Nick set Sam down and held him upright with one hand. He raised his other hand above his head. The sun came out from behind a cloud and shone onto the blade, the sharpened edge glinting like liquid fire.

“I’m going to cut your little pig’s head off,” Nick said with relish.

He paused. Licked his dry lips. He didn’t want to rush this.

This boy had caused him a lot of trouble. He wanted to see the fear and pain in his eyes before he finished it. He wanted the brat to know full well what was about to happen to him.

The boy’s eyes were satisfyingly wide. There was a look of horror in them that pleased Nick. They were fixed on his knife, as they should be.

No. Wait a second. Something was wrong. The boy wasn’t looking at the knife at all. He was looking at something else. His eyes had flicked down and appeared to be looking at Nick’s hand.

Nick frowned and looked up.

A rash of spots was spreading across his skin; already one or two had swollen into fat blisters. His throat went tight. He could do nothing but stare, mesmerized.

He should never have come out into the sunlight.

Sam couldn’t tear his eyes away, either. It was like watching a piece of food in a microwave. Nick seemed to be cooking in front of him. Another crop of blisters and boils blossomed from the knuckles, as his fingers swelled up like bloated slugs.

Nick moaned. The knife was wobbling in his grip, his puffed-up hand no longer able to keep hold of it. He dropped it, and it fell to the pavement with a clatter.

“Look what you’ve done,” he said in a strangled voice, and Sam looked at his face. The skin there was erupting too. Pearly boils were spreading from one ear across his cheek. His lips were growing fat, like sausages in a frying pan, the skin tightening then bursting.

It was as if all the evil inside Nick were erupting, forcing its way out of his body. The boils began to pop one by one, leaking blood and pus down his face. His eyes were swelling too, the blood vessels showing dark red. They bulged out of his face. Sam could imagine that someone had stuck a bicycle pump in Nick’s ear and was inflating his whole head.

Then Sam had to look away as the eyes burst.

Nick let go of Sam and put his hands up to cover the wounds. He opened his mouth wide to scream, but Sam saw that it was filled with swellings and lumps and ulcers, his tongue a fat warty toad-thing, forcing its way out from between his teeth. His throat was completely blocked, so that he could neither breathe nor speak.