Dreamside - By Graham Joyce Page 0,23

are the people

It was as though he had opened a real door to a parallel physical dimension, a door through which he could actually pass. These hand manipulations gave way to the conjuring of small objects from nowhere, like a stage magician. In the dream it was possible to make a silver coin, a rubber ball, an ace of spades appear. The objects which could be summoned were limitless; the only difficulty was to sustain control. A kind of forgetfulness would take over him after a few seconds, a veil would be drawn over the lucidity and control of the dream, and all would be lost as the dream shifted or stopped.

Lee made copious notes in his dreamwork diary and told Ella everything, as if he were passing on hard news. Ella listened intently to his feverish reports, nodding occasionally but neither probing into these accounts of his abilities nor inviting comparison with her own experiences. Indeed, Ella stopped remarking about her own lucid dreaming experiments beyond the reports which she reserved for the formal dreamwork seminars. Meanwhile, Lee was in a state of high excitement, massively stimulated by the curiously related developments now pushing back the boundaries of his experience. The bouts of lucid dreaming had an aphrodisiac effect on him and Ella reciprocated time and time again with unwavering energy. In turn the dizzying sex sessions acted like a thunderous backdrop to Lee's dreaming, an amphetamine boost to his struggle to assert control over the substance of his dreams. It was a struggle in which, step by tiny ominous step, he felt himself nearer to victory.

The weekly meetings of the lucid dreamers continued, and Lee became one of the most dedicated and most vocal attendees. Professor Burns could always be relied upon to smuggle some new box of tricks into each session. At one meeting he introduced the practice of dreamwork re-entry, an attempt to reactivate a dream in which lucid dreaming had taken place by using relaxation techniques and the gentle guidance of his semi hypnotic prompts. There were some successful results in reactivating dream associations in this conscious state, but the main requirement for these sessions was for the group to create a hypnotic atmosphere of stillness and peace. There was one main obstacle to this:

"I can't help it; when everyone goes so quiet and po-faced I just want to laugh." Brad had spent an hour in the bar before the session.

"We will allow you a minute or two to giggle it out of you Mr. Cousins." Burns was beginning to lose his secret smile at this third interruption. "And then we will try again."

"Doesn't anyone else see the ridiculous side of it?"

"No. Only you." Lee had become Brad's sparring partner in the sessions, but at this remark Brad started snorting again, pretending to suppress his guffaws by stuffing a grimy handkerchief into his mouth.

"Couldn't we etherize Brad and use him as a subject for re-entry?" Lee was serious.

"Rear entry? Not my line, mate."

"Ether is a very old-fashioned method . . ." said Burns.

"But we share the sentiment," said Ella. "What about carefully placed electrodes?"

"Mind-expanding drugs?" suggested another, warming to the subject.

"Too ambitious," said Ella.

Brad snorted derisively.

"If we're finally ready to start," said Burns, "let's have Honora."

"Let's have Honora!" shouted Brad.

"That's enough vulgarity," Burns retorted sharply.

"Rear-entry!” countered Brad.

"I think all of the assembled company would deeply appreciate it, Mr. Cousins," said the old professor in his most formal voice, "if you would be so kind as to shut your consummately tedious gob."

The session continued in peace.

Sleeping alone that night, dreaming his bauble-juggling tricks, Lee got a whiff of some of the possibilities of this dreamshaping, as it had been dubbed. He began to feel the potency of his control and was ready to try something new, a major progression, like conjuring another person to his dream. But suddenly, his grip on the dream loosened, not by loss of concentration as usual, but by a sound like hail on a tin roof. The sound woke him and he realized that someone was rapping frantically on the window of his cell-sized room.

"What does it take to wake you up? Let me in, I'm soaked."

"It's four in the morning Ella, what are you doing?"

"I'm standing in the rain trying to bloody well get in!" Ella's hair was plastered to her head, raindrops bubbled on a face red from running, blue from cold. She wore a long raincoat, collar turned up and clutched at her throat. "Jesus! Let me in!"

"Yes