Dreamside Page 11

  —Oh yes?—

  —Yeah! there's no sin on dreamside—

  —I don't know about that. Let's just take the boat on the lake instead—

  Brad didn't regard that as much of an instead. At times he took to following Lee and Ella around, making a crowd of himself even in the vast space of dreamside. Lee and Ella got as tired of Brad's prurient interests on dreamside as they would have done in waking time. It wasn't simply a question of finding a quiet spot out in the woods somewhere, because space and distance didn't count the same. Brad was just a thought away if he wanted to be, and he often did, warm on their warmth, breathing on their breath. Until then neither a cross word nor an unkind thought had passed between them on dreamside, but Ella this time thoughtspelled it out for Brad.

  —Can't you leave us alone we've got some private experiments to conduct which require the presence of two people only—

  —Don't mind me. I'll make notes—

  At which Ella turned and spoke to Brad. Not in the thinkspeak unique to dreamside, but in clear loud English as she successfully transmitted an old and unambiguous message: "FUCK OFF, COUSINS!"

  Brad was deeply shocked, as was Lee, at the waves of hard energy that radiated from the violence of Ella's words. Ella too was surprised and held her hands at her mouth as if to stop anything else which might want to come out. The very air around them seemed appalled; but to their surprise the dream absorbed the dull explosion of Ella's words as if they were shells detonating against the mem­brane of its walls, leaving Brad to turn his back and cross some threshold which would dissolve it all for him anyway.

  FOURTEEN

  0 God! I could be bounded in a nutshell

  and count myself a king of infinite space—

  were it not that I have bad dreams

  —Shakespeare

  Was it before Ella dreamcursed Brad Cousins, or was it some­time after his rupture of the dreamside idyll that events there took a dark turn?

  "Something's not quite right about the place," Ella said to Honora about dreamside. "Not quite the same as the real place, the orig­inal place. Something I can't put my finger on."

  "No birds for one."

  Ella instantly knew that Honora was right. No birds for sure, try that out for size; and therefore no insects either to play on the mirror surface of the lake. But it wasn't only that, there was something in the substance, the resin of the place, under the surface of things. It was a constant presence, attendant and right in front of you, but which only became more elusive the more you tried to identify it.

  What was it?

  But no one could recall exactly when the first elementals started to take hold. One rendezvous ran into another with no sense of chronology to slice them apart, no sequence of night or day. There was only the dreamed sun that never burned, and all note-taking discipline had gone.

  Now they were able to sustain and control the dreaming long enough to feel tired by their efforts, knowing that their energies were sapped by the work of fixing and holding the dream in place. This fatigue always came as a signal that perhaps they had stayed too long this time, and in the form of a lapse in control of events, a confusion, a loss of purpose. Then, in one deep-dreaming fog, Hon­ora laid her head back on the grass under the protection of that giant oak and closed her eyes.

  Shaking her mass of brown curls from under her she felt the touch of the warm grass and the exposed knots of tree root on her neck. She could feel the warmth of the fixed sun on her face. The lapping water spread a deep sense of calm, and she thought that even within sleep it might be possible to test for another sleep, dream within lucid dream.

  The other three had moved off somewhere, faded into the periphery of the dream, her dream or their dream. In the peace around her she heard a drowsy whispering, a rustle like a breeze in the leaves of the trees but something more intimate, almost a mur­muring coming from the lake or from the tree roots, but soothing, and whispering unrecognizable, comforting words. She relaxed, let­ting go completely. The air was scented with balm and she felt good about the warm grass and the exposed tree roots touching her white neck like the gently exploring fingertips of a lover's hands, then inter­twining in the spilled ringlets of her long hair, stroking, winding into her hair, gently pulling her deeper into the grass, weaving her hair into the grass and the roots of the tree, pulling it downwards and into the black soil. It was easy just to go with it, let it play, let it take you down, become part of it, let it become part of you. Honora heard a tiny splash from the lake far off, and realized what was happening.

  She had to swim her way back to consciousness. It was a fight. It felt as if she were actually struggling to pull her hair from the grass and the roots dragging her down. It became impossible to distin­guish between the loom of hair, grass, root and soil, so perfect a woven fabric had they made in the natural carpet at the foot of the tree. Honora fought for breath in a rising panic, thrashing wildly, her heartbeat echoing aloud in the earth from which she tried to tear loose. At last she felt her hair snapping and her scalp searing as she wrenched herself upright, screaming, arms flailing, to find Brad, Lee and Ella all stooped over her.

  —Was it a dream, a nightmare? I mean within this dream, did you close your eyes and sleep?—

  Lee helped Honora to her feet. They could see wisps of her hair still entangled in the roots.

  For a while the horror of it shook them, until they dismissed the event as some kind of nightmare taking place within the wheel of the dream. They were wrong. Their complacency was further shaken when Lee had a similar experience of his own.

  Lee and Ella were out on the lake, drifting in the small boat, its keel not piercing the still skin of the water. While the excitement of being on dreamside never waned, the exhaustion of consciously sus­taining the dream was closing in. They lay in the boat, fighting off the second sleep, the surrender that might take them back, Ella humming softly, Lee dipping a hand in the water over the side of the boat. The scene was lit by a pallid disk that could have been the moon but was the unshifting sun burning without energy. Lee sensed a low breathing from the trees or the water, or maybe from the gentle swell and fall of his own lungs. Maybe the secret was inside him, so easy was it to be at peace, to merge with the back­ground, give up, yield and become fluid, like the stir of water between his fingers. A gradual loss of temperature permeated his hand, blood pulsed gently at his fingertips, his veins leaking, flesh and blood dissolving without pain and commingling with the lake water in a sweet seduction that could take everything.—NOOO!— Lee sat up in the rowing boat and screamed. His arm was paralyzed. He struggled to lift it from the water, his muscles refusing to unlock until, gasping with pure terror, he felt his arm release with a scorch­ing pain and a sound like newspaper tearing.

  —What is it? What happened?—Lee's scream had caught Ella mid-song, and now she sat up in the boat taking Lee's head in her hands.

  —I don't know I don't know—Lee looked in horror over the side of the boat at the thin eel-like trails of blood already diffusing into the blue-black water.—I want to get out—

  There the dream broke.

  They all experienced it in different ways. For Brad it began with a perspiration that grew into a sweat which threatened a melting as if he was made of plastic; for Ella the earth, seeming to want to become part of her, reconstituted her feet as the warm soil.

  These lucid nightmares were more terrifying than anything in ordinary dreaming: for what might happen if the absorbing process continued to its conclusion? The implications for waking time were not to be contemplated. So, they guarded themselves. Their dream­ing became circumspect, as they proceeded in fear of another attack.

  It was Brad who showed them how to deal with these elementals. He called them together on dreamside.

  —Watch—he said, bringing them over to the trunk of the oak, and pressing the palm of his hand against its rough bark. He closed his eyes as they watched. At first nothing happened. Then his fin­gernails slowl
y took on a glaucous colour, changing slowly to moss-green, which moved imperceptibly down his fingers until the lines and folds and knuckles of his hand deepened and cracked, and his fingernails split. Then his hand absorbed the texture of solid bark spreading across the back of his hand to his wrist, his fingertips transforming into a stunted branch of the tree itself: gnarled, knot­ted, living tree:

  — Stop it—Honora whispered.

  —Not yet—The creeping bark inched up his arm, cracking and resetting his bones as it went, twisting at a point below his elbow.

  —Stop it!—

  —Now!—said Brad, and the metamorphosis stopped dead. His hand was organically joined with the trunk; the rough bark texture of his limb indistinguishable from the bark of the tree. But the process had been halted.

  —You've become sloppy! Forgotten the art of lucid dream­ing!—said Brad with contempt.—There's no time here, you just have to think it back, reverse the process, think it back, just like rewinding a film. Watch—

  The growth which had taken possession of Brad's limb retreated exactly as it had advanced, moving back down the arm and across the hand like a long glove being peeled off, the rough tex­ture dissolving, the moss-green tincture vanishing until his hand reformed itself entirely.

  Brad held up his unscathed hand for all of them to see.—Learn it—he said.

  F I F T E E N

  There is no law to judge of the lawless,

  or canon by which a dream may be criticized

  —Charles Lamb

  Harmony and security were restored to dreamside, at least for a while. Brad had demonstrated, and the others were able to repro­duce, the powers that would keep the frightening encroachment of those elemental forces at bay. Lee and Ella were free to persist with their "orgasm project": the sexual adventure of making it happen on dreamside. But they had difficulty with sustaining the dream long enough to contain such a high pitch of excitement. The dream always seemed to crack at a crucial moment.

  This left Brad to look on, and Honora to resist. It wasn't long before Brad decided that just being on dreamside wasn't enough.

  —Know what they're doing, Honora?—

  —Of course. Enjoying it, I hope—

  —Doesn't it make you curious?—

  —About them? No—

  —No, not about them. I mean about it. It. It must be different here. Incredible. Different. The end of the world—

  —I wouldn't know—

  —No, you wouldn't would you? Maybe you should watch them, find out how it's done—

  —I don't think they'd like to be watched; any more than I would—

  —C'mon. There's just you and me here—

  —Perceptive—

  —Know what? I want you badly—

  —Don't start—

  —Don't start? It never stops! What am I supposed to do? What about me?—

  —Poor Brad; he isn't getting any—

  They had rehearsed this discussion before, both on dreamside and in waking time.

  —Am I so obnoxious?—

  —I prefer you as a friend—

  —I hate people who say that—

  —So if you hate me you can't want me—

  Uninterested as she was, Honora knew anyway that Brad's real feelings were for Ella. She could see what Ella would have dis­missed out of hand; what Lee preferred not to see; and what Brad could never admit. Yet there was no question. Brad was secretly in love with Ella, and because he had no chance of getting close he made a mask of perpetual antagonism towards her. He was the only one suffering from this conspiracy to deny the obvious.

  Honora felt some sympathy for him, if only because she alone could see what was burning him up. Brad could only vent his feel­ings destructively. When Ella was around, he would mock or goad or challenge her in ways which at least won some form of contact, even if it was negative. He drew strength from the friction. And when Ella disappeared with Lee, he paced around Honora in a froth of agitation. He was a danger to himself.

  —Honora, think of what you could be missing!—

  —I thought of it—

  —And?—

  —I'll pass—

  —It's an experience denied to other people! It's like being spe­cially chosen for something! It's one of life's great miracles and it's only available to us! Don't throw it away!—

  —Still, I'll pass—

  —You're a stupid naive silly little country virgin who doesn't know anything—

  —Oh I'm not so naive; all the other things maybe—

  She got up and moved away from Brad's hot attention, leaning her back against the oak tree. She thought of Lee and Ella, briefly, naked in the long grass.

  —I'm not that naive—she said again.

  For Lee and Ella were only a thought away, stretched amid the daisies and the long grass, shivering at each other's hot breath and warm touch. It was as if they had cast off not just their clothes but also their living skin, leaving them a bundle of exposed nerve end­ings, detonating at every breath of air, kiss, or light caress. Achingly sensitive to subtle changes in the air currents around them, Ella leaned across Lee and pressed her tongue on his stiffened penis, flicking at the dome with her tongue, here is the church, her lips set­tling and lifting and resettling on him like a butterfly's beating wings, here is the steeple, Lee in an agony of tumescence, the unstop­pable swelling, the ecstatic unknowable voice in his ears until he thought the whole thing would explode, not just his cock but his brain, his head, his body, the dream, life outside the dream, life beyond that, until Ella brought him sharply back under control, coaxing and reminding him to hold it together.

  —Slow it—she said.—Slow. Breathe deep. Imagine I've got a knife at your throat and I'm making you do this, now do it, put it inside me—

  —Prove it—said Brad.

  —What?—said Honora.

  —Prove that you're not. Not naive—

  Brad stood up. His gaze locked on her and she felt unable to look away, mesmerized, as if he were holding her head so that she couldn't turn away. The air around was absolutely still, not a whis­per of wind in the air, but she felt a strange shift in the currents, something akin to a breeze lift gently at the nut-brown curls nestling on her neck. Although he stood fully ten feet away, she knew it was some force that Brad was exerting.

  —What are you doing?—

  —Prove it to me—Brad said again.

  —Don't—said Honora, unable to take her eyes from his.

  Brad didn't take a single step closer, but he continued to fix her with his gaze. She was unable to move. She felt the silver buckle of the patent leather belt around her skirt open, the belt passing itself through the loops of her skirt, moving off her like a live thing, like a snake which dropped at her feet. Then she felt a button of her blouse gently popping open above her breasts, followed by the next, and the next down to her waist, and the blouse being lifted back from her shoulders exposing her breasts to him.

  —Don't—Honora said again, her arms fallen at her side, held down by a strange paralysis, not knowing how to resist, wanting to fight back and reverse what was happening, think it back as with the elementals, but not finding the strength.

  —You can stop it any time you want—he said.

  —God, I just can't move! Don't you see I don't want this?—

  —Any time you want—

  Was he right? Could she stop it? She tried, but couldn't. There was nothing she could do. Then she felt the button go at the side of her skirt and heard the tooth rasp of the zip opening, and the skirt fell around her legs, lying in a hoop at her feet. At last she felt the elastic of her panties being rolled down her thighs and falling to her feet.

  Brad stepped forward.

  Control. Lee fought for control, imagining that Ella's sharp finger­nails on his throat were indeed a knife, until in the dream it was the gleaming blade she would plunge into his neck if he failed to please her; open the door, I love you for ever, he pushed inside her and she
squeezed him to her, laying her head back on the grass. It was unbear­able this dreamside sex, like making love on a live cable of electric wire. Stay with it, she was whispering, stay with it, but he knew it would have to finish or stop or the dream must break. He was clench­ing handfuls of her hair in his fists and the grass and daisies growing at the side of her head were mixed up in her hair, and she became a human shape of glittering white-hot energy, pulsating and glittering and burning. He felt they were making love astride a howling wind and over a rushing current and then when he felt her coming he gave in to the current and the wind and felt his body spurting light from every pore of his body as the dream imploded and was over.

  The next morning Lee woke up next to Ella, feeling strange, dislo­cated and energized. She was still sleeping. He kissed her, and in her hair he found a daisy head, two daisy heads, and torn blades of grass. He woke Ella to show them to her.

  Grass and daisy heads on the pillow: evidence in the day's eye of what had been transported from dreamside.

  Honora Brennan woke up alone in her bed and pushed back the bedcovers to inspect the speckled crimson stains on the sheets, as if a pressed flower had been squeezed into the linen.

  Honora felt inside herself for the blood of the broken hymen.

  S I XT E E N

  Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,

  In sleep a king, but, waking, no such matter

  —Shakespeare

  Honora was not seen on dreamside again. It was obvious to the other three that she had made a conscious decision not to return there. It must have taken some struggle. Entry into dreamside had once required considerable discipline and effort; now they were caught in an undertow which delivered them there unasked, and not to be drawn there whenever they slept required serious resis­tance.