Dawn was approaching and my life had taken a surreal turn. Bracing myself against the biting wind, I replayed last night’s events. The build-up, the anticipation. The careful attention to detail. A part of me couldn’t believe that I had gone through with it. Then again, this had been no random murder. There had been months of preparation, and the house guests were willing participants in my game. But when it came to Angelica’s final moments, I was rash and impetuous. The knife had cut through her flesh like butter. I had underestimated my own strength.

I sucked cold air between my teeth as I relived each moment: the smell of the woodlands, her chest hitching, wrists taut against rope. Then the sudden spray of blood. Spitting at the taste of warm iron. I’d watched the true crime dramas, where presenters talked about the ‘mind of a killer’. I was no psychopath, but when it came to Angelica’s last moments, all I felt was numb. There was much more to this than ridding the world of some silly little teenager who was out to impress her friends. She would have hated to know it, but Angelica was nothing but a pawn.

I craned my neck upwards, taking in every facet of the gothic ruin. I’d heard the rumours about how Blackhall Manor was a cursed house in an equally cursed town. Had it spoken in a whisper that only Mr Middleton could hear? In the end, the man had lost his mind and turned his gun on himself. But not me. It was my turn and I would play the game to completion.

I took the scrub path towards the dilapidated house, despite every instinct urging me to leave. Soon the place would be infested with police, but I was in its magnetic pull. I was not the only one drawn here; the place was teeming with life, from the rooks perching on the guttering to the insects burrowing in the wood.

The air felt heavier in the hall, thick with the stench of bat droppings. The devil’s songbirds, my mother called them. They hung from the rotting rafters, seeking shelter in the shadows from the unforgiving chill of the November winds. I lifted my sleeve to check my watch. I shouldn’t be here. But so what, if the police came? I knew the crawlspaces; the network of veins running through Blackhall’s fractured skeleton. Slowly, over the course of my visits, the Manor had revealed itself to me. Then it gave me the gift of the Midnight Game, and the schoolgirls who were gullible enough to accept my invitation. And so, I stepped into the shoes of the Midnight Man.