While Madeleine’s faith hadn’t stopped the creatures, blind or not they’d had no trouble recognising its temple and taken great pleasure trashing it: there were divots and cracks in the church’s stonework where gravestones had been uprooted and smashed against it. Ellie had seen less inviting sights than the building’s dim interior, but not many: later she might check it out, but only if time permitted – there was enough work to do already, and only so many hours of daylight. But first she’d keep her promise to Madeleine Lowe.

From the outside, the Vicarage was in a better state than the church, the only damage being the now-familiar pattern of missing doors and windows and the gīml marking. Inside, though, the destruction was greater. As Ellie had expected, anything of a vaguely technological nature lay smashed and heaped up in the living room, but also every book the creatures could find downstairs had been torn to pieces. Some were cheap paperbacks, the kind Madeleine devoured, but the majority were religious in tone or related to local history and folklore. If Ellie remembered rightly, though, most of Madeleine’s books were in her study.

She searched the ground floor of the Vicarage, calling for the dogs but hearing no response, then went upstairs. On the half-landing where the staircase angled round lay a dark heap: Shona, the big Labrador. The old girl’s eyes were open and glazed; Ellie sat beside her and rested her hand on her head, stroking the cold neck and withers. All she could think of was how grey Shona’s muzzle was. Madeleine had had the Labrador as long as Ellie could remember, but all the vicar’s dogs were rescues. No telling how long it had taken Shona to find a home.

It wasn’t right to leave her on the stairs. Ellie gathered Shona up in her arms. She couldn’t see any wounds, but the bitch’s head lolled with a horrible limpness. A broken neck, most likely: hopefully quick and painless, though there was no saying what the preceding minutes had been like as the creatures had swarmed into the house.

Ellie laid Shona down on the landing; she’d decide what to do about her later. Stupid, really, with so many people gone. But this was the only corpse she’d seen the attackers leave. And whatever you’d seen, there was always something about cruelty to animals.

Ellie called out again, aware she sounded choked. She thought she heard a whimper from Madeleine’s study. It did no harm to look.