Dreamside - By Graham Joyce Page 0,64

effect, sometimes without. Lee had, had no idea of what she had seen over his garden wall the previous afternoon. She had said nothing because she wanted to shield him from what was bearing down on the rest of them. He was the one with the slightest sense of the real danger.

As for the others, Honora was in a wildly unstable condition. Her encounter with the priest showed that she was wired up to all kinds of energies. But Ella calculated that Brad was the weakest of them all. Brad had been the strongest, most powerful dreamer; consequently those energies he had spent so freely on dreamside would be making their claims on him, with interest. He would be the most susceptible to these attacks. Which is why he would now, in all probability, be lying drunk somewhere.

Ella sailed past a car which had broken down on the hard shoulder. Shortly after, the Midget was overtaken by a dirty white estate car packed full of luggage, a child with a lop-sided grin making faces at her and waving through the back window as it went by.

Didn't that just happen, back there? The sense of deja vu was acute and powerful, but she credited the event to tiredness and dismissed it. She was more concerned about the impending encounter with Brad. If Lee's accounts were not exaggerated, she might be lucky to find him conscious when she arrived. On the other hand, Lee had been certain that Brad wouldn't be going anywhere. Ella would have a captive audience.

For the third time Ella passed a car which had broken down on the hard shoulder, but now she noticed the driver in the act of opening the door and climbing from his seat. She put her foot down hard, but sure enough, was overtaken by the grubby estate car complete with the manic child grinning back at her through the rear window. The landscape around the motorway went on unchanged for miles, a deep swath through the countryside, lacking any distinctive landmark. Ella had lost all sense of where she was. She kept her foot hard down.

For some days she had struggled against hallucinations and distortions. She knew how to suppress the initial rising panic, signalled by a familiar but unidentified metallic taste in the mouth. But this was different, as indeed they always were. She passed the stranded roadside car yet again, and, with a deep sickening recognition, watched the sequence regenerate itself as the estate car sped past her.

This time she recognised the face in the back of the car. She had seen it before, and more than once. She could identify every feature of that girl's face; just as she knew exactly who the girl was. The air was seeded with something colourless, odourless, tasteless, but yet dense and oppressive. She knew it was in control of the loop in which she was trapped, controlling events. Even now it regulated the flow of traffic, closing it up to block her from moving into the inside lane. She was being obstructed from pulling over, prevented from moving out of the loop.

Ella drove on. In the distance she saw the stranded motor coming up on the left-hand side. She slowed and indicated to pull in, but the procession of traffic on the inside lane had squeezed together. No one would give way. She sailed past the car parked on the hard shoulder, helplessly watching the rest of the sequence play itself out.

Again she saw the stranded car on the left. Again she slowed and signalled to move in, and again no one would allow her the space. She gripped the wheel and turned recklessly into the car abreast of her. There was a blast of horns and a shrieking of tires as she squeezed the Midget into a silhouette's space between two chrome fenders, a space so narrow it wouldn't have admitted a playing card. Miraculously, she made it, skidding and braking on the hard shoulder, scraping the side of the Midget along the crash barriers, stopping bumper to bumper behind the car which had broken down.

The driver was already climbing out of his seat. He came, opened Ella's passenger door, and said: "That was close."

Ella, still trembling, lit a cigarette.

She was too shocked to respond, or to look up at the man standing over her. She got an impression of an elderly figure in a long beige raincoat and smartly polished brown shoes. She knew exactly who it was.

Ella heard his