Sarah had welcomed her chat with Maggie. It was a shame that they had grown apart, but it brought it home to her that she wasn’t alone. Her old friend seemed as lonely as she was. Maggie’s once blonde hair now had some slivers of grey, but time had been kind to her, and she was the same warm person Sarah had grown up with. It was tragic, what happened to Lewis. His heroism had made the papers, but it also broke his family apart.

Elliott had surprised her. Elliott, with those eyes so dark and deep they spoke more than words could ever convey. The sight of him wearing his father’s medal was both sweet and comical as he stood in his Gruffalo slippers and too-small jeans. But his warning came with such a sense of magnitude, his concerns beyond those of a seven-year-old boy. Opening her police-issue notebook, Sarah sliced her finger on the page. ‘Bugger,’ she whispered, sucking the paper cut. She needed to commit the words to paper before she forgot.

The Midnight Man is coming, she wrote. The angel is dead. She stared at the page, stained by a drop of her blood. How did the poem go again? She beckoned it from her memory. It had been around for as long as she could remember and was resurrected by local teenagers every Halloween.

If you open your door to the Midnight Man,

Hide with a candle wherever you can.

Try not to scream as he draws near,

Because one of you won’t be leaving here …

Wasn’t there something about staining paper with your blood? she wondered, as the poem repeated in her mind. ‘I guess he’s coming for me now,’ she said on the breath of a sigh. She didn’t believe in silly superstition, but what about Elliott? He had uttered the words as if they were causing him physical pain, then one blink of those full moon eyes and he was gone. It wasn’t just his words that concerned her, it was the cuts on his mother’s arm, the bruises on her collarbone. They hadn’t come from a pet – she had scanned the room for signs. Cats left hairs and Sarah had a good sense of smell. Maggie was more or less a single parent, so it was just her and her son. She mentioned two local girls who babysat for her. Perhaps they had been feeding Elliott creepy stories over Halloween? Sarah exhaled. Of course. Children were like sponges at that age. They were probably messing with him. But the scratches and bruises? She made a mental note to keep an eye on things. She stiffened in her seat as a group of teenagers skateboarded past, whooping and cheering each other on as they raced.