The path winds through some bushes and all of a sudden the ground is harder beneath our feet and we’re in a little clearing. When George stops and looks back at me his glasses are two hard, silver rectangles of light. I can’t see his eyes.

‘I love coming here,’ he says again. His voice sounds hollow, dull. He turns away from me again and I realise he’s looking at something. Even though I don’t want to look, my feet are moving forward and the next thing I know I’m standing alongside him, staring into the clearing.

There’s a huge crack running through the ground.

It’s like those disaster films after an earthquake’s hit and the earth’s split apart. The crack in the clearing is about eight foot long and three foot across in the middle, at its widest point. It’s like a great, black eye. Looking at it makes my stomach feel sick.

George starts to move forward. I want to resist, to pull back away from him and the gaping crevice he’s pulling me towards, but my legs won’t let me. I walk forward with him and suddenly we’re standing at the edge of it, and when I look down into the blackness I realise there are stars in there too, there are tiny winking diamonds in that black cut just like there are in the sky. I feel dizzy and disoriented.

I can hear the wind, even louder now, and it’s almost as if it’s blowing up at me out of the ground, whistling up through that crack. George shuffles forward so his feet are hanging over the edge.

I don’t remember anything after this point, so that must be the part when the dream ends or I wake up.

(One final note: it’s funny, but even though I’m standing on the edge with him in this second dream and he’s holding onto me and I’m terrified, I’m also fully aware that he’s not going to pull me into the crevice with him. It’s more like he’s just showing it to me, so I know it’s there.)

The writing ended a few lines from the bottom of the paper. Matt turned the page with fingers that shook ever so slightly. The next page was blank, and the one after that, and the next. He flicked through the pad, but the first page was the only one with any writing on it.

Matt could feel his heart hammering in his chest. His fingers were slick with sweat as he reopened the pad on the page with the writing and placed it back on the table, in roughly the same position he’d found it.

Somewhere in the house, a floorboard creaked.