She screamed, and the lunacy in that sound chilled John’s blood. He half-ran, half-stumbled down the cellar stairs and enfolded her in his arms. She fought him at first and then surrendered.

Her screams gradually dissolved into steady weeping.

Then, over the soft thunder of the toads striking the house and the grounds, they heard the croaking of the toads, which had fallen down here. She drew away from him, her eyes shifting wildly from side to side in their shiny-white sockets.

‘Where are they?’ she panted. Her voice was hoarse, almost a bark, from all the screaming she had done. ‘Where are they, John?’

But they didn’t have to look; the toads had already seen them, and came hopping eagerly toward them.

The Grahams retreated, and John saw a rusty shovel leaning against the wall. He grabbed it and beat the toads to death with it as they came. Only one got past him. It leaped from the floor to a box and from the box it jumped at Elise, catching the cloth of her shirt in its teeth and dangling there between her breasts, legs kicking. ’Stand still!’ John barked at her. He dropped the shovel, took two steps forward, grabbed the toad, and hauled it off her shirt, It took a chunk of cloth with it. The cotton strip hung from one of its fangs as it twisted and pulsed and wriggled in John’s hands. Its hide was warty, dry but horridly warm and somehow busy. He snapped his hands into fists, popping the toad. Blood and slime squirted out from between his fingers.

Less than a dozen of the little monsters had actually made it through the cellar door, and soon they were all dead. John and Elise clung to each other, listening to the steady rain of toads outside.

John looked over at the low cellar windows. They were packed and dark, and he suddenly saw the house as it must look from the outside, buried in a drift of squirming, lunging, leaping toads.  ‘We’ve got to block the windows,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Their weight is going to break them, and if that happens, they’ll pour in.’