THE WALLS of my room looked like the screen at the old drive-in cinema. A movie of a girl about my age, in a white dress, flickered on the silver-screen walls. The girl was standing in front of a red-brick building, but I could still somehow see my room: stereo on a pine chest of drawers, pedestal fan, cheval mirror, Bon Jovi posters. The buzzing in my head sounded like voices — garbled unintelligible messages, a radio not quite tuned to the station.

‘I’m from the church,’ said the girl in the white dress. She was standing in my doorway now and in the doorway of the building on the screen.

I sat up, pulling my knees and the bedsheet to my chin.

‘They want you for a human sacrifice to Jesus,’ said the girl. ‘They’re waiting for you down at the river.’

Something that sounded as though it had long claws scratched inside the cupboard where monsters had lived when I was little. I sucked the corner of the sheet. Sweat trickled down between my breasts. The buzzing voices mumbled louder, competing with my heartbeat. It was hard to hear the girl.

‘Go to the river now,’ she said.

I let go of the sheet, jumped out of bed, and ran straight through the girl, across the foyer, and into Mum’s bedroom.

Mum was snoring into her pillow. She had fallen asleep with her lamp on. The room smelled of sweated-out alcohol and dog. Barky lay at Mum’s feet, licking his bum; he looked up at me and wagged his tail. The woodgrain faces in the birch wardrobe watched me slide in next to Mum. I worried that I’d stepped on cracks in the foyer. The hot-water tank in the roof roared as it boiled. Too many firelighters again. ‘Aah–aah! Aah–aah! Harelip! Harelip!’ screamed Elton and Liberace.

Mum stirred, and I told her about the girl in my room.

‘Shh, just a bad dream.’

‘Can you please go check?’

‘There’s nobody there.’

‘Please?’

‘No. Go to sleep.’ She reached out and turned off the lamp. The black bugs started dropping.