P.N.E. (The Wolfblood Prophecies Book 4) (4 page)

Chapter Five - The Dreaming

Hospitals are rarely completely silent places, but on the night of the floods, there was a moment when all was still and the dreaming took over.

Jo had fallen asleep in the armchair, reading about the Cuban Missile Crisis before getting ready for bed. She dreamt of Everard Burnley, trapped in a castle beneath the sea. The water sparkled with points of green light. Beauty and danger were hidden beneath the waves and shadows swam through the walls. She shivered and moaned softly.

Mary dreamt of a velvet-draped room in a disused Underground station, with a battered old green and gold Lloyd Loom chair. Outside the wolves were howling and she called to them, joining their moonlit symphony, yearning to run wild beneath the silver moon and the ancient dark trees.

‘Be happy, my dearest husband,’ said the tawny-haired woman of shadows and starlight to Matthew. Rosie’s blessing banished the burden he had been shouldering for so long. He breathed deeply and his heart opened like a flower.

Reg could not sleep. He had a lot on his mind. On the one hand he knew that Brenda was the only person who could have betrayed his plans to Titus Stigmurus, but on the other he knew only of her dedication, loyalty and integrity. He stared out at the rain and wondered what to do.

‘Who are you?’ asked Paul in anguish of the masked woman with the copper curls and jade eyes as she softly kissed his parched mouth. Her musical laugh beguiled and tormented him, then she was gone and the echo of the question hung on the air.

Lethe woke in terror, with the sound of distorted fairground music ringing in her ears and the memory of shards of silver glass and ruby beads of shining blood cascading down like the rain at the end of the world. Jonathon Mallory, ever vigilant, crossed the room to her bedside and reached for her hand. For once she did not push him away.

Titus was half asleep as he knelt by his bed praying for forgiveness of his sins. He had done so every night since being rescued from the gunpowder factory where he had been cruelly imprisoned and humiliated. As he worked through decades steeped in wickedness, betrayal and destruction, he wept. He remembered everything. Tonight he dreamed of 1957.

It was supposed to be a perfectly routine demonstration. Instead, there was a terrible explosion, tall buildings turned to dust, people died, and a deadly rain poisoned the land.

Ali, like Lucy, did not dream. In their worlds, all was darkness and silence.

Sebastian stirred imperceptibly, imprisoned in his thin cage of glass. A pin-point of green light danced above him, penetrating the gloom. The dreams swirling all around called out to him, creating connections to events long forgotten, and with a sudden wash of green light he was freed, with his power to invade dreams restored to him.

There was something he had to find, and while his body lay inert and comatose, his mind went dancing into the night, stealing his shadow, stitching an invisible cat’s cradle of lost recollections into a vast, glittering net. 

He crept into Jo’s dream, searching furtively. As he raked through her memories the images of a shimmering underwater world were replaced by those of a forget-me-not blue car, sleek as a panther, stalking its prey – padding stealthily and silently just behind a frightened girl on a bicycle; tracking a terrified tortoiseshell cat by the light of an ominous moon. As the old memories engulfed her, Jo was caught in the net. She struggled to escape, but to no avail. As Sebastian stole her dream, merging her thoughts with his, she began to share his senses; seeing what he saw, hearing what he heard.

Together they swooped into the aftermath of Lethe’s nightmare, icicles of glass still tumbling down. As Sebastian probed her memories, clusters of coloured sparks were caught in his net. Lethe stirred and sighed and trapped in her breath was a whisper. ‘I’m sorry, Sebastian.’

Jo closed her eyes to her father’s dream of a willow tree scattered with fairy lights and a laughing woman with hair of flame and eyes of green. They fell into those eyes to find Lethe standing in a laboratory, sterile, white and gleaming as she injected a test-tube with a bright green syringe and they were washed back to Jo’s castle beneath the sea.

‘You!’ shrieked the ghostly image of Everard Burnley, pointing a skeletal finger directly at Jo. The corridor stretched before her as the spectre loomed forwards, his deathly face elongating and craning closer.

Recoiling in horror, Burnley snapped his teeth closed where Jo had been moments before. She felt like she was swimming in treacle.

Still he bore down upon her and continued to grow in stature. As Jo was about to be engulfed she heard Sebastian’s voice as if from afar.

‘Close your eyes, Jo!  Close your eyes!’

She did and the world went silent.

‘Where are we?’ whispered Jo.  There was no reply.

‘Jo?’ called Sebastian, into the dark.  Nothing.

‘Sebastian!’ hollered Jo, her words vanishing into the velvet blackness without even an echo.

Sebastian listened intently, wondering if he had gone deaf, so absolute was the dark.

With a sudden crack came a gunshot, and the sensation of falling. Ali screamed and fell through Jo as Lucy simultaneously fell straight through Sebastian like a cold wind. Terror dragged them down behind and the two of them found themselves together in a dark alleyway, with Jo desperately trying to stem the blood pouring from a nasty gash in Sebastian’s head.

Reg was still fighting sleep as he struggled with his fears. Fractured images of a city in flames as armoured police forced crowds of people into submission while Brenda desperately tried to stop the blood pouring from his head wound. Jo caught Reg’s eye exactly as Brenda locked glances with Sebastian and for a moment the two dreams overlapped one another before Sebastian and Jo were once more helplessly dragged further down.

Mary’s memories of living as Crazy Em also contained blood; running down the walls and in the sewers and over everything as she shrieked dementedly beneath an enormous flickering ultraviolet light. The Blaschko lines on Jo’s skin glowed briefly as they were dragged past the Deep Level Shelter and further into the darkness.

The man cradled in Mary’s loving arms also began to glow as they entered his dream. He too was dreaming of the sterile, gleaming laboratory and was staring directly at them. The sparks twinkled like fireflies as Sebastian and Jo were pulled ever deeper into the realm of dreams and nightmares.

One more sleeper left. Titus, still on his knees, slumped against the bed, reliving blinding light and choking dust and unimaginable, ear-splitting noise followed by wave upon wave of profound silence as he stumbled towards the ruins of the laboratory.

Sebastian howled in triumph and flew towards the blinding light, a dark silhouette, trailing his web of sparks and stars. The net opened wide and Jo was dragged along helplessly as he plunged into the heart of the light.

Far ahead, where the brightness softened into shadow, there was a door. A stainless steel door, with a magenta, three-bladed radiation warning symbol on a yellow background. At the heart of the symbol was a scorpion, and the words STIGMURUS ENTERPRISES – RESEARCH DIVISION encircled the symbol. Carved on a stone panel above the door were the words ATOMS FOR PEACE PROGRAM. As the two dreamers grew ever closer Jo saw an orderly queue of people waiting to be admitted. The door slowly opened.

A beaming Titus Stigmurus welcomed the visitors, a group of all ages and nationalities, leading them to a lecture hall. Each member of the party was issued with white hooded protective clothing and sunglasses.

Jo looked around – there was no sign of Sebastian. She could sense his presence, like a pulse, but no more than that. She wondered if anybody could see her, or if, like Sebastian, she was invisible, but a shout from an armed guard of, ‘Speed it up, Sonny-Jim,’ answered her question. Affronted, she wondered why the guard thought she was a boy, then realised that she was the only female not wearing a skirt. She quickly pulled on her jump suit and sunglasses, sat down, and looked around.

One wall was dominated with a huge photograph of a woman in an old-fashioned swimming costume decorated with something that looked like half a mushroom, half a cloud. Underneath the title,
Miss Atomic Bomb 1957
, someone had written,
You’ve seen the Beast – now here’s the Beauty!

Another wall had a poster of a person she recognised. The handsome man was holding a book called
Profiles in Courage
. The caption read:
Senator John F. Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize-winning author with the book he wrote while convalescing from back surgery.

As Jo scanned the room, one family in particular caught her eye – a man and a woman with two daughters aged about twelve. One of the girls was refusing to put on the protective clothing. She threw it to the ground in a temper. Jo clearly heard her say, ‘I do not want to look like a clown. Anyway, this is not a proper radiation suit. It’s pathetic.’ Her father said something short and sharp, and with an ill grace the girl bent down to pick up the hated overalls. When she stood up to put them on she turned her back on her parents, and looked defiantly at the people around who were watching her histrionics. Some were amused; others mildly irritated. She insolently out-stared them all.

For a split second she looked directly at Jo before sweeping the rest of the audience with a contemptuous glare. Jo was left reeling.  For a moment she thought she might faint with shock. Her head was spinning, her pulse was racing and her hands were clammy. It was like looking in a mirror. The angry girl had Jo’s auburn curls and green eyes. Instinctively Jo hid her own hair under the hood.

She was thinking furiously. Her mind seethed with questions. Who was the sulky girl? Where was she? Not only that, what year was it?

1957, dummy.

The petulant girl was staring at Jo again. Immediately Jo shielded. The other girl stuck out her tongue and it was all Jo could do not to laugh out loud. Somewhere in the back of her mind the date rang a faint bell, but the memory remained elusive.

A sharp reprimand of, ‘Behave yourself, Lethe, or you will miss the presentation,’ answered her first question. Jo was dumbfounded to realise she was staring at her mother and aunt when they were children, and their parents, the grand-parents Jo had never known. As she studied her handsome grand-father it was evident that he was the reason for the copper curls that ran in the family.

She was glad when the lights dimmed and covered her confusion. A single spotlight shone on Titus Stigmurus as he stood in front of a vast white screen.

He looks older in 1957 than he does now
marvelled Jo.
Whatever Mirabel does to stop him aging wasn’t happening then.

Everyone concentrated as Titus started to speak. His voice was compelling and his manner confident. He effortlessly exuded power.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Stigmurus Enterprises. As you undoubtedly know, the 1954 Atomic Energy Act promotes the peaceful uses of nuclear energy through private initiative, allowing the Atomic Energy Commission to license private companies such as mine to use nuclear materials and build and operate nuclear power plants as part of President Eisenhower's
Atoms for Peace
programme. I am privileged to be playing a small part in this exciting work. Before our tour of this section of the complex, I intend to show a film of the origins of the nuclear industry and some footage never before seen. After a delicious lunch we will demonstrate our Borax-III reactor – hence the protective clothing. Better to be safe than sorry, although the dangers from nuclear fall-out have been much exaggerated. Only two years ago the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission assured us that the path of fall-out does not constitute a serious hazard to any living thing outside the test site.’

‘Tell that to the down-winders,’ shouted a man in the audience. ‘Tell that to the mothers who miscarried or delivered dead babies. Tell that to the observers with flash-blindness and the troops with bone cancers and leukaemia.’

Titus was urbanity personified. ‘You raise interesting points, my friend, but I fear you are misinformed. There is no evidence to suggest the nuclear testing causes the dangers you describe.’

‘There is no evidence,’ replied the protester angrily, ‘because there has been no research.’

‘Perhaps we can continue this fascinating discussion later, Mr …?’