The Book of Dreams

He didn’t see the girl again for quite some time. By the time the door of the cabin opened and she trotted back down the steps, the object clutched tightly to her chest, the sun had dipped into the top of the trees, and wasn’t coming back out again.

He stood up, brushing twigs and leaves off his trousers. She came over to him.

'This is the book I told you about,’ she said, holding it out to him. ‘The one that grants wishes when you open it.’

He took it off her and turned it over in his hands. It was old, dusty, leather-bound and had a metal clasp to hold it shut. There was a tiny lock for a key.

"Where’s the key?’ he asked.

The girl shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

"Then how do you know it grants wishes?’

"My grandfather told me.’

"Does he have the key?’

"I don’t know. Maybe he did. But he’s dead.’

He wanted to say he was sorry, but all he felt was irritated by the girl’s games. ‘So you have no proof?’

"Oh, I have proof.’

"What?’

"I can’t tell you. Not until you’ve opened it and seen for yourself.’

"Fine.’ He handed the book back to her. ‘I don’t want it then.’

The girl smiled. ‘Oh, you do. Now you want it more than ever.’ She held out the book again, and after a moment's hesitation, his shaking hand reached for it.

&&&

Later that night, after dinner, he took the book out from where he’d hidden it at the bottom of his sock drawer, and put it on his desk. He closed his bedroom door and locked it, then turned on his small portable TV to cover the sound of what he was doing.

First he tried to force it, but the leather-bound book’s cover seemed to be framed in metal, the joints welded together.

Next he tried to pick the lock with a variety of objects, but none worked. He tried to jam a fork between the lock mechanism and the cover and lever it open, but the fork just bent over like an old man.

He sat back, exasperated, hands sore from the effort. He needed the key.

&&&

The girl was standing at the end of his parents' driveway when he got home from school.

"Hello. Do you remember me?’ she said, as he leaned his bike up against the fence.

He didn’t know what to say. He remembered her, all right. ‘Yes, you were in my science class… but you left.’

"A year ago. I changed schools.’

"Oh. How… how… are you?’ A stupid question when he remembered what he’d done to her. His face flushed red.

"Tired. Always. Can you come with me please? I want to give you something.’

A reprise? A second chance? ‘Okay,’ he said with a little falter in his voice. After all, they weren’t friends.

He waited until his parents were asleep, then crept down the stairs, out of the back door, and around the side of the house. He took his bike from the garage and cycled down the driveway.

The darkness closed in once he reached the end of the street, and he switched his light on to guide him. Even that wasn’t much use once he came to the path that led into the woods, a thin gravel lane just wide enough for a car to traverse if it were careful.

He got off his bike and pushed it into the path’s dark hollow beneath the trees, using the extended time to think. By the time he’d reached the cabin that the girl called home, he had a plan.

He hid the bike back in the trees, just off the path. The moon beamed overhead, illuminating the clearing around the cabin, hanging shadows across him like cobwebs. He pulled gloves over his hands, and a beanie hat down low on his forehead. He didn’t have a mask; hadn’t thought to bring one. He’d have to take his chances.

He counted down from three, then ran low across the clearing, pausing in the shadows below the cabin’s steps. He waited for a minute or so, listening to the breathing of the woods and for sounds of disturbance from inside.

Nothing.

Quietly, he crept up the steps. Surprisingly the front door was unlocked. His guard went up immediately, and as he pushed it inwards he half expected someone to grab him from behind. He should go back, he knew, but he needed the key.

The moonlight poured through windows without curtains and in its pallid glow the room looked remarkably large. He began his search in a drawer unit to the left of the door, but quickly realised every drawer was empty.

He felt panic rising up within him like tea spreading through water. Had the girl given him the book on the eve of her family moving away, the sick, twisted bitch? Given him the promise of his wishes granted true then walked away laughing? She’d set him up, he knew it, should have known it the moment he’d seen her again.

He heard movement from behind him, and swung around, heart pounding. The girl stood near the window, moonlight framing her from behind. He couldn’t tell what she was wearing, but it looked like the same clothes as before.

"I knew you’d come,’ she said. ‘There was no way you could resist.’

"Please…’ he whispered. ‘Don’t call the police.’

"Oh, I won’t.’ He couldn’t see her face, but he knew she was smiling. ‘You want it don’t you? The key?’

"He took a step forward. ‘Where is it?’

He heard a grunt of laughter. ‘Oh, I don’t have it. The book was my grandfather’s, remember? He never let anyone near the key. He kept it with him always.’

He felt a sinking feeling in his stomach, as though he’d just been punched.

"And he’s dead. It could be anywhere!’

"Yes, it could.’

Anger flared in him. He wanted to hit something, make some noise, but he didn’t know who else might be here.

"Why did you give me the book? Why? If you knew it would make me like this.’

He heard her laughing quietly in the dark, and couldn’t stand it any longer. He turned and bolted out of the door, down the steps and across the clearing to where he’d concealed his bike. He dragged it up from where it lay on its side, and swung himself on to it. He jerked the handlebars around in the direction of the path.

Just once he looked back at the cabin. The girl was standing in the doorway, watching him, face unreadable beneath the blanketing shadows.

&&&

‘Ask her out, go on,’ Pete implored him.

‘Yeah, she’s new, got no friends yet. Easy,’ Lenny chipped in.

He looked from one face to another. Neither Pete or Lenny would dare ask the new girl out, of course. They were dorks, perennial followers. It was up to him.

‘You might be able to … you know, do .’

He glanced back at the new girl, on the back row of the science class, head down in her textbook. She was cute behind the glasses, she wore a nice, short skirt. There were other girls around like her, and all of them were paired off with other sixth-form boys. He had a couple of days at most.

He felt desire rising up in him.

&&&

He woke the next morning with what felt like a hangover, though of course he had drunk nothing. The book was across the room, on his desk, sitting on top of a pile of summer homework waiting to be done. He had gotten it out after he returned from the cabin last night, and hadn’t bothered to put it back. He’d tried one last time to force it open, failed, and now realised what must be done.

He hid the book in his school bag and cycled down through town to the harbour. There was a pier near there, jutting out into the bay with an old, disused games arcade at the end, all boarded up and bolted shut. Last year, with exams just over, him, Lenny, Pete and a couple of others had broken in and got drunk for the first time, on a couple of bottles of vodka that Pete’s older brother had bought for them. Later, on the way back, Lenny, who’d drunk the most, had slipped and fallen over the railing and into the harbour. Ten minutes later he was hauled out by the police, one arm broken from where it had caught one of the concrete stands on the way down, but otherwise okay. He had endured a couple of days in hospital, and Pete had received a nice, brotherly black-eye from telling the police where they’d got the vodka.

Now, he stood on the end on the pier, on a small path around the back of the disused games arcade, not visible from the pier or the promenade or the harbour, only from the sea, and the only boats were too far out to see him. Waves cracked against the concrete supports jutting up out of the water below him, spray catching in the breeze and cooling him off against the summer heat.

He held out the book. A couple of seconds and it would be over. He shut his eyes, not wanting to see where it landed.

He screamed as he let go, and fell back against the wall behind him. He glanced quickly over the edge, but it was already gone, lost in the waves.

Over, all over.

He found himself crying, wanting to jump in and search for it, use it to discover the mysteries of his life, make his wildest dreams come true.

It was some time before he made his way back around the side of the deserted arcade and back along the pier. His shoulders were slumped, his head ached, his empty bag felt full of rocks.

As he reached the end of the pier he looked down at the rocky excuse for a beach below the pier which no one ever used except dog walkers and crack addicts. Something small and square lay amongst the rubbish and the driftwood of the high tide line, about twenty metres from him. It was the book.

So, it was meant for him then.

&&&

The water had made no difference to the book’s impenetrability. It was still locked as tight as ever, and didn’t even look damaged by its little swim in the ocean. He didn’t believe in magic, but if he had, he might think this book carried some with it.

The girl’s grandfather was dead, and he’d had the key.

That night, he logged on to the internet.

&&&

He sat in the driver’s seat of his dad’s car and watched her run away up the path towards her house. Regret and revulsion filled him up like a lock gummed up with glue. He hated himself, hated the way he’d treated her and felt sick for what he’d done.

His friends had egged him on. The new girl had said yes, agreed to go out with him, and he had wanted a nice date at the cinema or bowling or something. Instead, they had made him take the whiskey with him, take her up into the hills, get her drunk. They said everyone did it, that was the way it was supposed to be. They said she’d be gagging for it.

He’d not got far. Got enough drink in her to loosen her up, to let him touch her a bit. Only when he’d tried to take her clothes off had she started to object, started to get mad. He hadn’t meant to punch her, but she’d slapped him, and the whiskey had put extra fire in his gut.

He had regretted it instantly, and apologised, but the blood dribbling from her nose made it already too late. He had driven them back to town, his unsteady eyes using all their focus for the road, while she sat in silence beside him.

&&&

He waited until midnight before setting out again. His parents were asleep by that time, and he stole the car keys from off the hook in the kitchen, sneaked round the front and pulled open the garage door.

He was lucky their driveway was on a slight slope, because he was able to roll the car silently out into the road and about fifty metres away from the house before the road started to angle upwards and he had to start up the engine. He didn’t know how he’d get it back into the garage again, but that wasn’t his concern right now.

In the boot of the car were his father’s shovel and a pick axe.

It had been easy enough, from a local obituaries website, to find out where the old guy was buried. In a cemetery about a mile out of town, in a small village where he’d apparently grown up. Easy enough to find, he just hoped the old man’s grave was away from the road.

As he drove, thoughts flickered through his head like a misfiring TV, but only one seemed to make any sense. Getting the key in his hand. The girl said her grandfather had kept it with him always. And now the old man was dead there was only one place he was going to find it now.

He hated what he had to do, but life was becoming unbearable now that he had the book to deal with.

He found the cemetery easily enough, though it took him some time to find the grave because it was lit only by the moon, and covered about an acre. Using a torch he had brought with the tools he eventually located it, among a row of relatively fresh graves around the back of the decrepit Norman church. It was out of sight of the road, so he was able to set up the torch to light the area he had to dig without fear of being seen by any passing motorists. Be grateful for small mercies, his mind screamed at him, as he prepared to undertake an operation found only in the trashy horror novels his father read.

The headstone told him the old man had been dead for just over a year. Oh sweet God, that would be long enough, he knew, as he took one last deep breath of free air, and then he began to dig.

Within minutes his body had broken out in a cold sweat from the exertion, and it got worse the deeper he went. After half an hour his muscles screamed at him, after nearly an hour his back felt like he’d been beaten with a stick. He wanted to quit, but knowing that the key must be down here somewhere pushed him on.

He was waiting to hit wood, but when his spade suddenly speared into something crunchy and hard he realised it must have rotted away. He put down the spade, reached over and grabbed the torch. The battery was getting low, but there was still enough light to see by, and he angled it into the grave to see what he’d found.

The remains of a human skull lay in the soil at his feet.

His reaction was involuntary. He leaned forward and vomited before he could help himself, the yellowy gunge splattering his trouser legs and the skull itself. His heart pounded, his cheeks burned, and his eyes almost rolled in his head. He’d come here for this, but nothing could have prepared him.

It took a few minutes for the pain in his stomach to subside, and for his hands to steady enough to investigate further. With tears pouring in floods down his cheeks and sobs bouncing up from his chest, he reach down and scrabbled in the dirt around the base of the skull.

The soil felt woody and flaky, and his fingers found pieces of what were once the man’s clothes. He found a button, the plastic insert of a turned over collar. Trembling fingers pushed past them, scrabbling at the body’s neck.

And then he found it. A chain.

He had to break the head from the neck bone to get it off, and that was the worst. It made a sharp cracking sound, and lolled in his hands. There was some soft stuff inside that oozed out, and he pushed it away, yanking at the chain.

He climbed out of the grave as soon as he could, the chain clutched in his hands. As he felt along it, at first he feared it was just that – a chain – nothing more. Then his fingers closed over something small and crusted with mud.

In the torchlight he cleaned it off, and there it was: the key.

"Oh, God!’ he moaned up at the sky, lying back on the grass, seeing the girl's smiling face in his mind. ‘What have you made me do for this?’

He slipped the key chain into his safest coat pocket, and began to refill in the grave. He had the key now; the book could wait that long.

Half an hour later he was finished, and he sat down on the grass as the grey dawn began to ascend the sky. He was soaked with dew, vomit and sweat, and covered in mud. He looked exactly what he was: a grave robber. Tears flooded down his cheeks, cutting river channels through the soil and the puke on his face.

He went back the car, cleaned the spade off as best he could, and dumped it along with the torch into the boot.

As he drove away, he glanced across at the passenger side.

The book lay on the seat beside him. He could almost feel it watching him.

&&&

He never saw the girl again. She never returned to the school, and there were never an official reason why. He told his friends she’d cancelled the date, and surprisingly they believed him. There were rumours, of course, that the girl had gotten pregnant and been taken away for a quiet abortion, but nothing from the teachers at all.

And soon, as the brief appearance of the new girl became old news, she was forgotten by the general school populace.

He never forgot her, though, and shame fumigated everything that he did. But, as time passed, even that began to fade. When it became clear that no one was going to come looking for him, no policemen were going to knock on his parents’ door, he started to forget about her too.

She had become a regrettable and unfortunate memory up to the day when he found her standing at the bottom of his drive.

&&&

He got within a mile or so of his parents' house before his curiosity and greed got the better of him. Spying a rest stop up ahead, he swerved the car in, parked up close to the hedge, and switched on the small interior light.

Around him the day was beginning to break, purple light brightening to orange. A truck roared by, a few birds sang in the trees, and on the other side of the hedge a cow mooed and stamped about in the grass.

He took the book in his dirty hands, the book that made wishes come true.

What secrets would it reveal?

He scraped a little more dirt off the key, and inserted it into the lock. It had started to rust during its time underground, and at first there was no give as he turned it sideways. Despair rose in him and his hands trembled like a choking starter motor, eyes blurring as all his efforts threatened to disappoint him.

Click.

The key turned sharply and the little padlock bounced up. The whole book seemed to relax in his lap, pages pressing outwards as though just waiting to be opened.

Greedy hands ripped the book open, searching out the secrets it held. He found himself panting like a marathon runner as he turned page after page, unsure what would happen but knowing he was about to experience something universal, something special.

But he quickly realised something was going badly wrong.

Every page was blank. Not a single mark, not a single line of text disfigured the pages. Their whiteness was sterile in its purity.

He flicked to the last page, then back again. Nothing. Not a word.

‘Nooooo…..’

It was a magic book, maybe, but somehow he knew there was no magic here. He'd been tricked.

The events of the last couple of days rushed over him in a flood. Meeting the girl again, trying to throw the book away, digging up her grandfather’s grave. He rocked back and forth as the enormity of what he’d done pulsated through him, his mind toiled and his eyes wavered in their sockets as unconsciousness sought him out and then found him.

&&&

The police found the stolen car about a mile away from where it was taken. It hadn’t been stolen after all, but taken by the family’s son. In the back of the car was a spade, coated in freshly dug soil.

The boy was found lying across the front seat. At first he was assumed dead, but closer inspection found life in those horribly blank eyes, and a weak heartbeat beneath shallow breathing.

In his left hand, gripped tightly enough to break skin and draw blood, was a rusty, muddy key.

&&&

Nothing would bring the boy out of his petrified state, and he was duly committed to a nearby psychiatric hospital, where his condition continues to be observed.

The key, it was discovered, opened the front door of a derelict cabin in the woods out of town. The cabin had been the property of an old man who had died just over a year earlier. A granddaughter, who'd lived with him, had disappeared, believed to have left town after his death.

Investigation discovered that the key had been taken from the disturbed grave of the man, and the evidence on the boy’s person and found in the car with him made it clear that he was behind the grave robbing. Charges by the church were raised, and then dropped when the boy was deemed unfit for trial. The parson of the church where the incident took place told local reporters that he would pray for the boy.

A week after the boy was found, nurses checking on him during the night, claim to have heard him muttering something about a book while in the deep throes of sleep.

No book was found in the car, nor at the disturbed grave. Nor indeed, in the derelict cabin in the woods.

&&&

She came to him one time after, while he was sitting up in the bed he didn’t recognise, in the room that wasn’t his. He may have been dreaming; he couldn’t be sure.

She ghosted in through the door, which closed without a sound and smiled down at him from his bedside.

‘Did it answer your questions for you?’ she asked.

He stared up at her. Her face appeared to shimmer. ‘

Empty,’ he said. ‘You lied.’

‘That’s what you think,’ she said. ‘The book did what I said.’

'Every page was empty. You said it granted wishes.’

She continued to stare at him with darkly hollow eyes. ‘You didn’t know what to wish for, so I gave you a wish. And your wish was to see inside that book, at any cost.’ She cocked her head. ‘Which you did.’

He leaned back. His body felt heavy and sluggish, as though he’d never get out of bed again.

‘And what did it do for you?’ he said at last. ‘You never told me how you knew it worked.’

The girl sat down on the edge of the bed. Her smiled faded, her face set as cold as an Arctic winter sky.

‘You hurt me,’ she said. ‘I was lonely, and needed a friend, and you took me up into the hills and abused me for the amusement of your friends.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I wanted you destroyed. And look around you.’ She waved her hands at the room. A single Picasso print and a curtained window broke up the whiteness of the walls. The book did what I asked.’

‘I’m so sorry! I can make it better, I promise.’

‘Its too late for that. It was too late by the time you dropped me off that night.’ She stood up.

‘Wait!’ He tried to get up, and realised for the first time that strong restraint belts held him down.

‘See you,’ she said.

She turned away towards the door, and he noticed that her hair seemed to be matted at the back, as though something were stuck in it, or something inside her head had decided to burst out of her skull, bringing, sticky, gluey stuff with it. He’d never seen what it looked like to have the back of your head shot out with a shotgun, but he had no doubt that was what he was seeing now.

She turned back as she pulled open the door, and for the first time he realised how deathly pale she was. ‘I hope you enjoy it, down there,’ she said, as he began to buck and twist in his restraints and scream as though he had swallowed up a strong, northerly wind.

The girl went out and closed the door behind her. From out in the corridor came the sound of footsteps, running.