‘Shut up,’ I say through gritted teeth. ‘Leave her alone. If you’ve got a problem with me, then you deal with me.’

‘Oh no,’ laughs the voice. ‘If I’ve got a problem with you, I can do whatever amuses me. And this kind of game amuses me greatly.’

The Creeper materialises from out of the shadows to loom over Mel’s bed. It’s wearing black Darth Vader robes that partly shade the white mask. Mel’s eyes are open now, black with fear. I can see the tendons in her neck stand out. It puts its hands around her throat and squeezes, then brings its face down close to hers.

‘Give me your breath,’ it says to her.

There’s a vase of flowers on the table. The card says, ‘Break a leg, kid! –Vazzie xxx.’ I pick up the vase – it’s heavy – and heft it to my shoulder, then go skipping towards the bed like a shot-putter placing a throw. I hurl the vase at the Creeper. The vase goes right through the Creeper and hits the pillow next to Mel. She sits bolt upright, covered in flowers and water.

I am an idiot.

The Creeper turns towards me and I’m confronted by the mask. Under my scrutiny the head seems to grow, and the surface of the white mask stretches and develops a red slash of a mouth, flat-lipped and much too big in proportion to the rest of the face. I always find caricature scarier than realism. I wonder how it knows that about me. Ugh. I reach out and tug at the Creeper angrily, trying to drag it away from Mel.

The Creeper’s arm comes off in my hand with a wet crunching noise. The arm is still moving and the hand grabs at me. Black fluid spurts out of the stump, and a smell of decaying flesh.

I hurl the arm across the room. The hand climbs up the wall and switches off the light.

‘Gotcha,’ says the Creeper, in the dark now. ‘Do you smell that? It’s death. You’ll find death everywhere you go. Beginning here, tonight.’

‘Fuck off,’ I say. I conjure up a bedside lamp and switch it on. The one-armed Creeper is lying on the bed, face down, covering Mel. I can’t even see her. Oh my god. This is awful.

I’m really mad but I don’t want to touch its body again, so I hesitate, looking for something to use as a weapon. The detached arm keeps crawling along the wall, heading now for the lamp I’ve just turned on.

‘Mel!’ I scream. ‘Wake up! Wake up! Terminate dream!’

I grab the lamp and swing it in an arc like a cricket bat. As it strikes the Creeper’s head, the bulb breaks with a pop and the room’s dark again.

‘Wake up, Mel! Wake up!’