‘Then I must assume you’re prey. These things are drearily binary, I’m afraid.’

I’m starting to see what Mel meant about the Creeper. It has a way of getting to you – its voice is more than a voice, it’s super-condensed freeze-dried malevolence. My heart is racing, I’m cold, the tension in my dream body is rising. The voice has this certain quality where, whatever it says, if the Creeper is the one saying it then it must be true. It’s pretty fucked-up.

I fight for control. I manage to locate myself. I am in the Dream City. As ever, it is night, and I’m standing at one end of a ramshackle bridge made of planks and rope several storeys high, swaying in the breeze. Below me is a building site, and I can hear the sound of jackhammers and the scream of metal being cut.

I can’t see the Creeper. I want to turn around and confront it, but I’m distracted by what I see at the far end of the bridge: a small group of people coming towards me, single-file. Someone is idiotic enough to try to push a pram out across the wooden planks, clinging to the rope with one hand, holding the pram with the other. I put a safety net up and widen the bridge to make it easier for them.

‘Safety nets are for the feeble.’

The safety net catches fire.

I pour rain on it. I tell the Creeper, ‘Get out of my dream. You’re not welcome here.’

‘I’m here as a professional courtesy. You’ve strayed into my orbit by dreaming with Melodie Tan. I suggest you go back to working with insecure schoolteachers and midlife-crisis victims trying to find themselves.’

‘Melodie Tan is my client. I’ve been invited into her dreams. You haven’t. So stay out of her head, and stay out of mine.’

‘Or what?’

Or what? I don’t know. I don’t know who he is or where he is or how he’s doing this.

‘Just fuck off,’ I say angrily.

‘You want me to fuck off? Or what, Charlie? You’ll call the Dream Police?’

I don’t know what to say, so I turn myself into the Hulk again. I swing my giant hammer and it makes a curious whistling sound across the high, dark air of the night city – but of course, the Creeper isn’t really there. It’s just a voice in my head. And the voice laughs.

‘Face it, Charlie. You’re completely unprotected. You’re a basically decent person but you’re afraid of your own shadow. I’ve got the measure of you now. Don’t make me crush you like an insect.’