The skull of a deer, with its two branching antlers, was set on a table beside the window. The hollow eye sockets, that had once borne down over Cooper, gazed up at the ceiling. But without a face behind it, the mask was stripped of menace. There, surrounded by empty beer bottles and scrunched-up napkins, it was nothing but part of a uniform, no different from any other kind of helmet set aside after a hard day’s work.

Peter looked back up the road towards the trees, unsure whether to follow Cooper any further, when the square of yellow light on the sidewalk went out. He looked back towards the window. The room was dark. The mask had gone.

Footsteps struck the staircase leading down to the front door. Steady. One by one. In no hurry, but deliberate, like they had every confidence the things they hunted would allow themselves to be caught.

The door opened and the Ghost Ranger stepped out from the darkness of the doorway, the skull’s sockets at once alive with the hunt. The skull turned on a fluid neck without once moving the shoulders and looked out towards the foothills. But the Ranger didn’t step forward. The skull turned back, holding Peter’s gaze for the first time. The Ghost Ranger knew the things that brought him out here. He knew the things that kept him awake at night. The same things as kept him awake.

Peter glanced down. He was only wearing his pyjamas beneath his coat, but he had to get to Timberdark first. The deer’s empty eye sockets held firm. Without skin or muscle to form eyelids, there was nothing but that singular cold glare. It watched. It waited. It held for the longest time, goading Peter into the chase. And it worked.

Peter ran. He made it to the last of the streetlamps at the top of Mainstreet where he stopped. He held back, watching the snow fall like gold dust within the circle of light at his feet, finding comfort in its perimeter and fear in the blue of the night outside of it. He turned his head towards his shoulder. But he didn’t look back. He knew the Ghost Ranger was still standing there, so he stepped out of the light and, with nothing but the creak of snow beneath his feet, walked on.