Graham Joyce - Dreamside

“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.

Somewhere in the Brecon Beacons, guided in the moonless darkby an infrared confidence and a blueprint memory, Ella found her mark. It was the early hours of the morning. The Midget, engine knocking wildly, stalled outside the house on the exact spot where an old Morris Minor had stood one summer thirteen years ago. Ella had already jumped out, leaving Brad to stare moodily around him. The house stood empty.

“Thirteen years on,” she said to Brad, “and still a holiday home for some overpaid academic who’s probably been twice since we were here.”

Brad got out of the car. He didn’t begrudge anyone a single brick of the place. “How will we get in?” he said, in a voice that suggested. “Let’s turn back.”

Ella lifted the boot of her car. “You’ve got a narrow experience of life, Brad Cousins.” She lifted a slender chisel and a hammer from the boot, and marched around to the rear of the house. Brad followed at a distance of five paces. She slotted the chisel between the upper and lower frame of a sash window, swung the hammer once, hard, and the window catch flew open. The window required only a light push, sliding up as if by hydraulic gears.

“Where did you learn that?”

“From a cigarette card. Go and fetch those things from the car.”

Brad trotted off obediently as Ella climbed through the window. When he reappeared with Ella’s bag, she had the back door open.

“No, don’t switch on the lights. We don’t want to attract attention. Anyway, it’ll soon be light. Close the curtains and light some of these candles.”

“Romantic,” said Brad.

“You think so?”

“No.”

With the candle flames flickering and darting long shadows across the room, they could see that the house had recently been renovated. Floorboards had been sanded, old cupboards replaced by units, and the enamel sink supplanted by one of stainless steel. They made coffee and played a nervous round of That-Wasn’t-Here-Before.

“What time will the others come?”

“When they show up.”

“Give me one of those ridiculous liquorice cigarettes, will you?”

Some time after three o’clock in the morning, a car pulled up outside the house. Ella went to the window and drew back a curtain. Then she opened the door.

“We got well lost,” said Lee, “we’ve been driving in circles. Scary kind of circles.” He gave Ella a special look.

So now Lee was getting a taste, Ella thought. Now he understands what’s happening. “Don’t tell me about it. You’re here. Come inside, Honora,”

“Is he in there?”

Ella nodded, and they walked through. Brad sat stiffly in a corner of the room. Lee was only mildly surprised to see him shaved, shorn and kitted out in some of his old clothes. Honora simply erased his presence: he wasn’t there. Brad might have flickered a glance in her direction, or maybe it was only the play of candlelight across his eyes.

Lee rubbed his hands with simulated gusto, paced the floor and chattered about making coffee and getting comfortable: anything to overlay the smoky bitterness in the room. Ella was wiser than Lee. She knew the exact nature of the ingredients that had to be brought together to bubble in the cauldron. Let them feel it, she thought, let them feel it.

Lee discovered what hard work it is to keep up conversation when three other people don’t want to join in. He quickly ran out of counterfeit enthusiasm. The candles burned steadily, and the four sat silently, nursing empty coffee mugs, only their eyes reflecting the available light. Occasionally a flame would shiver in a draft, dispatching shadows across a wall and releasing a worm of black smoke.

“This is like a séance,” said Lee. “Let’s see if we can contact the living.”

No one bothered to laugh. Lee was reminded of the early lucid dreaming seminars, where they would sit for twenty minutes in uncomfortable silence waiting for the professor to speak. He was about to wonder aloud what Burns would have made of their situation, but opted against unwise comment. Honora gazed down at the rug beneath her as if she saw something significant in its pattern, and it seemed to Lee that her silence was the deepest. Brad continued to find the far corner of the ceiling an image of satisfaction. Ella looked far too comfortable, and the corners of her mouth were turned up fractionally in what he thought was an incipiently malevolent smile.

That Ella was in charge was unquestionable. The other three had by now surrendered themselves to her. They all knew why they were here, but they were waiting for Ella to summon them to order. She seemed to have the power to draw something out of them, to distil something from the brooding silence. When Ella did speak, the others were steeled to listen.

“No one’s in any mood for sleeping; and we all know why that is. In any event I’m wide awake, and the dawn will be up in an hour or two. Better save it for tomorrow night, when we will need to sleep. We have to take that walk together on dreamside.” Ella paused for effect, and released a deep sigh.