A distant image of them all sat around the campfire on Thursday night flashed across Tom’s racing mind and he saw Mr Stevens smiling and adjusting his glasses with a map balanced on his lap, and in that moment Tom knew that this wasn’t real, of course it wasn’t, he must be hallucinating or still trapped in a nightmare because it just couldn’t be. Blood thumped in his head. Fingernails dug rivets into the flesh beneath his chin. Somewhere deep in his mind, Tom felt something fragile starting to give.

When he opened his eyes again he saw that Mr Stevens’ face had changed.

His mouth was hanging open slightly to reveal sharp needle-like teeth, and his cheeks were slack around his face. The skin was loose around his jaw like a badly fitting mask. Spittle fell from his mouth in thin streams.

The thing Tom noticed most, though – the lasting image that stayed burned into his retina and followed him into the darkness – was Mr Stevens’ eyes.

They’d been brown before, like his son’s, but now they were a muddy yellow. They looked sharp and ancient, like the eyes of an old cat. He was in a nightmare, of course he was. None of this could be real.

Mr Stevens’ grip tightened.

Blood pounded through Tom’s head in hard, thudding heartbeats. He could taste sweat in his mouth.

Somewhere, way off in the distance, he heard Tim continuing to shout and scream.

Tom reached out with his mind, looking for something to hold on to, anything else, and he found the gurgling noise of the stream. He could no longer move his head but he shifted his eyes to the left, away from Mr Stevens’ sagging face and in the direction of the water.

The gurgling of the stream was still there; it would always be there.

The world started to blur and his eyes drifted shut.

News Cuttings (1998–2015)

From the Southampton Daily Star, 8 October 2007

Dog found DECAPITATED in suspected satanic ritual

The gruesome discovery was made by an elderly couple out on their morning walk.

The decapitated and mutilated corpse of a dog was found on Sunday morning in a field beside Southampton’s River Itchen, leading police to look into the possibility of a Satanic cult.

Marla Francis, 73, and Sam Francis, 79, said they made the discovery while going for their weekly stroll along the banks of the river.

‘We were just out walking when Marla saw something lying in the grass a little way off the path,’ Mr Francis told the Daily Star. ‘We thought it was a rabbit or something at first. When Marla walked over to it she dropped her bag and screamed. That’s when I knew something was wrong.’

The dog, which police report was a black labrador, was found with its head missing. Police later recovered the head from a neighbouring field after conducting a search of the area.