"the hour is almost here folks," jp mcstoots says to the gathering of the coven. "did everyone have a good time?" most nod affirmatively. i have deposited our bone, the hideous, fleshy goat shin, in the pile of other material the "scavenger hunters" have built. the bones of the little girl, our little friend, are safely at home. again, as i think about her, a tremendous feeling of warmth overcomes me: i don't understand it, don't know why i should feel so strongly about a child i never knew, who died fifty years before i was born, but i do; i feel such a sense of connection to her, such a responsibility for her that i think i will do anything to protect her.

amongst the detritus and trivia in the pile is a very large catfish, twenty pounds maybe. jose and everett, i suppose. i hope they had a trouble-free capture. scanning the congregation, i spot them at the back, sniggering and joking, unconcerned and inattentive. as usual.

"now," continues jp, his face glowing gold and tan in the glare of the fire, "does anyone have any good stories about the happenings of last night? we would all like to hear." i look at harriet, and she returns my look with an almost imperceptible shake of the head. little issy is with us, and curiously watches our silent conversation. "the story telling will begin at eleven pm," jp goes on. "i just want to thank each of you for participating, hope you enjoyed what we've added to the coven festivities this year. and hope your halloween has been very nice." jp's face is full of enthusiasm, his normally infectious delight in the proceedings of the coven evident in his happy features. normally infectious i say, because tonight i feel empty, i feel no desire to swap tall tales, to try to frighten one another over the bland safety blanket of a bonfire. not now. not now that we have met weaver morgan. not now that we know evil. i don't want to go back there, but i know i will. there is unfinished business, and only harriet and i can do it.

i nod quietly to harriet and as people examine the pile of bones and prepare for the storytelling we surreptitiously slip away.

"i'm sorry, love," i say, "but you know we have to go back."

"yes," harriet replies. i swear her lip is trembling, poor love, but she tries not to show any fear. "the avengers are ready for anything, eh?" she smiles.

"anything, love," i agree and kiss her cheek. we glance back at the festivities, the happy throng of people enjoying their night of innocent celebration, and i experience a pang of regret, a wistful longing to be like them, to be ordinary. i wish we didn't have this responsibility. we go through our lives longing for something extraordinary to happen, but when it does we are never prepared for it.

we head for the car and i turn the ignition. this time i would be quite happy if it refused to kick into action; it would take responsibility for what happened next away from me. typically, it starts first time, and with a heavy heart i swing the car onto the dirt road and head towards home. as i do, the headlights sweep over an empty corner of the field and there, standing watching us, is little issy. her sudden appearance unnerves me and i swerve unnecessarily before regaining control. as we lurch onwards i look behind me but she is gone, swallowed up in the louring darkness which folds itself around our retreating form.

we don't talk much on the journey, our nerves betrayed by our diffidence. brusquely, we go through our action plan, such as it is.

"back to the house to get the girl?" harriet says. i notice she says girl, not skull. even harriet feels it, even she thinks of her as a real person and not a skull and a bunch of bones.

"yes," i reply.

"and then?"

"fuck knows, harriet. this is weaver morgan's show, i think. he'll let us know what to do."

i am driving slowly and i hate myself for doing it. i am trying to drag things out, delay the moment, delay the inevitable. i feel weary, lethargy swamping me, a tired hopelessness washing over me. as we approach my house, the familiar landscape unpeeling itself in front of us, i contrast my feelings with the sense of delight i normally feel when i return.

"nearly there," i say pointlessly. harriet squeezes my knee and strokes my thigh through my thick trousers.

"nearly there, mr steed," she echoes.

we gather up the skull of our girl, placing it reverently in the back of the car and without delay we head straight back out into the forbidding darkness. i know that if we stop and delay we will talk ourselves out of it. after all, think about it: an evening on the loveseat in my den, in front of a warming fire, or out on the edges of humanity, in the pit of evil that is weaver morgan's? not much of a choice is it?

the journey is the longest i have ever taken, and yet also the shortest. alternately, i wonder if we will ever get there and panic when a familiar landmark points to us being alarmingly close. finally, i recognise the approach to weaver morgan's, the ominous, looming bank of bare trees lining our path like sentinels watching over a killing field. in contrast to our last visit the weather is perfect, a clean, gentle breeze sweeping through the arthritic branches above us, the air unseasonably warm. the very benevolence of the evening unnerves me: it's not meant to be like this, i think. where's the flashes of lightning, the apocalyptic storms, the portentous claps of thunder? rather than still my uneasiness it serves only to increase it, and i am aware of my heart pounding in my chest, a constant tattoo of uncertainty booming in my ears.

i pull the car to a stop and sit for a moment, unsure what to do next.

"we're here, then," says harriet, as pointlessly as my earlier remark. encounters with the undead may make for exciting adventures, but they play havoc with normal conversation skills.

"we're here, mrs peel," i confirm, as bravely as i can muster.

"now what?" good old harriet, practical as ever, even in the face of terror.

"let's go call on weaver morgan," i bluster. "hope he's got some jack daniels in the cupboard."

"a bottle each," replies harriet with a forced smile. "and a straw," she adds. "and one for the girl."

"no, not for the girl, she's only eight."

"or seventy-eight, depending on which way you look at it."

"well if she's seventy-eight she should be tucked up in bed with a good book and a cup of cocoa."

"hmm, sounds good to me."

i reach into the back of the car and carefully pull the skull of the little girl out. i stroke it gently, for whose benefit, hers or mine, i don't know. both probably. i attach it to a bag which is fastened to my belt and it dangles demurely at my hip. "all set?" i ask.

"all set, mr steed." harriet's reminder that we are still in costume makes me feel foolish for a moment, dressed for frivolity in this scene of seriousness. i quickly put it to the back of my mind, telling myself that we have more serious things to worry about.

the dark is overwhelming. it is a wonderful, still evening, but there is dense cloud cover and in this isolated spot there are no lights for twenty miles around. standing next to the car we feel a sense of comfort, safe in the knowledge that an escape route is close by. within twenty yards, though, the car has been swallowed up by the viscious dark and i feel totally exposed, completely alone. the darkness is overpowering; it seems to claw at my face and fan itself down my body. my eyes strain but see nothing, and i feel that the darkness is sweeping through my anxious pupils into my resistent body. we become almost paralysed by the sense of doubt instilled by the darkness, floundering and groping pathetically in front of us, even though we know we are in the middle of a huge clearing. such is the denseness of the dark that it takes some minutes for our eyes to become accustomed to it.

"jesus fucking wept," mutters harriet, gripping my elbow painfully. "some fucking avengers we are. what d'you think would be the most useful implement in a deserted homestead twenty miles from the crack of civilisation? yep, you've got it in one, mr steed: a torch. and where is it?"

the answer is too painful to articulate. i can picture it in my mind, resting casually on the table beside our loveseat.

"the avengers always had to fight against the odds," i say, more lightly than i feel.

"yes, though they didn't generally stack the odds against themselves." harriet shivers and stops, fear paralysing her for a moment. then she does a curious and a wonderful thing: she folds her arms around me in a fragile embrace and kisses me full on the mouth. in the hadean darkness i can see the whites of her eyes and, from that, the impression of her pupils boring into me.

"you and me against the world," i say.

"the world i can cope with. it's that bastard weaver morgan i'm worried about." she is so brave, trying to conceal her fears beneath her laconic british humour; underneath, though, she is horribly tense, her muscles rigid, her demeanour one of barely controlled terror. i draw my arms around her and sweep her into my embrace, squeezing her as tightly as i can, trying to meld our bodies into one, generalised mass. i take comfort in her bravery and draw strength from her sense of humour. 'united, we're as strong as a mountain, united we're as deep as the sea, stand together shoulder to shoulder, sisters and brothers united and free' comes into my mind, a song harriet told me about after the september 11th atrocities.

"shoulder to shoulder," i say.

"united and free."

we walk on uncertainly, but with greater resolution than before. ahead of us, we know, is the morgan household, and its outline gradually reveals itself to us as we progress slowly. i have no idea what will happen next, and don't want to think about it. gradually, as we walk, i am aware of a sense of heat on my hip. at first, i think nothing of it, but it becomes more insistent, revealing itself to be more than a momentary itch. finally it embeds itself in my consciousness, a nagging source of warmth which requires investigation, and i look down.

the skull of the little girl is glowing.

my stomach lurches, as the memory of the previous occasion bursts painfully into my mind: that hideous, hysterical moment when weaver morgan's presence expanded before me and i ran headlong into it; the enveloping, agonising, suffocating pressure it exerted on me; the stultifying, paralysing effect it had on my limbs, my freewill; and the sense of doom, the certainty of death which overwhelmed me at that moment. the instant, sickening memory of that moment invades my mind and i know that weaver morgan is close at hand. i clutch at harriet and my alarm transfers to her.

an incredible, ear-shattering explosion assails us, knocking us off our feet and sending us head over heels, tumbling into the abyss of uncertainty. gasping, and aware of an ache in my ribs where i have landed heavily on the little girl's skull, i look around me. i am disorientated and don't know which way i am looking.

but all too quickly it becomes clear.

behind us, twenty-five yards or so away, is a heaving, pulsing inferno, flames erupting towards the sky in a frenzied blue and yellow dance of death. my car is a furnace, spitting out the dregs of its energy, st elmo's fire enveloping it, castor and pollux dancing on its hood and shattering its windshield. well then, i thought irrelevantly, i'll have to get a new one now. the heat is intense, and i swear i can feel my eyebrows singe.

i reach for harriet and grab her hand. at my side, the skull of the girl is glowing and pulsing, vivid and eloquent, and i sense her power. there is a further, huge explosion from the car, as the fuel tank ruptures and explodes, and as it does so i sense the force from the skull wane. i look down, and indeed it has dimmed to a sickly, pale yellow. weaver morgan is close. i know it.

i look up and he is there, hovering above the remains of my car, arrogant and malevolent: weaver morgan. there is a sense of triumph in his expression, a certainty that he has won. i feel smaller than i have ever known, insignificant and irrelevant. true power, evil power does this: it saps the spirit, insinuates its defeatist fatalism into the unwary observer. i want to be sick, but won't give him the pleasure.

"you've come then," he said. "i knew you would. too stupid not to. welcome to the night of your death."