E - Echoes - Chapter Four

Chapter Four

James Leydon was sleeping.
Night had fallen, and the dream came again, long hours of oblivious
blackness merging into foggy unreality through a shifting whirlpool of
colours, scents and sounds from the distant past.
He dreamed of...
Young brown eyes staring up in wonder as the sunlight filtered through
the summer trees far above, timeless walks through meadows of sad,
waving reeds writhing up the rotten walls of old farm buildings long
forgotten. The dream came as part of his past, although it was
inextricably linked with the future. Were these things going on while
he lay in comfort, heedless of the soughing of the wind in the eaves
and the cold glitter of the stars, or were they yet to happen, sparks
shot back by some bright explosion in his future?

Whatever, the past faded and the dream was all that remained, a
blood-red evening sky, clouds rearing and snorting on the western
horizon, straining at the leash as they were held back by the impatient
moon. The sun died among them, smothered by masses of vapour that
yearned for the absolute power of the night. He looked down, and his
shadow was also blood-red, cast on the wild grass of some distant
field. His eyes glared back at him from it, a brighter orange distinct
from the rest of him. Night fell suddenly, the leash snapped and
darkness billowed over the sky, the screeching of owls its victory
cry.

The aura surrounding the moon shimmered and blurred, and then he was
standing on a desolate plain, huge boulders scattered here and there
like tombstones, the black sky devoid of stars or cloud. A few yards
away, a figure stood, a young woman whose colourless robe flapped in a
wind that he could not feel. Moonlight flowed from her eyes and burned
into his, and its touch was cold and lonely.

She spoke, and her voice rebounded off the boulders and zigzagged
through his consciousness. When her mouth opened light poured from it,
and he shivered.

"I'm coming for you, James. I'm close to you now, and getting closer.
Prepare yourself. Nothing, no one will stand in my way."

The woman threw back her head and laughed and he looked up and saw the
Earth far above them,a shining blue orb suspended on a trapeze of
cloud. The barren ground fell away beneath his feet and he plunged into
the soft warmth of his bed, icy laughter weaving around the house,
riding on wind. A clock ticked and flashed redly 2:56.

He rose from bed and opened the door, peering out into the gloom of
the landing, sure that the laughter had been real.

"Mum?" he whispered.

Nothing. The gloom peered back at him with invisible eyes, and the
wind sighed again, rustling dry leaves against a window downstairs. He
shrugged. The dream must have lingered briefly in his consciousness,
its final traces banished from his mind as his eyes flicked open. He
leaned against his bedroom wall, and for the tiniest moment, his whole
body tingled with a power that felt electrical and outside, far beyond
some lonely and huge forest which marched precariously between rugged
mountains, a wolf howled its anguish at the patient moon. Yet he seemed
only to hear the sound inside his mind, as if the wolf's howl was
expressing a indefinable yearning that had lain buried deep within
him.

He moved to the window and pulled back the curtains. The street was
quiet; lamps cast pools of orange light over the pavement still moist
from the earlier rain. Opposite, a single flicker glowed in the top
storey of an old townhouse, and a shape glided across in front of it
and it was extinguished. He felt a sudden pang of utter desolation; it
seemed that the dream had torn away some important part of his soul,
and had left him feeling only half there. Perhaps it had stayed on that
cold, airless plain where the woman could endlessly mock it with her
metallic laughter and silver-weeping eyes. Then he felt a tear slide
slowly down his cheek until he tasted its salt in the corner of his
mouth.

What the hell was the wrong with him? When he'd taken Gemma back to
Effington and seen the desolation, the way the streets had seemed empty
of hope, he'd cried then as well. The tattered rags of yesterday's
newspaper laying stained and sodden in the gutters seemed symbols of
decay, of an existence rooted in a failed past, with no hope of a
brighter future. And he was crying now, feeling the same sense of
emptiness as when Gemma's wide blue eyes had stared out at him from the
dark. It was a feeling that behind her heavy makeup, behind even her
pale skin so fragile and thin over her cheek bones, there was nothing
but darkness and howling wind.

He jumped when metal crashed onto pavement outside in the street. He
squinted and peered down into the alley between his house and the next,
where cats occasionally squabbled for scraps from the dustbins, and the
snow was blown into deep drifts when winter gripped Denton. A huddled
shape staggered out into the lamplight, its outline hidden by bulging
clothes and ragged strips of old newspaper clinging to its clothes like
hungry limpets. James froze, hearing the humming of the refrigerator
from the kitchen below him, and the dripping of water as the town
slowly dried itself out from a day of incessant rain.

The figure reached a lamp-post and rested its right hand against it,
as if struggling to draw breath. When it turned towards him, half of
its face was hidden by a hood; the other was bright and clownish in the
orange light. Its one visible eye bored into him, and even through the
window and across the front garden James could see white fires dancing
deep inside it, and that the face's slender nose and small, red mouth
belonged to a woman. The tramp turned again and shuffled up the street,
its clothes rustling crisply as it went. James finally summoned the
strength to stagger back into bed and bury himself in his duvet like a
child.

It was part of the dream, he tried to convince himself desperately.
You were upset today. You started off complaining how bored you were,
and then realised there were people a lot worse off than yourself, and
the experience disturbed you. The subconscious was bound to
react.

But female tramps with white eyes and silver-robed nymphs dancing on
the moon?

When sleep was about to take hold of him again, the words from the
dream echoed wearily in his mind like a catchy tune on the radio. He
thought briefly that the dream might have been telling him that he'd
neglected Susan too much recently. Then everything went dark and the
strange visions did not return.