Desolation swept over him. He was too late.

Halfway down the alley, he found what he was looking for. Slumped against the wall, hands out and open like a beggar, was a dead boy, no older than Callum. Blood smeared his cheeks, black in the moonlight. He stared blankly across the alley from empty sockets.

His eyes had been torn out.

Callum stared at the dead boy’s ruined features, fighting the urge to be sick. He felt guilt slither into the hollow pit of his stomach. He should have been faster. He might have been able to prevent this.

‘What happened to you?’ Callum whispered. ‘Why were you calling me?’

The boy’s ravaged face offered no answer, his sightless gaze fixed on the opposite wall of the alley.

Callum turned. There were words scrawled across the bricks. The letters glistened against the rough surface, and Callum did not need to look any closer to know that they were written in blood.

IT IS COMING

That was all. Three words, ten letters.

IT IS COMING

As if in confirmation, a long, deep howl echoed through the night, terrifyingly close and horribly familiar. Callum spun round, pressing his back to the wall next to the savaged body as the howl reached a crescendo -

And then he was sitting up in bed, wide awake and tangled in his sheets.

The hairs at the back of his neck were standing on end and he was panting like he really had been running for the past hour. The soles of his feet were ice-cold, as if they still felt the wet concrete of the street in his dream beneath them.

He didn’t feel as though he’d woken from a nightmare, didn’t feel any relief from his sense of failure. He knew he was awake now, but his horror and disgust were as real as they had been in the dream.

So was the wailing howl echoing in the darkness.

Callum dug his fingers into his mattress, fighting the rising panic. Was the creature still outside? Had its call woken him up – or had it triggered the dream?