“So you didn’t use the environment technique?”
“No, I didn’t remember.”
Charlie looked disappointed, and Billy stopped smiling, looking sheepish now instead. For my own part, I was just trying to keep up. Glancing to one side, I could tell that James was feeling as bewildered as I was. The way Charlie was talking, it was like we’d been set a test without being given the classes to prepare for it.
“What the fuck is the environment technique?” I said.
“I said I’d explain.” Charlie turned to me. “What about you, Paul? How did you do?”
I hadn’t actually decided for certain whether I was going to talk about the success I’d had, but I didn’t like the way Charlie phrased that right then. How did you do? As though I had to prove myself to him.
“Nothing at all,” I said.
“No?”
“Maybe if I’d have known about the nose trick.”
Charlie ignored the jibe and simply nodded, as though it was what he’d been expecting. With me, there was none of the disappointment there had been with Billy. He moved on.
“What about you, James?”
James pressed the stapled papers down onto his lap and looked awkward.
For fuck’s sake, I wanted to tell him. It doesn’t matter.
“Nothing,” James said miserably. “Just like Paul.”
The words stung a little, but it was the tone of his voice that hurt the most. He made it sound as though being like me was such a failure.
“You didn’t notice any patterns?” Charlie said.
“Nothing at all. It was all just a random jumble.”
“That’s fine. It just takes practice and experience. Give it another week or so, and you’ll get there. You’ve done well just for trying.”
James gave Charlie a nervous smile.
Billy looked at him. “So what did you dream?”
James glanced down at what passed for his notebook. “Nothing interesting.”
“No, go on.” Billy leaned forward and made to take the dream diary away from James. “Maybe we can find some patterns there even if you can’t.”
James leaned away from him. “Don’t.”
“Just tell us, then.”
“Well … last night, I dreamed about the woods.” James glanced at me. “The ones behind our town. The Shadows.”
He looked slightly guilty. Perhaps that was because, after all of the weekend expeditions the four of us had done, the town and the woods no longer felt like ours anymore. It might have been where James and I had grown up, but it was Charlie who had started taking us into the woods and making up stories about ghosts.
“Go on,” Charlie said.
“It was dark in the dream. I was standing in my yard, at the edge of the trees, looking out into the woods.”
“Was anyone else there?”
“There were a lot of people in the yard behind me—like there was a party going on. I think some of them had hoods and masks on. But it wasn’t scary. It was more like some kind of gathering I hadn’t been invited to.”
Charlie leaned forward, intrigued now.
“But what about the woods?”
James fell silent for a moment. “Yeah, there was … someone in the woods, I think.”
“One person?”
“I couldn’t tell. It was more like a presence. But it felt like whoever was there could see me. Like they were staring right at me. Because it was all lit up in the yard behind me, right? But they were out in the trees—in the darkness—so I couldn’t see them.”
“Did that scare you?” Charlie spoke more quietly now. “Did the people in the woods frighten you?”
James hesitated.
“A little.”
“That makes sense.” Charlie settled back. “There was no need to be scared, but you didn’t know that at the time. Did you think they might have been about to call out to you? Or come toward you?”
“I don’t know.”
“So what did happen?”
“The dream shifted. I just went somewhere else.”
Even after only a week, I was familiar with that sensation by now—the way dreams melted seamlessly into one other—but the way James phrased it still made me feel uneasy. I just went somewhere else. He made it sound as though the dream were real somehow. And Charlie was staring at him with fascination now, as though something important had happened and he couldn’t quite believe it.
“You saw him,” Charlie said, his voice full of wonder.
A beat of silence in the room.
“Saw who?” I said.
“He didn’t see him.” Billy sounded sullen. “He never said he saw him.”
“Felt him, then.” Charlie gave Billy the briefest of glances before his attention returned to James. “Do you know what I dreamed last night?”
“No.”
“I dreamed I was in the same place as you. I was in the woods with him, and I could see you, looking back at us. It was very dark where we were standing, so I wasn’t sure if you could see us. But you did.” He smiled proudly. “It happened much sooner than I was expecting.”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
Charlie looked at me. “James and I were in the same dream last night.”
“What?”
“James and I shared a dream.”
“Oh, don’t be fucking ridiculous.”
The words came out without me thinking, and the atmosphere in the room changed with them. While I might have rolled my eyes in the past, I’d never challenged Charlie as directly or aggressively as that before now. His smile vanished and his eyes emptied, and I knew I’d overstepped a line.
But I pressed it anyway.
“That’s not possible, Charlie.”
“I understand, Paul,” he said. “You haven’t tried as hard as the rest of us. You haven’t achieved anything. But believe me. It really did happen.”
“Yeah, well. It really didn’t.”
Charlie opened his dream diary and held it out over the desk to James.
“James, can you read this for me, please?”
James hesitated. The sudden edge to the conversation had made him nervous. But I could tell he was also intrigued, and after a second he stepped across and took Charlie’s diary, then stood there, reading the page that was open in front of him.
His eyes widened.
“What?” I said.
But James didn’t reply. When he was done reading, he lowered the book, and looked at Charlie with something like awe on his face.
“This is … this can’t be right.”
“But it is.” Charlie nodded in my direction. “Show Paul.”
James handed me the dream diary. Even though he was obviously spooked, I still thought this whole thing was absurd. People couldn’t share dreams. I looked down at the book. Charlie’s most recent entry started on the left-hand page, and his small, spidery handwriting filled both. The date at the top was that morning.
I started reading.
I am sitting with him in the woods.
It is very dark here, but I can tell he is wearing that old army jacket, the one with the weathered fabric on the shoulders that looks like feathers, like an angel that’s had his wings clipped down to stumps. There’s a bit of moonlight. His hair is black and tangled, wild like the undergrowth around us, and his face is a black hole, just like always. But he is sitting cross-legged with his hands resting on his thighs, and for some reason I can see his hands clearly. They are bright red.