It started with a feeling. An itching between my shoulder blades as though someone was watching me. Someone nearby. Someone bad.

Anyone else might have shrugged it off, told themselves not to be so paranoid, but I was not 'anyone else'. I was me and I had learned long ago not to ignore this feeling. I kept walking, eyes flicking right and left, muscles tense, adrenaline fizzing.…

I'd never known such darkness.  It was complete.  Like being swallowed whole by some huge horrible creature.

You know that feeling when you wake up in a strange place and you don't know where you are for a few seconds?  It was like that.  I was panic-stricken.  I told myself the feeling would soon pass.  A familiar pair of curtains or a wall or something would come into…

"If I release you, will you calm down?" Nick shouted.

The man trapped in the headlock didn't respond. 

"I said:'If I let you go, will you calm down?!'"

Nick tightened his grip, stopping the air from reaching the man's lungs. Finally, as Nick wrenched…

When it first arrived nobody could understand the message.

It came in a series of electronic pulses, a binary code that could only be interpreted by the world’s most powerful computers. It was unscrambled into a series of mathematical codes, each more complex than the last, that could only in turn be read by the sharpest of minds. Yet even those scientists lacked insight to…

‘I knew you’d be cold,’ Mum called after me.  ‘You should’ve worn the new coat we got you.’

The New Coat! It was shiny, red, and so puffy that my arms stuck out at right angles. ‘It makes me look like a teapot!’  I yelled, my breath coming out in clouds.

Dad groaned. ‘It’s a walk in the…

I looked out across the moor.

There wasn’t much to see. Yellowish, springy grass. Clumps of heather and gorse. Small pools stained brown by peat. 

This was my first time up here alone. Dad didn’t like me coming up here at all, even if he was with me.…