Had it been a dream? His hand went to his throat where the amulet had always hung, and he touched the naked flesh. No. It hadn’t been a dream. He had told her about his sick little life, and before she’d joined him in bed last night he’d ripped the cursed thing off and flung it under the bed with contempt, just as he seemed to be tossing away his life in all this madness.

For one fleeting, unbearable moment his world fell from him like a chair kicked away from under a hanging man. Had she left him? He’d told her it all, well nearly all. And although she had listened with sympathy and love she had acted weird in bed. His hand moved from his throat to his shoulder where the scar from her bite was scabbed over now in a crusty black line, and he closed his eyes in a prayer that she was coming home tonight.

She’d been in his dreams last night, and for a time they were good dreams. They’d been on a lake together in a boat, a big green morainic lake like the ones in the mountains, with the glaciers reflecting in that emerald water. Except that this lake, unlike the real ones that were milky and cloudy with the particles that made it that mad colour, this one was crystal clear. They could see all the way to the bottom and it was hundreds of feet deep. Katie was laughing and throwing her head back as she dipped her fingers into the water and Sam was rowing the boat, smiling with love at his wife. He’d been so happy.

And then as he looked into the water, he saw a dark shape down there in the deep. Small at first, but growing in size as it started to float up towards the surface. Like a whale, but bigger and faster. Sam had watched as it started to rush up towards them, its shape becoming a huge mass of dark solid matter, and still Katie was laughing and trailing her fingers in the lake. The boat was starting to toss and pitch as the water churned and he rowed faster, pulling harder to get away, but he knew the shape that was turning the green water black would reach them soon, and he tried to scream to a deaf smiling Katie. And then suddenly he dreamed he had woken. But he had not. He was still asleep. His dreams had been feverish and muddled after that, making him believe he was conscious, wandering around the house looking for things that were not there, when he knew, even as he walked in the dream, that he was asleep. Mild dreams compared to the nightmares he’d been having.