The swing door is still moving and creaking behind me as Mr Becker comes through the main door, and I’m standing in the corridor, which is now lit up as he turns the building’s interior lights on. If he comes down here to get to the office at the other end, he’ll find me.

There are four doors leading off the corridor. The first one I already know is locked. I try the second one: that is locked too, and I just know what will happen when I try the others. I can hear Mr Becker’s footsteps coming across the staffroom floor.

The third door is locked as I expected. The fourth door has no window and it … opens.

I slip through it and almost squeal out loud. In front of me, dimly lit by a single candle burning in a holder, are three coffins. Each one is on a waist-high trolley with wheels. The one furthest from the door has a pleated curtain round the base, concealing the metal and wheels of the trolley.

I hear the swing door creak at the end of the corridor. Mr Becker’s footsteps are getting closer and I realise I have left the door open, but it’s too late to go back. For a second, I freeze, but, as the footsteps draw alongside the doorway, I dart behind the far coffin and slip under the trolley’s curtain.

He stops at the door and goes, ‘Oh my goodness me,’ in a weary tone. ‘What have we here?’

He can’t know I’m here, can he? I’m crouched under a coffin behind a curtain: he can’t see me. Unless he can hear my heart thumping and that is a distinct possibility.

Then I hear the beep-beep-beep of a mobile-phone keypad.

Mr Becker is standing next to me now. If I angle my head down, I can just see the toes of his biker boots where the curtain doesn’t reach the ground.

‘Terry? Yes, it’s me.’ His voice is not loud, but I can tell he’s not pleased. ‘I’ve just come back to the site to pick up that paperwork and guess what? Not only was the alarm not set, but the door to Store Two was unlocked, and you’ve left a flippin’ candle burning! A naked flame. Well, sorry doesn’t quite cut it, Terry. It’s a massive fire risk. We’re running a funeral home here, Terry, not a bloody crematorium. Yeah, well. Consider that your final warning.’

He tuts as he ends the call, then I hear him blow out the candle and leave the room, locking it behind him, and …

… locking me in.

As Mr Becker’s footsteps die away, I find I cannot move. Ever heard of people being ‘paralysed with fear’? Well, that’s me. I never thought it could be real, but every time I try to move I freeze up. I’m locked in a dead-dark room with three coffins that have to contain dead people otherwise what are they doing here? It is as though my brain is telling my limbs: So long as you don’t move a muscle, nothing bad will happen.

I feel like throwing up, and I try to fight the urge to sob, but it doesn’t work and I let out a quavering wail of terror. When I realise that my wail of terror actually sounds like the woo-ooo-ooo of a Halloween ghost, I let out something that is a bit like a laugh and a scream. I’m crouched under a coffin in total darkness, making these lunatic noises, and I’m a mess.

I guess it helps, though. When I finish, I wipe my face with the curtain, pull it aside and take a deep breath. I crawl out from under the trolley and the room is blacker than black. There are no windows – not even in the door to the corridor – so I really can’t even see my hand in front of my face.

The smell of the candle that’s just been put out gives me an idea. I grope around until I find it. It’s in a metal holder on a little table and on the table is – oh, the relief! – a box of matches. Trembling, I take one out, and use it to relight the candle.

I wonder if I preferred it when it was completely dark? Now I can see the three coffins: a white one with flowers painted on it, a black, shiny one with brass handles, and the one that I was hiding under. This is a simpler one in plain wood.

I ease the candle from its holder and bring it over to the coffins. My hand is shaking so much that little bits of melted wax are splattering on the coffin lids, while dark shadows skip and hide in every corner. Each of the coffins, I see, has a pink Post-it note stuck on the lid.

I hold up the light to read the first note on the black coffin. It says, simply, Mr D. Dyson. The next one reads Mrs E. Armstrong. I swallow hard, because I know what the one on the wooden coffin – the one I was hiding under – will say. Sure enough, there it is.

Mr K. H. McKinley.

Before I open the lid, I carefully look round the rest of the room, in case there are boxes of stored items, or shelves or cupboards …

Nothing.

I have lost track of time. I don’t know when – or for that matter if – Kez will be back. But I know that the only chance of getting the Dreaminator is to open the wooden lid and find out if it’s there.

With one shaking hand, I hold the candle up; with the other, I nudge the lid, half hoping that it is fastened down so that I won’t have to do what comes next. It isn’t, though: it moves. I squeeze my fingers under the edge, lifting and pushing until the lid slides away, and I glimpse the white satin lining of the box.

I turn my head. I can’t even watch what I am doing with my own hands. My eyes are screwed shut and I push too hard. The coffin lid clatters to the floor causing a tremendous noise in the small room and I drop the candle, but it doesn’t go out.

I bend to retrieve it, and rise up slowly, slowly, panting with terror at what I might see. Swallowing hard, I peer in.

There’s nobody. More important, there’s no body, and I breathe out with relief: a sort of wobbly sigh.

The coffin’s not empty, though. Oh no. Right there, resting in the centre of the shiny white satin, is the world’s last Dreaminator.

Then I hear footsteps outside again. I grab the Dreaminator and crawl back beneath the curtain.

The doorknob rattles.