I settle for writing their names in the dusty glass of a couple of the larger pictures, along with their dates of birth and death. Pausing, I smile and add a line under Dervish’s name. “Died fighting the good fight.” A longer pause, then, with no smile, I write under Bill-E’s name, “Killed by his half brother.”

Let future visitors make of those epitaphs what they will.

My old bedroom. I lie on the bed and sigh happily. Wouldn’t it be great if I woke up now and everything had been a bad dream? I could have a good chuckle with Dervish and Bill-E, tell them how they’d been killed off, play up the grisly circumstances of their deaths, stick some hair around my face to make me look like a werewolf.

But it’s not a dream and I can’t pretend that it is. Too much about me is different, not least the fact that my legs stick way out over the end of the bed, far past the point where my feet used to stop.

I look through my old clothes and CDs, remembering a time when such things were important. I go to the toilet and think about Reni Gossel, Loch’s sister, as I’m washing my hands. We would have become an item if the world hadn’t spun off its rails. Maybe I should look her up, kiss her farewell, tell her something corny, like I’ll always hold her dear to my heart.

Then I catch sight of my twisted face in the mirror, the fangs, the bloodshot eyes, the tufts of coarse hair, the way one ear sticks out about two inches higher than the other. Some boyfriend I’d make in this state! Best to give Reni a wide berth. I’d terrify her if she saw me like this, and I didn’t come back to freak out my ex-girlfriend.

Why did you come? the Kah-Gash asks. The voice of the ancient weapon usually speaks to me only when the situation is dire. But its curiosity has been aroused.