I am a single man. I was once a single boy. I have never attracted even horrors at my heels, though sometimes I scared myself into trying. I sleep little now and read Poe often. I feel the melancholy hands at my hot tea before I can even touch it. It seems there is a thing after me that calls in a voice that once knew and once knowing thus having power over me. The night is cold and I shiver, wrapped up in blankets sitting in my living room postage stamp size and dim orangey, perfect for the season rushing from the northward climes. I am naked under these blankets in the room I have left cold and I take my tea in my hands, second-handed, as I sip in the shadows and wait for the thing to catch up with me. Or rather, the thing ahead of me, to double back in forest black and drier, and turn round a second or third time to spy me out and call me to account: .....