(1989) Dreamer (18 page)

‘Slider?’

‘That was his nickname. He had a glass eye which he used to slide in and out. He’d walk down the High Street and when he saw anyone he’d slide it out and wave it at them. It was all red, livid, behind, and his eyelashes used to bend in the wrong way.’ She looked up at O’Connell, but he showed no reaction. ‘Sometimes he put a small onion in his eye instead. He’d take it out, wave it at someone, chew it, then spit it out.’

O’Connell frowned slightly.

‘No one knew how he’d lost it. The rumour was that a cat he was torturing had scratched it out, through I think he’d been in a car accident and had lost it then. There were rumours that he used to torture animals – the pets that he’d taken. After he died and his mother moved away the garden was dug up. Apparently it was like an ossuary.’

‘How old was he?’

‘Early twenties, I suppose. He also had another deformity. On one hand he only had one finger and a thumb; it was withered – horrible – almost like pincers.’

‘Was that from an accident?’

‘I don’t know. I think it was something he was born with.’

‘How did he die?’

Years, she thought. I haven’t talked about this for years. Not to anyone. The fear had been so strong that she’d never even told Richard. In case . . . in case just telling it brought it all back. She felt something moving towards her, a shadow like a cloud, or a wave that was piling up behind her; she shivered, and stared at O’Connell again, for courage, for reassurance.

‘I killed him.’

There was a long silence. ‘You killed him?’ he said finally.

Sam nodded and bit her lower lip. Talking about this . . . weird. She thought it had all faded away; thought that if she forgot it all for long enough, it might be as if it never had happened. Thought that after twenty-five years she was safe, finally. Safe from Slider.

‘You murdered him?’

‘No . . . I – I was playing out in the fields, and I heard this scream coming from a barn. It was quite isolated, almost derelict – hardly ever used. I ran over to it and heard noises up in the hayloft – horrible strangling noises – so I climbed up the ladder and saw him – Slider – wearing – this black hood . . . strangling – he’d just raped and strangled a girl.

‘He chased me across the loft, then got on top of me. I didn’t know who he was at that moment, because of the hood, but I knew he was going to kill me. I bit him, and kicked and somehow I gouged him in the eye and his eyeball flew out. He got even madder, then . . . I don’t remember exactly what happened but part of the loft was rotten, and he fell through and got impaled on an old machine on the ground.’ She was shaking now, shaking so hard that even when she clenched her hands together she could not keep them still. ‘There was a
metal bit – a sort of spar – that had gone right through his neck. I could see him staring up at me; there was blood all around him. It was dark in the loft, because the light bulb had broken – it had got broken in the struggle. There was myself and the girl that was dead. I knew she was dead – I don’t know why, but I knew – but I didn’t know if Slider was dead or OK. He still had the hood on, and all I could see was the one eye looking out of the slit at me. I didn’t know if he was going to climb up off the machine suddenly and come and kill me . . . And I didn’t dare go down because—’

‘What happened?’

‘I stayed up there. I’d worked out that somehow I could stop him from climbing the ladder – I would throw bales of straw on him if he tried – but he still didn’t move. Then it got pitch dark and I couldn’t see him any more, and that got even more frightening. Then, later, I heard voices, saw torches, and I heard my father. I just screamed and screamed.’

‘And Slider was dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who was the other girl?’

‘Someone from the village. I didn’t really know her. She was older than me – in her teens.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Seven.’

‘That’s quite a memory to carry from childhood, Sam.’

‘There’s more,’ she said. She looked down at her wrist and began to toy with her watch strap. ‘After this happened, I started dreaming of Slider.’

‘One would have expected you to,’ said O’Connell.

‘I used to have the same recurring dream. That I heard the scream and went to the barn and climbed up into the loft, and Slider would come out of the darkness at me.
Except he didn’t die in the dream. He was always about to get me – lying on top of me, with his one eye missing and just this red socket coming closer – then I’d wake up, and something bad would happen.’

‘Such as what?’

‘It started small. The first time I had the dream, my hamster died the next day. Then, each time, it seemed to get worse. I’d get sick, or my mother was having a baby and lost it. Then last time I had the dream I woke up and . . . my parents had been killed in a car crash.’

‘That was all when you were seven?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you didn’t have the dream again after that?’

‘No . . . it was almost as if he’d got what he wanted, I suppose – got his revenge.’

‘Could you tell at all from your dreams what sort of bad things were going to happen?’

‘No.’

‘And now you’re getting the image of this Slider with these two dreams?’

‘There have actually been three dreams with him in.’ She told him of her dream in the taxi. ‘I had a very weird dream the night before also,’ she smiled. ‘You probably think I’m cracking up.’

‘Tell me it.’

She told him about her dream of Hampstead underground. When she finished, it was still impossible to read his reaction.

‘This hooded man – Slider – was this the man in your dream down the underground?’

‘I don’t know – I didn’t think so. I couldn’t see his face, but there didn’t seem to be a mask – except—’ She tailed off. ‘He smelled of onions.’

‘You look very tired Sam. Are you on any medication?’

‘No.’

‘Not sleeping pills? Tranquillisers?’

‘No. Nothing.’

‘Does Richard know you’re here?’

She hesitated. ‘No . . . I’d be grateful if you didn’t—’

‘Of course.’

She stared into his expressionless eyes then away at the expanse of polished wood on the top of his desk, with nothing on it except a gold pen, lying flat. Then she glanced down at her fingers. Biting her nails, she thought, looking at her thumb, with part of the skin bitten away as well. Ugly.

‘I wondered if there were any pills you could give me that would stop me from dreaming.’ She was picking at it, picking, picking. Stop. She tried, then began to pick again.

He pushed out his lower lip, then tapped his gold pen with his fingers. ‘There are inhibitor drugs, but they have a lot of side effects. They’ll cut down your dreaming at night but you’ll start having day dreams, hallucinations, instead. Tell me, Sam, if you’re seeing the future, what are you really frightened of? Isn’t it helpful? Can’t you use this information?’

‘It’s not like that. It’s as if . . . as if I’m making these things happen by dreaming about them.’

‘You caused the plane to crash?’

She nodded.

‘And it wouldn’t have crashed if you hadn’t dreamed it?’

She felt her face redden slightly, and shrugged.

‘These dreams you had as a child after this hooded man was killed – how soon after the dreams did things happen?’

She racked her brains back in time. Hazy. Childhood was just a mass of images. Like dents in an old desk they
became smoothed over the years, part of a familiar landscape, and you couldn’t remember the order in which they came, no matter how hard you tried. ‘It varied, I suppose.’

‘A day? A week? Several months?’

She heard the cry of her own voice.

‘
Mummy!
’ Hugging. Crying.

‘
It’s all right, darling
.’

‘It was always soon. The next day, or a few days.’

‘Did you ever have anything bad happen when you hadn’t had dreams?’

‘I – I suppose so, yes.’

Silence.

I see what you’re saying.

She picked again, tore away a piece of skin and it hurt.

‘There’s an air disaster in the news every few weeks, Sam. If you dream of an air disaster, it’s almost bound to come true.’

‘Not with all the details in my dream, surely?’

‘Did you write them down? Before you heard of the disaster?’

‘No.’

‘I know you’re an intelligent girl, Sam, but you’re very tense at the moment. Do you think there’s any chance at all you might be crediting your dream with more detail than was in it? That you might be making the dream fit the facts?’

‘No.’

‘Look at the other dreams for the moment – your hooded fellow in the taxi who gave you a boarding card. That doesn’t seem to me to be anything prophetic. You found out that there was no such seat number on the plane, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘
35
A, wasn’t it? Those numbers might have some other significance. Do they mean anything to you?’

‘No.’

‘They’ll be in your dream for a reason. Everything in our dreams is there for a reason, but you can only get to understand them if you go through analysis.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t look so worried.’

‘Do you think I should go to an analyst?’

‘If you feel your dreams are disturbing you to the point where they’re affecting the quality of your life, then it’s something you could consider.’

‘What would an analyst do?’

‘He would try to uncover the anxieties that are causing these dreams. Try to find the root of them. Bring them to the surface. Help you to understand why you are having them.’

She picked at a different nail. ‘I still think that I’ve – that these things have been premonitions, Bamford.’

He pulled open a drawer on the right of the desk then pushed it back in again, without appearing to take anything out. Then he did the same with the left-hand drawer. Like an organist setting his stops, she thought. ‘Let’s have a look at the Punch and Judy dream: Punch disappears, reappears in a black hood and fires a shotgun at you. You wake up and a chunk of plaster has fallen on you from the wall. Is that right?’

‘From the ceiling.’

‘The next day a kid gets hold of your husband’s gun and fires it during the Punch and Judy show.’ He picked up his gold pen and rolled it between his neatly manicured fingers. ‘Well, there are connections, for sure, but I don’t think you could have foretold what was going to happen from that dream. I don’t think anybody could. Let’s turn it around a bit, Sam. How did a boy of six get hold of a loaded gun?’

‘Richard—’ She hesitated. ‘We’re not sure. Richard thinks he must have left it out. He normally keeps it upstairs, with the cartridges on top of a wardrobe so it’s out of Nicky’s reach.’

He nodded. ‘So he might have put it away?’

‘It’s possible, but unlikely. The boy said he found it against a wall.’

O’Connell leaned forward. ‘You see, Sam, it could well be that dream was telling you something, but not in the way you think. Consider this as an alternative: you gave up your career for Nicky, and because his birth was difficult you couldn’t have any more children. Maybe you feel anger at him. Maybe deep in your subconscious you feel that if you didn’t have him around—?’

Sam stared, flabbergasted for a moment, anger building up inside her. ‘Are you saying it was me? That I gave him the gun?’

‘I’m not saying for a moment you do feel that way, but I want to show you the possible alternatives, areas that an analyst would probe, trying to find the real reason for that dream. Your dreams indicate to me you have problems that you’ve got to get to grips with. By dismissing them as premonitions, you are ignoring their real meanings, brushing them away under the carpet. It’s much easier to put them down as premonitions than to face their real truths.’

‘Don’t you think you’re trying to dismiss everything with a cosy Freudian explanation?’ she said coldly.

‘I’m not trying to dismiss anything. But you need to understand what dreams are really about, Sam.’ He put the gold pen neatly down on the desk and steadied it to prevent it from rolling. ‘Our lives are a constant balance between sanity and madness. Most of us get by all right. We keep our emotions under control when we’re
awake, but they all come pouring out in our dreams when we’re asleep: jealousies, pain, thwartings, grief, anger, desires, and the past. Most importantly, the past.’ He realised the pen was distracting her, and put it away in a drawer. ‘Daddy’s having it off with my mummy and I’d like to do that, but if he catches me, he’ll cut my goolies off . . . Or in your case, Daddy’s got a huge donger and I’ve only got a tiny clitoris, so I’m inferior . . . you know? The primal scene and all that stuff?’

She smiled weakly.

‘The dream you had about going down the underground . . . you’ve told it very well. You’ve made it sound like a narrative. I could follow the story easily.’ He raised his hands. ‘But I don’t understand a thing about it. You see, it’s probably full of symbols that are personal to you.’ He paused and looked awkward suddenly. He shifted about in his chair, then leaned forward, put his elbows on his desk and rested his chin on his hands.

‘Sam,’ he said softly. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something very personal? If you don’t want to answer that’s perfectly all right.’

‘No – of course.’

‘I couldn’t help noticing at dinner that things seemed very strained between you and Richard.’

Her face reddened.

‘Are things all right between you?’

Penis starvation. Of course. That’s unhinged me. That’s why I have these nutty dreams. Of course!

He leaned back, without taking his eyes off her. ‘I think you would find it much easier to talk to a stranger. Would you like to see a member of my unit at Guy’s who without harassing you in any way would help you to sort it out?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘If your dreams are bothering you to the point where you feel they’re affecting the quality of your life, then you should consider it. Equally, they might all just go away.’

‘They’re not going to go away,’ she said.

‘Why do you think that?’

‘I don’t know. It’s just a feeling.’

‘Would you like me to recommend someone?’