Dreamside - By Graham Joyce Page 0,12
was afraid to go to sleep at night, because I knew what was going to happen. I used pills to stay awake for three or four days, and then when the inevitable happened I didn't have the strength left to resist it." He turned to face Lee across the room. "You wouldn't recognize the old place now: they've got penny arcades and fat lady shows, and hot-dog stands and end-of-pier comedy acts. It's quite a tourist pull these days; you should get Ella to go down there with you for the bank holiday."
"You're scared, Cousins." Lee stood up. "You live ankle deep in shit and you're scared. I can smell it on you, even through all the booze."
"And I don't even owe you the time of day!"
He turned back to the window. Lee was at a loss. Swaying uneasily against the unlit fireplace, he rubbed his hand along the dusty mantelpiece, waiting for resolution to materialize out of nothing. Cousins nodded at the crumbling cottage across the yard. "She's out there. I've seen her."
Lee stepped across to the window. He could see nothing.
"Who? Who are you talking about? Ella?"
"Noooo," waving a finger at the dereliction. "Not Ella. Her."
"There's nothing. Nothing."
"Did you see that? Did you see that light there—just a flicker. You couldn't have missed it. Did you see it?"
Cousins's gluey eyes were pressed against the window. He stank. Lee stepped back, looked around at the filth and debris of the room, wondered what he was doing there. There was no trace of light in the other cottage. He had had enough.
"To hell with it. I didn't see anything. And I'm going. I shouldn't even have come."
It was as if a spell had been lifted. He was appalled that he had allowed Ella to pack him off on this fool's errand. This confrontation disgusted him. But what really vexed him was not that Brad was a sot but that there was something about Brad's slither into alcoholic slush that was only superficially different to his own dash for stiff conformity. Both of them were casualties—Ella's word for it: men whose souls leaked through the corrosion which followed brilliant dreaming.
Now Ella had got him scurrying down here rattling chains and locks that were turning to dust in his hands. He felt alone, he wanted his neat home, his hermetically sealed box, wanted not to be confronted with this degenerate version of himself where the only distinction between them was a full set of buttons and a splash of cologne.
"You can… put your head down here for the night..." Cousins said, suddenly sheepish.
"What?" A mirthless laugh. "Is that a funny? Thanks, old friend, but no thanks. I'll take my chances of roughing it at The Plough, back down the road."
Back behind the steering wheel, he turned his headlamps up full on the derelict cottage. He had let Cousins spook him. He could still see him watching from the window. Turning the car around rapidly he drove back on to the road, switching on the wireless for the comfort of a Radio 4 voice.
At the Plough, with barely more customers than staff, he had no difficulty in getting accommodation for the night. He was shown to a room with an uneven floor and heavy Victorian furniture. Before turning in, he opened a window and looked out across the moonless, starless valley, wondering why he had bothered to come, but already knowing the answer. In the comfortable bed he fell into a fitful sleep; a seamless patchwork of dreams crossing easily from past to present and back again to the past.
PART TWO
April 1974
O N E
Remember not the sins and offences of my youth —1662 Prayer Book
LUCID DREAMERS
Lucid dreamers are subjects who, while dreaming,
are also capable of becoming aware that they are
dreaming and in certain cases capable of controlling
the direction of their dreams. Volunteers who have
experienced this phenomenon are required to participate in practical research experiments under the
supervision of the Department of Psychology.
The poster, hand-written in bold red marker pen, was displayed in the main university concourse, and Lee was pretending to read it. He was pretending to read it so that he could stand next to Ella, the girl with the spray-on blue jeans. She was also studying the poster, and he had to strain to hear the words she was speaking to her friend. Lee stood close enough to take in her scent of patchouli, baby soap, unruly pheromones and warm apple-blossom skin. He had spotted her once before, in the university library.