‘Exactly. She was engaging in high-level organised movements and responses while dreaming. But there’s more. There’s a thing called sleep paralysis. It’s a phenomenon that’s been observed and recorded for centuries, to the point where it’s become a cultural archetype, personified as a villain in fairy tales and horror movies. The dark, hooded presence. The white-faced stranger in black robes. Death itself. This is what you describe as the Creeper.’

‘You make it sound like a cliché, but it’s not like that, Roman.’

‘I’m sure it’s not. Listen. A person will wake up and find they can’t move a muscle. They sense a presence nearby. Sometimes the presence is on top of them and they can’t breathe – they are being suffocated. This presence has been given different names, but in the last twenty years it’s been known colloquially as the Stranger. And I’m telling you, the Stranger is the Creeper. The feeling of not being able to move. The dark presence with the white face. The sense of creeping malevolence. They’re all classic. The dreamer interprets the loss of motor control as a supernatural entity that intends them harm.’

I snort. ‘I know what the Stranger is. Is that really all you’ve got? The Creeper is the Stranger?’

‘No, I have more. But it’s speculative. Just hear me out and keep an open mind.’

I roll my eyes but say nothing.

‘As a dreamhacker, when you access someone’s dreamspace, you don’t interfere with their R.E.M. atonia. But what if you could? What if you could turn off the neural gate that controls muscle movement, so that the person’s body would respond to the conditions imposed in dreamspace? They’d be moving in reaction to the dream, acting out whatever they were experiencing there. What if you really could hack into their brain at that level while at the same time shaping their dream environment? Think of the consequences.’

Mel on the bathroom floor, her head in the bathtub. She was hacked, her R.E.M. atonia disabled, and while I was distracted the Creeper somehow led her to the bathroom. There she was convinced by events in the dream environment to turn on the taps and submerge herself, and then . . . what? The atonia was reactivated to keep her head in the water?

OK, it could fit. Roman’s watching me think through the whole thing. Maybe he is on to something. But I’m not about to say so without some kind of evidence. I fold my arms and wait for the hard evidence. But it doesn’t come.