Spatley closed his eyes tightly, opened them again, and the figure was still there. It slowly and carefully pulled its knees out of the door to kneel on the seat; that mask of a face was looking at him, the razor raised so that the blade was a line in his gaze, the other hand resting on the upholstery. Its meniscus method of entry sealed behind it and now it was entirely in the car with him. Its posture was that of a dancer, of someone playing a part in a mime show. Spatley grasped that feeling desperately to himself – that whatever else this was, there must be a person inside there. He still couldn’t make himself demand that Tunstall see it. ‘I … I…’ Even trying to talk to it felt terrible, as if he was making it real by acknowledging it. ‘What do you want?’ he asked, as quietly as he could. ‘Who are—?’

It leaped at him.

He flung up a hand to protect himself, but the hardest punch he’d ever felt hit him in his neck. He screamed at the force of it and threw himself forward to fight. But, as he moved, he realized that something wasn’t right in his throat. Okay, he was injured. He got his fingers to the mask. He tried to prise it from the thing’s face. His other hand grabbed the hand with the razor, but it was as if he was trying to force his fingers into the cracks of a wall. He suddenly felt how huge this thing was, how strong. How … old. The razor hand wasn’t yet moving, but – his throat … he had to look down. Blood was somehow now flowing freely down his chest. He felt the weakness of the blood loss in that moment, the darkness thundering into his head, as if he was suddenly up a mountain and needed desperately to breathe. He tried and couldn’t. The hand wrenched itself out of his weak baby grip. That hard pointed punch landed again, now in his torso. In that moment, Spatley knew he was terribly wounded, knew that the second blow had punctured something far inside him.

Michael Spatley bellowed with pain. Instead of sound, what burst from his throat was a deluge of blood.

*   *   *

Brian Tunstall looked round at the sudden sound from behind him. In the back seat, Spatley was thrashing around. It was just him in there. It took the driver a moment to take in what he was seeing, to be sure there was nobody else in the car. ‘Medical emergency,’ he shouted into his headset. ‘Ambulance required on scene.’ He was unclipping his seatbelt as he said it, turning to – to do what, exactly?