The decaying portico loomed over me, somehow unwelcoming yet designed to admit or perhaps entrap. I had previously abandoned all hope so that proviso was left unsaid. Pushing open the doors, I ventured into the unknown.

Daylight seemed to shrivel away as I walked into the entrance hall, giving way to a gloom that was disquieting. Carved figures populated the balustrades, glaring balefully down upon the hesitant visitor. I was still holding the old man in a painful embrace and I was determined to dispose of him somewhere soon.

It felt like I had come home but I was unsure of where home was. Surely this ramshackle mansion was not the ultimate destination of my existential meandering? A chill draught from the inner reaches of the grand hall rippled across my skin and elevated the hairs on my neck. It was like a breath from the past.

I imagined that I stood at the edge of time, hunted to extinction in the earth’s nascent light. All around me on the walls of the cave the shadows of my ancestors danced, silhouetted by fire. Outside in the awful night winged horrors flapped and shrieked, forever free in time but bound by flesh.