Dreamside - By Graham Joyce Page 0,57

and fallen plaster obstructed his progress, and he stumbled and climbed over the debris in darkness, stirring the smell of decomposing plaster. There was a wild scuffling in the shadows.

"Rats, bats and dreamwalkers," he muttered.

Groping his way, he found the staircase and set foot on the first step. The house reeked of dry rot. He was afraid his weight might send him crashing down to the cellar. At the top a door stood ajar. He pushed and saw broken rafters, and black puddles on the floorboards; gaping holes to the floor below. He turned to the other door.

In the second room, windows, ceiling and floorboards were all intact and unbroken. It was tidy, swept, and on its walls someone had hung a poster and a few bleached, twisted shapes of wood as ornament. Opposite the door, huddled in a single sleeping bag and clinging to each other in terror were two young people, boy and girl, sitting with their backs to the wall, their wide eyes like huge silver coins in the grey light.

"Human form," said Brad from the doorway.

"We're not hurting anything," said the girl.

"Dreamwalkers! What's your name? Quick now!"

"Victoria."

"Victoria," mimicking her squeaky voice. "No it's not, it's Honora Brennan. What's your name lad?"

"Keith."

"No it's not, your name is Brad Cousins. Dreamwalkers!"

"He's drunk," said the girl.

"Issat your little girl? Eh? Eh? Is she yours?"

"What girl?"

"Don't play with me, son. Is she yours? Dreamwalkers? Little girl eaters?"

He marched into the room, twisting the top off the paraffin can.

"Whoever you think we are, we're not!" shouted the youth.

Brad stopped for a moment and looked at him. Then he shook his head. "I can't take the risk." He started flinging the paraffin around the room.

"Jesus, is that petrol? Vicky get up!" The two students grabbed their clothes and the sleeping bag and fled naked out of the room. Brad emptied the can before discarding it, struck a match and dropped it on the spilled paraffin. Then he followed them down the stairs and out into the yard, where they were struggling into their jeans. His breath reared in the mist.

"Stay and watch," Brad invited generously. "Burn her up!"

But they declined, running down the road as they buttoned their clothes. Brad waved goodbye and turned, with enormous satisfaction, to watch the growing blaze.

While Honora was inside the church wrestling with the young priest's theology, Ella yawned and stretched and fiddled with the car radio. Something crackled and stuttered through the wavebands, a child-woman's voice, singing:

And your dreams are like dollar bills

in the pocket of a gambler

and they whisper in your ear

like those good-time girls

Ella tried to catch a better reception, but the signal drifted out again. She snapped off the radio and was startled to see someone looking at her through the passenger window. It was a girl, standing in the rain a few yards away from the car. Their eyes met. She was pale and thin, not quite into her teens and wearing what looked like left-overs from a church jumble sale. She had a bruised look, the eyes of a kid who has taken a beating for stealing sweets. Ella, soft on street waifs everywhere, instantly felt a surge of pity. Wanting to give the girl something, she reached for her purse and got out of the car.

But the girl had gone. Ella looked up and down the street: nothing. She looked at the closed doors of the church and shrugged before climbing back into her car, shielding herself from the increasingly heavy rain.

She settled back behind the steering wheel before realizing that something had been written in the condensation on the inside of the windscreen. Water droplets had collected and dripped from the crudely formed letters to the foot of the glass. The words said HELP ME.

Prompted by a movement, Ella glanced from the words to her rear-view mirror. Then she turned to look across her shoulder. Now the girl stood by the doors of the church. She opened the door and looked back at Ella, as if inviting her to follow. When she entered the church, Ella got out of the car and went in after her.

Lee, in the attic, lifted from the chest bundles of note books, ring-binders full of papers, photograph albums, a couple of half-completed diaries. Then the smaller stuff like posters and tickets for college dances, academic year photographs and other university flotsam, old poems that now made his skin crawl, theatre programs, a signed publicity shot of an unfamous female rock singer to Lee