I hear the siren just as I’m going over the stile into the field at the back of Shirley’s house. It sounds like it’s coming up the road into the village, and I wonder briefly if it’s the same police car (or fire engine or ambulance) I heard earlier or a different one. The siren I heard before was also coming up the road, so unless that police car (or fire engine or ambulance) had gone back down the road with its siren off, I think this is probably a different one. And as I start struggling up and across the field to my left, heading for the backs of the houses, I also wonder (just as briefly) if either siren has anything to do with Mum or Shirley or me.

It’s possible, I guess . . .

It’s possible.

But that’s as far as I can go with it. I feel so dead now, physically and mentally, that the only thing I can think about — the only thing I have to think about — is the exhausting and agonizing (and at times seemingly impossible) process of walking. Every single step has become a grueling trial of body and mind, and with every single step the trial’s getting harder and harder.

I keep going . . .

You can take one more step, can’t you? Just one more . . . ?

What’s the point?

Just try it, okay? For me.

Keep trying . . .

See? That wasn’t so difficult, was it?

It was just one step.

They’re all just one step . . .

I don’t know how long it’s been since the siren went quiet, and I have no idea if it faded away into the distance or stopped suddenly. All I know is that after a while — a minute? two minutes? — I realize it’s not there anymore. And at the same time I also realize that I’m not walking across the field anymore. I’ve reached the rickety old fence that separates Shirley’s backyard from the field, and (as far as I can tell) I’m just standing there, staring vacantly at nothing.

I close my eyes for a moment, take a breath, then open them again.

The fence isn’t solid, it’s the kind with upright posts joined together with horizontal timbers, so it’s not blocking my view of the backyard or the back of the house, and although I’ve never seen either from this side of the fence before, there’s no question that this is Shirley’s house. There’s not much light coming from it — the curtains are closed — and I don’t seem to have the flashlight from the hillbilly’s rifle anymore (I must have dropped it somewhere), but there’s enough light coming from the houses to the right of Shirley’s to let me see all I need to see. The ramshackle greenhouse, the little patio area in front of the window, the path that runs down the side of the house to a wrought-iron gate . . . I’ve seen them all before. And even if I didn’t recognize them, I’d still know this was Shirley’s house because it’s the last one in the row — or the first one if you’re coming into the village — and I can see from here that there isn’t another house to the left of it.

I’m still feeling nothing but deadness as I hobble up to the fence — no relief that I’m finally here, no curiosity about what I might find, no joy at the prospect of seeing Mum again . . .

Nothing.

I’m not even scared anymore.

Just dead.

It’s as if all the alarm circuits and fear mechanisms in my brain have been overloaded to such an extent that they’ve either crashed under the pressure, or they’ve automatically shut themselves down to avoid crashing under the pressure. I can still feel the big hole inside me where the fear should be, but it’s empty now, just a hollow black chamber . . . a cave, a nothingness. The fear’s gone, along with everything else I once had, and it’s left me dead to the world.

Which is why, when a glint of light from Shirley’s back window catches my eye, and I look over and see the edge of the curtain being pulled back, and a moment later the face of a nightmarish Santa Claus peers out . . .

I’m not scared.

I know I should be, because ever since that time in town when the monstrous Santa frightened me so much that I wet myself, I’ve been absolutely terrified of them.

But now . . . ?

I’m dead.

Everything’s gone.

The moment I see the Santa looking out of Shirley’s back window, I immediately move to my left and take cover behind a tree at the end of the fence. I stay there for a while, maybe thirty seconds or so, keeping myself out of sight as I try to figure out what the hell’s going on, and then — having failed to come up with any kind of answer — I cautiously peer around the tree trunk at the house.

There’s no one at the window now.

No nightmarish face.

The Santa’s disappeared.

My first thought is that it was never there in the first place and that I’d just been seeing things again. I’m exhausted, freezing cold, out of my mind with pain . . . it’s not surprising that my brain’s playing tricks on me. And why on earth would there be a horror-Santa peering out of Shirley’s back window anyway? It makes no sense at all.

But then I realize something.

The curtain isn’t closed properly.

It looks as if it’s caught on something. And I’m almost certain it wasn’t like that when I first saw it. So someone must have pulled it back and peered out . . .

Someone.

It can’t have been Shirley. She’d never leave the curtain like that. And it can’t have been Mum either. She knows her sister’s funny little ways so well that she’d never leave the curtain like that.

So it must have been someone else.

So maybe I didn’t imagine the Santa after all.

There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?

I check to make sure there’s still no one at the window, then I step out from behind the tree and clamber over the fence into Shirley’s backyard.