Dream School

Dream School

Leon de Kock

Copyright 2018 Leon de Kock

Chapter 1

Their minds drifted in the dream world. Already, the babies knew that this place was completely different from the other world, the one where everything was harder, harsher. Here, they lived a life of imagination.

Drifting in the dream, the boy turned to his sister and laughed. In this world he was not confined to lying on his back, dependant on his mother to pick him up. Here they could drift around, look at objects and even think up toys to play with. Here nobody ever needed to fill their bottles or clean them or bath them. They were simply here, drifting in the warm lucidity of their dreams, enjoying each other’s company. At the edge of their dream, beyond where their imaginations played, the dream world was grey, dark.

Shift

They had been sharing the real world for almost a year, but at the moment they were asleep, sharing another dream.

The girl looked at her brother, trying to make her thoughts known to him, but even in the dream world they could still only get out a few baby words. It didn’t matter though. In the dream world they understood each other better.

Tonight, before putting them to bed, Mommy had propped them in front of the television, where a program for young children had been showing. Now, in the dream world, Eve’s brother was recreating the characters from the television show for her to play with. Bernie, Ernie, Jessy and Jenny, the brightly coloured little fluffy creatures romped all over the place.

Eve laughed at them, and laughed at Shawn for being able to create them, it was as if he’d taken her inside the television.

Shift

As they grew older, it felt as if the days were going by faster. Mommy had taught them to talk, so now they could play games and tell each other things. But more importantly, when they woke up, they could tell Mommy what their dreams had been about.

In the mornings Mommy would take a book and a pen, and she would write down their dreams. Eve and Shawn could not write yet, but Shawn had already said he wanted to learn how to write so that he could write down his dreams himself.

Mommy explained that they would learn to write, as soon as they went to school.

Shawn drifted in a dream, wondering what school was. His thoughts searched through the dream world, looking for the minds of other dreaming children. He found a boy dreaming only a little way off. Shawn entered the boy’s dream and looked around. It was a sombre dream, filled with grey mist and meagre light.

‘Show me school,’ said Shawn. He didn’t say this loud, or the boy would wonder about him. The soft words were enough to change the dream, suddenly it was filled with wonderful things. There were lots of children, all sitting in rows on chairs behind desks, and in front of them a woman was writing on a black board. The dream changed, the children were on a sports-field, some playing games, some sitting around in groups, chatting. The dream changed again, showing children practicing sports. It changed again, and again, and again.

Shawn withdrew from the boy’s dream, amazed at what he had seen. School was going to be interesting, he couldn’t wait to go there.

Shift

In the dream, Eve looked at Shawn, but he simply shrugged.

‘How should I know why our eyes are different from the other children’s eyes?’ he asked.

They had been in school for only a few days, but already they knew that nobody else had eyes like them. The other children had eyes that were all kinds of colours, blue, green or brown, in circles with dark parts in the middle. Around the circles, the other children’s eyes were white.

‘In any case, maybe it’s their eyes that are strange, not ours,’ said Shawn. Around him the dream pulsed red, reflecting his frustration at his sister’s questions.

Eve and Shawn had silver eyes. No white part, no coloured part with a black bit in the middle, just silver. Some of the other children had made fun of them because of it, but Mommy had told them to ignore the other children, so they did.

‘Mommy doesn’t have silver eyes like ours, she has normal eyes, like other people,’ said Eve.

Over the years they’d been for many eye tests, but nobody had been able to figure out why their eyes were different. Yet Mommy had been happy because they could see perfectly, without needing glasses like some people did.

‘Look,’ said Shawn, starting to feel exasperated with his sister. ‘Maybe one day our eyes will change to be like the other children’s eyes.’ The dream was starting to pulse magenta.

From the look Eve gave him he could see that she didn’t believe it would happen, but for now it seemed to placate her. Although she was older than him, she always looked up to him, expecting him to come up with answers about questions or problems.

‘What would you like to dream about tonight?’ she asked, sensing his frustration and deciding to change the subject.

‘Would you like to see my golden dragon?’ asked Shawn. ‘He’s really cool!’

‘Show me!’ said Eve, her silver eyes wide with excitement. There was no end to the cool things Shawn could create in the dream world.

Shawn turned away from her and concentrated, and the dream shifted. A yellow glow suffused the dream, and a huge dragon, scaly and golden, hung in the air in front of him.

‘Don’t worry, he’s not dangerous,’ said Shawn.

‘Wow, what can he do?’ asked Eve, staring wide-eyed at the dragon.

‘We can ride him,’ said Shawn, patting the dragon on its flank. ‘Come on, climb up, I’ll show you!’

Chapter 2

Half an hour after the children had gone to sleep Shelly left the lounge and walked through the silent house to her home office. Since leaving her detective job with the police department ten years ago she had been earning a much better salary as a private investigator, and had traded her old apartment with its bad memories for this comfortable house in sprawling suburbia.

She closed the office door behind her, picked a folder off the desk and walked over to the couch to study it. Although a lot of her work still came from the police department, this file was from a private client. The client was a woman named Cathy Burns, whose husband had gone missing two years ago.

Shelly loved working on old unsolved cases, for her there was nothing as satisfying as getting answers to those mysteries nobody else had been able to solve. The Burns case was special because she had worked at it for three months, and still had not been able to solve the mystery of his disappearance.

Shortly before his disappearance every one of Alistair Burns’ bank accounts had been cleaned out. Cathy Burns had been left with only a small pension to survive on, and the mystery of her missing husband.

Shelly sighed and sat down on the couch. Everybody was sure that Alistair had simply walked out on Cathy as an easier and cheaper alternative to divorce, but more than two years later there was still no trace of him. She’d tried to find him in the dream world, by trying to see if he was dreaming, but she had been unable to find him. She had entered the dreams of everybody that Alistair had had contact with before his disappearance, trying to find out if anybody knew where he had gotten to, but so far she had drawn a blank. There was no evidence to show he had disappeared of his own free will, neither was there any evidence to prove that he had been murdered.

Shelly closed the folder, which was thick with transcripts of dreams she had recorded, put it on the table, kicked off her shoes and stretched out on the couch. At the foot of the couch was a light blanket, but she would not need it tonight, the unseasonable heat this early in spring meant it was warm enough in her office. She stretched out a hand and switched off the light, lay back on the pillow and closed her eyes.

Over the past few months, without them realizing it, she had entered the dreams of every one of his family, friends and colleges, and yet she had come up empty handed. She let the dreams run through her mind, trying to see if there was something she had missed, some vital clue she may not have picked up.

Slowly, with her body relaxed and her mind occupied with the dreaming world, Shelly drifted off to sleep, and the lady with the black and gold dress, her dream persona, took over the dreaming.

This time, instead of entering the dream of one of the Burns’ family or friends, Shelly let her mind drift into the dream world. She didn’t bother to move her thoughts to the part of the city where the Burns lived, she had searched through most of that area. Instead she let her mind drift with the picture of Alistair Burns.

What would he feel like, this Alistair Burns, she wondered? If he was still alive, what would he be dreaming of, what would he be thinking of? Something in the dream world caught her attention. Somewhere, someone had latched onto the picture of Alistair Burns. With a gentle push of her mind Shelly concentrated on the image, pushing it into the dream world.

She felt the tug again and followed it, slowly so as not to disturb it.

She could see a red light. It was a red light in a display window, shining on an empty wall and an empty chair. From one side of the display, an almost naked woman came into view and sat down.

The hooker made a show of folding her legs and smiled at the men looking in at her. Shelly slipped through the glass and into the red-lit room, into the dreaming mind of the hooker. What she saw was a memory, the memory of what the hooker had remembered from that night. In her mind Shelly felt around for a name, and found the name Bella. But Bella wasn’t right, Bella didn’t fit. The real name wasn’t Bella, it was Cindy. Shelly fixed the name in her dream, so that she would be sure to find it again if she needed to.

She looked out through the eyes of the dreaming woman and saw the hungry stares of the men in the street. None of them was Alistair. Shelly turned her mind to the dream memories of Cindy.

Softly, speaking in a whisper that was no more than a breeze in the air, Shelly spoke to the dreaming mind of the woman.

‘Where is Alistair? What happened to him?’

The dream shifted, and the red-lit room disappeared.

Now they were in a different room, one which contained only a bed, a washbasin and a mirror. In front of the bed stood Alistair, his arms around Cindy, and Shelly could imagine how tragically it had all gone wrong for him. He’d grown tired of his wife, but instead of ruining his marriage he’d gone to a hooker to fulfil his sex life. There, in a street filled with red lights, drug pushers and men hunting cheap sex, he had found Cindy.

Shelly probed deeper into the memories of the hooker.

Alistair had spent one hot steamy summer night with Cindy, and he’d fallen in love. She was twenty years younger than him, and worked the trade as the only job she could find to feed her drug addiction. Over the next few weeks he kept on going back to her. Alistair had promised her the world, promised her he would take her away from it all, from the prying eyes and searching hands and dirty bodies of the men. He had money, and if she left with him, they could make a new life together.

In the dream, Shelly looked at the suitcase lying on the bed. It was filled with money, all the money Alistair had drawn from his bank accounts. He held Cindy close to him, he could smell her perfume. In the stark room, Cindy had moved closer to him, until their bodies touched. She could feel his heat through the light dress she was wearing.

Slowly, she had pulled a knife from the folds of her dress, and with the warmth of Alistair’s breath still on her neck, the caress of his lips still on her skin, she had thrust the knife from behind, into his kidneys.

Alistair had given a soundless gasp, and as he sagged away from her she had stabbed him again, and again. There had been blood everywhere, splattered over the bed and the suitcase and the money, blood on the floor and on the cheap lampshade.

She had left him to bleed to death, while she had washed herself at the basin. A quick phone call and exchange of money had seen his body and suitcase taken care of. Wearing a clean dress and carrying his money in her old and battered backpack, Cindy had left that part of town forever, and had gone to live with her mother, who had been only too glad to have her daughter back.

Shift

Shelly woke up and reached for her voice recorder. She suppressed the excitement she felt, and spent half an hour recording every detail of the dream as she remembered it, then got up to switch on the computer, and started working.

It was another three hours before she got back to sleep.

Chapter 3

‘Mommy, the girls at school say I’m weird, and they laugh at me!’ said Eve.

Shelly looked into the silver eyes of her daughter Eve and sighed. She had known from the beginning that this might happen, and she had often tried to prepare herself for it, but now that the children were getting older she would have to pay more attention to their dreaming abilities. She should have been doing so all along, she knew, but her work had been keeping her busy. It had been too easy to pretend that the children were normal, that they were like all other children. She had, after all, always tried to raise them as much like normal children as possible, to make sure they would fit comfortably into society.

‘What happened, Sweetheart?’ she asked, ‘Have the other kids been teasing you about your eyes again?’

‘No, not this time. I told them I write down my dreams in the morning, and they think it’s a load of nonsense. Mommy, do I have to keep a dream diary? The other girls think it’s silly, none of them have to keep a dream diary!’

Shelly bent down and hugged her daughter. With her arm still around Eve she steered her gently but firmly to the large and comfortable couch in the lounge.

‘Keeping dream diaries is important, Sweetie,’ she said, sitting down and pulling Eve down so that the thirteen-year-old was sitting next to her. ‘Our family don’t dream like other people, I’ve explained that to you. But I don’t think you should tell all your school friends about your dreams, they won’t understand. Keep it to yourself, and tell only those friends that you really trust. And if you tell a friend about your dreams and they don’t laugh at you, you know you have found a true friend.’

Eve sighed and sagged against her mother. ‘But why do I have to keep a dream diary?’ she asked.

‘Because one day, Sweetheart, you are going to be a strong dreamer. You and your brother are going to have special dream powers. I am going to teach you a lot of things about the dream world, and it will be important to know how to keep a dream diary.’

‘Teach me now!’ said Eve, impatiently. ‘You keep on saying you’ll teach us one day, but I want to know now.’

Shelly looked at her daughter and sighed. She knew she had put this part of their education off for too long. It was time to start teaching her children how their dreaming was different from other people’s dreaming, what they were capable of doing in the dream world and how to control their dreams.

‘I tell you what. Tonight, I will come into your dreams, and I will start your dream lessons.’

‘Can you really do that, Mommy? Can you come into my dreams?’ asked Eve.

‘Yes, and then you will see why keeping a dream diary is so important. So tomorrow morning you write down your dream when you wake up, and I will write down my dream so that we can compare what we wrote to see if we really were in the same dream together. Then you will understand why keeping a dream diary is important.’

‘But you have to come into my dreams tonight!’

‘Fine, I’ll be there. Now go do your homework.’

Shift

Half a mile away Shawn was walking home from school, enjoying the afternoon spring sunshine. Usually the walk home from school took him only a few minutes, but today he was dragging his feet, thinking about what the teacher had said.

He knew the teacher had felt uncomfortable with what she had said, had even regretted it the moment she had said it, but she had said it and now Shawn had to work out what she had meant. It was the beginning of the new school year and his sister and he had been called aside by the teacher to sort out a problem the teacher said she had with their personal files. Out of earshot of the other children, the teacher had asked Shawn about their eyes.

Shawn was used to being asked about his eyes. His sister and he both had silver eyes, and all through his life he could remember them going for a battery of eye tests to see if the colour was caused by cataracts or some other eye problem. He’d been shown pictures of how eyes with cataracts looked, and it looked very much like his eyes, except that the whites of his own eyes were silver. Yet in test after test, they had proven to have perfect sight.

So once again Shawn had to explain to a teacher that although their eyes looked a bit strange, he could see as well as any of the other children. Standing next to him, Shawn knew his sister would be smiling inwardly, glad that it was Shawn’s turn to do the explaining - about - the - eyes routine.

It was then that the teacher had compared his file to his sister’s file and looked surprised.

‘Eve, according to your file you were adopted at birth,’ she’d said, looking at Eve. ‘I cannot understand why both of you would have the same eye problem if you are not related. Surely you must be related in some way?’

‘No Mam, we’re not related in any way, I’m adopted,’ Eve had answered, and Shawn could tell that the teacher was feeling embarrassed for bringing the subject up. She had dismissed them, but what she had said had been bugging Shawn ever since.

Shawn reached the house and turned up the driveway. Except for their eyes, there was nothing else remotely similar between him and his sister. Even their hair colour was different, his sister had straight blond hair, whereas Shawn had dark hair like his mother. During break time he’d discussed the matter with Dave and Diesel, but it turned out that even they had thought Eve and Shawn were related.

When he’d confronted Eve with the question, she’d simply shrugged. ‘Maybe something happened to us when we were babies, you should ask mommy about it,’ she’d said.

He found his mother in the kitchen.

‘Hi Mommy,’ he said, giving her a hug and a kiss.

‘Hi Honey. How was your day?’

‘Ok, I guess.’

‘What’s up?’ asked Shelly. ‘You look as if something is worrying you.’

‘Mommy, remember you once told us that Eve was adopted, and that you were not her real mother?’

Shelly pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table.

‘Yes, I remember. What about it?’ asked Shelly, immediately worried about what Shawn’s statement was leading up to.

‘Well, today at school the teacher wanted to know why we both have silver eyes if Eve is only my adopted sister.’

For the second time that day Shelly felt her heart sink. She supposed it was inevitable that one day Eve and Shawn would figure out that they had to have some connection, something binding them in their past, to cause them both to have silver eyes. Sitting at the kitchen table and looking at her son’s eyes, she knew she would have to tell them the truth at some stage. It might as well be today, she decided. Eve had already gotten a commitment of a mutual dream out of her, so this would be a perfect opportunity to explain things to them.

‘Tell you what,’ said Shelly. ‘Go call your sister and wait for me in the lounge, and I’ll pour us some juice, then I’ll try to explain to you why you have such dreamy eyes.’

‘You know why we have silver eyes?’ asked Shawn, surprised.

‘Yes, but call your sister first, I don’t want to explain twice.’

Shawn left the kitchen and headed for his sister’s bedroom, while Shelly took glasses from the cupboard and poured them juice. She knew she would have to handle the situation carefully, or what she was going to tell them would do them more harm than good. Eve’s school friends already thought that the brother and sister were weird because they had silver eyes and had to keep dream diaries. If the children went back to school and told the others what Shelly was about to tell them, she would have a difficult situation to deal with.

As Eve and Shawn approached the lounge she could hear urgent whispering going on between them. The news that their mother knew the cause of their silver eyes was being taken quite seriously. The whispering stopped when they entered the lounge and sat down next to her. Shelly handed