When We Got Lost in Dreamland

by Ross Welford

  ‘Seb,’ I murmur. ‘Get ready to wake up. I don’t like this.’

  I stare back at the man. His big eyes, like the others’, are almost black, topped with a single, dense bush of eyebrow, and below his hooked nose is a tangled, square moustache. He steps closer and moves the flame from my feet to my head, then he reaches out his hand and I try not to flinch as he runs it over my chest, then across my chin. I hear myself squeaking with fear.

  ‘Seb. He’s just touched me. Let’s get out of here!’

  The man growls slowly and then says two words, in English this time, that send a chill through me.

  ‘Take them.’

  The tall man’s companions murmur and nod. He straightens up, lowering his flaming torch. Then his arm darts out and grabs Seb roughly by the hair, making him squeal, and in one quick movement he throws Seb, staggering, towards his companions who grab him roughly.

  ‘Hey, stop it!’ cries Seb. His eyes meet mine and we know what to do. ‘Wake up!’ we both shout.

  Only nothing happens.

  ‘No!’ shouts Erin and takes a step towards the men, but their spear points stop her in her tracks. The leader says something to the dogs and they gather round him without taking their amber eyes off us. Meanwhile, he grabs Seb’s wrists and starts tying them together with a rough rope made of vines. His big arm muscles flex beneath his skin and I see a rough, smudged tattoo of a swastika through the hair.

  I’m properly scared now. ‘Wake up!’ we both shout again.

  The tall man bares his teeth and steps towards me, leaning close enough so that, when he laughs, I can smell his stinking breath.

  ‘Too late,’ he says. ‘You didn’t listen to the warnings, did you? Try it again, strange, modern pyjama-boy, ha ha!’

  ‘Wake up!’ I shout for the third time, then I do the hold-my-breath thing, releasing the air after a few seconds with a paaaah! right in his face.

  He sniffs my breath then sneers, ‘Toothpaste, hm? Yet you’re still here. That’s reassuring. To me at any rate. Welcome to my world – a vast dimension filled with anything you can imagine. But unfortunately for you – I can imagine too.’ He draws himself up to his full height – enormous now – and addresses his companions. ‘Take the little one away!’

  ‘No! Malky! Stop them! Wake me up!’

  ‘I can’t, Seb, I can’t! Do the breath thing! Wake up!’

  Seb’s cheeks are bulging, but then I have to look away as the dog with the damaged leg lurches unsteadily towards me and I have no choice but to run.

  This is just a dream, I keep telling myself. What’s the worst that can happen? Seb will wake up naturally soon.

  I run through the line of trees, pursued by the dog, my chest aching with fear and breathlessness, until I reach the clifftop and I turn round to see the huge grey-muzzled beast hurtling towards me. Below me is …

  Nothing at all.

  Not sea, not rocks, not a canyon, not even something silly and dreamlike, like a trampoline or a big pile of autumn leaves: just an endless, grey, fuzzy emptiness like a television that is not tuned in to a channel. It is as though Dreamland has just given up trying. As I look back, the dog is in the air, its front paws stretched out, and they hit me – oof! – straight in the chest, sending us both tumbling into the greyness.

  I start to shiver: a small trembling that becomes a shake. My teeth are chattering and my whole body begins to twitch in huge convulsions; my stomach starts to spasm and I feel as though I’m going to throw up, and I grip the sides of the white toilet bowl and up it comes.

  And again.

  And again.

  And I don’t know how long I’m there, on the bathroom floor, resting my head against the cool porcelain, in my still-damp pyjamas.

  My breathing returns to normal. I spit the last of the puke into the bowl and flush, then spin round in fright in case a crocodile comes through the door like it once did.

  But no. I’m not dreaming. I punch the wall.

  Ow.

  I’m in my bathroom at home. I jump and try to float downwards to the floor, but land with the usual force. I am awake.

  I am not …

  … definitely not …

  dreaming!

  I’m still shaking with fear, but everything is as it should be. I manage a wobbly grin in the mirror, rinse my mouth from the tap and head back to bed. I peel off my pyjamas and throw them in the corner.

  That’s it! No more. Never, ever, ever again! That was just horrible, and I’m furious with Seb for persuading me, and with myself for giving in to him. It’s nearly time to get up, anyway.

  ‘Seb!’ I hiss, angrily, when I get back to our room. ‘Seb. Hey, Seb! Wake up!’

  He lies there in the same green goalie top, twitching his head from side to side occasionally, his face grey-blue in the glow from the Dreaminators hanging above our beds: the devices that I had switched off, but that Seb switched back on again, once I was asleep.

  Annoying little brothers do stuff like that.

  ‘Seb, man, stop messing about. Seb? Sebastian. Sebastian! Wake up!’ I shake him roughly. ‘Seb! Seb!’

  He doesn’t wake. It’s like he’s dead but still breathing. I shake him some more – I even slap him.

  ‘Wake (slap) up (slap)!’

  My stomach flips over, and, if I hadn’t already thrown up, I feel like I might do again. I grab him by both shoulders, shaking him against his pillow. Nothing. I shout louder, I slap him harder – too hard, in fact. There’s now the red mark of my fingers on his cheek.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ I sob. ‘But just wake up!’

  From across the landing I hear Mam’s sleepy voice. ‘Boys? Malky? What’s going on?’

  In those few seconds before Mam comes in, I begin to regret all the bad things I had thought about Seb.

  I sink to my bed and hold my head in my hands. I can hear Mam coming.

  What have I done?

  Can you divorce your little brother?

  Daft question, I know, but until fairly recently I really wanted to. I didn’t exactly think through the practical side. I mean, it’s not like we could live in separate houses, is it? I guess Seb could go and live with Dad and his girlfriend and choke on her fruity perfume, but he’d only wail, ‘That’s not fair!’ and cry, like he always does, and somehow it would end up being me living in Middlesbrough with Dad and Melanie.

  There’s a photo of us in a frame on the kitchen windowsill, and I’ve got my arm round Seb’s shoulders. We’re in the old back garden. Once or twice Mam has looked at it and said, ‘You used to be such good little mates,’ with a sad expression, and I usually try to be nice to him after that, but he always – I mean always – spoils it.

  And then there was the time I hit him. Okay, okay … bear with me. It wasn’t my fault. Have you ever hit someone? I mean properly, when you’re angry? Say when someone tries to grab the game controller from your hands when you’re just about to reach the next level of Street Warrior?

  Take it from me: it’s very easy to hit someone with a game controller a bit harder than you mean to.

  That was not long after Mam and Dad split up, and we had moved to the tiny house in Tynemouth. Mam tried to make a thing of it, like adults do. ‘We’re going up in the world, boys!’ she said, because Tynemouth’s a bit posh compared with Byker, but I knew she was putting it on. Moving from a house with my own bedroom to having to share with a whingeing snot-ball isn’t my idea of ‘going up in the world’ and, when I complained that all my friends were staying in Byker, Mam said, ‘If they’re real friends, they’ll come and see you, Malky.’

  They never did. We don’t have a car and Mam wouldn’t let me ride on the Metro on my own till I was ten, and by that time I hadn’t seen Zack and Jordy and Ryan for ages.

  A new school then, nearly two kilometres from my house, where the kids all talk differently, and they play rugby instead of football in the autumn term. (I hate rugby.) But I could have dealt with all of that.

  Every
one – Mam, Valerie the school counsellor, Mrs Farroukh – thinks that what they call my ‘behaviour issues’ are all because of Mam and Dad, and the move, but they’re not.

  They’re all down to Sebastian. If it hadn’t been for him, none of the bad things – the crocodile, the Stone Age, Adolf Hitler – would have happened.

  He would have woken up as normal.

  And the Dreaminator? Okay, I’ll grant you that. The Dreaminator was my fault, but I’d have probably got away with it if it hadn’t been for him.

  You’ll understand when I explain – but to do that I’m going to have to go back to when I found the Dreaminators, and Seb and I first discovered Dreamland.

  Just don’t start being all judgy with me when I tell you what I did, okay? Because I’ll bet you’ve done stuff that’s bad yourself. And everything is more complicated when you have an annoying younger brother.

  Just clearing that up before we start.

  It’s early September and school starts tomorrow. Kez Becker and I are in the empty back lane behind the row of big terraced houses that overlook the river. It’s about seven p.m. and still fairly light. Between you and me, I don’t think I really like Kez Becker, but she’s an alternative to whiny Seb.

  In order to ‘celebrate the end of the summer’, she has just dared me to commit a robbery.

  I’m pretty sure she doesn’t mean ‘robbery’ or ‘celebrate’ exactly, and I am about to point that out, only now she’s got my phone, the one Dad sent me for my birthday last month, and she’s refusing to return it. She’s my friend (sort of) so I’m pretty sure I’ll get it back at some point, only she’s also the weirdest kid in the school and you can never be quite sure.

  (‘Weird?’ you say. ‘How?’ Well, Kez’s dad is a funeral director, and Kez has offered ten pounds to anyone who’ll spend half an hour alone in his workshop after dark. I think there are dead bodies there. It’s another of her dares. She calls it ‘the Halloween Challenge’. That’s weird if you ask me.)

  Kez is in the year above me and she has taken my phone because …

  Banter.

  That’s what she says, anyway. ‘Only bantz, innit, Bell! Lighten up!’

  Kez was sitting at the top of the stone steps that lead up from the bay, examining the purple-dyed ends of her blonde hair, when I ran into her earlier.

  ‘A’reet, Bell?’ she grunted, barely looking up. She calls me by my last name. I don’t like it, but I haven’t said anything. Then she said something about a ‘nice evening’ and the sunset behind her turning the river-mouth a sort of brownish-pink. It was so unlike her that it should have made me wonder, right there and then, but my guard was down. So when she said, ‘Ha’way, I’ll take your picture! Your mam’ll love it,’ I handed her my phone …

  … and ten minutes later she still has it. Like a hostage.

  ‘Please, Kez. Give it back. Me mam’ll kill me …’

  I stop myself. Please? To Kez Becker? She’s got me now, and I know it, and she knows I know it.

  ‘Go on then, Bell. You’ve gorra do it. It’s the rules. Or you’re not gerrin’ this phone back. Or don’t you trust me?’ She leans against the high brick wall, arms folded across her beefy chest, my new phone clutched tightly in her fist. Kez talks with a strong accent, more like my old friends in Byker than most kids at school, although I think she puts it on a bit.

  Next to us the wooden door to someone’s backyard is open a little, and my heart is thumping.

  ‘It’s easy, man,’ she says. ‘Just gan in, take somethin’ and come oot again.’

  ‘But take what?’ I’m trying not to sound scared, but I am: my voice has gone all high like it does sometimes. Kez wants me – requires me – to go into someone’s backyard and steal something. And I’ve never stolen anything in my life – well, nothing big.

  ‘Anything, y’great chicken. Anything that’s there. I bet there’s a bike. We can take that. Oh, don’t look at me like that: we’ll put it back. Honestly, we’re not thieves, man. It’s just borrowin’. This is a test of your courage: a “rite of passage” they call it. Years ago, they’d make you swim across a river with crocodiles in it, so count yourself lucky. I’ll wait here and keep watch. Off you go.’

  ‘But …’

  Kez bends her head close to mine and I can smell her chewing-gum breath. ‘But what, soft lad? You scared? Good. You should face your fears! Stand up to them! Welcome to the grown-ups’ club.’

  She prods me in the chest with a thick, nail-bitten forefinger.

  ‘Now go.’

  I’ve opened the squeaky door as much as I need to squeeze through when Kez says, ‘I’m not lettin’ you back out unless you’ve got something.’ She pushes me hard, then pulls the door shut behind me with a loud bang, disturbing a seagull from a shed roof.

  I look round the space: there’s nothing to steal. I’m quite relieved.

  I’ll just go back to the door and say, ‘Kez: there’s nothing to take.’

  Doesn’t sound good. I glance around again. There’s a big green wheelie bin, and next to it a smaller black one with a recycling symbol on it, some bin bags, and some flattened cardboard boxes. That’s it: a few square metres of cracked, swept concrete.

  There’s a small kitchen window and a back door into the house and to my right is a narrow shed. I try the door and it opens. It’s dark inside, but I can tell it’s just shed junk. Kez said ‘anything’, though, so …

  I put my hand out. A thick cobweb flaps into my face. On the floor there’s a paper carrier bag with handles. It’s going to have to do. There’s a box in it or something, but I don’t wait to look – I just want to get out of here. I squash the whole thing down inside my hoodie and zip it up to my throat.

  I shut the shed door behind me and I’m ready to run for it when the light in the kitchen window comes on. I press myself against the side of the shed, squeezing myself into a shadowy corner of the wall as I hear the back door open.

  From inside comes a woman’s voice.

  ‘Go on out, you smelly old thing.’

  The biggest dog I’ve ever seen shuffles out and starts sniffing around. The kitchen light goes off and I hear an internal door in the house shut as whoever let the dog out goes back inside.

  The massive beast has got coarse black-and-ginger hair in tight curls. It doesn’t notice me. It sniffs around on the ground and then squats to do a poo. It’s in the middle of its business when it turns its head towards me.

  If fear has a smell, then I must stink.

  Slowly, the old dog finishes, rises off its haunches and ambles towards me, leaving a small mountain of steaming poo behind. I’m wondering if it is one of those ‘friendly to everyone’ dogs like Tony and Lynn’s collie over the road, and I’m getting ready to pet it when it pulls back its top lip and emits a growl that makes me go cold.

  R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r!

  Its head dips, as if it’s going to leap at me. It’s between me and the door leading to the back lane.

  ‘Kez! Kez!’ I’m sort of shout-whispering, but she doesn’t hear me.

  When I hear the kitchen door open again, and the light comes on, I have no choice but to run, in a kind of backwards arc round the dog. In my panic, my foot squishes right into the mound of poo. I slide but remain upright and make it to the back door past the dog who has started a loud barking, but is probably too old and slow to chase me. Turns out I’m wrong about that.

  ‘What is it, Dennis?’ says a woman from the house. ‘What’s up?’

  The dog has made a late start, and has followed me, growling, as I wrench open the door to the alleyway. Dennis is coming for me and I only mean to shut the door to keep him in, but I pull it really hard and something is stopping it, so I pull still harder, and that’s when I hear a crack and a howl of pain. I look down and, horrified, I see that I have trapped the dog’s front paw, and one of his claws is bent at a horrible angle.

  Immediately, I let go of the door, which springs open again, but I can’t stop. Dennis doesn�
��t stop, either, and limps after me, barking and snarling and trailing drops of blood. I run down the back lane, clutching the paper bag under my hoodie. I’ve run about twenty metres when I realise that the dog is gaining on me in spite of its injury.

  Kez is nowhere to be seen. (I find out later that she legged it the minute she heard the back door to the house open. ‘Test of courage.’ Yeah, right.) She’s still got my phone.

  I look behind me. A woman has followed the dog out of the backyard and is coming after me. ‘Hey! Stop! You little—’ she swears at me.

  There’s a bend in the lane that takes me out of sight of my pursuers for a moment, and, while I’m running, I unzip my hoodie and chuck the bag I’m holding as hard as I can over the wall. It is evidence of my crime, and I want rid of it. It sails through the air and I hear it land. Still, Dennis is getting closer, probably seeking revenge for his injury, and I know I won’t be able to outrun him. I get to a pair of big wheelie bins and clamber on top of them. On the other side of the wall is a garden belonging to a house that’s been empty for ages, so I grip the top of the wall and haul myself over.

  It’s a long drop on the other side. My T-shirt and hoodie ride up and I scrape my belly and chest hard as I lower myself down behind a big bush. On the other side of the wall, the dog is barking and its owner has caught up with it. ‘Where’s he gone, the little toerag? Oh my God, Dennis, you poor thing, you poor thing!’ Then she says something that makes my stomach turn over with fear. ‘We’ll find him, won’t we?’

  They’ll find me?

  I try to push my fear down.

  There are loads of blond kids.

  The evening’s getting darker.

  She can’t have seen that I’ve stolen anything because there was nothing in my hands – it was inside my hoodie.

  She’ll not do anything …

  It’s working. My breathing settles. Everything’s quiet, apart from some traffic a couple of streets away.