He knew the way by road. Sort of. Mom had driven him and Jess up there to the viewing platform plenty of times in the summer. But it was miles and miles by road. It would be quicker just following the rail tracks out of town. That way you went right through the middle of the forest instead of skirting way round it.

But now in the middle of that dark black forest, with the dawn just creeping into the snow-laden sky, all the exhilaration was gone. Billy was just scared.

There were animals or birds rustling from time to time in the thick deadfall and he knew he was being watched by eyes that were not human. But it was something worse than that. He could feel the dark thing near by. It felt different though. Almost like it was just a bit of the dark thing, instead of the whole monstrous mass he’d seen inside his father that night. It was as if the dark thing had split into bits, like it needed to be in lots of places at once.

The bit that was near him felt much weaker, much smaller, than when it was one thing. But it was still frightening him.

And as the light grew stronger and his fear increased, it did what he feared the most.

The air around his head seemed to shift, as though a door in a room had been opened, and as Billy stopped walking, staring into the gloom with glistening unblinking eyes, something started to appear in front of him on the tracks.

Like mist rising off the river, it was spiralling up from the snow. But it was black filthy mist, and it seemed like it was trying to look like his father. Billy’s heart stood still as the curls of black badness tried to cover themselves with a layer of flesh. Trying to look like a human. It was horrible. Bits of a face floated over the clouds of moving blackness, then arms tried to appear, the hand reaching threateningly for Billy. His father’s face very nearly came together in one tiny glimpse, mouthing something angrily at him, but it broke up again, the way smoke parts and regroups when a fast car drives through.

He had closed his eyes then and remembered what Eagle Robe told him.

I see nothing because you are nothing, he’d said in a shaky voice. And when his eyes opened again there was only the faintest trace of badness left, wisping between the snowflakes like smoke.

Billy exhaled through his teeth and pulled his fleece jacket tighter around him. He’d been roasting in it only minutes ago from the march along these endless tracks, even though its bobbly fleece was coated in a thick layer of sticky snow. Now, he was freezing.