As Above, So Below

by Richard Lawther

  Back to the Lake District – the same ‘dodgy’ Lake District as before, and back on Glaramara, close to where Hargreaves and I had been. I hastily began typing as I swivelled around to face north:

  Remove Matterhorn.

  Before Cube had a chance to notice, the Alpine giant shimmered out of (non) existence and the dream filled the gap with a crude approximation of a Lakeland hill. The understudy, a sad little impostor, just sat there, fifteen miles to the north, like an embarrassed cowpat.

  I looked over at Cube: he was studying a map and occasionally glancing up to view the scene towards the southwest, exactly as Hargreaves had done the previous night. I left him to it and sat down on the springy turf. Following the trials of the last few hours I now felt ready to enjoy a quiet and peaceful spell, hopefully we could stay here until Cube woke up naturally. With a bit of luck, the redoubtable Cube would remain happy and quiescent.

  I turned to survey the landscape and noticed something that genuinely puzzled me: my telescope! it pointed away from us – still looking to the south or southwest.

  I followed its gaze...

  The arrangement of hills and crags, though plainly incorrect and exaggerated, were laid out exactly as they had been in yesterday’s dream.

  Dreams were mere phantoms, I conjectured, prone to change, and prone to inconsistency. Yet this landscape appeared startlingly self-consistent. I stared back at my telescope: no way should that instrument still be here!

  The jumbled hills around me, all bearing partial resemblance to the ‘real thing’, started to become real in my mind. Could it be possible, for example, that behind that ridge on Dale Head, out of view, and never seen, hid something, maybe a tarn, that was always there!? If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to see it, does it really exist?

  I sat back and tried to relax, but it was difficult, so much strangeness tonight, more than I’d bargained for. Despite myself, I began to dwell on the hellish spider dream... What the hell was that Morse code all about? – “south is watching you”.

  I studied the southern aspect...

  Would the castle still be here? The distant crag of Lingmell, now cloaked in a tattered mist that ripped through the gullies, revealed just fleeting glimpses of its summit. Hard to tell. But there had been a character watching me from that castle, which roughly lay to the south. Is that what the spider was banging on about? Again, this could be another example of a dream taking a minor detail and amplifying it into something dramatic.

  I turned to Cube and helped myself to one of his phantom cheese pasties.

  ‘Hey!’ shouted the greedy Cube.

  ‘Wait a minute, Cube, I paid for these, remember?’ I reminded Cube, incorrectly.

  ‘Oh yes, sorry, Geoff.’

  What a sap!

  ‘Cube?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘South is watching us.’

  Cube abruptly stopped chewing. He nodded and then began chewing again. I waited for him to swallow his food before asking:

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, what!?’

  ‘South is watching us.’

  ‘I know!’

  ‘What do you mean, you know, it doesn’t make sense!?’

  ‘So why did you say it?’

  This was getting me nowhere! I was being outmanoeuvred by a mindless dreamer, and there was almost certainly nothing significant about that phrase; if Cube appeared to extract meaning from it, well, that was just what dreamers did – they created plots and meaning out of thin air, and instantly.

  Cube’s attention returned to his map and I left him to it. In the waking world Cube exhibited a high emotional intelligence, but down here he–

  ‘There!’ Cube jabbed a greasy finger at the map and handed it over to me. ‘South: here.’

  I assumed Cube was just pointing to the southern end of the map but his finger had left a greasy mark over Lingmell. On closer inspection I noticed a simple castle icon at the same location.

  I handed the map back to Cube and continued to munch the cheese pasty; it was beginning to taste rubbery so I reached for the laptop:

  Improve flavour of pasty.

  That worked. A rich mature cheddar flavour filled my mouth. It’s said that you only dream in black-and-white, well, I knew that to be wrong, and now I knew that smells and tastes could be dreamt as well. If a sensation was required, the dream ‘software’ would provide it – and as richly as anything in the waking world.

  ‘What is “south”?’ I asked.

  Cube stared towards the southern fells. ‘South is becoming an increasing problem. You remember I was doing that Stars Against Homelessness shoot?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ The poor Cube believed himself to be a professional photographer. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Hmm, well, I was dealing with a shed-load of celebrities, some minor, some stratospheric hyper-stars. The shoot, as you can probably imagine, was very arduous: much clashing of fragile ego, and none of the stars would pose with the bums and winos we’d pulled in off the street. Agh! It was a nightmare! I later analyzed my pictures and... you guessed it: South! This is almost commonplace now; photojournalism and fashion photography is plagued by it – everyone’s concerned. They estimate that over sixty percent of all news photos now contain South.’

  Cube had finished his story and I found myself disturbed, not so much by the contents, though they were strange enough, but by the simple fact that Cube had been able to tell the story at all. These dream yarns were invariably an incoherent jumble of shite. This was far from that: the details were bollocks, but self-consistent bollocks – a bit like this Lakeland dreamscape.

  I persuaded Cube to run through the story again; he did so, and with barely a deviation of emphasis.

  ‘So what does “south” represent?’

  ‘There are rumours – some say it’s a society woman.’

  I nodded and reached for my Laptop:

  Take us to Lingmell.

  ‘How would you like to meet this society woman?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, actually,’ said a suddenly pensive Cube.

  We remained in our reclined positions, but the surrounding hills blurred and refocused into a new configuration. We found ourselves at the Scafell Pike/Lingmell col; the remaining climb to the summit of Lingmell would be little more than a stroll.

  ‘Come on, Cube, it’s an easy climb from here.’

  Cube and I set off up the gentle slope towards the top and immediately encountered problems. Some kind of dream-style slomo impeded forward progress as though the air were composed of treacle; the more you pushed against it, the worse it got.

  ‘I’ve got to stop and take a rest,’ I said, apparently exhausted; I recognizing the sensation to be bogus, but there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it.

  ‘Yes, walking any kind of distance is always difficult in dreams,’ replied Cube. I eyed him, puzzled by his sudden lucidity. ‘I usually find that walking backwards solves the problem.’

  We set off again, this time, backwards, and, amazingly, the technique worked. The treacle had gone. As the gradient began to level off I suggested to Cube that “forwards walking” could be considered; Cube assessed the remaining distance and slope, carried out a quick mental calculation and finally gave the green light.

  Within a couple of minutes we reached the large, flat summit of Lingmell; ahead of us, near the northern cliffs, stood the round, grey castle with its adjunct narrow towers and fluttering pennons. It looked very physical, very real.

  Cube gazed at it with a look of trepidation: ‘You know, Geoff, I’m not sure I should be here. I’ve stepped off the grid.’ And with that, he vanished.

  I was alone on the summit, no longer tethered to a dreamer and a route out of here. A rising chill wind and a sinister swirling mist persuaded me to return down the slope and track down Cube. I turned and took my first step–

  ‘Excuse me.’

  I wheeled around again and gawpe
d at the nearby standing figure: it was Madam, the aristocratic woman from the Hargreaves’ dream. She had dispensed with the ostentatious evening gown, choosing instead a look that more fitted the new environs: patterned headscarf, thick woolly sweater under open, flapping anorak; corduroy trousers tucked into a pair of olive-green wellington boots. Under her right arm huddled an elderly black Labrador; it shivered and looked a bit fed up, and, to be perfectly frank, far too heavy to be carried; when it peeped up in my direction it began to wag its tail. Madam’s left hand held the ever-present smoking Cuban.

  She managed to affect the air of aloof, disinterested gentry, but those eyes – sharp and neutral in expression – also hinted at an amused curiosity. She took a quick drag on her cigar and then threw it away; her freed hand came across to meet the Labrador. I expected her to pat the dog but instead she started tapping her fingers on the top of its head. The dog wore an expression of tolerant-but-pained suffering as the woman continued to drum:

  Tap tap tippy tap tap.

  After a slight pause I suddenly recognized the ‘beat’. It was the spider’s Morse code!

  ‘South is watching you.’

  The woman – South? – smiled slightly. I knew at this point that I was experiencing something real – no dream. I’d been playing with fire these last couple of nights, and now I was going to get burnt.

  “South” broke her visual grip. She placed the dog on the ground and it gave itself a vigorous shakedown: hairs, tics, flees and scabs showered the summit of Lingmell.

  ‘Come on, Brock, the weather is closing in, let’s go inside.’ The two of them turned and walked back to the castle, but after a few steps the woman stopped and turned back to me.

  ‘Mr. Christie, would you care for a drink of something. Something to ease the chill, perhaps?’ She beckoned towards the castle.

  I nodded and smiled.

  The weather really was closing in.

  11