y a miracle, you feel your right hand connect with some lump on the roof. You get a good grip on it. You’re not going to let go, no matter what—you know that much! Slowly, ever so painfully, you haul yourself up over the edge, until at last, having expended every gram of energy in your body, you’re safe again, lying face down, totally exhausted, on the wet roof.

After a minute you get enough energy back for your mind to start working slightly again. And the first thought you have is ‘What’s this lump I’m hanging on to so desperately?’ And so you open your eyes and turn your head slightly and look at it. And it’s a human foot.

A human foot?! And not just any foot, but a desiccated yellow skeletal foot with no fingernails. ‘Of course not,’ you think, ‘feet don’t have fingernails, they have toenails.’ Only this foot doesn’t have them either. You let out a wild scream, just as a bolt of lightning rips the sky apart and an explosion of thunder shakes the whole house. You let go of the foot and jump up. The sightless eyes of the corpse seem to stare right through you. The hands, those ghastly dried hands, reach for your throat again. You take a step backwards. This is not such a good idea. You’re standing on the edge of the roof, remember. Now you’re balanced on the gutter and it’s starting to give way beneath you. In your terror of falling, you throw yourself forwards. The corpse is not expecting this. He falls backwards with you on top of him. The two of you go rolling straight for the edge. You see a couple of steel pegs sticking out of the roof, just beyond your reach. If only you could reach them! Wait a sec, maybe you can reach them! You grab the arm of the corpse and give a mighty wrench, just as he goes over the edge. And sure enough the arm comes out of the socket! You’re holding it in your hands! Desperately you thrust it between the steel pegs. And to your relief, it holds! You use it to haul yourself up to the pegs and wedge yourself against them. They give you something to hold on to, till help comes. You can stay there all night, if you have to.

And you do have to. When the fire brigade gets you down the next morning your first question is, ‘Where’s the dried-up corpse?’

Everyone—the fire brigade, your parents, the neighbours—stare at you like you’re mad.

‘On the ground,’ you cry, looking around frantically. ‘It must be here somewhere. It must be!’

‘There, there,’ says your mother soothingly. ‘It’s the shock. Poor dear, you’ll soon be over it.’

‘No, no,’ you say, ‘the dried-up corpse, it must be here.’

Then you see it, lying in the long grass just five metres away. You point to it with a quivering finger.

‘Oh, that old scarecrow,’ says your mother. ‘I don’t know where that came from. It wasn’t here yesterday.’

You don’t know about that. All you know is that it has one arm missing.