Dreamside - By Graham Joyce Page 0,75

was cradling an empty bottle of good malt whiskey. A second bottle lay discarded on the floor. Broken rays of sunlight stroked his bloated cheek.

"Hey Captain!" Lee shouted, relieved to have found him in any condition. Brad only slept on. Lee called again. There was no movement, and he returned to the house.

"Sleeping beauty just turned up. We'd better organize some coffee."

"Black?"

"Black as the pit."

Lee felt heartened; Ella's plan might still be salvaged. He returned to the shed with a chipped mug of sweet, steaming black coffee. Squeezing into the shed, he set the coffee down on the workbench and tried to wake Brad gently.

First he tried shaking him by the arm. Then he patted his cheeks. Even bellowing loudly in his ear produced no result. His pats turned to hard slaps, but Brad slept on. It was only as a mischievous last resort that he considered a bucket of icy water.

With protracted ceremony, Lee filled the bucket. Ella and Honora followed behind him to enjoy the show, giggling through the shed window as he raised it aloft. They watched Brad get a thorough dousing. But where he was expected to scramble awake, puffing and groping blindly, he slept on. For the first time it occurred to Lee that getting him to wake up might be beyond their ability.

Manoeuvring Brad's sleeping body out of the shed was a difficult task. The shed doors were blocked by the boat, and they were unable to move it because of Brad's considerable weight. Getting Brad out of the boat was no simpler. There was precious little room to stand alongside, let alone hoist Brad out, and he was a dead weight. Finally Lee managed to drag his lifeless, soaking body clear, as Ella manipulated the boat free of the doors, and eventually, sweating and swearing, Lee laid Brad down on the damp grass outside the shed. Ella kneeled beside him. His face felt dry and was bruised and bloated. There was a bubble of vomit at the corner of his lips."His hands are freezing, and his breathing is very shallow. We'd better get him to a hospital."

"I'll take him," said Lee. "Bring a blanket and help me get him to the car.

It was late afternoon when Lee returned. "Alcohol poisoning. He's in a coma."

"This much we already know," Ella said sharply.

"It's all they could say. He's comatose."

"When will he not be comatose?"

"They pumped his stomach. He didn't revive. The doctor said he could come out of it in five minutes. But it could be weeks, months, years. They've got him all wired up. There was no point in me hanging around drinking coffee from a plastic cup. So I left. Wasn't that the best thing to do?"

"And they said that it was the booze for sure?"

"They said so. But they were surprised it was such a heavy coma. They asked me a lot of questions about his lifestyle, most of which I couldn't answer. We just have to wait until he comes out of it. They said it's a condition beyond .. ."

"Beyond the help of medical science." Honora supplied the phrase.

"Something like that."

"Where does that leave us?" said Ella.

"One down, three to go?" said Honora.

The remark was left unanswered.

Evening drew in, and little was said. The silences prickled against the walls and crawled into every crevice and corner of the house. Every sound or movement was an affront. Mattresses had been dragged downstairs and covered with bedding so that later they could sleep side by side in the living room. This arrangement was made by tacit consent, an indication not of their closeness but of their fear of the night ahead.

Ella was the most worried. This strange turn in events had deflated her plans. She had staked everything on the idea of them taking the dreamside walk. She looked defeated.

Candle flames flickered from the mantelpiece, imparting shadows and inflaming imaginations that needed dampening. Outside a gate banged. Then it banged again and again in a mischievous wind, until Lee went out to fasten it.

It was a clear night. A moon was up, a slender crescent amid a scattering of bright stars, like the sable flag of a strange country. Lee looked into the sky for omens, portents. It was a moon for dreamers, cutting through the night sky and bearing strange cargo.

A scattering of lights burned in the distant village. They seemed a long way off, and something was stirring out there in the dark. Something was in this new wind, something