'Like I said, he collected people's nightmares. I'm not saying I believe it any more than this site does. You don't have to either, Ellen. Just use it if you can.'
She'd closed her mouth by now, though her lips were continuing to shift. 'What's kind of interesting,' Glen said, 'is he's supposed to have made a couple of mistakes.'
'What?' Hugh said with an urgency Charlotte found disconcerting.
'That last quote I gave you sounds as if he thought he took the nightmares out of people, doesn't it? Or maybe he didn't care. The people he's supposed to have lured to his house, they went away with nightmares some of them didn't even know they had. Of course that could just have been they were scared of the place because they knew his reputation.'
Hugh's gaze was dodging about so wildly it looked helpless, and Ellen seemed equally uncertain where to rest her wriggling fingers. As for Charlotte, she'd grown too breathless to speak, and so Hugh asked the question. 'What was the other mistake?'
'I guess he thought nobody could get at his own nightmares. You could say he did it to himself by being so obsessed with other people's, or maybe it makes for a better story if Grace turns Pendemon's own nightmare on him after one of his followers joined up with Grace and told him what it was. Or it could just have been a coincidence, but that's not the kind of book your cousin's writing.'
Again it was Hugh's question that broke the stale constricted breathless silence. 'What was?'
'He was scared of being buried alive,' Glen said before a rush of blackness engulfed his voice. The train had entered the tunnel at last. For an instant Charlotte was glad that it had quieted him, and then she seemed to taste the dark that clogged her mouth and stole her breath.
TWENTY-THREE
As Ellen saw blackness racing towards her she had time to hope that it would blot her out. Extinguishing the lights would do, but it only closed around the train, displaying her on either side. Even if she stared resolutely ahead she was still aware of the loathsome bloated pallid shapes that flanked her like guards conducting her to some inevitable fate. She saw Charlotte grab the mobile and switch off the silenced call before shutting her eyes tight, while Hugh made it plain that he had no idea where to look. It had been kind of them to pretend they could bear the sight of Ellen, and she couldn't blame them for giving up. Charlotte ought to be proud of Ellen's developing vocabulary, of the number of words she had found for herself: bulky, bulging, puffy, inflated, pasty, revolting, disgusting, foul, fetid, noisome, emetic, vomitive . . . She was going down the list that filled her head when Hugh spoke, barely audible above the hollow uproar of the train. 'Is it him?'
Charlotte raised her head as if to search but kept her eyes shut, presumably for fear of glimpsing Ellen. 'Is who what?'
'Pendemon,' Hugh mumbled and turned his gaze away from the window beside her, only to find the view across the aisle as unwelcome. 'Has he done something?'
Ellen's fingers writhed, not just because she could scarcely bear how they felt whenever they rubbed flabbily together. She was remembering the buried object that she'd taken for a bunch of twisted roots until it had seemed to grope for her hand. 'Can we leave him alone for now?'
'You think he has,' Hugh said with a kind of dismayed eagerness.
'I didn't say that and I'm not thinking it either. What are you trying to prove, Hugh?'
'Maybe just that I'm worth listening to.'
'You know you are. When has anybody ever said you weren't?'
'Let's talk, then,' Charlotte muttered. 'We need to.'
The train clattered at length through the dark before Hugh said 'Do you remember what we talked about last time we were there?'
By leaving Thurstaston unnamed he rendered the memory of the twisted object that had stirred under the earth more ominous, and Charlotte didn't help by saying 'Remind us.'
'We were saying what we dreamed the night we slept there.'
Ellen hadn't mentioned her dream, and didn't want to recall it now, even if it was no worse than her present state. 'I don't see anything unusual about that,' Charlotte said, shutting her eyes tighter. 'Everyone dreams.'
'Yes, but how many dreams do you remember all these years later? Was it just that one?'
'It still is.'
'Then mustn't that mean it wasn't an ordinary dream?'
'It was pretty ordinary,' Charlotte said, and Ellen wondered if this was meant to fend off the memory. 'I wouldn't make any great claims for it.'
'What was it, though?'
'Just some kind of cellar. I was going to be pulled down into it if I hadn't woken up.'
'Anything else you remember? Where –'
'I'd rather not discuss it here.' Charlotte's eyelids trembled as though she were equally nervous of keeping them closed or opening them. 'Or maybe anywhere,' she admitted, mostly to herself.
'Sorry, I should've realised.' Hugh's gaze dodged about so wildly that it might have been searching for an intruder before fastening on Ellen. 'What about you?'
Did his scrutiny explain why she felt spied upon, her every word analysed in case it went too far? She couldn't resist glancing around, but nobody appeared to be lurking behind any of the seats; the darkness had brought nothing dreadful into the carriage except her reflections. She understood Hugh's question all too well, which was why she retreated from giving the answer. 'I should have,' she tried telling him instead.
'No, I mean did you dream something? What did you dream?'
'I'm going to be like Charlotte,' Ellen said, wishing that she were. For an instant she'd glimpsed an underground room that surrounded her with her hideous self. 'I want to save it,' she said, only to find this didn't reassure her at all.
'I thought we wanted to talk.'
'Nobody's preventing you,' Charlotte said, how encouragingly Ellen couldn't judge.
'You already know what I dreamed.'
Charlotte's mouth opened and closed as if she were struggling to breathe, unless she was reluctant to speak. With her eyes closed she might almost have been trying to talk in her sleep. Eventually she said 'Tell us again.'
'I couldn't find my way, and now I can't.' More resentfully than Ellen had ever heard him sound he added 'I said once.'
'You don't need a nightmare to explain that,' Charlotte protested. 'Life's enough of one too much of the time.'
'Not this much.'
Charlotte lowered her head and folded her arms hard. If she hadn't spoken Ellen might have had to ask 'What do you mean?'
'Not this much of a nightmare.' Hugh faltered, and Ellen tried not to think he was letting the darkness or something in it creep closer. 'All right, I didn't tell you everything,' he mumbled. 'I can't find my way anywhere at all.'
'Oh, Hugh.' With a visible effort Charlotte opened her eyes to peer at him. 'There's no need to go looking for a nightmare to explain it, surely,' she said. 'Didn't it start with all your stress at work?'
'Maybe that was part of it.'
Ellen felt dismayingly unable to help, as incompetent as the tribunal's verdict had made her feel. 'You need to see a doctor,' she urged.
'I couldn't find my way there either.'
His attempt at a laugh was too perfunctory to invite an echo, but Ellen imagined she'd heard one, muffled by the buried thunder of the train. 'We –' she began and then was afraid to promise. 'Someone will take you,' she said.
'You're forgetting about Rory.'
'I mean after we've visited. Or no, I'm being stupid. You could see a doctor at the hospital.'
