“Can you tell us more of this monster and of what happened to you that night?”

Tom looked from Miss Goddard to Rose Sladden with a great deal of uncertainty and reluctance. It was clear that the memory frightened him deeply, the anxiety of reliving it clear in his expression. For most, childhood was not a halcyon time of innocence and protection: children worked, they died, they suffered. But whatever this boy had experienced had altered him forever.

“You can talk to them, Tom,” Rose said. “They are friends. And there is another boy who has been taken—one who might not be as lucky as you. We must try to help him if we can, Tom.”

Just then there came a thudding on the wall from the next room.

“My sister, Alice,” Rose told them. “You stay with Tom, Lucy. I will go to her.”

Charlotte took a stool by the range so that she was at eye level with the boy, who even after several days in the care of Miss Goddard was pale and thin, his eyes huge with worry and fear. Charlotte was in no doubt that he had seen something terrible—it was almost as if a reflection of what he had endured was still imprinted within his eyes.

“Your friend William told me that you had been sent to bed as usual,” Emily said, “though it was hard to sleep, for you were all so cold and hungry, but that eventually he must have done so, because he woke to the sound of an old song being sung—a song you all knew of as a warning.”

“We knew the monster had come then,” Tom said. “We’d been taught that by boys who had come before. ‘Just don’t open your eyes,’ they told us. ‘Don’t look, don’t make a sound, don’t breathe and perhaps, if you are lucky, the monster’ll pass you by and take your friend.’”

“Did you look, Tom?” Emily asked him.

“Just a crack,” Tom said. “I just wanted to see.”

“And what did you see?” Emily asked him.