As he fought to keep the sound of the nightmare in his house out of his head, there was no escape from the memory of Eden’s eyes, boring into him, making him listen, making him believe.

‘And he be mighty sorry if he lose you, ’cause then he have to find someone else help him do his killin’. And that get harder to find the more men goes away from knowin’ what they used to know.’

Sam, the boy, had been so confident, so sure. ‘Then I be lettin’ him kill me and everyone be safe.’

Eden looked sad then. ‘No one be safe if he be left out there with no keeper to put him back where he can’t do no harm. He be the Trickster. Time was we could all trick him back some. You knows the stories. Then we gets to bein’ scared and believin’ in his tricks like my Pappy done. And that be makin’ him real strong. No, boy. You gonna die Indian, you be doin’ it when the time is right. You go ahead and says his names. It be better he knows who you is and who he is, so he thinks he knows who be puttin’ him back in his cage.’ Eden had sat back with satisfaction. ‘He never get that right. Not once. That be our trick, boy. That be our big trick.’

Sam arched his back in his shaking bed, and abandoning all reason, all hope of survival and sense, he spoke through his teeth.

‘You are Sitconski.’

There was a hissing sigh through the room, a pressure released, a new one building, and a voice that was like dust talking said, ‘And?’

Sam was in Hell. Eden had said it, known it. ‘Then he just kill you.’ He didn’t want to die. Katie. Where are now you, my Katie?

‘You are Inktomi.’

‘And?’

Sam could hardly speak. His throat was on fire.

‘You are Inktomni.’

‘And?’

‘You are Inktumni.’

He writhed on the bed. His twentieth-century bed that had a pine headboard with an acorn carved in it, and a little notch above his side, that Katie had done with a penknife for a joke after they’d done something particularly inventive one night.

His head tossed on the pillows, snug in their pillow-cases that he had thrown in the washing machine and Katie had slung over the radiator to dry. All the familiar ordinary things, that were now rendered twisted, grotesque and misplaced, bathed as they were in the ancient pollution of this nightmare. He would not open his eyes. He would not.

Even though the satisfied voice of a thing who now knew who it was, was addressing him again.

‘Then destroy me.’

‘No.’

He thought he heard the carpet tearing and the walls splitting. His bed rocked on its legs.

‘DESTROY ME!’

Sam screamed at it. Calvin’s words this time. In that ancient guttural tongue. The Latin of Cree.