The Dream Weavers by Barbara Erskine (books you have to read txt) 📕

‘Don’t touch, Em!’ Simon shouted.

Emma didn’t move. ‘I can hear him,’ she said suddenly. ‘I can hear him talking. He has a pen in his hand and he is looking at his work and someone has walked in and is standing behind him. The old man has dropped his pen and now the inkpot has fallen on the floor, splashing his robe. They can hear shouting in the distance and the old man has climbed off his stool. He’s terrified. He has pushed away the desk and is looking round for somewhere to hide—’

‘Emma! Stop it!’

She took no notice.

‘—it’s the enemy. They’ve broken into the church and now they’re in the scriptorium. The two men are running to the door. They run down a dark passage and out into the garden. I can hear their sandals flapping on the stone path and behind them the book has fallen off the desk and into the dark place behind it. The enemy are there, with drawn swords, the blades covered in blood—’ Her voice was rising, the words coming more and more quickly.

‘Emma!’ Simon shouted. Felix had put down his phone. He lunged forward and wrenched his sister’s hand off the page as Kate ran into the room. ‘What is it?’ she cried. ‘What’s wrong?’

Emma let out a sob. Pushing past Kate, she ran out of the door. They could hear her footsteps thudding along the landing and then down the stairs.

‘Em had some sort of vision.’ Felix looked down at the open page of the book as if he was trying to see the scene his sister had described. The page was exactly as it had been before. There was no mark from her hand, only that strangely powerful dash of ink at the end of the passage, and then nothing.

‘I’m sorry, Kate.’ Simon looked up in despair. ‘Let her go. We had a bad night; she had nightmares and she was sleepwalking. I think this place has got to her. It’s so …’ he failed to find the right word.

‘Old?’ Felix filled in helpfully.

Simon gave a grim smile and nodded. ‘That about covers it.’

Kate smiled. ‘Don’t worry. Let me go and speak to her. You boys go on with your photography.’

‘That sounded a bit patronising,’ Felix whispered as Kate disappeared.

Simon smiled. ‘Good idea though. Let her go and speak to Em. I have a feeling she might be quite good at it.’

Kate found Emma in the garden. She was standing amongst the ancient pear trees perfectly still, her arms hanging at her sides, tears pouring down her face.

‘Come with me.’ She took Emma’s hand and led her across the lawn to a pergola, heavy with budding creepers. There was a weathered wooden bench under it and she pulled Emma down beside her.

For a long time neither spoke, then Kate said, ‘Phil has gone out and your father and your brother are busy. There’s no one here. Do you want to tell me what happened?’

The sympathy in her voice, the sense that she understood, maybe the simple fact that she was another woman seemed to get through the Emma. Once she started talking, she couldn’t stop. The experiences at the cottage. The strange feelings. The bad dreams. Things that had happened at school that no one at home knew about, last night’s inexplicable race out into the dark, finding herself outside and not quite knowing why and now the chronicle. ‘I had to touch it. I had to. I knew I mustn’t. I knew Dad would be furious because it’s so precious, but I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t.’ The tears were still pouring down her face. ‘And I could feel it; hear it; see it through my fingers, like electricity! The swords had blood on their blades. And those two old men were running for their lives and the men saw them and they were chasing them and then Felix pulled my hand away and it all stopped. Just like that. Switched off. Gone. Finished.’

Kate sat still. When you don’t know what on earth to say, silence is the best option. She didn’t look at Emma, her attention fixed instead on the scattering of pear blossom on the lawn. A bee settled on a flower nearby and paused in its foraging, sitting completely still almost as though it was listening.

‘Please don’t tell my mum.’ Emma sounded like a little girl now. A frightened, guilty little girl.

‘I don’t know your mum,’ Kate responded briskly. ‘And I certainly wouldn’t tell her if I did. I won’t tell anyone anything unless you would like me to.’ She hesitated. ‘But I think your dad would want to know.’

She glanced across at Emma to see she was shaking her head vigorously.

‘Has this been happening to you for a long time?’ Kate’s question was cautious.

Emma nodded. ‘I hate it. I never know when it’s going to come over me. It happened in school once and it was awful. Everyone teased me. They said I was mad. They said I should see the psych.’

‘That’s tough.’ A movement at the edge of the lawn caught her eye and she saw Simon and Felix standing hesitantly outside the house. She gestured them away sharply.

‘Something like this, Emma, is too much for one person to bear alone. I’m not sure I’ve ever known anyone who can see what you’re seeing, but you do need to talk to someone. Perhaps your friends were right in a way. Perhaps a school counsellor or someone like that?’

‘They’d lock me up!’

‘No. No they wouldn’t. But they might be able to tell you how to cope with it.’

It. Kate knew it was an inadequate response, but what was it? Some kind of epilepsy, caused by an over-stimulated imagination?

‘I tell you what. Why don’t you all stay and have lunch with us. Perhaps a sandwich or something. I think some food will make you feel better, and I promise I won’t say anything to your dad.’

‘Felix