‘You did, didn’t you!’ Dawn accused.
‘No, no, I didn’t.’
‘Looks like we’ve both been dreaming, then.’
They finished their cigarettes and Dawn turned off the light. Gavin curled into her arms. ‘Must have been your curry,’ he said.
Landscapes shifted behind his eyes; the province of the released dark self, journeying through the brief freedom of night. Comfortable, daytime symbols became alarming extravaganzas, artfully twisted by the true mind that did not care to lie.
Gavin gasped into the darkness; thick, almost unbreathable darkness. He’d been asleep, yes. Awake again now. Had he woken up before? (A dream.) Why did he feel so strange, so unsafe? An echo from sleep, a cry from the past, fleeting, fading, forgotten; perhaps part of the first dream.
Feeling absurdly shaken, he grabbed Dawn’s shoulder. She seemed frighteningly far away on the other side of the bed. Woken so abruptly, she jumped in surprise and made a small, startled sound.
‘What were we talking about?’ Gavin asked her.
‘What? Gavin, what’s the matter? Let go, you’re hurting me!’
He shook her. ‘What were we talking about before? When I woke up and there was a cat on your neck, only there wasn’t?’
She pulled away from him. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about! You must have been dreaming. Go back to sleep.’
‘Did I wake up before?’
‘No, be quiet. You’re scaring me.’ She drew the quilt further round her neck, turning her back on him. ‘Want the light on?’ he heard her say.
‘No, no. It’s all right.’ He closed his eyes, making an effort to regulate his breathing. What a strange dream, he thought. So real. And yet so banal, hardly terrifying. Perhaps it was the reality of it that frightened him. Perhaps I’m going to be ill. Gavin turned over and relaxed.
He woke up, screaming. As he reared up in the bed, flailing coverings, Dawn rose up eerily beside him, echoing his cry. They sat for a moment, breathing hard.
‘Why the hell did you scream like that?’ Gavin said at last. ‘You could have killed me with shock!’
‘What? You just yelled out. It woke me! Christ, Gavin!’
‘I yelled out? No, it was you. You woke me.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
Gavin rubbed his cold arms with clammy hands. ‘I’ve had a nightmare. I feel ill.’
‘Lie down.’ Dawn was conscious of the impenetrable night around them. In daylight, Gavin’s scream would just have seemed part of his ordinary clownishness. But beyond their walls, the world slept; she felt alone. The wild look in Gavin’s eyes frightened her. Was he ill? She stroked his face. ‘Tell me about the dream.’
He screwed up his eyes. ‘I dreamed I woke, that’s all. Twice. And each time...’ He turned and looked at her in the vague light that came through the curtains, his face pale upon the pillow. ‘It was so real, Dawn. So weird.’
‘But not really that scary,’ she concluded lightly, clearly trying to hide her own night-fear. ‘I’ve often had dreams like that, lucid dreams. Usually when I have an interview or a dental appointment in the morning. Don’t you have them? You know, waking up, getting dressed, going out, being late, getting lost, and then waking up in bed?’
‘Yes, I know what you mean, but it wasn’t like that.’
‘How was it, then?’
‘It was the waking...’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t explain.’
Dawn smiled at him encouragingly, a smile reserved for small children or imbeciles. ‘Come on, let’s sleep. It was just a dream.’
‘Perhaps this is, too.’
‘Gavin, it isn’t. Just go to sleep, OK?’
‘OK.’
He lay thinking about what had happened. He could remember waking up the first time so clearly. It couldn’t have been a dream, and yet Dawn said he’d been asleep all the time.
Was she lying? Why should she? It wasn’t in her nature to play tricks like that. The conversation before going to bed had done it, obviously. His worst fear; reality slipping. Becoming unsure of comfortable things. Becoming unsure of your own mind, your own senses.
No, don’t think about it. Just sleep. Think of nice things. Sing a song in your head. How does it go? No, not like that. That’s not quite right; that’s weird.
He heard the echo of his own song, newly conceived that weekend, sweeping faintly round his brain. Off key.
Sing something else. A safe song. A top-ten throwaway. That gave him the image of black discs sailing through the air, cutting through it, gleaming at the edges like knives.
No, not that. Try breathing. Deep breaths. Concentrate on warmth and light. Try to relax. You’re winding yourself up, Gavin. Am I asleep, now? Am I really here?
The thought was small, but startlingly clear. Space receded swiftly. He curled into a ball and pulled the quilt over his head.
His eyes opened to darkness, a stretched kind of darkness. I’ve woken up again. He thought it slowly, in single words, breathing in cool air, feeling it circulate inside him. Did I wake up before? Of course I did. I can remember it. But there was an insidious apprehension creeping over him that he hadn’t. I’m becoming afraid of the fear, he thought. I’m becoming obsessed.
‘You spoke your fear,’ an inner voice admonished waspishly. ‘You spoke it and made it happen.’
No, this time’s real. I can feel it.
He gripped his own flesh, pinching hard. The pain was reassuring, made the blackness less black.
I’ll wake Dawn. I’ll ask her. He felt in control, knowing he could do that. But, said a sly voice inside him, will she tell the truth?
‘Dawn!’
She groaned. He could hear her mouth chewing as she surfaced to wakefulness. ‘Mmm?’
‘Have I been awake before, tonight?’
‘What time is it?’ Her voice was croaky.
‘Just answer me. Have we woken up before? Did we talk?’
He heard her scratch her head. ‘I can’t remember doing so,’ she said.
‘Are you just trying to freak me out? Is that it?’
‘Gavin, it’s the middle of the bloody night? What’s this interrogation? We came up to bed. We fell asleep, and now you’re yelling at me. A load of tripe, as usual!’
‘I won’t have this!’ Gavin said, in a low, determined voice.
Dawn grumbled as he scrambled over her, groping for the light switch. She shielded her eyes as he stood rigid in the middle of the room. Then, he began pacing.
She sat up slowly. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, clearly unsure. Her mouth dropped open as he held out his arm and pinched the flesh fiercely.
‘Am I awake now, Dawn?’
‘Of course you are. Stop being stupid! Get back into bed. This light’s too bright.’
‘No, I’m not getting back into bed. I’m going to prove that I’m awake.’
Dawn groaned and pulled the quilt over her head. He heard her say, ‘You’re mad, and I’m tired.’
Am I mad?
He found himself scrabbling in the drawer where he kept his pens and notepaper. I’ll write myself something, he thought. I’ll write myself a note and, in the morning, if it’s still there, I’ll know I was awake.
He took up a pen and the reluctance to begin writing was like an external force.
I must begin, he thought. It started downstairs, after the film. The conversation with Tim and Shona. I don’t remember coming upstairs. Did I come upstairs? Oh God!
He looked around the room quickly, which was silent and watching, the light of the lamp as unilluminating as if it was held in a fist.
The light’s not really here. I’m in darkness. No, I can see. I can see. Write the note. Are we still downstairs? Are they looking at me? What am I doing? Am I imagining this? Go back to the first dream. No, it’s one dream. Get out of the room!
The command seemed to come from outside of himself.
Yes, go downstairs. Check. Then everything will be all right. But what if I
’m still down there?
He shuddered.
Pull yourself together, he ordered himself. Make a noise. Write. Wake up from the first dream. Become real. No. Yes. Write.
‘Whenever I go one stage back in the dream,’ he wrote, ‘I’m never sure if the other stages (in my mind, that is), have even happened, or if they were all a dream of the first dream. I fear that if I go downstairs, I might find that I’ve been down there all the time, and just woken up in the armchair. Not been up to bed yet.’
He threw down the pen. It was gibberish, but there in black and white. Indisputable. (Unless you’re dreaming this.) He hated that voice. The voice didn’t want him to write, have proof. He picked up the pen and wrote, ‘Some force (predestined future) is trying to stop me from writing this down.’
There. That caught it. He’d made it actual.
Then go downstairs.
No. I don’t feel real.
Dawn, is she here? Is that really Dawn?
Where’s the morning?
He went and looked out of the window, at the street beyond, grey with the faintest of dawn light. It didn’t make him feel safer. He knew he would have to go back to sleep to wake up from this. There would be no hope of return otherwise. Perhaps this is the true reality, he thought, this half-world.
He stared at the scrawled note he’d written for a moment, and then carefully climbed over Dawn and got into bed. She hadn’t gone back to sleep. She said, ‘You really are scared, aren’t you?’
‘Something’s not right. Can you feel it?’
She considered, one hand over her eyes. ‘Yes, I think so. Maybe I’m picking it up from you.’
‘How does it feel?’
She looked at him. ‘Like a sense of confusion.’
Gavin nodded, and they both looked around the room. Their cat was still asleep, oblivious, but even its innocent stillness seemed pregnant with sinister import. The furniture seemed squeezed tight, as if vibrating at a higher rate, as if a sound too high for them to hear was filling the house.
‘Gavin, you’re crazy,’ Dawn declared, ‘and your crazy ideas have got to me! We’d better do something normal, otherwise we’ll both be gibbering idiots by morning.’
‘Can you remember coming to bed?’ Gavin asked her.
‘Yes,’ she said, although he noticed it was without any real conviction, and that her habitual poise and confidence were not quite as genuine as they ought to be.
‘Do you think we ought to go downstairs?’ he suggested.
‘For a drink?’
‘Yes. For a coffee. I can’t sleep anyway.’ He couldn’t tell her the real reason; that he wanted to open the lounge door and check that they weren’t still in there.
They put on their bathrobes and walked together, very closely, out of the door, along the silent landing, lit by streetlights from outside, down the stairs, throat-like in the dimness. They were both nervous, but aware that speaking of it would transform that nervousness to fear. By the living room door, Gavin took Dawn’s hand in his own. They paused, looking at one another. He wasn’t sure if she was thinking the same thing he was.
The door opened. It was dark inside. The TV was off, and there was a lingering smell of beer and tobacco smoke, but it was clearly empty of people, real or imagined. Gavin had been holding his breath. Now he gasped. I’ve been frightening myself, he thought. Thank God. That’s all it was.
In the kitchen, the strip light seemed faint. ‘Needs a new tube,’ Dawn said, sitting on a high stool.
Gavin filled the kettle and turned it on. ‘God, that was so weird up there,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘What were you so scared about?’
‘You won’t believe it! I had these crazy dreams about waking up, and I wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t... I think I was even doubting my own existence. I wrote myself a note. Can you believe it?’
Dawn laughed. ‘A note?’
‘Yeah, to prove I was there! I thought I was stuck in this other reality, and that I was really sitting downstairs with you and the others, and that I hadn’t gone to bed at all!’ He laughed again. The kettle was making comfortable, gurgling sounds. He could smell the aroma of the coffee as he twisted open the jar. ‘Jesus, it could make you too scared to sleep again!’
Dawn shivered. ‘Don’t say that, Gavin!’
‘It’s almost morning.’ He poured hot water into their cups. ‘What the hell did you put in that curry?’
‘Nothing peculiar, honest. Must be your digestion.’
‘Or Tim’s cheap beer!’
‘Don’t be ungrateful! It was free.’
Gavin smiled. ‘Yeah, I know. Come here.’ He put his arms around her, breathing in her familiar smell of night-cream and a lingering whiff of coconut oil…
And woke up to her white, white face next to his on the pillow, her mouth stretched wide in a cavernous, black grimace. Her voice was a harridan’s coarse squawk. She no longer smelt clean.
‘Get that cat off my neck!’ she roared. ‘Get that cat off my neck!’
Gavin could hear his own voice, screaming, screaming, and the air was full of swirling slivers of paper, proclaiming his own reality.
Did You Ever See Oysters Walking Down the Stairs...?
What a hell of a day that was. Rain like you’ve never seen before, pink lightning... Yes, pink lightning. Tara said it was an omen for strangeness and, looking back, I know she was right. Simon and Dominic moved in that day. They were taking the top floor and Tara and I were all eyes watching their delectable male behinds struggling up the stairs with a less than delectable sofa. Becky was off work sick (she had the other, smaller, middle floor with her boyfriend Al), so she joined us, sniffling, on the stairs to watch the scenery. ‘Funny coloured light out there, isn’t it,’ she said to the boys. They made one or two smart remarks which we all laughed at. I don’t remember what they were.
Tara suggested the six of us have dinner together that night, a sort of getting to know each other party. Of course she was overjoyed at the prospect of having two unattached, attractive males around. As our flat was the largest in the building, we would play host. All afternoon, I was shifting junk into the studio from the living room, where a lot of our tools and sketches and even half-finished pots had strayed to. Tara was looking forward to telling Simon and Dominic about how we were successful businesswomen. Successful? Well, we kept our heads above water, that’s about it, but we had a good life. Both of us adore freedom and working for a big pottery would have stifled that forever.
I shook out the coloured shawls that covered the sofas and Tara dragged a duster round the place. We shoved a mixture of mince and vegetables and spices into a pot, called it bolognaise, and hey presto, we were nearly ready.
Eight o’clock and everybody was banging on our door. Thank God they’d had the presence of mind to bring wine; we’d forgotten completely. Becky, by daylight a decent sort, had turned into the clinging, whining limpet she usually was when Al was home. Tara and I made faces, recognising the signs straight away.
‘Al, why didn’t you get Riesling? You know I hate this one!’
Al this, Al that. All we could do was roll our eyes and watch her smother him. He was a nice guy though, thin like a hunter, dark and lissom, so we used to put up with night-time Becky because of that. He was a systems analyst, which I thought sounded like some kind of cyber-punk psychotherapist. Computers are not my line really, so it was a relief Al was not the kind of guy to rabbit on about the things outside of work.
Tara and I swapped glances across the room when Simon and Dominic arrived. I reckoned we’d both made the assessment of ten out of ten, although I didn’t go for Simon’s slogan T-shirt too much. Dominic, altogether lither and darker, impressed me more with his designer-rips, although Tara remarked to me in the kitchen as we prised meat from the saucepan, she thought that was a little passé; she was more interested in peroxide Simon.
The boys hovered around looking awkward for a while, until we sat dow
n to eat, and then praised the meal beyond all reasonable requirements; it was pretty foul after all. Tara and I eat to carry on living, not for any particular pleasure in the act. After the meal, Dominic produced a bottle of Jack Daniels, the sly beast, and we all proceeded to dilute the soggy spaghetti in our guts with good liquor.
Tara, with her usual gift for diplomacy, soon managed to scrape out the information that neither Simon nor Dominic was romantically attached at present. They were both students and, oh joy, Simon was a poet too. Perhaps that was what first made my hackles rise about him. I’ve had many bitter experiences of men who thought they were poets, and many subsequent embarrassing experiences of learning how much they certainly weren’t any such thing, generally while they were expecting favourable critiques of their earnest outpourings. I actually cringed when Tara cooed about how much she’d like to see some of his work.
Dominic must have been psychic. He said, ‘‘Fraid I don’t write,’ to which I nearly responded, ‘Oh good,’ but caught myself in time and said, ‘No, me neither.’
‘Do you like poetry, Al?’ Simon drawled, leaning back on the green sofa.
Luckily, it was not the one with three legs. Al looked positively cornered, poor thing. I began praying Simon wouldn’t offer to nip upstairs and fetch some of his efforts down for us.
‘Um,’ Al replied. ‘Well, I – er – read it at school.’ He shrugged. ‘You know.’
‘Yes, well I think you’ll find styles have changed since then,’ Simon said.
His tone was quite sarcastic. I couldn’t understand why on earth he’d want to get at Al, who was such a pussycat.
‘You prefer horror books, don’t you, Al,’ Becky put in, quite courageously I thought, although I doubt whether the put-down was intentional.
Simon sniffed. A horror book had clearly never sullied his shelves. He decided to change the subject. ‘This is a great house. I love it! It was so lucky we got a place here!’
‘Yeah, we like it too, but I wish we had it all to ourselves,’ Tara said, ‘I keep hassling Mrs. Cryer to let us use the ground floor as a studio. It’s full of junk down there, but she won’t have it. This must have been one hell of a place when it was all one house.’