by Ben J Henry
THE ORDER OF CHAOS
BOOK ONE
BEN J HENRY
Contents
Title Page
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PART ONE
1
2
3
4
PART TWO
5
6
7
8
9
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Stay in Touch
The Trilogy
Thanks
Copyright
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The characters in this story explore lucid dreaming: becoming conscious in their dreams. If you are interested in lucid dreaming, and would like to learn how to wake up in your dreams, then click here for your free short guide.
PART ONE: SIMULACRUM
The greatest war that man shall fight will not lie on the plain.
No spear or gun, no atom bomb, no enemy terrain.
The foe long sought, this evil fought, will share his given name.
The war between and war within will be one and the same.
From fear inane, projected blame: to seek is not to find.
The greatest war that man shall fight will lie within his mind.
— Aldous Crow —
CHAPTER ONE
Blackout
The moon lingered in the morning sky like someone had forgotten to erase it. Throughout the streets of Godalming, flocks of schoolchildren filed down pavements chatting animatedly with the early-morning energy gifted only to the young. Teachers flicked on kettle switches and stared into space, waiting for the water to boil and the term to end. Summer was fading and on the chill breeze hung the first autumnal leaves: red-gold promises of a change in season. It was the first day of the academic year.
Alicia counted from five to one and gripped the lock on the back of her front door. She turned it counterclockwise, opened the door a fraction and decided that her laces were loose. She bent to tighten the laces while an impatient gust of wind pressed the door against the toe of her trainer. She stood and permitted herself a final count from five as she stared through the thin panels of glass in the door. She glanced over her shoulder at her father sleeping on the sofa, his head facing the entrance and his eyes closed like the world’s laziest guard dog, and then swung the door open. Stepping onto the mat, she counted from five to one, her eyes fixed on the corner of the driveway.
She knew she was stalling, and that these countdowns would make her late for the first day of her final year at school. Alicia was never late; she had not missed registration since her mother baked cupcakes for the class on her fifteenth birthday and then stopped the car to give them all to a pair of homeless men on the drive in.
‘Honestly, Alicia, don’t be mad—they will enjoy them far more than your form group.’
‘I’m not mad, nobody brings in cupcakes for their birthday any more.’
‘And Lord knows those children don’t need any fattening up. I just hope the sugar doesn’t kill them. You can’t get diabetes from a few cupcakes, can you?’
‘We’re going to be late.’
That had been three years ago. Now Alicia blinked at the sky—a lurid blue, offensively bright for this time of day—and let out a face-splitting yawn. She had slept through her alarm, which was unsurprising given that she had only fallen asleep three hours before it sounded. Muttering ‘Zero’, she closed the door behind her, resigning herself to the truth: the summer holidays had ended and her brother had not returned. She stepped from the mat, unaware of the eyes watching her from behind the bush across the road.
Winter spied Alicia’s yawn through the rhododendron leaves and her body responded naturally. A tremble ran through her fingers and she held the can of paint against her chest as a silent yawn erupted from her throat. Resting the can on her thigh, she pressed the back of a hand to her mouth and watched Alicia turn down the pavement.
‘Ready?’ she mouthed to Jack as Alicia disappeared around the corner. Winter emerged from her hiding place between the bush and the fence on the corner of the quiet street. Glancing left and right, she marched across the road towards Alicia’s house. She did not see Jack follow, but sensed his presence: pale-blue eyes searching the windows as they reached the driveway. Unaccustomed to treading lightly, Winter crunched her feet along the gravel and towards a side gate that led to a sheltered walkway between Alicia’s house and the six-foot wall separating the neighbouring property. She flicked a spider from the rim of the can, shifted it into her left hand and tried the gate: unlocked. Jack chased her through and she closed it behind her, feeling the needle-prick of adrenaline now that she was officially trespassing.
Winter trudged along the dark passageway, past the washing machine, lawnmower and a geriatric Christmas tree to reach the back door. Jack’s brow furrowed above his twice-broken nose: he feared that they would find it locked.
They’ve nothing left to steal, thought Winter, trying the door and finding it open. A triumphant smile lit her aggressively beautiful face as she entered the property. Creeping through the kitchen, her gaze swept the family photographs that grinned on the windowsill, glossy eyes following her deeper into their household.
In the living room, she stopped at the sight of Alicia’s father asleep on the sofa. Draped in a colourful pashmina, he lay with his head on a cushion and his knees tucked, resembling a young boy. The sofa was angled out from the wall such that, were his eyes open, he would see through an archway to the front door. The gentle snores filling the dark room with a soporific rhythm suddenly broke and his ruddy cheeks twitched. Winter’s heart stopped and the can of paint weighed heavily in her hands.
‘Mr Harrington?’ she whispered, taking a delicate step across the carpet and raising a hand tentatively in the direction of the sofa. Everybody knew that Alicia’s father was narcoleptic and dropped into sleep as though someone had stepped on a wire and his plug had come out. But narcoleptics were not known to sleep deeply.
Satisfied that Alicia’s father was sleeping soundly, Winter turned for the stairs. Jack thought it was a good thing that he was sleeping downstairs; Winter reminded him to be quiet. She passed two bedrooms and a bathroom before reaching the master bedroom at the end of the corridor. The paint can was heavy, and she wished that Jack would take it. She eased it back into her left hand, shifted the strap of her bag higher up her right shoulder and switched on the light.
The room was tidy, the bed made. Heavy teal curtains were drawn open and a block of light spilled upon an easel in the corner of the room. On the easel sat a canvas with a half-finished painting of a volcanic landscape. The bed was positioned in the middle of the far wall, and directly above each pillow hung two paintings. On the left was a portrait of Alicia and her mother, Anna, painted in a style that Winter recognised—with more than a little jealousy—as Alicia’s work. She wrinkled her nose at the sight of her classmate and art teacher and turned her gaze to the portrait on the right, painted by Anna.
The sight of Alicia’s father and younger brother made Winter’s stomach churn with acid, prompting Jack to question—again—whether this was a good idea. The pair in the picture grinned in vibrant hues, two pairs of hazel eyes telling lies of an alert wakefulness. Ignoring Jack’s discomfort, Winter reached for the postcard in the back pocket of her jeans, and when her eyeline left Alicia’s brother and settled on the card in her hands, she was glad to have brought it with her.
The postcard, purchased five weeks ago in Winter’
s hometown in Sri Lanka, depicted a beach that she did not recognise and a temple that she could not name. It was the text that had caught her eye: Wish you were here. She had bitten her lip, smiling at her own joke as she drew a line through ‘here’ and wrote ‘dead’.
It had seemed funny at the time.
‘Come on,’ Winter ordered, pocketing the postcard and nodding to the space above the headboard. ‘Across that wall.’
But Jack did not move. He did not take the can of paint. It was Winter that pulled the paintbrush from her shoulder bag. It was Winter that nudged the alarm clock aside and placed the can on the bedside table. It was Winter that stepped onto the bed.
She wished that Jack was here, but Winter was alone.
The duvet was soft and the mattress creaked. She glanced over her shoulder and down the empty corridor before sizing up the stretch of wall that was to be her canvas.
‘Lower or upper case?’ Winter asked. Her fingers shook as she placed the lid of the can on the spine of an open book that lay face-down beside the alarm clock.
Comic Sans, said Jack, and Winter smiled. She pictured the thick neck beneath his blond hair, stretching the collar of his rugby shirt: Henson 18. With the ghost of a smile on her lips, she proceeded to paint upon the white wall in white paint with careful, measured strokes.
You sure she’ll see it? Jack asked as Winter stepped back, trying to discern the white paint against the wall.
‘When the lights go out,’ Winter whispered with a wink. ‘Blackout.’
She left the lights on and the door ajar, carrying the paint can in both hands with the brush on top, to avoid any tell-tale drops striking the beige carpet. She descended the stairs and crossed the living room, where Alicia’s father continued to sleep in the shadows. In a distant recess of Winter’s mind, she hoped he would not be the first to turn out the bedroom lights. Her message was not for him.
Closing the back door, she stole quietly down the side alley and through the gate. Stepping into the front garden, Winter paused, glancing down at the can. With a grunt, she hurled it over the brick wall and into the neighbouring garden and was about to follow it with the brush when a violent clang assaulted her ears; the can had struck something hard and metallic on the far side of the wall.
Drawn by insuppressible curiosity, Winter hurried along the wall to peer into the front garden.
You said it was abandoned, Jack hissed.
It was.
The can lay on its side on top of a police car, nestled in a dent in the roof of the vehicle. White paint slid down the windscreen. Her chestnut eyes snapped in the direction of the front door, where a boy of her age looked from the can of paint to the brush in her hand. His mouth was slightly open, and a spark of humour lit his green eyes.
‘Nice shot,’ he said, grinning.
Winter watched the lid of the can slide gently down the windscreen, riding the wave of white paint.
Blackout.
Footprints
Alicia sat on the arm of the sofa with one hand resting by her father’s head and the other picking at the wilted leaves of the Caesar salad that she had left out for him an hour before. Since her mother taught art at the school, Alicia was often called upon by reception staff to perform duties for which they were unable to find a willing teacher. Having distributed new students around their after-school activities, she had arrived home late and her father had slept for the remainder of the evening. The only signs that he had departed from the realm of slumber at all that day were a half-eaten ham sandwich on the kitchen counter and a concerning smell of wet paint coming from upstairs.
‘It was pretty standard for the first day,’ she commented, popping a crouton between her molars and crunching into the silence. ‘Just your usual start-of-year bereavement assembly. Big photo of Jack at the front of the hall—that one of him at the Bath Cup? Nothing out of the ordinary. Winter didn’t show up, though.’
A snore escaped her father’s nostrils.
‘Now don’t be unkind, Dad. Would you have expected her to turn up, knowing every eye would be on her? Every sympathetic—’ she shook her head. ‘It’s probably best for the new kids that she’s taking some time to get her head together. Remember last year, when she tricked those Year 7s into an “assembly” on the sports field and soaked them with the sprinklers?’
She watched his eyelids flicker, and an incoherent mumble passed his lips.
‘Your words, not mine,’ said Alicia, eyebrows raised. ‘She’ll be all right, though. She’s, well, she’s a lot of things—’
Snort.
‘—Stop it. Be nice. She’s a lot of things, but she’s tough. Probably just needs an extra day, without all the questions, and the…’ she trailed off and, with nothing but the passage of air through her father’s parted lips, her thoughts were punctuated by the ticking of the clock on the wall above the fireplace. Three friends had asked through fragile smiles why she had not responded to their messages and—as though to answer their own questions—whether there had been any update on David’s disappearance. Five students and three teachers had asked where her mother was—Is she unwell? Do ask her to drop me an email about the Fair. At lunchtime, Alicia decided that she had earned a little break. In the girls’ toilets, she had counted down from one hundred.
‘She’ll be fine. Try not to worry, Dad. Don’t want you losing any sleep over it.’
She smiled through a yawn and cocked her head to catch her father’s eye, but his lids remained stubbornly closed. Rory Harrington was a great appreciator of jokes, big and small, humorous and otherwise. Alicia and David had been raised on puns and rapid-fire quips, with meals around the dining table descending into improvised comedy scenes, littered with lines from Rory that made the jokes in Christmas crackers sound like profound wisdom.
‘What do you think might happen,’ Alicia had once asked in a derisive manner while her mother and father enacted a scene in which she was failing a chemistry test; the upcoming exam was playing on her mind, ‘if you were to take something seriously, just once?’
Her parents had shared a glance, Anna with her husband in a headlock and a cucumber/Bunsen burner at his throat.
‘Divorce, probably,’ said Anna. Rory had nodded in sombre agreement.
Presently, Alicia lifted the corner of the pashmina, which her father’s snoring had shifted like sand across the skin of a drum, and tucked it back over his shoulder. A somnolent smile twisted the corner of his lips, and Alicia saw dream versions of Anna, David and herself bent double with laughter as he regaled an anecdote from his years at Trinity College in Dublin. A small crease pitted her brow.
She sometimes envied how effortlessly her father departed from the waking world, as though he never had two feet on conscious ground. His narcolepsy had struck, with no warning, when she was eleven. Anna joked with her friends at the uncanny timing of these episodes that tended to happen whenever Rory had a particularly boring task to undertake, like dog sitting for his brother’s three dachshunds, or filing a tax return. To begin with, his episodes were regarded with mild amusement rather than frustration. But over the years, the condition worsened. As a husband and father, he remained doting; but as a welfare officer, golfer and volunteer fireman, his days were over. Fortunately, nobody minded if you fell asleep while pruning the hydrangeas, so this hobby had been a late bloom.
‘According to rumour,’ Alicia whispered conspiratorially as a memory from the canteen surfaced, ‘well, according to the Carpenter twins, Winter set fire to a police car. You’ve got to hand it to them, they’re not short on imagination.’
That sounded disturbingly like something her mother would have said, so Alicia decided to end the conversation.
‘Good talk, Dad.’
She kissed her father on the forehead and rose from her seat. Neither of them had heard from Anna in two days, though they had both left messages on her mobile phone. Rory had slept more often than usual during this period, as though on strike until his wife returned.
At the top of the stairs, she did not turn left to her bedroom, but right, past the bathroom and directly to her parents’ bedroom, without her eyeline grazing David’s door: a little trick that she had adopted subconsciously and mastered through habit. The smell of fresh paint was strong and she might have considered that her mother had returned to finish the volcanic vista, had Rory not maintained his position facing, if not watching, the front door.
The light was on and nothing was amiss, except a poorly-made bed. The painting on the easel remained as incomplete as it had been when she checked the room that morning, to see whether her mother had returned in time for school. Glancing over her shoulder towards the stairs with the sting of dishonesty in her chest, Alicia pulled a sheet of paper from her pocket. She thought she had found the last of the ‘Missing’ posters, but this one had been caught in a hedge at the end of Gardner Road. She unfolded the paper with the tremulous fingers of one receiving examination results.
David’s face grinned from the centre of the page, the once-brilliant colour faded to bleached tones. ‘Missing’ stood in black letters across the top of the A4 sheet, with a description of David and the family contact details beneath the photo. To look into her brother’s eyes, it was as if—
No, thought Alicia. No. She folded the sheet of paper and sat on the edge of the bed, a surge of emotion rising within her like a tidal current beating against a splintering dam. Tears pricked her eyes and the vision of her parents’ bedroom doorway fell to fragments of memory: Alicia tearing a poster from a telephone pole last February and sliding down to sit in the snow; clenched fists against her mouth, screaming until the paper was wet; a crunch of footprints; an arm around her shoulders: There, there. Never before had she seen such emotion in her headmistress’s face. Never again would she let herself indulge in such weakness.