I had been him only two minutes before, now I was looking at him.

‘Don Hector?’ he asked in a nervous voice.

‘What do you want?’ I asked.

‘I’m a friend of Kiki.’

I beckoned him closer and gave him a plain cardboard tube, the same one that Webster would hide up the chimney, moments before being arrested. It was all backwards, but dreams, I learned, were rarely linear.

‘Look after the cylinder as you would your life,’ I said, ‘and get it to Kiki. We’ll not speak again.’

Webster understood the gravity of the situation and swiftly departed. Within a few minutes there were criss-crossing flashlights outside and The Notable Goodnight entered, followed by Hooke and several other people I presumed were HiberTech Security. They were one step behind both of us. Right now, Webster was on his way to hide the cylinder.

‘Where is it?’ said Goodnight, striding towards me. ‘What have you done with it? Who did you give it to?’

I gave her a smile, then the middle finger.

‘All our work,’ implored Goodnight, ‘everything we stood for, everything we built. Please, Don Hector, do the right thing.’

I smiled. Don Hector didn’t have to justify his/my actions to anyone.

‘We’ll squeeze it out of him,’ said Agent Hooke. ‘He might resist out here, but not in his dreaming mind. We’ve drawn worse secrets out of better people than him.’

‘Blue Buick,’ I said.

‘What?’ asked Goodnight.

‘I said, “blue Buick”. Because it’s all you’ll get from me. A picnic I once had, on my own, in a field overlooking the Wye where there’s this glorious oak that has large stones piled up around the trunk. I used to sit and read, the car parked close by, some wine in a cooler, cheese. That’s what’s in my mind, and that’s all I’m going to dream about. I’ll be adding a few guardians of my own, too. Severed hands like hairless mole-rats, just in case you decide to go in, or send others in your place. You’ll get nothing from me.’

‘Take him,’ said Goodnight, but I was already gone – back to the pile of boulders around the oak, the blue Buick parked close by, the picnic half eaten. I knew the dream was about to end as the carpet of rippling hands flooded towards me, across the ground, over the boulders. I didn’t struggle as they ran up my body. I didn’t care when their combined weight toppled me and I felt a tooth break as I hit the rock below me; didn’t care as I felt myself being pulled through the gaps in the stones; didn’t care as I felt myself once more suffocating beneath the soil, the damp earth pressing heavily on my chest. I didn’t care because—

Dawn and the dead