The creatures crept towards them, silent. Oh God, how many this time? Milly couldn’t count them. For a moment she thought they’d keep coming, light or no – rolling through the camp, smothering the fires with their bodies so the rest of the horde could fall on the survivors in the dark. But the creatures halted at the firelight’s edge and settled back into their waiting crouches; shadows danced and rippled in the folds and hollows of their cowls. The flames bowed and wavered in a gust of wind; their robes and hoods of skin billowed. Otherwise they were still as stone.

The creatures were ranked six or seven deep; if not for the fires they’d engulf the camp in seconds. But so far, they held back.

Wind. The roar and gutter of flames. Milly was afraid the fires would be blown out, but the wind dropped and they brightened again. Still the monsters didn’t move.

The heat on the side of her face faded. Milly dared a glance towards the old church grounds: except for a few dully glowing embers, the fire had burned out. More pallid shapes flowed in from either side, closing the gap.

They have now compassed us in our steps: they have set their eyes bowing down to the earth; like as a lion that is greedy of his prey. Milly waited: while they couldn’t venture directly into the firelight, they weren’t short of tricks, but the creatures remained crouching, motionless. She dared hope they might, if capable, be experiencing a glimmer of fear.

The flames dimmed and flared under fresh gusts of wind. Nothing else moved.

Then the things began to moan. It came, at first, from the blackness behind Milly; then the creatures on either side of the camp picked it up, finally those dead ahead.

The sound, neither human nor animal, rose and fell, its pitch shifting apparently at random. It was the howl of lost and wounded things; it was the groaning of things dying, frightened, alone and far from God. It was the wind keening in rocks and trees; it was the grief of all the dead. It was a terrible sound: Milly wanted to flee from it, to cut it off and kill it, but could do neither. Only listen.

The creatures looked different, somehow: Milly moved forwards, closer to the edge of the light.

“Milly –”

“Shurrup, Jones,” she whispered.

The monsters didn’t react. As she reached the perimeter of the lighted area, Milly saw their heads were thrown back, the twin pairs of incisors inside their muzzles splayed outwards as if on hinges. They didn’t pause or even, seemingly, breathe: it was as though they were conduits for a sound that came up from somewhere else – the depths below the peaks and dales, or another, deeper Pit.