(1989) Dreamer (33 page)

‘What I want to know is where do premonitions – precognitions, whatever you call it – come from?’

‘Ah. Well, that’s the big one. That’s what we are trying to discover here. We are working on three theories. We are not looking at anything that can be
dismissed as coincidence, or self-fulfilling prophecy; we are studying case histories only of people who genuinely seem able to see into the future . . . Real time. Does that mean anything to you?’

Sam shook her head.

He turned a layer of cheese over with his fork, peering at the meat it uncovered, swivelled round to study the crowd of people behind them, a rag-bag mixture of businessmen, students, building labourers, then turned back to her.

‘Real time is the theory that you tune into people’s thoughts, telepathically – unintentionally, of course. You see, you may have tuned into the pilot, telepathically. Maybe he had a drink problem, or some other problem, and he knew the plane was going to crash when he next flew to Bulgaria. Perhaps he was going to do it deliberately – commit suicide. Perhaps you picked those signals up.’

‘Read his mind?’

‘Yes. Picked up his thoughts. Even the sort of dialogue he knew he would have with his co-pilot.’ He smiled. ‘The child who fired the shotgun and the rapist in the underground station – you could have tuned into them, into their thoughts, in your dream state.’

She felt an uncomfortable tightening in her throat, and stared down at her fingernails. They were looking worse. ‘If I’m picking things up telepathically, why don’t I get more things – your thoughts, my husband’s, people walking down the street?’

‘The air is full of signals – radio signals, light waves, sound waves. We only pick up a narrow band of them. Either our brain is incapable of receiving the rest, or it filters them out, keeping only what we need. It’s possible something’s gone wrong with your filtering system
and in your sleep you’re picking up bits of thought from other people.’

‘Would they show on your graphs?’

‘We’re hoping so. We’re hoping we may find some common irregularity in people who have premonitions.’

‘What about mine, last night?’

‘Unfortunately, we didn’t record you for long enough. The only thing was you – when you went to sleep, you did seem to go into REM sleep quickly – but that often happens in a strange environment.’

‘How does this telepathy theory explain my balcony dream?’

‘Dreams can be very obscure. Premonitive or precognitive dreams get mixed up with the dream processes and buried in symbols. It’s one of our biggest difficulties, to separate it all out. The true meanings are often concealed, and need interpreting. I’m sure far more people have premonitions than ever realise it, because they don’t analyse their dreams.’

‘What symbols do you mean between the balcony and scaffold?’

‘Well, falling – in a woman – often relates to falling to – ah – yielding to sexual advances—’ He fidgeted with his hands. ‘Ah – intercourse.’

Good old Sigmund. Knew you couldn’t keep out of this.

She felt her face going bright red.

The dream was nothing to do with the scaffold.

Was it?

She saw him looking quizzically, saw from his expression that he realised he had touched a nerve.

‘Symbolism . . .’ he said, trying to move on quickly. ‘It’s not always correct, you see.’

‘What are the other theories?’

‘The supernatural, of course.’ He prodded his lasagne
with his fork, pricking it all over, as if trying to let the steam out. As if trying to exorcise the steam.

‘Do you believe in the supernatural?’

‘Ah.’ He turned the fork over in his hand. ‘I’m a scientist. Officially we’re not allowed to believe in the supernatural.’

‘And unofficially?’

‘It’s a question of definition.’

‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

He scratched his beard then his cheek and lowered his head a fraction. ‘I don’t have any – evidence – of a connection between ghosts and precognition.’

‘What about Slider?’

‘You think he’s a ghost – a spirit – haunting you from the past?’

‘What do you think?’

He plucked up sudden courage and put a forkful of lasagne in his mouth. A tiny morsel fell away and tumbled through his beard like an acrobat in a safety net. He chewed thoughtfully. ‘I think he’s very interesting. Most bogeymen get left behind in childhood. He could simply be an embodiment of your fears. That whenever you are afraid – whenever your brain picks up danger – it translates it into this grotesque image. It’s saying to you “Slider, watch out,” as if it was saying “Red Alert”.’

‘So when he appears in a dream, I know that I have to be careful – that something’s going to come true?’

‘It seems that way, doesn’t it?’ He dug some more lasagne with his fork. ‘I think it’s important for you to try to work things out, to find the meanings. There’s a paper I’ve written on just this. I’ll nip over and get you a copy. I think you’ll find it helpful.’

‘Thank you.’

He smiled. ‘The other theory we are working on and
feel has currency is the time warp theory. Do you understand time, at all?’

‘Vaguely, I suppose.’

‘I won’t blind you with science, but we believe there do exist different spheres and planes – different dimensions of time – and that in the dream state some people tune into those—’ He raised his hands – ‘by design or by accident we don’t know.’ He toyed with his shirt collar. ‘You are frightened that our hooded man is a ghost of someone from the past, haunting you, but I would tend to take the view from what you have told me that he’s not a ghost from the past at all. I think it is possible that he’s someone in the present, now, who is bothering you, worrying you – someone that you are associating with this Slider.’

She felt the coldness again, much more now, spreading out around her body just beneath her skin. She saw that the table was shaking, then realised that it was her hands holding onto the edge of it that were making it do that. Her legs were crashing together. Everything seemed to have gone out of focus.

‘What—’ Her voice was trembling. ‘What sort of person?’

He was looking at her anxiously. ‘Someone you know, perhaps, who makes you feel uncomfortable? Someone you don’t like, or don’t trust? Someone who reminds you of this hooded one-eyed man? I don’t know. I don’t want to put thoughts into your mind. It’s just a possibility that you’re seeing something bad connected with this man.’ He shrugged. ‘It may be nothing.’

Andreas? she thought. Andreas? Tell him about Andreas? No, stupid. There’s no connection.

‘Maybe Hampstead?’ he said. ‘Maybe you saw him in Hampstead – or someone who resembled him? Reminded you of him?’ He checked his watch. ‘Just a
theory, of course. You’ve got a train to catch. I’ll just nip over quickly and get that paper for you. Two minutes.’

He drained his beer, stood up and hurried out of the pub. She watched him through the window as he ran to the edge of the pavement and waited for a gap in the stream of lorries, then she looked down at her lasagne, and cut a piece with her fork.

There was a fierce squeal of brakes, and a thud like a sledgehammer hitting a sack of potatoes. She spun around and looked back out of the window, and saw Hare hurtle up in the air then disappear. She heard slithering tyres and a dull metallic bang, then more slithering and another bang.

Someone screamed.

Herself.

Then someone else. She leapt up from her seat, sending her chair crashing backwards, ran, barged into someone, knocking their drink flying. ‘Sorry, so sorry.’ Out of the way! Oh please get out of the way! She lunged for the door. ‘Excuse me, excuse me. Colin!’ She burst out of the door, then stood and blinked.

Hare was standing on the pavement, waiting to cross.

‘Dr Hare! Colin! Colin! Don’t!’

There was a gap in the traffic and he sprinted out into the middle of the road.

‘No! Dr Hare! No!’

She saw the truck. Heard the fierce squeal of brakes, and the thud, like a sledgehammer hitting a sack of potatoes, and Hare disappeared. She heard slithering tyres and a dull metallic bang, then more slithering and another bang.

‘Dr Hare! Colin! No. No, please God,
nooo
.’

The door behind her opened and she heard footsteps.

Car doors were opening. Someone hooted. She heard the hiss of air brakes. The rattle of a diesel engine.

She inched forward, clutching her thighs with her hands, then sprinted over, pushed past the crowd that was already forming, looked, saw his body face down, his head somewhere underneath the massive wheel of the artic, a stain of blood and – something else – spreading out beside it.

She turned away, staggered, bumped into someone, apologised, knelt down and vomited violently.

The room was warm and the tea was hot and sweet, treacly sweet, and she sipped some down, felt it slipping down her throat and into her stomach, felt the warmth of its spreading out inside her, then she had to put the mug down because it was too hot to hold. She put it on the vinyl table top beside the words which looked freshly carved into it.

FUCK ALL PIGS.

She was surprised it hadn’t been noticed and covered up or removed. Perhaps it happened all the time? Then as she watched them, they changed.

AROLEID.

The police officer smiled at her from across the table, a big teddy bear of man in his blue serge jacket and his silver buttons and a coating of dandruff on both shoulders, and a face that looked as though it would like to change the world but didn’t know how.

‘Drink some more, love, drink it all up. It’ll make you feel better.’

Sam nodded and picked the cup up again, but she was shaking too much and hot tea slopped over the rim and
scalded her hands. She put it back down and a puddle spread out around it. ‘Sorry. So sorry.’

‘Doesn’t matter, love. Let it cool a bit.’

She fumbled in her bag, pulled out her handkerchief and wiped her hands, then dabbed her mouth. She’d rinsed it out, but she could still taste the bile. She looked around the room: small, dull, an interview room with hard lecture hall chairs, green paint on the walls, flaking, chipped, a big chunk missing on the far side – was that where they had banged some punk’s head while they were interviewing him?

The police officer read through her statement again slowly out aloud to her. ‘Anything else you’d like to add, love?’

Yes.

I caused it.

I killed Tanya Jacobson, and now Dr Hare. They both died because – because they might have been able to help me?

So why hadn’t Bamford O’Connell died? Because he hadn’t tried? Had Ken tried?

‘All right, love?’

She sat up with a start, blinking. ‘Sorry. I—’

‘Would you like to lie down somewhere, for a while?’

She felt her stomach heave. ‘I’ll be all right, thank you. I should get back to – back down – to London.’

‘There’s someone come from the university to run you to the station.’

‘Thank you. That’s – very – kind.’

He pushed the statement across the table to her. ‘If you wouldn’t mind just signing that. I don’t know if the coroner will want you for the inquest. He’ll write if he does.’

She followed him out into the front of the police station and to her surprise saw Laszlo sitting, waiting.
He stood up, his face ashen, the black rings around his eyes even more pronounced, and as she saw him she began to cry. She felt the kindly pat of the police officer’s arm on her shoulder and heard him speak.

‘She’s suffering from shock, I’m afraid. I have suggested we run her up to the hospital, but she wants to get back to London.’

Then she was outside in the bright cold light, climbing into Laszlo’s beat-up 2CV Citroën. He clipped her seat belt and closed her door for her, then got in himself and started the engine. She listened to its high-pitched lawn-mower whine.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘I think there are trains quite often.’

‘Yes.’

He drove in silence for a few minutes. ‘Terrible,’ he said suddenly. ‘This is so terrible.’

‘Yes.’

‘He was the whole department. He knew so much. It was all just beginning.’

‘Nice. He was so nice.’ She felt tears running down her cheeks and didn’t brother to wipe them

‘He was a very dedicated man. Maybe he was too dedicated.’

‘What do you mean?’

He turned and glanced at her. ‘You know what I mean.’ He braked at a traffic light.

She looked at him, but there was nothing in his face, just an emptiness as if he’d put up a sign which said ‘SORRY, CLOSED FOR THE SEASON, GONE AWAY.’

‘I feel responsible,’ she said. ‘I feel that I caused it.’

‘No,’ he said, and the sharpness of his reply surprised her. The light changed and they drove on. ‘You know
what they say, Mrs Curtis. You know the expression.

“If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen”.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If seeing the future frightens you, don’t go looking for it.’

She stared numbly ahead. Her head was pounding and her stomach was heaving again. ‘I’m not looking for it.’

‘Why have you come here then?’

‘Because I want to stop. I want to stop seeing the future. I don’t want to see it any more.’

‘You’ve gone too far down the road. You can’t stop.’

‘Why not?’

‘Existence is full of crossover points, Mrs Curtis. Countries have boundaries. Life has a boundary of death. The earth’s gravity has a boundary beyond which it cannot pull. When you start to look into the paranormal you remain a spectator up to a certain boundary. When you cross over that, you become a participant. Do you understand?’

She frowned at him, trembling.

‘When you are looking into the future, you are looking beyond the earth’s plane, Mrs Curtis. If you look long enough, you cross that boundary and you become part of the future.’

‘I – I don’t really understand.’

‘I think you do. You understand the forces that are around you, that you brought into the laboratory last night. I could see on your face that you understood.’

‘I didn’t understand last night.’

‘Didn’t you?’ he said, almost bitterly.