I’ll lie down, he thinks dimly.

Then something kicks him: No! Shout to them to get up!

He tries to shout, and produces nothing but a meaningless sound.

What shall I shout instead? He looks at them sprawling on their comfortable couches, without a care for anything more serious than changing their position, waiting patiently for the fuss to be over. What shall I shout that can tempt them?

Your place is ready, Stig. Come and claim it.

Not one of these placid persons on their resting-places around him has moved his lips, but this is said clearly by a friendly voice. Your place is ready, Stig.

There, right in front of you. Lie down, Stig. Find out how well people can look after themselves when they have a mind to it.

He wants to do so too. He takes two or three paces across to the wall where his place is waiting, bends down to arrange the pillows as he likes them – but then he is stopped by something he catches sight of in the nearest nodding face. In the dim light he had been too far away from them to see them properly. Now one of them is very close to him; he will be his nearest neighbour during this time of rest. A shudder goes down his spine: it is not a proper face. He cannot make out what it is, but it is not a face. He thought just now that the eyes were blinking, but they are not eyes.

The sight makes him recoil. What is this? It is so strong that it breaks the spell. No, he will not lie down here with this for company! He must get out! ‘No thank you!’ he mutters, for he has no strength to shout. ‘I’m going out again. I don’t want to….’

The pull from them has not quite reached him yet. He manages to turn and run for the door. Eyes blink at him from the couches around him, but no one says anything, and no one moves except to shift his position, from one comfortable side to the other on his comfortable couch.

The light goes out, so that he has to fumble along the wall to find the door, and this makes him so afraid that he flails out wildly. When he finds the handle it feels as if he is breaking out of the room. His forehead is beaded with the cold heavy sweat of wretchedness.

He gets himself through the second door, and the third, and is out in the side passage. A different, familiar air meets him. This is stale too, but different.

He is about to rush on, as if something in the room were after him still – but just as he is getting clear of the last door he meets someone who is obviously intending to enter. When he sees Stig he flattens himself against the wall, pretending indifference.

A young man. There he is, trying, not very successfully, not to be seen.