Doctor Who_ The Sleep of Reason - Martin Day [36]
She climbed off the bed, throwing the documents and papers to the floor –
plenty of time to tidy up later – and padded into the shower room. Still not sure if she was awake or asleep she approached the cubicle. She got the shower going and made herself jump straight in.
The jet of water was so cold she’d swear there was crushed ice in it. She certainly swore, streams of Anglo-Saxon to irritate her neighbours and some guttural noises that were just right in the circumstances. But at least it seemed to have kick-started her brain. She was awake.
Hello world.
But where had she been, what had she dreamed of? As the water began to warm she closed her eyes and relaxed, waiting for the memories – the memories of a night full of dreams – to come.
A dog.
Her eyes snapped open, blinking against the water. She’d dreamed about a dog, a creature of darkness, as big as a man, with glowing eyes and breath like steam from some great engine.
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She forced her eyes shut, waiting for her pounding heart to relax. What had happened? She could not remember. Where had she encountered the hound?
At the Retreat, of course – it so dominated her waking and subconscious world she was sure she hadn’t dreamed of anywhere else for months. But the place she had visited had been empty of people – just her, and the dog.
What had happened?
Her mind refused to divulge the information – and, the more she thought about the dream, the further it receded. Or, she thought, changing the analogy, the harder she tried to grasp the substance of her imaginings, the more it slipped away, like wet soap in the hand.
She shook her head against her own meanderings. She had to relax, but she had to concentrate as well. It wasn’t just her daily ritual, her most overt attempt to contact her subconscious self – somewhere, deep in her mind, something was trying to tell her that last night had been. . . important. The image of the dog wasn’t enough. There was more.
But it wouldn’t come. The rest of the dream had slipped through her hands.
Like soap. . .
Soap reminded her of shower gel and shampoo. Time to wash. Although she washed every morning she never quite felt clean, as if the very act of living deposited on to her skin layer upon layer of debilitating detritus. It was a barrier she tried to scrub away, but the dirt always seemed more than skin deep.
As Laska reached out for the shower gel she saw the grazes on her arms for the first time. Not the neat cuts that she was so used to, the ruler-straight marks of her own will, but something random, unpredictable. Ferocious and animal-like.
Unprompted, an image from the dream came back to her, the strength of it knocking her against the wall of the cubicle: the great, hairy head of the beast, the fur made rough by the elements and matted in wet chunks, lunging towards her. A thick paw arcing towards her, catching her on the arm. The taste of blood in her own mouth that swamped the familiar sensation of having been cut.
Then the dog enveloped her, sweeping over her like a shroud. Then – nothing. The end of the dream?
And yet she had not woken up with a start, as she was so often prone to do (a physiological reaction, someone had once tried to explain to her – to do with blood pressure or something). She had remained asleep – she was sure –
for many hours; she had drifted back to reality, to her bed, only gradually, as if the dream had continued even after the savage attack of the dog.
Nonsense, of course – there was no connection between dreams and reality.
Her dreaming insight into the geography of the Retreat before her arrival she 62
now attributed to luck, or having watched a documentary set in just such a house, or some exploration as a kid that she’d long forgotten about. Indeed, such was her reinterpretation of Dr Bartholomew’s surprised reaction to her incredible perception that Laska now genuinely believed she’d got some elements of her description