Different shades of darkness mapped out the shape of each weed against the sky. I smelt weeds and soil and fizzing secrets, and looked back across the road at our house. How many steps would it take to reach my bed? Thirty? More? Then it happened.

The air was suddenly hot, as if someone had turned on a gas cooker. Something sizzled. Way above my head in the power lines, there was a humming, as if the electricity inside them wanted out.

A gust of wind rushed straight at me. At the top of the weed-mountain, a small, bright shape swirled in and out of sight. Seconds later, the shape came rippling down the mountain towards me, getting bigger and trailing threads of light. Whizzy!

My hands grabbed for something to hold on to and found a rickety fencepost. My legs were jelly, but I couldn’t run away. Couldn’t miss this.

Whizzy shimmered and twisted silently. Whizzy was ripples and curves of light, in no definite shape at first. My hair lifted. My scalp tingled. A scorched smell rose from the ground. Whizzy pushed through the air, as if the air was as thick as water, and in just another second, Whizzy was closer and much bigger. My heart beat hard.

It was rubbish at staying balanced. Every time the top moved, the rest made a little ripple to get steady again, but when it did, when I finally got a clear look at it, my heart stopped racing quite so fast. My lips curled into a smile and my mouth opened wide in a silent gasp at the total, magnificent, extreme brilliance of it: my wonderful, impossible electrical creature.

Looks like it’s mostly made of white light. Its head curves over in an S-shape like a horse’s, but kind of not. And it has eyes! Shiny discs of the darkest silver anywhere, ever.

A row of quivery semicircular things down its sides ripple like gills the whole time, and there are no arms or legs, just like a seahorse. It’s a bendy, wavy stalk of light with glowing, golden insides that look like they’re silently crackling with electricity—

And it looked at me like I was just as full-on amazing.

Silence. The wires above were quiet now. Every sizzle and buzz had stopped.

That smell again: sour old batteries, burned rubber – the exact smell from the cloakroom walls at the concert. My teeth fizzed and itched like mad. I had to rub my gums. This close, I could see why the eyes shone: they’re like mirrors. You can see things reflected in them. I saw the moon. Clever. Unbelievable.

No mouth under those eyes, though. No mouth at all.