It swept this way and that, moving too quickly for me to identify, except to know for a fact that it wasn’t in any way human. There was something bad, something wrong, something horribly monstrous about it, but even as it struck out at the endless white hedgerows around it, it wasn’t able to damage or disturb them. For all its obvious strength and power, it was clearly trapped inside the maze. I watched it prowl up and down and back and forth, never stopping, never able to find an exit. I wondered what it was, and why I was so scared of what would happen if it should ever find a way out.

I looked up at the open sky. A huge moon, full and blue, hung alone in a dark, dark sky with no stars. No stars at all. I backed away from the window, and the blue moonlight fell through the glass, illuminating some of the corridor. For the first time I realised the blue moon was the only light there was. Blue moonlight, shimmering ice and dark shadows filled the corridor, and not a sign of life anywhere. I moved quickly down the corridor, checking each window, but I always saw the same thing. The exact same view, from the exact same angle, never changing no matter how far I walked . . . Which should have been impossible.

I turned and looked back the way I’d come. Although the rich carpeting was crusted with a thick layer of hoarfrost, I hadn’t left a single footprint behind me. No mark, nothing, to show I’d passed this way. I stamped my foot hard, but it didn’t disturb the frost beneath me, and the sound was oddly flat, strangely muffled.

Was I a ghost, haunting this place? Or was this place haunting me? It seemed . . . dead. And why did the only cold I was feeling seem to come from within me, rather than from without?

I called out, “Hello! Anybody there? Anybody?��� No answer. The silence seemed heavier and more oppressive than ever. I shivered abruptly, and not from the cold. It occurred to me that my voice had sounded strangely flat, and I realised it was because my voice hadn’t echoed at all. It should have. One more impossible thing in an impossible place. I breathed heavily, but my breath didn’t steam on the air before me.