The front door was struck again; another, answering crash sounded from the rear of the building.

They were behind the pub, too: of course they were. The Bell was surrounded. They’d be at every entrance, trying to get in. He saw those long thin fingers crawling up the outside walls like the spiders they resembled, drawing the rest of the creatures after them, to the bedroom windows – his and Barbara’s window, Charlotte’s –

Behind Joda glass shattered, and the wind blew into the snug. The first creature had driven a hand through the window; it groped over the wall and then across the floor, on the end of an impossibly long, thin arm.

Joda stepped forward, raising the cue to strike, but another window burst inwards as a second intruder drove both arms and its head through.

More blows struck the front door, getting louder and faster. Before it had sounded as though one intruder was flinging itself bodily against the door; now it sounded like several. By the time the third window shattered it sounded like a machine-gun, and Joda heard the wood begin to crack.

The first two intruders already had their arms and upper bodies inside the snug; their arachnoid hands crawled across the walls and sank into them, dragging the rest of their pale, bony bodies through. The third intruder thrashed and writhed, caught on the broken glass. Pointed shards snapped off as it struggled, but if they cut it, it didn’t bleed, and nor did any pain it felt deter it. As a fourth window broke, a final blow cracked the oak door vertically down its centre, top to bottom. The intruders’ long limbs spread out across the snug and they advanced, those jerky robotic movements accelerating so that their crawl became a spiderlike scuttle. Their heads swivelled in short arcs. They were searching.

He couldn’t fight this – not here, at least. But he had to believe there was some defence against them. Barbara deserved to die quietly in her bed. And there was Charlotte. His child. The future.

He fell back towards the stairs. More glass shattered at the rear of the building, and more wood splintered. The back door was giving way.

The intruders were breaking through on every side. Why? What had he done? What had been their offence? But how many millions had asked that since time began, without any answer?

Joda stumbled over the chain at the bottom of the stairs. He fell, sprawling, dropping the cue. Things slithered and scuttled over the worn carpeting of the snug.

The cue – he needed the cue. Had to be able to defend his family. However hopeless the fight, he had to try. Joda clawed across the stair carpeting, reached down and found the cue. As he grasped it, something long and thin brushed his hand.