There was such a disconnect between this mild-mannered man who looked so innocuous and the loony tunes psycho-killer that Joe nearly succumbed to the voice of reason. But he paused and looked closely at Eidolon and saw the pulse throbbing at his temple, the tense, clamped jaw and the gloved fists clenched tight in black leather.
“I don’t trust you. You’re a dealer and a nutter, and I’m not letting you into our house. I’ll meet you somewhere.”
“Burton Hill,” muttered Eidolon, baring his teeth like a wolf under threat. “Sure I can’t give you a lift?”
Joe smiled and shook his head. He closed the door.
On his bed, he stirred and turned over. Now he had to get to Burton Hill. It was their local landmark, a gently rising slope on one side then a cliff, as if a giant had taken a cleaver to the other half and scooped away the earth and rock and vegetation in a single sweep. It was about four hundred feet high, a pleasant afternoon’s scramble. Periodically there was talk of fencing off the vertiginous drop, but accidents were rare, and those people who threw themselves off the edge, it was argued, would have found a way to do so regardless of fences and barbed wire. There were melancholy spots where decayed bouquets had been left to wither and weather away, their stilted messages to long-gone loved ones blotched with rain. There was a car park halfway up the slope for ramblers and dog walkers.
There Joe appeared, leaning against the Lamborghini. It looked even more out of place than it had in the Knightley garage, surrounded by the detritus of family life—unused power tools, a luridly plastic lawn mower, piles of clothes that Mrs. Knightley meant to sort and give to charity. Here, on the uneven dirt path, sitting under a leaden November sky, it looked as alien as a supermodel in Sainsbury’s.
He watched as Eidolon’s little car puttered up the lane and into the car park, where it pulled up on the opposite side to the Lamborghini.
“My, we have been busy. Does it drive well?”
“Mmm.”
Eidolon yawned and stretched his arms, then rolled his head and his shoulders as if he were warming up for a run. Joe half expected him to do some quadriceps stretches or a couple of lunges. Then he linked his fingers and cracked all the little bones like a pianist preparing to play.
“My suggestion is that we become partners. At the moment, your dreams keep interfering with mine. But if we could dream together, if we could combine forces, we could work very effectively together and I could stop…um, eliminating people you care about. What do you think?”
What Joe thought was that Eidolon had made an admission of defeat. But it wouldn’t be polite to point this out.
“What’s in it for me?”
Eidolon turned. He scanned the hillside and walked over to the fence surrounding the car park. He leaned casually on it then held his palm outward. Joe waited. Nothing appeared to be happening. Then one of the bare oaks on the lower slopes of the hill began to smolder. Smoke billowed from its bark, and its branches began to crackle. Twigs flared up and flames began licking from deep within the tree until it became a pillar of fire. There had been no visible cause of the conflagration, no fiery beam from Eidolon’s palm, but that was clearly the source of the flames. It was hard to sustain his pose of adolescent world-weariness, but Joe managed.
“Is that a dream thing or some other trick you’ve picked up over the last half-century?”
“It’s a dream thing. I’m surprised you haven’t found out about your arsenal yet.” Eidolon’s smile conveyed smug relief.
“You mean this arsenal?” Joe closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the great porcelain bowl from Eidolon’s mansion was hovering fifteen feet up in the air above Eidolon’s car. Joe released the bowl and in slow motion, it crashed down on the car roof. On impact, its shards glided across the car park while a dent molded itself into the roof of Eidolon’s runabout, and the window struts gave way, shattering the front and rear windscreens. The car bounced once then settled.
“You’re not making this easy,” said Eidolon. “If we carry on like this, I’ll have to hurt you. I really don’t want to. It always gets so out of hand when I start hurting people.”
“Enough with the cheesy villain talk. Who was the last person you hurt? You directly, I mean. You get other people to do the hurting—pathetic tossers like Charlie Meek, desperate for a fix.”
“I was executioner for a sultan.”
“Yeah, and you stabbed De Vere when he was already dying. I bet that was the last time you got your hands dirty with the nitty-gritty of death. Four hundred years ago.”
“Why should I mess around with murder when I can find so many willing people to commit it for me? Oh, and before I forget, just how many people have you killed?”
Joe wanted Eidolon to shut up. For a supervillain, his voice was whiny and this particular incarnation—the impoverished teacher in his faded chinos and his stupid scarf and jumble-sale coat—diminished him further. Joe peered at the ground around Eidolon’s feet. It began to crumble and slip.
Eidolon glanced down and saw that he was sinking. He lifted up his hand again.
“Is that your fallback?” Joe was genuinely curious. He could feel the heat approaching. He gazed directly at Eidolon’s palm. He directed the heat back, and as the earth continued to suck Eidolon down, his fingers then his arm sprouted flames—at first small, delicate little lickings at the flesh and sinews and tendons, then a fiercer, bolder heat that made the skin glow and the flesh melt. Eidolon started screaming.
Joe had to decide how the creature should be extinguished, because the earth would stifle the fire if Eidolon sank any further. But the agonized squeals and the terrible smell were awful, so ice seemed like a good option. At first, Eidolon looked relieved to feel the cold, but then, as his breath formed crystals, his skin took on a blue tinge and his limbs solidified, his cries were stifled and his eyes were enormous with pain and terror.
It was then Joe understood that he was toying with this creature, which was cruel and unnecessary, making him no better than Eidolon. He turned his gaze on the Lamborghini. He could operate it like a giant remote-controlled toy. He maneuvered it until its engine was backed up against Eidolon, thrumming. Joe turned his full attention to the car and the sound of the engine deepened and darkened. The smooth, golden paint began to blister and smoke billowed from under the boot. Petrol spilled from the tanks and ignited. Joe ran for cover—ran faster than he ever had before—and dived as the fireball erupted.
He woke up at home, lying on his bed. His hand hurt. It was clenched tightly shut, blood oozing between his fingers. He unfolded his fingers and found that he was holding a broken shard of blue-and-white porcelain, its edges sharp. He held the fragment under the cold tap and watched as blood swirled around the white sink.
The house was still silent and empty. He went into the garage. Apart from the usual detritus of family life, there was nothing. The Lamborghini had vanished.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sleeping Venus
The next thing that Joe knew, his mum was shaking him awake.
“Where’s the car?” she demanded.
“What?” Joe was befuddled with sleep.
“The extremely expensive car that you won has disappeared. Where is it?”
“How should I know? I’ve been up here all afternoon.” He sat up, rubbing his eyes and trying to unkink his neck.
Mrs’ Knightley’s hands were on her hips, her eyes hard, her shoulders tense. “Do you know how much money I’ve forked out to have that car legally registered in our name, and all you can say when it vanishes is ‘How should I know?’ You lie there sleeping while some burglar comes into the house and makes off with it, even though it sounds like a snoring buffalo, even in low gear?”
“I was at the top of the house. You know I can’t hear anything up there. You put me up there on purpose so nothing would interfere with darling Ben’s practicing and darling Ben’s work and darling Ben’s life in general, then you blame me when I can’t hear anything? I didn’t ask to be exiled at the top of the house.” He paused for a breath. “Anyway, what does it matter? It’s just a car. Nell died yesterday, and you want me to fuss over some stupid car?”
“First of all, it’s not any old car. It’s
your
car, your massively expensive, valuable car, and secondly, of course Nell’s death matters, but this has nothing to do with it. And finally, you weren’t exiled at the top of the house. We asked you first which room you wanted, and Dad did it up especially for you. So don’t try sidetracking me with shabby little tantrums.” She glared at Joe.
He glared back, then his rage melted. “I’m sorry, Mum.”
She blinked, disarmed.
He took the next step. “I’m sorry about the ‘darling Ben’ crack, but I really have no idea what’s happened to the car. Maybe you’d better call the police.” He suppressed his guilt about lying to his mother. The truth was so implausible that it would probably make her head twist around and explode.
With resignation, she nodded. By the time Joe had joined the others in the kitchen, the police were on their way. The radio was blaring. It was tuned to the local station because Liesel had met one of the DJs at a road show over the summer and developed a massive crush on him.
Whenever Liesel could get away with it, she retuned the radio away from Radio Four to Central Southern. The pips for the six o’clock news bleeped. Nell’s murder was supplanted as the number one news story by a fresh item about a massive explosion on Burton Hill. Two cars had been destroyed, and there was one confirmed but unidentified casualty. Then Dave Tanqueray came back on air, and Liesel sat enraptured at the table, her chin cradled in her hands, a goofy smile on her lips.
A couple of uniformed men came to take Mrs. Knightley’s statement about the car. She had to show them around the garage, and they spotted that the lock had been melted away by what looked like a high-intensity welding machine. An unusual, but effective, way to breach the garage and snatch the car.
Joe didn’t remember dreaming that, but he was relieved there were physical signs that the garage had been forced.
It meant that the insurance might pay up, although probably not up to the full value of a new Lamborghini, given the doubts about the car’s provenance. He didn’t much care about the money, but it would make up to Mum for the hassle caused by the car’s arrival.
Once the police had gone, he was left pondering his next conundrum. Defeating Eidolon had not been as gratifying as he’d expected. He could not forget that he had effectively tortured Dolon before destroying him, and the forces he had unleashed in doing so terrified him. Sitting upstairs at his desk, he fingered the shard of porcelain. He began flicking through
Dream Master
. This time, in addition to frames from Joe’s perspective, the artists had included thought bubbles showing what Eidolon had been considering. It was no comfort to discover that Joe had been quite right not to let the man into the house, where he had planned to make a complete mess involving Joe’s eyeballs, guts and skin before getting started on the rest of the family. Even the knowledge that Eidolon had been the sickest of beings could not ease Joe’s consternation at his relish in tormenting him. In less than a month, he had gone from a normal—well, normal-ish—teenager to havoc-wreaker, and he didn’t like it. He wanted to be normal again, to ditch this dream stuff once and for all. But first, he had to recover Nell.
He wanted her back more than ever. He missed her common sense and her calm competence, the way she talked to him as if he were an idiot. Most of all he missed knowing that whether he was with her not, she was there, somewhere on earth, thinking, doing, being. He would gladly give up on the Dream Master gig if it only meant he could make her live.
But first he had to demonstrate that he had relinquished her. It was his hardest dream, harder by far than combusting Eidolon, an act that had not required deliberation.
He was in a boat on a river, without oars, without a rudder, without any means of propulsion, carried by a current that accelerated into a mist out of which shapes loomed then dissolved. He huddled deep into the warmth of his dark woolen cloak. The current gentled until the boat came to a stop in an expanse of black water so still that it seemed oily in its density. The water sucked at the sides of the boat. He sat. About fifteen feet in front of the boat, a column eased from the water. Gradually, the column took shape and Joe saw that it was Nell, slender, gray as the mist, the slash down the left side of her neck raw and oozing darkly, stickily. She started speaking and sinking simultaneously.
“Rescue me, Joe. Come and get me. Don’t leave me here. Please don’t leave me here. You have to help me, Joe. Please help me.”
But something was wrong with her eyes and the supplication of her hands, which seemed to reach the very edge of his boat.
“I can’t help you, Nell. It’s too late to help you.” Her fingers now clung to the side, her hair slicked back, her eyes still wide and crazed, her face the chalky white of a portrait of the aged Elizabeth, Virgin Queen, her mouth gaping and black as her voice echoed in the hollow mist, pleading, begging for him to save her.
He recoiled and he gazed at the water. The first wave swelled beneath the vessel, causing Nell to lose her grip. The second wave swept the boat around. The third wave carried it away from her. He heard a piteous wail, but he did not look back. He did not turn. He sat firm, his hands gripping at the bench so hard that he could feel the grain of the wood impressed into his skin, knots and whorls and all. The boat picked up speed, rushing over the waves, but from across the stream, he could still hear his name, a woeful, elongated moan.
As the boat eased through the water, the mist cleared.
Joe was traveling through a steep-sided valley, thick with trees and shrubs, uninhabited territory. As he gazed at the landscape, the boat shuddered and slowed. He stood and looked around him. Holding out a hand, he traced a line along a contour of the land. Instantly, the trees and shrubs along that line were erased and a barren strip of earth appeared. Stunned, Joe quickly reversed his action. It was like watching a film played backward. Mature trees and lush undergrowth sprang back into position. It wasn’t bunting and brass bands, but it was an incredibly powerful sensation, more than enough to leave him in no doubt that he’d achieved the promotion. Joe longed to have Eidolon alive to witness this.