Lee sat in the dark attic, with the weak light of the torch shining on the daisy head resting in the palm of his hand.
Honora knelt in the peace of the empty church, hearing only the sounds of the hail on the roof and the creaking of the hassock on which the priest kneeled. She allowed her mind to range unfettered over vivid images of her dreamside experiences.
The memories flooded her with a sweet intensity. She felt the anxiety and the sheer pleasure that came with the control of dream-side. She felt the body’s dreamside ache, a lust more physically acute than anything felt in the material, waking world. But she also remembered the fear, the brooding undertow beneath the earth and water and waxy sun of dreamside.
They were inseparable, this pleasure and this fear. Never before had she felt them so strongly. It was like a live thing inside her. She had called it from dreamside, the essence of dreamside, reforming, shape-shifting, soul-sucking, predatory, sloughing off one skin like a serpent, taking on new colours, all-devouring, breaking her down, covering her over with warm soil, reconstituting her, like a death without dying until buried over she became spice for the earth’s pleasure. This was the thing the priest would take from her. This was the sin she could surrender to him.
She wanted purification. The priest would take her confusion and sin and guilt and doubt, and dissolve it. She felt it slip from her to him, memories that melted as they transposed themselves, her mind drained of all thoughts of lucid dream incarnations.
She opened her eyes. The priest had stopped praying and was looking at her. He was shocked. She knew instinctively that he’d had a taste of it, had peered over the edge and drawn back. He was unable to take it from her. What should have been dissolved between them had been arrested. Now bitterness hung on the air. His hands were trembling.
“You felt it!” said Honora. The priest failed to answer.
In despair she looked up at the plaster statue of the Virgin. The figure hanging over her swelled as she looked at it, and pulsed. This pulsing was the beating of her own heart. She desperately wanted release. It was all wrong. The priest couldn’t help her. She looked at the figure of the plaster Virgin; at the flecks of skin-colour paint, faded with age to grey. Over how many failed confessions had this flaking plaster Virgin presided? How many prayers had dropped short?
Honora wanted to cry for her childhood. She wanted to cry for every Sunday School and for every mass she had attended, in their own way like lucid dreams—the invocation of hopes and the for-fending of horrors. Her eyes were wet. As she looked up the Virgin stirred. There was a rustle of her blue robe and Honora was sure she heard her sigh. A whiff of decay hung on the air.
She sobbed and closed her eyes. Her memory fanned out across her faith; it was like watching the fragments of a shattered mirror reassembling: light streaming through stained glass; pungent smells of incense; votive candles flickering out; Latin words; all competing for her attention. She opened her eyes again, and this time the Virgin moved. Her eyes flicked open, and she struggled to speak. She saw her shiver, saw that she was real flesh, that her tears were wet and flowed and were an agony to her.
But her sobs turned to gasps as the figure began to change. She was appalled as it transformed, slowly, painfully, to the figure of the little girl. The girl swinging on the gate at home, the girl who would never leave her alone. The incarnation of Honora’s sin. She felt dizzy, dislocated; a sick wave of fear rolled over her.
She felt something inside herself fall away. The girl fixed her with an unbroken gaze as she descended, glimmering faintly in the shadows of the church, moving slowly towards her, arms outstretched. The air turned cold: Honora could see her own breath icing over in front of her.
She was paralyzed. The girl was moving towards her, about to touch her. A blast of cold air passed from her. Her hands seemed cracked with the bitter cold and Honora shrank back from the diseased touch. The girl mouthed silent words. HERE I AM LORD; HERE I AM. As the girl drew close, Honora’s screams echoed around the vaults.
The figure had changed again, had transformed back into the image of the Virgin, but this time more terrible, its body twisted and distorted with agony, wounds blistering and cracking on the painted flesh, open sores glistening and bleeding, its face contorted in a silent scream. The statue swayed, and came toppling down on top of her, the plaster Virgin shattering into fragments as it struck the hard floor of the church.
Ella entered the church to find the priest trying to drag the sobbing Honora away from the debris.
FIVE
“I’m afraid you are rather a careless dreamer,” said Bertie resentfully.
Ella closed the bedroom door quietly behind her. “She’s sleeping,” she whispered to Lee, and they went through to the lounge.
“The priest helped me to get her to the car. Not exactly good in a crisis, that one. In fact he was in a terrible state. He seemed more concerned about his statue.”
“Honora had actually pulled it down on top of her?”
“That’s what it looked like, though she denies it.”
“It’s crazy. What did she tell you?”
“Very little. But whatever it was, the priest saw it too. He was in a state of shock. He couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell me anything about it. He just wanted us out of there. But it was obvious to me that he was just as shaken up as she was.” She sighed. “I don’t say that I go along with it… but Honora is convinced that it’s something from dreamside. A demon or a ghost or something…”
“Oh for Christ’s sake Ella…”
“Lee, Honora thinks that her… child… has found a way to come through from dreamside.”
“And you think it could be real.”
She didn’t have to answer. Lee looked very tired. He thought about the box in his attic.
A moan from Honora sent them scuttling along to the bedroom. She was sitting bolt upright. “Am I awake now?”
“Have you been dreaming the repeater?” asked Ella.
“Several times.”
“This is awake.”
“I wish I could believe you.”
“Lee; give her a book.”
Lee found a paperback. Honora turned the pages and read the opening lines:
The flood had made, the wind was calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.
It read the same second time around.
“Somehow I still don’t trust that,” said Honora.
“Why don’t you go back to sleep,” coaxed Ella. “You look like you need it.”
“I’m not going back to sleep!” Honora shouted.
“OK. Listen; I’ve got another idea.”
“Whatever it is,” Lee said to Honora, “you say no, and I’ll say no.”
“Agreed.”
Ella bristled. “Why the hell do you both think we’re here? Why am I here? Why are you here? Are we just renewing old friendships or what? Do I have to remind you that we’re in some kind of crisis? I don’t know about you two, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my fucking life frightened to go to sleep! I want to end it!” She walked out of the room, slamming the door behind her.