The Black Dreams - 'The Quizmasters' by Gerard McKeown

The antepenultimate story in this anthology of Strange Stories from Northern Ireland concerns the dangers of ignorance. A man recalls how, as a youth, he was riding his bike along country roads when he was subject to a strange interrogation. It becomes clear that he is not merely being asked a few random questions by the mysterious man in the mud-caked Fiat. The pub quiz-style posers are something far worse. 

This short story packs a lot in. The English accent of the quizmaster (the other one doesn't talk and is in fact barely glimpsed). The way in which the commonplace and trivial becomes a life-or-death situation. The impossibility of appealing to any meaningful and trustworthy authority when confronted with extreme violence. The general sense that nothing can be resolved or clarified. A story about the Troubles, then, but also one that might become more generally relevant in a world where traditional certainties are being revealed as neither certain nor particularly traditional for most of our species.

So, another story that offers a dream-like experience but one that has the brutal immediacy of some nightmares. It's also admirable for its cool, almost detached tone.