A spit of hot mud dashed Snowball’s heel making him start. Peter gripped the reins, steering him back into a steady walk, when Cooper tapped him on the shoulder. Just ahead, the dull glow of candlelight broke through the grey. The cabin was still some distance away and probably further still given how the boardwalks didn’t form a straight line to any destination. But there was something else at play. Every now and then the lamplight would disappear inside the mist only to reappear again, twinkling much further away.

Peter leaned over the horn of the saddle. “Do you see that? The light’s moving.”

“That can’t be,” said Cooper. “The mist’s just playin’ tricks is all.”

They carried on, the boardwalk at once never seeming to take them any further away or bring them any closer.

They hadn’t got much further when Snowball struck his hoof down sharply across the boards and stopped.

“Easy, boy,” said Peter leaning forward to pat his neck. “Easy does it.”

Steam folded over the boards, handcuffing Snowball’s hooves. But there was nothing there. Peter squeezed both thighs to will him on, but he only whinnied, striking his hoof down with greater force this time.

Cooper jumped down, kneeling with the flat on his hand across the boards. “Pete.”

“What is it?”

“Somethin’s taken up the walk with us.”

“Don’t say that.”

“But it’s true.”

“Maybe it’s just the ground gurgling.”

“Maybe.” But Cooper wasn’t convinced. “The vibrations in the wood are gettin’ strong. We’re being followed.”

Peter craned round and three figures hovered inside the grey. They looked like used matchsticks. There were no limbs to speak of, just sticks with cinder heads perched on crooked necks almost too fragile to support them. It was as if the blackened trees they’d passed yesterday had followed their trail and finally caught up with them. But these weren’t trees, and the shuffling sound their feet made as their twisted forms broke through the mist had haunted Peter’s dreams since he was a child. He rubbed the back of Snowball’s ear to calm him.

The Dead were no longer of any concern to Cooper, though. He didn’t even reach for his machete. He just strolled a little further back along the boardwalk, doffing his Stetson as one traveller might another and made his presence known.

The three figures stopped just short of Cooper. Their faces were quite without features and completely flat now the cartilage of their noses had rotted away. But light glinted inside the inky mulch of their sunken eye sockets. Just as Cooper was looking at them, they were looking back. If you didn’t know any better, you might almost believe they were thinking.