In Your Dreams

by Holt, Tom

  ‘Say it,’ she warned him, ‘or I’ll bash your head in.’

  He tried killing her by sheer glarepower, but it didn’t work terribly well. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Say it.’

  He looked away. It’d be easier if he said it to a distant bush. ‘I’m a little flower fairy,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Louder.’

  ‘I’m a little—’

  ‘Louder.’

  ‘I’M A LITTLE FLOWER FAIRY,’ Paul bellowed, and kids from all parts of the playground turned and stared. ‘All right?’ he snarled.

  Melze nodded smugly. ‘Yep,’ she said. ‘And I didn’t cheat,’ she added, ‘so there.’

  ‘Let me see your rotten conker,’ he said. She shrugged, and dangled it in front of his nose.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘Satisfied?’

  He nodded grudgingly. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘One last game. Go on,’ he pleaded as she shook her head. ‘Go on.’

  ‘All right.’

  Paul reached in his pocket and found the string of his last conker. I’ll get her this time, he promised himself, as the conker swayed gently in front of his nose. The horse chestnut was dry and wrinkled and smelt of vinegar. He sneezed, wiped his nose on his sleeve (remembering as he did so that he’d never done that when he was a kid; in fact, the only person he’d ever known who did that was Sophie –) and stood by to receive incoming—

  The stone of the knowledge of good and evil lies hidden inside the conker of self-doubt.

  The voice was so loud and clear that he looked round to see who’d said it. Nobody there, apart from Melze, who chose that moment to lash out, her arm coming forward with the dreadful power of a medieval siege engine. Their conkers met; hers shattered like glass. ‘There!’ he crowed. She burst into tears.

  ‘That’s not a conker,’ she was saying, ‘that’s a stone.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Paul heard himself say, ‘it’s the stone of knowledge.’ This made him look to see exactly what he’d got on the end of the string he was holding. They’d both been right. Instead of a conker—

  ‘That’s ours,’ Melze snarled through her tears. ‘That belongs to us. Give it back.’

  As the string twisted, it swung round; a bright yellow unblinking eye with a black pupil that looked into him and then at her as it swung to and fro. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s ours. We won it, and we’re going to keep it.’ Paul stuffed it back in his pocket before she had a chance to make a grab at it. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘your turn. Go on, say it. You’ve got to.’

  She gave him a look of pity and contempt. ‘I’m a little flower fairy,’ she enunciated disdainfully. ‘Right, now give it back.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Give it back,’ Melze repeated. ‘Or I’ll tell my aunt.’

  ‘You tell her, I don’t care,’ he replied, but he knew he was lying. Melze didn’t have a mummy or a daddy (some people didn’t, apparently) but she did have an Auntie Judith; and nobody in his right mind would want to tangle with her. She came from the same place where the nightmares come from; she was huge and fierce and very, very stern. On the other hand, Paul remembered, she wasn’t likely to get involved in a trivial conkers dispute. Auntie Judith didn’t approve of conkers, or children, or anything much.

  ‘I hate you,’ Melze said. She was about to do more crying; which was unusual, because Melze wasn’t like that. All the other girls went for tears like gunslingers in a Dakota saloon, especially if a teacher was nearby, but Melze only blubbed when she was unhappy . The thought disturbed Paul. It wasn’t exactly ideal, having a girl for your best friend, but he figured that it cut both ways. It didn’t seem right, making her unhappy over a silly old conker.

  Except that it wasn’t a conker. It was an eye, and they don’t grow on trees. And she had no right to it; none of her side had any right to it, and it wasn’t fair for them to want it. She was his friend, but if she was really a friend, she wouldn’t have asked. She’d have known.

  ‘I hate you too,’ he said. ‘So there.’

  Her eyes were suddenly hard, and strange, and very old. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’m telling my aunt about you.’

  The fear was real enough, but she was wrong and he was right. Surely no harm could come to him if he was in the right, or else how could the world possibly keep going? ‘Don’t care,’ he said. ‘You tell who you like, you still can’t have it.’

  Melze didn’t reply; instead, she opened her lunch box and drew out a long, thin sword, silvery-white like an icicle. It was much longer than the box, but then, there were a lot of things in life that Paul didn’t understand, even when he was awake. ‘I hate you,’ she repeated (and behind her, the rest of her side were lining up; they had swords like hers, and spears and bows and double-headed axes) and stabbed the sword at his face—

  Paul jerked back so hard that he nearly fell out of his chair. ‘Melze?’ he said aloud, but of course there wasn’t anybody in the room except him. He sat quite still, just in case, but nothing happened.

  The stone of the knowledge of good and evil lies hidden inside the conker of self-doubt.

  Coffee, Paul said to himself, it must be coffee. Pity the decaffeinated stuff tastes so yucky. Still, if it can do things like that to a person, no more caffeine from now on. He leaned forward and picked up the book, closed it, hesitated and slid it back onto the shelf. One good thing about his peculiar dream, it had helped pass the time. His watch said ten past five; twenty more minutes and he was out of there. Just as well; it’d been a long and gruelling day. It occurred to him that if he nipped down to the front office (realistically, of course, nipping wasn’t possible in the JWW building; the distances involved were too great for nipping, you had to plod or trek instead) he could casually mention to Melze, assuming she wasn’t busy with a client or answering the phone, that he didn’t have anything much planned for this evening, so maybe they could go and see a film or something. He could do that. Probably she’d say ‘Yes, I’d like that.’ There was no reason why it couldn’t happen.

  Paul frowned. He’d like that, wouldn’t he? He’d like that more than anything else he could think of. Wouldn’t he?

  Well, of course. It’d be silly not to.

  Right, then.

  He stayed where he was. It had absolutely nothing to do with the strange dream (which was entirely due to coffee; purely a chemical reaction, meaningless). It wasn’t that debilitating, limb-cramping fear that he’d learned to associate with talking to girls. It wasn’t anything. Just—

  Of course, he knew about all that stuff, he’d seen chat shows and read bits in magazines in waiting rooms. He knew about how men reach a point in a relationship where the road forks, commitment or escape, and their natural instinct is to run like hares. He knew too that he was still healing from the trauma of getting dumped, so naturally he was scared of getting back into the ring. There were plenty of reasons why he wouldn’t want to stroll down to reception right now. Loads of them. Absolutely certainly and for sure, it wasn’t anything to do with the crazy dream.

  Twenty-five past five; Paul stood up, reached for his coat, put it on, stopped. There were many excellent reasons for not being in the office once they locked the front door, all of them goblins; but he stayed put, studying the second hand of his watch. Mr Wurmtoter would be back any day now, according to Benny Shumway. Paul had no idea why but he found that thought reassuring. Not because he had any naive notions of Mr Wurmtoter being on his side or anything like that; Ricky Wurmtoter was a partner, and therefore a part of the weirdness. But he was also a hero, which meant that it was his job to fight the forces of darkness and save the innocent from mortal danger. Paul found the thought of that mildly reassuring, until he remembered that he was now a hero too. The criteria obviously weren’t particularly stringent.

  A little scrap of worry was niggling him, but he didn’t know what it was; it was like being irritated by the feel of a raspberry pip jammed in the crack between two teeth you’d had pulled out years ago. Five-thirty. He pushed t
he door open and set off down the corridor as quickly as he could go without actually running.

  In theory, the front door was shut at five-thirty but not actually locked until a quarter to six; also in theory, the goblins stayed lurking in wherever it was they lurked during the day until the front door had been locked and the duty partner had checked the building to make sure everybody had gone home. In theory—

  ‘You.’

  Paul heard it, but it sounded strange; a human word spoken by something inhuman, like a phrase repeated by a mynah bird. Best to ignore it, he thought; but then whatever it was spoke again.

  ‘You. I’m talking to you.’

  He stopped, looked round. He was standing outside the closed-file store, whose door was ajar. Wondering why in hell’s name he was doing such a very stupid thing, he pushed the door open with the tip of his forefinger and looked in. Nobody there; just a million buff envelopes on shelves, and somebody’s old bicycle.

  ‘Yes, you,’ said the bicycle. ‘Look at me when I’m talking to you.’

  He wasn’t even sure how he knew it was the bicycle talking; it wasn’t staring at him with its headlamp or frowning with its handlebars. He just knew.

  ‘Sorry,’ Paul said. ‘Can I do something for you, or—?’

  ‘Shut up and listen,’ said the bicycle. ‘You’ve got to let her go, do you understand? You’ve got to. It’s not right.’

  ?, Paul thought. ‘Sorry,’ he repeated, ‘I don’t understand. Who do you mean?’

  ‘Let her go,’ the bicycle said. It was old, and green, and the white vinyl of its seat was cracking. ‘Otherwise, so help me, we’ll kill you. Do you understand?’

  ‘No,’ Paul said, and waited for a reply; but the bicycle was now nothing but a bicycle, incapable of human speech. Paul sighed. ‘Look,’ he said, though he was fairly sure there wasn’t anybody there to hear him, ‘if you don’t tell me what you want, how can I be expected to do it? Be fair. Please?’ Just an old bicycle, with a black oily chain and bits of chrome flaking off the pedal stems. ‘Screw you, then,’ Paul said bitterly, and left the room.

  Something was following him. Eloquent testimony of how strange Paul’s life had become, that he hoped it was just goblins and not an enchanted push-bike. He turned a corner and collided with something; something short and very chunky.

  Fuck, he thought, goblins; but it turned out to be Benny Shumway, who scowled at him and asked him what he thought he was playing at.

  ‘Sorry,’ Paul said. ‘I was just on my way out when a bike started threatening me. In the closed-file store. Do you know anything about that?’

  Benny shrugged. ‘Nothing that goes on in there would surprise me any more,’ he replied. ‘I’d stay well clear of it if I were you. Come on, I’ll see you to the front office. I don’t suppose the goblins’d pick on you, because of Dennis Tanner’s mother, but you never know. They can get rather boisterous sometimes.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Paul said, realising that he was in fact rather more scared than he’d appreciated. ‘So,’ he went on, making conversation, ‘do we know when Mr Wurmtoter’s due back yet?’

  ‘Any day now,’ Benny replied. ‘Thank goodness. It’s been a real pain, doing his work and mine as well. So,’ he added, ‘what did you make of your first afternoon in Glamour?’

  Paul thought before answering. ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think I’ll be any good at it. I mean, glamour . Not my thing, you know?’

  Benny looked up at him and grinned. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Well—’ Wasn’t it obvious? ‘I mean, it’s all about beauty and charm and all kinds of stuff I wouldn’t know about.’

  ‘Because you’re awkward and shy and your ears stick out like wing-mirrors?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Valid point. But you’ve got to know about it, even if you can’t do it yourself. I suggest you do your time and then ask to be put in with Cas Suslowicz. You’ll like his department, it’s – well, almost normal. Civil engineering, like I said – can’t get more down to earth than that.’ Benny frowned. ‘Actually, that’s a bad choice of words, given that what Cas is best at is building rainbow bridges and castles in the air. But it’s still all about planning permission and quantity surveying and snagging lists and subcontractor scheduling. Not much magic, is what I’m trying to say.’

  Paul agreed that that would suit him far better. ‘And no talking bicycles,’ he added thoughtfully.

  ‘That’s really bugging you, isn’t it?’ Benny laughed. ‘Listen, don’t worry about it. Probably someone’s idea of a joke, like a whoopee cushion or a bag of flour balanced over a door. It’s a safe bet that it was meant for someone else, anyhow.’

  They did bump into a party of goblins, in the corridor leading to the fire door behind reception; but as soon as they saw Benny, they scowled and turned away. ‘They’re no bother really, if you stand up to them,’ Benny said cheerfully. ‘’Course, it helps if you’re a dwarf, like me. We’ve got a lot of history with goblins, mostly stuff they’d prefer to forget. You get on,’ he added, ‘it’s my turn to lock up. See you tomorrow, then.’

  As the door closed behind him, Paul felt an unusual surge of relief at being outside, in the normal, safe street. Mostly, being in the office didn’t spook him any more, not the way it had done at first. He’d got used to it, like the people who build villages on the slopes of active volcanoes. This evening, however, had reminded him of just how flimsy the partition was between the monotonous daily routine and the stark terror of it all. A bit like being an estate agent in a war zone.

  It was only when he’d got home and was defrosting a frozen pizza for dinner that he suddenly realised what had been preying on his mind, ever since he’d woken up from his dream. He darted across to the bookshelf and pulled down Sophie’s copy of the office-procedures manual. At the back, just before the index, was a page that he’d flicked past without reading several times. He found it, ran his finger down the list of names till he came across the entry for the chapters he’d glanced at earlier –

  EFFECTIVE MAGIC by Otto Nijsbakker, Contessa Judith di Castel’Bianco, Professor Kajikawa Yosobie & Dr Ernest Carpenter

  Ernest Carpenter. Ernie Carpenter. Uncle Ernie.

  Cohere, Paul ordered himself. Not the most uncommon name in the world. Probably – no, almost definitely someone else, a complete stranger . Nevertheless; Uncle Ernie, whom he hadn’t seen or heard about since he was a little kid. Not since he was at junior school, in fact. Hadn’t his name come up in some conversation recently? He wasn’t sure. He made a mental note to ask after him next time he heard from Mum and Dad, assuming he could get that many words in edgeways.

  The microwave pinged; dinner was served. Paul slapped the pizza onto a plate, found a clean fork and knife, made himself a strong black coffee, switched the telly on and flopped down on the sofa. He’d apparently hit the news, but he couldn’t be bothered to get up and change the channel. He munched pizza through various small wars and other melodramas, and was chasing a stray olive round the plate when he heard something that made him look up—

  ‘. . . Reports just coming in of an explosion in the City of London.’ Shaky hand-held footage of a red glow behind silhouetted buildings; a fire engine, men with hoses. ‘The blast wrecked offices in St Mary Axe, causing extensive damage, though as yet there are no reports of casualties.’ Paul jumped to his feet, dropping the plate and scattering fragments of pizza crust. Irritating helicopter shot, could be anywhere; then, unmistakable, the frontage of JWW. There was the brass plaque on the wall, but the door was gone and so was a large chunk of the masonry. ‘Police have not yet commented on the cause of the explosion, but are not ruling out the possibility of terrorist involvement. Finally, Larry the ring-tailed lemur who escaped from London Zoo two days ago has been found after a—’

  Paul said something vulgar about Larry the lemur and switched the television off, thinking: a bomb? Surely not. A bolt of lightning, maybe, or even a direct hit from a fire-breath
ing dragon; but ordinary mundane old high explosive would be beneath the dignity of trade rivals, and nobody else knew who JWW were so why would they blow them up? Unless it was an accident; goblins having water-balloon fights with Benny Shumway’s private stock of nitroglycerine, perhaps, or playing chicken with a gas main. Unless it really was a dragon, and the news people were just—

  Then someone grabbed him from behind, and he felt claws digging into his neck.

  Chapter Five

  ‘It’s all right,’ hissed a horrible voice in Paul’s ear, as the claws bit into his skin. ‘Nobody’s going to hurt you.’

  Fibber, Paul thought; but the grip was too tight to allow him to put his thoughts into words. He decided to hold very still indeed, and pass out as quickly as possible. On balance, if he had to die, he’d rather be asleep when it happened.

  ‘Mum,’ said a voice in the distance, ‘not so tight, all right? They’re fragile, you’ll break it.’

  The grip relaxed slightly, and Paul could feel something huge on his shoulder, turning him as though he was a page in a book. He’d closed his eyes when the pain was bad; now he opened them again. Injudicious. He shuddered.

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘It’s no use saying “Mum“ at me like that,’ said the horrible voice. ‘How do I make it stay still?’

  ‘Let it go, for God’s sake. You’re probably hurting it.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  The thing, the hideous, terrifying, ugly thing, was huge, like a grizzly bear or a monster gorilla, but it wasn’t any kind of creature that Paul had ever seen or heard about. Its skin was fish-belly white and coarse as sandpaper; its head was completely spherical, with slits for ears, eyes and mouth, and sat on top of a gross sack of a body like a golf ball balanced on a dollop of weightless custard. Paul could feel how very strong it was, but where it kept its muscles was anybody’s guess. He didn’t even bother trying to peer over its shoulder for a look at the owner of the other voice.