In Your Dreams

by Holt, Tom

  ‘Or there’s the closed-file store,’ the goblin persisted hopefully. ‘We aren’t allowed in there unless one of you Tall Bastards lets us in. You sure you haven’t accidentally lost something in there? A paper clip or a two-pee piece or something?’

  ‘No, really,’ Paul said firmly. ‘But thanks ever so much for offering.’

  The goblin muttered something under its breath, then whistled to its chums. They all glowed electric blue for a split second, then vanished. Paul allowed himself a moment or so to gaze at the majesty of the spectacle before him. According to his parents, his bedroom had been, beyond all possibility of comparison, the untidiest place on the planet. Not any longer. For a connoisseur of the Shambles Beautiful, it was an awesome sight. A small part of him hoped that the clearing-up spell the partners used every morning to straighten up the aftermath of the previous night’s goblin frolics would suffice to deal with this mess. The rest of him couldn’t care less.

  Back in his office, Paul carefully opened the matchbox. There was the stone, still looking uncannily like one of the bits of coloured glass that you get in a flame-effect electric fire. He closed his hand around it, then hesitated and opened his desk drawer. Sellotaped to the side was a list of in-house extension numbers. He found the cashier’s office and dialled. No reply. Not-Melze was still at the Bank. Fine.

  On his way to the cashier’s room Paul stopped off at the closed-file store and headed for the shelves where Benny stored the heavy-duty pest-control gear. Since he was on a roll with wanton destruction, he was tempted by the comprehensive selection of explosive devices and accessories, but in the end he decided to keep it simple and discreet, and helped himself to a crowbar, a hammer, a couple of offcuts of two-by-four and a bag of nails. Plenty enough to carry up two flights of stairs (three if there was an R in the month; offhand he couldn’t remember), and not so noisy as to risk attracting unwanted attention. It did cross his mind to see if Ricky Wurmtoter was in his room, but he decided against it. Paul still wasn’t sure about Ricky. True, he seemed to be mostly all right, but he was still Management. Paul reckoned he’d be better off on his own.

  The first part of his plan wasn’t too hard, although woodwork had never been his strong suit, and he caught himself a nasty blow on the thumb with the hammer. That gave him the time he was going to need for the tricky bit, the first part of which was breaking into the filing cabinet.

  Tricky was about right. When the crowbar snapped in half like a stick of celery, Paul seriously considered going down to reception and asking for a loan of another six dozen goblins. He dismissed the notion; the partners were bound to have specifically goblin-proofed every bit of office furniture in the place, so even the relentless energy and imagination of Mr Tanner’s off-relations wasn’t likely to do him any good. There were always the explosives, but by now he had a nasty feeling that the rest of the building was likely to give way long before the filing-cabinet lock. Hitting it with the hammer would achieve nothing beyond a temporary alleviation of his frustrations. Apparently he was screwed after all.

  Unless—

  Surely not. But what the hell, it was worth a try. Paul opened the top drawer of the desk and looked inside. Sure enough, along with the statutory broken pencils, twisted mess of tangled rubber bands, spilt miscellany of paper clips and whorls of discarded Extra Strong Mint wrappers was a little chrome-plated key. Just for kicks, he tried it in the filing-cabinet lock. It turned, something went click, and the drawer slid open as smoothly as a politician lying.

  Fine, Paul thought, as he took a deep breath. Now for the really tricky bit.

  Muscles stiffened, teeth clenched, he peered inside.

  His first reaction was: Shit – no wonder the bloody thing was so heavy to shift around.

  A spiral stone staircase, such as you’d expect to see in a church tower or the keep of a medieval castle, led down from the lip of the drawer into a huge, gloomy hall, dimly lit with rush lamps set in wall sconces. Paul hesitated for maybe five seconds; then, brushing aside a file divider marked A-C, he scrambled into the drawer and started to descend. He had the key in his pocket, just in case it’d do him any good if someone came in and slammed the drawer shut; he’d also brought the hammer and half the broken crowbar. If he got trapped down here, would anybody think to look for him? Just possibly, yes. After all, his name did begin with C, and all offices everywhere are founded four-square on the principle of alphabetical order.

  It was dark. Paul hated spiral staircases. There were almost certainly rats, not to mention spiders. For the first time, he genuinely felt like a junior apprentice hero. Not that that was any comfort at all. In fact, it was right up at the snow-capped top of the list of things he didn’t want to be right now. Nevertheless: just for once, he had a plan – not a very good one, in all probability, but still a plan. All junior apprentice heroes have plans, the way teenagers have spots. He pressed on until he ran out of steps, then stopped. Someone was staring at him – he could feel it.

  ‘You again,’ said a vaguely familiar voice.

  ‘Hello?’ He hated the sound of his voice at that particular moment: reedy and feeble and indescribably silly. ‘Where are you? I can’t see—’

  ‘Oh, right. In that case—’

  Green light seeped through from all directions, showing Paul a scene that he recognised straight away. A long green fire ran the length of a broad Hollywood-medieval hall, oak-panelled and hammer-beam-roofed, painted and gilded. Polished tables and carved benches flanked the hearth, and the walls were masked by acres of richly coloured tapestries, a grotesque combination of flowers, wildlife, court and battle scenes. At the end of the hall, a high table crossed the T. Paul swung round, but the staircase wasn’t there any more, needless to say. ‘Idiot,’ Paul muttered to himself, ‘idiot idiot idiot.’

  ‘Now you know where you are,’ said the little girl, stepping out from the hidden side door. ‘Didn’t expect to see you here again. Last time, you couldn’t wait to leave.’

  Behind her were the rest of the gang he’d first encountered at the all-night garage in the Forest of Dean; the same nightmare blend of cuteness and horror, Stephen King moonlighting as script editor for The Brady Bunch. Great plan, Paul thought; now what?

  ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, ‘wrong drawer. I was looking for DE. You couldn’t possibly point me in the right direction—?’

  A freckle-faced boy grinned at him. ‘D as in Dungeon? Sure, we’ll take you there if you like.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Paul said, ‘but actually I was after E for Escape.’

  ‘Then you’re out of luck,’ the boy said. ‘Definitively out of luck, in fact. Please abandon all hope in the receptacles provided.’ He took a step forward. ‘And if you think your horrible friend with the claws and the little round red eyes is going to burst in and save you again, you can forget it. We’ve upgraded the security since you were here last.’ He pointed to something above Paul’s head; Paul craned his neck and saw something small and metallic flashing pale green light, nailed to a cross-beam. The Sea Scout badge.

  No need to ask how that had got there. Nevertheless, Paul had a feeling that the loathsome kid had committed a tactical error in drawing his attention to it. Apart from that one step forward, the gang hadn’t moved. He was prepared to bet (not that he had any choice) that as long as he stayed underneath the badge they weren’t in any hurry to come closer. At best, though, it was a stalemate.

  ‘Not that it matters,’ the girl was saying, ‘but what on Earth prompted you to come back here?’ She giggled. ‘Is there anything we can do for you?’

  Paul forced himself to smile. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘there is. You can answer a few questions for me, and you can give me back something that belongs to me. Would that be all right?’

  The boy grinned. ‘Depends,’ he said. ‘On whether you’ve got anything to bargain with. We don’t think you have. And don’t think you can stay safe for ever just standing under that stupid badge thing. Sooner or later you’ll pass out from
hunger or fall asleep on your feet. We’re patient.’

  Paul shrugged. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘While we’re waiting, answering my questions’d help pass the time.’

  ‘But what would be the point? Face it, after you’ve been here a few days, or months, or centuries, whatever it is that’s occupying your funny little mind will have lost any traces of significance long ago. You think you’ll care who planted the bomb or who the traitor inside JWW is when the only thing you can think about is how wonderful it’d be if only you could die?’

  ‘Humour me,’ Paul said.

  The girl rolled her eyes. ‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘Fire away. After all, we don’t have to answer you if we don’t want to. But in return,’ she added slyly, ‘you’ll have to do something for us. Something we can’t force you to do. Okay?’

  ‘There’s things you can’t force me to do?’

  ‘Some. Not many. What’s the first question?’

  It took Paul a moment to remember. Maybe Little Miss Poison had a point. Already, none of it seemed particularly important. ‘Who’s Grendel’s Aunt?’ he asked.

  All the kids except the little girl sniggered. She just looked at him as if he was simple and said, ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Amazing. All right, then. Grendel’s Aunt is the queen.’

  ‘What, of your lot? Countess Judy?’

  The girl nodded gravely. ‘The Contessa Judith di Castel’Bianco. As you’ve probably guessed, the Contessa thing is just slumming, like God dressing up as the Pope. But yes, she married some tinpot human nobleman when she first broke into your side of the line. She needed a human cover, and your lot are so impressed by titles and stuff. She reckoned it’d give her more credibility. Before that, she was just a – what’s the word for it? Someone who sings in a theatre, along with a lot of other human females.’

  ‘Chorus girl?’

  ‘Like it matters. But to answer your question, she’s Grendel’s Aunt, and this is her home and principal place of business. And the dungeons are hers too, of course.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Paul said politely. ‘So who is it pretending to be Melze Horrocks? One of you?’

  The girl smiled. ‘Queen Judy’s niece,’ she replied. ‘Princess Suzie. Out of interest, how did you find out? We all thought she was doing a really good job.’

  ‘She was. But the real Melze phoned me, out of the blue. Otherwise I don’t suppose I’d have known.’

  ‘Interesting,’ the girl said, poker-faced. ‘That raises some implications we’re going to have to consider carefully. But that’s our business, not yours. One more question, and that’s your lot.’

  One more question; and they didn’t have to answer if they didn’t want to. ‘This civil war thing,’ Paul said. ‘What’s it about, exactly? I mean, are there genuine issues or is it just that you don’t like each other very much?’

  ‘A bit of both,’ the girl replied. ‘Yes, two-thirds of us can’t stand the other third, and vice versa. But what sparked it all off was the big colonisation debate. The majority like the idea of crossing over to your side and settling there, like when your Europeans came to America. But there’s a few fuzzy-minded types who don’t hold with stealing territory and exterminating the indigenous wildlife. Mostly they’re just a nuisance – there’s not enough of them to constitute a problem, and they’re way too wishy-washy to do anything effective. The only reason we haven’t done the invasion stuff before is that we couldn’t get across the line except one at a time every now and again – great for building up our intelligence-gathering network, useless for large-scale troop movements. But then you showed up, and we got hold of that wonderful Portable Door contraption, which means we can finally start a full-scale takeover. All thanks to you, with some help from that clown Ricky Wurmtoter. The irony is,’ she continued, ‘he only borrowed the Door off you in the first place because he was convinced that it wasn’t safe leaving it with you; soon as his back was turned we’d get hold of you and prise it out of your cold, dead fingers. So he took it, thought he’d lie low for a while somewhere we couldn’t find him. Not a bad idea, actually, provided you haven’t got a mole in your support structure. As it is, we were there waiting for him. Stupid arrogant human, thinking he was a match for us. Once we’d got him in the dungeons, it took us about five minutes before he was practically begging us to take it if only we’d let him go. We agreed. We were lying, of course.’ She smiled. ‘And that’s your third question and I hope you feel much better now that you know the answers. Right now, though, you’re feeling very, very sleepy.’

  Annoyingly, she was quite right about that.

  When Paul woke up, his first instinct was to roll onto his side and reach for the light switch. But there wasn’t one; and then he remembered. He wasn’t at home in bed, he was in the stronghold of Judy di Castel’Bianco, Queen of the Fey. Again.

  He was just about to scream with fear and anger when he remembered something else. Yes, he was screwed; but he had a plan.

  So that was all right, assuming he could remember what the plan was.

  He couldn’t.

  It’s a miserable thing to have a tea-bag memory, riddled with thousands of tiny holes through which information floods out. Paul had lived with the affliction for so long that he generally managed to rise above it; he wrote things down on scraps of paper, or tied knots in his handkerchief to remind him that he’d tied knots in his other handkerchief, or stuck yellow stickies on doors and VDU screens to remind him to check his handkerchief. Forgetting something as big and important as The Plan was, however, seriously careless even by his standards. Assuming, that was, that he’d actually forgotten, rather than having had strangers inside his head editing his memory.

  Good point. The impression Paul had got from the kids back in the great hall was that he’d been deliberately put to sleep, as opposed to merely flaking out through exhaustion and caffeine deficiency. If they’d put him to sleep, it almost certainly wasn’t for the good of his health. Pound to a penny he’d been having dreams while he’d been asleep; and while they’d been inside his head, what’d be easier than wiping the odd memory as they passed through?

  Bugger, he thought. But he rallied quite quickly. He had no idea what The Plan had been, but if he’d made it up in the first place, it couldn’t have been anything too clever or elaborate. If he’d managed to invent it before, he’d surely be able to invent it again, from first principles if need be. Piece of—

  Unless, of course, The Plan hinged on some specific piece of kit, which he’d carefully brought with him only to have the Fey pinch it from him while he was asleep. That wasn’t so easily shrugged off. Paul checked the contents of his pockets: keys, crumpled Switch-card receipts, pen cap without accompanying pen, handkerchiefs (with knots), thirty-seven pence in loose change, wallet, ball of frayed string, his battered old penknife (official Girl Guide issue, his twelfth-birthday present from Auntie Chris), one unwrapped and extremely sordid fruit pastille, one small chunk of what looked like the glass out of a flame-effect electric fire. Fat lot of good—

  No; Paul remembered now, he’d been at great pains to get hold of the small chunk of what looked like glass. It was, of course (silly him), the third eye of a Suffolk Round Spot wyvern, prised out of the poor dead creature’s skull by Mr Tanner’s mum, confiscated by Countess Judy, restored to him by two dozen extremely improbable goblin Boy Scouts. Since he’d incurred so much aggro to get hold of it again, it followed as night the day that it featured substantially in The Plan. But how? All it was good for was research, finding out marginally relevant facts about chimeras. Look in it, Mr Tanner’s mum had told him, and you might just see something useful.

  Fine, Paul thought. What’d be really useful right now? He grinned sourly. What he needed to know, as a matter of urgency, were the details of The Plan, just in case he’d actually managed to think up some way of—

  The stone grew, from a loose chipping to a potato to a basketball to a boulder that filled all the sp
ace between floor and ceiling, until it was so big that he couldn’t see it any more. Déjà vu, Paul thought, with a brief spurt of wild hope. Cool. The green glow was warm, and crackled softly with static. Please wait .

  As before, the glow resolved itself into a shimmering, insubstantial blackboard, on which words started to form like frost crystals on a window-pane.

  The Plan.

  It occurred to Paul that he hadn’t breathed for quite some time; since the stone came on-line, in fact. Never mind, plenty of time for breathing later.

  Note: since it’s likely, certain even, that I’ll be caught and my memory will be wiped, I’m taking the small chunk of what looks like the glass out of a flame-effect electric fire along with me. With luck, they won’t notice it in among all the other junk in my pockets. Then, when I’m trapped in the dungeon, all I’ll have to do is look in it and, with more luck, there’ll be a copy of this Plan, and then everything’ll be just fine. I hope. Fingers crossed.

  Fine, Paul thought. Clever, resourceful old me. Now, about The Plan —

  Please wait.

  Stupid stone. Paul did his very best not to get impatient, but it was hard going. Quite apart from the fact that The Plan was his only hope of not spending for ever in a very small dark room with himself for company, he couldn’t wait to see how clever he’d been.

  The memory you are looking for is currently unavailable. Your cerebral cortex might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your physical surroundings. Please try again later.

  Aaargh, Paul thought. Now, about The Plan—

  The Plan .

  (Thank you. Thank you so fucking much.)

  Paul read the wispy white letters once, twice, three times for luck, a fourth time just in case he was being really thick and had missed something painfully obvious that would explain everything. Then he shrugged. Of all the people in the world to be forced to trust blindly, he demanded of himself, why the hell me? I wouldn’t trust me to tell me the time.