“‘What?’ asked my father.

“‘Things haven’t been so good on the station due to the war…And I’ve been offered a good job up North….”

“‘So we’ve come round to say goodbye,’ explained Doreen Moffett.

“‘And to give you first refusal to buy our farm,’ explained Arthur.

“The Moffetts talked for half an hour or so with my parents, before arriving at a price that the Moffetts would accept and my father could afford.   So it was agreed: We would take over the Moffett station, whose boundary adjoined ours so there was no problem converting them to one giant-sized station…But finally the waiting got too much for me.   ‘But what about Leonard?’ I said before I could stop myself, having spent the last nervous half hour wondering when they were going to mention what had happened to their teenaged son.

“‘He’s outside in the car,’ replied Arthur, thumbing back over his left shoulder.

“‘Out…outside?’ I asked, not understanding, wondering whether they had his mouldering corpse in the back of their HR station wagon.

“‘That’s right, outside in the car,’ said Doreen Moffett, making me think for a t that she had read my thought.   ‘Go on, I know he’ll be pleased to see you….’

“So, reluctantly I went out into the corridor, heading toward the back of the farmhouse.   However, I only got as far as the kitchen before meeting Leonard coming in through the back doorway.

“‘Hello…To…Tony,’ he said, slightly hesitantly, as though having to think for a moment to recall my name.   ‘I suppose you didn’t expect to see me again…?’

“‘No…no I…” I stammered.

“The creature in front of me didn’t reply; it merely smiled demonically at my obvious horror.   I found myself almost being hypnotised by the Cheshire cat-grin on the creature’s face.   Without realising what I was doing, I began to walk trance-like across the kitchen floor toward the creature, only stopping when I was close enough to peer into its hellish eyes.   Where I saw the image of a hideous, grey-haired old hag glaring back at me as though peering out at me through two tiny windows…By 1945 the old legend that the eyes of a corpse held an image of the last person seen before dying had already been exploded.   But even if it hadn’t been, I knew that there had been no bespectacled, grey-haired old woman on the side of the mount with us a week earlier, and there had been nowhere on the mountain for her to have been hiding….