Time seems to slow as we pass, trickling onwards like an eternal river. Unstoppable. Inevitable. We are everywhere at once, observing all that occurs with an outsider's eyes.

Here, a man struggles against his captors, screaming and howling in the faces of people who simply do not care. They're just doing their job, they think. Just another ordinary day. But for the man in the chair, his eyes wide and his mouth screaming, this is everything he has ever feared. Discovery, in the old days, used to be a good thing. Science. Progress. A wondrous new world ready to be explored. But, sometimes, that great new invention, that glorious opportunity, turned out to be quite the opposite. There is something ancient here, something bigger than any of the men in this room can understand, could even comprehend. But not the man in the chair. He knows exactly what is going on and he is not having any of it. He shouts louder, as if that will change his situation, as if that will free him from the bottomless pit of torment he finds himself sliding inexorably towards. It won't, of course. Nothing can save him now. A camera clicks. His fate is sealed.

Nearby, a young woman stands, looking on. Her eyes are thick with tears, but she is careful not to show it. The man in the chair looks at her, hurt. Betrayed. Proud. Yet something inside her has changed. She is no longer his shining beacon of hope, just as he is no longer hers. They are both tarnished now, him with the blood of twenty, her with the blood of one. And the guilt of a hundred. She pulls her clothes tighter around herself as she feels an unearthly breeze rippling. Is it fate she can sense on her back, howling down as time's river flows towards its ultimate destination?

Another man, somewhere else. His mind is whirling with conflicting emotions. His best friend, the only one who has been there for him since the start, gone somehow. In this man's mind, when he thinks of his friend, he can only see blood and bodies and fear. But even as his mind moves from his friend, he thinks of another. A blonde woman, standing at the gate. His one true love, the only person he has ever felt truly happy with. And now she is tainted too. Tainted by the curse he has brought on her, tainted by her past, tainted by the friend he has so recently lost. The mother of his child.

And here, in a corpse-strewn kitchen, lies a fourth. Not quite as dead as the others in the room, but not quite alive. Somewhere in the middle. In limbo. Purgatory.

Here, a corridor full of doors. Some open onto rooms as bloody as the kitchen, some onto hotels or grand halls. One opens onto a train carriage.

Here, a man stands alone, the black of his eyes only surpassed by the malice in his soul. Tick-tock. The time is coming.

Here, a young man in a long coat, a necklace of teeth and a stake in his hand.

Here, a girl in a floral dress, her faint smile belying what wonders she has in mind.

Here, we stop. The hour is upon us, and soon everything will become clear.

You fetch the sticks, and I'll fetch the rope.

The full moon is rising.