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the kitchen window. The women were still making sandwiches. They’d heard nothing from outside yet.
    But what was this spook outside the door?
    Zip pushed Runty aside so he could approach the pale creature. He shone the light full in its face.
    Dear God.
    Runty made stupid groaning noises. The idiot was scared half to death.
    Borderline-psychotic Zip Pearson wasn’t scared. Once, when a skinhead had stabbed him in the neck he’d only laughed. Zip got ready to punch the monster.
    That’s what it is, isn’t it? A bog-ugly monster.
Zip wasn’t afraid. He was excited.
    A man stood there. Shreds of fabric passed for clothes. They hung in strips from his shoulders. His skin held a peculiar blue-white tint. The veins in his neck revealed themselves as black lines, almost as if a bizarre road map had been tattooed there.
    There wasn’t a single hair on the creature’s bald scalp. Most striking were the eyes. They were white. The same white as the flesh of a boiled egg. In the centre of each eye, a black pupil. A tiny black dot like a punctuation mark against a white page.
    The man didn’t move. He simply stood there straight as a soldier, guarding the door. The pinpoint eyes did nothing but stare forwards.
    ‘No . . . no . . .’ Runty whimpered. He backed away along the path towards the stone archway. Runty wasn’t sticking around.
    ‘I like you,’ Zip murmured to the creature. ‘You look cool.’ His psychotic condition suddenly erupted. Zip pushed the figure. The bare chest felt as cold as raw beef taken from the fridge. The skin was wet.
    ‘You were born too beautiful.’ Zip grinned. ‘Want to take me on?’
    There was no response from the stark, blue-white man. Zip pushed harder. The figure staggered backwards. Zip nearly whooped with excitement. He grabbed hold of the bony shoulders and threw the spook into the bushes.
    ‘Runty. Come back. It can’t hurt you.’ He chuckled. ‘The pasty bastard’s weak as gnat jizz.’
    ‘I’m not staying here,’ hissed Runty from the archway. ‘There’s something wrong with the place.’
    Zip turned round. Two more figures stood on the path between him and the house.
    Spooky buggers. They’d just appeared there.
    So what . . .? They’re pushovers. Easy pushovers.
    Zip approached the two figures, which were identical to one another. They
were
easy pushovers. He shoved them over into the bushes to prove it. There they lay like oversized Halloween dolls. Their white eyes, which were centred with the fierce black pupil, stared up at him.
    ‘Runty,’ he called, ‘they can’t hurt you.’
    He shone the flashlight along the path, catching a glimpse of Runty’s feet. They seemed to flicker he was running so fast. Chicken-shit coward.
    Quickly, he shot a glance at the kitchen window. The beautiful blonde stared out through the glass. So strange . . . it was one of those sleepwalk stares. A trance state. She didn’t move a muscle. The fact that there were intruders, and ghostly statue men, just outside her house didn’t attract her attention at all.
    Somewhere in the distance Runty screamed. A full-blooded scream of pain, terror, despair . . .
    Death was in that scream. Death ran through it like an electric current runs through a wire. Runty was gone.
    ‘Cool.’ Zip smiled; this place was more interesting than he anticipated. He walked purposefully towards the cottage. A plan took shape: kick in the door, tie up the women, and then let the good times rip.
    Only, the path to the door had been blocked again. This time it wasn’t a white dummy spook. What blocked the way couldn’t be pushed over.
    Zip shone the flashlight on the huge mound that rose out of the shadows.
    A moving mound. A hissing mound.
    And at that moment he wondered if the psychiatrists had been right all along. That he, Zip Pearson, couldn’t tell the difference between reality and dreams.
    Because this was a living nightmare.
    The mound’s surface undulated. There was a Mexican wave kind of ripple