Dream On

by Kerstin Gier

  I had to smile, although only briefly. “Does Henry really have a plan?”

  “He said so, and he sounds determined. Where can he be?”

  “Yes, where?” With a groan, I looked down the corridor.

  Arthur had been right. Waiting was the worst thing. Waiting and uncertainty.

  They really wore you down.

  “If I were Arthur, I wouldn’t strike tonight,” I said, more to myself than to Grayson. “And not tomorrow, or next week. Why be in any hurry? He can wait until we’re all out of our minds with anxiety.”

  “You don’t know Arthur well enough. Patience isn’t his strong point. And he certainly won’t risk waiting until Henry’s found a way to put him out of action.”

  “How right you are,” said Arthur’s voice, and his figure materialized out of nothing right in front of us. In my fright I didn’t even have time to gasp for air. “And what’s more, who says I’m not going to strike every night from now on?”

  “Over my dead body,” said Grayson, taking aim with the shotgun.

  Arthur laughed. “Those were the days, remember, Grayson? When we went duck hunting with your grandpa. I remember the check caps we all had to wear. Although I also remember how difficult you found it to pull the trigger because you felt so sorry for the ducks. And I’m not a sitting duck.”

  “Exactly,” said Grayson, pulling the trigger, but the pellets from the shotgun didn’t travel far. They left the barrel in very slow motion, hung in the air in front of Arthur, and then dropped to the ground. Grayson and I exchanged horrified glances.

  I went frantically through our options in my mind. I could imagine Mr. Wu. Or I could try attacking Arthur myself. But what use would breaking his jawbone again in a dream be? I could play for time until …

  “Where’s Henry when he’s needed?” asked Arthur, obviously enjoying himself. He was all in black, like the night before, and it seemed almost as if he were shining from inside. If you could have a dark light shining.

  I could … surrender.

  “Arthur, please,” I said, putting as much genuine feeling as possible into my voice. “I’m sorry that I … hurt you. I’m sorry you’ve had pain and … and grief because of me. I’m terribly sorry for all that.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Arthur, putting out his hand. Suddenly it was icy cold in the corridor. Within a split second, the walls, the floor, and the doors were covered with hoarfrost—ice crystals even formed on my T-shirt, and Grayson’s hair was white as snow with the frost on it. “All the same, it’s fun to hear you say so. I like it when you whimper like that. Maybe you should fall on your knees to me?”

  How did Arthur do that? He wasn’t even moving his hands. He was incredibly good at this.

  The floor was like a skating rink now. My teeth began to chatter. My breath formed little white clouds in the air.

  I must … warmth … fire … Oh God, it was so cold!

  “You’re such a…,” Grayson began, but he couldn’t finish his sentence. The ice was climbing up from his feet at high speed, covering him with a thick, glassy layer that left him rigid as a statue, entirely motionless, an expression of sheer horror frozen on his features.

  Arthur laughed, satisfied. “And now for you,” he said, turning his angelic face to me. Had I really thought that demons didn’t exist? Arthur might not be of ancient Babylonian origin, but he was demonic, no doubt about that.

  How could I have let myself think of surrendering? I should have fought back—that was the only answer to someone as vicious as Arthur. But it was too late for that now. My feet were already encased in ice up to the ankles. And the cold had sunk deep into my bones, so deep that I couldn’t even think of fire anymore.

  All that I could do was stare at Arthur.

  “Arthur, please,” I whispered through numb lips that were blue with cold. “Don’t do anything to my sister. Don’t hurt her.”

  Arthur just laughed. “Make yourself a few nice, warm thoughts while I’m gone,” he said, opening Mia’s door and disappearing into her dream without another glance at me.

  Beside me, Grayson’s statue, with a dreadful cracking sound, broke apart into a thousand tiny splinters of ice. They slid all over the floor, glittering in the milky light. There was no sign of Grayson himself.

  Oh God—I must do something! Every second counted now. I tried to pull myself together and concentrate. I told myself that what Arthur imagined couldn’t have any power over me while he was gone, but at least thirty seconds passed before I finally managed to melt the ice and get my normal body temperature back. Precious seconds during which Mia was in danger, and I hadn’t the faintest idea what to do next. At last I felt that I could move my little finger, then my hand, finally my whole body. There was still no sign of Henry when I followed Arthur and slipped into Mia’s dream.

  And here I was now. I’d gone from room to room, through countless doors, with time running out like water draining away.

  Why couldn’t I just wake from this dream?

  29

  DESPONDENTLY, I OPENED the next door. I’d stopped running. It made no difference how fast I raced through Mia’s dream; it was never going to end, whichever way I went.

  This time, however, I found myself not in another empty room, but in Mia’s bedroom.

  For a wonderful, exhausted second, I thought I had finally awoken, but then I realized that in that case I’d hardly be seeing a second Liv half sitting, half lying in Mia’s bed.

  Mia was sitting beside this Dream-Liv and talking to someone standing by the window.

  Grayson. He had dug his hands in his pockets and was smiling warmly at Mia. Even before he turned his head to me, I knew it wasn’t really Grayson. Of course not.

  “You’ve arrived at just the right time, Liv,” said Arthur in Grayson’s voice. Obviously he’d been just waiting for me. “What a shame that you’re only a painting on the wall, so you can’t do anything but watch.”

  “That’s not true,” I wanted to say, but I couldn’t get the words out. Bewildered, I looked down at myself. My hands consisted of many tiny little brushstrokes in skin tones, everything about me was painted, and as I raised my head again, my figure froze, in exactly the same position as when I was caught in the ice just now, only this time it was in oil paint.

  “Tut, tut, tut!” Arthur-Grayson shook his head disapprovingly. “Pictures can’t speak. But it’s always nice to work with someone whose imagination is even livelier than mine.”

  He put a broad gilt frame around me and hung me on the wall beside the door, all without leaving his station by the window. The whole thing had happened very quickly, and Mia hadn’t even glanced at me. In fact, she didn’t seem to have noticed me coming in.

  “Hmm.” Arthur looked at me through Grayson’s caramel-colored eyes. “Very pretty. What shall we call it? Girl in Fear? Or no, I know: Girl, Defeated. Oil on canvas. Terrific.”

  I am not a picture. Blood flows through my veins. This is only a dream, and I can be whatever I like. I am not a picture.

  But I was a picture, defeated and unable to move, condemned to listen as Arthur turned back to Mia.

  “Did you know that one floor higher in this house there’s a secret room?” he asked in flattering tones. “The previous owners of the house left some really strange things there. I can’t make heads or tails of them.”

  Mia immediately looked fascinated. “Can I have a look?” she asked, moving as if to get out of bed.

  “Careful,” said Grayson, pointing to her leg. “You’ll have to undo that first, or you’ll wake Liv.…”

  “Oh yes, so I will.” Mia looked doubtfully at the sleeping Liv. “But I’m sure she’d really like to see that room as well. Why don’t we tell her about it?”

  “We could,” said Arthur-Grayson, casting a brief, mocking glance at me. “But she looks exhausted. Maybe we’d better let her sleep and show her later. Then you’ll be the first to see all the clues.…”

  Oh heavens. He’d really gotten
to know Mia in her dreams.

  “That’s true.” Mia began undoing the knots in the rope around her ankle, and I didn’t for a moment doubt that she was doing the same in reality, only with her blank, sleepwalking look, so that in effect she was blind. I had tied two reef knots, one above the other, but it took Mia only a couple of seconds to free herself.

  Which meant that in real life we were no longer tied together, and I wouldn’t be woken by a rope pulling at my leg. Arthur could easily entice Mia upstairs.

  Why in hell didn’t that alarm clock go off? My sense of time told me that far more than an hour had passed, but maybe I was wrong about that too?

  I tried hypnotizing the clock face with my painted eyes, but that was a bad mistake, because Arthur noticed me looking at it. “Wait a minute, Mia,” he said. “You’d better turn the alarm off, or it will rouse the whole household.”

  “Oh, okay.” Mia made her way back to the bed and picked up the alarm clock. Arthur gave me a mocking smile. He really had thought of everything.

  “Come along,” Mia said impatiently to Arthur-Grayson. He stood there enjoying the expression on my face for a moment longer, then winked at me and followed Mia through the door and out into the corridor.

  As I tried to free myself from his spell—I’m the only one with control over myself, I thought, I’m the only one who decides what I am, and I am not some damn oil painting—I was doing my utmost to persuade myself that they wouldn’t get far. After all, there were other people in the house, and surely one of them would hear if Mia, walking in her sleep, trod on the loose floorboard that sounded like Aunt Getrude after eating bean soup? Or Spot would get in her way. Or Florence would be going to the bathroom and see her.…

  I was still trying with all my might to wake from the dream, and a wave of self-hatred broke over me. What kind of a sister was I? I’d gone far too long without taking this situation seriously. Grayson had warned me, but I hadn’t listened to him. Instead I’d wandered around the dream corridors, deciphering Senator Tod’s silly anagrams and practicing being a breath of air. I ought to have used my time more sensibly, damn it all, I ought to have practiced waking from a dream anytime I liked, I ought to have found out how to defend myself if someone tried turning me into an icicle or an oil painting.

  I ought to have been prepared for Arthur.

  Girl, Defeated. Oil on canvas, I heard him saying.

  And then I suddenly realized that he had said that to me on purpose. He didn’t merely want to hurt me, no, his words had another purpose. The more I doubted myself, the safer it all was for him. He’d almost done it, at that. I was wasting my energy, wallowing in self-pity as I hung here helpless on the wall. But it all depended on me.

  I had to concentrate on my anger—my incredible anger with Arthur and what he was planning to do to my little sister. It felt like a glowing red ball inside me, getting larger and larger the more I focused on Arthur and my own fury, and at almost the same moment, the gilt peeled away from the picture frame as it broke in two. I was free again.

  I ran into the corridor, only to collide with Arthur standing at the foot of the stairs in the form of Grayson. It looked very much as if he was waiting for me there.

  Mia was nowhere to be seen. I called her name, but there was no reply.

  “Where is she, Arthur?”

  “Shhh!” Arthur put a finger to Grayson’s lips. With his other hand, he pointed to the ceiling. “Not so loud, she’s up there with Lottie. I can only hope your au pair really does spend every night with earplugs in her ears and a sleep mask on her face.”

  “What have you—” I broke off. It was useless to ask him questions. I knew better than that.

  A deep, angry growl escaped my throat. I was a jaguar, and I crouched to spring, ready to tear Arthur to pieces with my sharp claws and my huge fangs. Even as I leaped, I saw the surprise in his eyes. He hadn’t expected that, but he reacted at lightning speed. I bounced off an invisible wall that he had set up at the entrance to the staircase with a blink of his eyes. It was like the energy field that Henry had placed between us and Senator Tod the other day.

  As I ran into it again, some kind of electric shock threw me a few yards back.

  Arthur laughed, and for a moment he was no longer Grayson but entirely himself. “Give up, Liv,” he said as he ran upstairs. “You’re not good enough to outwit me.”

  I hissed.

  No, no, and no again. I wouldn’t allow myself even to think of failing. I mustn’t let his imagination determine what I did. He had only as much power over me as I would grant him. As long as I believed that his energy fields were impenetrable, they would be. And he’d already disappeared at the top of the stairs. Who was to say whether he could set up another energy field there?

  I didn’t stop to try out the invisible wall in front of me. I strained all my muscles and sprang. This time it felt as if I were running into rubber, and for a moment I thought I would be thrown back again, but then it was like plunging into a thick, viscous mass that took my breath away. Half jaguar, half human, I struck out with my arms. My lungs were burning, but I wouldn’t stop—I must do it, I must save Mia! With a slight plop like suction, the wall let me through, and I landed on the first step of the stairs. Gasping, I filled my lungs with air before scrambling to my feet and running on up the stairs as fast as I could go.

  Lottie’s bedroom door was open, and Lottie herself was lying in bed, wearing her flowered sleep mask. Her arm was dangling over the side of the bed and down to the floor, where Buttercup was sleeping curled up on a blanket. The scene would look something like this in reality, too, but I hoped that in real life Buttercup would wake and rouse the whole house.

  In Mia’s dream, Lottie and the dog were both snoring peacefully, while Mia made her way past them, not exactly quietly, and Arthur—back in the form of Grayson—almost trod on Buttercup’s tail.

  I was about to follow them, but once again I came up against an invisible wall.

  “Sorry, no cats allowed in,” said Arthur, although I wasn’t a jaguar now, I was myself again. Obviously he had just been waiting for me to appear. “However, you’re welcome to watch what happens to your sister. We’ve nearly reached that part of the show.”

  “Mia!” I shouted—no, I screeched it, for Mia was walking purposefully toward the window. “Don’t listen to him. He’s lying to you. You mustn’t do as he says. You must wake up! It’s a trap!”

  Arthur cupped a hand behind his ear. “Sorry, Liv, I’m afraid no one can hear you. And I’ve never learned to lip-read, but I assume you’re shouting ‘Don’t do it, Mia,’ or something like that.” He laughed again, and in defiance of all reason, I threw myself against the invisible wall that seemed to swallow up my voice, only to fail once more. Maybe I’d wake from the dream when the pain was bad enough.

  “Look, there it is. The secret room.” Arthur went over to Mia. His voice was gentle again. “You only have to climb through the window and you’ll be in it.”

  Sure enough, if you looked through the window you didn’t see the night sky above the roof of the house next door, but another dimly lit room with unplastered brick walls, containing old chests of drawers that looked as if they had all kinds of secret compartments in them.

  “Wow, crazy!” said Mia, and she couldn’t disguise the enthusiasm in her voice. “To think I never noticed it before!”

  Arthur-Grayson shrugged his shoulders and cast me a mischievous look over his shoulder. “I expect the blinds were always down.”

  “Hmm, yes,” said Mia, who obviously didn’t take logic seriously in her dreams. Although I knew it was no use, I shouted her name again.

  Arthur shook his head. “Liv, lots of people have survived jumping out of third-floor windows,” he said gently. “Well, maybe not lots, but I’m sure that one or two have.…”

  Meanwhile, Mia had opened the window.

  Without a doubt, she was doing exactly the same thing in reality too. But maybe the real window would jam. Or maybe
Lottie had a vase of flowers standing on the sill, and Mia would knock it over by accident. Maybe the real Buttercup was awake by now and scurrying around her legs, barking. Mia would be woken by the noise, or at least Lottie would, and then …

  Mia sat on the windowsill and swung her legs over it. It looked as if she would simply climb over into the new room, but I knew that her legs were really hanging in the air many yards above the drop to the paved garden path that ran all around the house.

  Think, Liv! Think of a way to beat Arthur with his own weapons.

  Something collided with the energy field.

  “Bloody hell,” said someone behind me. It was Henry. “What’s going on here?”

  I had no time for explanations. It was too late for that.

  Arthur turned around once more, probably to enjoy the moment to the fullest. When he saw Henry, he briefly compressed his lips. I used the moment when his attention was distracted.

  “What are you waiting for?” growled Arthur, looking at my little sister again. He seemed to be in a hurry now. “Go on!”

  But suddenly Mia hesitated. The room with the brick walls beyond the window had disappeared, and instead you could see the sky. I quickly imagined a large yellow full moon and any number of stars, so that Mia could see as much as possible.

  Arthur shot me a hate-filled, furious glance, but I was light-years away from feeling even a glimmer of triumph.

  “Mia! No!” I shouted again, and this time, somehow or other, I seemed to be getting through to her. At least, she looked around at us in surprise, as if she had heard something that puzzled her.

  Meanwhile, Henry had obviously dealt with the energy field. He took a step forward. “Come away from there,” he told Mia quietly.

  She looked at him, wide-eyed. “Away?” she asked.

  I leaped forward, but at almost the same time, Arthur made an angry gesture. This time I hit the invisible wall when I was level with Lottie’s bed, while Henry, behind me, let out a groan.