Ben had zoned out. He was staring past her. Memories of the village rallied under the moonlight. Chloe’s suburban dead end – with its concrete, symmetry, and artificial light – couldn’t have felt any farther from Tír Mallacht. Here there was comfort and security. Her house wasn’t exactly palatial but the rent probably didn’t leave too deep a dent in her pocket. And it seemed to abide by the classic all mod cons included mantra. There weren’t many modern conveniences two hundred years ago, and there certainly weren’t any in Tír Mallacht now. What if Sparling had been right after all?

Chloe was still stood where she was, primed to drag the other curtain into place. Outside, all was calm like an abandoned cemetery with mausoleums the size of houses. The last drops of rain had dried. The wind had given up its chase, or else it had simply run out of breath. Even thinking about the miles they had walked was enough to dim the light behind Ben’s eyes.

Chloe’s fingers suddenly tensed around the curtain’s cloth, as if something had caught her eye on the street. She snapped it closed and staggered backwards, both hands searching blindly for the couch.

‘Ben,’ she tried to call out, but the word came no louder than a whisper.

He was slumped over the backrest, eyes finally at rest. His revival was slow, like an old fluorescent light flickering into uncertain action. Chloe’s fingers clinched around his shoulder bone.

‘Ben,’ she repeated, shaking him awake. ‘Ben, please.’

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, sitting back.

‘He’s outside.’

Ben rose to his feet, head spilling with sleep. He looked to her – to the whitest eyes he had ever seen, so flushed with fear that he knew who had to be responsible.

‘That’s not possible,’ he said disbelievingly.

Chloe had to be mistaken. Whoever she had seen was probably just a neighbour out for an evening stroll. Ben rounded the couch and approached the window. Chloe stayed back. She stared at the curtains, seeing past them, to the impossible sight seared into her mind.

‘What does he want?’ she asked. ‘Why did he follow us?’

‘It can’t be the same person, Chloe. How would he even get here?’

‘Open it,’ she said, taking a timorous step forward. ‘See him for yourself, if you don’t believe me.’

Ben threw the curtains open with a sharp wrench of his arm.

There, in the centre of the street, not forty yards away – his scrawny black shape illumed in orange light, as still and sinister as the night before – was the man from the far field. In the shadows that fell by his face, Ben could feel the eyes that had all the while been watching them.

‘No,’ he whispered. ‘That’s impossible.’

It was the same man.