An unnamed person divulges the secret of their dual life. Outwardly, as secretarial assistant in the Adult Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic, they type up patient records. In secret, they act as secretary to Johnny Panic, the spirit of panic which, they contend, runs the world and is source of all dreams. By eavesdropping patient conversations and recording their dreams, they are compiling Johnny Panic’s Bible. Their endeavor is to understand dreams, rather than stopping them, as psychiatrists do for the ‘crass’ purposes of health and happiness. The secretary's own dream is of a great lake of dreams, a dredge of bodies and monsters into which every person’s thoughts run at night. Their fluency is such that they can unearth dreams that the patients themselves aren’t aware of, intuiting from one man’s religious fear of death the dreamscape of an endless monastic hall lined with bodies in advancing states of decay. Engrossed in their pursuit, they decide to risk a secret night in the unit to pore over patient records and extract dreams. At the crack of dawn, the clinic director appears and lifts the secretary into his arms. He guides them through the hospital to a back ward equipped with ‘Johnny-Panic-Killers’. The secretary attempts to dodge and run but ends up strapped to the table, watching an astral vision of Johnny Panic circled by angels up above.