She writes this down. "Unfortunately neither do I. But, details of the monsters, details of the images?"

"The only one I remember... describably enough, was the winged one that shows up in the whistles."

Nodnod. "Well, I have no idea if it's anything, but everyone's been having weird dreams lately and if you dreamed about the whistles before seeing them that seems like something we should be keeping tabs on."

"I am aware that that makes no goddamned sense."

Shrug. "Lots of things don't make any sense to me, that's a fact about me not about them. If it happened, it happened, and unlike most of the occult things I hear about you've got no reason to lie to me about it. Tell me if you have more weird dreams?"

"I will endeavour to keep you informed of" my horrifying nightmares "dreams. Though they do seem to have settled down, thankfully. And I'll keep you updated if I find anything more useful about the whistles."

"Glad they settled down, anyway. Thank you."

"You're the one I was picking the brains of. I'm just glad doing that was somehow useful to you."

"--oh! Right, almost forgot to ask. Did you have weird dreams before the Roby thing, differently weird or similarly weird or otherwise, or have they pretty much been normal up until now?"

...Inaaya has an angle here, doesn't she? "Define normal? There were reoccurring cities and people and such like, but they weren't distressing if that's what you're asking."

Hey. Inaaya always has lots of questions even when she doesn't have an angle. (He's totally right that she does in this instance though.) "I guess I'm asking what normal dreams are like for you."

"Totally non-disturbing wandering around cities and talking to people, mostly. The architecture is very pleasant. More opalescent than anywhere real."

"Do you still have dreams like that or is it all the nightmares now?"

"I've gone back to mostly cities now."

Nodnod. "And you were at that one performance of the King in Yellow, right?"

"Yes." ...what even is her angle here.

More scribbling! "Right. Cool. --completely unrelatedly, did you find out anything else by batting your eyelashes at the police station?"

"The police have very little idea what exactly happened at the scene, other than a whistle being involved. Also Roby was at a town that had some other suspicious deaths, but-- there's nothing but gut feeling linking those two at the moment. --But mostly it was spooky space whistles. Spooky retroactively dream-haunting space whistles."

"Which town?"

"Clare Melford, Suffolk."

She writes this down. "Thank you. --I don't have more weird questions. Sorry about how incoherent that probably was from the outside."

"I asked you deliberately because this is much more your wheelhouse than mine. I didn't expect it to make perfect sense to me."

That night, Oscar has a dream.

He is hunting. Scrub gorse, heather, and granite spread out to the horizon. He remembers the story of a man lost on these moors. As the sun fell, and he had resigned himself to sleeping out in the cold, he came across a lovely girl who was out hunting with falcons. She spoke Old Breton. He went with her to her manor house and quickly fell in love with her. In the morning, as he sat with her in the garden, he was bitten by a viper. He swooned and when he woke all that was there was her grave — it said she died in her youth a hundred years ago, for the love of a man of his name. In his mind’s eye Oscar sees images from this tale: the pale triangle of her face, the ivied stone of her grave, and her falconer, Hastur — he sees him too and wishes he did not, for Oscar knows what he heralds. As in the story the light is almost gone and Oscar settles down on his haunches, knowing he must spend the night out here. He watches as the sun goes out like a snuffed candle and the world changes to pitch black. He lies down to sleep. But just as he is drifting off he hears the bells.

When he arrives at work Oscar discovers a Sal lurking among the shelves.

"Sal-- good to see you. Something you wanted to talk about, or should I leave you to it?"