I was climbing the slope to the university when I found myself straying towards the edge of the pavement. Perhaps this was a symptom of sleeplessness, but it felt as though a companion was leaning against me, so nearly insubstantially that I hadn’t noticed they were inching me towards the traffic. I kept having to lurch away from the road as I trudged uphill. When I reached a crossing between sections of the campus I poked the button and gripped the pole until the red light halted the traffic. I’d set foot on the crossing when a van jerked forward to speed through the lights, and I felt the chill wind of the side mirror that had barely missed my head. It left me shaking, and I suspected the driver had been no more to blame for the incident than my father had been responsible for his crash.

A few students were wandering the campus. Since they weren’t mine, they must have wondered why I stared at them or more precisely past them in search of a dodging lurker. My card let me through the barrier by the reception desk, and the receptionist said “Dr Semple,” surely not alerting anyone to my arrival. I tramped up the bare stairs and unlocked my office, and stared around the room. As I blinked at the shelves of books and the desk occupied by a computer, I felt as if I was very gradually wakening. There was no reason why I should be here today at all.

I remembered imagining I heard a whisper in the night, and now I knew I had. While I was asleep I’d been directed here by a spell that felt close to hypnosis. Perhaps the purpose was to lure me away from my apartment so that some mischief could be perpetrated there – and then, as though I’d wakened fully at last, I knew it was more dangerous. I’d been decoyed into the open, where I would be most at risk.

I locked my room and kept hold of the banister all the way down the stairs, where every step felt like a chance to be tripped from behind. I couldn’t begin to anticipate how many opportunities to do away with me the homeward journey might contain. “Dr Semple,” the receptionist said as though my departure called for an announcement too. “Leaving us already?”