Dream Paris (4 page)

“I’m not trying to frighten you. I’m warning you. And as for what could happen to you, well, why not ask Anna?”

More cruelty. He knew how to push people’s buttons. Petrina took hold of my arm.

“What could happen to me, Anna?” she pleaded.

“I don’t know! Have you eaten any street food? Anything from the stalls? Some of it is left over from Dream London. People live on it for weeks, and then whatever it was in the food that was holding it to this world just slips away. The food vanishes and so do the nutrients in your body. A couple of months ago a boy in our school starved to death in front of his classmates’ eyes.”

Petrina kneaded the top of her bag, squeezed the knitted material between her fists. “I’ve only been here a week or so. I’ve mostly eaten in my digs.”

“Do you know where the food comes from? Never mind that. There are other ways. Sometimes buildings just collapse. Whatever it was that was holding them together just vanishes. Or maybe a hole will open in the ground. That happened to a whole family. Their son was in my year. There was a crashing noise in the night and the next day the whole house had gone, vanished down a sinkhole.”

Petrina looked down at the stone flagged floor.

“You think the floor will open beneath me and me alone? What if I came and sat by you?”

“You know they found metal creatures in the soil?” said Mr Twelvetrees “Like squids with spears for arms, frozen in place as they swam to the surface?”

“It’s true,” I said, unhappily. “They keep digging them up. A whole army of them, they were almost at the surface when Dream London ended.”

Petrina was looking at the floor in horror. “Anna, whose side are you on? You must see I’m only trying to help you!”

“I know that, Petrina!” I felt close to tears. Darkness had gathered outside. This safe, ordered, quiet place that I had built was no match for the horror of the outside world. “I know that! But I’m trying to help you, too! You don’t know what it’s like, Petrina! You don’t know what it was like back then! I don’t want to go back to all of that! And yet it says that I will, right here on this piece of paper. It’s not that I have a choice, it’s going to happen!”

“Five minutes to go!” Mr Twelvetrees held up his watch.

“I don’t care,” snapped Petrina. “I’m staying. I don’t care what you say, Mr Twelvetrees, this poor girl is terrified.”

“And so are you,” smiled Mr Twelvetrees.

“Yes, I am. But I’m not leaving.”

No matter how wrong-headed she was, the woman was brave. Petrina took hold of my hand.

“Don’t worry, dear. I’m staying with you.” You could hear only the faintest tremor in her voice.

“Four minutes.”

“You still haven’t said why you’re here, Mr Twelvetrees. Why bring Anna that scroll?”

“Her Majesty’s Government needs people like Anna. It wants to find out what happened in Dream London, it wants to prevent such incursions happening again.”

“And what’s your part in this?”

“A number of people still remain unaccounted for after the changes. It’s known that most of the people who sailed down the rivers to other lands never returned when the changes came to an end. Many soldiers and spies have been sent to look for them, few have returned.”

“My parents,” I said. “You’re looking for people like my parents.”

“Precisely. See, Petrina? I’m not such a bad person. I’m here to help Anna.”

“It sounds more like she’s helping you.”

“Where’s Dream Paris?” I asked. “I’ve heard the news. There’s been no mention of any changes happening in Paris.”

“There haven’t been, so far as we know,” said Mr Twelvetrees. “I think Dream Paris is a different place from our Paris.”

A different place.

“You think? Don’t you know?”

“We know very little. You’ll need to find a way back into the Dream World.”

I shivered as he said the words.

“Dream Paris will be in there somewhere. We know that the Dream World has broken through to our world in the past. We suspect that Dream Paris is a remnant of a former incursion.”

“So I’m to go into the Dream World and look for Dream Paris. But you don’t know where it will be.”

“No. If we did, we would have gone there ourselves.”

Looking back, I really should have thought more about what he’d just said. But at the time I was too distracted. All I was thinking was that I was going to see my mother again.

“And then you found this fortune scroll.” I looked at the paper. “I’m your route to Dream Paris.”

“She’s not going to Dream Paris! She’s…”

Petrina paused, pressed a hand to her head.

“I don’t feel so…”

“What’s the matter?” I said.

“I think this is it,” said Mr Twelvetrees.

Petrina was looking at her hands.

“How many fingers…?” she murmured.

“Petrina, look at me.”

She wasn’t listening. I was trying to see her eyes. Blue checks, square pupils… What was wrong with her?

“Everything is wHoLe. EveRyThInG iS sepArAtE…”

What was the matter with her voice? She sounded like she was being auto-tuned, her voice stepping up and down between pitches.

“EvErYtHiNg iS mOvInG aPaRt.”

“What’s happening, Anna?” That was Mr Twelvetrees. He sounded eager, excited.

“Her eyes! They’re like little television screens. Mr Twelvetrees! What’s going on? Do you know what’s happening?”

“I’d step away from her if I were you, Anna.”

I didn’t know any better than to do so. I wasn’t a sadist, I took no pleasure in the death of another human being.

“AnNa, tAkE mY hAnD! HOlD mE to tHiS wOrLd, I…”

She looked at a hand that had turned into a cluster of pink boxes and was silent. Her head was a cube sticking from her knitted jumper. She was a badly made Guy, a collection of cuboids slumping to the floor, dead.

“5:23,” said Mr Twelvetrees. “What is it? What’s happened?”

The sound of music filled my head, brass bands blaring. The thing that had been Petrina Kent lay on the floor. What the hell had happened to her?

“What is it?” said Mr Twelvetrees.

A soprano cornet was screaming in my head. I imagined a vault, thick walls, a heavy door, and me, inside, in the silence. It worked. It worked a little. The madness receded, the sound of it dulled by the walls.

“What can you see?” repeated Mr Twelvtrees.

“She’s like a computer woman. An ultra low resolution picture of a woman.”

I looked around the kitchen. My beautiful, spotlessly clean kitchen. I didn’t look at the floor. I sat down on a stool next to Mr Twelvetrees. It was 5:25.

“I can’t stay here,” I said. “I need to go to Dream Paris to find my parents.”

“The scroll only mentions your mother,” Mr Twelvetrees reminded me, cruelly.

I was convinced. He was a sadist. And I was in his hands.

THERESE DELACROIX

M
R
T
WELVETREES SAID
that I wouldn’t need anything, that everything would be taken care of. I wasn’t having that. That’s a trick that men play on women, one they instinctively seem to know. “
No need to bring anything, it will all be provided. Hey, dinner’s on me! It’s okay, I’ll run you there. No need to bother learning how to fix it, I brought my tools
…”

They call it chivalry, they call it being a gentleman. Really, it’s just a way of keeping you in their power.

I stood in the doorway, looking everywhere but at the shape on the floor. (Who would tell her family? What would happen to the body?)

“I want to fetch a few things,” I said. “You wait here.”

Mr Twelvetrees was gazing at nothing, fly eyes glittering like jewels in the flickering candlelight. The dull warmth of the kitchen, the smell of the Rayburn, the thick oak door that kept out the night… I didn’t want to leave this place.

“Don’t be too long,” said Mr Twelvetrees. “We’re on a tight schedule.”

The salesman’s trick. Make up a deadline. Still, I ran up the uneven stairs, taking care not to trip on the carpet that had buckled where the treads narrowed. The upstairs landing creaked as the house shifted, the rain pattered on the ill-fitting windows. I ran into my room and grabbed my old hiking rucksack and started throwing things into it. Underwear, clothes, penknife. My own script, the one I kept locked in a box.

My walking boots stood on my cornet case, tucked at the bottom of the wardrobe. A note sounded in my head and I remembered poor Petrina’s pixellated form.

Think of the silence.

I found a pad half filled with maths notes and I tore off a few blank sheets.

Dear Ben,
I wrote. I paused, pen in my mouth. What was I going to say?

My mother is alive in Dream Paris. A man called Mr Twelvetrees came to my house and told me this. He says he’s going to help me find her. He gave me this card.
(I placed the card at the side of the note, ready to be sealed in the envelope.)
I don’t know if I can trust him, this may all be a trick, but what else can I do?

What else could I put? I signed it
Anna
. Quickly, I scribbled out a second note to Mr Hiatt. And then a third, to Ben again. I sealed these notes in envelopes and addressed them.

I returned to the kitchen to find Mr Twelvetrees sitting where I’d left him, blank eyes turned towards a floor that danced with orange stars in the glow of the Rayburn. He looked up as I entered the room, hearing the bump as I caught my rucksack on the door frame.

“Ready? Splendid! Now, would you mind taking my arm, Anna?”

“Just a moment,” I paused, thinking. “I can’t just leave like this. What about Mr Hiatt? What’s he going to do for food? What about Ben and his family? They’ll worry if I just vanish.”

“Who’s Ben?”

“My boyfriend.”

Perhaps that was too grand a title. To be honest, Ben was more of a convenience. A box ticked, something that prevented offers and enquiries from other men.

“… and then there’s school. What about my exams?”

And that was the big thing. I had my future to think of. I needed my grades to get to university.

Mr Twelvetrees waved a hand dismissively.

“You’re doing work of national importance. Trust me, all that will be taken care of.” He looked in my general direction. Or was it all a lie? Could he really see me? I wasn’t sure. This was where I found out. I placed the first letter to Ben in the middle of the table, in full view. Mr Twelvetrees didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m sorry, Anna,” he continued. “You read the fortune. You speak to your mother on Nivôse 23rd. According to our research, that’s in five days time.”

“And you only just came to me?”

“The scroll was only found on Monday morning. It took us a day to find out which Anna it referred to.”

“It had my address on it.”

“We wanted to know something about you.”

Why? It’s a fortune. What difference would it make?
But I kept my thoughts to myself.

“I’m sorry. We can talk about such things later. Now, would you mind taking my arm?”

I did so, and I led him from the room, casting a backwards glance at the letter to Ben I’d left on the table. How long before someone saw it? Or would it just lie there, forgotten?

T
HERE WAS A
dark car parked outside The Poison Yews; a heavy old thing, all polished chrome and shiny black paint. As we approached it, a tall young man with a broken nose got out.

“Thank you, Darren,” said Mr Twelvetrees.

Darren held open a door, and the scent of the oily red leather interior wafted over us both. I felt sick: the car smelt of Dream London.

“Ladies first, Anna.”

I ducked into the car through a cloud of acetone breath. As he closed the door, I noted that Darren was missing some fingers. Then he was gone, around the other side to help Mr Twelvetrees into his seat.

Mr Twelvetrees waited for the sound of the driver’s door closing.

“The base, please.”

“Certainly, Mr Twelvetrees.”

The car pulled away gently. I noted that someone had laid down a metal sheet over the pipeline at the end of the street to allow car access. People like Mr Twelvetrees were not to be inconvenienced.

“Any news of your wife, Darren?”

“Still none since this morning, Mr Twelvetrees.”

“It must be awful. I suppose the worry increases every day.”

So why mention it?

“Darren put his wife up as collateral for a loan, back in Dream London,” explained Mr Twelvetrees. “He was behind on the payments. They took his kidneys, too. Isn’t that right, Darren?”

Darren grunted.

“He’s on dialysis every night. But we look after you, don’t we, Darren?”

I’d gotten into a car with a sadist. What was I doing? I reached into the pocket of my rucksack and pulled out my souvenir of the last days of Dream London.

“Can you read this, Mr Twelvetrees?”

I pushed the script into his hands.

“I can’t read anything, remember,” he said, feeling the edges of the sheet. “What does it say?”

“Never mind.” I couldn’t keep the disappointment from my voice. I’d hoped it would still work.

“Is this a truth script, by any chance? Do you think I’m lying to you, Anna? I’ve not said anything that wasn’t on your fortune.”