Simon Guthrie awoke later in the morning than usual, a few minutes after eight o’clock. He rolled out of bed and went into the bathroom, his mind still under the influence of the Dream. He stood for a long time under the shower, watching tendrils of soap foam flow down the drain between his feet, thinking about the little girl running between the monuments, the sudden darkness descending over the cemetery, the black mist coiling across the ground toward him. Clenching his teeth, he shampooed his hair and forced the Dream out of his head. There were other, more immediate problems to face.Simon towelled off, brushed his teeth, shaved and dressed. It was a bright, sunny Friday morning in October, so he chose a heavy rugby shirt and a sleeveless grey hoodie over jeans and sneakers. At the sound of his movements Jeremy, his yellow Labrador retriever, wandered into the room to greet him, then settled down on the floor to wait for him to finish. At ten years of age, Jeremy had mellowed in the way many yellow labs do, developing a patient and unhurried approach to life based on an understanding that Simon would feed him, walk him and not ask him to do things he really didn’t feel like doing at this time of his life.Simon glanced down at the dog and thought of Gail, as he always did. Jeremy had been Gail’s dog. Her only child, she used to joke. Gail was the one who walked him, fed him, took him to the vet, slipped him treats under the table at mealtime. In return, it was her side of the bed he guarded at night, and it was Gail he ran to meet, tail wagging, at the end of the day.The house was quiet. He ran the comb through his wavy, sand-coloured hair, grimaced at the mirror, and thought about growing a beard. Then he sighed and shook his head. Time to face whatever the night had brought him. He went out onto the landing, put his hand on the banister, and slowly descended the winding staircase to the main floor of his million-dollar log home.At the bottom of the stairs he found the portable phone on the floor. He picked it up and put it back in its cradle. On his left, separating the foyer from the kitchen, was an island with bar stools where he often ate his meals. The stools had been stacked on top of the island. One on top of the other, all four of them, balanced with impossible precision in the mathematical centre of the island. He carefully returned them to their places on the floor. The carafe had tumbled out of the coffee maker and sat on its lid on the counter. He checked it for damage, found none, and proceeded to make coffee. As he carried the grounds from last night’s pot of coffee to the trash bin he looked at the calendar on the wall. One of his chef’s knives was impaled in today’s date. Sighing, he stepped on the lever, dumped the coffee grounds in the trash, rescued his knife and dropped it in the dishwasher.He finished making the coffee, and as it began to percolate he took a quick look around. Yesterday morning there had been a severed raccoon head in his kitchen sink. The morning before that, all the furniture in the great room had been covered with a disgusting slime that had taken more than two hours to clean up. He felt as though he were getting off easy this morning, although the knife trick was a little unsettling. He didn’t want to be around when his cutlery began to remove itself from the drawer and fly through the air.Was that a message for him? Was today the day? The day for what? Who knew? After two weeks it was all starting to get a little tiresome.