The Dream Operator

by Mike O'Driscoll

  His throat was dry as a bone and his headache had returned. Stumbling away from the summerhouse, he moved toward a stand of sycamores on a rise behind the willow. Sweat stung his eyes as he walked up the slope and into the trees. Above the birds and insects, he heard the faint sound of running water. After a minute or two searching among moss-covered rocks he found the small spring. Cupping his hands beneath the outlet, he filled them with the ice cool water and drank till his thirst was slaked. It revived him somewhat and seemed to clear his head. He noticed that although the sun shone bright and strong over the summerhouse, the mist lingered over the trees across the water, obscuring any view he might have had of Penrice House and the castle beyond. It struck him as unnatural, as though some peculiar force had acted on the mist, punching a hole through it to lure him here.

  A small shiver ran through his body as he made his way back down toward the bridge. He walked quickly past the summerhouse, thinking of Maggie and Eileen, feeling the need to return to them. Just then he heard Katherine’s soft drawl, an odd cadence to it as though she were singing or chanting to herself. He crept up to the wall and peered over the sill. Katherine sat in the middle of the floor, a sheet of paper in one hand, the other sorting stones into small piles. Whatever she had been chanting or singing, she stopped abruptly and looked up at the roof.

  “I knew you’d come back,” she said.

  David looked for his younger self but the boy hadn’t returned. “I wished you were here,” Katherine said, “and you are.”

  He stood up and saw that she was looking at him. “Katherine?”

  “Hello David.” She beckoned him to join her in the summerhouse.

  He entered the building. “I don’t understand,” he said. “How are you here?”

  She smiled and he saw glints of light in her dark and smokey eyes. “I’ve always been here. I never went away.”

  He sat in front of her, dazed and disbelieving. She looked just as he remembered, as though she had somehow escaped the waning of the years. Her chopped hair was wild and red, like her half-open mouth, and her bare, angular shoulders were pale and freckled in the subdued light. He felt the blood coursing madly through his veins. She held the sheet of paper to her chest.

  “Why? You could have gone. I never thought you’d stay here.”

  She shook her head. “Where would I go? This is our home, remember? That’s what you called it. You said this would always be our house.”

  David tried to remember but the weight of the past confused and unnerved him. “I’m tired,” he said. “I don’t really know why I’m here.”

  “Never mind. Tell me what you’ve been up to.” She nodded at his hand and he realised, a little shamefully, that she had seen his wedding band. “What’s her name?”

  “Maggie,” he said. “We’ve been together twenty years.”

  Katherine nodded. “You have children?”

  “Yes, a girl. Eileen. She’ll be ten next month.”

  “Does she look like you?”

  He wondered why she asked him these things, sensing that it must hurt her. “A little, yes. Maggie thinks she has my eyes.”

  “And you’re happy, the three of you?”

  He hesitated for a moment. “Yes. I think so.”

  Katherine glanced at the drawing in her hand, then picked a blue stone from a pile of mixed stones and placed it with a pile that was all blue. “But you came back.”

  “We’re down for the week,” he said, adding lamely, “It was Maggie’s idea.”

  She moved another stone, grey and jagged, from a pile of small pebbles to one made up of larger, fist-sized rocks. “You were always coming back, you know that don’t you?”

  “No. I don’t remember.”

  “You said you were going and I begged you to stay—you remember that?”

  “That was, that was later.” Memories shifted and coalesced in his mind. “I had—we were over by then.” He felt a cold anguished guilt in his heart. “I had to go away, to university.”

  “You had what you wanted by then,” she said, sadly. “You came back and you took it.”

  She gazed at him and he found himself lost in her beauty. As she leaned forward to move stones the low-cut dress revealed the rounded white curves of her breasts. He stared at them, dimly aware of the erection pressing tight against his jeans. “I didn’t plan it this way,” he said, his voice thick with desire. “I didn’t expect to find you here.”

  “Where else would I be?” She pointed at the wall behind him. “I made some new pictures when I knew you were coming.”

  There were sketches and photographs on the walls. He stared at them in the gloom, feeling oddly troubled. From where he sat he thought he recognised a picture of the lake, and two or three of the summerhouse. Two figures in one painting might have been himself and Katherine, but one sketch clearly depicted a woman and young girl standing by a mound of stones.

  When he turned back toward her she held out the sketch she’d been working on. In the drawing they sat facing one another. Between them were small piles of stones. Katherine held out a sketch depicting two figures lying naked together, their faces too small to recognise.

  She took his right hand in hers. “You’re trembling.”

  The picture disturbed David, but the touch of her hand took the edge off his doubt. “Katherine. I’m sorry.”

  She laughed and the sound thrilled him. “For what? I mean, you wanted this, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you took it.” She pulled him close and placed his hand against her breast. She rolled onto her side, pulling him down. He slipped his hand inside her dress, felt the ripe fullness of her breasts, the hard nub of her nipples. He kissed her, reached down and hitched up the dress, pawing at her knickers.

  “You wanted it and you took it,” she whispered, her body thrusting against him. “Even when I said no.”

  “I did,” he said as he tore open his jeans and forced himself between her legs. It’s what she wanted. He knew that. No more cat and mouse, no more teasing. He entered her, his mind reeling in a vortex of emotion and desire. He fucked her hard, with all the pent up rage and frustration of so many lost years spilling out of him. When he came, it was in the dry, brittle leaves scattered across the floor. Spent, he shuddered and moaned, and realised with an awful sense of dread that he was alone.

  He rolled to his knees and pulled up his jeans. The building was empty. Katherine was gone and the walls were unadorned except for patches of cracked peeling paint. He was distraught. “Katherine,” he said, his voice cold and hollow. “Please—I didn’t mean for it to be like this.”

  The only sound that answered him was a breeze gusting through the open sides of the summerhouse. He walked to the steps and sat on the top one, staring out at the lake. Why did you do it? Why did you abandon her? Despair wormed its way into his mind, not just at the realisation of what he had done, but at the sure and certain knowledge that he was not and never would be the kind of man he had imagined himself to be.

  He was a construct, like the summerhouse itself, an edifice into which he poured all the illusions he had about himself. And now it crumbled around him.

  Something blew against his hand. Looking down he saw a photograph. A woman and a young girl dressed in black, their faces veiled, stood beside a grave. Inside the marble surround, blue stones covered the grave. He turned and picked up a small sheet of paper, a charcoal sketch. A boy and girl lay beside each other, suspended in water. Their faces were obscured and strands of weed coiled around their limbs.

  David went down the steps and found the pile of grey rocks among the weeds. He tucked the legs of his jeans inside his socks, removed the laces from his boots and tied them around his shins. He filled his pockets with stones and then shoved more down inside the legs of his jeans until they felt stiff and heavy. He shuffled to the water’s edge and waded into the shallows. His feet sank a little in the soft mud but he forced himself further out. He sank to his knees in the wat
er and pressed on. He pushed through reeds and lily pads, the water rising up above his belly to his chest. He turned to look back at the summerhouse.

  The mist had closed in around it. The water felt cold and thick. His feet were sinking deeper in the mud. He tried to lift them out but the stones pressed hard and pitiless against his flesh, crushing him, dragging him down. He thought of Maggie and Eileen, waiting for him back at the cottage and told himself it was some other man they were waiting for, not him. Never him.

  Presently, he thought about what he wanted and was no longer afraid. The breeze blew warm against his skin and the sun was soft on his eyes. The mist had burned away as he pulled himself out of the lake.

  As he approached the summerhouse he heard Katherine call out his name.

  “I’m here now,” he said.

  “You were always here,” she told him. And he was.

  Beasts of Season

  I never knew much about the fierceness I had inside me and was never much for games until Troy and his friends came to Forest Fawr and showed me that the world outside was not as I’d imagined it to be. I didn’t know much about people then and what they’re capable of. I know a little more about it now but I don’t see it’s made me any better or wiser than I was. Back then I doubt I even knew all there was to know about the wood and the wild country surrounding, in spite of living there all my thirteen years.

  At home was just me and Megan, and my mother, who was a fucking bitch but was the only one we had. The bar hadn’t been set high for us when it came to parents and consequently our expectations were low. We had a father once but he ran off I think. I don’t remember much about it. I was six when he disappeared and young as I was I sensed there was something shameful about it because when my mother’s relatives came they spoke to her in whispers, like normal speech might be too brazen, and when I entered the room they shut their gobs and smiled like they had no wish to burden me with intolerable truths.

  My mother never was the most sprightly of women, even before whatever happened to my father happened. There had always been a sense of woe about her that she tried to mask with drink. But after he disappeared, the alcohol just seemed to feed her wretchedness. When I was nine she went away for a while. I figured she’d found my father and had gone to live with him while Aunt Delyth came and looked after me and Megan. It wasn’t like that. She showed up out of the blue one day, looking only a little less mournful than she used to. When I asked her where she’d been she said they’d put her in the nuthouse.

  The good thing was that she’d stopped drinking and the bad thing was she ate pills like sweets. Somebody must’ve told her they’d keep her off the drink or maybe stave off that anguish that seemed to plague her, but from what I saw they were a dead loss. Once Aunt Delyth left, the place went to shit. Mam sold off all the livestock, rented out our land and suddenly we no longer had a working farm. For a little while longer, she went through the motions of bringing up me and Megan, but as time passed that burden fell to me. By the time of my thirteenth birthday, Mam rarely left her bedroom—except for the toilet and she mostly did that when we were out—and hadn’t left the house in two years. It was her refuge, she told us, but I never understood what kind of horrors she was taking refuge from.

  Sometimes a social worker came up from Neath and my mother would make an effort. She’d wear clothes instead of a dressing gown, and put on a little make up, and tell the lady how much of a help I was. It was a good show and the social worker bought it, and other than helping sort my mother’s benefits and her prescriptions, she left us well enough alone.

  The early summer of two thousand and one was no different from any other I’d known, and come the school holidays, me and Megan were mostly left to our own devices. By then I was in secondary and already a dab hand at mitching. I had nothing against school and could read and write well enough. It was the sitting and listening part that bothered me and I figured it’d be better for everyone the less time I spent there. I guess by now you have an idea of the kind of boy I was and maybe not enough about this wild country and none at all about Troy and those who came here that summer before the world went all to shit.

  *

  The last game was Smee. Troy got it from an old book, which explained why I’d never heard of it before. It was like Hide and Seek, except that only one of you got to hide and you drew lots for that. A blank slip meant you weren’t it, but there was one that had Smee written on it and if you drew that, you got to hide. You didn’t show your slip to anyone, and there was one person who didn’t draw at all but did the count. Once it began, we all went off to hide. When the count reached a hundred, if you were Smee you stayed hid while the others hunted. If you found someone, you had to ask if they were Smee. If they responded with Smee that meant it wasn’t them so you’d both carry on hunting. If you challenged someone and they didn’t answer, that meant you’d found Smee and you’d join them in their hiding spot to wait for the next hunter to find you, and so on until the last hunter turned up and he’d be the loser and have to pay the forfeit.

  After an hour no one had found Smee and most of us had begun to drift back to the Fall of the Fuller where we’d started out. I looked around and counted eight kids. “It’s Jonathan,” I said.

  “It could be one of the others,” Izzy said.

  “What others?”

  “The others from the campsite.” She looked at Annie. “They were here, right?”

  Annie said there was one or two of them with us, but she wasn’t sure. It turned out nobody knew exactly how many we were at the start. I thought nine, but some said ten or twelve, and others thought more. What was more galling than not finding Jonathan was that we weren’t even sure it was him. We were still debating it when Troy called a halt. “Hold on,” he said. “I never counted twelve at the start. But Jonathan was here and now he’s not.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s Smee,” Izzy said.

  Troy turned to her. “So who else?”

  Izzy shrugged. Troy looked around at each of us, I guess trying to get a feel for our mood. Finally, he looked back upriver. “I know it was him. I can’t prove it, but I know.”

  “So where is he?” I asked.

  Troy tilted his head to the sky and sniffed, like he could divine the truth from the air. “I reckon he quit.”

  I didn’t believe it but the others nodded and muttered together, saying that this was probably what had happened. I looked at Megan and Izzy, saw that they were happy to go along with this speculation and I guessed it wasn’t no use to go against Troy in his determination to have us all give Smee another shot.

  *

  Losing Jonathan and everything that came after might never have happened if I’d stuck to what I’d resolved. It rained heavy the morning after I fell out with Troy, which made standing firm all the easier. I stumbled around the kitchen with a head full of cement and a doormat for a tongue because of the alcohol we’d drunk the night before. I remembered enough to feel a sense of shame about what we’d done. There was more than a little resentment too, at the power that Troy had over us, and this feeling helped steel the determination I’d forged in the night.

  Megan came downstairs. Her cheek was bruised and the scratch had scabbed over. We ate in silence and afterwards I took tea and toast up to my mother. She asked what time we’d come home and I told her.

  “You’re a liar, you,” she said. “Keeping Megan out till all hours.”

  “It wasn’t late.”

  “I know your game, Cai. It’s in your eyes, it is.”

  A dull booming sound filled my head. “What? Tell me what’s there.”

  “Don’t you raise your voice to me!”

  “You shout at me all the time.”

  “You’re just like him, you little bastard.”

  “If I was like Dada you’d be on your own.”

  That shook her. “Megan would never leave me,” she bawled. “She’s my baby.”

  “You don’t even give a shit about her!�
��

  The door opened and Megan came in. “Please don’t fight,” she said, taking hold of my hand. “Please don’t.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not. I can see it’s not.”

  “Your face,” Mam said. “What happened?”

  Megan forced a smile. “It was an accident, it was Mam. It doesn’t hurt.”

  Mam looked at me. “It was just horse play,” I said.

  “You can’t even look after her properly!”

  “Mam—he does.”

  My mother leaned forward on the bed and held out her arms. Megan went to her. I left the room. When Megan came down there were tears in her eyes. “I wish Dada was here. Maybe Mam wouldn’t be mental if he was.”

  She’d been too young to remember Dada before he left. All she had was what I’d told her about him, and I could never make stories as good as hers. “Are we going down to see them today?”

  I shook my head. “Not after what happened.”

  Megan frowned. “It’s not because of the game, is it?”

  “Not just that. We shouldn’t have killed that animal.”

  “But Troy was right. It was suffering.”

  I tried to reason with her but my reasons seemed small and trivial and it confused me how quick she was to forgive them. She said none of that mattered. They’d go soon and we’d never see them again. I told her I knew that and maybe it was for the best. But when Annie showed up at our door the next morning with Izzy, my resolve blew away like the seeds of a dandelion clock. Megan ran out of the house and gave Izzy a hug. “We missed you both yesterday,” Izzy said. “It wasn’t the same.”