Nightmares in the Dreamhouse Read online

  Then he switched on the TV and flopped on the floor to watch Neighbours. When the News began he was about to switch off but the announcer mentioned Wiltshire so he slumped back on the floor again. It took ages for her to get round to it, but in the end a picture of an upturned lorry and a squashed car on the M4 showed on the screen.

  “M4 blocked for three hours... tailbacks on the westbound carriageway... serious injuries... local hospital... ”

  Mention of the hospital made Matthew glance at the clock on the shelf over the gas fire. It was time for him to go. At that moment the evening paper clunked through the letterbox. Switching the news-reader off mid-sentence, he went into the hallway and looked quickly through the paper. The reporters must have lost interest in John. There wasn't any mention of him at all. The main news was the accident on the motorway.

  Dropping the paper he pulled on his black anorak and turned up the collar as he always did. The mirror only showed him the top of his head so he jumped up enough to see the effect, then went out, slamming the door behind him.

  Crisp bags and leaves fluttered in a gusty wind. Autumn was in the air with coldness and a smell of smoke. It made him think of fireworks - in fact there had already been a few early bangs - then the back view of a girl who looked like Karen brought the frown back to his forehead.

  It wasn't her, and he went on out of his short road and up the hill, a small, hunched figure in a black jacket, hands pushed deep in the pockets. There was no sign of Gary. He passed the alley that ran along behind the Dumps - the rubbish-filled gardens of the row of bricked-up houses that were waiting to be demolished - and went on along the straight, flat road at the top of the hill.

  Now his mouth was working without any sound coming out. He was rehearsing what he was going to tell John. But the words he was trying to find got muddled, and turned into something else.

  By the time he pushed through the wide glass door of the hospital those other words were jogging in his head in time to his walking...

  “He fell from the sky

  Like a butterfly

  He fell from the sky... ”

  And each time he switched the rhyme off, so that he could think sensibly and usefully, the same stupid words came sneaking back until he felt his head was blowing up like a balloon under the pressure. He didn't know when the words had first invented themselves, but now they were seldom far away.

  “... fell from the sky

  ............... butterfly

  He fell from the ... ”

  Then the spell was snapped, at least for a while, when he came to the choice - the lift or the stairs.

  The stairs were steep and there were four flights between the ground floor and John. But he felt awkward in the lift; if anyone else was in it he didn't know where to look. Sometimes people he thought might be dying were wheeled in as well. This time two nurses were waiting for the red triangle to flash and show a lift was on its way, so he settled for the stairs.

  A woman in a white coat brushed down past him, then two men carrying briefcases. Puffing a bit, he reached the fourth floor. Now he paused.

  He knew he could just go in, but he was always afraid someone who didn't know him would tell him off, or make him explain why he was there. Just as he was hesitating near the lifts the black nurse came along the corridor. Good.

  “Hi there Matt,” she smiled. “You're as regular as clockwork. Come on in with me.”

  The fat one -Nurse Beryl - was just taking her cloak off as they passed the reception desk. Matt hunched lower in his collar and speeded up to keep Nurse Sharon between them. It didn't work.

  “How's my little Titchy then?” she squawked, in a voice loud enough to wake all the patients in the hospital. “What a good little brother he is...”

  They scuttled past, but the voice bellowed on behind them.

  “Don't you worry my love,” she yelled. “He'll soon be...” but Sharon had pushed open the wooden door with the window in it and the noise faded as it swung shut behind them. They were in a small room containing just one bed.

  In there it was quiet. There was no more sound than a slight hissing somewhere and the occasional faint sigh of wind past a partly open window. Outside there were clouds drifting past, and as it was so high the room seemed to be floating itself, not attached to any building at all.

  “He fell from the sky

  Like a...”

  began again in Matthew's head. He shook it, then looked up at the nurse who was standing quietly by him.

  “All right now?” she asked. “Do you want me to stay?”

  It didn't make any difference really. Matthew was getting used to it, sort of. He looked shyly out at the clouds again.

  “No, it's OK. I'll just... tell him a few things...”

  Sharon glanced towards the bed, nodded and smiled at Matthew as she always did. Then she slipped neatly through the door. For a moment there was a buzz of sound from the unseen spaces beyond - a rattling trolley, the rumble of a man's voice - then the door closed and it was deadly quiet again.

  Matthew walked to the side of the bed. His brother lay there on his back, his head and shoulders raised on pillows. Two plastic tubes and a silver wire looped from bottles and dials at the other side of the bed and disappeared under the sheets.

  John slept. He was breathing slowly and evenly with just occasional slight snorts. His face was pale. The shape of his still body reached right down the bed and his strong neck was bare above the white hospital gown. He had been shaved and his hair had been brushed and he hadn't moved to disturb it.

  For nearly two weeks now he hadn't moved. He had been lying there, not speaking, not moving, not waking. They called it being in a coma.

  6. you have to wake up

  Matthew pushed off his trainers, knelt on the chair, then very careful not to disturb anything, climbed onto the bed. Just like he often did on the hard school chairs, he curled his legs under him. In school it meant that he could write more comfortably on the tabletop. Now it brought him up close to his brother's head. Nurse Sharon wouldn't mind.

  As usual, the words came easily; there hadn't been any need to rehearse them.

  Hello John. It's me again. How are you feeling? When Mum comes in, tell her off for not leaving me any tea. Don't really. I expect she was in a rush for work. There's been a big smash-up on the motorway. It was on TV, I think the drivers are in this hospital somewhere. I had a great time in Art today. Now that I've finished the kingfisher picture we could choose what we did, so I'm doing a jungle full of leaves and animals. Mr. Carter says I can go on with it at dinner times if I want to. I'm going to have monkeys and a lion and snakes and in the corner there's going to be a big beetle and I want to try and make it look real. Mr Carter said he'll help me put a shine on its back. You HAVE to wake up, then you can see it...

  Matthew paused there, looking without any real hope at John's still face. Once his own voice stopped the room seemed weirdly quiet. Nothing stirred except for a slight pulse at the side of his brother's neck. Matthew took a wobbly breath.

  You know that Karen and Roy we used to go round with. They want us to start up with them again. D'you remember how you told me off last year after you smelled all that smoke on me? We don't want to but they might make us. You've got to wake up and tell me what we ought to do. Roy's a lot bigger now and Karen's not very nice even though she gets loads of money... I need you John...

  Then his throat choked up and he had to cough to clear it, and rub his eyes.

  We had games today. I nearly scored a goal and Mr Wells said, “Good effort Matt,” but we lost in the end. History was brilliant. We're doing all about the cave men and Miss showed us a video about how they had real artists who drew on the caves when they were going hunting to bring them luck... you should have seen the animals! They're in a big cave in France and she's been there. You can even see their footprints in the mud and they made hand- prints on the walls. They were quite little people... I'd really like to go there one day. Cherry's in
the same class and she reckoned it was the best History we've ever done…”

  The words flowed again now and he was still going strong when he realised that the door had opened gently and Nurse Sharon was standing just inside. When he broke off, seeing her there, she said softly, “You're doing a lovely job, Matthew. We all think you're great. Sister says that's about long enough for both of you now though.”

  She came closer. “You'll get through in the end. Sure to. He's not damaged - not like those poor people in the crash. It's mostly shock with him, the doctors reckon. We've just got to wait - and keep smiling. OK?”

  Matthew nodded obediently. He bent forward to whisper, “'Bye Johnny,” right in his brother's ear, as he always did. Then he untangled his stiff legs and slid down from the bed and into his trainers.

  He said “'Bye” to Sharon and slipped away, out through the door, along the corridor and into a waiting, empty lift.

  Poising a finger over the button marked “Ground Floor” he counted, “Five... four... three... two... one... zero!”

  His finger stabbed the button. “We have lift down,” he said, and the floor fell smoothly away under his feet.

  But in the gentle vibrations of the lift those other words came crawling back into his head... “He fell from the sky

  Like a butterfly

  He fell from the sky... ”

  and they wouldn't go away until there was a slight jolt, the lift stopped and the doors swished open.

  When he stepped out a policeman was standing there waiting to use it. The tall figure in the dark uniform made him jump. Then he felt guilty as if he had done something wrong, and he hadn't... yet. He went out into the cold darkness, with his shoulders hunched to cover his ears with the anorak collar and his hands buried deep in the pockets. Thoughts of Roy and Karen, and the evening ahead, made him shiver.

  7. you'll really like this one, Karen

  A damp autumn mist was making haloes round the street lamps as Matthew trudged down the hill, away from the hospital. His breath steamed when he paused to wipe a cobweb strand from his eyes.

  He turned the collar of his coat up and walked dully on, past the end of the six little houses that made up the old condemned terrace. Except for the one at the far end, that was still lived in, they were all blinded with bricks where the windows and doors once were, to keep out whoever might want to go inside them. The back gardens - the Dumps - were heaps of rubble where walls and sheds had been knocked down. People had even tipped rubbish there - old furniture, smashed TV sets and piles of soggy garden refuse. During the summer a bramble that had once been a cultivated blackberry had spread its barbed-wire strands over the stones. It looked creepy in the half-light.

  Only the house at the end was still normal. There had been something in the paper about how the old couple were refusing to leave their house and so the rest of the houses had to be left standing for the time being. A light in their window looked odd by the bricked-up, empty properties.

  As Matthew walked the rhythm of the verse began to keep time to his feet...

  “Fell from the sky

  Fell from the sky... ”

  and he couldn't turn it off until nearing his own home, when he became aware of a group of figures under the light that shone in his bedroom window every night.

  He faltered, thinking for a shaky moment that it was Roy and Karen, come to get him. Then he saw the silhouettes more clearly: one tall and thin; one looking sort of square; one with an unusual tuft on top of its head.

  Suddenly he felt lighter, and the words in his head faded as he took off - rushing down on them like a runaway bus. They scattered and he threw his arms around the lamppost to stop.

  Now their faces surrounded him; the shining, alert black one, the circular pink one, and the long pale one. Friends.

  “We've been waiting for you,” Gary said.

  “We're going together,” Cherry broke in, “then we can do what we like.”

  “Not what they like,” Abby explained.

  Cherry went on, as they moved slowly off in a close group. “If we don't want to do what they want us to, we've been planning, Matt. We're gonna run away.”

  “Cherry's going to give us a signal,” Gary explained carefully, “an' then we're all going to run.” He sniffed. “Trouble is, I don't run all that fast... ”

  “But we're going to stay together,” Abby added. “They can't get us all... can they?”

  “They could,” Gary muttered. “I wish I'd stayed home now... ” Then he said, “No I don't. It'd be worse on Monday. And my step-dad's home, anyway.”

  “How's John?” Cherry asked, remembering where Matthew had come from. In the lamplight her face, honest and kind, looked down into his. A few people still asked, but most had already forgotten, now that it wasn't in the papers any more.

  “Just the same,” he said. “Still asleep.”

  “Does he... does he... not have any food? I mean, is it like hibernating?” Abby asked carefully. “Is it like that Matt?”

  Matthew muttered, “No. It's tubes. They use tubes.”

  He hated the tubes. When he went in the room he tried not to see them, like trying not to hear the horrible hospital noises that came out of some of the wards.

  “Don't worry Matt. My Mum says he'll be all right,” Cherry comforted. “She's worked a lot in hospitals, so she knows. He'll feel weird when he wakes up though, won't he. You know - the date and all... ”

  The off-licence was close now, on the next corner. They slowed to a stop, just before reaching it.

  “You said... a signal, “Matthew said. “What's the signal?”

  Cherry was quick to answer.

  “We'll wait ‘til we get a chance - if we don't like it - then I'll click my fingers. Like that!” she said. She snapped them under Gary's nose so that he jumped, even though he tried not to.

  How does she do that? Abby thought. I can't even whistle properly.

  “OK, so where do we run to?” Matthew asked doubtfully.

  There was a moment's silence as they stood there, puffing breath into the darkness. The mere idea of escaping had been enough until then. Now it wasn't.

  Matthew answered his own question. “Down here. My house. Mum'll be up the hospital. We'll go round the back. There's a key.”

  “If we get this far,” Gary said gloomily.

  Then there were footsteps, and Roy's voice.

  “Great,” he was saying, rubbing his hands together as he closed in on them. “Everybody ready then?”

  As usual his face seemed to shine with good nature. An easy smile showed his teeth. He was fun, he was friendly, his smile seemed to say. He joked, or sounded as if he was joking.

  “Nearly missed you there in the dark Cherry. My favourite yoghurt too. Geddit? Knew Gareth was here though. Sniff, sniff. Good old Stig. Washing machine broke again has it?” He gave Abigail's long hair a sharp tug. “Your tail's getting damp, Horsey,” he said. Then he laughed, as if it was all his way of being friendly, and looked over Matthew's head at Karen, who was opening a packet of gum. Bits of silver and white paper fell from her fingers to litter the street and tumble away in the breeze.

  “Seen big Matty yet?” he asked her. “I'm sure he was here just now. Perhaps he's fallen down the drain... ”

  “Give over Roy,” Karen said in her creepy whisper. “I want to see what you've got planned. ‘Ow's your brother Matt? Still out?”

  Matthew muttered, “Yes,” longing for Cherry to click her fingers, now, without waiting. He wanted to run away already.

  “Great, just great,” Roy said. “So let's go. Keep it quiet guys. No questions. This is goin' to be good. You'll really like this one Karen.”

  But she only sniggered in reply.

  Roy lead the way now, and they followed with Karen on their heels. Back up the hill they went, past the blind, bricked-up terrace where it slanted away from the main road, along a dark backway, out into the lighter path beside the railings of the playing-field of their own
school, past the caretaker's bungalow, through the gate - really puzzled now - on to the dew-wet grass, then along the back of the school, until suddenly Roy stopped.

  They were standing by a door that lead directly from the field into the school, via the changing rooms.

  “Here we are then,” Roy said cheerfully. “And this is where it all begins.”

  8. he was scared, really scared

  They stood in a huddle, not understanding. The school rose, black and silent, on one side, and the playing-fields spread away on the other. It was very quiet.

  “First of all,” Roy said, “try pushing that door open, Stig - sorry... Gareth. Go on!” His voice had sharpened. “Push!”

  Gary gave out a little moaning sound but obediently put his hands flat against the blistered paint of the door and pushed it gently. The door rattled slightly, but it was firmly locked and bolted.

  “Now Titch.” Matthew pushed, as gently as Gary had.

  “Abby?” She tried.

  “Cherry?”

  Muttering, “This is stupid,” Cherry gave it a brief shove. The door remained shut.

  Karen tittered. A dry sound in the damp air.

  When Roy spoke, he didn't sound at all disappointed. “Well done team! That's your fingerprints all over it, I should think,” he said happily. “You did that real well. I don't reckon anyone's going to tell on anyone else now - if they do, we know who'll get the blame, don't we. That's if I don't get them first, of course!”

  He laughed. Only Karen obediently joined him. As the idea sank in, the others stared at the door in horror. Matthew had a panicky feeling that their fingerprints might suddenly light up, calling attention to themselves, like electric door-bells or cats' eyes in the road.

  Then Roy swung back his foot and let loose one savage kick. A panel at the bottom of the door burst inwards.

  “Neat, eh?” he said. I took a couple of screws out in games when I had me bad cold.” He laughed again, cheerfully.