Its footfalls grew louder as it drew nearer. Twelve-year-old Joseph Capello recognised the sound as coming from a nightmare – a lie of the subconscious that would dissolve with dawn’s light. And yet, the terror was real enough, as the cloaked figure stalked the shadowed passageways between the camp huts.

Joseph’s coarse blankets pressed him into the mattress, his chest too constricted for him to scream as the murky figure sought him out. It could smell souls like a child smells a freshly baked pie; taste coppery blood like a boy tastes caramel. The footsteps halted outside their hut and Joseph withered into the mattress as a talon scratched at an eddied knot in the wall just inches from his face.

The scratching woke him.

He cast the blankets aside and sprang upright in bed. Joseph focused on the familiar knothole, a tight wad of newspaper plugged firmly against the night and whatever lay beyond. He didn’t know what time it was, but it was still dark outside the window, his bedroom door open enough to let in some of the kitchen’s light. Joseph concentrated on his breathing as he sank back down, hugging his knees. He strained to hear the scratching again. Just a dream – another lie. He studied the twisted trail of the blankets he had cast across the floor, to the mirror opposite, the auburn-eyed twelve-year-old boy in the mirror staring back at him. His once plump cheeks had wasted away along with his appetite since Mama, Papa and he had been exiled to the camps, with busloads of other Italian immigrants.

Joseph stood warily so as not to make the floorboards creak. He stepped into the rectangle of kitchen light as he heard the front door open slowly, the rabbit snares that hung from the handle chiming his father’s entry. Joseph held his breath, stood stock-still as Papa skulked in, having defied the camp curfew, and Mama’s feelings, for the German bathtub gin in the adjoining compound. Joseph couldn’t let his father see him witness this indiscretion. He waited for Papa to steal into his and Mama’s bedroom before moving so much as an eyelash, then returned to bed, the blankets he’d gathered covering his head as he waited for the shouting to begin.

And it did…

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