The Dream Operator Read online

  “You made that happen,” I said. “How?”

  He pulled on the cigarette, held the smoke for a few seconds then exhaled through his nose. “It’s just my time, Connor. Yours moves so fast.”

  “You’re not real.”

  “And this is?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All of it, your life, what you do up there. You don’t dream anymore.”

  “Dreams aren’t real.”

  “Oh yes—look up there.” He turned and pointed to the higher ground that rose up in the centre of the park. I’d never really noticed the small hill with the stand of trees near the brow. Though the sun’s glare dazzled me I saw two people up there by the trees, an adult and a child, waving. They were too far away for me to be able to make out their faces.

  I rose from the bench. “Who—” I began, but Robin grabbed my arm.

  “Or when,” he said. “Think about it.”

  “About what?” I snapped. “Was that…?” I couldn’t say their names. Looking back I saw the hill was empty, the trees bare.

  “You know about not seeing the wood for the trees,” Robin said, smiling wistfully. “It’s like when you know where you want to go but you’ve no idea where to start out from. That’s you.”

  *

  Though we rarely talked about work, Julia had recently begun to ask about the purpose of what I did, whether or not I believed in it. I wasn’t sure what she was getting at. Her motives puzzled me. She knew there were limits on what I could tell her. Maybe she found these restrictions unnecessary or unnatural in some way. Maybe in her eyes they diminished me, made me less than I was. Lately she seemed to be trying to catch me off guard. One night, after making love, she’d said, “What do you see in all that data, Connor? What do you look for?”

  I didn’t know what to tell her. I didn’t want to lie.

  Over the weekend I examined my own recent cases. I didn’t expect to find anything I hadn’t already seen, but I felt a slight trepidation at the thought of some new pattern emerging from the files considered as a whole. I worked backwards, cross-referencing particular strands of data and using these fragile connections to map a complex representation of my history with the Bureau. In one file I found a scrap of paper on which I’d scrawled What are we not guilty of? It was as if I’d doubted my own objectivity. Despite investigating each case in isolation, it was a reminder that the Bureau’s subjects exist in the real world and are always unavoidably contaminated through their interactions with others. Perhaps it was that inescapable fact that had made me write the note though I couldn’t remember having done so.

  After two days of careful scrutiny I discovered a common thread running through a number of my cases: in some degree or other, they were dependent on matters of perception. A policeman had shot dead a Panamanian boy he’d mistook for a suicide bomber; a civil servant in the Foreign Office had leaked confidential documents that she thought showed government sponsorship of a terrorist organisation; a writer had published a series of essays suggesting that all religious belief was founded on myth; a young woman had claimed that her husband did not have the right to keep her locked up or to beat her when she tried to leave him. Each of them saw things in a manner that did not fit with reality. It wasn’t always possible to discern whether circumstances had skewed their perceptions, or if something else had caused them to misinterpret the data. The pattern that emerged from each case was one of retreat, of a failure to face up to reality.

  Leaving the office late Sunday afternoon, I heard someone call my name from across the street. Robin stood waving at the entrance to the park, Banjo at his feet. I moved through the stalled traffic, stirred by a vague sense of excitement. Robin beckoned me to follow him through the gate.

  We followed the path that rose towards the brow of the hill. The stand of leafless trees seemed to have crept a little further down the slope and the path soon wound its way in among them. They echoed with the sound of birds, insects and other small, unseen creatures. As we moved further in, the branches adorned themselves with foliage and after two hundred yards the canopy grew dense overhead. The tarmac had petered out into a dirt track by the time Robin spoke. “You’re seeing things, things you believe aren’t there. Just as the people you investigated saw things that couldn’t be.”

  “That’s not how—”

  He put a finger to his lips. Through the trees to our left I saw a stretch of water, ribbons of sunlight shimmering on its surface. He lit a cigarette. “I said it would be hard for you, to see what you need to see. But they’re more real than the patterns they want you to see in the case files.”

  The track curved down towards a small lake. I tried to understand what he was telling me. “I’m having trouble seeing any patterns,” I said.

  “Good. Now maybe you’ll start to see what’s really there.”

  “What is really there?”

  “What he sees.” He pointed to where Banjo was racing ahead, disappearing into the shadows.

  “Banjo!” I called. “Here boy.”

  “It’s okay. He knows.”

  “Knows what?”

  Robin flicked his cigarette into the water. It continued to glow orange as it sank down deep below the surface. He whistled and suddenly, mysteriously, Banjo was at my side.

  “Where’s Nettie?”

  The question took me by surprise. “I…she’s with Julia,” I whispered.

  “You know what happened to Julia?” Something crumbled inside me.

  “She couldn’t see what Nettie saw,” Robin went on. “The way into the woods.” He touched my arm then left me alone standing at the water’s edge, staring at the dark, still surface, trying to see what wasn’t there.

  *

  Photographs covered the floor, documenting my marriage, my fatherhood. I studied them dispassionately, as if trying to reify some memory from the faces, unwilling to let myself feel anything. Nettie’s hair was wine-dark, like her mother’s, her eyes brown as earth. There were pictures of birthday parties, Christmases, holidays; Nettie in an angel costume for the school nativity play; Julia in a blue dress, blowing a kiss towards the camera; me hoisting my laughing daughter high over my head. No pattern emerged. Loneliness and pain came instead.

  I crossed the hall to Nettie’s bedroom. Her books were neatly stacked on the shelves above her bed, her clothes folded in the chest of drawers. In the bottom of the toy cupboard I found a folder of paintings. I sat on her bed and began to look through them, handling each painting tenderly, as if it were Nettie herself. Most depicted houses and people and animals but one jarred with the others. In it a child stood alone on a hill, blue tears rolling down her face. I couldn’t remember seeing it before, but something about it seemed familiar. Julia would know, I thought, as I carried it to our bedroom. Maybe she could explain its significance. But nobody was waiting in the room, just our bed and our furniture. No Julia.

  Yet her smell lingered on the skirts and blouses that hung in the wardrobe. Her make-up was still on the dressing table, perfumes and powders, tubes of lipstick, everything in its place. In the bathroom her toothbrush stood in the plastic cup next to mine and her contraceptive pills were in the cabinet over the sink. I stared in the mirror, wondering how I had lost sight of what really mattered.

  Back in the bedroom I began searching methodically. In the bottom drawer of the dressing table, beneath the jumble of socks and tights, was a pocket folder. Inside it were a few pages of text printed on government stationery. They contained a précis of a report written by Julia. It summarised the report’s main findings, which cited a sharp increase in alleged sightings of unnatural phenomena such as ghosts, UFOs and fairies. She concluded that the sightings were probably some type of mass psychosis linked to a nascent sense of disillusion and detachment from reality.

  I felt disquiet as I read the report, something akin to déjà vu. Had we talked about this? At the back of the folder I discovered another of Nettie’s paintings. She stood on the same hill but she’
d filled it with trees. Standing beside her a tall figure held her hand. Not me. My hair was always black in her pictures. His was yellow, like straw. Something else odd about him: she’d painted wings on his back. He’s flying, I thought. Flying with Nettie. Loneliness tightened its grip on my heart. “Nettie,” I whispered. “Where did you go?”

  I turned the painting over and recognised some lines in Julia’s hand. Is this who Nettie sees? The one who asked her to go away with him? I think they are watching her. Does C. know?

  *

  I arrived at the Bureau twenty minutes later. The duty officer looked up as I entered the office, but I ignored him. At my computer I skimmed through the files I’d been examining, checking their dates. After five minutes I found what I was looking for. A two-week gap, at the end of October, for which there was no case file. Why? Where had I been? I tried to remember how long it was since Julia had gone—surely not three months? An alert sounded and I saw the small star-shaped icon at the top right of the screen. I clicked on it and a window appeared, one line of text inside. What alone does not make up the world? The question was familiar but I found it hard to focus as the words began to oscillate across the screen. The movement reminded me of something Robin had said. Words, I typed.

  More words appeared: Whose questions were never answered? My breath came in ragged, shallow gasps, as if the air in the office had thinned. Sluggishly, I typed Julia’s name, hit return and watched a ‘restricted access’ folder materialise on my desktop. Inside, under the heading ‘Intangible’ was a list of case files. I scrolled down and clicked on one that had been created in late October.

  The Bureau had been asked to investigate a civil servant who’d given an unauthorised interview to the press. In it, the subject had criticised a government department for distorting and suppressing key elements of a report that they themselves had commissioned. The department wanted us to explore a range of potential charges, though, as I read through the overwhelming mass of data, it was clear that they favoured one of subversion.

  The report was an investigation into the increase in sightings of unusual phenomena across Britain. Although all names had been excised from the report before it had been passed to the Bureau, I felt sure it was the same one I’d found summarised among Julia’s things. Even so, its implications were very different from those suggested in her précis. It said that reports of mass sighting had been greatly exaggerated in order to undermine confidence in the government and stir up civil unrest. On the contrary, the report maintained that the public’s sense of wellbeing had shown a steady increase over the last twelve months.

  Countless other documents and fragments of information had attached themselves to the file, the cumulative effect of which was to establish the subject’s guilt. There were rumours of stimulant dependency; recorded snatches of conversation suggesting alienation from work colleagues; allegations of child neglect, including a copy of a letter from a social worker expressing her concerns; transcripts of taped telephone calls implying infidelity; and a missing child report filed by the police. It was only words. It didn’t add up. Despite what I told myself I sensed there was more to it, another reality I’d only just glimpsed. Though I was afraid of what I’d see, I forced myself to focus on Julia and Nettie. Remembering how I’d not seen or spoken to them in weeks, maybe months, I willed things to converge into a pattern of guilt that, as investigating agent, I had already reified.

  Seeing now what I’d never wanted to see, I saw what remained to be done in order to shatter the illusion. Clearheaded for the first time in months, I sent copies of the ‘Intangible’ files to a host of newsfeeds, blogs, conspiracy and crank sites around the world.

  Leaving the office I saw a look of panic on the duty officer’s face as he stared at his computer. Phones began to ring, alerts started sounding on computers throughout the office. Alarms followed me down through the building and out past security but no one thought to doubt or question me, as if, with things starting to fall apart, I no longer mattered.

  Outside the night was cold, the street unnaturally quiet. My head felt raw, as if the thoughts and memories had been sucked out of there. It’s too late, I mumbled. This achieves nothing.

  “You’re wrong,” Robin said, emerging from the dark shadows of the building. He cradled Banjo close to his chest. “A space is opening up—something new is rushing in. Look.”

  He pointed across the street to where the forest had bullied its way out of the park. Ancient trees had punched holes in the tarmac and now straddled the road. Something stirred inside me. I thought it was anger. “Why did you let Nettie see you?”

  “Some people look harder—they want to see.”

  I shook my head. “But not me?”

  “That’s why it had to be you. You were involved in maintaining the illusion. If we could make you see, then we knew the whole edifice would start to fall.”

  I knew I should have felt anger and bitterness about the way I’d been used but I was too far gone. The best I could manage was relief that it would soon all be over. “So that’s it,” I said. “Our time is done.”

  “No reason, not today.” Robin’s voice was soft, almost childlike. He put his free hand on my shoulder. “You have somewhere you need to go.”

  “Where?’

  “Where you were already heading—into the woods, to the real world.”

  I felt pressure on my back and stepped into the road. As we moved towards the trees a car hove into view and speared us in its headlights. It screeched to a halt twenty yards away. More cars swung in behind the first and a voice cried out my name. “What have you done, Cloud? What the Hell have you done?”

  I saw the chief and half a dozen uniforms bustling past him. “Get down on the ground now!” one of them shouted.

  “They can’t hurt you today,” Robin said, pulling me towards the trees.

  “What about Julia?”

  “Get down right now!”

  “She didn’t make it,” Robin said, glints of red glowing like coal embers in his eyes.

  As we walked I tensed involuntarily, anticipating the explosion of bullets that would rip us apart. Strands of mist swirled round us and when the roar came it was dull and muffled, as if from far away and of no consequence to us. The mist thickened as we entered the forest and Robin lowered Banjo to the ground, soft with earth and dead leaves. We followed a dirt track and as we went deeper in I began to feel a strange lightness in my limbs. My lungs filled with cool, sweet air and for the first time in a long while I wasn’t afraid.

  Up ahead the mist began to dissipate and a soft golden light filtered through the trees. Banjo sniffed the dank earth excitedly and raced on along the trail. Robin stopped and said, “You forgot this.” He handed me a rolled up sheet of paper. I opened it out. It was Nettie’s painting. She stood on the hilltop next to a dark-haired man, both of them waving and laughing.

  I nodded, tears welling in my eyes.

  “You’ll see,” he said. From further up the trail came the sound of Banjo’s furious barking. “She’ll like that you remembered.”

  THE ENTIRE CITY

  Blood dried on Snow as he listened to the guy singing about a wonderful life. It was the only voice he heard, for which small mercy he was grateful. In the dawn stillness, he stared through the dusty windscreen, looking for a sign in the pinking sky. Provenance stretched away to the south, sleeping. Did its citizens share his dream of a world hidden from the vigilant gaze of the CCTV cameras which mapped an irrefutable vision of the entire city? He wondered if, despite all that they saw and logged, the ordered movement of flesh along its streets and inside its buildings, the cameras could see the angels that would release him.

  Snow picked up the cellphone next to the briefcase on the passenger seat and scrolled through a list of messages. He didn’t recognise the names of those who had sent them. He played the most recent one. The voice was frayed with impatience and fear. “Are we safe?” a man called Astorbilt wanted to know. “Is it done?”r />
  Not knowing the answer, Snow turned it off and got out of the pale blue Nissan. The drag of muscle and bone no longer troubled him. He wondered if this was the first sign of the weightlessness he’d been anticipating. The lightness of his thoughts was a new phenomenon, as was the sensation of being alone with himself. It would take some getting used to, he thought. His only regret was Darla.

  The sun came over the hill, its rays kissing the peaks of downtown’s high-rise office buildings. Birds began to caw and screech in the cluster of pines that hid the car from the road, and the sky over Amity Park shimmered in the wake of an unseen force. Snow’s heart missed a couple of beats. His vision blurred in the dry morning air. Something indeterminate was shaping itself against the sky, drawing the dawnlight into itself in an attempt to achieve definition. He stepped away from the car, gazing up at the spectacle, sure that this was what he’d been waiting for. His palms and feet started to tingle, a small but insistent pressure against the inside of his skin. He slumped back against the side of the car, the sensation becoming uncomfortable, skin tightening as if something was trying to tear its way out of him. His eyes watered and a gust of wind blew through his soul. He could hear the beating of wings. He wanted to speak, ask them to take him, but the words died on his tongue. Moving towards the shimmering blaze of colour, he stumbled and fell.

  For a while, he lay on the side of the road, weak and graceless as the pressure against his flesh eased. When he found the strength to look up, the sky was as clear as a high-res digital image. He hadn’t done enough, he thought. There was something he had missed. He took the semi-automatic from his jacket and got to his feet. At the rear of the car he stared down at the half dozen holes in the hood. They no longer spooked him. As if to test his resolve, he lowered his head and pressed an ear against the cool surface. “Speak to me,” he whispered after a moment. Nobody spoke. Returning the gun to his jacket, he took out his cellphone and played the last message again. The voice was like a ghost’s, the words barely audible through static. He pressed the call button and left a message for whoever might hear it. “It’s done,” he said. Then, as the sun rose into the empty sky, Snow abandoned the car and began walking down towards the waking city.