Dreams (Sarah Midnight Trilogy 1)

by Daniela Sacerdoti

  “It was great.”

  “They seem a nice bunch of people.”

  “Yes. We’ve all known each other since we were children.”

  “Jack, too?” He paused. “Is he special?” Harry tried to sound casual, but he was dying to hear the answer.

  Sarah shook her head. Bryony, Alice, Leigh and all her friends fell in love once a month, and changed boyfriends like they changed outfits. Especially Bryony, who had such a cheery, sunny attitude to love and dating – she saw it all as a big game. Sarah, on the other hand, had never fallen for anyone; she’d never had a boyfriend, a serious one. And she had never been kissed.

  She didn’t like talking about those things. She thought that if she’d said she was waiting for the right person they’d laugh at her, like she had fancied herself some damsel from old times. Like she didn’t belong here, now.

  “I’m waiting for the right person. Like my mum waited for my dad.” She immediately regretted her answer. He was going to laugh. He was going to make a joke of it.

  “It’s a good plan,” said Harry. Sarah’s heart flew away, like a butterfly in a blue sky. He understands.

  “Is there anyone that you think might be the right one?” He kept his eyes on the road, as if what he had just asked didn’t matter much, just small talk.

  Leaf? I never felt that way before. I was never even remotely interested in anyone before. He makes me feel … like I’m floating. He makes me feel like there’s nobody else in the world but us. When he’s around, I could forget my own name …

  And still …

  Harry. Her cousin. Stop it!

  “No.”

  Harry felt immensely relieved, and then immensely sad. The person she was waiting for could never be him. Unless he told her the truth.

  They spent the rest of their evening like Sarah had hoped, in the living room, with a dancing fire and the delicate light of a table lamp. Harry sipped a whisky, lost in thought, and Sarah watched the flames.

  “I need to finish my daily practice.”

  “Is it OK if I listen?”

  “Of course.”

  Harry loved hearing Sarah playing. The dark, melancholic sound of her cello was like an echo of his own thoughts, as if he were hearing the music of his soul. As if he were looking in a mirror. Also, Sarah was beautiful when she played. Focused, her eyes closed, graceful movements, her hair flowing like waves. It worked on Harry like a spell.

  When she’d finished, she sighed. She would have rather stayed where she was, in her own little music bubble, immune to the reality of her life.

  “What shall I do now? I’m trying not to go to sleep.”

  “I know. I’ll be awake anyway, don’t worry.”

  “You need to sleep, once in a while.”

  “I never sleep.”

  “You’re not a vampire, are you?” laughed Sarah.

  “I know it’s the thing to be at the moment, but no, sorry to disappoint!”

  “Werewolf?

  “No.”

  “Fallen angel?”

  “Nope.”

  “A boring, old human being then.”

  “That’s me.” They laughed.

  They were silent for a bit, Sarah looking out of the window, leaning her head on her cello, and Harry looking at her.

  “John Burton, the next name on the list,” he whispered after a while.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Sarah opened her eyes. Like she had predicted, the dream had come. She was standing in a sea of heather, and an icy wind howled in her ears. She looked up – a milky, white sky was above her, not the purple surreal one of the place she had been seeing in her dreams recently. She realized she was standing on a little round hill. The heathery moors seemed to go on forever, creasing up in more of those little mounds. She was cold, wearing only shorts and a T-shirt, her feet bare. She shivered.

  Sarah waited. Someone would turn up, something would happen. Let it be Leaf. Let it be Leaf and not a demon, she prayed silently.

  A figure took shape in the distance, running towards her. Sarah waited for it to come closer, so that she could make out who it was … a girl. A red-haired girl. Bryony? No, the girl’s hair was long and straight.

  “Sarah! Help!” Sarah steeled herself to stay still, waiting to see if she was friend or foe.

  “Sarah!” The girl was getting closer and closer, and Sarah could make out her features. She’d seen her somewhere before.

  “Help!”

  Of course, Angela! Angela Cunningham! She’d gone to Sarah’s primary school for a year, then her family had moved away. Sarah hadn’t seen her for years.

  Angela was now standing right in front of her. She was breathless with the run, and tears were streaming down her face. She looked terrified. “They’re coming to get me!” she whispered.

  “Who? Who’s coming to get you?”

  “The soil people. Only you can save me, Sarah …”

  “Soil people? Where are they? Where are we, Angela?” she thought to ask, so she’d know where to find her.

  “Roslin. Hillside. Sarah!” A white hand had come out of the grass, and had curled around Angela’s ankle – a hand that had sprouted from the earth, like in one of the horror movies she’d seen at Bryony’s. Angela screamed in terror.

  Sarah threw herself on the ground and grabbed the ghostly hand, trying to dissolve it with blackwater – but it didn’t work. Another hand grabbed Angela’s leg, and started pulling her down, underground.

  Angela kept screaming and calling, out of her mind with terror, and Sarah took hold of her, trying to keep her on the surface – but it was no use; the white hands were too strong, they pulled and pulled until Angela was underground from the waist down.

  “Angela! Angela!” Sarah was crying too now. She knew there was nothing she could do. She watched Angela being dragged down, still screaming and crying for help, until her mouth was full of soil and she couldn’t call any more. Her red hair lingered on the surface for a few seconds, one of her hands desperately feeling for something to hold on to – Sarah held it for an instant, until it disappeared under the ground.

  “Angela,” she called again, though she knew it was no use. The only sound left now was Sarah’s heavy, frightened breathing. She knew what would happen next.

  Then something brushed Sarah’s right foot, and she knew they had come back for her. She jumped up as fast as she could, and scanned the ground around her feet, waiting to spot a white hand coming out of the ground. She hugged herself in the cold wind, shaking uncontrollably. It was her turn; she’d be dragged down now, her mouth would fill with soil like Angela’s …

  They’re coming. They’re coming for me.

  Finally, the white hand appeared and curled around her ankle. Sarah screamed and tried to free herself, but the creature’s grip was too strong. She felt a hand grabbing her other ankle too, and she lost her balance, falling in to the heather.

  A face emerged from the soil, a human face, but mortally pale. The creature leaned on its arms to climb out completely, and jumped on Sarah, holding her down. Its face was so close that she could smell its rotten breath. It opened its mouth and sank its teeth into Sarah’s shoulder with all its strength. Sarah yelled with pain and fear, and felt blood pouring down her arm …

  Sarah opened her eyes in the darkness. The pain was unbearable.

  “Sarah!” Harry burst through the door and switched on the light. He never knew if Sarah was screaming because of a dream, or because a demon was attacking. He was living on a knife’s edge, his nerves frayed, his insomnia worse than ever.

  “Harry!” She felt her shoulder. It was wet. She looked at her hand, expecting it to be full of blood, but it was just sweat. Still, it ached as if she’d been bitten for real.

  Harry sat on her bed and took both her hands in his. “It’s OK. It’s over. There’s nobody here, just you and me …” He looked her in the eye and whispered to her, to lead her out of her terror. Sarah was trembli
ng all over, and she was desperately trying to take a breath. Harry thought once more how heavy a burden the Dreamers had to carry.

  “What did you see?” he asked, when she had calmed a little.

  “This girl I knew, Angela. We went to school together …” Sarah put her hand on her chest, trying to slow down her racing heart. “She was asking for help. There was a sort of … a sort of zombie coming out of the earth, like Night of the Living Dead or something. It dragged her underground right in front of my eyes. I tried to pull her back up, but I couldn’t. It dragged her down … Then it came back, it came out of the earth and bit my shoulder.”

  “Do you know where you were?”

  “Somewhere near Roslin, a few miles from here. She was so scared. She asked for my help, and I couldn’t help her.” Sarah’s eyes were huge. Harry squeezed her hand tight.“I need to look for her. She needs me. Maybe I can save her.”

  “Sarah, not now. You can’t do this now. We’ve got the Valaya after us. We can’t be distracted.”

  “Distracted?” Sarah was so upset, she could hardly turn her thoughts into words. “The demon dragged her underground. She couldn’t breathe! She kept calling me …”

  “You’re just putting yourself in danger. As if we needed more of that!”

  “I need to take the risk. I have to.”

  Harry sighed. “Let’s think about it tomorrow morning. Get some sleep now …”

  Sarah shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “Do you want me to stay with you?”

  She nodded.

  “OK.” Harry went out of the room, and reappeared a minute later with his duvet and a pillow. He switched the light off, and arranged the duvet on the floor, wrapping himself in it.

  “I’m so comfortable … not.”

  Had she not been so terrified, Sarah would have laughed.

  25

  Soil

  Deep in my soul, where it’s dark

  I’ll meet you in secret

  Away from their eyes

  Away from the light

  Where our kisses

  Cannot be counted

  “Are you ready?” asked Harry.

  “I’m not going to look for John Burton, Harry. I’m going to Roslin.” Sarah was wearing jeans, trainers and her black waterproof jacket, with the cream scarf wrapped twice around her neck. She had a black, leather-bound volume in her hands.

  “Sarah, please …”

  “Harry, I’ve got to go. Do you understand? I’ve got to go.”

  “We’re going to Craigmillar to find John Burton. End of.”

  “I’m going to Roslin to find Angela.”

  “Sarah. We have enough on our hands …”

  “I can’t hold myself responsible for Angela’s death. I’ve got to see for myself.”

  “Jesus, Sarah!”

  “I’m going.”

  “Fine. Fine.” He ran his hands through his hair, exasperated. “We need to find out where she stays. I’ll ask my friends. What’s her second name?”

  “We don’t need your friends this time. I know where she is. Recently my dreams have been strange, but this one was textbook. It was a real place. Look.” Sarah handed Harry the black leather-bound book she was holding. It was her dream diary, the one that her parents had given her when she turned thirteen.

  I’ve never seen anything more un-Sarah-like. It’s … sinister, thought Harry, taking it from her.

  “Angela told me they were in Roslin, somewhere called Hillside.” She pointed at the word on the page, written in bold black letters. “Also, I noticed something out the corner of my eye when I was up there. A farm, a whitewashed building. I think that’s where Angela lives now.”

  Harry looked at her. She has taken charge.

  “Right. Let’s go.” He wasn’t convinced. He had a bad feeling about it all. The Valaya had to be involved, one way or another.

  “There’s something I need to do first,” Sarah called, disappearing up the stairs. Alone with Sarah’s dream diary, Harry started looking through it. Page after page of horrifying visions, Sarah’s childish handwriting distorted with fear and shaking hands. She’s written most of this in the middle of the night, waking up in terror.

  He could just imagine her, feverishly writing down everything she could remember, alone in that big house. Most children worry about a monster under the bed – Sarah saw monsters every night, and they were real. Like a dark fairy tale she found herself thrown into, one where no prince would come and save her. Harry skimmed through the entries … 12 October 2008. A few days before her fourteenth birthday.

  I know we were in the Botanic Gardens; I’ve been there before, with my school. There were two of them. They took us to the hole and covered us with soil, and we couldn’t breathe. The other girl died first, then I did …

  It went on and on, four years of fear. An entry marked 14 August 2010. She’d been fifteen years old.

  She was swimming in the pond, and I couldn’t see her properly, just her hair floating on the water. It was green. She took the man down with her and then she came out of the water. Her teeth were black. She tried to get me, but I was too far from the water, so she hid again among the reeds and waited for someone else. The man she drowned came back up, and his eyes were gone …

  Harry swallowed. Not even he had seen such horrors, hunting on the other side of the world. He could only imagine what it must have been like for Sarah, so young, seeing all that. And then getting up to straighten anything she could get her hands on, to scrub and polish until she was exhausted. Did her parents not know? Was anyone there to help her? Did anyone care?

  Sarah went down to the basement and stood in front of the oak table. Her mother’s diary was there. She had been through it all three times, looking for a protection spell. She couldn’t find anything but the basic one, the one she’d known since she was a child. She was so frustrated she could have screamed. A protection spell that works, is it too much to ask? Morag most certainly taught my mum one, a proper one. She must have forgotten to include it. How do you forget something like that? With a sigh, she started preparing a basic little pouch. She didn’t have that much faith in it working, but it was all she had. She crushed some pine needles in a mortar, some garlic and some salt. She put it all into a red leather pouch, and held it tight in her hands, her eyes closed. Then she had a thought. She took the pink quartz out of her own protection pouch, and slipped it into the one she’d made for Harry. To keep you safe.

  “I’ll tie it around your neck. There, three knots. The way it should be.”

  Harry felt her cool fingers on his skin, and closed his eyes for a split second. “Thank you.”

  They got into the car and drove out of the city, towards Roslin. Sarah was looking out of the window in silence, taking in the beauty of the landscape. It was an ocean of grass and heather, open and swept by sea winds. They were leaving clear skies behind, and driving towards a gathering of grey clouds. Everything looked expectant, tense, waiting for the storm to hit.

  “We shouldn’t be far. I think it’s past that hill … Let’s stop here.”

  “Did we remember to bring a picnic?” joked Harry.

  They parked in the middle of nowhere. They couldn’t see the village from there, or any buildings for that matter. They were less than an hour from Edinburgh, and still it looked wild, like a Hebridean island.

  “This way.” Sarah led them.

  They walked on for about twenty minutes, until they got to a big whitewashed building, with a brown roof and a big sign: Hillside.

  Sarah pointed at the sign. “That’s what Angela said.”

  “OK. So here we are. What do we do?” Harry asked.

  It’s not me asking that question. It’s him. Harry is asking me what to do. It was exciting, and a bit scary.

  “Let’s have a look around first, then we’ll knock at the door.”

  “I could go for an ice cream, could you?” asked Harry, pointing at a sign reading ‘Homemade ice cream – or
ganic eggs’.

  “It’s only open in the summer, Harry.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Oh well.”

  They walked away from the farm. Sarah’s instinct led them up a tiny, rounded hill. She turned around. It was like a snap-shot from her dream.

  “It happened here.” Her heart was racing. She could still see Angela’s terrified face, her screams as she was dragged underground … She took a deep breath. Harry was standing beside her, alert, ready to get his sgian-dubh.

  “I’m here!” shouted Sarah unexpectedly, at the top of her voice. “I’m Sarah Midnight, come and get me! Come out!”

  She’s getting stronger, thought Harry. About time, too.

  Sarah’s voice echoed through the moors. Nothing happened. And then, another voice, calling from the bottom of the hill.

  “Sarah? Is that you?”

  They both turned around at the same time. A girl of Sarah’s age was walking up the little mound. Her red hair was blowing over her face.

  “Sarah Midnight?”

  “Angela! You’re alive!”

  Angela looked at her, puzzled.“Alive? Yes, of course. Are you OK?”

  “I’m good, yes, I’m good. Your family owns that farm, then?” Sarah pointed at the whitewashed building.

  “Yes, we do. It’s ours. It’s still ours, yes.”

  Still?

  “What are you doing up here anyway?” Angela continued.

  “We are … hill walking. Yes. This is my cousin, Harry. He’s just arrived from London.”

  “Come in for a cup of coffee. My mum and my sister are home. Remember Lorna?”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” Lorna was Angela’s sister, two years older than them. She was blind since birth. “And you’re all fine, yes?”

  “Yes, of course we’re fine, why shouldn’t we be?” Angela laughed.

  Sarah and Harry exchanged a look. Harry shrugged his shoulders. They walked together down the hill, towards Hillside.

  “Come in.”

  “Angela, I need to talk to you. There’s something important I need to tell you,” Sarah began, wondering how on earth she was going to explain the whole thing.

  “Mum, she’s arrived!” Angela interrupted her.