Together, they scaled another stone ridge in the cavern. They were directly underneath the beam of light.

‘It’s dazzling,’ Zachary breathed in awe now he could see it up close and so bright.

‘Can you feel that? The prickling on your skin. There’s a buzzing in the air,’ Irene said in wonder.

‘My clothes are standing up, and so is my hair,’ Percy said in astonishment.

‘Wow,’ Aisling said in a quiet voice.

‘It’s electricity… that’s all it is…’ Dale stated with defiance. Nevertheless he looked up with awe at the rippling, flowing river of light.

‘This is the purest energy in all the world. This is the energy that underpins all the other energies. It holds it all together; like glue on paper. It can become anything; that’s what I believe,’ said Henry.

The others watched as Henry climbed a stalagmite that rose like the trunk of a mighty tree. He got so close to the glowing beam that he was but an arm’s length from it.

‘Now, don’t try this yourself, folks!’ Henry called to the others, with a jaunty air that made them know he was about to do something incredibly dangerous.

Henry withdrew the iron rod and plunged it straight into the light.

There was a crackle of brilliant sparks in every colour that the eye could see. The light itself flowed like water around the metal and sent the flecks of light gushing away. Henry’s rod glowed an intense, white colour. It made a sizzling, bubbling sound like hot iron being dunked in water and trembled and jolted in his gauntlet.

Henry half climbed, half slid back down to the ridge where the others waited.

He held the iron rod at arm’s length. It sparked and fizzed with energy, and the top of it emitted a corona of white and rainbow-coloured light.

‘The raw energy can be turned to any other energy of the world. Right now, I’ll introduce this one to fire,’ Henry said. He unscrewed the lid from his lantern and held the flame underneath the rod. As soon as the flame touched it, the rod glowed an infernal orange and the light emitted from it blazed like a sunset.

For a moment, Henry showed the others the glowing metal, while seeming not to be burnt by it, then he turned and hurled it into the depths of the cavern.

The rod exploded.

A brilliant plume of fire burst out, and fireballs spiralled out in all directions. The thunder of the detonation echoed for several moments, then all was deathly quiet; as if the cave waited with baited breath.

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‘Run for it,’ Henry said.

He picked up his stave and lantern and sprinted off along the ridge, as fast as his uneven lumbering gait would allow.

The others looked about in astonishment, then ran after him.

From within the caverns a cacophony erupted. The disembodied voices that made their background murmur of whispers and chuckles rose to an angry screech. Flocks of crows screamed, cats wailed and there was the baying and howling of packs of hounds.

Henry slammed the door behind them and slid a wooden bar into place to lock any supernatural and unnameable horrors outside.

‘Lights out, lights out!’ Henry urged, and all fell to darkness.

They ducked out of sight of the windows, which were too grimy and cobwebbed to see much through anyway, and waited and listened in silence.

Outside, they heard dogs sniffing around the chapel entrance and scratching at the crack under the door. The silhouette of a cat appeared against the glowing beam as it sat and looked in through a window. Crows harked; their wings beat; and animals screeched through the holes in the roof.

Henry waved his stave at the crows. There was a splash as he stepped in something unpleasant, and wet.

‘What was that?’ Henry groaned.

‘Ow!’ Flora exclaimed. ‘I put my hand in something prickly. There’s leaves and thorns all around here!’

‘Lights on, lights on!’ Henry called as he stepped in more water and audibly overbalanced in the dark.

‘Oh no!’ Flora moaned, as the chapel’s interior came back into view as lanterns were relit.

Half of the worn, subsided floor of the chapel was covered in water, up to Henry’s ankles. It reached the bottom of the coal pile; the extinguished hearth, and the supply crates. More curiously, plant life had pushed its way through the cracks in the chapel walls and twisted its way through in bushy, thorny growths.

The crows in the rooftop gave a scornful cackle and flew off. The activity outside went quiet.

‘I don’t believe it, how has this happened?’ Dale said aloud as he held his head in his hands.

‘We were only gone a short while!’ remarked Percy as he plucked a stem of thorns that clung to his legs.

‘This isn’t natural,’ mourned Irene, with despair in her voice. ‘Look at all the supplies! Help me get them out of the water; they’ll be ruined!’

‘Oh look, it moves! It moves!’ Flora cried. She held the stem of one of the thorns and it twisted and coiled around her hand like the tentacle of a squid.

‘You’re making it do that!’ Dale accused.

‘I’m not, I swear!’ Flora protested and flung the stem away as it tightened around her wrist.

Aisling set about hauling crates from the water and dumping them on the dry floor. She grunted in wordless anger as she tossed even the heaviest crate aside while the others bickered.

‘Folks… look outside…’ said Zachary in a hoarse croak as he peered out of a window.

Dale wrenched the window open and looked; aghast. From the rear of the chapel, unseen by them in their rush, there were sprawling masses of barbed, tangling greenery that rolled towards the chapel, like waves.

‘My God. Lord preserve us,’ said Irene.

‘Impossible,’ said Dale in a numb voice, and shut the window.

‘Is water still coming in? I can’t even see where it’s coming from,’ Percy asked. He attempted to lift a crate, but only succeeded in ripping the lid off and splashing down on his backside.

‘There’s a pool of water nearby, up on a ledge. It might be seeping through, but this has never happened before. But the thorns? I’ve got no explanation for that,’ said Henry. ‘Oh, look at all the coal. That won’t dry for weeks, maybe months!’

‘Can we get the supplies up somewhere dry? How about upstairs?’ asked Percy.

‘Ha! You’d be welcome to try! Carrying all this up there; you’d fall through the floor,’ said Henry, and wrenched the coal shovel from under the murky tide with a mournful splash.