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glare out of that upstairs window. OK, I didn’t believe in the supernatural, but I wasn’t about to stop and argue the point with that. As natural explanations go, it looked pretty vicious.
    So here we wereback at the ploughed field again and me running like a maniac, retracing my steps for all I knew. In other circumstances this could have been a bit boring, but just then that didn’t bother me at all. Especially when I heard another of those cries, only a lot louder this time, and it came not from the path where I’d left it but from the house. Which meant that whatever our two hairy citizens hadbeen calling up could have been drifting nearer all the time, sort of, just about ready to drop in much as I had. Nice thought. A minute or two later and I might have met it on the doorstep – or the windowsill. But I kept on running. When it found nobody in, it might decide to go home the same way – that was my conscious reason, anyhow. I don’t think I could have stopped if I tried.
    What broughtme up was the fence rail, right across the chest, winding me; and I was flailing at it and sobbing for what felt like eternity, till I calmed down enough to realise what it was. I began to feel a bit stupid, then. After all – an old dump like that, half falling down, probably because nobody could afford to restore it …
    I should haverecognised the type. I’d been in enough of them when I workedin architectural salvage, otherwise known as lifting fireplaces, frames, handles and anything else not nailed down. A place like that, and a pair of superstitious loonies – a man could believe anything. The light? That brazier tipping again, probably. Could burn the place down. Shame, that.
    I turned to peer into the dark. And that was when the roof flew off the grim little place, and the lightboiled up from within. Out of the cavity, like a decayed tooth, the glare rose up. A mushroom cloud, almost, and for a moment I thought about green glows and silent, invisible death. There wasn’t any explosion, though, just a crash of timbers; and the sphere of light lifted long and slow, like a balloon, and hung against the blackness. Then I realised it was moving, forward across the fields. Apale globe of light, with something stirring at its heart. An outline – a figure, striding.
    It walked, and the light advanced – but much faster. It strode weightily upon emptiness, maybe fifty feet above the ground; but not upon silence. I could feel every footfall pound through the iron-hard earth beneath, reverberate dully in my roaring ears. Smoke or steam wreathed lazily about it, twistingin the windless air. Did I mention it was coming straight at me?
    Don’t they always?
    I was over that fence in one bunny-hop, sending the rail flying. Then it was along the path, where the banks should be rising – they weren’t. Wrong way! But I barely managed to make myself turn around. Only the thought that something worse might lie ahead made me do it, that and the open ground. At least thebanks were some shelter; but as I reached the crest the slope to my left suddenly glimmered a greasy green, and that smoky globe rose like a hellish moon over the other. I was past, then, chasing my own faint shadow in that pale light, but utterly unable to look around.
    Now I ran like acockroach runs, automatically, with no help from my brain at all. I was in agony, I thought my heart was goingto give up and sit down for a breather on its own; but there was a bend in the path, and trees, and suddenly there were those cottages, with a few lights showing now, and the sign of the dear, sweet, lovely, hospitable inn. I hit the post hard enough to rattle the sign, clinging to it like a sanctuary-seeker to the church knocker and screaming.
    Screaming for Poppy, or meaning to, and I thinkthe police and Jesus Christ may have been in there somewhere too, which is pretty funny, considering. It felt great, here between the houses, with my arms around that wood, solid and real. I