(1989) Dreamer

  Critical acclaim for Peter James

  ‘A well-paced thriller that elivers maximum emotional torture’

  Chicago Tribune

  ‘Grippingly intriguing from start to finish’

  James Herbert

  ‘Too many horror stories go over the top into fantasy land, but Dreamer is set in the recognisable world . . . I guarantee you more than a frisson of fear’

  Daily Express

  ‘A thought-provoking menacer that’s completely technological and genuinely frightening about the power of future communications’

  Time Out

  ‘This compulsive story is a tale of the search for immortality . . . I cannot remember when I last read a novel I enjoyed so much’

  Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Gripping . . . plotting is ingenious . . . in its evocation of how a glossy cocoon of worldly success can be unravelled by one bad decision it reminds me of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities’

  The Times

  ‘Peter James, Britain’s closest equivalent to Stephen King’

  Sunday Times

  ‘The suspense holds on every page, right to the end . . .’

  She

  Peter James was educated at Charterhouse and then at film school. He lived in North America for a number of years, working as a screen writer and film producer (his projects included the award-winning Dead of Night) before returning to England. His previous novels, including the number-one bestseller Possession, have been translated into twenty-six languages. All his novels reflect his deep interest in medicine, science and the paranormal. He has recently produced several films, including the BAFTA-nominated The Merchant of Venice, starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes, and The Bridge of San Luis Rey, starring Robert De Niro, Kathy Bates and Harvey Keitel. He also co-created the hit Channel 4 series Bedsitcom, which was nominated for a Rose d’Or. Peter James lives near Brighton in Sussex. Visit his website at www.peterjames.com.

  By Peter James

  Dead Letter Drop

  Atom Bomb Angel

  Billionaire

  Possession

  Dreamer

  Sweet Heart

  Twilight

  Prophecy

  Alchemist

  Host

  The Truth

  Denial

  Faith

  Dead Simple

  CHILDREN’S NOVEL

  Getting Wired!

  DREAMER

  Peter James

  AN ORION EBOOK

  First published in Great Britain in 1989 by Victor Gollancz Ltd

  First published in paperback in 1990 by Sphere Books Ltd

  This ebook first published in 2010 by Orion Books

  Copyright © Peter James 1989

  The moral right of Peter James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978 1 409 13348 3

  This ebook produced by Jouve, France

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  To my mother, and to the memory of

  my father – an absent friend

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Also by Peter James

  Praise

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Acknowledgements

  My immense indebtedness to Jon Thurley, agent, friend and unflickering beacon of sanity in the lonely abyss, and to my editor Joanna Goldsworthy, for her encouragement, guidance and unswerving belief.

  Many people have generously helped me in my research, both with their time and their wisdom, and among them very special thanks is owed to Dr David Stafford-Clark, Dr Keith Hearne, Barbara Garwell, Dr Robert Morris, Edinburgh University, Canon Dominic Walker OGS, David Berglas, Eleanor O’Keeffe, Society for Psychical Research, Tony Reynolds, Dr Duncan Stewart, Laurie Drury, Richard Howorth, Charlie Edmunds, Peter Rawlings, Rob Kempson, Roger W. Moore, Mike and Sally Oliver, Serina Larive, Berkley Wingfield-Digby and Ken Grundy (mad bastard of the mountains!).

  My thanks also to the numerous readers of Homes & Gardens and Psychic News who responded to my requests for experiences of premonitions; to the Hampstead and Highgate Express for their kind permission to quote from an article on dreams; to Grafton Books for permission to quote from Tom Chetwynd’s Dictionary for Dreamers (Paladin); and to Faber and Faber Ltd for permission to quote from No. 12 from ‘Choruses and Songs’ by W.H. Auden taken from The English Auden edited by Edward Mendelson.

  My gratitude to my mother and my sister and everyone at Cornelia James for tolerating my long absences so supportively and in particular to my secretary Peggy Fletcher for slaving so often and so hard over a hot photocopier.

  And my deepest thanks to my wife Georgina, researcher, critic, proof-reader and chief stoker, who kept me going.

  P.J.

  Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read The Hunter’s waking thoughts. Lucky the leaf Unable to predict the fall . . .

  W.H. Auden

  1

  The scream was carried towards her by the gust of wind, then whiplashed away, leaving her face smarting with the sting of grit and shock.

  She stopped and listened. Another gust shook a few more early autumn leaves down from the trees, and dealt them out across the field. Then she heard the scream again.

  A single piercing scream of utter terror that cut through her like a knife.

  Go, it said. Get away.

  Go while you have the chance!

  Run!

  For a moment, Sam hesitated. Then she sprinted towards it.

  A small girl, slight, a few days past seven, her fringe of dark brown hair slipped down over her eyes and she tossed it back, irritated, then tripped over a flint stone in the dusty track and stumbled.<
br />
  She stopped, panting, and stared around at the furrows of brown soil that stretched away from her across the barren field, at the woods that bordered two sides of it, and the barn beyond the gate at the far end, listening as the fresh gust came, but it brought only the sound of a creaking hinge. She ran again, faster this time, dodging the loose stones and bricks and ruts, the sandy soil kicking up in spurts under her.

  ‘I’m coming,’ she said, slowing again, catching her breath, stopping and bending to retie the lace of her left sneaker, then sprinting again. ‘Nearly,’ she said, ‘Nearly there.’

  She paused a short distance from Crow’s barn, and hesitated. Huge, dark, in a state of neglect, with half its door missing, she could see through into the blackness of its interior. It was OK to go in with a friend, but not alone. Alone it was scary. When she played around here, and visited her secret places, she kept a safe distance from the barn, sufficiently far that nothing lurking in that blackness could leap out and grab her. The half door swung out a few inches and the hinge creaked again, like a wounded animal. There was a bang above her, then another, and she jumped, then breathed out again as she saw a loose flap of corrugated iron above lift and drop in the wind, banging loudly.

  Slowly, nervously, she stepped past a strip of rotting wood, past a buckled rusted bicycle wheel and through the doorway into the black silence. The air was thick with the smell of rotting straw, and a duller, flatter smell of urine. There was another smell too, some smell she could not define, but which made her flesh creep, made her want to turn and run; a strange, frightening scent, of danger.

  She felt as if the scream she had heard was still echoing in here.

  She peered around in the gloom at the empty trough, the obsolete threshing machine and a section of an old plough lying on the floor in a shaft of dusty light. An old ladder lay hooked in place up to the hayloft, and as she stared up into an even blacker darkness, she heard a noise coming from up there; a whisper.

  Her head spun in terror.

  Then she heard a whooping sound as if someone was inflating a dinghy with a footpump, a strange tortured whooping, then a low pitiful moan.

  ‘Noo.’

  Then the whooping again.

  Sam ran to the ladder and began to climb, ignoring its bending, its flexing, and the fear that at any moment it might snap in two; ignoring the blackness into which she was climbing. She reached the top and scrambled out onto the rough wooden joists and the thick dust, wincing as a splinter slid deep into her finger.

  ‘No! Oo! No! Please no. Please . . .’

  The voice turned into a strangled choking. She heard the pumping sound, much louder now, and a human grunt that accompanied it, and she heard a girl’s voice hoarse, struggling for breath, pleading.

  ‘Stop. Please stop. Please stop. No. Oh – h. Oh – h’

  Her hand touched something round and hard, something plastic with a cord coming from it, something that felt like a switch. She pulled it and a bare bulb lit up inches above her head. She blinked and saw straw bales piled high in front of her with a thin dark gap like a corridor running between them.

  For a moment, there was complete silence. Then a whimper, cut short. Shaking with fear she followed her shadow slowly down between the bales of dry acrid straw that stretched to the ceiling, stepping carefully on the joists, until her shadow became indistinguishable from the rest of the darkness.

  There was another gasp, right in front of her, a sharp snapping sound, and one more terrible gasp that faded away into complete silence. She froze, her heart thumping, petrified as a figure rose up out of the darkness and began stumbling towards her, his hands reaching out for her, and she began to back away in slow steps, finding the joists, trembling, touching the rough straw to steady herself as she went, staring wide-eyed at the figure that followed her out of the shadows and was getting clearer with every step.

  So clear she could now see it was not shadow that hid his face, but a hood. A black hood, with slits for the eyes, the nose, the mouth.

  She could see his hands too now; could see the deformed right hand, with just the thumb and the little finger, coming out of the darkness at her like a claw.

  She tripped and fell backwards underneath the light bulb. She rolled, scrambled to her feet and tried to step back, but stumbled again, and felt a crunch as her foot went through the rotten flooring.

  ‘You little bitch. What the fuck you doing here?’

  She felt his hands clamp around her neck, felt the hand with just the thumb and finger, strong, incredibly strong, like a steel pincer, and her face was filled with the stench of onions and sweat; old stale sweat as if it had been in his clothes for weeks and was now being released, and fresh, raw onions, so sharp she could feel her eyes water from them.

  ‘I – I was—’ She froze as the grip of the hands tightened around her neck, squeezing the bones, crushing them. She jerked back, then she stumbled and he stumbled with her and they crashed to the floor. There was an agonising pain across her back, but she was free, she realised. She rolled, heard him grunt again, rolled some more and struggled to her feet. She felt his hand grab her sweater, pulling, and she wriggled, trying to tear free, then tripped again and fell.

  As she tried to get up, his hand gripped her shoulder and spun her over, then he was lying on top of her, knees either side, pinioning her body down, and she felt the stench of his breath, the raw onions like a warm foul wind.

  ‘Like to be fucked, would you, little one?’ He laughed, and she stared up at his black hood, lit clearly by the bulb above it, seeing the glint of his eyes and his rotten broken teeth through the slits. He leaned back tugging open his belt. The loose corrugated iron flap lifted above them in the wind, lighting them up with daylight for an instant, then banged loudly back down. He glanced up, and Sam sprang at him, clawing at his face with her hands, jamming her fingers into his eyes. The fingers of her left hand sank in deeper than she had thought they could, and she felt a hideous damp gelatinous sensation, then heard a rattling from the floor, like a rolling marble.

  A hand crashed across her cheek. ‘You little fucking bitch, what you done to it? What you done?’

  She stared up, trembling, pulling her hand away from the sightless socket that was raw red, weeping, the eyebrows turned in on themselves. She felt him lean back, groping with his hands, and as he did so she pulled a leg free and kicked him hard in the face. He jerked his head back sharply, smashing it against the bulb which shattered, and they were in complete darkness. She rolled away, scrambling feverishly towards the hatch, then she felt her shoulders grabbed again and she was flung backwards, felt him jumping onto her. She kicked again, yelling, thrashing out, punching, feeling his breath closer, until his face was inches from hers, and a sudden shaft of light came in as the loose flap above them lifted again, lighting clearly the red sightless eye socket that was inches from her face.

  ‘Help me!’

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Help me!’

  ‘Sam? Sam?’

  She thrashed violently, and suddenly she was free of his clutches, falling, then rolling wildly into soft ground, in different light; she tried to get up but fell forward, and rolled frantically again. ‘Help me, help me, help me!’

  ‘Sam?’

  The voice was soft. She saw light again, from beside her, from an open door, then a figure standing over her, silhouetted.

  ‘No!’ she screamed and rolled again.

  ‘Sam. It’s OK. It’s OK.’

  Different, she realised. Different.

  ‘You’ve been having a bad dream. A nightmare.’

  Nightmare? She gulped in air. Stared up at the figure. A girl. She could see the light from the landing glowing softly through her long, fair hair. She heard the click of a switch, then another click.

  ‘The bulb must have gone,’ said the girl’s voice. A gentle voice. Annie’s voice. ‘You’ve been having a nightmare, you poor thing.’

  She saw Annie walk towards her and lean down. S
he heard another click and her bedside Snoopy lamp came on. Snoopy grinned at her. It was all right. The baby-sitter was looking up at the ceiling, her fair hair trailing below her freckled face. Sam looked up too, and saw that the light bulb had shattered. A single jagged piece of glass remained in the socket.

  ‘How did that happen, Sam?’

  Sam stared up at the socket and said nothing.

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘He broke it.’ She saw the frown on Annie’s face.

  ‘Who, Sam? Who broke it?’

  Sam heard raised voices downstairs, then music. The TV, she realised. ‘Slider,’ she said. ‘Slider broke it.’

  ‘Slider?’ Annie looked down at her, puzzled, and tugged the strap of her corduroy dungarees back over her shoulder. ‘Who’s Slider, Sam?’

  ‘What are you watching?’

  ‘Watching?’

  ‘On the television.’

  ‘Some film – I don’t know what it is – I fell asleep. You’ve been cut. You’ve got glass in your hair and on your forehead. And your finger. It’s everywhere.’ She shook her head. ‘I left it on. It must have—’ She stared around again. ‘Must have exploded. Don’t move a sec.’ Carefully, she picked the glass out of Sam’s hair.

  ‘Are Mummy and Daddy back yet, Annie?’

  ‘Not yet. I expect they’re having fun.’ She yawned.

  ‘You won’t go until Mummy and Daddy get back, will you?’

  ‘Of course not, Sam. They’ll be back soon.’

  ‘Where’ve they gone?’

  ‘To London. To a ball.’

  ‘Mummy looked like a princess, didn’t she?’

  Annie smiled. ‘It was a lovely dress. There.’ She walked over to the wastepaper bin, stooping on the way and picking something up from the carpet. ‘Bits of glass everywhere. Put your slippers on if you walk around. I’ll get a dustpan and brush.’