Dreamside

by Graham Joyce

  —Open the door! We must open the door! Can't you see it! Open the door and the people will escape! Here are the people! We are the people! Dream a hole in the ice!—

  But Ella didn't wait for the others. She turned her gaze on the clearing of snow, at the figures floating beneath the ice. Remaining perfectly still she recalled all the forgotten powers of dreaming and focused them on the submerged figures. She was willing the ice to melt. Lee and Brad were activated by her raw energy. They fol­lowed her lead blindly, standing perfectly still, concentrating their minds, dreaming a hole in the frozen water. And slowly the ice began to melt.

  None of them heard Honora moaning softly.—I've been in this dream before! You must stop! I've seen this!—

  It was too late. Tiny hairline cracks suddenly began to appear in the ice, multiplying and discharging in all directions. There was a thudding sound from somewhere beneath them, like the banging together of great ice floes or the grinding of huge rocks.

  —No! No!—

  Now Lee saw what Honora was most afraid of. It was his turn to panic.—We have to get off the ice!—

  —Not yet! Break open the ice! Dream open the door! Release the people! Here is your golden thread, Lee!—Ella still commanded the situation.

  The lake answered. From deep, deep under the ice came a low, blasphemous groan. There was a series of dull, sonorous thuds like distant detonations, followed by a terrible tearing sound. The ice began to tremble.

  —Wait! Wait!—

  This time the sound of groaning and splitting sounded loudly in their ears and a violent tremor in the ice sent them rocking. Ella staggered backwards. The cracks in the ice expanded into jagged black forks, splitting off in all directions. Lee saw that Honora and Brad were paralyzed. They wanted to escape from the lake but were unable to tear themselves away. Ella was still locked into the con­summation of the ritual she had initiated. He couldn't seem to make her hear him. She was entranced by the ugly, multiplying fractures in the ice. Lee shook her violently. She looked back at him as though he were someone from another world. It was like looking across time.

  The ice was splitting everywhere. Ella came to her senses. She took hold of Honora. Lee propelled both of them towards the bank. They clung to each other, slipping and skidding as they tried to scramble off the ice. With the sound of ice splitting and splintering around them, Lee hoisted Brad off his knees; but in flailing and staggering wildly Brad brought them both down. Lee tried to strug­gle to his feet but Brad clung desperately to his legs. The two men slithered hopelessly.

  Ella and Honora stood on the edge of the bank screaming at them. Brad groped blindly at Lee, dragging him back. At last they scrambled to the edge, where the two women pulled them to safety.

  —The girl!—said Honora.—Where is the girl?

  No one answered. Behind them was a mass of deep interlacing cracks, darting across the lake like snakes' tongues and splitting still farther as they watched. Then the ice began to groan like a wounded primeval beast, folding against itself and crushing upwards, breaking up in huge slabs which collapsed in clouds of steam. Churning grey waters tossed in the air, waters that broiled and bubbled and released billowing jets of cloud.

  A wind of hurricane strength blew up from nowhere, or from within the depths of the lake itself. It threatened to pick them up like straws. The willows screamed as the wind tore through their dead branches, and the old charred oak creaked and leaned with the wind. Ella stood behind its huge trunk, her hair whipping in her eyes as she called to the others, urging them to make a chain around the tree. But the wind stole the words off her mouth as she reached out for Lee and pulled him to her. Honora saw them, and with the hurricane shrieking and raging around her and the water boiling behind her, she took hold of Brad's outstretched arm and battled to reach Lee and Ella.

  —Circle the tree! Circle the tree!—Ella was mouthing orders that none of the others could hear. The lake was now a boiling caul­dron, releasing great geysers of water and steam thirty feet into the air. Huge waves radiated from the centre, buffeted by the wind and crashing on the banks of the lake, hissing and sizzling as they fell on frozen earth. Lee guessed what Ella was trying to do. He threaded his way around the tree trunk, inching into the full force of the hur­ricane, pulling the chain of the others after him. Circling the tree, he was able to link arms with Honora, but the force of the wind pressed him flat against the blackened trunk like a pin on a magnet. On the other side, Ella linked arms with Brad.

  The earth at their feet was scooped up in giant handfuls and flung around their heads and into the lake. The wind was digging them out. The ruined oak creaked and groaned and leaned. The angry wind clawed like a live thing at the ground, throwing up earth and exposing its roots. It seemed that even the tree might be dug out and dragged into the lake. The four clung grimly to each other's arms, faces pressed against the charred trunk. Ella thought that if only they were able to hold on they might have a chance.

  But the hurricane shrieked and howled like a thing enraged, and Ella slipped and fell as the earth was dug out from under her feet. The wind ripped up clods of earth and loose soil, tossing it in the air and lashing it at their faces. The others held her up as she found new footing on the exposed roots. Then the roots themselves curled and bent in the wind as if twisted by a giant fist. They began to snap, were torn off and bulleted into the lake. The tree groaned and leaned with the wind. It was being dug out of the earth.

  Then Lee felt Honora stiffen, and saw her mechanically turn her head towards the boiling lake. Her features reset themselves in that familiar gaze. Her face was ivory. He felt her loosen her grip, as if she wanted to be taken by the wind, as if her resistance was exhausted. He knew that she was going into the lake.

  —No Honora! No!—The wind lifted the words from his lips.

  Ella saw what was happening.—Stop her!—

  —I can see her in the water! She wants me! I'm going to her!— Honora slipped Lee's arm. He lunged to pull her back, but she fell away easily.

  —Hold her! Keep her there!—Ella called out to Brad, know­ing that somewhere in the storm he too was holding Honora. Then she felt Lee stumble towards her and a sudden absence of pressure at her other hand.

  Brad had slipped Ella's hold and had gone with Honora. Ella and Lee slithered to the base of the tree, clinging to its exposed roots. They saw Honora plunge into the raging water, crying out unintel­ligibly into the heart of the storm. It was Brad who plunged in after her and dragged her, kicking and thrashing and screaming, out onto the bank. Then he fell or dived back into the water. Fell or dived they would never know, but they saw him look back at them as he was dragged under. Lee grabbed Honora and brought her weeping to the tree, where the three of them clung like survivors of a ship­wreck groping for a plank of driftwood.

  As quickly as it had appeared, the wind dropped, and the waters on the lake calmed. Brad did not come up again. The three lay panting, exhausted on the bank of the lake. Already it was begin­ning to ice over. Then the dream broke.

  EPILOGUE

  I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming

  I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly

  dreaming I am a man

  —Chuang Tzu, 3rd century BC

  Ella checked her face in the hotel room mirror. After packing and clearing her room she decided to forgo breakfast and leave early. Carrying her split-leather holdall down the stairs, she crossed the polished parquet floor to the reception desk, where she learned that Lee had already taken care of the bill. She was grateful for that since money was going to be a problem for a while. Then she went out­side and crossed the deserted hotel car park, unlocking the door of the Midget before swinging her bag on to the passenger seat.

  The sun was well up in the sky. The morning was fresh but tranquil, and it promised to be a beautiful spring day. She readjusted the soft-top of the Midget to its down position, and the clip which Lee had repaired for her came apart in her hands. Since there
was no one else around, Ella allowed herself another weep, last one before leaving.

  "Come on, Innes, you'll see worse than this," she said into a crumpled tissue. But she was crying for a whole host of things. Ella had agreed to stay behind for a few days to tidy up the details. In the end, she had felt most responsible, particularly for Brad.

  It was she, after all, who had raced down to Cornwall to bring him back. She had cooked up the whole plan; and it was she who had gone alone to the hospital that morning after the ultimate dream. When she had woken the morning after the storm on dreamside—incredibly only three days ago—she had not waited for the other two. She had got into her car and had driven to the hospi­tal with a terrible foreknowledge. It echoed an earlier experience in her life. It had been a fine morning, like this one, of diffuse yellow sunshine and the grass wet with a heavy dew.

  She had thought of the time she had washed him and shaved him and cut his hair and dressed him, ostensibly in preparation for meeting the others but really for their last walk on dreamside. There had seemed to be a tiny measure of hope, but that was then. Of course she wished she hadn't done any of it, wished she had left Brad to his mouldering alcoholic decay in Elderwine Cottage. But she knew that bringing him back to face that final dreamside ren­dezvous was as unavoidable as daylight coming after dark. Or the reverse; Ella wasn't sure.

  She tried hard to recall the thing which he had begged her to remember. It grieved her deeply that she hadn't been able to see how important it might have been to Brad if she had just been able to lie— if indeed lie it was. But no; surely that would have made the entire dreamside business nothing more than a conspiracy. A conspiracy of what would at worst be a nest of liars, and at best a coven of hysterics. Yet it had all happened. And whatever they were, she was not about to betray or deny a single moment of the reality of dreaming.

  At the hospital they told her that Brad had died during the night, that he'd never come out of his coma. There was some bewil­derment on their part, and talk of a post-mortem. Ella had said "Thank you" to the doctor who had broken the news. It had been an odd thing to say. What Ella had meant was thank you for the clarity, thank you for the confirmation of what she already knew, thank you for the permission to grieve. When she had returned to the house, to tell Lee and Honora what they too had already guessed, that's when her tears had come.

  On her way out of town, Ella drove up to the lake to take a final look. After he had held her for a while, Lee had cleared the house. He had suggested they stay in the town while the formalities of Brad's death were taken care of. That night they had checked into a hotel, where Lee had booked three single rooms.

  In the morning, when Lee found himself alone with Ella, he told her that he wanted to return to Northern Ireland with Honora. Ella was not at all surprised.

  "Honora wants it; but she won't do it because she thinks you will feel betrayed. I know that's not so, and I think you would have been leaving me anyway."

  "Tell her I understand."

  "I love you, Ella, but I'm no match for you and I'll never be enough for you."

  "I'm not sure I know what you mean by that."

  "Yes, you do."

  "Lee, will you do me a favour and leave today? I'll stay here for another night or so."

  "I can't leave you with all of this."

  "I would prefer it. Really I would."

  Lee knew that Ella didn't say things for the sake of form. She wanted Honora and him to go, so they did. Before they left, Ella hugged Honora and kissed her and they made unkeepable promises about seeing each other again. Then she went to Lee.

  "Ella ..." he began.

  But she stopped him. "Now you're going to kiss me, and then you're going to go," she said, as if she were directing an actor.

  Lovers were easy to come by, thought Ella. They were as thick on the ground as used dreams. But a relationship that would stand the test was rare. So she and Lee parted for the second time, and she never let him know that he was right, that she would have been leaving him anyway. The sun was warm, and at the top of the hill overlooking the lake she stopped the car and climbed out to see what was happening. A small army of volunteer conservationists had already begun the task of cleaning the polluted water. They were busy dredging, draining and replanting. Ella felt heartened. She wanted to go over and wish them luck, but she felt shy about it. She knew they would do a fine job.

  End

  Dreamside, an Afterword by the author

  It seems fictional to me to say so, but it is a quarter of a century since I started writing my first published novel Dreamside. I had the seed idea in my head and had scribbled a possible opening; but then a bang of blood to the brain made me quit my very good job, ask my girlfriend to marry me, and hare off with her to the Greek island of Lebsos. There we lived on the beach in a scorpion-infested shack, just outside a village called Petra. There was no electricity, we drew water from a pump and I wrote while my wife painted watercolours.

  It was there that I completed Dreamside. The working title at the time was Zeds. I knew it was a lousy title but I’d already discovered that wringing one’s hands trying to dream up a good title was Number 39 in the long list of Ways To Run Away From Actually Writing. Anyway there was no internet, no TV, no local cinema and the only entertainment available was watching one of the local shepherds catch and milk a goat. Back home in England I’d quickly got used to a PC/Word Processor, so now I had to revert to a portable typewriter with – and I tell this story to my children who listen with deep scepticism - something called a return carriage so that every time you reached the margin of the page a bell rang. I sat under a vine-covered canopy looking out at the sparkling Aegean and making my little bell ring every fifteen or so words.

  Ting.

  You might think that with my working in such an inspiring place, at the edge of the aquamarine sea, close to the ancient Gods and under the stirring Mediterranean light that I might have written about Greece. But it never works that way with me. I would come to write about the Greek islands much later; meanwhile experiences have to be milled, yeasted, fermented and left in a dark place before the mysterious stewards of the back-brain are ready to barrel them up for consideration. So I worked on the idea I’d smuggled with me from England, and that idea was founded on the concept of Lucid Dreaming.

  Lucid Dreaming is semi-fantastical. The ability to control and steer one’s dreams can be and has been rationally tested. What appealed to me most about it at the time was that the condition of any kind of dreaming can’t be dismissed as pure fantasy, even though its content is often Surreal and can only be demonstrated in so far as an individual dreamer reports his or her dreams. Thus events in a lucid-dream world, even though they may appear to belong to fantasies of the paranormal, do actually take place in this world, inasmuch as we all dream and those dreams are unquestionably part of a real human experience.

  This in itself generated serious questions about the type of novel I had written. In 1989, the year I sold it, my publishers not unreasonably wanted to know on what shelves it would sit. Was it a science fiction novel they asked me? Was it Fantasy? Or even Horror, since it has its fair share of creepy moments. Or was it after all a Mainstream novel, since most of the events in the novel fell in the waking, natural world rather than in the dreaming world. All good questions, which I was too inexperienced in the world of publishing to answer. I hadn’t a clue. I wanted it to have a compelling narrative, engaging characters and some psychological insight. I also wanted it touch on the world of the paranormal. All that seemed quite enough to think about.

  After 25 years in the business I do of course now realise that these genre divisions mean very little. They are of course important to the bookseller, but that’s all about the market place and not about the book itself. If I’d known then what I now know my answer to those questions every time would be: which of those is selling the most?

  For me the most important thing about the book is the leak of the miraculous into
the ordinary world; the idea that the marvellous is always closer than we think. I’m fixed on the notion that rationality – wonderful rationality – will take us so far but will never answer everything to our satisfaction; and that the most difficult thing that rationality will ever face is the question of what makes us human. Dreamside set me on a very particular trajectory of novel writing - for a quarter of a century at least – that I didn’t know was in front of me. I still can’t answer the question of what kind of novel this is (or any of the novels that followed). I’m happy to let other people answer for me.

  As for Dreamside itself the principle of Lucid Dreaming is somewhat distanced from Fantasy in that there are many people who can dream lucidly and who can control their dreams. At one time quite a lot of scientific research went on into the subject and the most remarkable – and still unexplained – report from that body of research was that Lucid Dreamers could categorically meet up with each other, by pre-arrangement, in some mentalistic universe.

  The subjects, interviewed separately after a period of dreaming and without being able to contact each other, successfully confirmed who amongst their experimental group had made the dream rendezvous happen. They were able to identify precisely who from their experimental group had kept their appointments and who hadn’t. And the remarkable thing was that they corroborated each others’ claims exactly. The scientific experiments foundered when the experiment subjects, their extraordinary achievements notwithstanding, were unable to progress their experiences. Research requires a practical pay-off. Not content with the merely astonishing, the funders of this exciting research lost interest. Dreamside speculates on the notion of what might have happened if such an research group had managed to progress the enterprise further.

  I don’t like going back and re-reading my past work, though I did so to get this novel ready for E-publication. There are one or two wince-inducing lines and some things I would now do differently. I can’t quite believe I was seduced into using words like tremulousness. That sort of nonsense belongs in the kind of bad novels we have come to call “literary” and all I can say is forgive me the sins and offences of my youth. Other than that the story itself seems to have weathered quite well. Note that it was set in a quite recent time when there were no mobile phones and the idea of the internet was but a dream.