Nicky continued along the hall. Both the living room and dining room appeared to be empty, and she stopped at the threshold of the kitchen.

‘Melissa? Are you in here?’

The kitchen went further back than Nicky had anticipated. The room seemed bigger than the rest of the downstairs combined, and Nicky’s torch beam barely penetrated to the furthest wall. Unlike the living room and dining room, the kitchen was cluttered with old furniture: a table, overturned chairs, and another mattress propped against one of the walls, not to mention the kitchen cabinets themselves. It was an obstacle course, in other words – and the perfect place for someone to hide.

‘Melissa, I—’

Abruptly, Nicky’s phone started ringing. The chime shattered the heavy silence, and Nicky was so startled that the phone slipped from her hand. She fumbled to catch it, and as she did so, everything seemed to happen at once. There was a noise, like a piece of furniture being shoved to one side, and then movement in the corner of Nicky’s eye. A shadow darted towards her. It seemed to grow as it closed in, and dimly she realised it was a figure raising something above their head.

‘Melissa, wait—’ Nicky started to say, but she was too late even to lift an arm. Something heavy struck her on the temple. She’d shifted at the last second, lessening most of the impact, but still the blow rattled her skull. She staggered, dazed, and her legs buckled beneath her. Her phone clattered off to one side, leaving the torch beam jutting uselessly towards the ceiling. On her hands and knees, she tried to crawl, but something grabbed her leg and pulled her round, and she found herself staring blearily towards the torch beam. And then the darkness seemed to envelop her, and a pair of hands closed around her neck.

Ben – May 1997

(One week before his death)

Ben crouched nervously in the shadows of the staircase. His eyes swept the entrance hall, from the arched window over the doors, aglow with moonlight, to the huge wooden engraving of the school’s coat of arms directly above him. It was the same coat of arms that appeared on his blazer, and it always gave Ben the creeps. On one side of the image there was a bird, which Ben had heard from somewhere was supposed to be a dove, but to his mind looked more like a crow. Its single dead eye stared out coldly. Facing the bird, there was a snake. It was coiled around a tower, which Ben had always presumed represented the school, and the snake appeared to be laughing as it squeezed.