Dreamside - By Graham Joyce Page 0,70

middle of it Ella's voice piped through, but was distant and stripped of tone and amplitude. Her voice had been reduced to the narrowest frequency, a single oscillation playing along a fine wire that could have been stretching half the length of the galaxy. Ella was there and he could hear her, but he couldn't identify a single word she was saying. The line seemed full of breathing and whisperings, and waves of static, all conspiring to crowd her out. Lee pressed his ear closer to the receiver.

"YOU'LL HAVE TO SHOUT, ELLA!" The electronic piping of her voice continued, sounding like the noise an electronic or mechanical bird might produce, against the unabated interference. "ELLA? WHAT IS IT YOU'RE SAYING?"

Lee felt his earlobe, pressed tight against the earpiece, start to get hot, then smart and sting. Then he felt a sharp sensation like a pin being inserted into the tender part of his ear. As he pulled the phone away from his head it jerked at him, as if his ear had become glued to the receiver. Pulling at it only produced a searing pain, like flesh tearing away in strips.

"Honora!" he shouted. This time he knew what was happening. Honora jumped to her feet.

But the stinging continued, until it felt like a razor cutting his ear, or something gripping him tightly like a pair of scissors. He tried to breathe deeply and control the hallucination, as he had done on dreamside many times, thinking in detail down the procession of events, smoothing back the sequence of the attack. Then he felt himself begin to panic as he felt out of control.

"There's something inside the phone!" Honora shouted.

Lee felt it now; and as he inched the receiver away from his head he could almost see at the periphery of his vision the dull gleam of yellow blades snapping and twisting and bringing blood to his ear. A black feathered head squeezed out of the earpiece, shaking frantically, eyes bulbous with fear, and he realized that what was tearing at his ear was not a razor, not scissors, but the sharp pecking beak of a bird. Honora screamed and stood over him, not knowing what to do to help. Lee wrenched the phone away from his head. The bird, large, the size of a blackbird, squeezed out of the earpiece, its wings flapping wildly as they came free, first one then the other, still pecking and cutting at Lee's bloodied ear in wild panic.

Dropping the phone and lashing out with his hand, Lee smashed it up and away over his head. The bird flew frantically around the room, disastrously, crashing into walls and thrashing against the window. Lee crumpled and retched and vomited. The bird swooped crazily, and flew into objects around the room. The black rag of its wings was magnified by the confinement of space, fanning them with ice-cold waves of air. Torn feathers came floating down around them, until at last Honora, screaming and crying, in utter desperation picked up the coffee table and hurled it through the central window. The glass shattered spectacularly, and the table fell back into the room. The bird flew out of the smashed window and away into the dusk outside.

Honora staggered over to where Lee lay on the floor. She hoisted him up by his waist. Breathing heavily she said, "Come on; you've got to get up; you've got to get up."

"It was real," he panted. "You saw it. It was real. It wasn't a hallucination at all." His ear was bloodied and torn.

"Of course I saw it. You must get up. It's time for us to go isn't it? Ella was trying to tell us it's time. They're both going to be there, aren't they?"

Lee nodded. He was beginning to understand why Ella had been in so much of a hurry.

"Get some overnight things; get some blankets and covers. I'll get the rest. Then get in the car."

They loaded up the car in silence. Then they drove away, dusk slipping into darkness, leaving the gaping hole of the smashed window in the empty house behind them.

A foul wind came up, assaulting the room they had left, like a raid made a few moments too late. It flapped the heavy curtains beside the broken window and flipped Honora's unread cards, dealing a new sequence, one darker and full of portents which only the wind could read.

T E N

We may need to characterize and distinguish respectively between the deceptions and distortions

of our desires;