Prologue

The creature opened its eyes. All twenty-seven of them. They blinked simultaneously, the long lashes wafting the musty air of the basement like the delicate fan of a middle-aged divorcee with hot flushes. Turning its head, the creature surveyed its surroundings. A small, windowless room lit only by the blue fluorescent flicker of an electric insect killer and the yellow glow of a candle. Together the lights made green. It was time to go.

Raising itself to a standing position, the creature looked for an exit in twenty-seven different directions. One was enough. A door stood in the concrete wall opposite. It was marked freedom. Possibly by a teenage graffiti artist on Ritalin. Powerful muscles rippling under leathery skin like a kitten trapped under a duvet, the creature moved towards the door. With a flick of its tail, the candle was knocked to the floor, where it gently ignited the corpses of numerous flies, and lit the creature’s way to the exit.

Grasping the door handle with all six suckered fingers of its middle hand, the creature pulled, and the door swung open with a creaking moan of protest. Stone steps led upwards. Slowly but purposefully, it climbed, the smell of smoke permeating the air as the basement room below became engulfed in flames, instantly solving the chronic damp problem which had blighted the building for generations.

The road outside was empty, quiet, and in darkness, save for some faulty street lighting and the permanent orange glow from a small branch of Carphone Warehouse opposite. Had anyone been passing, they would have seen the first wafts of smoke billowing out from the vents of an unassuming building on a nondescript street. They might have caught sight of a side door opening, and seen a creature emerge. They might even have felt a chilled breeze as that creature blinked all twenty-seven of its eyes, and looked up at the single-worded sign above the door.

The sign read ‘Optician’. And the creature was gone.