by North, Alex
“What was that?”
“Stuff about your life. I always thought you’d be married with kids by now. Writing your stories. And also, the way you didn’t want to look into what your mother said. It’s just so different from how you used to be. Let’s just say that I remember you being a little more … proactive.”
She raised a knowing eyebrow. I realized that even after all this time she still had the ability to make me blush, and I ran my finger over the condensation on the bottle of beer to distract myself.
She was right, of course. But rather than thinking about me and her back then, I found myself remembering that day at rugby instead—the day Hague died—and how I’d been so determined to get through the boy opposite me on the field. About the way it had always been me who stuck up for James and protected him. And the focus I’d had back then, working on my ideas for stories late into the night, the house dark and silent around me.
“I guess so,” I said.
“So what changed?”
I looked at her. “You know what changed.”
“But it’s been twenty-five years.” She gave me a pointed look in return. “That seems a long time to be dwelling.”
I didn’t reply. Again, I supposed she was right. While I had spent most of my life trying not to think about what had happened in Gritten, the truth was you didn’t need to think about something for it to affect you. I had been knocked off course, and by keeping my eyes closed, I had never been able to correct that trajectory.
“Well,” I said finally. “I did look into what my mother said. I searched the house. You’d have been proud of me.”
“So you searched. And?”
“And I found.”
I told her about the boxes of newspapers my mother had collected—the coverage not only of what Charlie and Billy had done here in Gritten, but of the murders that had been committed since. How it appeared that, over the years, other teenagers had read about Charlie and sought to emulate what some of them believed he’d managed to achieve.
“Copycat cases,” I said. “I checked online. All the details are there. Charlie thought a sacrifice to Red Hands would allow him to live in the dream world forever, and because he actually did vanish, there are some people who think he managed it.”
Jenny shook her head. “But that’s…”
“Ridiculous? Yeah, I know. But there are all these websites.” I started to reach for my phone, but then thought better of it. “It’s nuts. These websleuths—I mean, that’s literally what they call themselves—they’re poring over every little detail, trying to figure out how Charlie disappeared.”
“People like a good mystery,” Jenny said.
“But nobody’s ever going to solve it. For all anybody knows, Charlie could even be alive.”
Immediately I wished I could take the words back. The thought of him escaping justice after what he’d done was unbearable in itself, but it was also unnerving to imagine he might be somewhere out there. Even after all this time, the idea of him being close by scared me.
There was a beat of silence.
“I suppose he might as well be,” I said. “Because people are still listening to him, aren’t they? Still learning from him.”
“Why do you think your mother kept it all?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I think she didn’t want me to know about it or have to deal with it. There’s a whole lot of guilt there, and it feels like she was taking it on so I didn’t have to.”
“You don’t have anything to feel guilty about,” she said.
“Yeah, I do.”
I looked at her, and a different memory came back to me. The first lucid dream I ever had happened a couple of weeks after Charlie and James appeared to have shared their first dream. It had started out as one of the recurring ones I kept having about the dark market—wandering along narrow aisles as something huge and dangerous hunted me—but this time had been different.
I’ve been here before, I thought.
I recognize this.
I had pinched the sides of my nose shut and tried to breathe. There were various ways to test whether you were dreaming or not, but Charlie had told us the nose trick was the most reliable. In real life, you wouldn’t be able to breathe, but in a dream you always could. I was met with the startling, impossible sensation of my lungs filling with air.
God, I’d thought. I’m dreaming right now.
I had looked around at the gray stalls, the dimly illuminated crates, the rickety tables and dark, creaking canopies, and they had all seemed completely real. The world had been indistinguishable from the one around me while I was awake, and I had felt a profound sense of wonder. Everything was so intricate that it had been ridiculous to think my brain was capable of constructing something so elaborate.
Show me the way out of here, I thought.
“Paul.”
Jenny’s voice had come immediately from over to my left.
“This way.”
It was Jenny whom my subconscious had conjured up to help me during that first lucid dream. If it hadn’t, things would have turned out very differently.
You don’t have anything to feel guilty about.
“I do,” I said again now.
Jenny frowned at me.
“Is that really how you’ve felt all this time?”
“No,” I said. “That’s a new thing. When I left here, I made the decision to pack it away—to leave it all behind me. Guilty is just how I should have been feeling.”
“God, you should talk to someone.”
“I am.”
“Someone proper, I mean. Someone who can help.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“That word again. Like I said, you used to be more decisive.” She sighed and stood up. “I have to go.”
“I know.”
“But seriously. Think about what I said.”
As I watched her walk away to the door, I did. You don’t have anything to feel guilty about. I thought about it over and over, and tried to believe it, but it didn’t feel true.
* * *
Later, I woke suddenly in the middle of the night, unsure what was happening. The bedroom around me was almost pitch-black. I was sure I had been pulled out of a state of deep sleep—jerked awake by something—but I didn’t know what.
I lay there, my heart singing.
The bedroom revealed itself gradually, shadowy shapes emerging slowly, as though stepping forward out of the darkness toward me. My old room. The sight of it brought a disturbing sensation I had become used to in the days since I’d arrived back. I was not where I should be, and yet the room was so familiar that it felt like someplace where I had always been.
THUD.
THUD.
THUD.
I sat up quickly, my heart pounding now.
The sounds had come from downstairs—someone knocking at the front door. Except it had been more rhythmic than that: the noises spaced out, as though it took an effort for whoever was out there to lift their arm. From the weight of the blows, it seemed as though they were trying to hammer the door off its hinges.
I swung my legs out of bed, then scrabbled on the floor beside me. My phone came alive in my hand as I found it; it was just after three o’clock in the morning. Panicking slightly, I pulled on the jeans from last night and padded out onto the upstairs hallway.
Downstairs, the floor by the front door was illuminated by a wedge of weak light from the street outside. I stared down at it for a moment, expecting to hear the noises again and see the door rattle in its frame from the force of the impact.
Nothing.
I hesitated.
You used to be more decisive.
So I headed down carefully, the phone still in my hand. When I reached the front door, I swiped the phone open and flicked on the flashlight option. Bright light filled the hallway, then the beam flickered around as I unhooked the chain and opened the door.
There was nobody outside. The front path was empty and the s
treet beyond was deserted.
The gate was open, though.
Had I left it like that?
I couldn’t remember. I stepped outside, the night air cool on my skin and the stone path rough beneath my bare feet. I shone the flashlight left and right, flecking the overgrown yard with light and shadow. Nobody hiding there. Then I made my way down the path, and through that open gate onto the sidewalk. The street was bathed in a sickly sheen of amber, empty in both directions.
I listened.
The whole town was silent and still.
I closed the gate, and then headed back to the house. As I reached the front door, the beam from the flashlight passed over it.
I froze, my heart beating quickly now.
Then I steadied the light, and my skin began to crawl as I shined the beam over the wood and thought about the knocking I’d just heard.
And as I took in the marks that had been left on the door.
FOURTEEN
BEFORE
After my first lucid dream, there were more and more in the weeks that followed. I never mentioned any of them to Charlie or the others. That was partly because they felt too personal to share, but also, as time passed, I found myself resentful of the way the experiment began taking over our lives.
Charlie had started leading discussions on our findings increasingly often, and it had become clear that, whatever was happening, it was not one of his passing interests. Looking back, I find it hard to remember exactly how it all happened. The idea of sharing dreams was impossible, but they did—or at least, they claimed to. It resembled a kind of arms race. Charlie might read from his dream diary first, say, and then Billy would describe his dream, and there’d be a connection there. Charlie would be pleased, which of course would spur James on to find a connection in his own. Or else James would go first, Charlie would describe a similar dream, and then Billy, not wanting to be left out, would make out that he had experienced something similar. They never showed each other their dream diaries after the first time. Perhaps they didn’t want to puncture the fantasy world they were developing between them.
And increasingly it did feel like the three of them. My reluctance to join in began to open up a division in the group. I kept hoping that my indifference might sway the others, but it didn’t. James, especially, seemed to be falling harder under Charlie’s spell with every passing day.
Which was another thing I resented.
I had the uncomfortable sensation that we were all building toward something. There was a purpose to what Charlie was doing, and while I couldn’t figure out what it was, it made me more and more uneasy.
But as stupid as the whole thing seemed to me, I remember thinking: What harm can it do? Like I’d told James on the day we compared dream diaries for the first time, none of it meant anything. Dreams were just dreams. And so I figured that eventually the whole thing would burn itself out and life would get back to normal.
It doesn’t matter.
That’s what I kept telling myself.
* * *
Incubation.
Despite its sinister undertones, the word describes a straightforward fact: the dreams we have are influenced by the real world. Our subconscious takes everyday experiences and shatters them on the floor like a vase, then picks up a handful of pieces to form something random and new to show us while we sleep. We might recognize a few fragments, but they’re joined together oddly and separated by strange cracks. Dreams are a patchwork, stitched together from the things that happen to us in our waking lives.
But sometimes the opposite can be true.
One lunchtime, James and I were in the playground, heading to Room C5b. I wasn’t relishing more of the usual activity, and the feeling grew stronger as we walked, but I couldn’t think of an excuse not to go.
Then I glanced behind me.
Jenny was at the far edge of the playground, walking off in the direction of the construction site. She looked as confident and self-contained as always—alone, but never lonely—and the way she moved, it was as though she’d somehow plotted a route between the other kids that allowed her to walk in a straight line without having to stop.
I watched as she continued down the small road alongside the building site. Where was she going? There was little that way apart from the tennis courts, a few outside teaching huts, and the staff parking lot, and yet she was walking with quiet assurance, some destination clearly in mind.
“What?” James said.
I didn’t reply for a second. Seeing Jenny reminded me of that first lucid dream I’d had. And just as our dreams are shaped by our reality, there are times like these when our lives can be changed by the dreams we’ve had.
“I’ll catch up with you,” I said.
“Why?”
“I just need to talk to someone.”
“Okay.”
He shrugged slightly and then headed off.
I hesitated, but then set off back the way we’d come. Up close, the tarps were transparent enough to see the mud spattered on the far side. The raised arm of a digger hung in the air above, its thick metal teeth misshapen and rusted, and I could smell the faint scent of tar in the air. Presumably something was happening in there, but the site was so quiet that it was easy to imagine it was all an illusion: that eventually the tarps would be pulled aside like a handkerchief in a magic trick to reveal that nothing had changed.
There was nobody else around, and the world grew quieter as I walked. The tennis courts on the left were locked away behind wire mesh, while the teaching cabins on the right looked like corrugated caravans abandoned in a rough line. Up ahead, a little way past them, there was a lone wooden bench. Jenny was sitting there. She had been a minute ahead of me at most, but she was already scribbling furiously in a notebook on her lap.
I stopped a short distance away, unsure of myself now, and feeling a little stupid. This was clearly her place, and she was so absorbed in what she was doing that it seemed wrong to intrude. And while I’d spoken to her a handful of times since she loaned me the book, it had always been accidental: conversations after the creative writing club, or fleeting exchanges when we bumped into each other in the corridor. I’d never sought her out like this before. I had no idea what I was going to say. A dream might have brought me here, but reality found me speechless. So I was about to turn around when she looked up and saw me.
She stopped writing immediately, her face blank for a moment.
Then she called out.
“Hey.”
I shifted my bag on my shoulder. “Hey.”
Another beat of silence.
“Well,” she said. “Are you coming or going?”
Again, I felt stupid. At the same time, turning around and leaving would make me look even more ridiculous. I walked up to the bench.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You looked busy.”
“Busy?” She glanced down at the notebook. “Oh. No. Just messing around with ideas.”
“Story ideas?”
She closed the book.
“Kind of. Do you want to sit down, or are you planning to stand?”
Another question that, now I was here, had only one possible answer. I sat down at one end of the bench, leaving a careful gap between us. She looked at me expectantly.
Yes, I realized. I probably need a reason to be here, don’t I?
Inspiration struck.
“I saw you and realized I’d been meaning to apologize,” I said. “I’ve kept that book you gave me for so long.”
“Oh. Don’t worry about it.”
“I just had the impression it was important to you.”
“Yeah, but I’ve had it for ages. Have you read all the stories yet?”
“Not quite.”
“Then you should keep it a bit longer, then. Get your homework done. Because they’re all good. There are some real classics in there—ones you should definitely read.”
I smiled.
“To educate myself?”
“
Yeah. If you’re going to be a writer, you’ve got to know the field, haven’t you? Have a bit of respect for history. As awesome as he is, I can’t leave you just reading Stephen King for the rest of your life.”
“I guess.”
I felt even more awkward now. If you’re going to be a writer. I wanted to be, but with recent distractions I’d barely managed to write a thing for weeks. I’d jotted down a few ideas, but they seemed flat and lifeless. It felt like I had nothing to write about. No stories to tell.
“What are you working on?” I said.
“A horror story, of course.” Her face lit up with an appealing kind of glee. “Sort of, anyway. A ghost story, so it’s more sad than anything else.”
“Why sad?”
“Because ghost stories should be sad. Don’t you think?”
Ghost stories generally made me imagine white sheets and clanking chains, and dark corridors with figures jumping out at you. But, thinking about it, I could see what Jenny meant.
“Yeah, I guess so. It must be sad to be a ghost.”
“Exactly. If there’s a ghost it means that someone’s died. A person’s been left behind and isn’t at peace. Other people are grieving. And so on.”
“No gory bits in this one, then?”
“No.” She sniffed. “Well—not many.”
I smiled as I remembered “Good Boy,” the gruesome story she’d read out about the dog that had eaten its owner after he died. It made me think of Goodbold, strutting through the streets with his own pet, and a part of me hoped the same thing would happen to him one day. Except that, for all his faults when it came to us, he seemed to treat the animal well.
“The dog story was ace,” I said.
“Thanks.”
“You said it was based on a real thing. How did you even hear about that?”
“Marie told me.”
“Who’s Marie?” I said.
“A friend of mine.” Jenny put the notebook on the bench between us. “Which reminds me, actually—I’ve got something for you. I don’t know if you’ll be interested, but Marie gave it to me, and it made me think of you. Hang on.”
She bent over and rummaged around in the bag at her feet, eventually retrieving a tattered magazine. She passed it to me.