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launched itself towards me.
    There was a thud and the letterbox flapped open. My fingers were too cold and my hands were shaking too badly for me to work the lock. It took four or five attempts before I managed to slide the snib closed. Outside, the screecher gnashed and snarled as it hurled itself against the door.
    Turning and running for the stairs, I took them two at a time until I reached the top. One of the doors on the upper landing was in pieces. The body of the screecher that had once been Billy’s cousin lay just beyond it. Gusts of icy wind blew in through the room’s broken window.
    I picked another door and found myself in a small bathroom. The light switch was outside the room. I flicked it on as I ran past, and slammed the door behind me.
    Either the screecher was no longer hammering on the front door, or I was too far away to hear it. I put my ear close to the bathroom door and listened for any sign of the thing.
    Nothing. There was only silence in the house.
    I crossed to the toilet, closed the lid, and sat down. I had to figure out what to do next. I realised quite quickly that the list of options wasn’t long.
    With Joseph dead, Billy missing and Ameena working against me, there was no one to help me. For the first time since all this had happened I was truly on my own.
    I forced myself to focus on the problems one at a time. All the villagers were mutating into monsters. That was a biggie. More than that, though, the barrier between the real world and the Darkest Corners was almost gone. If I used my abilities again it might collapse completely, letting the horrors of that world flood fully into this one.
    Billy was gone, taken to… where? I had no idea. But his stitched-up lips and the sudden appearance of the hospital porter had me convinced that Doc Mortis was not only alive, but somewhere close by.
    And then there was Ameena. Ameena, the girl I’d thought of as my best friend, my only friend. Ameena, who I thought would always have my back, no matter what horrors we were facing.
    Ameena, who had been playing me like an idiot right from the very start.
    I bent forward, letting my head rest on my hands. When I thought back, dozens of niggling little doubts swam through my mind. My dad was right, I’d had suspicions about Ameena from early on, but had ignored them because I was too scared to go on without her. Too scared to do anything without her there beside me.
    And now she wasn’t there. And I was terrified.
    So, to recap – everyone I loved was dead; the world was on the brink of disaster, and I was almost certainly to blame; the one person I thought I could trust was now my enemy; and Billy, the enemy who had become a friend, had been snatched away.
    Oh, and I was locked in a bathroom with monsters roaming outside. But hey, at least it couldn’t get any worse.
    I regretted that last thought the moment it popped into my head. What had I said in the tower earlier? It could always get worse.
    There was a click from the hall outside and the light above me went out, plunging the bathroom into darkness. I held my breath and listened for movement outside the door, but the next sound I heard came from right there in the bathroom with me.
    It was a giggle, like the one I had recognised earlier. It came from over on my right. I stood up. My eyes were adjusting to the gloom, allowing me to make out a figure standing in the bath, half hidden by a plastic shower curtain.
    My throat went dry. Even in the dark, I recognised the outline. Terror cut through me like a knife blade as a voice came in a scratchy sing-song whisper.
    â€˜Peek-a-boo. I seeeee you!’

I didn’t dare move, didn’t dare breathe, didn’t dare tear my eyes away from the small, frail-looking girl who stood in the bath.
    Her white, Victorian-style dress was spattered with blood. Her eyes, ringed clumsily with eye shadow, peered out through a curtain of lank hair. A smear of red lipstick bled