That turned dark quickly. Instead I found that the very thing I needed to see was the least interesting. I was standing in a park, near a very large house. A wide, high street separated it from another area, which was open and park-like. At the bottom of the street was a car park. It was full, and behind a couple of cars stood a large truck, like the one that I'd been driving up and down the country roads, towing my trailer. But this one was big, about ten times bigger than my truck and about twenty times bigger than my trailer. It was covered in thick black fur, to match the look of its black-and-green paint job. I guessed that it was a Land Rover. 'What is it?' Lorna called from the car. I was about to reply when I realized that she'd gone to bed, as she'd done at about midnight. My cell phone rang. I had an incoming call – it must have made it all the way through from the hotel. 'Yes?' I said, and my stomach lurched. It was David. I wanted to shout at him that it was my phone, but what if the call was just some random wrong number? I heard him say my name, but I couldn't make out the rest. 'Hello?' I shouted, louder this time. 'Hello,' said David. 'Hello,' I said back. 'How are you?' 'I'm fine, thanks. Just getting to know you better. Did you eat yet?' 'No. I'm not very hungry.' 'That's okay. You must be exhausted. You've hardly slept. Come home.' I looked towards Lorna. What would she say? The Land Rover was still very visible in the moonlight. 'It's not that simple,' I said. 'But you can't be staying here all night. This is madness. I'll pick you up in the morning. Come home.' 'The reason I can't come home is because I'm standing here.' I pointed towards the park. 'This is where the house I'm looking for is. You can probably see it. It's just a large house, more like a palace. I can't leave here. I can't leave this park.' 'Why not? Is it under threat of something?' 'No, not yet. But it will be soon. I have a job to do.' 'What is it? I'm not an archaeologist.' 'This is not just for archaeology. It's a big conspiracy.' 'Conspiracy? What on earth are you talking about?' I was about to tell him the rest of the story when I remembered that I'd left it all out earlier. Why hadn't I told him about the gold? I didn't want to start now. 'My great-great-grandfather knew of a great conspiracy that was going to happen,' I said. 'It's why my parents moved to Ireland. I'm going to try and stop it, in my own way. It involves finding something very valuable, something that was buried in the ground. That's what they want. I don't know what it is yet, but I think they're going to dig up a big hole and have a go.' 'What kind of a conspiracy?' 'They call themselves the Knights Templar. They have an entire castle down there. That's where they are now. I know that they have the treasure buried somewhere. I don't know where, or what it is. But this big house is very, very important. It was built over it. It's somewhere very close. I'm going to find it. I have to. You have to come home. The house is going to be excavated very soon.' There was a long pause on the other end of the line. When I heard his breathy voice again, it sounded like he was crying. 'I can't come home, David. I'm here now, in the middle of nowhere. I'm in a park, and there's not a lot around. The house is on the other side of the road. I'm going to have to stay here and watch it. I have to. It's my job.' 'It's not your job. You don't know anything about any of this. You're going to get yourself killed, or arrested. You're completely mixed up, Dan. Are you sure you haven't been drugged? Are you sure you're not hallucinating? Your eyesight's going. You haven't slept in two days. You're talking gibberish. Get a grip. You have to go home.' 'I don't need any home. I don't need anything, except that I'm right.' 'What the hell are you talking about? What do you mean, you're right?' 'I'm here. I can see the house.' 'We've been through this already. You haven't been here for two days. We've been through all of this. I want you to go home now.' 'The whole story will come to light, you know that. Everything that's happened to us. It's just a matter of time. You'll be next. I have to go. I'm going to try and stop them. I've got to.' 'Stop what? What are you talking about?' 'Stop the entire world from getting ripped apart. But they'll try and stop me. And I'm going to have to do something to stop them.' 'Stop who?' 'Stop the Knights Templar.' There was silence. He'd hung up. I held the phone in my hand for a while. What a mess. I knew that I had to keep going. The world would think that I was crazy. I needed to prove to them that I wasn't. Then I remembered what Lorna had said to me on the drive up here: _We all think we're the only ones who see what's going on. But we're not. The truth is out there, Dan._ I knew it already. In my childhood, that realization had arrived at about the same time as the truth about my father. So it was already out there for me. The world is an illusion, like everything else in it. It's made of nothing but ideas, as everything else is. It's made of words, for starters. Words are made of letters, and every letter has a sound, so words have meaning. And each word has its own meaning, and that meaning goes further than the word itself. Each word has its own story, and that's where it ends. It doesn't carry on. It's full of a kind of energy, it has a momentum, just like a moving thing. It means nothing. It ends in nothing. It doesn't live. But if I wanted to find something, I had to find that meaning in it. I had to find the energy. The story. I had to start looking at the facts. 'It's too late for me,' I said to Lorna. She hadn't moved since I'd come up with her. She was sitting on the ground, next to the Land Rover, with her back to the car. I couldn't see her face, but I knew that she was listening. 'I've got to find this thing.' 'Whatever it is,' she said. 'You're going to be arrested. The whole world is going to think you're out of your mind.' 'I'm not, Lorna. I'm not. But I need to know what happened to my great-grandfather. I need to find that.' There was another long pause. I couldn't hear anything but Lorna's breathing. The only other sound was from the birds around us. I felt that if I talked now, it would come out as just another of the random words that words are made of. It would be nonsense. 'I'm going to help you,' she said. 'Even if I have to do it from the outside.' 'I can't leave.' 'You can't stay. You're mixed up, and you're talking nonsense. Do you want to be stuck in here, hiding, while the whole world thinks that you're out of your mind? Then do that. But you'll die in the end. You'll be killed. If you're not, it'll be because I stopped you, or died trying to stop you.' 'Okay,' I said. I couldn't explain what she meant. But she was right. 'Stay,' she said. 'If you're staying, I'll help you. You're not going to hurt me.' 'I promise I won't.' 'I know, but that's not what I'm talking about. I meant that you won't hurt others. You'll need my help with that. Because I know who you are. I know how to deal with people like you. I have secrets too, you see.' It made sense. But it made me feel more vulnerable, more exposed. And I didn't know what that would mean, or how it would be. 'So what do we do?' I said. 'We stay here, together. I'll take you through what's going on around you, what's happening now.