Dreamside Read Online Free Page A

Their reunion had plunged him back into the morass of
his adolescent longing. He didn't know whether to blame that on the dreaming or
on Ella. He had hoped that his greater maturity would do something to defuse
the excitement he felt in her presence, but just thinking about her made his
cheeks burn.
    She was a
witch, he had decided. Or at least a mesmerist or a
spellbinder of some kind. It was Ella, after all, who had led him into
this whole bizarre situation. All she claimed to want was an end to the
dreaming. Yet he knew that Ella was notoriously unclear about her own state of
mind. She was not as in control as she liked to appear, and he knew that,
behind her assertiveness, she would be depending on his support.
    Her
behaviour back at his flat had been ambiguous to say the least. She seemed to
be signalling that she wanted intimacy, and yet she had kept him at arm's
length. Then she had climbed into his bed half-way through the night, and he
had had to pretend to be asleep to avoid making love to her. But at least since
she had come his nights had been undisturbed by the repeated dream awakenings.
    At
Plymouth, Lee hired a Cavalier from a lady in an orange costume and lopsided
orange lipstick (which made him think of Ella again). It was already late
afternoon.
    Dusk was
settling. He drove out of town and crossed the Tamar Bridge into Cornwall,
heading towards Gunnislake. By the time he reached the village it was dark, and
then he got hopelessly lost looking for his turn-off. Eventually he found
it—hardly more than a dirt track—and arrived at two isolated cottages. One
slouched in semi-derelict condition with a collapsed roof and broken windows;
the second was in only slightly better shape. A bare light bulb was burning in
a downstairs room.
    He drove
his car as close as he could to the front door. On a wooden plaque on the wall,
weather-split and almost completely effaced, Lee could just about discern the
word Elderwine, He sighed, less than happy that he'd found the place.
    He switched
off the engine and killed the lights. He sat for a moment, hoping that someone
would appear. Then he got out of the car and went to the door. No one answered
his knock. He tried again, waited, and pushed at the handle. The door swung
open; a pile of unopened envelopes lay on the mat. They were addressed to Brad
Cousins. Lee went in.

 
 
     
     
     
     

 
 
    F
I V E
    For
years I cannot hum a bit
    Or sing the smallest song;
    And this the dreadful reason is,
    My legs are grown too long!
    —Edward Lear
    Ella,
meanwhile, found her prey with relative ease . The
ferry journey, the disembarkation and
the drive down to Fermanagh had gone smoothly, and she was soon walking
unchallenged through the doors of the primary school. Through a glass window in
a classroom door she saw the woman she sought.
    Honora
Brennan was gathering up stubbed-out paint brushes and jam jars of murky water,
offering words of encouragement after an end-of-day paint your fantasy
session—yes anything you like, the sky the trees the stars at night. Is that
the stars at night, she says to one seven-year-old with a pink NHS eye patch,
no he says it's the mortar that got me da, is it she says, put it in the pile
with the others and wash out your brushes in the sink. On instinct Honora
looked up and saw Ella watching her.
    Briskly,
she dismissed the class, then turned to rinse the
paint-pots as if by this chore she could make the other woman disappear. Ella
willed her to turn around: Don't block me out Honora. If Honora heard
the words, she fought them.
    "Yes, I'm here; you're not dreaming."
    Honora stiffened, stacking the pots in a precise
pyramid.
    "How did you get here?" Her back still
turned, she scrubbed at an already gleaming jar.
    "You can still get a boat across the water."
    "I'm
sorry, Ella. I wanted to say 'It's lovely to see you' but I didn't feel
it."
    "Then you were right not to say
it."
    Honora
busied herself thumb tacking the children's paintings to