Banquet for the Damned

CHAPTER FIVE

Visiting Doctor of Anthropology seeks students suffering from nightmares, disturbed sleep patterns, night terrors. Completely confidential analysis. Contact Hart Miller.

Africa's red dust has finally cleared from his eyes, nose, and thick brown beard. The sight of naked children playing in unsanitary water has disappeared too, along with the grease on his skin and the flies that were attracted to it. Milling below his window in the cooler and thinner air, cleansed by the sea, the people of St Andrews have replaced the familiar sight of African tribesmen wrapped in their damask robes, swatting at mosquitoes with lazy arcs of their peroxide palms in the sweltering sun. Smells of roasted goat, crushed ginger and his own sweat are also swept away by the tang of salty breezes and the aroma of stones bleached by the sun. And there are no crippled beggars in Fife singing for their food. Shouting mothers, laughing students and rumbling car engines have changed the soundtrack for Hart Miller. Following six months of fieldwork in Nigeria, he has spent several hours of each day gazing from the window of his flat on Market Street, watching and adjusting to the new world.

Occasionally a passing tradesman or shopper will glance up and meet his brown eyes, small behind the round spectacles that he repeatedly pushes up his stubby nose. And only when the time approaches for his first interview with a student does he move away from the bright sunlight and rub his face in an attempt to massage some feeling back into his hairy cheeks, and into his small, bullet-shaped forehead. 'Time I started work on some professorial eyebrows,' he says, and begins wheezing and giggling to himself, while padding across the lounge on his hairy feet to reach for the bottle of whisky on the coffee table. A bottle of Laphroaig has been his first purchase in St Andrews. During the headaches and fatigue on the flight to Edinburgh, he dreamed of the Scottish spirit and its distinctive peaty taste. It was earthy. A local product with a smattering of anthropological information on the label: enough professional justification to put a spin on things. Hart tugs on the bottle, sucking the nectar through his dense facial hair. After a gasp he wipes his mouth and begins checking the living room that will double as a study during his stay in Scotland.

Everything is set up: the couch, with an Ecuadorian throw-rug draped across it; a tape recorder positioned on the coffee table; his books, papers, and a laptop computer, amassed on the desk.

Exhaling loudly, he checks the diver's watch on his freckly wrist and thinks of the approaching interview. Talking to an English girl about her nightmares should be routine. Pressures of late adolescence and the stresses of a student lifestyle can create any number of recurring nightmares in a young mind. And perhaps there will be no connection between the reports his e-mail service in Nairobi was receiving from St Andrews, and what he's been studying in Africa, Asia and North America. It could be a waste of time: another one. But he has to be sure.

When his friend, Adolpho, first sent him an e-mail from the Anthropology Department at St Andrews, two months earlier, the news had been tragic. A fourth-year student, Ben Carter, had committed an unusual suicide. The history undergraduate had burned himself to death in the car given to him by his parents on his twenty-first birthday. According to Adolpho, who knew Carter personally, the undergraduate had been sleeping poorly for months, had become increasingly withdrawn throughout his final year, and failed to show for his exams. More importantly, prior to his death, Ben Carter had become terrified of the night and the vivid terrors that came with it. And, according to rumour, he was not alone.

With the offer of Adolpho's flat, rent-free for a month, Hart booked airline tickets immediately. Although his sponsorship grant and the publisher's advance for his book on dream culture in primitive society had nearly run dry, Adolpho's e-mail message had excited him enough to make him head for the airport the minute his work in Africa concluded. This new territory was special. Of all places, a night-terror phenomenon could be occurring in Scotland. That would cover Northern Europe and the last ground in Hart's rarely studied global puzzle.

After spending his first two days in bed, or on the toilet, recovering from jetlag, a hangover, and a recurring bout of amoebic dysentery, he began posting his flyers at strategic locations around the town, invariably popular with students at any university: the library by necessity, the Student Union complex on Market Street, and the Union diner on North Street. And within an hour of the first poster going up, a message from a young student called Kerry Sewell had been left on his answering machine:

'Hello, Mr Miller. I'd like to see you urgently. I'm a student here. Art History. And when I saw the flyer in the library… It's so odd, it's as if you knew. I really need to see you soon. About the night terror thing. The sooner the better. It is confidential, isn't it?'

Hart had called her straight back and arranged the first interview. Now, in an attempt to relax before the girl arrives, he turns on his small portable stereo and plays American Beauty by the Grateful Dead, an album full of summer memories from his youth in Chicago. And while he nods his head to the lonesome and mellow harmonies, he continues to pull on the Laphroaig bottle and to enjoy the throat-burn and stomach-glow. But right before the first chorus of 'Friend of the Devil', the front doorbell emits a single solemn chime.

Hart leaps up from the rug, staggers forward, bangs his shins on the corner of the coffee table and shouts, 'Shit!' Hurriedly, he wipes his mouth and runs back and forth with the bottle before he finds a place to hide it, behind a stack of tomes on the dining table. After rinsing Listerine through his cheeks and over his teeth, he then siphons it through his lips into the kitchen sink. Smoothing out the front of his red flannel shirt with the moist palms of his hands, he trots down the narrow staircase to the ground-floor reception.

Through the glass in the top portion of the front door, he sees the profile of a tall girl. Stylish tortoiseshell sunglasses conceal her eyes. Shoulder-length hair, ice-blonde in colour, is tied at the back of her head with a black velvet band, which gives the effect of sharpening her already striking cheekbones. But her young face, that in any circumstance is arresting, seems distracted. Although she gazes down Market Street, so bright with sunlight, toward the large and modern Student Union building, it is as if she sees nothing. 'Jeez,' Hart mutters. She is nearly a foot taller than him and he can already smell money.

When he opens the door, she turns to face him. Her tight lips part and there is a pause — a fathoming — before she says, 'Hi.'

'Hey now,' Hart replies, nodding his head to some inner rhythm and raising both hands as if he has just met an old friend unexpectedly, and wants to do nothing more than spend time with them. 'Let me guess. I'm not what you were expecting,' he says.

Kerry pushes her sunglasses up and into her hair. 'No.' She slinks through the doorway, blinking her pale-blue eyes quickly as she scans the walls. Sensing distress, Hart manages to sustain his characteristic warmth and endearing smile, in an attempt to put her at ease. 'Up there?' she says, and points toward the open doorway at the top of the staircase.

'Yeah, yeah, go on up, honey.'

With his eyes fixed on her wrap-around skirt, which is long and falls to the top of her leather boots, he follows her up the stairs to the lounge. As the stairs groan and creak beneath them, he becomes conscious of inhaling her fragrance across his copper-wire moustache. After Africa, and Guatemala before that, it is a sudden but refreshing opportunity to share time and space with all the things he enjoys about Western women: perfume, shaven legs, and painted lips. He briefly entertains an image of Kerry, naked, in his mind, but then dismisses it, feeling ashamed. After so long in the wilderness he suddenly worries about blowing his first lead with an inappropriate leer.

'So, Kerry, you saw the flyer in the library,' he says with a chuckle when they reach the lounge. 'I've been pasting those things all over town.'

She stays quiet. Hart loses his grin, fast. 'Sit down, honey. Umm, let me get you a drink. I haven't had time to go to the store, but I have some coffee. It was in the cupboard when I arrived. Guess I inherited it.'

Kerry approaches the couch. 'That would be nice.'

As he gets busy in the kitchen, he hears Kerry sit down in the lounge. When she crosses her long legs, the little whisper created by the innocent gesture runs a prickle down the nape of his neck. Shake it off, he tells himself. This ain't a date. Don't start with some Woody Allen routine. Ensconced in the kitchen, out of sight, he also looks at his hands and sees shakes. Christ, I'm an anthropologist. What if she needs a doctor?

'Will you be taping this?' Kerry asks, and he thinks her voice sounds even more feminine with the cultured English accent. It drifts through the arched white portal, separating the lounge and kitchen. 'Sure,' he says. 'But don't worry about a thing. If it fits my study, I'd like to use it for my book. With your permission of course, and I can always change the names.' Holding two cups of black coffee that steam in his chubby paws, Hart reappears in the lounge. 'Like it black?'

Kerry nods. Hart blushes. 'Just as well, there's no milk.' With the cups placed on the table between them, he pulls a wooden chair around to host his bulbous hips.

'It's OK about taping me,' she says. 'I'm just a little delicate at the moment. I've not been sleeping.'

'Go on.'

'Well it's very strange. I… I think I could be losing my mind.' The skin across the thin bones of her face blanches, losing its honey coloured sheen, and after she speaks there follows a nervous and apologetic giggle before she dips her head. A long silence follows and Hart begins to fiddle with his beard. Finally, he smacks his lips, and rubs his hands down the front of his weathered combat trousers.

'Don't be ashamed of anything, Kerry. Just feel free to let go. I got two good ears here and a lot of experience in this field. It doesn't matter how wacky you think your dreams are, I want to hear everything you can remember about them.'

Taking careful sips from her coffee, Kerry stares across the room and beyond the far wall, her eyes unfocused, looking inward. 'Is it nightmares you study?' she says, breaking from the daze, suddenly uncomfortable with letting herself drift in front of a stranger.

'Yes, that's a significant part of the whole deal. I'm an anthropologist and I've been studying occult beliefs in primitive or isolated societies — from what we call an ethnographic perspective. I study people and why they believe in the supernatural. Not whether magic works or not, but why some communities still maintain occult practices. This took me down the avenue of primal fears in a wide range of cultures and night terrors became a by-product of my original thesis. Something I picked up along the way. It interested me and I saw my chance for original work.'

'Tell me about the nightmares,' she says, staring right at him now.

'Well, when a locale has a long tradition of superstition, and if the roots of that history are deeply entrenched in the occult, sleepers often suffer the same nightmares for generations.' He feels himself light up inside and, despite his reticence at becoming an academic bore with such a pretty girl, his enthusiasm carries him along. 'You know, the bad dreams last for years, even centuries, like a kind of echo. I've travelled to Newfoundland, South America and Africa chasing this pattern for my book. I want to collect data reflecting how, inexplicably, a haunted past can become locked, like an energy, in a specific area, and affect the sleep of even those people who are otherwise oblivious to the history of the place in which they live.'

'How do these night terrors affect people?' Kerry asks, her voice sharper.

'Well, some of the good people who have confided in me have had the same dreams since they were kids, and want to know why they go to the same place every time they close their eyes. Others are too afraid to sleep, or find their dreams affect the way they behave. In some extreme cases, well, folks do unusual things. They become volatile, or unreasonable. They can sleepwalk too.'

The girl's eyes widen and her body stiffens.

'But it's usually just the sleeping consciousness, and night terrors are a universal phenomenon. There is no need to —'

'Sleepwalk, you say,' Kerry interrupts. 'How extreme does sleepwalking get?'

'Well, it varies, from strolling around the house to incidents of amnesia. In extreme cases —' he pauses '— well, it seems to be the start of something more complicated.'

Kerry closes her eyes and covers them with a slim hand, pressing her varnished nails into her cheek, just below an inflamed scratch. He hears her say 'Shit' under her breath.

'Kerry, I'm sorry. I don't want to frighten you. Girl, that is a very unlikely scenario.'

When she removes the hand from her face her eyes shine with tears. Hart swallows. 'Listen, Kerry, I think we should start. Just lie back there on the couch and relax. If you want another drink or a smoke just holler. That's it, get comfy. Don't worry about your boots, just relax. I'm going to ask you a few questions and I want you to be as candid as you are able. I'm not an analyst, but I believe talking about it, to someone who knows what's going down, will take the world off your shoulders. Clean off, honey, where it hadn't ought to be.'

She reclines on the couch and sinks into the cushions and throwrug. She dabs at her eyes with a white tissue she has kept tucked up her sleeve. Hart stretches his arm across to the tape recorder and indents the RECORD button as quietly as possible. 'This is Doctor Hart Miller on August 25 at 11:00 a.m., speaking with Kerry Sewell, a fourth-year student on the Art History honours degree programme, at St Andrews University. Kerry, I would like to ask you a few frank questions about your general wellbeing and state of health.'

'OK.'

'Are you taking any medication, or have you been over the course of your troubled sleep?'

'No. Wait a minute. Yes. Some hay-fever tablets. And I had a really bad flu. Like a forty-eight-hour thing. I took antibiotics.'

'Have you suffered unduly from stress or depression?'

'I'm not depressed, but I have been working hard. I had final exams and still have my thesis to finish.'

'So you often work late?'

'I would say so.'

'How much do you drink a week, on average, in terms of units of alcohol?'

'Umm, I don't know. Wine sometimes with a meal, or in the evening, and at the weekend I go out with friends, but I rarely get drunk.'

'OK. Is there a family history of mental illness? Schizophrenia, to be precise?'

'No. Grandma's a bit scatty, but she is nearly eighty.'

'Right. Have you ever had any psychological problems?'

Kerry looks away.

'Kerry, I am not asking for specific details, but generally have —'

'I saw a psychiatrist during my A-Levels.'

'A-Levels? What are those?'

'Exams you take before university.'

'Oh, right. So you needed counselling for something?'

'Yes. I had a few problems in my teens. Nothing major.'

'That's all right, honey, I —'

'Sorry, but it was very painful. Can we talk about the dreams now?'

'Sure, sure. I was just establishing a bit of background.'

'And you think I'm a nut already, because I saw a psychiatrist?' Her words come quickly and her face hardens with annoyance.

Still smiling and keeping his voice steady, Hart says, 'Kerry, there is no taboo in counselling. I think everybody should have an analyst. I spent most of my youth on a couch talking about my mother to some dude in a check jacket and brogues.'

Anger changes to relief, and her face softens with a smile. 'I'm sorry… for snapping. But everything is difficult for me at the moment. I'm not sleeping and I think I should leave St Andrews.'

'Kerry, I hear you, but I think you should start at the beginning. You mentioned your nightmares on the phone. Just give me what you can remember about when and how they began.'

She folds her arms across her chest, as if for warmth, clasping the top of each arm with a hand. 'It started about two months ago, when a student called Ben Carter killed himself. At first I thought it was a reaction, like delayed shock. I didn't know him that well, but when someone your own age dies, it's terrible. You just don't expect things like that to happen.'

Hart nods his head. 'It was awful. Did you and Ben take the same courses?'

'No. Ben and I were part of a group. I knew him from there.'

'What kind of group?'

'Umm, a paranormal society, run by a lecturer in the divinity department. Eliot Coldwell. Lots of people went, but it was all quite harmless.'

Hart frowns.

'Most of the people there went out of curiosity. Mr Coldwell has quite a reputation for being weird. Bit of a giggle, really. That's why my friend Maria and I went along.'

'So this lecturer, what did he do?'

'Oh, gave talks and things. Like the stuff you see on those Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World programmes. I heard he conducted experiments with some people who thought they were psychic as well. But I dropped out early. I had too much work to do.'

Hart squints and tries to remember where he's heard the name before. 'Eliot Coldwell. The name rings a bell.'

'He wrote a book. Some of the boys in the group kept asking questions about it. Because of the drugs in it.'

'Yeah. Can't remember the title.'

'Banquet for the Damned.'

'That's right. I've read about it. Started a few cults in Britain and some of those heavy metal bands went for it in a big way. Led Zep, I think. Maybe Sabbath too. He was into the whole Eastern thing. Kind of like a minor-league Crowley or Huxley.'

Kerry nods. 'It's in the library. I never read much of it. Found it a bit heavy going.'

'Did these group meetings start your nightmares?'

'No. That was all finished before the summer. People say the university stopped it. There was a lot of fuss about a group like that here. It's a very quiet place and I think Mr Coldwell was told to stop the group. It was nothing really, though. Just discussions and some meditation. It helped me to relax and he had a beautiful voice. Like Anthony Hopkins.'

'What about your friend, Maria? Did she have nightmares?'

'I don't know. We fell out. A while ago. Over a stupid man.'

Hart nods. 'Most of them are. I can say that because I don't count. With this much hair I gotta be the missing link.'

Kerry giggles.

'Did this lecturer stop his group?' he asks.

'I think so, but there was talk about it going underground.'

Hart frowns. 'Ben Carter was a member too. I didn't know that. My buddy Adolpho went back to Brazil after Ben's death to do his fieldwork. He only mentioned the kid's nightmares.'

'Ben was into it more than most people. I think he was Mr Coldwell's research assistant.'

Hart nods some more, deep in thought, before turning his attention back to Kerry. 'Your nightmares. Tell me about your disturbed sleep. I'm sorry for digressing, but this is all new to me. I was in Nigeria last week.'

'You don't look very brown.'

'Too many insects on me. The sun never had a chance.'

Kerry laughs again and then looks toward the ceiling to concentrate her recall. 'These dreams were different to anything I've experienced before. They're so real.'

'Go on. How are they vivid?'

'I could swear I'm awake. In the beginning, something terrible would happen in a dream and I would wake up, suddenly. And be really frightened. Even in tears. And my bed sheets would be all strewn about the room. And things would have been moved around my bed.'

'Can you remember the dreams?'

'No. Not really. Not in full. I would just wake up with a horrible taste in my mouth and my arms and legs… and things, would hurt, as if I'd been attacked. Sometimes there were bruises, but I thought I had done them to myself. Then recently, these dreams came back every other night, and I began to remember bits. There is always someone in my room. Trying to find me. To get at me.' She sniffs again.

'So Kerry, let's concentrate on the waking moment. You said that things in your immediate physical environment had changed. How so?'

After clearing her throat and dabbing the now crumpled tissue at the corner of both eyes, she continues in a quivery voice. 'I used to leave my bedside light on. It sounds silly, I know, but after it all began I just couldn't bear to sleep in the dark. And when I woke up, the light would have been turned off and I could hear someone in my room.'

'You're sure you were awake? This wasn't the residue from a dream?'

'I didn't really know at first. My whole body would be like tingling and I couldn't move. It was terrifying. I was paralysed and tried to scream for my neighbour, Sarah. But I couldn't make a sound.'

'Aphasia,' Hart mumbles, nodding his head and staring toward the window.

'What?'

'Just a technical term for the inability to speak when paralysed. It's more common than you think.'

'Really,' she says, her eyes widening and something approaching relief entering her tone of voice.

'Sure, but anyway Kerry, please go on. You said there was someone in your room.'

'Yes. Someone's by my bed, in my room. Sort of sniffing. Like a dog, but not in a dog way. Not friendly. It's slower. And I can't move but I can hear it moving about, and reaching for things. Like… Like it's looking for me.'

'Did it vanish quickly when you woke up fully?'

'Yes, to start with, but as the dreams became much worse, it would linger. A couple of weeks back, I saw it for the first time, just as I woke up. I saw what looked like a long arm reach across my bedside cabinet to touch the light, which went off. And it just sat there, huddled over in the dark, making these sounds.'

'The breathing and so forth?'

'Yes, and more. It was… It's hard to describe, it seemed to be whispering to me too, but I didn't recognise the language. It just sounded very old and unpleasant, with bits of English breaking through, but I could never fully understand the words. And it would hiss, like… like it was excited.' Kerry pauses to dab her nose. She turns her face away from Hart but he can see her jaw trembling as she tries not to cry.

He feels terrible for pushing her even further, but he has to. 'The intensity of the visitations, I will call them, increased as time went on. The nightmares became more vivid and the presence stayed a little longer each night.'

'Exactly,' Kerry continues, her voice breaking around the edges. 'There was this one time when I'd woken up and it was still there. There was some light coming through a gap in the curtains, so I got a better look at it. A dark shape over by the window. Very tall. It went right up to the ceiling but still had to bend over. My heart nearly stopped. And it was trying to show itself to me. Leaning right over toward my bed. But its hands were covering its face.'

Hart leans forward in his chair, resting both hands on the edge of the coffee table.

'And I remember feeling so cold at that moment and I heard it whispering to me. Through its fingers. It was there for a moment and then it moved very quickly to the side of my bed. I could smell it. It was horrible. I closed my eyes. I couldn't bear it for a moment longer, but I did see it move. It wasn't like a normal walk. Not natural. It was more of a glide. But very quick. I remember it was very thin and then it was making a sniffing noise. Right by me.' Kerry's face is pleading for an explanation.

He clears his throat. 'And it would stay beside you and watch you?'

'Yes, but it was agitated. It sounded fierce and I was just so frightened with it hovering by me, waiting for something.'

'Kerry, it was only a dream. A very vivid dream.'

The girl's face crumples and reddens. She covers it with her hands and sobs. Her chest heaves, and Hart hears her final stand. 'It's trying to kill me. The nightmares have always been leading to something, that gets stronger and more real every time, until the thing in my dream attacked me. Last night it nearly killed me.'

He stands and flits across to the couch in alarm, but only manages to dither beside her and look at the ceiling in exasperation. What can he do? What has he forced her to remember? He isn't trained as a psychiatrist and the girl seems manic. It could be more than his theory about night terrors. For a moment he wishes he'd never come to St Andrews. Maybe the girl has been raped, repressed the memory and been too scared to tell the police or her parents.

Maybe there is a stalker on the campus.

Forcing composure, he sits back down on the corner of the couch. It is important he doesn't touch her and he feels like a louse for all of the desperate and hungry thoughts he entertained earlier. 'Kerry, listen to me. I know this has been painful, but draw some comfort from what I am going to say. You're not the first young woman to suffer from dreams like this. I've heard about this more times than I've wanted to. You're not crazy. But I think you should go home, to your parents, or a friend's or something. Can you do that?'

Kerry nods.

'Just get out of here for a while. Maybe see a counsellor.'

Kerry sits up suddenly, and removes her hands from her tearstained cheeks. 'I'm not mad! I know what you're thinking. That I'm some stupid little girl who's been raped and can't face the truth. You're wrong. These dreams are real. There was something in my room. It took me to the pier, Mr Miller. It took me to the pier and tried to kill me. It wanted me to die. Like Ben Carter. That's why he burned. It made him do it! I know it!'

The violence in her voice forces Hart away from the couch. His hands hover at the same level as her shoulders but fail to narrow the distance. 'OK, honey,' he says, his voice no more than a whisper. 'But did you hear me? Go home. Leave today and put some distance between yourself and this town.' Just in case, he wants to add. Just in case you're right and everything I've been studying is true.

The girl continues to sob.

Kerry walks through Market Street in a daze after confessing so much to a stranger. These night-time experiences are more than bad dreams and Hart Miller knows it. She could tell by his face. Other girls have suffered the same thing, he said so. That's why he is in town, looking for the thing that came for her at night. It sniffed around her when she slept and attempted to consummate its final wish down on the pier. She can't spend another night in St Andrews and doesn't need Doctor Miller to tell her so. She's only stuck it out because of her work. Four years of study can't be just thrown away. She needs the degree for the job promised her by a management consultancy in London. But last night changed everything.

Pausing at the newsagents at the top of Market Street, Kerry decides to top-up her phone. She'll call home and ask her dad to come and fetch her. Most of her work in the library is done and the last bit of the thesis can be finished at home. She'll post it up to the university.

Before she enters the shop Kerry turns around and glances at the town made dark by her shades. A place she's lived in for four years and loved, but now the very sight of the monuments and old churches makes her feel different. During the day, she is more frightened than she ever was as a child alone in a room at night, not knowing any better. There is something here that has killed her hope and even her most simple joys — something unholy.

After progressing no more than a few steps inside the shop, she suddenly stops and closes her eyes for a moment. Her composure unravels. It is right there, the confirmation of her fears in black and white, on the front page of the Herald:

POLICE FIND MYSTERY REMAINS ON WEST SANDS

In a young life inexplicably filled with terror, there is no such thing as coincidence. Every screech from a hungry gull is a reminder of the dreams; every placard commemorating the death of a Protestant martyr is a sign; every newspaper's report of a death is connected. Kerry pulls the paper off the bottom shelf and hurries up to the counter. She slaps a pound coin down and races out of the shop. The girl behind the counter raises a quizzical face. As she drifts back into the sunlight, Kerry's eyes race across the opening paragraph on the rustling newspaper:

Police officers responded to an emergency call from the West Sands yesterday. A local woman, Beatrice Hay, found part of a human body washed up on the shoreline. 'I have been walking on that beach for thirty years but I've never seen anything like it before. This was awful, a terrible thing to see.'

A police spokesman issued a statement late last night, indicating a belief that the grisly body-part — still unspecified as to which limb or organ — had been washed ashore from the channel. 'It could have come from the sea,' Sergeant Lindsay declared. 'But we are not ruling out suspicious circumstances.'

Suddenly remembering the strength of the night terror and the power in its hard fingers, Kerry feels Doctor Miller's shaky assurances vaporise. Breaking into a run, she bumps into a couple of men with long hair. She knocks them apart and rushes away, unable to apologise, thinking only of a phone call, a suitcase, and the safety of home.

Thin trails of perfume, left behind by Kerry, make Hart melancholy. After a long shake of his grizzled head, he takes another slug from the second fifth of Laphroaig. He's been sitting alone and still for a long time after Kerry's departure, drinking and going through every possible angle and explanation he knows of to explain away her story, until coherence has begun to fragment and his theories have become jumbled. But instinct tells him her confession and reaction are genuine.

In a way, he should be elated. If what she has just recounted is true, and he can think of few reasons to disbelieve her story, then his work could continue in St Andrews in dramatic style. Night terrors might just be the beginning — the first telltale ripples before the contagion spreads. Everything he's studied so far has always been after the fact — hearsay, folklore, the incoherent ramblings of witnesses. But today, in the Kingdom of Fife, it is possible he's landed in the thick of something extraordinary.

It is ironic. He should be whooping with delight at the find. But when something creates so much anguish in a young and faultless girl, when her sanity and perhaps even her life are in danger, he cannot rejoice. Staring at the tape recorder, he moistens his lips and begins to mutter to himself. 'You're afraid, buddy. No wonder you swallow so much wine. Maybe you looked too hard.'

Waiting for the slight judder to vanish from his vision, Hart forces himself to stand up and to remove the image of Kerry's tear-stained face from his mind. Sweeping up his Dictaphone, he checks the battery light and begins pacing about the lounge, murmuring his initial observations into the tiny microphone:

'My first interviewee has experienced a classic night-terror situation. Is it metachoric? Is her visual field hallucinatory on waking when there is such defined evidence of a physical manifestation in her immediate environment? It is still unclear, however, why the apparition has begun to appear in her room. A previous adolescent trauma suggests a reactive vision, but there is much evidence to the contrary.

She is struck dumb with aphasia upon waking and also confesses to acute paralysis. This state lasts too long for the conditions of a false awakening.

'The manifestation is particularly profound, as recorded in a number of case studies. She engages in a tactile, auditory, and visual experience. Temperature, smell, touch, hearing and sight are all affected during the visitation. I would like to observe her further and carry out REM tests, but, as I have advised, it is best she desert the locale and reintegrate herself into a familiar environment. If these experiences fit my research and are more than just bad dreams, I can only hope she takes my advice.'

Hart stops the recording, places the Dictaphone on the coffee table and presses REWIND. Wearily, he slumps across the couch. No sooner has he made himself comfortable than Kerry's scent, and the troubled air she left behind, surrounds him again. The tape stops rewinding with a loud clunk, which makes him flinch, and he upends the bottle of Laphroaig. But, before he is able to gulp his way any further into the whisky, the phone rings. He crosses the room, unsteady on his feet, and raises the receiver. 'Hey now, Hart Miller speaking.'

'Hello, Dr Miller. My name is Mike Bowen. I saw your flyer this morning concerning nightmares and think I have something for you. Can I arrange an appointment?'

'Sure. Are you having the nightmares?'

'Afraid so.'

'Is tomorrow good for you?'

'Yes. I'd appreciate your thoughts. I need to get this thing resolved.'

Hart clears his throat and shakes some clarity back into his fuddled mind. 'Let's say after one.'

'That's great,' Mike replies.

Hart hangs up and mutters, 'This is crazy.' He'd expected one or two calls stretched over a month, but two on the first day following the posting of his flyer is incredible. Night terrors are usually isolated to one individual before the remote chance of a gradual spread.

After he's pushed a sandwich around his plate for half an hour, the phone rings again. A girl, who introduces herself as Maria, wants advice and an interview. Does she know someone called Kerry? he asks. Yes, she answers, and he can tell immediately the girl is doing her best to maintain a steady voice and not crack up. Hart books her in for an interview after Mike Bowen, hangs up, and then drifts back to his favourite window overlooking Market Street. It is almost too much too soon. And he only has a month to gather his data. He needs to think and process the information, authenticate the stories, check out this Coldwell character, and find out how a beautiful Scottish university town can be afflicted with night terrors. But what he needs more than anything else is another drink. So he has one.