I didn’t. Not even a tiniest bit. It was Don Hector’s voice all right, but what he was saying made no sense at all – a long and seemingly random collection of apparently unconnected words interspersed with numbers and Greek letters, all spoken in an even monotone. It lasted five and three quarter minutes and was, I presumed, some kind of code. It was only after the discordant collection of words had faded that I heard another noise – a gentle murmur from outside. I walked over and quietly opened the door a couple of inches. As I’d suspected, there was a nightwalker outside. It was Rubik’s Cube Girl, but she’d stopped doing the puzzle and was standing stock still in apparent Torpor. She wasn’t the only one. They were all there, perhaps thirty or so, filling the entire corridor. All standing still, unblinking, tightly yet equally spaced from each other, all missing a thumb. I was about to close the door when the nightwalker blinked, and that was unusual. Firstly because nightwalkers in Torpor don’t blink, and secondly, because they’d all blinked – in unison.

I cautiously reached my arm out through the door and pushed her hard on the sternum. She took a step back to steady herself. If she’d been in Torpor, she would have fallen over, knocked the next and they’d all be over, one after the other in a comedy fashion, like skittles. But the thing was, they all took a steadying step backwards.

‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked, and they whispered back in unison, like a lispy echo: ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘What’s going on?’

‘What’s going on?’

‘Simple Simone says,’ I said slowly, ‘“Put your hands on your head”.’

They all obediently put their hands on their head.

‘Simple Simone says: “Put your hands by your side”.’

They all put them down again.

‘Stand on one leg.’

They ignored the order. Simple Simone hadn’t told them to, see. I smiled, for the first time in a while.

‘Simple Simone says: “Tell me your name”.’

They answered as one, but each with their own. I only heard a few in the mass of different words. Rubik’s Cube Girl was Rebecca and Glitzy Tiara, positioned off to her right, was Betty, who now had tears rolling softly down her cheeks.

‘How are you feeling right now?’ I asked, and there followed a mix of responses – frustrated, trapped, lost, adrift.

They stood there for a moment longer, but then the magic faded, and they moved out of the trance and drifted off down the corridor, as vacant as ever. I had no idea of the meaning of Don Hector’s words on the cylinder, but whatever it was, it had an effect on nightwalkers. The recording might not retrieve the nightwalkers, but it was a step in the right direction.