When they reached the corner they stopped and flattened themselves against the wall. Jackson wiped her face. Dried her hand on her jeans. Felt a droplet of sweat scurry down her back under her sweatshirt.

‘When I say so we both look round,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll keep close to the edge and shine the torch. You go wide and be ready with your spear.’

She wasn’t sure if Achilleus would accept being told what to do by a girl, but he just nodded and said, ‘OK.’

‘OK.’ Jackson swallowed, her mouth painfully dry. ‘Ready … one … two … three.’

On three they both moved, together, Achilleus going quickly to the centre of the corridor, spear up, tensed and ready for a fight, Jackson keeping tight to the wall.

She had no idea what to expect. All she saw, though, was a rack of shelves fixed to the wall, with thin sheets of metal on them, piled high so that there was only a very narrow space between the shelves. Five, maybe ten centimetres at the most. Not big enough for a human to hide in. She took this all in fast, peering along a gap at head height, her torch beam bouncing off the metal and making strange dancing shapes. She sidestepped, keeping her eyes fixed ahead, and as she did so she caught a glimpse of something on a lower shelf. Out of the corner of her eye. A hint of a hint. She swung the torch beam back. Gone.

But she’d definitely seen something. Something pale. Something alive. She was sure of it. It had been such a brief flash though, that she couldn’t make sense of it. She crouched down and threw more light along the shelf. There was a hurried movement. A quick whip and a wriggle.

‘What are you doing?’ said Achilleus.

‘There was something on the shelves.’

‘What something?’

‘Don’t know. A creature. A face. I definitely felt it was looking at me.’

‘You mean like a rat or something?’

‘No. It was hairless, naked, I don’t know. I didn’t really see it clearly.’

‘A creature?’

‘I’m sure of it. Almost white, with black eyes, set wide apart. Looking at me.’

‘So what was it then?’

‘Like I say, I don’t know, it was like a … It reminded me of something.’

Achilleus came over and looked where she was aiming the beam.

‘There’s nothing there.’

‘There was. It went to the back of the shelves. Look, can you see? There’s an opening there, a hole of some sort.’

‘What’s going on?’

It was Blue. The other kids were coming round the corner to join them now, in ones and twos.

‘Jackson reckons she saw something,’ said Achilleus, poking the point of his spear into the hole. ‘But I reckon she’s imagining it.’