How it came about, she was watching telly one night, coming up to News at Ten, and the power went off, and so she automatically went across to the window to see if the lights were on across the river, in the town.

And that was when she first saw it.

Horrible. Really horrible. It was… well, it was like the night itself bounding down from the Tump and rushing off, hungry, into the fields.

But why can't you just stop looking? Why can't you stay well away from that window when it's going dark?

I don't know.

That's the really frightening thing. I don't know.

Yes, I do.

It's because I can feel when it's there. No matter what I'm doing, what's on telly or the radio or what I'm reading, ever since I first dashed to the window during that power cut, I've always known when it's on its way down from the mound. Without even going to the window, I know when it's there.

And the reason I look – the reason I have to look, even though it scares me half to death – is that I have to know, I have to be sure that it isn't coming this way.

Crybbe: a small one-time market town within sight of Offa's Dyke, the earthwork raised in the Dark Ages to separate England from Wales.

A town like a dozen others on either side of the border; less distinctive than most.

Except that here, the night rose.

PART ONE

Some persons have super-normal powers not of a

magitien, but of a peculiar and scientific qualitie.

Dr John Dee,

Letter to Lord Burghley, 1574

CHAPTER I

Sometime – and please, God, make it soon – they were going to have to sell this place. And on evenings like this, when the sky sagged and the bricks of the houses across the street were the colour of dried blood, Fay would consider how they'd have to bait the trap.