Dreams, I knew, were not some mythic message from Beyond. Dreams are speech from the unconscious mind, messages couched not in the logical terms of daylight consciousness, but in a twilight narrative of glimpsed images and impressions. Repeated dreams, worked over and over, generally had a purpose: In my case, the flying-objects image had taken me by the hand and eventually led me to the realisation that I had been in San Francisco during the earthquake, thus opening up an entire segment of my childhood that I had closed away. The second dream, that of the faceless man, was rooted in a specific incident that clearly had terrified my six-year-old self, an event that had rested unquiet over the intervening years until I could finally bring it to light and put it to rest—I felt certain, thanks to Holmes' discovery of the old woman's reminiscences, that that particular nocturnal visitor would trouble me no more.

Both dreams had their origin in frightening incidents, two events that had been wrapped about and reshaped by my unconscious mind to soften their sharp edges—until, triggered by the realisation that I was heading to the place where both had occurred, like bits of psychic shrapnel they worked their way to the surface.

But the third dream appeared to be without antecedent. I could find no concealed rooms, either here or in Pacific Heights; moreover, the dream had always been very specific: I knew about the rooms, and needed only to put the key to the door and step inside. Yet in both houses I had actively searched, and although memories awakened as I went along—freely and comprehensively in the Lodge, piecemeal and grudgingly in San Francisco—in neither place had I felt that throb of recognition that told me I was getting close to the door.

Perhaps Tom Long had been right. When I'd heard those precise Chinese accents telling me of Matteo Ricci's memory palace, I'd been frankly indignant, that this stranger might presume to see into my mind. But maybe I'd been too quick to dismiss his suggestion that the hidden rooms were not of stone and wood, but were located in the recesses of my mind.

Like an object so familiar to the eyes it goes unseen, I had habitually walked past my own history, freely displaying the rest of the house to all and sundry, knowing yet not knowing what lay behind its surfaces. My entire childhood had become a self-inflicted blind spot—I had complacently passed by the locked rooms of my past for so long, fingering the key in my pocket, that I no longer knew where to find the door.