In Your Dreams

by Holt, Tom

  ‘Hers,’ he said. ‘Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Give it to me. No,’ Mr Tanner added quickly, ‘hold on a second.’ He picked up the tongs, used them to grip the band and tease it gently off Paul’s wrist, like a detective retrieving a fibre sample from a murder scene. He dropped it in one of the empty envelopes, sealed it with Sellotape and put it away in his inside pocket. ‘I’ll hold on to that for you for a day or so,’ he said. ‘You need to get some sleep sooner or later, or you’ll be completely useless.’ He frowned, then used the tongs to push aside the lapel of Paul’s jacket. ‘That badge thing,’ he said.

  Paul had forgotten all about the Sea Scout badge, and its painful effect on goblins. ‘Sorry,’ he said guiltily, ‘I hadn’t realised it was still there. I’ll put it away—’

  ‘No, don’t do that.’ Mr Tanner took the tongs away and stepped back as if getting but of range. ‘You hang on to that for a bit, you never know.’ He paused. Something was making him uncomfortable, as though he had a fishbone stuck in his throat. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry, the way things’ve turned out for you. I know you don’t like it here and you’d far rather pack it in, quit. Unfortunately,’ he went on, looking at the frosted-glass front window, ‘that’s not possible right now. But I just thought I’d tell you, it’s not – Well, anyway.’

  Paul would have liked to say something at this point, but he had nothing worth making the effort for.

  ‘Quite,’ Mr Tanner said. ‘Right, you get on with the Mortensens, and let Julie know when you’re finished. That’s all.’

  Paul wanted to fall asleep during the morning, curled up in a soft nest of computer printouts, but he seemed to have lost the knack. ( Can you forget how to sleep? he wondered. Do you have to go on special sleep-training courses, where they read you bits of railway timetables and literary criticism textbooks? ) He couldn’t even persuade his mind to wander; he was focused, to his absolute amazement, on his work; to the point where he’d have missed lunch if someone hadn’t knocked on his door and broken the spell.

  ‘Hi,’ Melze said, poking her head round the door. ‘Fancy coming out for lunch?’ The hell with it, Paul thought, why not? Last night, during the long vigil, he’d been wishing more than anything that he had a friend, someone he could talk to about what he’d been through in the last week or so. Fool, he’d forgotten about his oldest friend of all – true, the issue was clouded somewhat by the fact that she was a girl and he was (not beyond reasonable doubt, but on the balance of probabilities) in love with her. Stuff like that can clog your mind, like bits of rice and cold pasta gumming up a dishwasher.

  They didn’t go to the Italian sandwich bar or the little Uzbek place. Instead, they wound up in a Burger King. Somehow Paul felt that this was a bit of the adolescence he’d never had, sitting on a plastic chair drinking a milk shake through a straw with a girl he’d been at school with (though by right, in order to make it canonically correct, they should have been skiving off double Maths); it reminded him of those letters that get lost in the post and are finally delivered thirty years later. ‘Something’s bothering you,’ Melze said, looking at him with her head cocked on one side. ‘You’ve got that bewildered look you used to get when you discovered you’d forgotten your PE kit.’

  ‘That obvious?’

  She smiled. ‘It’s remarkable,’ she said, ‘how little you’ve changed. Peter Pan, almost. Makes me feel like it was only a few months ago we were at Laburnum Grove primary.’

  Paul thought about that. ‘Odd,’ he said. ‘I was thinking that you’ re the one who hasn’t changed. Well, you have changed, obviously,’ he added quickly, ‘but what made me think that was – well, how easily we’re getting on, like we’ve picked up exactly where we left off eleven years ago. I didn’t think people could do that.’

  ‘Depends on the people,’ Melze replied. ‘But don’t change the subject. Something is bothering you, isn’t it?’

  Paul took a deep breath. ‘Do you really want to hear about it?’ he said. ‘It’s long, and pretty weird.’

  ‘Sounds interesting.’

  ‘Nah.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s got me in it. I’m serious, though. Can I tell you about it? The point is,’ he added before she could reply, ‘you’re, well, normal. In fact, you’re the only normal person I know—’

  ‘Doesn’t that make me exceptional, then? Sorry,’ she added. ‘Carry on.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Get on with it, for pity’s sake.’

  Paul paused for a moment, tidying the tumbled sockdrawer of his thoughts. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I won’t start at the very beginning, with me getting the job and everything, because there isn’t time and I don’t like the sound of my own voice that much. I think this particular wave of bad stuff started when Sophie and I split up.’

  ‘Ah,’ Melze said, ‘that sort of bad stuff. I’ve got A levels in that.’

  Paul shook his head. ‘It was rotten and horrible,’ he said, ‘no question about it; but it wasn’t weird. In fact, I’d pretty much guessed it was on the cards for some time. Well, right from the start, basically. I wasn’t good enough for her, and that’s all there is to it.’

  Melze didn’t say anything, but she was looking earnestly at him. Taking me seriously, he realised with a faint shock of surprise and pleasure. So that’s what it’s like.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘that wasn’t weird. She goes off to California; and next thing I know, I’m transferred from general office dogsbody to trainee dragon-slayer.’

  She nodded gravely. ‘I’m beginning to see where the weirdness comes in. Tell me, if Sophie hadn’t got a transfer to LA, would she have been assigned to the dragon-slaying department too?’

  Paul acknowledged the merit of the question with a slight dip of the head. ‘Don’t know,’ he replied. ‘The idea is, trainees spend three months or so in each department, to find out what they’re good at. But Benny – Mr Shumway, the cashier, only he’s also a dwarf and a hero part-time – he reckons you can’t be a hero unless you’re born to it. There was a lot of touchy-feely stuff about the nature of love, but I think the bottom line was that you’ve got to be such a sad loser that nobody’d miss you if you never came back.’

  ‘Convenient,’ Melze said thoughtfully. ‘Your girlfriend dumps you, so suddenly you qualify. Did she want to go to California?’

  Paul nodded. ‘Yes. To get away from me, mostly, I think.’

  ‘Oh well.’ Melze shrugged. ‘Another finely crafted conspiracy theory bites the dust. So there you are, learning to be Conan the Barbarian.’

  ‘Not likely,’ Paul said with a faint grin. ‘Mainly it’s a cross between working in the planning office and the Territorial Army. Very boring, with little nuggests of real shit in it.’

  ‘You didn’t take to it?’

  ‘Can you say out of place? Like a slug in a packet of crisps. Not my sort of thing at all, apart from the paperwork and filling in the forms and stuff. That was boring, but at least I could handle it.’

  Melze raised her eyebrows. ‘But didn’t you actually slay a real dragon?’

  ‘Oh, come on. It was about this long.’ He enclosed a trouser leg’s length of air between his hands. ‘And I killed it by accidentally sitting on it. If Saint George ends up in the dole queue, it won’t be because of me.’

  ‘How do you know that’s not how he did it, and they changed the story a bit so as to look good in the paintings? Slaying dragons is slaying dragons, if you ask me. I couldn’t do it.’

  ‘Yes, you could. Well, you’d probably ladder your tights, but that’s about all. Anyhow, no sooner have I sort of got the hang of being a hero, but I get transferred again. Not after three months; more like a few days.’

  Melze rubbed her nose with her fingers; and through a small hole in time Paul could see her doing exactly the same thing in the playground, albeit with shorter fingers and a frecklier nose. ‘That’s odd,’ she conceded, ‘but not really weird. When you said weird, I was exp
ecting magic and monsters and spoons bending for no apparent reason, not sideways career moves.’

  Paul sighed. ‘If you want weird, brace yourself because here it comes. First, I get threatened by a talking bicycle who tells me “Free the prisoners or you’re dead.“ Then I find out that my great-uncle Ernie was a magician too, just like the partners; so good, in fact, that they had him write a section in the office-procedures manual. I’m guessing, but I wouldn’t have thought they’d have asked him to do it if he wasn’t some kind of leading expert. Then I get woken up by monsters in my own bedroom, telling me all sorts of cryptic stuff I don’t understand; and then I hear that someone planted a bomb in my filing cabinet, and the whole office gets trashed. And then,’ Paul added bittertly, ‘the fun begins. Turns out that whoever planted the bomb has kidnapped Benny Shumway and Ricky Wurmtoter, and there’s nobody in the office except me who’s qualified to rescue them. So I go to High Wycombe . . .’

  ‘Sorry,’ Melze interrupted. ‘Did you just say—?’

  Paul nodded grimly. ‘That’s the portal between this world and the Kingdom of the bloody Fey, apparently. So there’s me, or rather me and Monika.’

  ‘Monika?’

  ‘My car. Mr Wurmtoter’s sister, but also my car. We cross into the Kingdom of the Fey, and we end up in this really nasty, creepy dungeon, along with Benny. Just as I’m being drawn to the sad conclusion that this time I’m really and truly fucked, Mr Tanner’s mum turns up out of the blue and rescues me. Not Benny or Monika or Ricky Wurmtoter, mind. Me.’

  ‘Just a moment,’ Melze said. ‘Mr Wurmtoter’s sister is a car?’

  ‘Yes. At any rate, she is now. Before that, she was this tall brunette. But she got transformed – in the trade, you see – and I’m assuming they haven’t figured out how to turn her back yet. Either that or she prefers it, I really don’t know. She’s a pretty good car, I’ll say that for her; forty to the gallon, and her exhaust—’

  ‘Fine,’ Melze said firmly. ‘Mind you, I think you’re breaking the cardinal rule of office survival: don’t drive the boss’s sister. But you were saying. Mr Tanner’s mother—’

  ‘Rescued me.’ Paul turned his head away slightly. ‘I think I told you, she’s got this thing about me, God only knows why, it’s a bit sick if you ask me, her being a goblin and all. But she’s got her good points, no doubt about it. She helped me with that stupid little dragon, and fetched me out of that dungeon – really, I thought I’d had it that time.’

  Melze nodded. ‘But she didn’t rescue the others.’

  ‘No. Apparently she could only take back one of us. I imagine Benny’s going to be fairly conclusively pissed off with both of us when he gets home.’

  ‘You think they’ll be able to rescue him, then?’

  ‘Already done, apparently. The firm brokered a deal of some sort through a bunch of weirdos in an old warehouse in Bermondsey.’

  ‘Oh.’ Melze looked surprised; more so than when Paul had told her about their capture in the first place. ‘Well, that’s good. And how about Mr Wurmtoter and whatsername?’

  ‘Them too, so I’m told. The funny thing, though, is that when I got back from Wycombe, the first thing I did was barge into the Countess’s office wanting to know what they were going to do about Benny and Monika, and she downright refused to do anything. Nothing anybody could do, she said. And now, quite suddenly, they’ve been released – they’re on their way home, apparently.’

  Melze thought for a moment. She thought very fetchingly; a slight frown, a wrinkle of the nose. ‘Maybe not so strange,’ she said. ‘Like, these creeps who captured you were the rebel faction in the Fey civil war, right? And the Countess; isn’t she the rightful Queen of the Fey? Maybe when she said there was nothing she could do, she was thinking about, you know, the military option: going in there like the SAS and busting them out by force. Then she had a quiet think about it, or maybe these rebels came through with their demands for releasing the hostages. She negotiates, gives them what they want or some of it, and presto, they’ve got a deal.’

  Paul nodded. ‘That makes sense. God, that’s a change. I’m so used to everything being bizarrely inexplicable, maybe I’ve just stopped looking for reasonable explanations.’

  ‘Wouldn’t blame you if you had,’ Melze said sympathetically. ‘I mean, it’s one thing to hear you talk about it. Must be something else actually having it happen to you.’

  ‘For instance, that bloody bike turned up again, for one thing. Luckily, I think I’ve worked out how to scare it off. Turns out it’s allergic to names.’

  ‘Allergic?’

  ‘It’s like names hurt it when it hears them, so all you’ve got to do is say a whole list of them – John, Fred, Clive, Rachel – and it runs away. Curiously,’ Paul added, ‘the nutters in Bermondsey I told you about were the same way; and I think I may have seen the rogue bike in their warehouse place while I was there. Or,’ he added, ‘it could just’ve been, you know, a bike.’

  ‘A non-rogue one?’

  ‘Does seem more likely, doesn’t it? Oh, and then there was my uncle Ernie’s stuff. Apparently he died—’

  Melze was frowning again. ‘Didn’t I meet your uncle Ernie once, when we were kids?’

  ‘I doubt it. I don’t remember him at all.’

  Her face lit up. ‘Got it,’ she said. ‘I came to tea at your house, when we were very small. Not just me, I think you’d invited the whole class over for your birthday or something. That’s it; it was your birthday party, and I was really jealous because you had a real live conjuror. And you told me, it’s not like that, we’re not paying for him or anything, he’s actually my uncle. Your uncle Ernie.’

  Paul thought hard. Now Melze came to mention it, he remembered the party, his ninth birthday; and he remembered the conjuror, vaguely, though he couldn’t picture the man’s face or anything. ‘That was him?’

  ‘I’m sure it was. Tall man, very thin, bald, with a big nose and bushy eyebrows. I was scared stiff of him at first because he looked so fierce and sort of wizardy, but then he started smiling and telling very funny jokes, and I wasn’t scared any more.’

  ‘Oh,’ Paul said. ‘I wish I had a memory, it’d come in very handy. So he was actually real, then. I was beginning to wonder whether he wasn’t some sort of, well, trick that people were playing on me.’

  Melze shrugged. ‘So he died, then. He must’ve been pretty ancient, because he looked to be about a hundred and ten when we were kids. Mind you, grown-ups always look old when you’re that age, so he may only have been sixty or something. I’m sorry to hear that, though,’ she added. ‘He was a really good conjuror, anyhow.’

  Paul laughed. ‘Maybe he was cheating. You know, using real magic instead of proper sleight of hand. Anyway, the point is, I got this letter from my parents saying that his stuff was with this firm of solicitors. They didn’t want it, so if I went and got it, I could keep it. So I did. Bastards charged me a hundred quid,’ he added sourly. ‘And then, when I got it back to the office, it turned out to be all this really powerful magic gear – anti-goblin charms and a load of things Mr Tanner’s mum told me were too dangerous to leave lying around, so she took them off me and put them in the strongroom.’

  A curious look came into Melze’s eyes. ‘Really? Why?’

  Paul shrugged. ‘For safe keeping, I suppose. So they wouldn’t cause accidents or something.’

  ‘You’re sure she didn’t really want them for herself? If they were dead powerful, I mean.’

  That thought hadn’t even occurred to Paul. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ he said. ‘I mean, the shield thing; she couldn’t bear to touch it – burned her, she said.’

  ‘Or perhaps she was just pretending it hurt, so if it got stolen you’d never think it was her that took it. Have you been to check it’s all there?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, no. I mean, if she wants it, far as I’m concerned she can have it. The last thing I want is more weirdness.’

  ‘Maybe it’s va
luable,’ Melze said. ‘Could be worth a lot of money, if it’s rare magic equipment.’

  Paul considered that. ‘I don’t think goblins care a lot about money. I remember someone telling me that they’re all filthy rich anyway, because of mineral rights and God knows what. I could well believe her nicking it to do mischief with, but not just so that she could flog it for cash.’

  ‘Well.’ Melze scowled. She had a sweet scowl – dear God, Paul thought, listen to me. How can anybody have a sweet scowl? ‘I know it’s wrong and I’m probably not really supposed to think it, let alone say it, but I don’t like the goblins. Any of them. I think they’re disgusting and vicious and nasty. You should see the claw marks on the front desk some mornings; when there’s a lot of post to be sorted, sometimes Mr Tanner doesn’t do a thorough job of magicking them away. It’s scary, Paul.’

  Paul grinned. ‘Did I tell you about the time I faced down a whole gang of armed goblins with nothing but a stapler? That’s how I met Mr Tanner’s mum, actually. You see, they’d kidnapped . . .’ He hesitated. The night when the goblins abducted Sophie, and he’d gone charging off after them, their spears and swords and axes against his anger and fear of losing her, and he’d won – Somehow it didn’t seem right telling Melze about that, best friend or not. ‘They’d kidnapped one of the staff, and I confronted them, just sort of said “Boo!“ and they all ran away. Honestly, so long as you’re careful they’re the least of your worries.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘Really. To tell you the truth, I’m far more frightened of Countess Judy’s lot, the Fey. Now they give me shivers down the spine.’

  ‘Oh.’ Melze looked at him, then shrugged. ‘Well, anyway. God, is that the time? We’re late.’

  When Paul got back to his office, the pile of Mortensen printouts had quadrupled, to the point where he was afraid for the desk they sat on. ‘Bloody hell,’ he groaned, then saw a handwritten note on top of the pile:

  PAC—

  JDCB wants these done by the time you go home tonight. If you can’t finish before 5.30, don’t worry; she’s working late and will unlock the front door.