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During that night, I felt a cold black emptiness spread itself throughout the entire metaverse and draw me into its embrace until only a handful of poorly lit universes remained and even they were receding, leaving me in the dark.

This time there was no escape. No point in writhing. In any case, I hadn’t the strength. I was being swept down to the realm of demons. It was frightening of course, but even more horrible was the thought that corresponding to the fact that I had been dragged out of the metaverse, something wicked, without conscience, something implacably hungry, had found a way into the light and it was my doing. I shivered.

What terrible crimes was it going to do?

Never had I felt the need to act as urgently as I did now. But
how was I to escape my nightmares and stop the demon?

When I woke up it was in a place whose unnatural sky was a lurid purple, like the clouds of a thunderstorm at sunset.
Visibility
was poor and shadowy because there was no sun or moon. A building loomed over me, the front door open. The interior was darker still, but familiar. Those radiators, the tall windows, the smell of carbolic from the polished floor. It was my school. Except that the corridors and rooms were in all the wrong positions.

This was awful, but a puzzle too. The world that I was in was hauntingly alien and yet somehow my past was here. Ahead of me was a corridor that stretched out towards infinity. From the distant emptiness came a clatter.

‘Hello? Is someone there?’

My voice was tentative, so I tried again, louder. ‘Hello?’

‘Who’s there?’

Another bang. Like a door shutting.

Walking in the very dim light towards the erratic sounds set me on edge. I slowed, to reduce the noise from my footfalls. Perhaps I should turn back instead? What drove me on, though, was the need to do something. I couldn’t just hide. Not while the hungry ghost was free to gorge itself on the people of Earth. Behind me the corridor turned right where it had previously been straight. Great. This world was crazy. The weirdness of the building taught me one thing at
least, I was in a world with different rules, a world of nightmares.

It would have been reassuring to tell myself that this was a dream. But the problem was that I was completely lucid and all my senses were as acute as they never are in dreams.

Why didn’t I try moving to get out of this appalling environment? I did, of course. But when I tried to slip into the frame of mind preparatory to making a move, it felt wrong and nauseating, like pressure on your funny bone.

In any case, try as I might, despite the horrible sensation, there were no alternative universes that I could see from here. Not one.

There came a crash, like a table had been upturned. It was close, from just beyond a nearby door. How strange, to feel the familiar brass handles of our school doors in such an otherwise unnatural setting.

That was another unanswerable question, why did this place seem so like our school? Had someone created it out of my memories?

Quietly pressing down on the handle, I inched open the door, ready to flee. The room was like our school’s big assembly room, set out for exams, with ten rows of desks. It was much longer than it should have been, the back wall of the room lost in purple shadow.

Jane Curtis was sitting at one of the desks. She smiled when she saw me and put her finger to her lips. Moving slowly down an aisle formed by two rows of desks was Mr Kenny. His back was towards me, and his hands groped at
each desk that he came to. Something was wrong with Mr Kenny. He waved his arms about above the seats, before
moving
to the next pair of tables. There was not far to go before he would come to Jane.

Gathering up her pencil case and the papers on her desk, Jane created a rustling sound. Mr Kenny immediately lunged towards her, knocking a desk flying with a loud clatter, staggering as he did so.

A little, uncharacteristic, teasing giggle came from Jane as she skipped away from his splayed hands, before moving, swiftly but with delicacy and in complete silence, to a desk on the other side of the room. When I opened the door wider, so as to keep her in sight, it gave a slight scrape. Mr Kenny immediately turned around.

‘Who’s there?’

Eagerly but clumsily, he began lurching in my direction. As he passed through one of the patches of purple light created by the hall’s great windows, I saw his face. It was eyeless. Just hollow sockets, deep-set in pallid cheeks.

‘Who’s there?’ His voice was angry now.

Not pausing to pull the door shut, I turned and ran, my footsteps far too loud and filling the corridors with echoes.

‘Who’s there?’ A bellow resounding around me as Kenny reached the door. Once I had reached the corner at which the corridor turned I paused, breathing hard, heartbeat loud in my ears. Would he follow? I had to see. I couldn’t bear to run off, not knowing if he was still behind me or if he had stopped.

It was difficult to make him out in the dim light and I was grateful I did not have to look at that ruined face again, but he was there, standing outside the door. Silence quickly returned to the building as we both waited. Eventually the door closed again. Had he gone back inside the room? I thought so, but the light was so dingy that it was hard to be completely sure. Was that clump of shadow in the angle of floor and wall moving? Was he stealthily creeping up on me? For what purpose? Best not stay to find out.

For over an hour I hurried through the cold school corridors, trying to find a door that would lead me outside. It was
impossible
to keep my footsteps quiet, because the polished stone floor magnified them. If I wanted to limit the sound, I had to slow down and move on tiptoe. From time to time, I did this, always keeping a glance back at the way I’d came.

Just as I was considering whether to try smashing a window in order to climb out of the labyrinthine school, I heard distinct footsteps from ahead of me. They were strong, confident strides and growing louder.

From the comparative safety of a junction, I peeked around the edge of wall, ready to flee. Christ, but this creepy version of school was making me sick with fear. Surely, though, this was not the eyeless Mr Kenny? No, the figure walking swiftly and confidently up the corridor was our
headmaster
, the Monk.

Careful not to make a sound, my face screwed up with
concentration
, I backed away from the junction, and then turned on my toes to rush away as quickly as I could without slapping
my feet down. But the corridor had changed again and as I came around a corner, it was a straight in to a dead end, whose only exit was a door. The Monk’s metronomic steps were coming closer, still in my direction. I nipped to the door, quietly opened it and slipped inside, just before he turned the corner. It was my third-year classroom, one we’d once decorated with our own paintings of the faces of a deck of cards. Then they had seemed colourful and merry, but now there was something sinister about these open-mouthed faces. O my racing heart, calm, calm; I must breathe.

I searched for somewhere to hide, terrified of the steps that were relentlessly coming towards me. Only the cupboard against the wall behind the teacher’s desk was large enough. I crawled into it, pulling the cupboard door shut behind me just as I heard the classroom door swing open.

Hugging my knees to my chest, I felt my eyes fill with tears. One step, another. The Monk was inside the classroom, but he had stopped. What was he doing? If humans, like mice, could die of the overexertion of their hearts, I would have expired right there. He must have known I was in the cupboard, just from the noisy beat of my pulse. Another step, and then a brushing sound. Was he sitting down?

‘Forty-three. Forty-four.’ The Monk’s voice was cold, severe. ‘Forty-five. Quite a record, don’t you think Mr O’Dwyer?’

Oh Jaysus, he knew about Michael Clarke. What was I in for? Now that he’d spoken, I found I had some life in me after all. Whatever was about to happen, I wasn’t going to stay grovelling
in this hole. The boot that I gave the door was supposed to be followed by my leaping out, but unfortunately I hadn’t reckoned in it bouncing back, slamming me in the shins and my panicked exit from the cupboard was a mess of arms, legs and pain.

Sitting on the desk, examining his fingers, was the Monk. As ever he was tall and bearded, but additionally he now had a sinister dark light in his eyes.

‘Welcome back, Mr O’Dwyer.’

He licked his lips before glancing down at the desk he was
sitting
on, to where his finger was tracing the word ‘Arsenal’ that I had once scratched deep into it. I didn’t reply, but instead got to my feet and began to edge along the wall towards the door.

When he stood up I ran for it. A fire ran down my right arm and I was stuck. His fingers were talons gripping me so tight that they had pierced my skin; blood was running down to drip from my fingers and splash on the floor. Those claws were iron and the pain was excruciating.

‘I’m going to eat you, slowly, your limbs first.’ His was a smile of shark’s teeth. ‘The first time is always the best. Then do you know what will happen?’

The agony of trying to wrench free of his grip caused me to cry aloud.

‘Then you will come again and I will find you again. And again. And again. More times will you be devoured than there are leaves on trees.’ He chuckled. ‘After which, there are other demons looking forward to meeting you.’

‘Demons?’ The question came with a shriek of pain.

‘Those who have been particularly wicked in life come here in death and are ours to play with.’

‘Am I dead? I didn’t die. And I wasn’t that wicked, was I?’

Instead of answering, he ran a black tongue over his lips before catching a drop of my blood on a talon and sucking it with relish.

‘Poison!’

Releasing me, he threw himself to the ground, rolling around, coughing and vomiting. With each spasm I heard children’s voices, as though he were disgorging a playground.

‘Poison. No, you are not dead. Not dead. Not dead.’ The Monk’s voice fell to a whisper, his expression one of baleful fury.

I was about to run out of the room, when I had a thought. Still nervous, I nevertheless forced myself to step towards the quivering body of the headmaster. By his fierce expression he wanted to intimidate me, but I could see the fear in his eyes. The blood was rapidly drying on my hand, but I reached out towards him and he writhed, jerking his enfeebled body in an effort to get away from my touch.

Now it was me chasing him and I found myself unexpectedly laughing with the relief of my pent-up fear. It was a bitter laugh, though, full of pain. Knocking desks aside as he tried to crawl away, I pursued him to the corner of the classroom. The faces on the wall watched with expressions of horror.

‘Go back to where you belong!’ The demon shouted in
terror
, holding its arms before it. ‘You shouldn’t be here!’

There was little of the Monk left now, the image of the
headmaster, which must have somehow been drawn from my thoughts, had melted, revealing a horrific monster, something like the hungry ghost in the book, all bloated stomach and sharp claws.

When I thrust my bloody hand at him he blocked it with his arm, except that the resistance to my blow withered away. His skin broke open, spraying the air with millions of tiny flies. My hand passed through bone and on to his face which also broke apart, a howl of fear and frustration abruptly ending as my whole palm sunk into his mouth and nose. Those once sinister eyes locked on mine, and then lost their lustre. Pouring out of the slumped body was a sea of tiny flitting insects. Disgusted, I snatched my hand away and retreated as the minute creatures hopped and crawled down the corpse, and began to spread across the floor. With the startled masks still watching me, I left the classroom.

Only one turn was needed and I found the exit from the school.

Outside, a great shudder wracked my body and I had to fight back the urge to be sick. Pain helped. My T-shirt was torn and was stuck to me at the upper arm by dried blood. Still, I’d learned something important about this place. The demon seemed to have been surprised I was alive and my blood was poison to it. That gave me heart. The scary
inhabitants
of this place weren’t ready for me. It sounded like he had expected me to have been dead, a spirit or a soul or something. Janey Mack, but you wouldn’t want to come here when you died.

Even though the experience had been disgusting, for the first time since I’d been swallowed by the darkness between the
universes
, I felt a certain optimism. After all, look what I’d done; I’d killed a demon that moments earlier had seemed utterly terrible and invincible.

Where should I go to feed? Even though I had no particular goal in mind, the anticipation of sustenance quickened my stride. I sniffed the air. There were wisps of unhappiness floating above the morning crowds, but nothing too substantial, enough merely to arouse my appetite for more. Very few people could meet my eye. Many of those whose gaze ducked down, especially the women, gave off frissons of self-doubt. Was I staring at them because a button was undone? A spot was visible beneath their make-up? Because I knew something about them? This was pitiful nonsense. The stream of office workers had carried me past Trinity College and my hunger urged me inside.

Here the pickings were only slightly better. Less of them were intimidated by my scrutiny; in fact the opposite, there was a 
certain amount of self-importance to devour. Who was I, a young kid, to be looking at them? Did I envy them? I should.

This one was a little tastier. She had come out of the library exulting in her triumph. The early bird catches the worm, she told herself. By coming in ahead of the others of her class she had managed to get her hands on the psychology books they needed for their exams. No one would find them behind the huge black history volumes on the second floor, no one but her. I chuckled aloud and she jumped aside, shocked.

There were trails for me to follow, walking eagerly to sniff them out, like a dog, sometimes turning back on myself. Disdain, ambition, competitiveness, lust, complacency. Never enough to hold me to one particular person. At least, not until I came to the building marked ‘Dental Hospital’. Even outside of the doors I could taste pain and fear. With a low growl, I pushed my way in and ran up the stairs.

I spent the morning sitting among the people who came and went in suffering. The availability of this sustenance changed the nature of my appetite. Never satiated. Never. But I was no longer finding it necessary to grasp at the faintest tendrils of dark feelings. Now I was awake and determined to obtain stronger meat, that which comes from the heart.

Over in the Physics buildings, I sensed a professor at work early. Almost at random, I went inside; he would do. Up the stairs to his lab, where the name on the door was Byrne.

‘Hello?’ He looked up, curious. ‘Can I help you?’

This was an affable elderly man, living a comfortable life, happy with his work, not an obvious source of energy for me. Yet 
he was human, I could break him open. I fastened my eyes upon his.

‘You are making a fool of yourself in McCarthy’s on a Friday. They think you are a sad lonely man and they are right. You have absolutely no hope with Eithne. She is only being kind and your fantasies are entirely misplaced.’

At first he opened his mouth, about to retort, but the mention of Eithne’s name killed that. Instead he glowered at me angrily. Good.

‘Why didn’t you credit Ger Singleton on your paper to the Royal Irish Academy last year?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You know.’

He flushed. Excellent, I inhaled heartily.

‘That wasn’t the worst of it, though. What about the
reference
you wrote for him to the Research Council. He trusted you. He probably still does. That would change rather a lot, don’t you think, if he could see what you had written.
Jealousy
? Fear that he would supplant you? That he would get the O’Reilly Award?’

The professor was cast down, physically slumping back into his chair, ashamed to meet my eye.

‘What are you?’ he muttered. ‘How do you know about those things?’

‘When you were a boy, your family had nothing. Remember crying because Robert McCarthy recognised your blazer, it was the old one his family had given away to Oxfam? Robert pulled you around the playground, showing the ink marks on the inside 
pockets. You were denying it through your tears, but you knew he was right. You’ve come a long way, Professor. If your father was alive, he would be very proud of you. Or would he? Your father believed there was never any excuse for a lie. Remember? What would he think about the way you’ve treated Singleton?’

‘Stop it,’ the professor whispered, his face bright red.

‘Come with me.’ I had him.

‘Go away. Get out.’ There was no force in his words.

‘Why did you let your brother fall? He was only six and he was stuck, high up on the climbing bars. He was screaming for you. What were you doing Byrne? Busy with your older friends, too embarrassed to help him? Until tiredness, vertigo and fear won. You turned just in time to see him let go and break both his ankles.’

‘Oh God.’ A tear rolled down his cheek.

‘Get up!’

This time he complied.

‘Go ahead of me, show me the way to the roof.’

It is extraordinary the difference in the walk of a person at ease with themselves, and one in the throes of misery. Byrne didn’t look up at all, his hands barely moved from his sides. From over his shoulder, I leaned to whisper in his ear.

‘How long do you think Veronica waited for your call? You know what it meant to her, a girl like that, to sleep with you. She trusted you. She believed she had met her soul mate in you and you let her believe it. What was it you said? If she was the princess in the fairytale, then you were the woodcutter, poor but honest. That, pathetic as it now sounds, clinched the matter, 
didn’t it? Your evident pride in truth over riches. But afterwards you panicked and couldn’t even ring her, couldn’t talk to her. What must she have gone through?’

Feasting on this man was good. All the better for the fact that his feelings had been buried deep, unexamined for years, smoothed over. He was ill prepared for them, and for me. There was no barrier between us, not like the girl or the monk. They had already examined their flaws under a harsh light and would not flinch from them. Pure force would be needed there. Byrne though was hurting and I was drinking at the wounds.

The fire escape made a loud racket as I pulled it down, worrying me that we might attract attention and this delicious feast would be interrupted. Byrne just stood there, passively, until I ordered him up. The day was breezy, low clouds swiftly moving above a skyline of cranes and grey buildings.

‘Come here. Stand on the lip.’

While I sat on the granite wall that surrounded the edge of the building, Byrne clambered right up on to it. There was nothing between him and a three-storey fall onto tarmac. His death was certain.

‘Look down.’

For a moment he glanced at me, the smiling boy sitting in front of him, and then his gaze continued on past me, to the drop.

‘In a few minutes I’m going to order you to step off. How does that feel?’

There was not the will in him to answer, but I enjoyed his fear all the same.

‘Hold out your left arm. Now stand on one leg, and hold the other over the edge.’

I let out a long sigh; this was good food. Yet I wanted more. Always I want more. And there was a lot more to be had from Byrne. It would be a waste to kill him now. With a chuckle at the sight of the professor, shaking as he balanced on the edge of destruction, I got up. My appetite had risen again, along with my strength. Time to roam the world and, where it did not produce its own misery, help create some.