When We Got Lost in Dreamland

by Ross Welford

  ‘No developments. At the moment, all they’re saying is that he is “stable”. They’ve ordered up some bit of machinery from another hospital that will give them a better look at his brainwave pattern, but it’s got to come from Manchester. They’re not ruling out infection. In some cases, the body can sort of put itself into a coma in an attempt to fight an illness, but they can’t understand why there’s no fever …’

  And so on. I try to take it all in but I can’t. Instead, I just stare at the silent figures on Wolf’s Lair, paused on the screen, mid-battle, waiting for someone to take up the console again.

  I have to ask Dad, but I’m a bit nervous.

  ‘The, erm … Dreaminators? Did they …?’ I want to know if they – that is, the doctors or researchers or whoever – have discovered anything. Perhaps it’s a bit early, but still …

  ‘No, Malky,’ says Dad. ‘I handed them over to Dr Nisha. I felt like I was mad for even bothering her with them.’

  ‘So you didn’t bring them back?’

  Dad’s tone is soft, or perhaps just exhausted. ‘No, Malky, I didn’t. And, until Seb is back with us safe and well, I don’t want to hear them mentioned again, all right?’

  He sits next to me now and he wants me to meet his gaze, but I cannot pull my eyes away from the screen where the game characters are doing that thing that they do when the game is stopped: you know, they stay still for ages, then they’ll move a bit, walk in a circle or something, then return to their resting position, waiting for a player to activate them again.

  Dad takes my chin in his hand, gently turning my head to face him. ‘Hello? You with me?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Mm-hm.’

  He breathes in deeply through his nose. ‘Why did you do it, Malky? Last night? You told the doctor that things had been going wrong before, you had had warnings, so why did you carry on?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to. Honest. But then … Seb started it, and I thought once more wouldn’t harm.’

  Dad is quiet for a while. Then he says, ‘That was my problem, you know? With the drugs. Every time I thought once more won’t harm.’ He sighs. ‘Don’t repeat my mistakes, son.’

  ‘But you’re okay now?’

  ‘Let’s just say I’m okay for now, eh?’ He hugs me, saying into my ear, ‘He’ll be all right, son. He’ll be all right.’

  And I hug him back and I go, ‘Uh-huh,’ while over his shoulder I’m still looking at the paused game.

  Is that what Seb is doing? I wonder. He’s still dreaming but nothing much is happening?

  Is it like he is paused in my dream and waiting for me to reactivate it? There’s no hope of that now. Not without a Dreaminator.

  I feel my phone buzzing in my pocket, but I don’t think Dad wants our hug to end yet, so I stay wrapped up with him. At last, he gives a big sniff in my ear and then gets up and heads towards the stairs.

  ‘I’m shattered. I can’t even think straight,’ he calls back to me, but his voice sounds wobbly and cracked. ‘Your mam’s staying at the hospital. Your Uncle Pete and your Mormor are driving over from Ullapool. We’re all taking turns talking to Seb, you know? Trying to keep him with us. You and me’ll head back to the hospital in a bit, aye?’

  I nod.

  ‘I’m going for a lie-down in your room. Can you wake me in an hour? I’ll be out like a light.’

  I take my phone from my pocket. There’s a message from Susan.

  I have thought of something we could do, but I am not sure you will like it.

  I wonder if it’s the same thing that I’ve thought of?

  If it is, I definitely don’t like it.

  Before I can reply, she sends another message:

  I am coming to yours.

  I meet Susan at the backyard door.

  We go into the kitchen and I shut the door so as not to wake Dad. Neither of us says anything: we haven’t discussed what ‘the plan’ might be yet. I’m more nervous than I expected, and we both start speaking in low voices at once.

  ‘If this is …’ I begin.

  ‘You will not like …’ says Susan.

  We both stop. Neither of us wants to say it, and there’s a moment of silence. Susan breaks it.

  ‘Mola sometimes applies her own, ah, interpretations to the teachings of the Buddha. And she thinks that Seb is caught in a loop, kind of a mental trap, caused by, erm …’ Susan bites her lip and dries up.

  ‘Caused by me,’ I offer.

  ‘Well, only sort of. Partly. Caused by, I don’t know, messing with things you do not understand would cover it. And the Dreaminator. I mean … crystals? Crystals have always had “mysterious qualities”. I looked it up.’

  Of course she did.

  ‘Crystals have been used in mystical healing and ancient religions for, well, forever, really. And pyramids too. Did you know, if you place a razor blade under a pyramid, it will not go blunt?’

  ‘Really?’ I say.

  ‘Well … probably. It is difficult to prove.’

  I think I have a better explanation. ‘You know when you stop playing a video game, and the characters are still moving but not doing anything?’

  Susan gives an embarrassed half-shrug. Of course, she’s not much of a gamer.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. They become reactivated when you pick up the control again.’

  Susan nods. ‘So … you will have to reactivate your dream.’

  I puff out my cheeks in frustration. ‘Go back there and what? Get him? How is that going to work?’

  Susan says, ‘Perhaps it is like Mola said. “Sometimes the greatest journeys …”’

  We finish the sentence together: ‘“… have no map.”’

  ‘Except,’ I say, ‘I don’t have a Dreaminator. I had one thought, though: perhaps if we looked on eBay or something, or Gumtree, or, or …’

  Susan is shaking her head. ‘I have already looked. Everywhere. I do not know if he ever even sold any. Maybe after that TV show he just gave up.’

  I nod miserably.

  ‘But we know where one is, don’t we, Malky?’ she says.

  We stay quiet for a moment, contemplating this.

  It’s like we’re dancing round the subject, and it is Susan who takes the lead next by saying, ‘The Dreaminator. It is at Becker’s funeral parlour on Front Street.’

  I feel cold just thinking about it. ‘But where exactly? In … in his coffin?’

  Susan chews her lip as she thinks. ‘I don’t know, Malky. But I would say … maybe? I mean, isn’t that what people do? In films and stuff? You are all dead and whatnot, in your best suit – or kilt in Kenneth McKinley’s case – and you are lying there with a photo in your hand, or a necklace, or something that has been important to you.’

  Is that right? Is that what happens? Susan actually doesn’t seem very sure of it. I take a deep breath and say, ‘I don’t want to do it.’

  ‘Do what, Malky?’

  ‘I don’t even want to say it.’

  ‘Say what, Malky?’

  I can tell what she’s doing. It’s crafty. She’s making me say it out loud. Once it’s out there, it becomes more real. I force the words out.

  ‘I … I’m going to have to steal … the last Dreaminator in the world from … from a dead man?’

  Susan smiles – a bit sadly, as though she knows how hard that was for me. ‘Yes. But it is not you. It is “we”.’

  ‘What’s it got to do with you? Why are you helping me?’

  She adjusts her specs and looks at me with her deep dark eyes. It’s as if I’ve asked the stupidest question ever. The answer is so obvious to her and, because I know her now, I also know that she is telling the whole truth, and it feels good.

  ‘Because I am your friend,’ she says.

  Something changes between us in that moment. Whatever happens from now on – whatever happens with Seb – I’m not on my own.

  I open up Mam’s laptop and, moments later, we’re b
oth staring at the outside of a building shown on Street View.

  Becker & Sons

  Funeral Directors & Monumental Masons

  It’s a newish-looking building in two parts. There’s a reception area with modern glass doors and big windows; next to it, accessible through reception, is a bigger building with a strip of narrow windows at roof level and a set of double doors at one end. I swallow hard. This is a crazy, ludicrous, criminal, dangerous and just plain weird thing to be doing. But it might also be my only chance.

  ‘How do we even begin to do this?’ I croak to Susan. I mean, it’s all very well to have done dodgy stuff in the past, and got into a bit of trouble, but this is a whole new level of bad. Making it even stranger is the fact that next to me is a girl who has probably never done anything bad at all in her life, yet she’s the one that came up with the idea.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘But we have to do it soon, right? We do not have much time. Tonight, I think.’

  At that point, I hear Dad coming downstairs, and I quickly close the window on the laptop. He comes in and looks a bit surprised to see Susan there.

  She stands up – stands up! – and says, ‘Hello. I am Susan Tenzin. A friend of Malky’s.’

  Wow, grown-ups are suckers for this sort of thing, aren’t they? Dad stops, gives her a tired smile and says, ‘Hello, Susan.’

  ‘I am very sorry to hear about Sebastian.’

  ‘Thank you, love.’

  ‘I was just leaving, wasn’t I, Malky?’

  Ten minutes later, Dad and I are in the car heading back to the hospital. As she left, Susan said, ‘I’ll text you later,’ and the thought of that, and what we had half agreed to do, made me go very quiet.

  Have I seriously just agreed to do this? I’m not sure, exactly. I still have half a hope that – somehow – I will get our Dreaminators back at the hospital. The whole thing plunges me into silence in the car.

  Dad doesn’t really seem to mind. Perhaps he, too, thinks that silence can be full of answers.

  Mormor and Uncle Pete are Mam’s mam and younger brother and they are already at the hospital by the time we get there, sitting with Mam in the beige waiting room beneath Aslan the lion from Narnia. A box of tissues and empty cardboard coffee cups sit between them. Their eyes are red and puffy. Outside the room, hospital staff walk quickly everywhere, and for a moment I try to imagine I’m just there for something normal, but of course it’s never normal being in hospital, is it?

  A man in a doctor’s coat comes into the room. He explains that Dr Nisha has gone home, and that he is the doctor in charge of Seb’s case. I don’t remember his name and he doesn’t look at me once. He seems nervous and doesn’t sit down.

  The news is not good. Seb’s blood pressure and breathing rate have fallen and, while the doctors are still ‘optimistic’, it is still too early to say, and they still don’t know exactly what’s happening to him.

  There is talk of the ICU, which I know from TV means ‘intensive care unit’, reserved for the most serious cases of everything, although Seb is not there. Not yet.

  ‘Can I see him?’ I ask the doctor.

  I’m on my own with Seb in his room.

  I can hear Mam and Uncle Pete murmuring outside, talking with a nurse. Seb looks like he’s hardly moved since this morning. He’s still for ages, then he twitches a bit – maybe his hand, or his eyes move behind the eyelids, then he’ll return to stillness, only his chest moving up and down under the bedclothes. There’s a drip attached to his arm, and something else leading from his wrist, and a strip of something stuck to his forehead.

  ‘Hey, Lil-Bro,’ I say. I feel self-conscious. No one can hear me, but then Seb probably can’t, either, so it’s all a bit odd, like I’m talking to myself. There’s a chair next to his bed, so I sit down and take Seb’s left hand in both of mine. I’d never hold his hand normally, of course, but this is anything but normal. I run my fingers over the raised red marks on his wrist. Have they got worse?

  Perhaps, in the dream, he’s twisting and turning to get away? Perhaps, like me after the Hitler dream, he’s dreaming that he’s awake? Or is he just stuck in a static dream-state, unaware of what’s going on? I hope it’s that. I can’t bear to think of him terrified all this time: aware that he is in a dream, but unable to escape it.

  The marks are definitely worse. I wonder if anyone has noticed? I’m thinking about telling someone when Seb jerks his arm away and then turns his head on his pillow. For a glorious moment, I expect his eyes to open and his stupid, gappy grin to reappear and I start to smile …

  He gives a little grunt, then a gasp and a sort of little cough, then his body twitches again. He doesn’t wake, but I notice he has started to sweat. There’s a few seconds of this; some numbers on a screen above him start changing rapidly, though I’ve got no idea what any of them are.

  Seb’s twitches are becoming bigger, and his head moves from side to side. Then there’s a beeping sound coming from the machine. It’s like he’s in a fight with an invisible attacker.

  ‘Seb! Seb, man!’ I shout. ‘Wake up!’

  I look at his writhing head and I gasp: a huge red mark has appeared below his left eye, spreading down his cheek. It’s exactly as though he has been punched in the face, and the sweat is now pouring off his forehead. The beeping of the machine continues, and a nurse dashes in, ignoring me, and studies one of the screens. She hits some buttons, the beeping stops, then she goes to the door and calls down the corridor.

  ‘Jez, Aminah! Quickly!’ Two other nurses, a man and a woman, come hurrying. Mam and Uncle Pete are nowhere to be seen, and I’m just standing next to the bed, feeling scared and useless.

  They all say things like, ‘BP elevated one three five over sixty. Heavy perspiration. Heart rate one twenty, ECG spiking, temperature falling thirty-three degrees …’

  Then the nurse called Jez leans over to look at Seb’s face. He touches the raised wound gently with a gloved hand. I can see already it’s going to be a big bruise, and I’m hoping that Seb is not in pain.

  ‘What is this? Who was here with him?’ says Jez to the others and they all lean in to look at it. Then the three of them turn to look at me.

  He says, ‘What happened? Did he fall?’ Then, more slowly, ‘Did you touch him?’ It’s a moment before I realise what is going on.

  They think I hit my brother! I would never do …

  Okay, there was that time I hit him with the game controller, but that was ages ago …

  I raise my hands. ‘No. No. No, no, no. I didn’t touch him. Honestly. It … it just came up on his face!’ My voice gets higher and louder. ‘Really! Why would I?’

  If anyone answers that question, I miss it among the people coming and going – quickly but with purpose. Ten minutes later, Seb has been admitted to the intensive care unit.

  His condition is being described as ‘involuntary comalike stasis with spontaneous facial and dermal contusion’. I suppose the doctors know what that all means, but I don’t. I hear a lot of, ‘Are you sure?’ and, ‘We need to wait for the results before we know,’ and stuff like that.

  Back in the waiting room, Mam and Dad sit side by side while I stare out of the window again.

  ‘Malky,’ Dad starts, and Mam snaps back, ‘Tom. Don’t.’

  He ignores her. ‘Malky. I know you’ve been violent to Seb in the past …’

  ‘Dad! Honestly!’ Mam knows that I wouldn’t have hit Seb. Well – not hard, anyway, and not in the face like that. They have both seen us fight plenty of times, Mam especially. Apart from the game-controller incident, I gave Seb a black eye once when I pushed him over and his face hit the corner of a low wall; I was grounded for a week after that. Seb once kicked me so hard in the mouth that he split my lip, but he wasn’t grounded, because I was pinning him down and Mam said it was my own stupid fault.

  Trouble is, Dad’s not around these days and maybe he thinks I’ve turned into a thug. There’s a look on Mam’s face that tells me she�
�s not totally convinced that I didn’t hit him. Not one hundred per cent like you need your mum to be about something like this. As for Uncle Pete and Mormor, they’ve come back with coffees and all Mormor wants to do is hug me, which is nice to begin with, but it’s getting a bit tiresome.

  Whatever Dad is going to say next is interrupted when the young doctor from before returns and holds up a plastic bag.

  ‘We have had these back, at least,’ he says.

  ‘What?’ says Dad.

  ‘Malcolm’s dream … things?’

  ‘The Dreaminators?’ I say.

  This is amazing – I can’t believe it! I’m not going to have to get one off a dead man, after all!

  Uncle Pete and Mormor exchange glances: they have no idea about any of this. The doctor sits down next to me. In fact, I soon realise that this is pretty much all for my benefit.

  He smiles, trying to make the mood a little lighter, and reaches into the bag. His brings out two broken plastic rings and some tangled and cut wires and it’s a few seconds before my mind catches up.

  When it does, I feel sick.

  The Dreaminators: they’ve been ripped apart almost beyond recognition.

  I stare at them. There’s no way I can put them back together.

  ‘They’re … broken,’ I say.

  ‘Yes. Sorry. We have taken them apart, as you can see. We kind of had to, in order to examine them.’ He lifts up the tangle of plastic and woven threads and wire to demonstrate that they have been properly dismantled. As he does so, a few of the crystals fall off and roll on to the floor.

  I must look pretty upset because the doctor pulls a guilty face. ‘Can you, um, get more?’ he says.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘The man who—’ But I realise I can’t tell them about Kenneth McKinley. ‘The man I got them off at the Lifeboat sale didn’t have any others.’

  ‘Ah, sorry about that,’ says the doctor. ‘Still – we were able to study them, at least.’

  ‘And?’ says Dad.

  ‘Well,’ says the young doctor, ‘there’s good news and bad news. Malcolm, you’ll be pleased to learn that there is nothing, nothing at all, about these Dream … things that could possibly have been harmful to Sebastian. The bad news, of course, is that they have given us no further clues whatever to his condition, but then we didn’t really expect them to, did we?’ He looks over at Dad for that last bit.