Vapour was coming from man and boy’s breath now as the room fell below freezing. Calvin Bitterhand was almost there, jumping over the broken fencing that half-surrounded the paddock and running through the thistles that stood sentinel over a long-forgotten driveway. Sam’s spirit saw it all at the same time, his mind taking in every movement and detail. Even a mouse rustling beneath a crate in the kitchen was observed by this roaming probe that was his mind. He could see it foraging for food on the garbage-strewn floorboards. Calvin’s mind touched his again, calling for his attention.

‘You must look, Sam. Look and remember.’

The room was changing in more than temperature. Something was growing there invisibly. On Moses’s face there was a look of triumph as his eyes grew wide and the amulet dropped from his teeth, swinging back down to rest against his collarbone. Moses was changing too. Subtly at first and then faster as all the watchers, flesh and spirit gazed on.

Sam’s spirit saw his own sixteen-year-old body sway and waver as if it seemed to be undergoing some kind of internal physical punishment, and he wanted to reach out to himself and give his young image comfort. Not possible.

But Moses.

What was happening to Moses was too horrible to behold.

The thing that had been Moses was now huge, terrible, crawling with its own degeneration and venom. And its power was beyond measure, filling the room like a yeast growing. The boy was screaming, his body pressed against the plasterboard wall, and his breath panted from his mouth in freezing clouds of vapour.

And then as the young Sam slid to the floor unconscious, the thing started its business, the business that Sam’s spirit was here to witness, and yet still could not. His mind recoiled from the vision so violently that he catapulted his thoughts away from the cabin and sent them hurtling up into the mountains that looked down on the small wooden structure containing such profanity.

But he had seen it. That which he had helped to call without purpose or permission. Seen it and remembered.

Sam’s eyes rolled in the back of his sockets and his head fell forward on his breast. He sat like that for minutes until he realized he was looking with his eyes instead of his mind, and was seeing glowing embers. The red-and-blue life that was still playing over the burning wood, comforted him with the vividness of its colours in this great darkness that surrounded him.