Before he could move, the blackness came rushing. It surged at them like a flood wave, a towering, noiseless mass, gobbling up the remaining streetlights, blotting out the sky. As it rolled nearer Alex saw it was made of countless small circular particles, about to engulf them. On instinct, he threw himself down. After a few seconds of nothing else, he risked looking up over the crook of his elbow.

They were inside the roiling black cloud. His grandfather stood over him as the fury fumed around them, pressing close, but somehow not touching them. Alex climbed gingerly to his feet. It was like standing inside a transparent tube on the bed of a seething ocean. None of the raging blackness crossed the salt circle, but it pressed against the invisible boundary as if against glass.

Mesmerized, Alex stepped forward to get a closer look and wished he hadn’t. Each of the myriad circular objects that made up the cloud was a tiny, grotesque head, about the size of a small, rotted apple. And each head was the same: wearing a black hat and entirely swathed in dingy bandages, save for one burning, baleful eye.

As Alex stared, the rotten bandages on the things closest loosened, falling away to reveal yawning, oversized mouths, filled with razor teeth. They snapped like flying piranha just beyond his nose. Repulsed yet fascinated, he lifted a finger to the glass, forgetting there was no glass there. Tiny heads massed hungrily around the spot his finger was moving toward, mouths threshing.

“Alex!” His grandfather knocked his hand down. “Not a good idea to break the circle.” The gnashing mouths frenzied in frustration, then, in a blink, the swarm was gone. Alex and his grandfather stood in weak rain under quietly buzzing streetlights. There was no sign anything had happened at all.

Fresh shock washed over Alex. “What . . . Those heads. That face.”

“How’s that?” His grandfather was scanning the road.

“Heads,” Alex repeated. “Faces . . . His face. M—” He caught himself before he said it aloud. “The tall man.”

“Hmm.” The old man ground his jaw. “I couldn’t really see them, Alex. I saw a lot of murk vibrating, a disturbance. But I’m afraid that was mostly just for you.”

“For me? What was that?”

“Well.” The old man was rooting through his coat pockets. He came out with a single, battered little packet of salt, frowned at it, then put it away. “Couple of possible explanations. Actually, I was wanting a word with you about all this kind of thing, old chap. But first.” He gave Alex a grave look and rested a hand on his shoulder. “I need to ask you something. And you must promise to tell the truth. Promise?”

Alex nodded. He tried to push fear from his mind and focus. His fingers brushed the tin toy in his pocket. Now the time had come, he was apprehensive about confessing he had kept it.