He pressed his hand to the wound, felt the heat coming off it, and closed his eyes, waiting for the throbbing in his head to die away.

And then he heard it.

A dry rustling sound, like an old man rubbing his hands together, and then a rattling of twigs.

Something was up here with him. Moving about. He opened his eyes and stared into the darkness below one of the windows, sure that that was where he’d heard the sound coming from.

Silence and stillness. Then the sound of claws scraping on wood. There was definitely something there. A patch of darkness that was blacker than the rest. It twitched, flickered, moving jerkily.

Paul held his breath and clutched his knife tighter, his eyes wide, trying to suck in any light.

A rustle and a leathery creak. The black shape grew bigger, rose up. It appeared to be forming itself out of the stuff of shadows, feeding on the darkness. What was it?

He heard a different noise now, rasping breath, almost like a laugh …

‘Get away,’ said Paul, his voice sounding feeble and weak. ‘Get away from here.’

The shape continued to grow, continued to rise, up and up, until finally it showed against the deep blue of the window. A black silhouette. A nasty, bony head, with broken and skeletal wings poking up on either side, so that the head hung down in the middle, making an M shape.

A Boney-M.

Still Paul stared at it, willing it to come into focus, and slowly, slowly the thing emerged out of the darkness. It had a long beak, lined with vicious little teeth that clacked as it opened and closed. It looked like a fossil come to life, one of those weird part-lizard, part-bird, part-fish creatures he’d seen below, crushed and bent out of shape. Like a dead animal you might find squashed in the road. It was dark and greasy, its few feathers glinting in the moonlight. It hopped forward, one black eye fixed on Paul.

‘Get away from me,’ said Paul, sliding backwards on the seat of his trousers across the floor, the knife held out in front of him.

The creature made a sound like someone retching, but didn’t stop. It hobbled on its shattered legs, using its wing tips like walking sticks. And all the while came the rustling and rattling of dry bones.

It opened its beak, an obscene little tongue waggling inside it, wider and wider and wider …

And then it screamed.

Paul put his hands over his ears, trying to block out the noise. It sounded like a hundred voices all shouting at once, a thousand, a million …

There were words in there, babbling, crazy; he tried to focus, to make sense of them, and slowly the voices merged together to become one voice.

‘Don’t be afraid of me,’ it said, harsh and crow-like.

Paul was panting, his chest rising and falling. He stared at the creature.