(1989) Dreamer

by Peter James

  ‘What have you got all those wires on your head for?’ he asked. ‘Trying to beat me with high tech? Stupid little bitch, aren’t you? It’s time you had a lesson. I think I’m going to give you one.’

  Lucid dream. I’m having a lucid dream.

  If you can be aware that you are dreaming, you can control your dream.

  ‘No,’ she said, surprised at how firm she sounded. ‘I don’t want a lesson. I’m going to give you something. I’m going to give you a Castaway bar.’

  He looked puzzled.

  Concentrate. Castaway bar. Castaway bar!

  One appeared in her hand.

  I can have anything in the world that I want, she thought suddenly. She thrust it out to him. ‘Eat it,’ she said.

  He walked over and took it, and she sat up in bed, watching him unwrap it and bite a piece off.

  ‘What do you think of it?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It tastes a bit like a Bounty with biscuit.’

  ‘That’s what Ken said.’

  ‘He said the same?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He smiled.

  She felt a surge of confidence. ‘I want you to tell me why you keep coming back to me, Slider. What do you want? Why don’t you leave me alone?’

  He licked his fingers. ‘It was good, that bar.’

  ‘Like another?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s no problem to get you another. I can fill the whole room with them if you want.’

  ‘You could fill the room with Castaway bars?’

  ‘Yes. And I could make you disappear if I wanted. But I don’t want to do that. Not yet. I want to know what you want. I want to know why I’m having these dreams.’

  He raised his arms, and looked surprised. ‘I’m your friend, Sam.’ He sat down beside her. ‘I’m your friend, that’s why! You’re having them to protect you. I’m showing you the future to warn you of danger. You’ve got to learn to trust me.’ He put an arm around her and squeezed her gently. ‘I’m your friend. See? Happy?’

  ‘Great.’

  He smiled. ‘Great! This is great. You thought I wasn’t your friend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He chuckled. ‘Ridiculous. That’s crazy.’

  She felt him heaving up and down as he began to laugh, and she laughed with him. They sat together, laughing almost helplessly for a long while. Then they sat in silence, peaceful silence.

  ‘Listen, Sam, you mustn’t worry about the future. It’s all taken care of. All the details.’ He squeezed her again, then jumped up from the bed, went over to the door and opened it.

  ‘Don’t go,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not going. I want to see if the papers have come.’ He opened the door and stooped down, then turned around, holding up The Times. ‘It’s a good place this, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Wonderful.’

  He pushed his goggles up onto his forehead, opened The Times and scanned through it, then he folded the pages back, came over to the bed and sat down again. ‘I told you I’d taken care of all the details. Look!’ He held the pages in front of her.

  ANNOUNCEMENTS AND PERSONAL.

  She looked up at him, at the eyes through the slits, the eyes which suddenly looked so cold and hard she could not tell which was the glass one.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, becoming insistent. ‘Have a look, see for yourself – see the column?’

  ‘Deaths,’ she read, and began to tremble as she followed his finger down the column, a long, neatly manicured nail. Too long, like a talon.

  ‘Look, there!’ His voice was filled with childish glee. ‘Can you see?’

  She froze.

  ‘CURTIS. Tragically. Samantha (Sam) Ruth. Aged 32. Beloved wife of Richard and loving mother of Nicky. Funeral service private. Family flowers only.’

  ‘The date,’ she dimly heard him say. ‘The only thing they left out.’

  She felt a sharp draught of air, and a sheet of the newspaper suddenly blew away onto the floor, then another sheet, as if caught in a ferocious gust. She heard the roar of an engine, felt her hair whipping her face, saw the curtains crashing wildly. She looked up, petrified, at the ceiling. The fan was spinning wildly, huge, black and menacing, spinning and clattering, the noise turning into a deafening roar that made her put her hands over her ears.

  No!

  The wind ripped at the bedclothes and tore them off the bed, hurling them across the room like pieces of paper.

  ‘No. Oh God, no!’ she screamed, as the glass of water beside her exploded like a grenade, showering her in sharp stinging shards.

  The doors of the wardrobe suddenly flew open and her clothes hurled out onto the floor. The light bulb on her bedside light exploded, and the room went dark.

  ‘Oh God help me.’

  ‘You little bitch. Think you’re going to beat me with high tech? Think you could make me disappear just by thinking about it?’

  She was flung out of the bed and smashed into the ceiling, then felt herself falling down, falling through a freezing swirling vortex, tumbling head over heels through a debris of glass and furniture which cut and stung, and then she crashed into the ground, hard; so hard, she was unable to move.

  There was a brilliant white light, which dazzled her and she closed her eyes against it.

  ‘Sam?’

  She shivered. Cold, it was so cold.

  ‘Sam?’

  She smelt a strange, unfamiliar, dusty smell, and opened her eyes. She saw a beige fuzz. A strange beige fuzz, lying on top of her, crushing her. She was bitterly cold.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said a man’s voice.

  ‘Are you all right, Sam?’

  Dr Hare, she thought. It sounded like Dr Hare.

  She pushed the fuzz of beige, but it would not move.

  ‘Have you hurt yourself?’ said Colin Hare’s voice.

  I don’t know, she wanted to say. I don’t know. ‘Please get this thing off me.’ She pushed the beige fuzz again. Then she realised. It was the carpet.

  She was lying face down on the floor.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ Laszlo’s voice.

  ‘We’ll lift her back onto the bed.’

  She felt hands, awkward, fumbling hands, then the fuzz was lifted away and she saw the white ceiling. No fan, she thought vaguely, then heard the creak of springs and felt the softness of the bed. Hare’s face was close to hers, searching, worried. Laszlo’s dark-ringed eyes probed her with a strange incomprehension that frightened her.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Hare.

  She gave a weak nod.

  ‘She looks cold, Laszlo. Let’s put the bedclothes back over her.’

  She watched him turn and walk across the room. Laszlo was still staring down at her. Why? He seemed to be saying. Why?

  Hare bent down, scooping up a sheet from the floor, Christ. The mess.

  The room looked as if it had been destroyed.

  Glass, clothes, bits of furniture were strewn all around. The window was smashed and the curtain rail had been ripped away from the wall. There was a thin trail of something white underneath the wash basin. A chair was lying lopsided against a wall, one of its legs buckled under it, like an old man who has fallen and can’t get up. Her bedside table was lying on top of the wardrobe.

  No. It was not possible.

  Hare came back towards her, dragging an armful of bedclothes. He dropped them down, disentangled a sheet, then draped it over her gently.

  Like a flag over a dead soldier.

  I’m dead. I’m dead. That’s why he’s looking at me like that.

  ‘Take the other end, Laszlo. Tuck it in firmly.’

  ‘Am I all right?’ she asked.

  Hare was studying her carefully. She felt the bed tilt slightly, first one side, then the other, then Hare stooped down again, and she felt the weight of a blanket. Warmth.

  ‘I want to wake up now,’ she said, and she caught a brief nervous glance between Hare and Laszlo.

&
nbsp; Hare smiled thinly. ‘You are awake now, Sam. You had a bad—’ He paused and raised his hands in the air.

  ‘Lucid,’ she said. ‘I had a lucid dream.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Hare. ‘Yes – I—’

  ‘Toothpaste. He squeezed my toothpaste. Is it there?’

  ‘Your toothpaste?’

  ‘On the wash basin.’

  He looked over at the basin, then down at the carpet beneath it. The trail of white toothpaste spelled out a word in large, clear writing.

  AROLEID.

  Hare knelt, touched the toothpaste with his finger, then picked up something and held it out. It was the toothpaste tube, empty, rolled flat.

  ‘He was here,’ she said, staring wide-eyed at the writing. ‘He did that.’

  ‘Who, Sam?’

  ‘Slider.’

  He gazed around the room again.

  ‘I didn’t do all this,’ she said. ‘Not on my own. And I couldn’t have reached . . . not with the wires—’ She raised her hands and felt the wires. They were all still in place.

  Hare looked back down at her, his eyes darting about her face, then at Laszlo.

  ‘How’s the graph?’ she said, feeling anger suddenly, anger and confusion and fear and shock battling it out inside her head. ‘Everything’s fine, is it? Showing sweet dreams? Any abnormalities?’

  Hare turned to Laszlo. ‘I think we’d better – ah – disconnect.’

  Laszlo smirked and raised his eyebrows.

  Sam watched them both.

  What the hell’s up with you two? Is this some kind of a game? Think it’s funny? Great hocus-pocus? Christ. Then she realised: he was smirking, but it wasn’t humour, no, not at all. He was grimacing. He just looked like he was smirking when he was grimacing. Hare didn’t think it was funny either. He was shaking like a leaf, like a rabbit.

  Like someone seriously shit scared.

  She looked away, around the room, then back at Hare again. Could see the terror in his eyes.

  And suddenly she understood why.

  33

  She’d stayed awake most of the rest of the night, in numb silence. Hare had sat in the room with her, hunched in a chair much like he was hunched in a chair now opposite her in the pub, by the window that looked out on the main road outside the university.

  AROLEID.

  What the hell did Aroleid mean? Was it an anagram? DIE LORA? DIE ORAL? Riddles. No good at riddles.

  AROLEID.

  You’ve got the really big fall to come.

  Falling? Was it something to do with falling? Hare was blinking quizzically. God, the poor sod looked awful. Couldn’t have slept at all. Not in a chair. He said something to her, but the pub was filling up with its lunchtime trade, and it was getting harder to hear his soft voice above the babble of conversation and the roar of the traffic outside. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I hope you didn’t mind coming here?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said, relieved not to be in his bedsitting room, not in that room. That was clear. Clear as daylight. Jesus. Fine cold jets of water sprayed her insides; needle sharp they hurt, stung, flooding her with icy coldness that got into her blood and filled everywhere in her body. She looked at him, into his tired, frightened eyes, and took a deep breath.

  ‘It wasn’t your wife, was it, who smashed your room up?’ she said.

  He sat for a long time in silence, before he finally replied. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘It was someone – some thing that didn’t want you to help me, wasn’t it?’

  He continued staring. Staring right through her. As if he was watching some private movie. Then he raised his shoulders and nodded lamely, eyes wide open, like a frightened animal. So frightened it scared her too. His mouth twitched, and he locked his fingers together, then pulled them apart, slowly, one at a time.

  ‘There is a scientific explanation.’ He picked up his glass shakily and drank some beer, then wiped his beard with the back of his hand. ‘Disturbances . . . energy.’ He nodded as if that was it. Simple.

  ‘I’m not quite with you.’

  He seemed reluctant to go on and hesitated, locked his fingers again, then unlocked them. ‘Our brain waves give out terrific energy. Incredible energy – particularly if we are in any state of excitement – I—’ He stopped whilst a waitress brought over their lasagnes and set them down. Steam rose up between them.

  ‘Anxiety – that sort of thing – can transmit. It’s possible, of course, that I picked up your anxiety and the energy set off a chain reaction in the energy patterns of my room affecting the electro-magnetic polarisation of the – ah – molecules in . . . It’s what is sometimes called the poltergeist phenomenon.’

  ‘Doesn’t poltergeist mean “angry spirit”?’

  ‘Well literally it means “noisy spirit”. In German.’ He dug his fork warily into his lasagne, as if worried it might be booby-trapped. ‘They do good food.’

  ‘Looks delicious,’ she said flatly. She lifted up a forkful of scalding microwaved pasta, but she had no appetite, and lowered it.

  ‘If you come up again, I’d like you to meet other people who have premonitions – to know that you are not alone.’ He put his fork down and sipped his beer, gazing at her with his worried eyes. ‘I’d be grateful if you would come up, or I could come down to Sussex. I really would like to make further studies. Most fascinating – it could be most valuable.’

  ‘Have other people had as many as me?’

  He seemed to relax a fraction. ‘Oh yes, I—’ He paused – ‘I would say yes.’ He frowned. ‘It’s a question of logging your future ones now, isn’t it? Seeing which of those come true.’

  ‘What I want to know is where do premonitions – precognitions, whatever you call it – come from?’

  ‘Ah. Well, that’s the big one. That’s what we are trying to discover here. We are working on three theories. We are not looking at anything that can be dismissed as coincidence, or self-fulfilling prophecy; we are studying case histories only of people who genuinely seem able to see into the future . . . Real time. Does that mean anything to you?’

  Sam shook her head.

  He turned a layer of cheese over with his fork, peering at the meat it uncovered, swivelled round to study the crowd of people behind them, a rag-bag mixture of businessmen, students, building labourers, then turned back to her.

  ‘Real time is the theory that you tune into people’s thoughts, telepathically – unintentionally, of course. You see, you may have tuned into the pilot, telepathically. Maybe he had a drink problem, or some other problem, and he knew the plane was going to crash when he next flew to Bulgaria. Perhaps he was going to do it deliberately – commit suicide. Perhaps you picked those signals up.’

  ‘Read his mind?’

  ‘Yes. Picked up his thoughts. Even the sort of dialogue he knew he would have with his co-pilot.’ He smiled. ‘The child who fired the shotgun and the rapist in the underground station – you could have tuned into them, into their thoughts, in your dream state.’

  She felt an uncomfortable tightening in her throat, and stared down at her fingernails. They were looking worse. ‘If I’m picking things up telepathically, why don’t I get more things – your thoughts, my husband’s, people walking down the street?’

  ‘The air is full of signals – radio signals, light waves, sound waves. We only pick up a narrow band of them. Either our brain is incapable of receiving the rest, or it filters them out, keeping only what we need. It’s possible something’s gone wrong with your filtering system and in your sleep you’re picking up bits of thought from other people.’

  ‘Would they show on your graphs?’

  ‘We’re hoping so. We’re hoping we may find some common irregularity in people who have premonitions.’

  ‘What about mine, last night?’

  ‘Unfortunately, we didn’t record you for long enough. The only thing was you – when you went to sleep, you did seem to go into REM sleep quickly – but that often happens in a strange
environment.’

  ‘How does this telepathy theory explain my balcony dream?’

  ‘Dreams can be very obscure. Premonitive or precognitive dreams get mixed up with the dream processes and buried in symbols. It’s one of our biggest difficulties, to separate it all out. The true meanings are often concealed, and need interpreting. I’m sure far more people have premonitions than ever realise it, because they don’t analyse their dreams.’

  ‘What symbols do you mean between the balcony and scaffold?’

  ‘Well, falling – in a woman – often relates to falling to – ah – yielding to sexual advances—’ He fidgeted with his hands. ‘Ah – intercourse.’

  Good old Sigmund. Knew you couldn’t keep out of this.

  She felt her face going bright red.

  The dream was nothing to do with the scaffold.

  Was it?

  She saw him looking quizzically, saw from his expression that he realised he had touched a nerve.

  ‘Symbolism . . .’ he said, trying to move on quickly. ‘It’s not always correct, you see.’

  ‘What are the other theories?’

  ‘The supernatural, of course.’ He prodded his lasagne with his fork, pricking it all over, as if trying to let the steam out. As if trying to exorcise the steam.

  ‘Do you believe in the supernatural?’

  ‘Ah.’ He turned the fork over in his hand. ‘I’m a scientist. Officially we’re not allowed to believe in the supernatural.’

  ‘And unofficially?’

  ‘It’s a question of definition.’

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

  He scratched his beard then his cheek and lowered his head a fraction. ‘I don’t have any – evidence – of a connection between ghosts and precognition.’

  ‘What about Slider?’

  ‘You think he’s a ghost – a spirit – haunting you from the past?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  He plucked up sudden courage and put a forkful of lasagne in his mouth. A tiny morsel fell away and tumbled through his beard like an acrobat in a safety net. He chewed thoughtfully. ‘I think he’s very interesting. Most bogeymen get left behind in childhood. He could simply be an embodiment of your fears. That whenever you are afraid – whenever your brain picks up danger – it translates it into this grotesque image. It’s saying to you “Slider, watch out,” as if it was saying “Red Alert”.’