I was taken to the doctor's then. My mother couldn't justify only wrapping me up in bed and suffocating me with affection, not after two episodes. Again, I couldn't remember what I'd seen so didn't have to worry why no one else seemed to be screaming or fainting. Doctor Culshaw asked me a hundred questions whilst making sure the thermometer stayed in my mouth, prodded me everywhere, and sent home telling my mother I had to rest. I was instructed to take a week off school, do nothing energetic and drink lots of water.

Yay.

Once home, Mum speedily ushered me upstairs and into bed. By the time she'd returned with hot broth, something I could never quite discern the actual ingredients of, I was asleep. Tomato or chicken soup were fairly obvious. I'd never seen a Broth, hot or otherwise, running around in the wild (the wild being my garden or street). The same went for whatever a Mulligatawny was. Did it fly? Burrow? Grow? Who knew? Either way, I'd turn up my nose until my mother held it, then the hot wotsit soup would be sliding down my throat like a child at a park, all happy and laughing.

I woke the next morning. Mum said she'd checked on me a few times (which I guessed to be a few hundred) and I was sleeping like a baby. Log. Why couldn't she have said I was sleeping like a log? A log was harder, tougher. A baby? Come on!

Daytime television was boring, at least to a twelve year old practically tied to his bed. This state of intimated incarceration induced an almost catatonic condition. "Try saying that when you're drunk," my dad would say. Not that he'd say something like that sober, of course. He was a decent man, my dad. He worked hard and did his best. He didn't, however, entertain much in the way of vocabulary. He and words had a mutual dislike of each other, and he'd shy away from anything more fanciful than "Have we got more gravy?", "Are you blind, ref?!" and "Make mine a pint." As a result, I dozed a lot. My eyes were heavier than my school bag on P.E. day and I struggled to keep them open.

I dreamed. In the world beyond sleep, I was hunted and haunted. A man with a smudge where his face should have been, as if he'd been caught in the rain and his features had run or whoever had drawn him had rubbed it out, wanting to have another go, watched me. At first, he stood at my window looking in. My bedroom was on the first floor – upstairs. In dreams that doesn't matter, of course. I used to dream that I could almost fly. It wasn't quite flapping my arms and taking off or pushing one fisted hand forward and zooming through the clouds. It was more like running and jumping and landing where I wanted. In this case, I supposed I could be on the top floor of the multi-storey flats at the back of Freeman Street and he could be standing outside watching. It would, perhaps, have been quite normal if he'd had a face. As he didn't, it wasn't.

I watched him back. It started to rain and he seemed to smile, in that the stain where his mouth should have been moved slightly upwards. The rest of him seemed to smear too until, eventually, the rain washed him away. I climbed out of bed and moved to the window. I was afraid, but it was more of not seeing him than otherwise. If he'd disappeared completely, where had he gone? In my wardrobe? Under my bed? If I could still see him, whether it be under the streetlight, in my garden or floating on a cloud, at least I'd know where he was – and it wouldn't be in my room. My window was a barrier. I knew vampires had to be invited in. I hoped smudge-men would too.

He stood at my front gate. It had never quite shut properly, being slightly too wide for the opening. He had his hand on the top and was swinging it slowly, open and closed. He dropped his hand to his side. The rain began to wash him away again, almost in strips. As the shreds of his body touched the ground, they turned to liquid. A thick, deep red, liquid. It bubbled, slightly, as it was swept down the drain. I think it was waving goodbye. I had to stop myself waving back.

I was wet. Not in my pants, not again, but from the rain falling on me. I was outside, looking down at the drain cover, the rain trying to sweep me away as it had the man. I felt a tingling in my fingers and saw them begin to fall away, droplets of me dripping into the gutter. As I watched, my hand became a stump and in a few seconds I had no lower arms. I tried to scream, but my mouth had trickled away. I could see parts of my lips drizzling down my chest, chasing the man into the sewers.

I woke suddenly. It was morning again, the sun knocking lightly on my window, asking if I'd open the curtains and let it in. I didn't. I stayed in bed, wanting the sun and any vampiric visitors or dissolving smears to leave me alone. I hoped my mother would too.

"Morning sweetie," she sang as she entered. I'd tried to ask her to knock so many times, but she always laughed, as if my requests for privacy were cute and funny.

I smiled. I may as well pretend to be pleased to see her. I could have feigned sleep but I dreaded closing my eyes again. I didn't want to risk being washed away. I didn't want to see him again. The man. The stain.

"How you feeling today?"

"I'm good, mum." I wasn't lying. I was good, health-wise at least. If you ignored the fact that my hands, hidden beneath the duvet, were shaking, I was right as ninepence. I thought that was a reference to 'old' money, as my parents would call it, but I wasn't sure. I didn't think I'd ever seen a ninepence to see how right it might or might not be.

"Well," she said, her voice bouncing up and down like a ping-pong ball on a piano, "you stay snuggled up in there and I'll pop up in a bit with some breakfast."

She walked out with the same happy spring in her step as was in her voice. I groaned and sank down under my covers. It was only a moment before I pushed them back and sat upright.

In the darkness of the duvet, I could hear the rain.

I slipped my slippers on – what else would you do with them – and went downstairs. I'd rather be bored in a room with my mother than alone with the remnants of my nightmares. My mother may have been overwhelming sometimes, but she seemed to resist any urges to float outside my window or erase her face. Mum fawned and fussed, as I knew she'd have to do, and I let her. For once, it was comforting.

The day passed slowly as I floated on an endless stream of attention, bad soap operas and cartoons. Time seemed to taunt me, making me feel, at times, as if it was rewinding and the clock in the corner of the room became louder with each tick. I made a show of eating the food my mother brought me.

"You need your strength," she said.

I needed an appetite, in fact. It had been taken away in the night by a man with a muddled face. Still, I did my best. My throat didn't want to swallow and my hand could have happily not lifted the sandwiches to my mouth, but I put in the required effort. It seemed to appease her and she took my plate away, leaving me in piece for a time.

I tried. I really did try. I wanted to concentrate on the television, and I managed it for a while, but with my mother pottering about in the kitchen, the low hum of a lawn mower across the street and the comfiness of the sofa, my eyelids began to droop.

I watched the news. Well, I wasn't watching it as much as it was on, sandwiched between two other programmes I wasn't particularly watching either. There was a piece about the rise in unemployment. I was at school. It didn't affect me. At twelve years old, nothing much did. Jobs and loans and worries were years away for me. Problems in countries I had never even heard of were for adults to dwell on, not a boy whose most difficult decision was which colour odd socks to wear in a morning. For a long moment, the presenter stopped talking. Then he stood and walked towards the camera. The screen.

Me.

He stopped just inside the TV, his head filling the screen. He was watching me. Then it started to rain in the studio. Then his face started to melt. Then the rain and the dregs of his features started to pour from the bottom of the television onto the carpet. It pooled in a vaguely disquieting mix of colours as if an artist was mixing tints for his next masterpiece and had forgotten which particular shade he'd wanted.

I must have shouted out as my mother came running in. She saw me staring at the TV and turned towards it.

"What?"

She could see it? She could see it!

"What is it baby? What's wrong?"

No! She couldn't! I looked from the melting man to my mother and back again.

The news reader was introducing the weather. Apparently we were going to be in for a heat wave. Summer was early. Make sure you had your sunglasses and cream.