I stopped as I saw him, outlined in the light from my bedside lamp. The person he was talking to was trying to free herself from the grip of his enormous right hand which held her wrist in a vice. Tears streamed down her face, but she didn't cry out. I had no idea what to think; it was myself, aged perhaps eight or nine. I froze in the doorway, terrified that he might hear me and turn, but he did not. Instead, he bent and planted a rough kiss on the child's tightly shut lips - and then I couldn't watch any more. I remembered none of this - surely this was all a horrid dream-lie - but the whirlwind of trouble inside me told a different story - what if this were the truth, and the rest of my life was a lie?
I closed my eyes in tears, and suddenly the noises stopped. Startled, I opened my eyes again and the house was dark. My father was gone. Spinning around, I followed the corridor back towards his room. There he was, lying on his back and snoring gently. I started trying to talk, trying to assuage the awful things I felt, and although I must have been there for ages, he didn't move, he didn't wake. I began to wonder if I was really there at all, but I couldn't bear to touch him to find out.
I was still in tears when I finally fled down the stairs and out into the night. I racked my brains to see if I could find the edges of this - hole in my memory, but there was nothing. No blank spot, no awful, awful memories. Only the tightness of the trouble in my chest to tell me how familiar these horrors might have been.
I dried my eyes and forced myself to breathe deeply and calmly. Again, the night seemed impossibly warm and still, and I was alone.
"You are here for a purpose, and you must abide by our rules now."
There were three of them, and they were all looking straight at me from out of the darkness. With only the moonlight to clue me in, all I could see was that they were well dressed, and motionless. One of them might have been a woman.
"We are the Envoys. We are always here. You must come with us."
His voice was strangely modulated. He broke his immobility to reach out a hand to me, and then stopped, as if his motor had been disconnected again.
The hesitation must have been plain on my face, as he spoke again, in what I suppose he thought of as reassurance.
"You will be safe. We are not good. We do not lie."