Dreamside Read online

  "What?"

  "What, what?" Ella mimicked heavily.

  "But what about all the other times." Lee sat up. "All your other lucid dreams. All that stuff in your dreamwork diary. All those lurid accounts you gave in the seminars."

  "No," pinching his nipple between her teeth, "this was the real thing!"

  "The real thing? What was the other stuff then?"

  "It was . . . not the real thing."

  "Wait a second. You mean you made it up?"

  "Sort of."

  "What do you mean sort of? You don't sort of make up things like that! You mean it was all lies. Jesus! All your stories of lucid dreams were all a pack of lies."

  "Not exactly lies. More kind of half-lucid dreams."

  "Day dreams more like! It was all bullshit!"

  "Don't get so fucking superior—you've only just started lucid dreaming yourself, remember! You strung people along at the beginning."

  "But not with Technicolor big-budget cast-of-thousands porno­graphic epics like yours! Christ I believed every word; so did all the others. I'm going to enjoy telling them. I'll enjoy telling Brad!"

  "You won't say anything. The important thing is that it really happened. I made it happen."

  "I'm going to tell them all! Miss Lucid Dreamer of the Year! I can't wait to see their faces!"

  "You won't tell on me," said Ella. She took his cock in her cold hands and rolled it like dough. Rain swept against the outside win­dows in great gusts, coming in through the open window, soaking the curtain and dampening the disorderly heap of books.

  "Here is the church," she said, "here is the steeple."

  He promised not to say anything.

  S I X

  Learn from your dreams what you lack —W. H. Auden

  From that night Ella stopped her I'm-more-lucid-than-you games. She was a fast learner, and her genuine skills developed accordingly. She contrived to disguise the substantial change in the accounts she offered to the weekly seminar, and if anyone was made suspicious by her later reports being more modest than her early claims, nobody said anything. Even so, an unacknowledged hierar­chy did develop in the group, with Lee, Ella, Brad and Honora clearly emerging as the people with the strongest ability to influence the course of their dreaming. Each of them progressed, without major effort, from being able to conjure small objects to switching locations and settings in which dreaming took place.

  Professor Burns, when pressed, admitted that, despite several years of trying, he, like most people, had never experienced the state of self-awareness during dreaming which would allow him to manipulate the course of dream events. "I think I'm too crusted over by a life devoted to academic pursuits," he confessed, admitting to more than a little envy of their abilities. "Besides which," he added, "I don't have the modern swagger of youth in the face of fear."

  End of term beckoned, and the round of dreamwork seminars was held to be a moderate success. Their efforts, Burns asserted, while not having lit up the skies of science and progress, had contributed to a growing body of research in the increasingly important field of parapsychology. To conclude matters, he added cheerfully, a miserly wine-and-cheese celebration on the expenses of the parsimonious departmental budget would be arranged for the final week of term.

  The students made their arrangements for a long summer: Ella and Lee planned a backpacking expedition around the Greek Islands, sleeping on beaches and living on tzatsiki and feta cheese salads; Honora a trip home to beautiful County Fermanagh where she hoped to make a few pounds sketching portraits of tourists boating on the Loughs; while Brad, as a medical student, had work which would keep him at the university. Meanwhile June warmed the nights in which they lay in their beds and dreamed their lucid dreams.

  Invitations to the wine and cheese party came as promised. The students dutifully spruced up and went along to the house. A stiff performance with an early finish was predicted, but they were sur­prised to find Professor Burns racing around in high spirits, his eyes enlivened by whatever share of the drinks he had already consumed, exhorting everyone to get stuck in to the crates of wine that had been provided along with the standard party fare of cubes of cheese and French loaves.

  "Drink! It'll probably be the last time we can get this out of the miserable blighters!" Burns danced around, lavishly topping up any glass within arm's length, everyone's congenial host. "Don't be shy Brother Cousins, there's another crate through there!"

  Some group members had brought their partners, swelling the numbers to twenty or more young people freely availing them­selves of the generous flow of wine and filling the house with noisy chatter. Burns held forth to a knot of students in the corner, his steady stream of university anecdotes and outrageous disclosures producing waves of raucous laughter. After an hour or so he noticed Honora standing alone in the middle of the room with an empty glass. He cha-cha-cha'd his way over to her. He had obvi­ously been making the most of the departmental wine while the going was good. His jewel eyes blazed merrily and a long thin lock of iron-grey hair had become displaced from its habitual coiled groove across the top of his head. It hung gamely down the side of one ear.

  "Wait behind, Miss Brennan," he whispered as he refilled her glass of white wine from the bottle of dry red he was carrying, "after all the others have gone." He winked, then cha-cha-cha'd back to the corner of the room. Honora, speechless, colouring, looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. Ella drifted by.

  "L. P. is pissed," said Ella.

  "I know; he's trying to chat me up."

  "No! What did he say?"

  "He wants me to stay behind afterwards."

  "Then we're in for three-in-a-bed; he asked me to stay, too."

  "What can he want?"

  "We'll probably have to suck his balls."

  "I'm not going to!" cried Honora.

  "No, don't," said Ella, already regretting the joke. "But he's a sharp old cookie. He must be up to something."

  Ella knew that Burns had also invited Lee to stay. She had a sneaking suspicion that Brad would also be asked. Indeed, when Burns shepherded out the last of the guests, Brad was still looking very comfortable in a large high-winged armchair, nursing his very own wine bottle. Honora looked deeply relieved.

  "Yes, help yourselves to that; I don't really want the incrimi­nating stuff hanging around here." Burns was carrying out empty and half-empty wine glasses four in each hand. Then he returned and closed the door behind him. "I did intend," he said, holding out his glass to Brad, "to keep a clear head, but the road to Hell blah blah."

  "Blah blah." Brad poured from his bottle, stealing a glance at the others.

  "Quite right. Point being, why did I ask you four to stay behind?"

  "Because we four are your most lucid dreamers—we've got nothing else in common."

  "Too right," someone else agreed.

  "Too right indeed. But the question is are the four of you interested in continuing?"

  "Continuing? Continuing how?"

  "Yes, Ella, continuing. Carrying on," said Burns as if he was having to explain an obscure concept or an arcane word, "progress­ing, doing more, not stopping, going further. Some rather more intensive exercises, under more testing conditions, exploring the true potential of these . .. talents of yours."

  "Sounds interesting," said Lee, "but I'd got the idea we'd taken things as far as they could go."

  "Oh, I don't think that's the case at all. Remember, it wasn't until half-way through the seminar program that you discovered your capacity for lucid dreaming." Lee looked at Ella. "Likewise Ella. Come on, don't look quite so sheepish. It's not important; I know your later accounts were genuine enough. What I'm more concerned about is whether you four will stay on over the summer vacation and do some real work."

  "The thing is," said Brad, swirling wine dregs in a smeary glass, "we don't all have the luxury of the academic cushion."

  "Pardon?" Burns's eyebrows were twin Norman arches.

  "He means some of
us have to spend the summer working," said Lee.

  "I thought of that. And not wanting any of you to suffer the indignity of having to work for a living, I thought of a way of keep­ing you on as temporary research assistants. At least until the new term begins. Of course I'd want some results out of you; but from what I've observed of your academic activities, Brother Cousins, it won't squeeze out your studies."

  "You mean we'd get paid?"

  "A grant?"

  "For dreaming?"

  "And for writing up your results with a little more rigor than we've seen hitherto."

  "What do you get out of it, apart from seeing your name under an article in The Spoonbender's Gazette}"

  "Let's say, Brad, that I'm easily satisfied."

  "Done," said Lee.

  "Done," said the others.

  "Good," said Burns, getting out of his chair, "next week we'll see if we can't start a program of real dreaming."

  Ella was the last to file out through the hall. The door stood open to admit a wedge of cool night air, and a glimpse of a new moon hanging low over the graveyard opposite. The light played without sympathy on the old academic's cable-veined forehead as he helped Ella on with her coat.

  "By the way," shaking her hair free of her collar, "how did you know when we, that is Lee and I, started lucid dreaming for real?"

  "Oh," Burns smiled slyly, closing the door to behind her, "I'm a sharp old cookie."

  S E V E N

  All would be well

  Could we but give us wholly to the dreams

  —W. B. Yeats

  "How do you mean, 'meet up' with each other?"

  Term was over, the students had all gone home, summer was delivering its promise. Lee and Ella had abandoned their plans for combing the Mediterranean beaches of the Aegean islands; the plump faces of German and American tourists went unflattered by Honora's quick pencil sketches; and Brad's medical tomes lay unstudied on the shelf.

  The sash windows of Burns's lounge were pushed up to admit the sweet summer air. Lee held out a hand for one of Ella's hand-rolled liquorice-paper cigarettes which he had taken to smoking, and Ella grudgingly passed him the one she had just been about to light for herself. Honora reclined in a heavy armchair, her cotton dress sticking to her moist skin as she fanned herself with an Erich Fromm paperback she had plucked from the professor's shelves. Brad looked on glumly with his eyebrows raised in the expression of barely tolerant boredom that he had cultivated of late.

  "I mean exactly that: arrange a meeting, a rendezvous between the four of you at some pre-arranged location, just as you would in normal waking life."

  "Can it be done?" Ella, not looking up from her tobacco.

  "It's already been done," Burns said impatiently, "many times, under laboratory conditions."

  "If it's such a well-trodden path," said Brad, "why are we both­ering to do it?"

  Burns, looking tired, rested his head against the wings of his armchair. "I don't care to continually justify my interests; if you want my rationalizations then you'll have to earn them. If you do manage to rendezvous in dreamtime"—Burns used the new lan­guage, the conspiratorial argot of this small cell of lucid dreamers, dreamside dreamtime dreamwork dreamthought dreamspeak, to reaf­firm his membership of the group—"then exchange a phrase, a song or a proverb. Something you can bring back as an objective correla­tive. Confirmation. Words that will become real things in waking time. That's all for tonight. Thank you."

  He rose and escorted them to the door.

  "Tetchy." Brad spoke against the background of a pulsating pub jukebox. "Very tetchy."

  "You have that effect on people," said Ella. "In any case, it's time to move this thing into a different gear. Let's agree a rendezvous point, a meeting location which we could head for during dreaming. L. P. says others have done it, so why don't we give it a serious shot? We all manage to shift locations in dreamtime; let's agree on a place to meet."

  "There's a difference," Brad muttered, "between shifting loca­tions inside our own dreams and in bringing four different dreams together."

  "It can work; I know it. I just know it." Honora surprised them with her enthusiasm. "Have faith. Just choose a place."

  They all stared back at her, and for the first time Ella recog­nized the attraction which the Irish girl held for the two men. She saw them watching as Honora shyly averted her eyes and lifted her glass to her mouth. Honora was the one who talked least about the dreaming, who was the least inclined to speculate, but Ella sensed that she was also the one who dreamed deepest. She spoke as if she knew the coinage in that strange, different country. Ella warmed towards her and felt saddened by a simultaneous pang of jealousy.

  "Honora's right," she said, breaking the spell, "we've got to believe it to be possible. If you've got any more doubts, Brad, keep them to yourself."

  "Choose a place," Honora repeated.

  Brad tapped the table in front of him. "This pub, preferably after hours when we can help ourselves."

  "Be serious."

  "I am being serious!!"

  They walked home across the park. A full moon sat low in the sky. They walked past the tennis courts and along the row of cherry trees that some weeks ago had hung heavy with pink blossom. Brad aimed a full-throated howl at the appalled moon.

  "This would be a good place to meet in dreamtime!" Ella still had strong associations for the place, as, she knew, did Lee.

  "Are you sure?" said Lee.

  "What's so special about this place?" Brad wanted a more dra­matic setting.

  "It's easier to make an outdoor scene appear than it is to shift to an indoor location."

  "Is it hell," said Brad.

  "Anyway this place has a certain intensity."

  "Maybe it has for you two," he smirked. "It certainly does noth­ing for me."

  "What do you mean by 'intensity'?" Honora wanted to know.

  "It probably means they fucked here," said Brad. "But that's no help to us two."

  "The place suits me," shrugged Honora. "Seems as good as any."

  So a plan was formed and the group went their separate ways, hoping to meet there again, but in very different circumstances.

  Brad insisted on walking Honora home, against all her protests. Ella saw Lee watching them go.

  "Poor Honora," he said.

  "Yes."

  The night was hot. They propped the windows open with text books, but even then the air was close and uncomfortable, making sleep difficult. They lay on the mattress, discussing the night ahead. What would be the possibilities if they did rendezvous in dream-time? Excitement kept them awake. Eventually, sleep took them.

  Lee awoke with Ella leaning over him. Did you dream? Did you go there?"

  “No," Lee still dazed, blinking stupidly, "I didn't even dream."

  "Me neither. Nothing."

  "Maybe we tried too hard." "Maybe."

  E IGHT

  To dream of creeping up a mountain signifies

  the difficulty of the business at hand

  —Astrampsychus

  For some time the project was a singular disappointment. Not only did the four fail to keep their dreamside appointments, but the dreams themselves failed to come. Or at least, they couldn't remem­ber them in the morning. Whatever the reasons, they felt as if a power had suddenly been switched off at source, a cable discon­nected, a fuse blown.

  They tried a number of strategies to reactivate the circuit, all of which proved futile. Ella and Lee tried sleeping apart; another night Ella disappeared and returned an hour later with a small brown wedge of hashish in the hope of encouraging vivid dreams; they tried a program of rampant exhaustive sex, which, while enor­mously enjoyable, remained sadly ineffective; and they began a reg­imen of difficult-to-digest foods last thing at night, strong cheeses with exotic names and an array of pickles, all of which produced nothing more than bad breath. Finally they had to conclude that dreams rode on horses which, while they could be led to the dark waters of s
leep, could not be made to drink.

  Honora and Brad, inquiries revealed, were having similar prob­lems. Nothing was happening. Honora, however, had a different theory about why her dream diary was gathering blank pages. She complained that Brad Cousins had taken to inviting himself back to her room every night for the past week, flatly refusing to leave until the dew was up on the grass. Honora's device for beating back his advances was to make a fresh mug of coffee every twenty minutes so that she might have something—a caffeine curtain—to draw between them. These massive doses of caffeine and the attendant lack of sleep did no more to remedy Brad's or Honora's current dream amnesia than any of the desperate nostrums employed by the other two.

  "Let's run through all of the original exercises," said Burns, "from the beginning."

  Ella stifled a yawn. They met more frequently now, and always at Burns's house. If they had thought that the extended 'grants' which Burns had miraculously engineered would prom­ise them an easy summer, they had been mistaken. Burns proved to be rigorous about punctuality at meetings, exhaustive in his questioning and insistent upon meticulously kept journals chart­ing the daily progress of their dreamwork. "This is not like study­ing for a degree," he said more than once, "this is real work."

  Burns was trying hard to give them some uplift to beat the sag in the development curve.

  "But we've been through all of those exercises," Ella protested. "That's not what's blocking things."

  "So what is, exactly?"

  "I don't know."

  "Precisely. You don't know. I don't know. We all don't know. So we go back through it again, from the beginning, following our pre­viously successful formula until something breaks for us; and what's more, we keep a diary every day charting the exercises and the results."

  "But there are no results!" said Lee and Brad in chorus.

  "So we carefully chart our exercises and note that there are no results, and we explore our lack of results. What's the matter with you?" Burns's exasperation was becoming more apparent. He marched over to the sash window and pushed it open.