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of the
police.
    The sunshine,
and white snow, blinded them as they squeezed through the door,
partly jammed with snow, piled up against the side of the
castle.
    Mortimer
shuffled through a knee-high layer of snow, moving away, and
Merton, at first, could not move, but shuffled after him, tightly
wrapping his jacket around him, shivering from sudden cold
chills.
    The snow
thinned, as they went further out from the wall.
    At the corner
of the castle, Mortimer stopped and waited for them to catch up
with him. He did not seem in a hurry to go anywhere – more like
rushing to make himself warm. They had been stuck in the dark
castle for a long time, without much exertion. Perhaps they should
have eaten more than they had. With more sugar and protein, to keep
them warm.
    “ Over
there ...!” Bryson said, looking at part of the wood, where he had
swiftly escaped out of the wood, the night before. “Our footprints
are still visible!”
    Mortimer
approached them. “I see that the three of you were running.”
    Merton studied
the separated prints, as they moved along.
    “ Perhaps
it would be best to find something to defend us!” Bryson muttered,
trying to warn them. “If we destroyed it, we would stop it harming
someone someday.”
    “ It!”
Mortimer muttered. “Let’s find their prints first. And obtain some
type of insight into what we are up against.”
    Bryson
examined the snow all around him, keeping his eyes peeled for
anything, in the trees. It was hard to believe that he was at the
same place as the night before, and that the thing that chased them
had even existed. There were no signs that anything had been
there.
    They strolled
through the wood, following their frantically placed prints, and
even came across a patch of marked snow where James had fallen over
onto the ground, and they had frantically pulled him to his
feet.
    Bryson looked
at every place he had heard the things, and every conceivable place
that the thing could have been; but there were no traces of
anything.
    They finally
gave up when they reached the place where the light had been; and
Mortimer then led them back.
    It
astonished Bryson that the evidence of them being there, which
should have been completely visible, was not anywhere. It was
absurd believing that there was a chance that the snow had covered
it. Why would it only have
covered it ...? They had their prints there! And there would be a
larger level of snow.
    At their
approach to the back door of the castle, Merton stopped and looked
at him.
    “ Your
encounter might have been with an entity!”
    “ It had
to be a floating one!” he joked. “But why was it so loud? I heard
it crashing through the wood, charging towards us.”
    “ It
might have created the sounds itself. Or like the sounds in the
castle: they might have manifested from elsewhere!”
    Bryson
considered the facts from different angles, while he and Merton
cleaned away the snow from about the door, before entering.
Mortimer seemed to be doing the same, behind him, but, when he
observed him, he saw that he was checking something further
out.
    After a few
minutes, Mortimer crouched down to study something, on the snow.
And they followed his path through the snow – to where he was –
where the snow thinned out.
    Suddenly,
almost like magic, Bryson saw shoe impressions appear, going
through the snow, leading away from the castle, and he rushed
towards Mortimer.
    “ Whose
shoe is that size?” Mortimer instantly asked.
    “ I don’t
know!” Bryson answered.
    It was
impossible to tell, from the vague marks.
    “ They
look as though they were made at about the same time as my prints
were made – over at the wood. They could not have been made
earlier, as they would be covered over with snow. And they could
not have been made later, as they would have no snow on
them.”
    “ Someone
left the castle, at about the same time as you entered it! And they
went off into those trees over there.”
    “ But
nobody left! Everybody