was where she used to keep his Christmas presents. As an eight-year-old he had been caught snooping around in there and from then on the presents had resided elsewhere. Unsurprisingly, the leads were nowhere to be seen.
He had a bit more of a poke around the room, but was reluctant to look too hard for fear of finding anything he might later regret knowing about. When he’d exhausted all reasonable locations in the room, he carefully covered his tracks and headed out onto the landing.
The loft hatch in the ceiling required the use of a metal rod to release it, but, once open, it was quick and easy to get inside via the retractable ladder. The loft was full of boxed up junk that his parents no longer used, as well as a substantial quantity of Ryan’s old toys, which he made a mental note to sell online at some point. In addition, there was some old camping gear, a boxful of Christmas decorations and his mum’s ‘special’ crockery which, to Ryan’s recollection, had not seen a single meal. There were no leads to be seen.
Ryan sat back on his haunches and thought hard. It was hot up in the roof and he had already worked up quite a sweat, so he gave up on that location and headed back down. A cursory hunt around the rest of the main rooms turned up nothing, so the next port of call was the large double garage at the side of the house. The two buildings were linked by a small utility room, which allowed Ryan access without having to go outside. This was handy, since Daisy’s parents’ house had an aspect overlooking their garage, and he was not sure whether his mum would be keeping tabs on his movements from next door.
He slipped into the garage and flicked on the lights. The hulking black mass of his parents’ 4x4 gleamed beneath the clinical fluorescent tubes. Beyond it was his dad’s pride and joy; a fully restored Lotus Seven in British Racing Green. It had seen about as much use as the crockery set upstairs, but the few times Ryan had been taken out in it had been most memorable. His eyes lingered on its petite, taut body for a moment, before he returned to business. He poked around under the work benches at the far end of the room, but was beginning to lose hope. He doubted that even his mum would have bothered going to such lengths to hide his stuff.
He was about to give up completely when his eyes caught a glimpse of something yellow in the off-roader. His heart leapt as he recognised one of the cables from his PC. Peering through the lightly-tinted glass, he saw the dark, snaking shapes of his other leads; the lifelines to his stricken possessions. He tried the door handle but, naturally, the vehicle was locked. That would have been too easy. He thought hard. His mum would have her keys on her. There was a spare set for the car, but his dad normally had them. Except he had taken the little runabout up to the base and that had a different set of keys altogether. He grinned to himself and headed for the small cupboard in the utility room where the spare keys were all kept. Sure enough, the second set for the 4x4 were there.
‘Thanks Mum,’ said Ryan to himself. ‘You’ll have to try harder than that to beat me!’
He went back to the car, opened the door and grabbed the bundle of cables. The taste of victory was sweet. The tangle of wires was enormous and it took him a while to gather them all into a shape he could carry in one go. He kicked the door shut and was about to head back upstairs when a thought struck him.
His mum was already upset with him. Rebelling against her punishment so soon after the event would only lead to deeper consequences. Was it worth it for just one more night of entertainment?
Without a doubt, said one part of him.
But what happens tomorrow? asked another.
He thought for a moment, then opened the car door again and carefully laid the pile back down on the seat. Then, selecting only the ones for his PC and leaving the rest behind, he closed the door, locked the car and put the keys back where he had found them. The pile looked as large as it had done before, the only obvious difference being that he’d had to remove the yellow wire. He just had to trust in his mum’s lack of observational skills.
Heading back to his bedroom, he was back on the internet in no time and once again felt connected to the outside world. He played a couple of games with the sound down low, so he could hear if the front door went. After a while he grew hungry and headed downstairs, having first unplugged everything and tucked the wires away out of sight.
As his dinner cooked, he sat revelling in his masterful cunning, which had brought him access to music, films, games and the internet. What more could he want?
Not wishing to face his mum at all that evening, he decided to play it safe and headed straight to bed after dinner. After all, the leads would still be there in the morning and his punishment was no longer as bad as it had first appeared. After such an eventful day, he had no trouble drifting off into a sleep that was as far from dreamless as one could possibly imagine.
7
Everything was white. Really, really white. It was as though Ryan was staring at the sun through a blizzard. He squinted, but it didn’t really help much. He looked down and saw a pair of shiny metal feet where his own should have been.
So I’m back here again, he thought. Okay then. Why can’t I see anything?
He looked up and found that the outline of a large conical mountain had drawn itself on to the white canvas. As he watched, the image in front of him slowly filled itself with colour, giving it depth and clarity, and before he knew it he was standing on the same stretch of beach where he had met Daisy the previous night. Of course, it wasn’t night there – it was brighter than any summer’s day – but Ryan was curiously aware that while, in his mind’s eye, he was standing on a deserted strip of sand, somewhere in the real world his body lay tucked up in his own bed. It was a quite surreal feeling.
Focusing on the landscape around him again, he was surprised by how truly desolate it looked. He turned and stared out to sea, but there was nothing between him and the horizon except a glistening sheet of turquoise water. Ryan was confused. What was the point in him being here? So what if it was the place where dreams were created? With no-one to talk to and nothing going on, it was more boring than any dream he’d ever had. Where was everyone? Where was Daisy?
Slowly his eyes were drawn back to the huge shape of the mountain dominating the island, and he noticed for the first time a gleaming tower crowning its peak. The sun reflected brightly off its multi-faceted sides, making it hard to get a true idea of its shape.
Suddenly he remembered that Daisy had spoken of a building of some sort that Tristram had taken her to on one of her earlier visits to the isle. She’d said something about others too; people like her who had found their way there. People like Ryan.
It seemed an awfully long way away and the terrain in between was bleak and inhospitable; nothing but rocky slopes covered in scree, with not a flash of green anywhere to be seen. Still, there was little else for him to do, and there didn’t appear to be any way for him to leave, save diving into the sea and heading to the Nightmare Realm beneath, so he set out towards the tower. To his right, the mouth of a river opened out, bisecting the beach as it flowed into the sea. Curious about the contents of the water, Ryan headed towards the point where the beach and the river met with the lowest reaches of the mountain.
When he got there it took a while for him to pick out any images within the swift-running waters. He had not had the chance to look too closely into the rivers in the Nightmare Realm, for everything had happened very fast and his mind had been swamped with information. Now, with time on his side and nothing else to distract him, he watched the dreams flow past. It was a weird sensation; peering through rippling windows into other people’s minds. There was something strange and voyeurish about it that he wasn’t sure he was entirely comfortable with. Yet at the same time it was intriguing watching so many different tales playing out before his eyes. They ranged from what looked like a family reunion to someone fighting through an eastern European war zone, which was strikingly similar to a level Ryan had fought through himself in one of his computer games. There were romances playing out, sports being won and lost
, and adventures ranging from those he’d seen in a million action movies, to some that simply defied description. There was one thing they all shared in common though; for good or bad, all the tales appeared to be coming to an end.
Ryan looked out to where the waters of the river finally flowed out and met the sea. ‘The sea of broken dreams’ Tristram had called it, and it really was just that; a place where all dreams ended up, spent and useless.
He continued to watch the images flow past as he started making his way up the dreary valley the river had carved into the landscape. It was all very intriguing, but at the same time Ryan felt like an outcast; forced to watch everyone else having a good time through some invisible barrier he did not understand and could not penetrate. He’d had to work hard at school to keep himself out of such a position and he was starting to feel as though he would rather not to have found this place at all.
Suddenly an image caught his eye. It was the merest hint of something familiar that was gone in a second, but it stopped him in his tracks. He had seen something he recognised, but by the time his brain had cottoned on to the fact it had flowed out of sight. He backtracked along the riverbank until he found it again. The