This was a matter of some concern to the town council, of which Jack Preece was a member (his father, Jimmy Preece, was the Mayor), and negotiations were in hand with Offa's Dyke Radio and the Marches Development Board to get the gate replaced.

Why?

Same reason as old Percy Weale had given, back in the sixteenth century, for the institution of the curfew: to safeguard the moral welfare of the town.

What other reason could there be?

Minnie Seagrove, sixty three, a widow, had no doubts at all where the night began.

It began in that thing they called the Tump.

She could see it from the big front window of her bungalow on the Ludlow road. Nobody else could see it better.

Not that she wanted to. Ugly great lumps like this were ten a penny in the North and the Midlands where Mrs. Seagrove had lived. Only, in those areas, they were known as industrial spoil-heaps and were gradually removed in landscaping and reclamation schemes.

However, this thing, this Tump, wouldn't be going anywhere. It was protected. It was an Ancient Monument – supposed to have been a prehistoric burial mound originally, and then, in the Middle Ages, there might have been a castle on top, although there were no stones there any more.

Mrs. Seagrove didn't see the point in preserving just a big, unpleasant hump with a few trees on top. It was obviously not natural, and if it was left to her, the council would be hiring Gomer Parry with his bulldozers and his diggers to get rid of it.

Because that might also get rid of the black thing that ran down from the mound in the twilight and scared the life out of Minnie Seagrove.

All right, she'd say to herself, I know, I know… I could simply draw the curtains, switch on the telly and forget all about it. After all, I never noticed it – not once – when Frank was alive. But then, there didn't seem to be so many power cuts when Frank was alive.