I was sitting in the lounge when I heard Mum’s key in the lock, and the sound of her walking down the hallway.
“Did you know?” I asked, before she had even entered the room.
“Hello, nice to see you too,” Mum responded before she saw the look on my face. “Know what, honey?”
“Know what would happen to our house!”
“What do you mean?”
“Melody called – it’s gone.”
“Oh,” Mum said. “How?”
“I guess they demolished it – and all the trees too – it’s like we were never there – like our whole lives never existed at all!”
Tears were running down my cheeks, and my voice was cracking, but I didn’t care.
“That’s a bit of a shock,” Mum said. “But it’s just a house, honey, it’s not our lives.”
“It’s not just a house!” I sobbed. “It’s a home – it was… I grew up there. Don’t you even care about that?”
“Awa,” Mum said, but I had already gotten up.
I stormed down the hallway, slammed my door closed, and threw myself on my bed. I’ll call Dad; maybe he will care.
“Awa – hi – look, I’m just in a meeting at the moment – I’ll call you back, okay.”
He hung up the phone. Blinking back more tears, I typed Dad a message instead:
Hi Dad, I just wanted to tell you that our house – the one we used to live in – is gone now. It’s just gone. There’s nothing left. Anyway, I hope you’re having a good meeting. Bye.
How could this happen? My parents didn’t even care. Maybe no one cared but me. I cried until I was too tired to cry anymore, and then I drifted off to sleep with heavy eyes.
I felt the sensations under-foot: the ground I knew so well, tree roots in the dry summer grass. The scent of my Nannie’s freshly baked rēwana bread drifted through the air. Something lit up inside me – like I’d stumbled back into a memory of the last time I’d felt properly happy. I was walking on the lawn of my old house, under the old redwood, past the magnolia tree. I looked up towards the house with its familiar green edging.
I wanted to explode into celebration, Melody was wrong!
Then, as the house blurred and shifted in front of me, I realised I couldn’t possibly be there. My excitement sank and swirled into a dark heavy feeling.
You’re not real anymore, I thought, looking up at the house.
I must be dreaming, but it feels like I’m awake… how strange.
Everything seemed to slide into itself. The view around me faded at the edges. I saw movement and looked up at the house again. Someone was at the window, a boy with a pale face, looking out. The ghost of the house, the thought came. A chill ran down my spine. I turned to run, terrified that the ghost would follow me, would haunt me, I woke up to a buzzing sound.
My phone was ringing. Dad, the screen read.
“Hello?” I said, my voice was croaky with sleep.
I wondered why my dad was calling in the night before I realised I must have fallen asleep in the afternoon again.
“Awa! I’m sorry, did I wake you?” he asked. “It’s only eight-thirty.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I was just resting. School has been busy, and I was tired.”
“Oh,” Dad replied. “Look, I just wanted to say I’m sorry about before. I’ve been so busy with work, and I’m also sorry I haven’t seen you lately.”
“It’s okay, Dad,” I said, with that good feeling I get when Dad pays attention to me, like warm sunshine.
“And I’m sorry about the house too,” said Dad. “It’s so sad they did that.”
“Yeah,” I said, but there wasn’t much else I could say.
“I mean,” Dad’s voice continued although I had pulled away from the phone. “Once we sold it, we had no control, and we had to sell, you know, because of the divorce.”
I held back the tears that kept trying to burst out.
“I know.”
“Anyway, let’s hang out soon. How about we go for pizza next week?”
“Sounds good,” I said, feeling the warmth fade and the longing come back.
“I’ll let you go, but I just want to say I love you and I care about you, sweetie.”
“I love you too, Dad.”
I dropped the phone onto my bed and rolled over. At least Dad understood.
I picked up the book I’d found in the school library. It was really good – about this kid whose family had to move to the other side of the world to get away from a nasty criminal. I even read while eating dinner – fried rice with extra chili sauce. I forgot all about the creepy dream I’d had until Mum told me it was bedtime.
As soon as I was alone in my room, getting my pyjamas on, the feeling came back, like I was being watched.
I left the light on and got into bed.
“Time for lights out, sweetie,” Mum said, leaning against the door frame. She looked tired.
“I’m just gonna sleep with it on tonight.”
Mum sighed. “Not this again, Awa.”
“Come on, Mum. I won’t be able to sleep otherwise. I had a nightmare about the house, and there was this creepy kid staring at me through the window.”
“You only just found out about the house.”
“It was this afternoon – I had a nap.”
“Really?” Mum said I could tell she didn’t believe me.
“Yes – really!”
“Why do you keep falling asleep in the afternoon?” Mum asked.
“I’m tired?!”
Mum sighed again. She came in and sat down on my bed.
“Look, honey. I know all this change has been hard on you, and not seeing your dad much…”
“I see him enough,” I said, even though it was true that I hadn’t actually seen him for a while.
“Is there anything I can do, to make things easier?”
“Just let me sleep with the light on, okay?”
“Okay – but don’t make a habit of it,” Mum said. “It’s not good for your sleep.”
She hugged me and left the door open, and the hallway light on too, just how I like it.
Chapter Three
It happened over and over again. I dreamed about the old house every single night since I’d heard the news that it was gone. It was the house I had grown up in. I knew every inch of it, and now my dreams were tracing it.
Walking down the hallway…
Standing in the kitchen…
Going from room to room…
I opened the door. I was staring into the dark hallway of my old house. Light flickered down the walls just as a shiver ran down my spine. I’m not supposed to be here.
The shadows moved and shifted around me as I seemed to glide through the house.
I got to the kitchen; bright light lit up the old yellow linoleum floor and the orange cupboards with their peeling paint. That’s when I saw it. It was dark green and slithering on the floor:
A huge snake!
It lifted its head and hissed at me. I ran to the back door, and out into the night.
It felt unsafe out there too. The land around me looked haunted and empty except for the forest. There was no forest here before. I must be dreaming. I turned back to see the house had morphed into an old church.
There was movement out of the corner of my vision:
The snake!
It was even bigger, and it was coming right towards me.
No! I screamed and ran into the dark forest. I could hear the twigs cracking under its weight and the hissing as it followed me, closer and closer, growing larger and larger.
All I could do was run!
I woke up, my heart racing from the nightmare. I rolled over in my bed and pulled the covers up over my head, wrapping myself in a ball.
It’s okay, I tried to reassure myself, it’s just a dream, but dreams meant something different now. A sparkle was still just visible on my index finger even though it had almost completely faded. If dreams are real – I don
’t want anything to do with them!
The snake dream kept coming back to my mind at school over the next few days. It felt so real!
I wondered whether there was something wrong with my brain, or whether there really was something after me: something evil. I mostly kept to myself at school because I didn’t feel very social. I hung out in the library at lunchtimes and looked up everything I could find about dreams and snakes and demons… and I made myself feel even worse!
School hadn’t gotten much better. I tried to avoid Felicity, but I did notice her looking at me and giggling with some of her friends, probably calling me horrible names behind my back.
It was lunchtime when I saw Ella again.
“Felicity’s awful, isn’t she?” Ella said.
I nodded. I didn’t know what else to say. As we walked out into the courtyard and into the sunshine, the tightness lifted. I sighed.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked Ella.
“That’s a good question – she’s always been like that, as far as I can remember.”
“I didn’t do anything to her except accidentally sit in her seat. What does she have against me?”
“That’s just Felicity”, Ella said. “She’s jealous of you because you’re new, so you get more attention from the teachers and because you’re cool.”
“I find that very hard to believe. I said I’ve never once been cool in my entire life.”
“You are!” Ella insisted. “You dress differently, and you’re… I don’t know… you’re your own person – you’re not trying to be like everyone else.”
“Maybe it’s more that she’s racist,” I said.
“Maybe,” Ella replied. “I never really noticed.”
Later that day Ella asked: “Do you want to come over next weekend for a sleepover?”
I didn’t know what to say. The school bell had just rung, and I was packing up my bag. I liked Ella, but what if I talked in my sleep when I was dreaming – or worse, what if I have another snake nightmare and scream?
“I’ll ask my mum,” I said, smiling, but deep down I was worried.
I walked out of the school gates into a gust of typical Wellington wind. There was too much to think about.
That was when I saw it: the snake tattoo. It was green and looked as if it was glistening, and it was on the arm of a big hulking man, standing outside the school gates with a black t-shirt and ripped jeans.
I stared. The snake looked just like the one from my nightmares! I stood, stock-still, staring at the man. A tingle of fear ran up my spine.
It was so weird – the way things from my dreams were turning up in real life. I looked at the man’s face, and he smiled at me. I flinched and began walking, quickly away, trying my best not to run. Running shows them you’re afraid.
I continued walking as quickly as I could until I turned a corner, out of sight. I stopped panting. He must be evil… he must be dangerous.
I tried to think of something else – to push the image of the man and the snake out of my mind, but it kept coming back. What was he even doing outside my school? I wondered. A hundred paranoid thoughts rushed through my head. Maybe he’s after me, I checked behind me, but no one was there. I looked suspiciously into the passing cars, but the man wasn’t in any of them. I ran home, against the wind, keeping a constant watch on everything and everyone around me.
I slammed the door closed behind me as soon as I got home. Mum came down the hallway.
“Awa, what’s wrong?”
I was still catching my breath.
“Nothing,” I lied, but I could tell from her look that Mum didn’t believe me.
“It doesn’t seem like nothing,” Mum said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” She pulled me into a hug.
“I feel like I have!” I said.
I didn’t know how much to tell her. I told her about the man with the snake tattoo, but that didn’t make sense without telling her about the dream too. Once I started talking, everything just came out – the dreams about the old house, the strange thing with the starry room, and my fingernail.
“It’s like my dreams are real,” I said.
“Awa,” Mum said. She looked concerned. “Let’s have a hot chocolate.”
I sat down, waiting for my heartbeat to slow back to normal. Mum moved slowly around the kitchen, making hot drinks. She had a worried look, and I wondered if I had made a mistake in telling her. It felt so good to tell someone, but it seemed crazy even as I was telling it to Mum.
She sat down with me on the couch, passing me my hot chocolate that was the perfect temperature to drink.
“Awa…” Mum started.
“I know – it sounds crazy…” I said. “Just please believe me!”
“How can I…”
We sat in silence for a moment.
“I know things have been hard lately with the move and the divorce and the new school.”
“It’s not that!” I said, my voice rising in anger. Why couldn’t she just trust me?
“You’ve been having trouble with anxiety.”
“Mum – I’ve had anxiety since before the divorce.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I want to talk to you about, honey.” She lowered her eyes. “You won’t remember this, because you were a baby, but…”
“What?”
“It’s hard to explain,” Mum said, and I could see tears in the corners of her eyes. “But I think the anxiety might have started when you were very young. It was… a difficult birth. You were born too early.”
“I know I was a prem baby, Mum.”
“Yes, but you don’t know how… how all that affected me.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. I looked at Mum’s face where a tear had started to trickle down her cheek. She brushed it away.
“I wasn’t well for quite a while after you were born, which made it really hard for me to take care of you. I spent a lot of time resting in bed and feeling awful. I felt so guilty, Awa. I didn’t know what to do. I think that difficult time was what caused you to be an anxious child.”
“Maybe it did,” I said. “But that’s not the same as my dreams becoming real.” I put my cup down on the coffee table and got up. It didn’t seem like she was listening to me at all!
“Look, honey, maybe there is no connection.” Mum said, her eyes had a pleading look. “But I think we should do something about the anxiety.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I talked to your father about you being anxious at school. He thinks it might help if you see a therapist that specialises in this kind of thing.”
“What?”
“I didn’t agree with him,” Mum said. “I thought he was jumping to extremes again, but now…”
“Now you think there’s something wrong with my brain!” I yelled.
So that’s what I get for telling people the truth! I stormed to my room. I’m never doing that again!
Chapter Four
I was looking forward to the weekend because Melody, my best friend from my old school, was coming over for a sleepover. I hadn’t seen her for ages.
I got home from school on Friday afternoon and tidied my room before Melody arrived. At 5, I got a message saying she was running late — typical Melody. I finally heard the apartment buzzer at 6 and ran to let her in.
“Hey!” I called as she came through the door, her strawberry blonde curls bouncing around her shoulders.
“Awa!” Melody hugged me. “So good to see you!”
She looked around. “Hi Vivian!” she called to my mother, who was in the kitchen, making dinner.
“Hi, Melody, welcome to our new home,” Mum said.
“It’s great here,” Melody said. “I mean, it’s small, but it’s so close to town.”
“It is a bit of a change,” Mum said.
I dragged Melody away before she got stuck into conversation with my mother. They got along way too well.
We hung out in my room. I felt self-conscious
about how messy it was with all my stuff from my old house packed into a smaller space. Melody didn’t seem to mind.
We watched some online videos by Valerie Sparkles and Todd Brainstorm.
“Can we order pizza?” Melody asked. “I’m starving.”
“Mum’s making Bolognese,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her that I hated asking Mum to spend money, especially at the moment, because she seemed so stressed about it.
“Pizza is better,” Melody said. “But I do like spaghetti.”
“You like Mum’s cooking too,” I reminded her.
“Very true,” she said, then she changed the conversation. “Hey… so what’s the gossip?”
“What gossip?” I asked.
“New school… what’s it like?”
“It’s… it’s fine,” I lied.
“It doesn’t sound fine,” Melody said.
“Well, it’s just… I don’t know anyone yet; I don’t really have proper friends. I mean, I’ve known you since kindergarten, and I knew enough about people at our old school to know who I wanted to be friends with, but I just don’t know…”
“You’ll make friends,” Melody assured me. “How about boys?”
“What?”
“Cute boys – tell me!”
“Oh, uhh… I don’t know,” I said.
“Awa!”
“What?”
“I need details!”
“I said, I don’t know.”
Melody threw herself down on the bed. “You are of no use to me!” she yelled into a pillow. I laughed. She turned around. “I need you to keep records of all the cute boys and their phone numbers – get their phone numbers!”
“I’m not going to do that, Melly.”
Melody glared, in that joking way that was one of her usual expressions. Mum brought us plates of hot, steamy spaghetti Bolognese which she said we had to eat at my desk. It was delicious, and Melody forgot all about the pizza idea, thank goodness.
Awa and the Dreamrealm Page 2
