It was late afternoon when Lee returned. “Alcohol poisoning. He’s in a coma.”
“This much we already know,” Ella said sharply.
“It’s all they could say. He’s comatose.”
“When will he not be comatose?”
“They pumped his stomach. He didn’t revive. The doctor said he could come out of it in five minutes. But it could be weeks, months, years. They’ve got him all wired up. There was no point in me hanging around drinking coffee from a plastic cup. So I left. Wasn’t that the best thing to do?”
“And they said that it was the booze for sure?”
“They said so. But they were surprised it was such a heavy coma. They asked me a lot of questions about his lifestyle, most of which I couldn’t answer. We just have to wait until he comes out of it. They said it’s a condition beyond…”
“Beyond the help of medical science.” Honora supplied the phrase.
“Something like that.”
“Where does that leave us?” said Ella.
“One down, three to go?” said Honora.
The remark was left unanswered.
Evening drew in, and little was said. The silences prickled against the walls and crawled into every crevice and corner of the house. Every sound or movement was an affront. Mattresses had been dragged downstairs and covered with bedding so that later they could sleep side by side in the living room. This arrangement was made by tacit consent, an indication not of their closeness but of their fear of the night ahead.
Ella was the most worried. This strange turn in events had deflated her plans. She had staked everything on the idea of them taking the dreamside walk. She looked defeated.
Candle flames flickered from the mantelpiece, imparting shadows and inflaming imaginations that needed dampening. Outside a gate banged. Then it banged again and again in a mischievous wind, until Lee went out to fasten it.
It was a clear night. A moon was up, a slender crescent amid a scattering of bright stars, like the sable flag of a strange country. Lee looked into the sky for omens, portents. It was a moon for dreamers, cutting through the night sky and bearing strange cargo.
A scattering of lights burned in the distant village. They seemed a long way off, and something was stirring out there in the dark. Something was in this new wind, something which would never be seen nor smelled nor tasted, but which Lee sensed, fattening all around them.
“When will you leave us alone?” he said.
He was exhausted. Lack of sleep hung from him like chains, and played tricks with his eyes. As he looked up, everything took on a brilliant hallucinatory property. The moon hovered over him, bright, massive, leaking light everywhere, silver moonstain running from it like hot wax from a candle. The wind whipped up high, and he had a notion that he could see it, etched in rich, dark colours against the night sky. He could see its spiralling contours, its playful currents and its fan-shaped terraces. Then he shivered and went back inside.
TWELVE
Thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever
The house was like a camp under siege, with the enemy tents of ghost armies pitched in the garden outside. Ella tried to kindle a fire in the hearth, a brave attempt to smuggle some cheer into the room. The fire took at the third effort, smoky flames licking without relish at a damp log dropped on Ella’s criss-cross of smouldering twigs. The key of a sardine can broke and Lee cut himself trying to extract the contents. They consumed a dismal meal in silence.
Lee suggested that someone should telephone the hospital ward, to get a report on Brads condition. Since no telephone had been installed in the house, this involved a short drive to the nearby village. This small task took on the prospect of a minatory expedition with all attendant dangers. Lee’s recent tangle with telephones was a strong disincentive. He seemed to think that Ella should be the one to go, and said so. But Ella had been looking for an opportunity to speak privately with Lee. She needed some minutes alone with him, even though she was disinclined to leave Honora, whose capacity to remain in complete possession of herself seemed to be deteriorating fast.
“Look at her!” she said. She’d addressed Honora twice, without getting any response. Honora was staring into the fire with an expressionless, unfocused gaze. Her eyes lacked lustre, seemingly dried out by the smoke. She was away. “You can see her uncoiling. It’s almost physical!”
Ella took Honora’s hand and broke the enchantment.
“Come away from the fire.”
“It happened again? I’m like smoke. I’m coming apart.”
“We’re going to phone. Come with us.”
“I’d rather not go out there.”
“It would be better if you came.”
“Don’t make me go out there, Ella.”
Ella hesitated. “We’ll be ten minutes at the most.”
Ella made the call, with Lee hovering in the background. Brad’s condition was unimproved. Ella sighed and replaced the receiver. She told Lee what she had heard and they agreed to telephone again in the morning. Before they climbed back into the car, Ella took Lee by the sleeve.
“She’s right isn’t she? What she said about it today. She just knows it.”
Lee nodded. “Honora is all intuition. She’s the most susceptible.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning she knows how it will be. The danger of being overwhelmed. Of dreaming and never finding our way back. Of being stitched into the fabric of dreaming, frozen in perpetual dreamside.”
“It’s the worst scenario. The worst nightmare.”
“It’s what we face now.”
“I just didn’t want to admit it. To myself.”
Lee looked at her. Where did she get her courage from? He grabbed her cold white hand and kissed it. “Like you said, it’s the worst nightmare of all. Perhaps one of us will have to stay awake, while the others dream. Perhaps that’s the only way.”
“Short straws? Or volunteers?” Ella shook her head. “It won’t work. We all have to be there on dreamside. We’re all implicated.”
“If only we had someone on the outside of our dreaming, someone to anchor us. If Burns was here, what would he tell us? What clue would he give us?”
Ella recalled her motorway encounter with the professor—if indeed it was the professor—and saw him vividly: agitated, cryptic, wringing his hands; saying nothing she could understand.
“Listen to this. I had an encounter on the motorway. I have to tell you about it, only there’s an uncertainty. I met the professor: that is, I met him—or he came to me—but I don’t know if it was really him. Maybe it was someone else. I know I’m sounding confused and maybe I’m making a mistake here… Only it was the professor who came to me in the car, after a nasty experience I had. I felt sure he— she, it—was trying to help us.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing we can use. Something about undoing what was done. He got very agitated.”
“But that’s all that was said?”
“‘Undo what was done.’”
“Not exactly a lifeline, is it?”
“Wherever it came from, I looked back and saw not Burns, but… Oh, why are we afraid to name it? I saw not the professor, but the Other.”
“But it still doesn’t help.”
“No.”
“We need a thread. Something to take into the labyrinth which will lead us out again. It’s got to be you, Ella. You’re the seer out of all of us, you’re the one. Can’t you weave us a golden thread?”