His mother and father clung to each other. Another sharp fork of lightning ripped through the clouds, illuminating everything for a brief and appalling second, before the thunder rolled around once more. The boat was pitching about on a wave as if it were nothing but a piece of flotsam.

The storm had come from nowhere. Nothing had detected it. No instrument was able to sense its coming.

A familiar blackness spread through Tom’s mind. Above him in the clouds was a force, malign and ancient. Tom recognised it. In the centre of the storm was a black, swirling disc.

This was the storm. This was what was controlling the weather. This was what had caused everything and the death of his parents.

It was Jack. His ancestor, James Swinton.

The force of the realisation hit him harder than a wave. Battered, he knelt, water sluicing over him, rain slashing at him, his parents now clinging for their lives to the mast. His father was trying to put a lifejacket on his mother. He pulled it over her, and they kissed. She helped him on with his own and tightened the straps.

‘We’ll get through this.’

‘Tommy. What if we don’t …?’

‘He’ll know we loved him.’

James Swinton had made the storm.

There was a terrible creaking noise, and the boat was suddenly overturned, and Tom was plunged into the freezing depths of the ocean.

He saw, falling, their orange lifejackets, the bodies of his parents, and a terrible sadness overcame him. The storm plunged them deep down into the ocean, further than they should have gone. Dark shapes flowed and surged around them.

He fell with them.

He should stay here, with them, be with them as they died. He did not need to live. What point was there?

Another voice in his mind countered this.

No, it said. Don’t let him win. This is what he wants. He wants you to give in to despair.

The grief slowly changed into anger.

He realised that he could move. His parents were floating back up to the surface, drowned within seconds. He wanted to throw himself at them. But he knew it would make no difference. He had something else to face now.

With a great effort, he pulled himself to the surface and saw above him the centre of the storm, radiating out from a black disc that he knew was an emanation of James Swinton.

He was shivering, with fear, cold and grief. A wave engulfed him, and he swallowed some seawater, gasping for air.

It’s not real, he told himself. It’s not real. It’s his mind that’s making this happen. It was James Swinton making him believe that he was cold. James Swinton making him believe that he was trapped.

Experimentally, as he trod water, he imagined warmth spreading through his body.