Decay Inevitable

Now his father’s laughter was yo-yoing around the room, his mother pleading for Benny to go and catch some mice. Everything seemed normal, yet there were things that seemed out of kilter with what had gone on before he slept. Benny, for example, had changed. The cat approached him, affable as ever, yet one of his white “socks” had swapped feet. When he went to his room he found that his bookshelves had been altered and were now arranged alphabetically by author, rather than by title, which was how he preferred it. Outside his window, in next door’s garden, Mrs Pleat’s pond fountain chuckled happily; only last week the pond had been filled in because it attracted frogs, creatures Mrs Pleat couldn’t abide.

He saw many other inconsistencies that day, but when he woke the following morning, they had all resolved themselves. All was as it had been and nothing else was amiss.

He spent a long time worrying about the dream and trying to remember what had happened before he fell asleep. Had he spent all afternoon there, on the floor? He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t recall an alternative.

He went to the bathroom and checked his eyes in the mirror. They appeared normal, their usual brown colour. He gritted his teeth against a strong compulsion to cry and backed away from the mirror to sit on the edge of the bathtub. He was not usually given to emotional blips such as this, but then he could never understand why people always offered comfort to those who had suffered a nightmare by saying it was just a dream. This was why he had not confided in his parents.

He began to dream about the hill regularly and found that he could control his actions while he was there. He visited the wood and walked the edge of the ocean. The building, if he pressed his ear up against it, made soft, clanking noises, like machinery heard at a distance. He discovered these places were comforting to him, no longer associated with the pain or shock of his first journey. As his real-time experiences developed, so the surroundings in the dream followed suit. The trees grew. Flowers bloomed and died, corresponding with the seasons. There was an abundance of plantlife that he could never find replicated in any garden or botanical encyclopaedia during his hours of wakefulness. There were animals too, although they were timid and he never saw more than a glimpse of them in the wood. He discovered that he could not travel beyond the limit of his vision. He tried often to escape the confines of his surroundings, but at the moment he felt he had broken free, he would find, by some strange trick of perspective, that he was running back in the direction from which he had come. It didn’t bother him; he felt it was something he would achieve one day. It was something to be learned.

It was always night on the hill, and always the summit would be crowded with shaven-headed people dressed in plain, grey tunics. He grew to recognise some of the inhabitants and looked out for them on subsequent journeys to help convince him that his dreaming was lucid, although the gold-toothed character did not resurface in all this time. On occasion, he attempted to communicate with them but invariably the object of his attention would back off, eyes averted deferentially.

On the morning after one of these failed contacts, a week after his thirteenth birthday, he woke to the sound of voices. Pulling on a pair of track suit bottoms, he opened his bedroom door and peeked out onto the landing. The voices were coming from the bottom of the stairs; both were male, one calm and measured, the other breathless, threatening to become desperate. He could not hear his mother. He checked his watch. Only six a.m.; she would be in bed for at least another hour.

He crept to the top of the stairs and sat down. From here he could see the shadows of the men. He recognised his father’s voice patterns even before he’d understood what was being discussed. When it became clear it was him at the centre of their debate, he found it difficult to follow the conversation over the clamour of his heart. They were discussing money, a final payment. He forced himself to concentrate.

His father was begging the visitor now but the other was apparently unmoved.

“We have the facility ready, Mr. Nevin, and a car waiting outside. It’s really out of your hands now. We’d appreciate it if you went and woke the boy.”

“But my wife... she’ll be devastated.”

A sigh from the visitor. “Mr. Nevin, Joe, we had an agreement. Monies have been paid into your account for the past year. You don’t seriously believe that we are simply going to turn around and leave without the boy? That isn’t going to happen.”

“It is,” said the boy’s father. “I’ve changed my mind.”

There was a silence and then, very clearly, his father said: “Fuck.”