy silence was a solid sheet between them. No cracks, no weaknesses, no sound.

If he had hidden or even come running at them, his reasons for being there would now be known. But to just stand there, watching them. It was more unnerving than any action.

‘We can’t stay out here,’ Ben said, putting his arm around Chloe’s shoulders. ‘We’ll freeze to death.’