Peter ducked back behind the tree. He looked up towards the rocky bluff knowing that his best chance of not being seen was to head down the other side of the hill towards town. But the route was too exposed for him to make it there without being seen now. He flattened his back against the tree trunk and hoped the woman wouldn’t glance round.

He watched.

He waited.

He heard the woman coming up through the woods towards him.

A twig snapped, followed by the sound of footfall creaking through the snow, and the woman passed him. She stopped, with tangles of grey hair falling about her shoulders, and looked up into the night. The cardigan she wore hung long to the back of her knees. The knitted belt had slipped from its hoop and dragged across the ground behind her, weighed down by clumps of frozen earth. Pine needles riddled her hair too. But none of this seemed to bother her. Yet it didn’t even cross Peter’s mind that she would be fatally cold in only a cardigan and jeans until he saw her bare feet.

The remains of her toes were as black as charcoal. Her rotting fingers were no thicker than twigs with bulbous knuckles like the knots of a tree. The woman’s head twisted round into profile as if conjured by some strange calling. It hung low on her neck but alert, watching, with cloudy eyeballs wide as moons. Hunting.

The hairs on the back of Peter’s neck stood. The Restless One’s jaw ground and sagged and ground and sagged, its mouth having greater power to scour the woods than its eyeballs. And he was up here without a staff or Cooper’s scent to protect him. All it took was for one of the group to call out and that thing would turn back in his direction and see him.

Peter dropped to his knees, burrowing his nails into the frozen earth. Perhaps the smell of soil would mask his own scent. But the earth was too hard to break up. Someone in the group laughed. The fire crackled. The Restless One’s eyes swivelled round and Peter took a stone. He threw it. The snow softened its landing and for a moment, he thought it hadn’t been enough to call the Restless One’s attention away. But like an owl to a mouse, it was. The thing’s head twisted round. She blinked. She stumbled on deeper into the woods, jaw wide and clacking.