The final stages of this book were completed (overshadowed, in truth) by an invisible menace whose physical, psychological and social effects were nonetheless highly tangible and observable. Although some people were fortunate enough to live in areas that did not experience this unseen ‘enemy’ as a familiar neighbourhood presence, the fear it provoked always lay close by, not just in distant parts. The COVID-19 pandemic epitomised our central concerns in ways we could never have anticipated, and certainly not welcomed. This strain of coronavirus posed existential threats to lives and livelihoods that revolved around movement and location; the challenges it presented fundamentally altered our immediate surroundings. In Gothic literature we tend to go forth to meet the unknown, yet this real-world crisis demanded retreat or seclusion. Few people could travel far. In the early stages of the outbreak, urban landscapes were eerily uninhabited, inaccessible for work or leisure purposes. Beauty spots, beaches, mountains and nature reserves similarly barred or restricted access to those seeking escape. These rural landscapes, to which many people would typically travel for recreation or solace, became empty, almost untenanted, spaces. Indoors and outdoors, social distancing rules emphasised the spatial threat, the insidious footfall, of the disease. In a climate of creeping unease and dread, the experience of risk seemed at once proximate and remote, intimate and abstract.

Medical questions about transmission (across continents, countries, neighbourhoods and households, as well as from individual to individual) rapidly became urgent matters of political, cultural and economic debate. Accelerated partly by international travel for business and leisure, or exacerbated by displacement and forced migration, the pandemic has been an issue of movement. Stay at home, we were told, a strategy intended to avoid infection and to limit the spread of the virus or confine it where it had already arrived. Set against this edict, the global supply chain struggled to transport medical equipment and supplies; research laboratories rushed to develop vaccines, produce chemical reagents or design reliable antibody tests; and manufacturers shifted production to make ventilators and visors. A state of suspension and ceaseless activity, unquiet stillness and haste ensued: in such a disorientating hiatus, the future could be viewed, alternately, with anxiety or through a peculiar nostalgia for a return to normality.