What noise escaped my throat was alien to me – a half-screamed roar so harsh it tore at my larynx.

The wraith's blank eyes shone stark against the blackness. Her mottled skin was blue and black, curving inwards to where her lips should have been.

Her wailing crescendoed into a scream, urgent and shrill as her face broke through the veil of mist, lurching towards me.

I tore back from the apparition, rocking the cab as I snatched both feet up onto the bench. I curled up, arms splayed, trapped inside the small space with some otherworldly evil bearing unknown intentions; locked in indefinitely with no way of knowing what she wanted or where I was headed.

But after that, I saw nothing.

I did not move nor relax right away; to do so would have been impossible under the government of inherent fear. Each breath I heaved came in violent, panicked bursts of the likes I had not yet and never since experienced, and nor should I like to. I convinced myself in that moment that it was the end for me; that I would meet my eventual fate out where nobody could hear me scream.

The stillness lengthened, but my heartbeat did not slow. Almost too much for me to bear, a crazed compulsion possessed me. I find it hard to fathom why then I should look, though a mild comparison might be the curious urge one feels when a hot object is set before them, and despite warning, one serves only to prove it by touching it. Bereft of sense and sanity I knew that I must look, though what rational part of me that fought against this impulse urged me that I should not.

I would be lying if I wrote that the very thought of seeing her ghastly face a second time did not frighten me immensely. What I felt in that half-mad moment was not courage. It was not determination. It was some intense, inescapable magnetism. In spite of my experience in the paranormal, to encounter one in proximity unhinged me as much as the next man – of that, at least, I pen with confidence.

But still I peered over the edge.

Only the hansom's thin, soiled lining came into view. There remained no trace of the black mist, and the face in the floor had altogether vanished. Still, I did not yet find the nerve to lower my feet again, and the driver carried me further into the countryside without another word exchanged between us.

The wraith's absence did not comfort me as I had hoped. I grew mindful that she still lingered in the carriage with me and had done so from the moment I boarded. In this knowledge I hardly troubled myself with what might become of my destination. After all, one would have to survive the journey to arrive there. I curled on that tattered bench for what felt like another quart hour, staring into the swaying lantern flame for fear of what else I would see.

It is with great insult to my pride that I write this part, for it is uncommon of me to lose my composure. I truly wished for nothing more than to bolt out into the night, uncaring for whatever muddy back lane I found myself in. I would sooner leave the driver every coin I had in my pocket if it meant that he would halt his horse and release me from this tiny haunted prison, but he had not yet spoken a word or listened to my demands. I was alone ... But similarly I couldn't shake that I was not. And for the first time I wholly knew of the dread that had unnerved Viola Harold and Frederic Emory so drastically that even in the daytime they were no longer much like themselves.

It was this newfound dread that I accredit for my uncharacteristic faintheartedness and everything that happened beyond this point. Or that, at least, is the only way I can begin to explain what it was that froze me to that corner for some inconceivable amount of time, until, at last, the cab slowed.

The lock clicked in release upon stopping, but still I dared not move too suddenly. I half feared that it would soon take off again and whisk me ever farther from the skirts of London. I glanced around now that the carriage lamp ceased its violent sway, and spied no milk-white orbs watching from those shifting shadows as I had dreaded. Out of fear of what might happen if I did not, I emptied my pocket of its coinage, left it on the bench and hurried out into the downpour.

No sooner had I stepped from the plate did the carriage race off again with its cab door swinging wide open, battering its flank with an eerie knocking as its form disappeared into the blackness. I stood in the middle of the lane for a few moments, already soaked through to my waistcoat and with the rain dripping from my hat like icy fingers on the nape of my neck. As disagreeable as the Great British weather is at the best of times, a lifetime of it could not have prepared me for the dankness of those few, rotten hours.

To make it worse by bounds, I was hopelessly lost. The terrain this far from Glasten was nothing like I had ever known; flat, featureless and dark in every direction from horizon to horizon. Only one thing broke this perpetual grey sea with its buckled and irregular form: a lone farmhouse, half a mile from the road.

It did not seem to be inhabited, for no light came from within. Perhaps a braver man, or one more foolish, might have sheltered there for the night, but I was neither. Instead I stared out at it for the longest time, only aware this most unremarkable farmhouse stood out there at all by the odd contours of it just visible against a dramatic watercolour of clouds. Why the driver had thought to unload me here, I could not even begin to speculate. I did not know the name of this road and never would – if it lay claim to one at all – where it led to or from, or in which orientation it lay. But I could be certain of all things that it was not Clement Street, and it was no secret I did not take pleasure in this particular country walk.

And so began the long, bleak trudge following the road back to Glasten. I stopped frequently at any sound or movement in the rain, fearful that the wraith longed for my attention even now, but nothing showed itself to me. Still, out here where I should have experienced one of the most lonesome points in my life, I could not shake that curious sense of being watched. It is a queer, uncharted phenomenon of man's faculties that he should always know when a stranger casts their eye over him in a crowd. It is not something he does consciously, but fleetingly, and then altogether disregards it. It is something animal in us that we know so little about, but by God did it haunt me.

When at last Glasten came into view, with its blurry pinpoints of lamplight stark in the night, the cold had numbed me so severely with its bite, and I no longer felt sensation in my hands or toes.

By the time the clock tolled for midnight, I found myself the other side of Mr Rawlings' front door. I fell against it, so relieved to have arrived home at last that I looked to the heavens and swallowed in my throat the urge to weep.

Shorn of my sodden outerwear and the puddles in my boots, the warmth of my landlord's hearth burned against my icy skin as I stood before it. I buried my gaze into the heart of the coalfire for the longest time, but it did nought to warm or comfort me as it had on so many other troubled nights. Mr Rawlings had left the fire burning in anticipation of my arrival, and their housemaid, as she so often did, approached me with a steaming pot of tea.

I looked into her face for what might have been the first time in weeks, genuinely appreciating her familiar, slightly crooked smile, and in regard of the way her tight blonde curls slimmed the fuller contours of her cheeks. I might have smiled in likeness, but I could not feel the muscles in my face perform so natural a reaction. Even so, her own lips never once faltered, and I was drawn to that perfect Cupid's bow as I had so often been drawn to Nina's.

It is curious how trauma affects people in its singular ways. For some will weep until they withdraw into their melancholy for days, even weeks, and, on rarer occasions, for good. Some complain of recurring nightmares and vivid flashbacks. Many grow silent, detached from the world or the people who love them. Others may suffer a mix of both. Others laugh like madmen.

For myself, it was none of these. My relief turned to a desperate, uncontrollable desire for comfort from a mother figure I'd lost at a young age; for physical, human touch so intense it bordered on the erotic.

I eyed the poor woman's face in the way I reserved only for my future wife, and it is much to my shame and poor judgement that I took her by the shoulders and pressed my lips against hers. I hardly knew what I was doing, but I nevertheless revelled in the feeling. It was as though the trauma of the night had cast an imitation of me, and I cared not for that damnable Corgaine, or Nina, or Viola, or that fool of a girl at Glasten Central. All that mattered in that delirious, blissful moment of misplaced passion was that I knew it was real.