I had been dreaming, running through the streets of Edinburgh, my dress aflame, and yet the fire did not warm me and then I was on the ridge, with Skelthsea below, a ruin of ashes. Only the headstones in the graveyard jutted from the scorched earth. A crow, huddled on Hettie’s plot, regarded me with a preternatural gaze and opened its beak.

It was not song that fell from its throat but a whistle that soured and sickened on the air and wound like a shadow over the island.

I was awake then with the heaviness of dread across my chest. A dream, I told myself, but then I heard it, that thin note which shrank the marrow in my bones. Not the wind, my mind whispered, something else.

I jerked to sitting, dazed momentarily by the multiple yellow hearts of the candles. The room was empty although the flames twitched, sending shapes sprawling to the walls.

But the room was not as it had been when I had taken to my bed. Upon the dresser, someone had placed two figures. Leaning against my brush set, they appeared to be standing: dolls, such as the ones I had already found. I stared unbelievingly. One, I recognized as the object that had been in my drawer, but now it was dressed, its jointed arms flat to the side, red hair glued to its scalp and a face painted upon it. Next to that was another – its head chalked white and in boys’ garments. They were grotesque – repugnant. My thoughts were still half in my dreams and I did not want to get up to investigate, did not want to take a step further into the reality of what I was witnessing. With the darkness behind them they could have been standing unaided and the waking part of me began to pulse with horror.

I shrank beneath the covers and then the female figure, blown by wind or too uncertainly balanced, fell forward and toppled to the floor. I jolted and, as distinctly as if it was beside me, there was a sigh.

I leapt up and searched but found no culprit, no Mary or Greer, hidden in my room to play a night-time trick.

I forced myself to lay them upon the bed. Just dolls, I said, but part of my mind had become detached from rationale and I was back in a place of numb distortion. The faces stared back at me, two sets of inanimate eyes, but in spite of their vacancy I felt observed and I locked them in my dresser with disgust.