“What are you doing in there?” said Mr Barrington. “Come on, it’s time for bed!”

Mr Barrington was concerned. Last year on this trip to Orwell Farm a pupil had gone missing – for a small amount of time – and he held himself responsible. He was absolutely insistent that this wasn’t going to happen again. So, this time, every night of the week, he’d stayed up to check that all of Year Six had gone into the farmhouse at the end of the day.

Then, after checking the rooms, he’d walked through all the barns and all the animal pens to make sure there were no children not safely in bed. He had felt terrible about that boy – Matthew, was it? Michael? – who had disappeared briefly before. Even if he had turned up safe and sound eventually.

And now – wouldn’t you believe it? – there again appeared to be a boy not in his bed: in the goat pen, in fact. It was quite dark in there, and Mr Barrington was aware that his eyesight was not of the best. It had got worse since last year – and he was tired from doing this every night – but those eyes definitely seemed human. Didn’t they?

Mr Barrington opened the pen gate and went in. Hmm, he thought, looking down – bit muddy to go any further. He squinted into the dark. Yes, those were definitely two eyes, looking at him. Quite large eyes, and he couldn’t quite make out the colour (brown? amber?), but he felt sure it was a boy or girl. It couldn’t possibly have been an animal looking at him that keenly. Those eyes knew who he was, there was no doubt about that.

“Come on now. I know you might think you’ve got into trouble for staying out, but we’ll discuss that in the morning,” said Mr Barrington.

By Mr Barrington’s standards, that was fairly lenient talk. He even said it in what he thought was a gentle, friendly voice. But still, the eyes kept on staring at him.

“Look, I really don’t want to have to come in there and get you,” he said. Which he didn’t. He could feel his nice patent leather shoes – the ones Mrs Barrington said really suited him – sinking into the mud.

He decided to try a different tack.

“Look. We all love the animals. We all want to spend more time with them. This may sound silly, but sometimes, at the end of the day, I look out on the farm, at the sheep and the cows and the horses grazing, and I think, how wonderful it would be to be like them. To be an animal, with no money worries, no books to mark, no difficult pupils to make behave –” Mr Barrington was warming to his theme now, and starting, himself, to believe it – “not a care, really, in the world. It must be a wonderful life. But the truth is …”

He was about to say that the truth was that, obviously, we can’t become animals, just because it looks nice, and because, as humans, we’ll always be curious about how they think. We have to buckle up and get on with our own lives, and right now, that means coming out of the dark and going with me back to the farmhouse!

He was about to say that, very clearly, and he was sure that his speech would bring whoever was hiding in the goat pen out, and then everyone would be accounted for.

What happened instead was that he felt very … very … sleepy. It was late, and he was, as we know, tired. And somehow, while looking at those deep, amber eyes – the ones that seemed to know who he was, and belong to someone who was, clearly, listening and understanding him – that tiredness increased.

So he said:

“… obviously, we can’t … be … com … annii … we … no …”

And that was as far as Mr Barrington got before he fell asleep, face down in the mud.

There was a pause of about ten seconds while the amber eyes watched and blinked. And then K-Pax came out of the dark, sniffed at the head of the strange human – already changing into something furry – and went back into the dark.