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.

Joda hadn’t made a sound of his own since seeing the first creature outside his window; shock and disbelief had made him speechless. But his silence ended now, and he was shocked how high and shrill his cry of revulsion was. He lashed out with the cue and kicked down at whatever was below him for good measure, not looking back for fear of what he’d see crawling behind him like an immense pallid spider.

Cue in hand, he went up the stairs on all fours – like a spider, like a dog. Like a bug, fleeing a boot that wanted to crush it. No. He had to be a man – stand straight and face the Devil. That was his job.

Joda reached the top of the stairs, clutched a newel post and stood. Barbara. Charlotte. He had to protect them.

Glass was breaking upstairs too.

Something was coming up the stairs behind him.

His wife’s room, or his daughter’s? He couldn’t be in both at once.