by Graham Joyce
Lee plunged his arm into the hot water and took a plate. He heard the ping! and felt it split as he lifted it out. The hot water had broken it.
A hairline crack appeared in the centre, spreading jaggedly both up towards the rim and down to his wrist. But then the crack extended itself at both ends simultaneously: at the top of the plate the crack skipped from the plate to rip at the plastic bowl, releasing a tide of foaming water. Then with a groan of tearing metal it wrenched apart the stainless steel sink itself, water gushing through the breach in the basin. At the other end of the plate the crack swept along the lifeline of the palm of Lee's hand. Skin cells popped and unzipped bloodily, following the curve of a vein in his forearm, marking its progress with a gory, congealed butcher's gash.
Lee was rooted. He let out a tiny gasp. Then he jumped backwards and dashed the plate to the floor where it shattered into minute fragments. The crack breaching the sink repaired itself and closed up instantly. The gash in his hand and arm healed.
Honora came in. Lee was staring at the palm of his hand. Honora took it as if she was looking for a burn, but she had already guessed part of the truth. The kitchen floor was awash with water.
"What happened?"
"I don't know!" said Lee. He was still looking for the phantom gash. "What was it? Did that really happen to me? It was like a . . . like a memory flash from dreamside. An elemental. Oh God!"
"Come through to the other room," said Honora.
"Are we awake? Or are we sleeping?"
Honora had already experienced these invasions into daytime. Lee hadn't, and was shocked.
"We're awake. This has happened before."
"Often?"
"No, not often.”
"But the book .. . the acid test. I did it this morning."
"You can't trust it any more. The old rules are broken."
"God, I'm still shaking. I was being torn apart!"
Honora was still holding his hand. She leaned forward and
kissed it lightly.
"What was that for?"
"That was for you." Her eyes were the blue of a lake.
"Honora, did you never meet anyone, after you left the university I mean. Did you never want to?"
"My one experience of men was enough."
"Are you going to blame everyone for that?"
"I don't know. After it all happened I went into hiding, and that became a habit."
"Did you never think that the reason for all of this might be that you were hiding, I mean repressing things."
"You've all got your boxed theories, haven't you? Ella's theory was Religious Guilt. Yours is Sexual Frustration. At bottom, neither of you wants to admit that there's the dream, the whole dream and nothing but the dream. So you try to put the problem on to me."
"That's not fair .. ."
"Come on. It's going to take more than a bit of pop psychology to clear the rats out of this cellar."
"Don't misunderstand me, Honora. I wasn't suggesting that we . . ."
"Well, I could do worse. Look at you, you're easily shocked! And why not anyway? Things could easily have been different."
"What do you mean ?"
"Oh ... let it go."
"You mean it could have been you and me instead of Ella and me."
"Oh no, not really. Ella was always the bright sparkle on the water. She made me feel like I was standing in the shade. I always admired her and felt a little jealous at the same time."
"I can't imagine you as the jealous type. What was there to be jealous of anyway?"
"Well, she had you for one thing."
"Oh come on Honora, be serious."
"No, really, it's true. I liked the way you could sit back from a situation, when others argued; you always seemed to have … reserves."
"You're mistaking the absence of ideas for reserves; I just didn't have anything to contribute, I always thought: go which way the wind blows."
"That's not such a bad philosophy, is it?"
"You're wrong about that. I've lived all my life in a draft!"
"Oh go on. Don't put yourself down."
Lee thought how easily indeed it might have been different. There was a moment back there, years ago, in the shadow of a doorway somewhere, between Honora and himself. But the moment had been distracted by a sparkle on the water, when Ella had dropped back and had steered him by the elbow down a different path.
Lee put his hand into the nest of brown curls tied back above Honora's neck, and felt them slide over his fingers like cool, live things. But when he tried to draw her to him, she resisted.
"Too late for all that," she said.
"Yes, but I'm going to kiss you anyway."
This time she consented. She put her mouth on his, and her tongue flicked at his mouth. Through half-closed eyes, he saw her curls tumbling free and twisting towards him. He thought of Ella's words before she left, about sleeping with Honora, and he knew that Ella had seen this, hadn't been joking. Or maybe he credited Ella with too much vision, maybe she had just been afraid of this happening. But he closed his eyes and all thoughts of Ella were subsumed in the honeyed kiss. Honora's lips were sweet and her inexperience excited him. She smelled of the freshly falling rain.
Then he opened his eyes and he saw not Honora's face, but a child's. A girl child's, the colour and texture of white candle-wax; the sick, unhealthy face of the child who had eyed him that very morning from the bottom of his garden.
And now he saw not the waving curls of Honora's hair, but a writhing, spitting nest of vipers. Her eyes had turned the dull yellow-gold of a venomous serpent. He tried to pull back, but his tongue petrified in her mouth and the saliva on their lips became a glue which bonded them. Tearing himself away was the agony of lips lacerating in strips of flesh. He gasped and flung himself backwards, crashing into the table and shattering the glass cabinet in the corner of the room.
"What is it? What happened?" cried Honora, getting up to help him.
"No! No! Don't touch me!"
The vision had already disappeared. All he could see now was Honora's helpless and horrified expression, her arms lifted towards him, a trace of blood on her mouth. But he couldn't let her near him.
S E V E N
I have observed that in some individuals, the high-
est aspirations are for no more than the sovereignty
of dreams above fantasies. In seeding to define this
condition we might also ask whether there might
return some form of psychological retribution for
the crime of living so vaguely.
—L. P. Burns
A peculiar instinct guided Ella, offering soundings of what was swimming in the depths around her, what to avoid, where to go next. She charted her course by this intuitive sensory apparatus, and she was rarely wrong.
Wrapped in her fleece-lined flying jacket she accelerated the Midget down the fast lane. The motorway was choked in its own stratosphere of exhaust fumes. Her split-leather holdall lay on the passenger seat, stuffed with Lee's possessions. Though her foot was firmly pressed on the accelerator, she felt decidedly less than confident.
Her sonar instinct couldn't be held responsible for the fact that Ella, knowing with uncanny prescience where trouble or difficulty lay, would often head straight for it. Nature always seemed to volunteer her to be the one to jump through hoops of fire; though to her credit she never asked anyone to take responsibility for it but herself. She was committed to her current course of action. There was no going back.
Driving south, she passed a car which had broken down on the hard shoulder. Shortly after, she was overtaken by a dirty white estate car piled high with luggage. A kid with a sickly, lop-sided grin made faces and waved at her through the rear window as it sped by. The kid made her think of Brad Cousins.
She had been right about Honora and the Church. What had happened between Honora and the priest had happened precisely because Ella was right, even if the event had failed to res
olve things. Had she been wrong, Honora would have walked away with a rosary and a soothed conscience, but with their group problem unsolved. Now, she knew, she was right about having to bring them all together. It was unfortunate to be always right.
Before she did anything else, she and Brad had some business to sort out, something to get straight. Then Brad would come. She would make him come. From Lees description of Brad's physical state she didn't need to guess at his psychological condition. Of the four, only Lee seemed to be standing up to the increasing pressure, the cracks which had begun to appear in the fabric of reality itself, the invasions from dreamside. She hadn't mentioned her own recent experiences— better to keep the lid screwed down tight. If he had so far managed to stay clear of the frightening distortions that had crept up on her over the last few days, then that could become a source of strength.
Ella herself had been suffering the horrors of these attacks for some time, without saying anything to Lee. She had survived them only with the intellectual effort of the reversal techniques they had all learned on dreamside, sometimes with effect, sometimes without. Lee had, had no idea of what she had seen over his garden wall the previous afternoon. She had said nothing because she wanted to shield him from what was bearing down on the rest of them. He was the one with the slightest sense of the real danger.
As for the others, Honora was in a wildly unstable condition. Her encounter with the priest showed that she was wired up to all kinds of energies. But Ella calculated that Brad was the weakest of them all. Brad had been the strongest, most powerful dreamer; consequently those energies he had spent so freely on dreamside would be making their claims on him, with interest. He would be the most susceptible to these attacks. Which is why he would now, in all probability, be lying drunk somewhere.
Ella sailed past a car which had broken down on the hard shoulder. Shortly after, the Midget was overtaken by a dirty white estate car packed full of luggage, a child with a lop-sided grin making faces at her and waving through the back window as it went by.
Didn't that just happen, back there? The sense of deja vu was acute and powerful, but she credited the event to tiredness and dismissed it. She was more concerned about the impending encounter with Brad. If Lee's accounts were not exaggerated, she might be lucky to find him conscious when she arrived. On the other hand, Lee had been certain that Brad wouldn't be going anywhere. Ella would have a captive audience.
For the third time Ella passed a car which had broken down on the hard shoulder, but now she noticed the driver in the act of opening the door and climbing from his seat. She put her foot down hard, but sure enough, was overtaken by the grubby estate car complete with the manic child grinning back at her through the rear window. The landscape around the motorway went on unchanged for miles, a deep swath through the countryside, lacking any distinctive landmark. Ella had lost all sense of where she was. She kept her foot hard down.
For some days she had struggled against hallucinations and distortions. She knew how to suppress the initial rising panic, signalled by a familiar but unidentified metallic taste in the mouth. But this was different, as indeed they always were. She passed the stranded roadside car yet again, and, with a deep sickening recognition, watched the sequence regenerate itself as the estate car sped past her.
This time she recognised the face in the back of the car. She had seen it before, and more than once. She could identify every feature of that girl's face; just as she knew exactly who the girl was. The air was seeded with something colourless, odourless, tasteless, but yet dense and oppressive. She knew it was in control of the loop in which she was trapped, controlling events. Even now it regulated the flow of traffic, closing it up to block her from moving into the inside lane. She was being obstructed from pulling over, prevented from moving out of the loop.
Ella drove on. In the distance she saw the stranded motor coming up on the left-hand side. She slowed and indicated to pull in, but the procession of traffic on the inside lane had squeezed together. No one would give way. She sailed past the car parked on the hard shoulder, helplessly watching the rest of the sequence play itself out.
Again she saw the stranded car on the left. Again she slowed and signalled to move in, and again no one would allow her the space. She gripped the wheel and turned recklessly into the car abreast of her. There was a blast of horns and a shrieking of tires as she squeezed the Midget into a silhouette's space between two chrome fenders, a space so narrow it wouldn't have admitted a playing card. Miraculously, she made it, skidding and braking on the hard shoulder, scraping the side of the Midget along the crash barriers, stopping bumper to bumper behind the car which had broken down.
The driver was already climbing out of his seat. He came, opened Ella's passenger door, and said: "That was close."
Ella, still trembling, lit a cigarette.
She was too shocked to respond, or to look up at the man standing over her. She got an impression of an elderly figure in a long beige raincoat and smartly polished brown shoes. She knew exactly who it was.
Ella heard his voice as if from a great distance. "I had faith that you would stop. Faith will move mountains, but it won't drive the internal combustion engine."
She pulled harder on her cigarette as she felt the man climbing into her passenger seat. She could only manage a whisper. "Oh God; am I dreaming?"
"Don't be afraid. You needed me." It was almost the same gentle, reassuring voice which Professor Burns had used to guide them through their early experiments with lucid dreaming. Burns put his hand on Ella's arm. His grip was warm, but she shivered.
"Help us, Professor."
"Drive a little, Ella."
Rigid with fear, she started the motor and rolled the car back on to the motorway. It was easier than having to look Burns in the eye. She drove slowly, blindly, thinking: How do we wake up? How?
It was a long time before Burns spoke. "You are in danger, Ella. Serious danger. All four of you. You stayed too long on dreamside. You have left a terrible need there, and it calls you back. And it will have you back. Your minds are unravelling. Even now it's winding you in." Burns was agitated.
"But what can be done? What can we do?"
Burns paused. Ella couldn't look at him. Her eyes settled instead upon his hands, which he was twisting together. "Undo what was done."
"How? How can you undo what isn't there?"
"How did it come to be? Dismiss it in the same way. This is the best help I can give you. But beware. This is the danger of dream-side: those who stay too long may never be allowed back. All four of you have stayed too long."
The professor pressed his hands together, as if in prayer. Then he looked nervously over his shoulder at the road behind.
"Are you cold, Professor?"
"Oh yes, cold. Always cold. Stop the car. I will get out. Then you must think that this meeting never really happened."
Ella coasted to a stop on the hard shoulder. Burns got out and closed the door. Nothing more was said. She steered back onto the motorway. Through the rear-view mirror she could see him staring after her. Then she blinked, and saw the girl gazing at her from the spot where he had stood. The figure of the girl diminished in the distance.
Ella was becoming unstuck. So many overwhelming things were happening she could only try to move with the flow. The old forms had to be abandoned. She had to learn new, simpler rules for existing: can I feel it /does it stop me? Who was that in the car with her a moment ago? The professor? The girl? Or neither, just phantoms gathering out of a zone of madness they had come to call the dreamside.
She had to keep herself together long enough to get Brad back to the others. That was the only important thing now. She continued her journey braced against further horrors. Three hours later she stopped the car outside an isolated cottage.
Lee had told her to look out for two cottages, but all she could see was this one and the charred and blackened shell of another burned-down building near by. The
roof had gone and a side wall had fallen in. At the holes where window and door frames had all been burned out, the stone was charred with soot patches like great black rags hung upside-down. Ella could still detect the smell of charred wood in the air.
Fixed beside the door of the remaining cottage, however, was a split wooden plaque bearing the name Elderwine, just as Lee had described. Ella walked right in.
In the first room she entered, she saw Brad Cousins in yellowing underclothes, lounging on an old sofa. His feet were drawn up beneath him, and he was blowing smoke at the ceiling.
"I've been waiting for you," he said.
"You're the second person today," said Ella.
EIGHT
MERCY: I was a-dreaming that I sat all alone in a
solitary place and was bemoaning of the hardness
of my heart
—John Bunyan
"Is this the best you can do?" Ella, in her WWII flying jacket, stood framed in the shadowy doorway. She looked to Brad like a modern Valkyrie, or some other messenger of the gods, come to peck at his liver.
"You look great," he said, "the crow's feet under your eyes give you character, though your breasts have sagged. Also your jaw has slackened off, which has lifted the venom sacs from under your lip. Really, you look better. Where did you land the Spitfire?"
"I could have landed a small aircraft in your mouth. That hasn't changed."
"Give me one of those godawful poseur's cigarettes you always smoke."
Ella swept newspapers and empty brown ale bottles from a chair on to the floor. She inspected the seat closely before deciding to sit. Expertly hand-rolling one of her liquorice-paper cigarettes, she tossed it to Brad. "This place makes me want to puke."