‘It has a name?’

‘Yes, it has a name and there are ways to manage the condition. But look, we can’t talk here.’

‘My God, this is amazing news,’ I said, ‘all I’ve ever wanted was to be able to call it something. What is it?’

‘I know you’ve got to run, Doner. Maybe now you’ll come back next week?’

I shook my head in disbelief but laughed to hide my anger.

‘I’m here, now,’ I said, trying to sound calm, ‘why don’t you tell me now?’

I spotted a café, pointed to it: ‘Come on.’

We sat at a cold metal table, face to face.

‘Well?’ I demanded.

She reached into her shiny black leather bag, grabbing a chunky bale of academia.

‘According to these studies, you suffer from something as old as humanity itself, yet it’s only starting to get proper scientific recognition now.

‘In Newfoundland, they call it the Old Hag. In China it’s called Gui Ya, which means Ghost Pressure.’

She even did that thing of pronouncing it in a Chinese accent.

‘In the West Indies, he’s called Kokma, the ghost baby that bounces on your chest and attacks your throat. The Norwegians call it Mer which is where we get the term “nightmare”. There’s a famous painting called The Nightmare, hanging in the Royal Academy, showing exactly this phenomenon.

‘In the last couple of years, this condition has been scientifically defined as sleep paralysis.’

‘Sleep paralysis,’ I repeated, ‘right.’

I’d read about apnoea and narcolepsy. At least they sounded sexy. Sleep paralysis? I’d been expecting something less specific, more complex, in Latin. Or named after some fearsome Germanic boffin, a Münchausen or a Heimlich. Sleep paralysis sounded too matter-of-fact, like glue ear or athlete’s foot or irritable bowel syndrome.

‘What makes you think it’s sleep paralysis?’

‘You exhibit all the classic signs,’ she argued, seemingly bemused by my lack of enthusiasm.

‘And they are?’

‘Well it’s a complex area.’

‘Try me. But feel free to skip over the complex stuff.’

‘Okay, well, you probably know what REM is? It’s that dreaming period of sleep when your eyes twitch violently under your eyelids?’

She was now torturing me by going up at the end of her sentences.

‘Rapid Eye Movement is when we have our most vivid dreams. You’re supposed to have non-dreaming sleep first. Then you go into REM sleep six or seven times during a night’s sleep.

‘During REM, the brain sends your body into paralysis, so that you don’t act out your dreams. It’s most likely that when you doze off, REM comes to you too quickly, before you’re properly asleep. Or, sometimes when you wake in the middle of the night, REM doesn’t snap off.

‘In either case, your body’s awake, but your mind is dreaming. What you’re seeing are dream images superimposed on waking images. As you can imagine, this is really common in narcoleptics.’

‘No, Lilian,’ I laughed, a little too desperately, ‘I don’t think you understand. Meehan was real. Marion is real. I can see her, I can feel her touch. I can smell her.’

‘Yes, they are real to you, same as the Old Hag is real. A dream is always real while you’re in it. It’s only when you wake up you realise it isn’t.’

I felt a surge of resentment. How dare she trivialise my real, terrifying, other-worldly episodes with such trite explanations.

‘So if these are just dream images, why do I feel so terrified?’

She leafed through her papers until she came across a colour-coded picture of the human brain.

‘There are two things about dreams, they tend to make no sense and they tend to be negative.’

You don’t say, I thought.

‘Look,’ she said, pointing to a part of the brain.

‘When we dream, our pre-frontal cortex, this bit we use for logic and language, to make sense of things, is switched off. But the middle brain lights up. That’s the part of the brain that controls emotions. See this bit?’

Her sharp, scarlet fingernail tapped what looked like a crinkled testicle.

‘This is the amygdala. The philosopher, René Descartes believed that the amygdala was the seat of our soul. It’s actually the seat of our fear. This is on full alert when we sleep. This is why our dreams are almost always scary.’

I got up and walked around to her side of the table for a better look, if only to slow her down.

But she was on a roll: ‘The amygdala is the “fight-or-flight” part of our brain. The bit that weighs up an immediate threat. Now, remember, this in a high state of alert when you dream.’

I had remembered.

‘Now, think of your condition: you are lying there, you think you’re awake because you can see your room and your belongings, but your brain is in REM, so your body is in paralysis, you’re finding it hard to breathe. Your amygdala is in a state of high alert, which means you’re terrified. Fear is an inherent part of the experience. The feeling of terror comes, then the bogeyman. Your visual cortex has to justify the terror you feel, so it creates an image of the thing you fear most. Two thousand years ago, people saw demons. Two hundred years ago they saw witches. These days, they see aliens.’

‘I don’t see aliens,’ I protested, ‘and I can feel Marion! I can feel her skin. I could feel Meehan strangling me.’

‘The strangling sensation is because the paralysis makes it hard for you to breathe. Your throat and chest muscles are frozen, so it feels like there’s something pressing down on your chest and your throat. It’s your brain that decides what that something is.’

My mind raced. I had to accept that, when Tony Meehan attacked me in hospital, he was definitely my bogeyman. After all, I’d just witnessed him attacking my girlfriend. Maybe Marion became my bogeywoman as soon as I stood between her body and the open window, making her attacks on me some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Her terrifying antics had come from the darkest recesses of my own twisted imagination. This was all feasible, credible. I just didn’t believe it.

I returned to my side of the table, slumping in the seat. Lilian cocked her head and studied me, as if sitting at an easel.

‘You seem, I don’t know … annoyed?’

‘I’m fine,’ I lied, ‘I’m just coming to terms with the fact that I’m seemingly incapable of distinguishing dreams from reality.’

‘I sense that what I’ve said has upset you?’

‘I mean, with respect, Lilian, sleep paralysis doesn’t explain how I floated into Eve’s room and saw her getting attacked that time, does it? Or why Marion only came to me after I’d attended the scene of her murder?’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ she said softly. ‘I think I’ve found some of the answers. There are so many things that don’t make sense. You say you saw the time on the clock radio when Meehan attacked Eve. It is beyond dispute in the science of sleep that you can’t read numbers or letters in your dreams. I’d like to drill down into all these elements in your case.’

‘How can they even know that?’ I laughed, shuffling awkwardly, ignoring her determined eyes.

‘The first time we met, Doner, you said you wanted to know what was happening to you, and find a way to manage it.’

I nodded.

‘I think I can help you manage it. But only if you let me help you. Look Doner, I’m making progress here. But I need you fully on board. This is it, we either go all out or we call it a day.’

I recognised the cons right away:

1: Time.

2: Opening up and all that.

I considered the pros.

Lilian was the only person who knew my entire story, albeit in a condensed format. If there was a clinical explanation for my lurid ‘slasher movie’ episodes – the cop in me felt convinced that there had to be a clinical explanation – then she was the only person equipped to find it. I didn’t believe she could cure me, but I liked the idea of getting a decent night’s sleep every once in a while, if only so I could live a normal life.