(1989) Dreamer
‘A well-paced thriller that elivers maximum emotional torture’
‘Grippingly intriguing from start to finish’
‘Too many horror stories go over the top into fantasy land, but
Dreamer
is set in the recognisable world . . . I guarantee you more than a frisson of fear’
‘A thought-provoking menacer that’s completely technological and genuinely frightening about the power of future communications’
‘This compulsive story is a tale of the search for immortality . . . I cannot remember when I last read a novel I enjoyed so much’
‘Gripping . . . plotting is ingenious . . . in its evocation of how a glossy cocoon of worldly success can be unravelled by one bad decision it reminds me of Tom Wolfe’s
Bonfire of the Vanities
’
‘Peter James, Britain’s closest equivalent to Stephen King’
‘The suspense holds on every page, right to the end . . .’
Peter James was educated at Charterhouse and then at film school. He lived in North America for a number of years, working as a screen writer and film producer (his projects included the award-winning
Dead of Night
) before returning to England. His previous novels, including the number-one bestseller
Possession
, have been translated into twenty-six languages. All his novels reflect his deep interest in medicine, science and the paranormal. He has recently produced several films, including the BAFTA-nominated
The Merchant of Venice
, starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes, and
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
, starring Robert De Niro, Kathy Bates and Harvey Keitel. He also co-created the hit Channel 4 series
Bedsitcom
, which was nominated for a Rose d’Or. Peter James lives near Brighton in Sussex. Visit his website at
www.peterjames.com
.
Dead Letter Drop
Atom Bomb Angel
Billionaire
Possession
Dreamer
Sweet Heart
Twilight
Prophecy
Alchemist
Host
The Truth
Denial
Faith
Dead Simple
CHILDREN’S NOVEL
Getting Wired!
DREAMER
Peter James
AN ORION EBOOKFirst published in Great Britain in 1989 by Victor Gollancz Ltd
First published in paperback in 1990 by Sphere Books Ltd
This ebook first published in 2010 by Orion Books
Copyright © Peter James 1989
The moral right of Peter James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 409 13348 3
This ebook produced by Jouve, France
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
www.orionbooks.co.uk
To my mother, and to the memory of
my father – an absent friend
Contents
Acknowledgements
My immense indebtedness to Jon Thurley, agent, friend and unflickering beacon of sanity in the lonely abyss, and to my editor Joanna Goldsworthy, for her encouragement, guidance and unswerving belief.
Many people have generously helped me in my research, both with their time and their wisdom, and among them very special thanks is owed to Dr David Stafford-Clark, Dr Keith Hearne, Barbara Garwell, Dr Robert Morris, Edinburgh University, Canon Dominic Walker OGS, David Berglas, Eleanor O’Keeffe, Society for Psychical Research, Tony Reynolds, Dr Duncan Stewart, Laurie Drury, Richard Howorth, Charlie Edmunds, Peter Rawlings, Rob Kempson, Roger W. Moore, Mike and Sally Oliver, Serina Larive, Berkley Wingfield-Digby and Ken Grundy (mad bastard of the mountains!).
My thanks also to the numerous readers of Homes & Gardens and Psychic News who responded to my requests for experiences of premonitions; to the
Hampstead and Highgate Express
for their kind permission to quote from an article on dreams; to Grafton Books for permission to quote from Tom Chetwynd’s
Dictionary for Dreamers
(Paladin); and to Faber and Faber Ltd for permission to quote from No. 12 from ‘Choruses and Songs’ by W.H. Auden taken from
The English Auden
edited by Edward Mendelson.
My gratitude to my mother and my sister and everyone at Cornelia James for tolerating my long absences so supportively and in particular to my secretary Peggy
Fletcher for slaving so often and so hard over a hot photocopier.
And my deepest thanks to my wife Georgina, researcher, critic, proof-reader and chief stoker, who kept me going.
Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The Hunter’s waking thoughts. Lucky the leaf Unable to predict the fall . . .
1
The scream was carried towards her by the gust of wind, then whiplashed away, leaving her face smarting with the sting of grit and shock.
She stopped and listened. Another gust shook a few more early autumn leaves down from the trees, and dealt them out across the field. Then she heard the scream again.
A single piercing scream of utter terror that cut through her like a knife.
Go, it said. Get away.
Go while you have the chance!
Run!
For a moment, Sam hesitated. Then she sprinted towards it.
A small girl, slight, a few days past seven, her fringe of dark brown hair slipped down over her eyes and she tossed it back, irritated, then tripped over a flint stone in the dusty track and stumbled.
She stopped, panting, and stared around at the furrows of brown soil that stretched away from her across the barren field, at the woods that bordered two sides of it, and the barn beyond the gate at the far end, listening as the fresh gust came, but it brought only the sound of a creaking hinge. She ran again, faster this time, dodging the loose stones and bricks and ruts, the sandy soil kicking up in spurts under her.
‘I’m coming,’ she said, slowing again, catching her breath, stopping and bending to retie the lace of her left sneaker, then sprinting again. ‘Nearly,’ she said, ‘Nearly there.’
She paused a short distance from Crow’s barn, and hesitated. Huge, dark, in a state of neglect, with half its door missing, she could see through into the blackness of its interior. It was OK to go in with a friend, but not alone. Alone it was scary. When she played around here, and visited her secret places, she kept a safe distance from the barn, sufficiently far that nothing lurking in that blackness could leap out and grab her. The half door swung out a few inches and the hinge creaked again, like a wounded animal. There was a bang above her, then another, and she jumped, then breathed out again as she saw a loose flap of corrugated iron above lift and drop in the wind, banging loudly.
Slowly, nervously, she stepped past a strip of rotting wood, past a buckled rusted bicycle wheel and through the doorway into the black silence. The air was thick with the smell of rotting straw, and a duller, flatter smell of urine. There was another smell too, some smell she could not define, but which made her flesh creep, made her want to turn and run; a strange, frightening scent, of danger.
She felt as if the scream she had heard was still echoing in here.
She peered around in the gloom at the empty trough, the obsolete threshing machine and a section of an old plough lying on the floor in a shaft of dusty light. An old ladder lay hooked in place up to the hayloft, and as she stared up into an even blacker darkness, she heard a noise coming from up there; a whisper.
Her head spun in terror.
Then she heard a whooping sound as if someone was inflating a dinghy with a footpump, a strange tortured whooping, then a low pitiful moan.
‘Noo.’
Then the whooping again.
Sam ran to the ladder and began to climb, ignoring its bending, its flexing, and the fear that at any moment it might snap in two; ignoring the blackness into which she was climbing. She reached the top and scrambled out onto the rough wooden joists and the thick dust, wincing as a splinter slid deep into her finger.
‘No! Oo!
No!
Please no. Please . . .’
The voice turned into a strangled choking. She heard the pumping sound, much louder now, and a human grunt that accompanied it, and she heard a girl’s voice hoarse, struggling for breath, pleading.
‘Stop. Please stop. Please stop. No. Oh – h. Oh – h’
Her hand touched something round and hard, something plastic with a cord coming from it, something that felt like a switch. She pulled it and a bare bulb lit up inches above her head. She blinked and saw straw bales piled high in front of her with a thin dark gap like a corridor running between them.
For a moment, there was complete silence. Then a whimper, cut short. Shaking with fear she followed her shadow slowly down between the bales of dry acrid straw that stretched to the ceiling, stepping carefully on the joists, until her shadow became indistinguishable from the rest of the darkness.
There was another gasp, right in front of her, a sharp snapping sound, and one more terrible gasp that faded away into complete silence. She froze, her heart thumping, petrified as a figure rose up out of the darkness and began stumbling towards her, his hands reaching out for her, and she began to back away in slow steps, finding the joists, trembling, touching the rough straw to steady herself as she went, staring wide-eyed at the figure that followed her out of the shadows and was getting clearer with every step.
So clear she could now see it was not shadow that hid
his face, but a hood. A black hood, with slits for the eyes, the nose, the mouth.
She could see his hands too now; could see the deformed right hand, with just the thumb and the little finger, coming out of the darkness at her like a claw.
She tripped and fell backwards underneath the light bulb. She rolled, scrambled to her feet and tried to step back, but stumbled again, and felt a crunch as her foot went through the rotten flooring.