When We Got Lost in Dreamland

by Ross Welford

  ‘Friends,’ I repeat.

  Mam has texted that she’s been held up at work and Fit Billy’s cooking our supper again. Second time this week: it’s something super-healthy and vegetarian which is okay, but it’s got beans in it, and I know Seb will have really bad wind come bedtime. There’s good news, though: Mam will have calmed down by the time she gets in and she’ll be tired; I might even be in bed and avoid the confrontation about my antics in the lunch hall until tomorrow.

  ‘What is this?’ says Seb, eyeing the pan suspiciously.

  ‘It’s bean stew,’ says Billy, proudly.

  It’s like Seb’s been waiting his whole life to deliver this line. He pauses to catch my eye, then says, ‘I don’t care what it’s been, Billy. I want to know what it is now!’

  I start to tell him off, mainly because I’m angry with him about his FaceTime call. ‘Seb! Don’t be so …’

  But I stop when Billy lets out a loud bark of laughter. ‘Good one, son! Top banter!’ he says and Seb smirks with satisfaction.

  I think about taking the Dreaminators down, but then I realise that I’ll have to explain everything to Seb and I’m just not in the mood. Besides, I don’t want to scare him, so I’m going to have to lie to him, and Susan’s little lecture is still kind of ringing in my ears.

  ‘You’re quiet tonight, Malky,’ says Billy. ‘Is there something wrong?’

  ‘No,’ I say and to cover my silence I take another mouthful of Billy’s stew.

  ‘Nowt wrong with a bit of quiet, eh?’ says Billy, which I’m grateful for.

  Later, Seb’s already lying in bed when I come in, brushing my teeth. Billy has found him new batteries from somewhere and the Dreaminators are glowing a little brighter, it seems to me. They look more powerful and they scare me.

  ‘Hey – got something for you,’ Seb says, and then lets rip with a huge fart that he wafts over to me with the side of his duvet.

  I tut and shake my head, which is not the reaction he wants. I try to sound as casual as I can when I say, ‘You know what, Lil-Bro – let’s not do the dream thing tonight, eh?’

  His voice goes up in pitch just like mine does. ‘Eh? You’re boring. Why not?’

  ‘No big deal. I’m just not in the mood, you know.’

  ‘But don’t take them down, Malky! They’ve got new batteries. We can do the cave-boy one. Ride on the back of a mammuf! We could even make it a … a dinosaur. I know there were no dinosaurs when there were people, but …’

  Only a few weeks ago, I’d have ignored him. Told him to shut up and stop whining. And there would have been no way I’d have done what he wanted just, well, just because he wanted me to. I’d have taken the Dreaminators down to show him that I was his big brother and that I was in charge. But things have changed between Seb and me.

  Instead, I reach over and turn off his Dreaminator. ‘Another time, eh, Seb? Not tonight.’

  ‘Why?’ he whines.

  ‘Listen, man, I’m just tired, okay?’ I turn mine off as well and climb into bed. I think I’m asleep pretty quickly.

  And I’m definitely asleep when Seb creeps out of his bed and turns on both of the Dreaminators again, starting the dream that will end so badly.

  The dream that begins in our usual cave, and leads to Seb being captured by a tribe of huge Stone Age warriors with spears.

  The dream that ends with Seb lying in a hospital bed, unable to wake up.

  And so here we are. Seb is still in a coma, in hospital, and I am back on my unmade bed.

  Earlier, I watched silently as Dad took the Dreaminators down from their hooks and now, from my window, I see him toss them carelessly into the back seat of his car. Tony and Lynn from across the road have come over to see what’s going on: there was an ambulance outside our house early in the morning, so they must know something’s up. Fit Billy’s out there as well and they’re all talking.

  If only I had taken them down last night, none of this would have happened.

  Mine and Susan’s plan to put everything right by returning the Dreaminators has been well and truly smashed to pieces now. The Dreaminators are lying, tangled and messy, in Dad’s car.

  I can tell their conversation pretty much from seeing all their reactions. Heads on one side, nodding and concerned. Then Lynn’s hand goes to her mouth in surprise, and Tony shakes his head, sorrowfully. Billy leans in, asking for more details, curious about what might have made Seb sleep so deeply, and shakes his head again. They both turn to look at our house and nod. (Dad has obviously told them I’m in, and they’re saying they’ll keep an eye on me.) Then Lynn puts her hand on Dad’s arm and he nods in response before he gets into his car. They watch him go. Billy exchanges a few more words with Lynn and Tony, then turns and comes into our house, using his own key I think, which is new.

  Dad said he’d be gone a couple of hours. That doesn’t give me a lot of time, but I know what I need to do.

  I put my head round the living-room door. Billy’s making himself comfortable on the sofa and he has brought his own games console round. He says, ‘I’m really sorry about Seb, Malky. I’m sure, you know … he’ll be okay. Doctors know all about stuff like that.’

  He’s being kind, so I just nod. He pats the sofa next to him. ‘Wanna play a game? I’ve got Wolf’s Lair. It was the name of Hitler’s headquarters for the German advance on Russia, and you’ve got to …’

  ‘Billy?’ I interrupt. ‘I’m very tired. I’m going back to bed.’ I close the door and head upstairs. As I go, he’s putting his headphones on. Even better.

  The front door’s no good. Tony and Lynn are not exactly guarding me, but their house faces ours, so there’s a fair chance they’ll see me if I go out, and they’ll be worried, and call Dad. He and Mam have got enough to worry about.

  So I go out of the kitchen door at the back and, a minute later, I’m through the yard door, down the alleyway and along the back lane before I can even argue with myself.

  ‘Call round tomorrow,’ Susan had said. She’ll be expecting me. But it’s not Susan I need to see.

  I’m relieved that it’s Mola who opens the door, but there’s no more, ‘Ah, special Dream-boy!’ stuff. All that is replaced by a dark look of distrust. I get it immediately: Susan has told Mola about me, Seb and the Dreaminators, and Mola is not impressed. I’m sort of glad in a way. It saves me having to explain it all.

  ‘Hello, young man. Is Susan expecting you?’ Her voice has lost all of its singsong warmth and almost makes me shiver. She looks up at me standing on the doorstep. She’s not in her usual long cotton things, but still manages to look completely round in a baggy T-shirt and long skirt.

  ‘It’s you I came to see, Mola,’ I begin, but then, from behind her, Susan comes down the hallway. She looks at me in surprise. It’s a sunny day, and I’m sweaty from running here.

  ‘Hello. You look terrible, Malky. Come in. What is wrong?’

  I look between the two of them and they are both frowning.

  ‘It’s Seb,’ I blurt out. ‘He’s not woken up. We were dreaming, and I can’t wake him, and he’s being held captive by the big guys, but Dad’s taken the Dreaminators to hospital, and Mam’s there, and Fit Billy’s at home, so …’

  ‘Whoa, young man! Shh. Steady,’ says Mola, holding up her palms. I stop talking, realising that I’ve been gabbling. She tips her head on one side and looks at me, curiously, like you might gaze on an interesting exhibit in a zoo, then she nods, slowly. The whole thing is oddly calming. ‘Come. Follow me.’

  We go out into the garden where there’s a wooden picnic table and the remains of breakfast. Mola points to the bench.

  ‘Now then. Sit down and have some tea.’ Her tone is still brisk: her offer of tea is like a nurse prescribing medicine, but she sounds a tiny bit friendlier.

  ‘I don’t want any tea …’ I begin, but then I see her eyes, gentler now, and I stop. ‘It’s Seb,’ I say, again still wondering how much Mola actually knows, worried that she will be angry.
r />   What does it matter, Malky? She already knows, and who cares how angry she gets?

  We sit at the table in the shade, and I tell them everything about the Stone Age dream, and Seb being captured.

  Neither of them gets angry. Neither says, ‘I told you those things were dangerous, you stupid boy. Look at the mess you’ve created. Why were you so irresponsible?’

  No, they both just listen without commenting, without judging.

  Then Susan says, ‘What happens now?’

  ‘No idea. The doctors are investigating. They say he’s “stable”, that it’s like a coma. It might even be a coma, and that people usually … come out of comas, but you can’t tell how long …’

  I trail off. It was saying the word ‘usually’ that tripped me up.

  ‘Oh, and one more thing …’ I say and I tell them about Seb’s wrists looking red, and the dream I had when I was attacked by Cuthbert, and the pain I felt and the marks that were left when the crocodile bit my arm.

  ‘But … but that cannot happen,’ says Susan. ‘It is actually impossible. Are you …?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’ I sink my head on to my hands and slump forward on the table, knocking a plate on to the grass. Mola shuffles along to me, making little clucking noises of concern. From the corner of my eye, I see her arm reaching to me and I think she’s going to cuddle me or something, which I’m not really ready for, but instead she taps me twice on the top of my head, quite sharply.

  ‘Hey. Hey! Dream-boy! Don’t leave us now. We need you here, we need you present, and fully awake, yes? And so does your brother.’

  I lift my head wearily.

  Then she says something so quietly that I can hardly hear. ‘Why did you do it, Malky? If it was going bad? Why?’

  I blink at her, puzzled. Is she trying to tell me off – you know, ‘I told you not to mess with this’? I have to think for a long while before I answer.

  ‘I guess I didn’t believe it myself. I mean, I knew the shared dreams were really happening, but how wrong could it go? They’re dreams, Mola! They only exist in my mind. And Seb’s.’

  Susan stares at her trainers for a while, then she raises her head and looks at Mola, as if she knows a reply is coming.

  Mola shakes her head, with a sad smile. ‘The internal life, Dream-boy,’ she says, ‘is as real as anything else. Perhaps even more so.’

  I find myself on my feet again, and my voice is louder. Mola does not flinch, but maintains her steady gaze as I say, ‘But it’s not! They are separate! You … you’ve got stuff going on in your head, and then there’s stuff going on here, in the real word!’ I stamp my foot and thump the table to emphasise my point. ‘They can’t … they can’t interfere with each other, can they? Can they?’

  Mola gives her serene smile, and this time it drives me mad.

  ‘Stop smiling!’ I say. ‘It’s not funny. You can meditate, you can dream, you can do whatever you like, but it can’t have any effect.’

  Mola says, ‘And your brother’s wrists? Your sore arm, Malcom? Your … ahh … performance at school yesterday? Oh yes, I heard. Were they real, or just in your mind?’

  I fall silent and sigh, and sink on to the wooden seat again. I rub my forearm, remembering the teeth-marks of the crocodile. No one says anything for ages. I mutter, eventually, ‘I just don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Some more tea will help us think. Susan, be a good girl. Malcolm, help clear the table. And for a little while we say nothing at all. Complete quiet.’

  Perhaps it’s doing something in total silence that clears my mind. A familiar action: clearing cups and plates, carrying them into the house’s sparse, neat kitchen, no one saying anything at all. I find a cloth and wipe down the picnic table while Susan boils the kettle. I put fresh cups on a tray, then I load the dishwasher. It makes me feel better.

  On the kitchen wall is a photograph of a handsome man with shiny black hair like Susan’s. Mola sees me looking.

  ‘My son,’ she says.

  ‘Susan’s dad?’ She nods and I follow her back outside. She makes herself comfortable with a cushion on the wooden planks of the picnic-table bench. I can’t sit.

  ‘He is in prison,’ says Mola, as matter-of-factly as if she had simply said, ‘He’s gone to Sainsbury’s.’

  ‘Yes. Susan mentioned, erm …’ I don’t know what to say. What do you say in situations like that?

  At that moment, Susan arrives, carrying a tray of tea things. Mola looks at the tray and makes an approving noise in her throat.

  ‘I don’t think you would like po cha, Malky,’ says Susan, ‘so I’ve brought you regular tea.’ She sees me looking a bit embarrassed. ‘Po cha is Tibetan tea.’

  ‘The best tea! Everyone loves it,’ interjects Mola. ‘It is made with tea leaves and …’

  I can already identify the smell. ‘Yak’s butter?’

  Mola grins. ‘Clever boy!’

  ‘But it takes a bit of getting used to,’ says Susan.

  ‘Nonsense! I drink it when I was a little girl!’

  ‘Tibetan tea,’ Susan says, ‘is made by boiling the leaves, then adding butter and salt. It’s … unusual. I love it!’

  Mola beams. ‘See? You are good girl, Susan!’ She takes a sip of her butter tea. ‘Malcolm will not drink that goat’s wee.’ She grasps the cup that Susan had poured for me and throws the contents on the grass behind her, and says, ‘Malcolm? Dream-boy? You all right?’ She hands me her cup and says, ‘Drink it. It is good.’

  Hesitantly, I raise the little cup to my mouth and pause. Something has washed over me, like a cloud obscuring the sun.

  I stare at my teacup, inhaling the strange odour, and blinking.

  ‘Am … Am …’ I am finding it hard to talk. I stare at Susan. ‘Susan … am I dreaming?’ Right now?’

  ‘Malky! What do you ask that for? No. No, you are definitely not dreaming!’ Susan sounds alarmed.

  As quickly as it started, the feeling wears off.

  ‘I’m sorry … I just had a sort of … flashback.’ I shake my head, vigorously. To be certain, I quickly look at the clock on my phone. Everything is fine. ‘Float,’ I say to myself. I can’t float. I sigh with relief.

  It was as though something had flicked a switch in my head. A sound? A sight?

  No. The smell of the tea!

  ‘I’m all right now,’ I say, and it’s the truth. I do feel okay, but I don’t want to speak for a moment. I look across at Susan and Mola and they are both sitting with their eyes half closed, as though they are enjoying the silence as much as I am. I sip my tea and close my eyes as well.

  I can hear seagulls and the soft hum of traffic on the seafront, and the gentle rustling of a tree outside, and a bicycle bell pinging, and away in the distance – so far away that I might be imagining it – a child shouts something.

  There’s something else as well, and it’s a moment before I work out that it’s the fluttering of the little flags that form a large cone around the flagpole in the garden, and I’m reminded of the evening – only a few weeks ago, but it feels like a lifetime – when I first heard them, and saw them, and met Mola too.

  I feel like, if I could just detach myself further from today, I might hear the sound of the clouds moving, or the high-pitched buzz of a sunbeam, or the soothing hum of the blue sky, and everything will be back to normal.

  I can’t do it. I open my eyes and find, to my embarrassment, that Susan and Mola are both looking at me. Mola smiles and nods. ‘Welcome back.’

  ‘I was … daydreaming.’

  ‘Good,’ she says. ‘More people should try it! Silence is not empty, Malky: it is full of answers.’

  ‘I was thinking,’ says Susan, replacing her cup in the saucer precisely. ‘Malky. You think that Seb is somehow “trapped” in a dream of your … your making?’

  I sigh. ‘I guess so. I mean … that’s as good a way of putting it as any. No wonder people don’t believe me.’

  ‘Can’t he control the dream he is ha
ving?’

  ‘I don’t really know. A bit, I think. But not enough to wake up, obviously. Something’s gone wrong.’

  Susan looks over at her grandmother. ‘Have you heard about this, Mola? This dream-sharing?’

  Mola doesn’t look at us, but gazes at a point in the distance so intensely that I turn my head to see what she’s looking at, but there’s nothing.

  She nods slowly. ‘I have heard of it. I had a lama – a teacher – who talked about it. He definitely believed it was possible. Maybe belief is all that is required.’

  There’s a long pause before Susan speaks next, and I hear the seagulls cawing again.

  ‘So … Malky … could you go back to the same dream?’

  I think about this. ‘And … and do what?’

  ‘Well, you say your powers of control seem to diminish the longer you are in the dream?’

  ‘That’s what’s been happening, yes.’

  ‘And also the realness of the dream increases at the same time? So you get a sore arm from the crocodile, and Seb’s wrists get rope burns?’

  ‘I suppose so. Is that what’s happening? I don’t know for certain.’

  ‘Well, neither do I, of course. But it sounds like that is what is happening. Doesn’t it?’

  I sort of nod, but I don’t really know what to say and the garden returns to its previous silence. Mola hasn’t said anything. She’s just listening, her tiny dark eyes flicking between Susan and me as we talk. Then she gets up, accompanied by a percussion of cracks and pops from her joints, and starts walking up the garden. She pauses to look back.

  ‘You coming.’

  It isn’t a question.

  ‘These are nice,’ I say, referring to the strings of coloured flags that Mola has taken us to. Close up, their fluttering has become a rattle that is noisier than I expected. I add, ‘What are they for?’

  Mola has turned her face up to the sun.

  ‘They are prayer flags,’ says Susan. ‘A tradition in Tibet. We say that the wind carries the prayers away.’

  I nod. ‘Carries the prayers up to God, yeah?’