Ready by Claire Louise Amias
I have a dream in which I am looking down on a settlement of small thatched huts, arranged in a rough circle with a ditch and ramparts at the perimeter. It is late evening. Through the blue fug of woodsmoke, I can see an old man in dirty, tattered clothes standing at the gates of the village. Two figures, both dressed in loose, hooded robes, stand either side of him.
The man makes a gesture with his arms, and they depart. One walks to the east. The other goes west, into the red glare of the setting sun. The figure heading east walks with a stumbling gait. It diminishes in size as it goes, as if it were melting away. The other is more powerful. It moves with purposeful strides, and in its wake it leaves a thin red streak along the centre of the road.
I have another dream, which begins with a long drive out of the city towards my cottage in the country. It is easy going at first, a pleasant journey along an almost empty motorway as the autumn twilight sets in. The roads get progressively more congested as I go on, however, and the last hour of motorway driving is an agonising crawl.
By the time I leave the motorway and join the network of minor roads that will get me to my destination, I am feeling tired and irritable. It is dark now, and a fog is descending. I feel myself drifting off to sleep at the wheel. I wind down the windows, turn the radio up, and press on.
I take a sharp left-hand turn. From now on, I will be driving on an unmarked road. All I can make out either side of my car is the fog. For all I know, I could be heading down a narrow lane, or along the ridge of a steep hill. There is something peculiar about the surface of the road. It glows almost white in my headlights as I roll slowly along it, and in the centre lies a thin, uneven, red-brown streak.
Suddenly, I register a blur of movement. Something comes out into the road from behind, overtakes my car and then plunges on into the fog. Almost immediately afterwards, I spot the old, weathered signpost that marks the turning, and I pull into the shallow lay-by. I check my phone, but I already know that there is no reception here. I take the torch from the glove compartment, get out of my car, and climb over the turnstile. I pick my way along the field towards the cottage. The fog is still thick, so I follow the narrow footpath and hope for the best.
The ground is uneven, and progress is slow, but finally I see the cottage looming up out of the mists, the flaking limewash on the walls and the dark wooden door. I stand on the front step and search in my pockets for the keys.
I am just opening the door when I sense someone standing behind me. I turn around quickly. It is a young woman with red hair, dressed in a long black coat.
‘Can you help me?’ she asks. Her tone is detached, neutral; I wonder if she is in a state of shock, if she has been in an accident.
‘Can you help me?’ she repeats. It takes me a while to find my voice, and I try to sound relaxed and reassuring when I speak. I am not entirely successful.
‘What’s happened?’ I ask.
‘I need to get inside,’ she says, and brushes past me, into the front room of the cottage. As we briefly touch, I feel the chill of her body and smell her perfume. It is a woody, bitter scent.
I follow her inside and turn the light on. The faded lampshade holds a low-wattage bulb, and gives a sickly, greenish glow. The woman paces around the room.
‘How can I help you?’ I ask.
‘I need somewhere to stay,’ she says.
‘Are you afraid of someone?’
She stops in front of the fireplace. ‘I’m cold,’ she says. She is looking at me warily.
‘My car isn’t far from here,’ I say. ‘We can go to a police station.’
‘No,’ she says, firmly, ‘it isn’t safe. We need to stay inside.’
‘Who are you afraid of?’ I ask.
She parts the curtains a fraction of an inch, and peeks outside.
‘I’m thirsty,’ she says. ‘Can you give me something to drink?’
I go to the kitchen. The water spurts erratically from the tap; I fill the kettle and look around in the cupboards for some coffee. I find an old jar of instant, the granules virtually glued together at the bottom. I hack out a teaspoonful for each cup, and pour in the boiling water. The coffee dissolves unevenly, leaving misshapen lumps floating on the surface.
I carry the cups through to the living room. She is sitting in the threadbare armchair next to the fireplace, and has taken off her overcoat. Underneath, she wears a red cotton dress, tied closely at the waist with a black leather belt. There is a bronze clasp at the front; it depicts a dragon curled in a circle, eating its own tail.
She holds her hand out for the coffee, but she does not thank me for it. She sips it as I light the fire. Then I sit down opposite her.
‘If you’re in trouble,’ I say, ‘I can help.’
‘Can you?’ she says, and smiles as though she finds my statement naïve.
‘Where are you from?’ I ask.
‘Nearby,’ she says. ‘You came along the red path.’ It is a statement of fact, not a question.
‘You mean the last bit of road before the cottage?’
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘it’s only a couple of miles long now. But it used to run further, much further.’
‘What were you doing out there tonight?’ I ask.
‘I was trying to find my sister.’
Something about what she says strikes a chord. I try to think what it could be.
‘Do you know the story of the red path?’ she asks. ‘It’s one of the old folk tales. There was a village near here, which was threatened by enemies both east and west. One of the village elders, a sorcerer, built two women out of clay and brought them to life. One day, he sent them off along the road so that they would find and kill their foes. One into the west, and the other into the east.’
I sit forward in my chair. Is it usual, I wonder, for one dream to reference another? How long ago did I have the dream about the village? Last night? Just before this one? Did I ever wake up?
The woman throws the dregs of her coffee onto the fire. The wood hisses and spits. ‘No one knows what became of the one who followed the road to the east. The other woman, though-’
I nod for her to continue, and she smiles. She knows she has me hooked.
‘The old man lied to the other elders of the village. He knew the secret of breathing life into clay, but to sustain it – that was harder. So he made the two women differently, to test a theory of his. One was infused with an elixir containing the substance of dreams. To the other, he added human blood.
‘The second one - the one made with blood - left a trail of it as she walked along the road to the west. That, they say, is the red line soaked into the surface. She came upon the enemy village at night, crept in through their defences and drained everyone there of every last drop of blood. When she was finished, she turned back and went home for more. She had developed a thirst, you see.’
She comes over and kneels down next to me. She puts her hand over mine; it is cold and damp, although the fire is roaring now, and the room is becoming stuffy and airless. I try to move my body, but I am completely paralysed. This, I remind myself, is what happens sometimes before I wake up. Fighting it will only make things worse; I have to relax, to let the dream end naturally.
Her face is inches away from mine now, and I am looking directly into her eyes. They are flecked like pieces of amber. She closes them, angles her head and moves in to kiss me. She tastes of earth and iron. She holds her lips firmly against mine, opening them just a fraction, and I feel something warm escaping through my mouth and into hers.
She sits back and smiles at me. My vision is growing dimmer. I feel myself trying to emerge from the dream. I am floating upwards but caught below the surface, like a diver trapped under ice.
‘Perhaps I will take you quickly,’ she says, ‘or perhaps slowly. Perhaps I will keep you like this for a hundred years. Would you like that?’
I try to speak, but my jaw is frozen shut. How long will it be before I wake up? I try to visualise my waking life, my house, my family. I have a vague recollection of my job: I am an actress. I see myself before an audience, telling a story on an autumn evening. But the details are fleeting and vague, like a dream that comes back in snatches the next day. Nothing is constant. I cannot even remember my own name.
She puts her hand against my face, and presses firmly. I feel it sinking through the skin, the flesh parting willingly. She pushes further and further in, until I can feel her fingers inside, exploring my mouth, running over my teeth, twisting and kneading my tongue. Then she pulls her hand back and shows it to me, shows me the slick, wet clay.
‘My sister,’ she says. ‘Your precious dreams. Why did you keep them all to yourself? Dreams like yours should be shared. Shared with an audience. Shared with the kind of people who enjoy stories about lonely roads and empty houses, smoke and mirrors, blood and thunder.’
She pauses for a moment, and looks over my head as if she is addressing a crowd.
‘All those people,’ she says. ‘I'm quite sure I'll think of something to do with them.’
Blood Relative by Niall Boyce was read by Claire Louise Amias at the Liar's League Blood & Thunder event at The Wheatsheaf on Tuesday 13 October 2009.
Niall Boyce lives and works in London. His short stories are gathered at http://strange-powers.blogspot.com
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