The instant the gate drifted shut behind me, I realised I could see it, slithering up the west transept of the church. That same moment, it was gone.

I felt my heart jolt, my eyes grow wide and staring, mystified by what I'd just witnessed.

The limestone walls of St. Oswald's appeared phosphorous, cast in a burnt, dusty orange from two sodium lamps in the grounds.

The rest was hidden in cold, black niches of shadow, flooding the porches and the buttresses. Deeper into the churchyard the branches of yews were like jagged needles in the darkness.

This was a regular shortcut on my route home, and usually caught the icy bluster off the North Sea. Tonight there was an almost vacuum-like stillness. It wasn't even cold. It was as if the old church was enclosed in a bubble, and I'd slipped through the membrane.

Dismissing what I'd seen as a trick of the shadow - after all, there were so many - I ventured further down the gravel pathway toward the hotel-lined street at the top of the shallow incline. My heart was still thumping. I considered myself a pragmatic man; and I'd walked this route dozens of times. Of course, that failed to stop me from glancing nervously at the headstones hunched in the grass, and the weathered table-tombs discoloured with lichen. I almost froze as I passed the craggy ruins of the chancel and north transept.

Then I heard the breathing, slow and faint.

I spun, searching wildly for the source of the noise. The bell-tower loomed high before me, the slits of lancet windows gazing down coldly. The darkness seemed to thicken around it. There was no one nearby, and yet I couldn't be sure - the winter evenings summoned nightfall far too quickly.

At once, I covered my mouth with a trembling hand.

There were two figures, inhabiting the shadow, staring at me from the eaves of the tower some forty feet high.

I stared back, unable to move, every sense sharply attuned. They were like black insects hanging off the very stone.

At last, the air rushed into my lungs again. All I wanted to do was run. The distance to the street ahead suddenly seemed twice as long. But as I burst into motion, one of them slithered down toward me - and I caught a glimpse of an eyeless face, its mouth open unnaturally wide.

Under a wave of shock, I turned on my heels and fled in the opposite direction, back the way I came. And as I ran, I heard the metal shriek of brakes and the blaring of traffic horns from that hotel-lined street.

What has haunted me ever since has not been the figures on the church, but the reason they came to me that night.

The following day, the local paper reported that an articulated lorry had veered off the road next to St. Oswald's, ploughing into the stone wall and iron gate I was originally heading for.

The staring church had saved me, by delivering a warning I would never forget.

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