Dave spots them on the train. Their backpacks and battered sandals mark them out as fellow travellers. I try to catch her eye, but her bald boyfriend glowers and draws her to him. Her eyes never leave the ground.

With the delays after Prague, it’s midnight and pouring when we arrive at the town with the unpronounceable name. I haul our backpacks onto the sodden platform. Thick, glutinous cobwebs gather droplets of rain in the orange glow of the platform’s single light.

There’s a noticeboard under the shelter. Dave suggests we see if someone has an ad for a room or a bnb. It seems unlikely but we have no other option. We’ve spent enough nights on platforms this past month that we’re resigned to huddling here till morning if we have to, despite the spiders. And the mould.

Baldy and Mousy have the same idea. He looks like he wants to get as far away from us as he can, but the shelter is small so he places himself between us and Mousy and settles for staring at us with open hostility. None of the posts on the noticeboard are in English.

When the pale man appears he surprises all four of us. His face is sickly in the oval of his black hoody and he peels himself out of the shadows like a wraith. There is an antiseptic smell about him that permeates the damp musty air of the shelter and he is gesturing for us to follow him. None of us move.

He mutters something about rooms and we all share a glance. Mousy looks so desperate that I find myself suggesting that we all go. There are four of us and only one of him, after all…

Baldy is too big to climb in the back of the tiny car with Mousy. Instead he stares unblinkingly at her in the rearview mirror throughout the drive.

The Wraith drives like he’s trying to dodge raindrops, but the really terrifying moment happens when he wrenches the wheel suddenly to the left and we find ourselves driving along a path through the trees in a dense forest, past broken fences and a burnt out car.

Dave whispers to go for the Wraith’s eyes if the car stops suddenly. Mousy nearly looks up at me, but catches herself in time. Baldy is still staring.

In the end the rooms are lovely. Clean, fresh, warm. The Wraith gestures at food on a table and a bottle of local spirits that seem to be included in the absurdly low price he names. When we’re warmed and dried the place feels almost homely.

Mousy looks like she wants to join us, but a gesture from Baldy sends her scurrying to their room.

It’s three am when I hear the tapping. I peer out. Mousy is standing by our door. She isn’t looking at the floor now, but dead into my eyes. My first thought is that she has come for help and I move to usher her inside.

Then everything happens at once; Baldy lunges out of their room, hurling himself towards us. He is shouting at Mousy to stop, but I can’t make sense of it. Dave calls me, and, as I turn to answer him, Mousy’s arm slams down into me, a sharp flash of bright metal. Pain and sticky red. Somewhere, someone is screaming.