Chengyang screamed, jumping away from a baby doll’s head in the belching earth at her feet. Reddish mud spluttered then a torrent of red liquid and pink plastic infants erupted from the hole. Godwit took her arm, explaining the sick jokes that Jost Fingle loved to play...  Clouds laden, Arnside Knott brimmed, he would plant polythene shopping bags of sinister doll parts in the ground. Iron oxides and flood water did the rest— She nodded to say she understood and appeared to be calming down when a bolt of lightning and crackling thunderclap shocked her and Zhao to the core. It’s bright light momentarily illuminated them both from head to toe. Pale olive faces covered in sleet, weary bloodshot eyes, expressions of desperation and shivering with cold... Godwit knew he needed to get them to the air-conditioned warmth of his Sierra RS Cosworth as soon as possible, but     something weird was approaching— He heard a familiar chorus of yelps, hundreds of cheeps and thousands of chirps. Zhao’s and Chengyang’s stomachs tightened with panic at squelching and pattering noises, watching in horror as soil crawled and glistened, moving towards them, the sounds louder, shiny, slippery and moving in a wave.
    Nà shì shénme? asked Zhao, trembling.
    Godwit smiled and put their minds at rest, explaining that the frogspawn had been out of kilter for years after Ashmeadow’s old open-air swimming pool was destroyed. An army of baby frogs swept past for some time until only the odd late straggler hopped by, desperately trying to keep up. The last one collided with a tree, heading off the wrong way, but Godwit caught it and sent it in the right direction.