it while he still had eyes in his head. He pressed the button again.
Click it went, and with a swift jerk Ryan was launched into the air by his new-found grappling hook. He risked a look over his shoulder as he gained height and saw the faceless masses staring up at him – if indeed they could stare.
He shuddered and averted his gaze, realising with a sudden gut-twisting horror that he was almost at the top of the wall and that the line was pulled tightly across the parapet. He was going to lose his fingers if he tried to reel himself all the way in. He waited until the last possible moment before releasing the button.
Both his hands were clasped around the torch as he dangled over fifty feet above the waiting hordes. He bumped against the wall and almost lost his grip. He looked up at the top and knew that it was beyond his reach. He was well and truly stuck.
As he clung on for dear life he felt a dull ache rapidly growing in his arms. He desperately wanted to get over the top to safety, but if he released one of his hands he doubted the other would have enough strength left to support his weight. The dull ache intensified to a burning pain. How much longer could he hold on for?
Desperate, he pressed the button again and was yanked upwards until his fingers met the wall. He felt a sickening scraping as the bricks bit into his flesh. Instinctively he released his grip on the torch and for a split-second he was free; far above the waiting mob and away from the accursed wall and the pain that it had caused. Free from his own weight. It was bliss.
Then he fell.
Little did Ryan Butler know that in that moment at the bottom of the wall, when all hope seemed to be lost, he had done something that would change his life forever. He had changed the course of his dreams.
2
Ryan awoke flat on his back in his bed. As the familiar shapes that made up his bedroom swam into view, he let out a huge sigh of relief. The faceless hordes were no more.
Sunlight was streaming on to his face through a gap in the curtains and he rolled away with a groan, his cheek ending up on a cool patch of pillow that felt blissfully soft against his skin. He was safe.
Suddenly the rasping blare of his alarm clock tore through his state of nirvana and he swung his right arm in a great arc, knocking it onto the floor. It kept ringing.
Damn it, he thought, and reluctantly he rolled out of bed and flopped onto the carpet. He pressed the ‘Snooze’ button and the obnoxious noise ceased.
He sat back against his bed and sighed again. It was good to be in his bedroom; his fortress of boy-dom. His large flat-screen TV sat in front of him with his games consoles on the floor in front of it; one of the controllers was tantalisingly close. To the right, underneath the large skylight that looked down upon his bed, was a stereo with stacks of CDs on either side; mainly hip-hop and gangsta rap – anything that would annoy his mum. In the other corner of the room, close to the window on the far wall, sat his PC; the nerve centre of his room. For a fleeting moment he thought about switching that on instead, but suddenly he heard his mum’s voice calling from just beyond his bedroom door.
‘Darling, are you getting up? You know that it’s school today?’
Ryan groaned.
The May Day bank holiday had come and gone all too soon. He had just gotten used to lying in bed until well past midday. Slowly he clambered to his feet, then almost sat straight back down again as his legs failed to provide their usual strength. Resting one arm on his bedside cabinet for support, he suddenly realised how hungry he was. It was like he hadn’t eaten for a week, though the empty crisp packet beside his bed told a different story.
Gingerly he left his room, ignoring the shower, and headed straight downstairs for breakfast.
‘Sleep well sweetheart?’
Ryan gave his mum a muffled grunt of acknowledgement but did not look up from his bowl of cereal. He had topped it off with a double helping of sugar and was shovelling it down at a phenomenal rate. He reached the bottom and, without pausing, helped himself to another bowlful and a splash of milk.
‘Nice day today. You’ll enjoy the walk in.’
That comment made Ryan stop and look up. His spoon dangled limply from his right hand.
‘You’re joking, right? You’re dropping me in as usual.’
He tried to make it sound like a statement of fact that was non-negotiable.
‘No way young man. You need the exercise.’
It was true; Ryan was still carrying a veritable bounty of weight over from Christmas, which an inordinate amount of Easter eggs had done little to help. In truth he had always been rather large, though he was often quick to point the finger elsewhere whenever the subject came up. Like now.
‘I’m sorry I’m not built like Dad, Mum. I take after Uncle Jez who, may I remind you, comes from your side of the family.’
‘That’s Uncle Jeremy to you,’ replied his mum curtly. ‘And don’t you start that tone with me. Uncle Jeremy has a thyroid problem, while you’re just plain lazy.’
Ryan scowled at her and reached for the sugar bowl.
‘And there’ll be no more of that, thank you very much,’ she added, whisking it from beneath his outstretched hand with remarkable speed.
Ryan hung his head and stared forlornly into his cereal, realising with discomfort how similar the little pieces of puffed wheat were to the faceless people of his dreams. He felt his mum’s comforting arm around his shoulder and her soothing voice in his ear.
‘There there darling. Your father will be home in a little over a week. Don’t you want to show him what a big strong man you’re growing up to be?’
‘I guess so,’ he shrugged.
Ryan’s dad was an officer in the Royal Air Force who had been stationed out in the Gulf for the past eight months. He was often away, and while Ryan did miss him a lot when he was gone, part of him resented how high the bar of achievement had been set. His father was good looking, fit and successful. Ryan often wondered how he could ever fill his shoes. Uncle Jeremy’s he could probably manage, but not his dad’s.
He finished his bowl of cereal, which tasted bland without the extra kick of sugar, and headed back upstairs to get ready for school.
It truly was a majestic May morning. After a dreary April the weather was really trying to atone for it. The sky was clear and blue, while a fresh morning breeze was playfully scattering blossom across the gravel driveway, whipped from the plum trees that grew in the front garden.
Ryan lived in the small village of Picklewick, tucked away in a small vale in the Chiltern Hills on the outskirts of Hemel Hempstead. Despite the nature of his father’s work, he had always lived there; the village was close enough to the RAF base for his dad to get there in minutes if the need arose.
There was next to nothing in the village aside from houses, so Ryan had to go to school down in the town. Picklewick had a lovely secluded feel to it, yet it was only a ten minute walk to the bypass and maybe fifteen more to the town centre, where Ryan’s school was located. Having lost the argument about how he was getting there, Ryan closed the gate at the end of the drive and, with a rueful glance over his shoulder, trudged off down the road. He was just reaching into his bag to dig out his mobile phone when he heard a voice calling out to him from somewhere over to his right.
‘Ryan! Ryan wait up!’
Ryan rolled his eyes and swore under his breath. He had hoped to get to school unnoticed. He was not in the best of moods and would have preferred to have been left alone, quietly cursing his mum for not driving him in. He turned and greeted the owner of the voice with a smile that he hoped didn’t look too forced. Running down the driveway of the large house next to his, as if she didn’t have a care in the world, was Daisy Rose.
Ryan had known her since birth. They had played together as toddlers, gone to nursery together and had even been in the same class at primary school. Their parents were old friends and often shared evenings out when Ryan’s dad was around. His mum still considered Daisy to be Ryan’s playmate and best friend, and while
Daisy clearly shared that opinion, it had been some time since Ryan had felt the same way.
The problem was that most of the other kids thought Daisy was, well, a little odd. She appeared to spend most of her time away with the fairies, staring out of the classroom windows at school, and wandering through the woods and fields around Picklewick in her free time. It was so unlike all the other girls her age, who preferred to bitch and squabble endlessly; concerned more about their appearance and who was snogging whom, while showing little interest in things like reading and going for walks in the countryside. It was almost as if Daisy had been born a couple of hundred years too late; she would have found herself far more at home in a Jane Austen novel.
Today she was wearing the white blouse and blue skirt of her school uniform and, for a personal touch, had braided a number of bluebells into her raven hair, bringing out the colour of her blue eyes to startling effect. Ryan didn’t know any other girl who would have considered doing such a thing, and he knew that it would only serve to cement her reputation as a weirdo. Still, Daisy, or Dizzy as she had become known, didn’t appear to worry about anything, and so the thoughts of her fellow classmates would barely register.
‘Hey Dizz,’ said Ryan as she fell into step beside him. In the three years since they had started secondary school their relationship had changed. Ryan had found that any association