The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 19

MIKE O'DRISCOLL 13 O'Clock

The days were beginning to stretch out. Another couple of months and it would be surf and barbecue, cold beer out on the deck listening to Bonnie «Prince» Billy. Play some silly tunes on the guitar for Jack, teach him his first chords. Make some other kind of music for Polly. The sweet kind for which the diminishing nights left barely enough time.

The cold still hung in the air at this hour though. Caleb Williams could feel it on his face as he followed Cyril across the rising field. He bent down, scooped up the mostly black mongrel terrier and boosted him up the stone ditch. He climbed up and over while the dog, resenting the indignity of having to be lifted, scrambled down by itself.

They crossed the dirt track to the garden, where Caleb paused to lean against the unpainted block wall. The sun was a ball sinking below Cefn Bryn, leaving the mid-April sky streaked with red.

Gazing up at the house, he felt a sudden, unaccountable yearning. The otherness of dusk made the cottage seem insubstantial. Shrugging off this unexpected sense of isolation, he opened the back gate and let Cyril bolt through. They got the dog two years ago for Jack's birthday, but whether Jack had tired of it, or the dog had tired of the boy, it had ended up attaching itself to Caleb. Only now was he getting used to the idea of himself as a dog person.

In the living room, Polly was curled up on the sofa, dark red hair breaking in waves over her shoulders, ebbing across her blouse. She was channel hopping as he came in, and had opened two small bottles — stubbies, she called them — of San Miguel. "Saw you coming from Jack's room," she said, her grey eyes lucent with mischief. "You looked like you need one."

Caleb took the beer and sat next to her. "Is it me," he said, "or is the climb up from the bay getting steeper?"

His wife swung her feet up into his lap. "It's decrepitude," she said.

"Good. For a moment there I thought I was getting old." He tapped his bottle against hers and took a sip.

She smiled for a moment, then her expression changed. "You didn't hear Jack last night?"

"No. What?"

"I meant to tell you this morning. He had a bad dream." She frowned. "More than that, I guess. A nightmare."

"There's a difference?"

"Of course there is, fool." She jabbed a foot playfully into his thigh. "This was a nightmare."

"How could you tell?"

"I'm serious, Cale. He was petrified. He screamed when I woke him."

"Was he okay?"

"After a while, yes."

"What did he dream?"

"He was alone in the house at night. That's scary enough for most eight-year-olds."

"Poor Jack. How is he tonight?"

"He's fine. Has been all day. I was half-expecting him to say something but he never mentioned it. I guess he's already forgotten."

"Good," Caleb said, feeling a vague sense of guilt. Should have been there for him, he thought.

Polly sighed and rubbed her foot across his belly. "So, how was your day?"

Caleb said nothing. He was thinking about Jack's nightmare, trying to imagine how he must have felt. A yellow woman moved across the TV screen. He wondered where nightmares came from. What caused them?

Polly wiggled her toes in his face. "What's the matter? Got the hots for Marge Simpson?"

He laughed and grabbed her foot. "It's the big hair that does it for me"

She yanked her foot free. "There you go, making me jealous," she said, sliding along the sofa.

He drained his bottle and pulled her close. "I always thought blue would work for you," he said, before kissing her. He didn't think about Jack's dream again until after they had made love, and then only for a short while, until sleep took him.

Caleb taught basic literacy skills to young adult offenders, most of whom were serving community sentences for alcohol and drug related crimes. Twice a week he held a class in Swansea Jail for those whose crimes were more serious. In all the time he had worked as an English teacher in a city comprehensive, he had seen countless faces just like theirs. The faces of disaffected boys who had never willingly picked up a book, or lost themselves in words. After ten years he had walked away. Now, watching these young men begin to find pleasure in reading, he felt he was finally doing something that mattered.

All the more maddening then, not being able to comprehend his son's terror. As he moved from one student to the next, his thoughts kept drifting back to Jack. He'd had another nightmare last night, worse than before. Hearing him, Polly had woken Caleb. When he'd gone to his son's room, the look of terror on Jack's face had shocked him. After he'd calmed the boy and returned to his own bed, he'd lain awake for hours, trying to comprehend the extent of Jack's fear. His inability to understand the dream left him feeling helpless, and this in turn had added to his confusion and guilt.

At lunchtime, he called Polly on her mobile. "Hi Cale," she said. "What's up?"

"You busy?"

"On my way to town. Got work to drop off at McKays." She worked part-time, auditing small business accounts. "Can I get back to you?"

"It's okay," Caleb sighed. "I was just wondering about Jack. How he was this morning."

"Okay, I guess." Caleb heard the doubt in her voice. "He dreamed about a stranger. He, uh —»

"He what?"

"He said a stranger was coming to our house."

Caleb tried to imagine his son's nightmare.

"We spoke at breakfast and he was all right. I think he forgot most of it. He's tough, you know, resilient."

"You're right," Caleb said. "I'll stay with him tonight, till he's asleep."

"He'll like that, Cale. Really." She broke the connection.

I hope so, Caleb thought, as he flipped the phone shut. Despite Polly's reassurances, he felt there was more he should be doing. Like being able to explain the dream to Jack, stealing its power through interpretation. Take away that ability to rationalize and he was no better than the most illiterate, most brutalized of his students.

In the evening Caleb put his son to bed and read him a chapter from The Wind in the Willows. Jack liked it when he put on different voices for the characters. High-pitched and squeaky for Rat, ponderous and slow for Mole. Toad was his favourite. He always laughed at Caleb's braying, exaggeratedly posh voice, but tonight there was no Mr Toad, just the softer, more subdued notes of Rat and Mole as they searched the river for young Portly, the missing otter. He found himself strangely moved by the animals' mystical quest, experiencing an emotion akin to the yearning regret that was all the memory Rat and Mole were left with of their encounter with Pan. He closed the book and forced a smile, trying to hide his mood, but his melancholy was mirrored in Jack's eyes.

"What's wrong, Dad?" Jack asked.

"I was thinking about the story."

Jack nodded. "Me too. About the friend and helper." He frowned. "Why did they forget him?"

Caleb hadn't read the book since he was a child himself, and he'd forgotten how mysterious, how at odds with the rest of the tale, the "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" chapter had been. "So they wouldn't feel sad," he said, after a while.

"But he helped them find Portly."

Caleb nodded. "Yes, but there are things…"

"Why?"

Caleb wondered what it had felt like when he had first become aware of his own mortality. Choosing his words carefully, he said, "Sometimes people know things they're better off not knowing."

"Things in dreams?"

"Yes." Something resonated in Caleb's memory. He couldn't quite grasp it, though he suspected his feelings were an echo of Jack's empathy for Rat and Mole. "You remember anything about your dream last night?"

Jack shook his head.

"If you're scared, Jack, if something's troubling you, I want you to tell me."

"Are you okay, Dad?"

Caleb wondered why Jack would ask that question. It disturbed him, but he managed a smile and said, "Course I am."

"Right," Jack said, but the look of concern remained on his face. "I'll say a prayer."

"Why?"

"You're s'posed to," Jack said. "Mrs Lewis said you have to pray to Jesus to look after your family."

Mrs Lewis was Jack's teacher. Caleb had nothing against religion, but he was troubled by the notion of Jack taking it too seriously.

"You don't need to pray for me, son. I'm fine, really. Sleep now, okay?"

'"Kay," Jack said, closing his eyes.

Caleb woke from a fretful sleep, scraps of memory gusting through his troubled mind. Though a film of sweat coated his body, he felt cold and vulnerable. A shaft of moonlight fell through the gap in the curtains, cloaking familiar objects in odd, distorting shadows that, in his drowsy state, unsettled him. He struggled to claw back the fragments of a dissipating dream and the sounds that had slipped its borders. A minute passed before he understood that he had followed them out of sleep, that he was hearing the same muffled cries from somewhere in the house. He sprang out of bed and crossed the landing to Jack's room. His son was whimpering softly, making sounds unrecognizable as words. As Caleb approached the bed, Jack's body spasmed and an awful scream tore from his throat. Caleb hesitated, unnerved by the intensity of his son's fear. He wrapped his arms around the boy and felt the iron rigidity in the small, thin body. Downstairs, Cyril began to bark.

"It's okay, Jack," he whispered. "I'm here." Jack's eyes opened, and in his disoriented state he struggled in his father's arms. Caleb made soothing noises and stroked his face. Jack tried to say something, but the tremors that seized his body made him incoherent. "Ssshhh," Caleb said. "It's over."

"Duh-duh, Dad," Jack cried.

"I'm right here," Caleb told him.

Jack struggled for breath. "He-he was here. He knew you wuh-were gone."

Caleb shuddered involuntarily at the words, and felt the lack of conviction in his voice when he said, "Nobody's here Jack. Just you and me."

Jack shook his head and looked beyond his father. "He came in the house. He was on the stairs."

Caleb held the boy in front of him and looked into his eyes. "There's nobody here. It was a nightmare. You're awake now." Cyril barked again, as if in contradiction.

"His face — it's gone," Jack said, still disoriented.

It was the same nightmare, Caleb realized with disquiet. Polly had said Jack had dreamed of an unwelcome stranger in their house. How common was it for kids to have recurring dreams? He wondered if it signalled some deeper malaise. "I'll go and check downstairs," he told his son, in an effort to reassure Jack.

"Please Dad," Jack said, his voice fragile and scared. "Promise you won't go."

A tingling frost spread over Caleb's skin, numbing his brain. His thoughts stumbled drunkenly, dangerously close to panic. He wondered if what he was feeling was, in part at least, a residue of his son's fear. He needed to be strong. "All right, Jack. You come sleep with us tonight, okay?"

Jack nodded, his gaze still flitting nervously about the room. Caleb picked him up and carried him back across the landing. He laid him down in the middle of the bed, next to Polly. She stirred and mumbled something in her sleep. He put a finger to his lips, signalling Jack to keep quiet. Then he left the room and went downstairs to the kitchen.

Cyril was standing at the back door, sniffing. Caleb crouched beside the dog and petted him for a few moments. "What's wrong boy? You having bad dreams too?" The dog licked Caleb's hand. He pointed to Cyril's basket, stood up and glanced through the kitchen window above the sink. Moonlight silvered the garden. Nothing was out of place. When he went back upstairs and climbed into bed, Jack turned and clung to him for a while, until fatigue loosened his hold and sleep reclaimed him.

The radio clock's LED screen pulsed redly in the darkness, as if attuned to the rhythm of Caleb's agitated mind. Vaguely disturbing thoughts had taken root there, but an unaccountable sense of guilt made him reluctant to examine them. They seemed born out of nothing. The darkness robbed him of reason, made his fears seem more real than they had any right to be.

What could he do for Jack? Explain that his nightmares were the product of his own unconscious fears? As if reason could ever outweigh terror in the mind of a child. As if it could account for what seemed to him a strange congruence between Jack's bad dreams and his own fragile memories. He felt powerless and bewildered. Though he believed he would do anything for his son, he was plagued by a small but undeniable doubt. He couldn't escape the feeling that he was in some way responsible for Jack's terror, that it was connected to some weakness in himself.

Caleb strummed his guitar listlessly, his chord changes awkward and slow, like they had been when he'd first started playing. Maybe, once you got past forty, it was too late to take it up. The fingers were too stiff and the willingness to make a fool of oneself was not so strong as it had been. Yet, he didn't feel that way about himself.

When Polly had bought the guitar for his birthday and told him it was time to stop talking and learn to play, it hadn't seemed such a crazy idea. And still now, after a year, the desire to play competently some blues and country tunes was as strong as ever. It was something else distracting him.

He leaned the guitar against the table, got up and walked to the sink. Polly glanced up from the book she was reading. "Not there today, huh?"

Caleb shrugged and watched his son through the kitchen window. Jack was playing in the garden by the recently dug pond that still awaited its first Koi Carp. He was manoeuvring his Action Men through the shallow water as if it were a swamp.

"You okay?"

Caleb looked at her. She'd put her book down on the table and was staring intently at him. He didn't want to talk. He knew already what she'd say. "I'm fine," he said, turning back to the window.

"It's Jack, isn't it?"

The boy was manipulating two of his soldiers into a fight. He paused suddenly, and cocked his head to one side, as if listening. Slowly, he swept his gaze across the garden. He seemed nervous, wary of something. After a moment or two, he continued with his game, but more guarded, as if aware that he was being observed. Caleb felt uneasy. He leaned closer to the window and let his gaze wander around the garden and down to the rear wall that backed onto the lane. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary.

"He's okay, Cale," Polly was saying. "He'd be even better if you'd stop fretting."

"I was trying to help him," Caleb said, still watching Jack.

"By interrogating him?"

"Talking about it will help him." Jack was shielding his eyes from the watery sun as he gazed south towards the bay. "Expose the irrational to the cold light of day and it loses its power. Making Jack talk about the dream will weaken its hold over him."

"Oh sure. After all, he's eight years old."

She didn't seem to get it. "What do you suggest we do?"

"Ignore them. They'll pass of their own accord if you stop bringing them up. Jesus Cale, all kids have bad dreams sometime or other."

"I never did. Not like his."

"We all have nightmares. Why should you be different?"

He looked at her and heard himself say, "I just never did."

"Or you forced yourself to forget."

Maybe she was right. He turned back to the garden. Jack had laid one Action Man face down in the water. He was draping strings of pondweed over the doll. He paused and glanced up towards the house, before turning his attention once again to his game.

Polly came up behind Caleb and slipped her arms around his waist. "You just need to give him a little time," she said, pressing her lips against the back of his neck.

How much time, Caleb wondered, feeling an ache of tenderness as he watched Jack rise up onto his knees. The same nightmare four times in one week. How much time before reason was exposed as a hollow lie? He would not let it happen.

As if feeling his isolation, Polly pulled away. He was about to reach for her when he saw what Jack was doing. The boy was kneeling over the pond where the Action Man floated, covered with strands of weed. His hands were clasped together, his head was tilted skywards and his lips were moving. Caleb's flesh tingled with disquiet. What kind of game was it that necessitated prayer?

Jack and Gary raced into the dunes ahead of Caleb and Cyril. A stiff breeze blew in from the east, across Oxwich bay, unleashing small, foam flecked waves to snap at the shore. Caleb followed the terrier up the steep, sliding bank of a dune.

The boys were waiting for him atop the grassy ridge. Jack looked skinny and frail next to his friend, who, though only a month older, was a good six inches taller and a few pounds heavier. Sometimes Caleb feared for his son when he watched the rough and tumble of their play, but he was glad too that Jack had such a friend. Gary seemed to him indomitable, and he hoped that some of that strength would rub off on Jack. No nightmare last night. Third dreamless night in a row. Perhaps Polly had been right after all.

"We're gonna hide now," Jack said. "You gotta count a hundred."

Caleb nodded. He called Cyril to him and held on to the dog while the two boys took off. He began counting out loud as he watched them scramble further up through the tough marram grass. Cyril whined and struggled to chase after them, but Caleb held him until he had reached fifty. Then, still holding the dog by his collar, he crawled up the slope and peered over the crest of the dune.

Jack and Gary were sixty or seventy yards ahead, running through the small dip towards another rise. He waited until they had disappeared around the side of the hill, then called out that he was coming.

Letting Cyril race ahead of him, he followed their path, before cutting across and up the dune at a steeper angle. Crouching as he came over the crest of the hill, he scanned the dune slack below, searching the bracken and coarse grasses for anything other than wind-induced movement. He spied a patch of yellow moving beyond the pink and white trumpets of a bindweed-choked tree, and quickly chose a route that would allow him to get ahead of the two boys.

Soon after, he popped up from behind a thick mound of marram grass and made booming noises as he shot them with his forefingers. After yelping in surprise, the boys collapsed spectacularly into the scrub.

By the time they had picked themselves up and started counting, Caleb was already heading deeper into the dunes.

He ran for about a hundred yards, found cover in a clump of bracken, and lay on his back to watch the cirrus clouds race across the sky. He could hear the sea rolling in over the long flat stretch of the bay, the screech of gulls and the wind whistling through the dune grass.

He closed his eyes for a moment and heard voices carrying on the breeze. He was surprised at how much distance and the wind distorted the sounds, made them indecipherable, barely recognizable as human. The vastness of the sky overhead instilled in him a sense of isolation, which added to the strangeness of the voices. Despite the coolness of the breeze, he felt trickles of sweat on his back as the words shaped themselves in his head. Something about time.

He listened more intently, made out Jack's voice, frightened, asking what happens at thirteen o'clock. A sudden rush of panic swept through Caleb. He sprang up from the bracken and spun round, searching the immediate vicinity for his son. There was no sign of either boy. He was about to call out when he heard Jack shouting from the top of a dune some sixty yards away. The boy waved to him, then followed Gary and the dog down the slope.

"You're s'posed to hide, Dad," Jack said, as they arrived, breathless, beside him. "That was too easy."

"We would have found you anyway," Gary said. "Cyril had your scent."

There was nothing in either boy's faces to confirm what Caleb had heard. He had imagined it, he told himself. The wind and his own anxiety about Jack. Understandable, if foolish. He thought the boy looked a little pale, but he seemed untroubled. "Okay," he said. "I think it's time to go."

"Not yet," Jack said. "We only had one go of hiding."

Gary nodded, and without waiting for Caleb to agree, he tore off up the nearest slope. Caleb felt a surge of anger but he suppressed it. He gestured to Jack. "Get going," he said. "Make it good."

Jack sped off after his friend. Cyril stayed with Caleb of his own accord. It was getting on for seven and a chill lingered in the late April air. As he watched them disappear over the top of a high dune, he regretted letting them go again and considered calling them back. But they were gone now, and despite his sense of unease, he didn't want to spoil their fun.

He counted slowly to fifty, then set out on their trail. He climbed the dune and scanned the nearby hollows for any trace of them. "Where they go boy?" he said, more to himself than the dog, who had stopped to investigate a few pellets of rabbit shit. Caleb shrugged, scrambled down the dune towards a trail that skirted the copse separating the dunes from the marshlands beyond.

He followed this path to the end of the trees, then climbed up the nearest slope to get a belter view. From the top, he saw the grey ocean and a thin line of sand, separated from him by the expanse of green, cascading dunes. A sudden, intense fear bloomed inside him as his eyes searched the wind-swept slacks. "Jack," he cried out. "Time to go son."

No voice came back to him, just the moan of the insistent breeze through the coarse grass and brittle sea holly. He moved in a shore-wards direction, clambering down one dune and up the next, calling Jack's name. He felt a tight knot in his stomach as he forced himself up the yielding slope. It sapped his strength and robbed him of breath. He reached the top, light-headed and panting. Cyril scampered up the path behind him, tongue lolling out of his mouth. He stopped abruptly and turned, just as a figure burst out from the scrub.

It was Gary. Caleb's relief dissipated when he saw the boy was alone. "Dammit Gary," he snapped. "Where the hell is Jack?"

Gary's grin slipped. "I–I'm sorry Caleb. We didn't mean to —»

Caleb saw that he had frightened the boy unnecessarily. "It's all right. Just tell me where he's hiding."

"I didn't see," Gary said.

Caleb's fear intensified. "Which way did he go?" he said, trying to keep his voice calm.

Gary looked around, then pointed back towards the marsh. Caleb took his hand, and together they headed down the slope. The sweat chilled his body as he raced over damp scabious, calling out.

The minutes ticked by and dusk began to roll in from the bay. Odd terrors clawed at the frayed edges of his mind, and his limbs shook with fatigue as he searched through the trees. What had he been thinking, especially after what Jack had been through? Please, please, let him be okay.

A whispered sound caught his attention. He turned and saw the dog running along another path back into the dunes. "There," he shouted at Gary, a sharp pain piercing his side. He staggered after the boy and dog. Beyond them, he caught a glimpse of yellow through the scrub, lost it, then saw it again, unmoving on the ground behind a stunted tree. His heart was pumping furiously and the cry of despair was on his lips as he came round the tree and nearly crashed into Gary, who stood over the motionless form.

Jack was grinning up at them. "What took you so long?" he said.

For a second, Caleb teetered on the edge of rage, then he fell to his knees and hugged Jack tightly to his chest.

Caleb turned into the school car park. Beside him, Jack stared blankly ahead. He'd not spoken in the six-minute drive from the doctor's surgery to the school.

After a dreamless week, the nightmare had returned to ravage the boy. Caleb had heard him cry out sometime after midnight. He'd run to Jack's room and had found him sitting upright, his gaze fixed on nothingness.

Traces of whatever haunted his dreams lingered in his eyes even after Caleb had woken him, but he had been unable to ascribe it a material substance or meaning. And all the doctor had had to say was that there was nothing physically wrong with Jack. Jesus Christ — what did he expect? Broken bones? A gaping wound? Caleb had wanted answers, not fucking platitudes. Tell him why Jack was having these nightmares, what was scaring him. Instead, he'd had to listen to bullshit reassurances about Jack's overactive imagination and how they should maybe monitor his TV viewing and ease up on the bedtime stories.

Polly would be relieved, even if she had more or less predicted what the doctor would say.

Caleb turned off the ignition, his body tense with anger and concern. He glanced at his son in the passenger seat. Jack looked too fragile, he thought, too lost inside his own head. He wanted desperately to hug the boy, to let him know that he would do anything for him, but he was afraid that Jack would somehow see the truth.

"You sure you want to go to school?" he said. "I can take you home if you want."

"I'm okay," Jack said.

Caleb felt sick with anguish. He didn't want to quiz his son but felt he had no choice. "Jack, the other day, when you asked Gary about thirteen o'clock, what did you mean?"

"About what?"

Caleb forced a smile. "When we were down at Oxwich. You asked him what happens at thirteen o'clock."

Jack seemed confused. "I don't know what you mean, Dad."

Caleb wondered if his son was being evasive. "Maybe, like Rat and Mole, you feel that it's better to forget some things?"

Jack shook his head, making his uncertainty evident. "I never heard of it."

Caleb believed the boy. He leaned over and hugged him, trying to squeeze strength into his son. "I love you, Jack. You know that?"

"Yes."

"I won't let anything hurt you."

"Dad," Jack said, his voice muffled against Caleb's chest. "I don't want you to go."

Caleb stifled a sob and patted him on the back. "I got work, Jack."

The boy pulled away from him. "I didn't mean — " He stopped then, kissed his father and got out of the car. Caleb waved after him as he ran across the schoolyard, but Jack didn't look back.

Alone, his eyes watered, and he felt overwhelmed. His love was compromised by a sense of powerlessness, of having failed his son. He felt guilty too, at being afraid, not for Jack but for himself. He was ashamed of his weakness and angry at what he saw as the failure of his reason.

He caught sight of something in the rear-view mirror, a child's bewildered face staring at him from the back seat. Jack's, he thought at first, but after a moment he realized it was his own, as it had been thirty years ago. The cheeks were pale, the lips thin and trembling, the eyes haunted. Caleb felt the glacial creep of fear across his skin. Wanting to connect with the abandoned child, he reached up, touched the mirror, and saw the child's features blur and reassemble themselves into his own, harrowed face.

Discordant sounds frayed Caleb's nerves and a harsh chorus of jeers echoed from the far end of the bar. He realized Polly wasn't really listening to what he was saying. Her attention was elsewhere; on the football match playing on the big screen television, or maybe on the people gathered in front of it. As if sensing his scrutiny, she returned her gaze to him and said, "I'm sorry, Cale. It's just that I thought we could, you know, talk about something else."

"Something else?"

She sighed. "We don't often get the chance to go out for a night. We've both been under a lot of strain lately, I thought it would do us good to be alone together."

Caleb frowned, frustrated at what he perceived as a lack of concern. "You don't think we owe it to Jack to —»

"Please don't play the guilt thing on me," she snapped. "Of course I'm concerned, but Jesus Christ, Cale, we just have to be patient."

"I think we should take him to see a specialist."

"If they continue, yes, maybe we should take him back to Dr Morgan and get him to refer Jack to someone. But just for tonight, can't we talk about something else?"

It was a reasonable request, he knew. Jack's problem had taken its toll on them both. And yet, he was wary of looking away. "All right," he said. "Let me just say something, then we'll talk about whatever you want."

Polly's lips tightened and she leaned back in her seat, away from him.

"The common thing is a stranger," Caleb said. "Think about what that means. For a kid it signifies danger, right? What are kids told all the time? Be wary of strangers, and this is drummed into their unconscious." He spoke quickly, trying to flesh out his still sketchy interpretation, how Jack's fear of strangers was manifesting itself in his dreams as someone coming to kidnap him.

Stories were in the papers and on the TV about kids being abducted and murdered. That young girl found strangled in the woods outside Cardiff a couple of months ago, and more recently, the teenage boy whose naked body was found beaten to death on the sands along Swansea foreshore. Kids weren't impervious to things like that, he said. They made connections, even if they weren't conscious of doing so. In bad dreams, the most irrational things became real.

Polly finished her bottle of Corona. She tried to sound reasonable but Caleb could hear the frustration in her voice. "It's not that what you're saying isn't plausible, Cale. Maybe it is, I don't know. I'll read up on it. But I think you're becoming obsessed with this. What chance has Jack got of forgetting the bloody dreams if you keep on about them?"

"Ignoring it isn't going to make it stop."

"It sounds to me like you don't want them to."

"Shit, Polly, what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

She got up from her seat. "I want to go," she said. "I can't talk about this anymore."

Caleb grabbed her arm and said, "This is Jack we're talking about."

She pulled her arm free. "No it isn't. It's you." She hurried from the bar.

He sat there for a few moments, immobilized by panic and fear. How could she not sense the threat to their son? Slowly, his panic subsided and he followed her out onto the street. He saw her crossing the main road to the car park. A mild rain was falling and the lights of Mumbles flickered on the dark bay like fragile memories. Caleb felt alone as he walked after her, distanced from everything he held dear. How does a man get back what he's lost, he wondered, puzzled at the question. He wasn't even sure what he had lost. Some memory, or maybe some part of his self-belief.

Anna, the babysitter, was watching The O.C. when they got home. Jack was fine, she said. Not a peep since she'd put him to bed at nine. Polly asked Caleb to check on him while she ran Anna home.

Alone, Caleb headed upstairs. A wave of relief swept through him when he saw Jack was sleeping soundly. The muscles in his legs quivered, and fearing he would collapse, he went and sat on the edge of his son's bed.

Wan light edged into the room through the open door, falling on Jack's slippers and a couple of Play Station games at the foot of the bed. A Manchester United poster was on the wall over Jack's head, and other posters around the room depicted Bart Simpson and scenes from the Harry Potter movies. Caleb felt a surge of tenderness. The sight of The Wind in the Willows on the night table filled him with sadness and a deep sense of regret.

I'm sorry, Jack, he thought, as he stood up to leave. The boy stirred and rolled onto his back. Caleb's breath caught when he saw Jack's eyelids were flickering crazily. His lips moved as if he were trying to speak, but no words came out, only the muted sibilance of dreams. "Jack," Caleb said, but the sound was less than a whisper.

He turned, saw the small armchair beneath the dormer window. He pulled it a little closer to the bed and sat in it. Jack continued to make soft, indecipherable noises on the bed, one hand above the sheet, the fist clenching and unclenching.

Caleb wondered what his son was seeing. He tried to will himself inside Jack's head, to witness the slow unfurling terror. "Stay with it, Jack," he said to himself. "Be strong."

Jack began to toss and turn on the bed, his legs kicking sporadically beneath the sheets. His voice grew louder, but Caleb was still unable to recognize the sounds as words.

His movements became more agitated, more violent. Caleb leaned forward in the chair, peering intently at his son. He anticipated some kind of revelation, as long as he didn't weaken and let his attention falter. That was the mistake he had been making, he realized, as Jack started to scream. Waking the boy too soon. Have to let him go further into it, see what he needed to see. Maybe then it would end. Recalling it in the daylight hours, his reason would overcome the nebulous fear.

Jack was writhing now, his lips pulled back in a rictus grin as scream after scream tore from his throat. As awful as it was, Caleb felt he had to let it go on, for Jack's sake, he told himself, his vision blurring through tears.

The only problem was Polly, standing in the doorway, screaming at him to make it stop. He tried to explain what was happening, but it was no good. She ran to the bed, gathered Jack up into her arms, and carried him from the room. Caleb sat there, appalled at what he had done. At what he had failed to do. The terror wasn't Jack's alone, he felt. It was his nightmare too.

Throughout the day Caleb struggled with his fears, barely able to keep his mind focused on his students. Their demands oppressed him, their need for reassurance wore him down. He grew more irritable and short-tempered, so that for the final session of the day, forewarned by the morning's students, fewer than half the afternoon group turned up. Afterwards, he sat alone for an hour in his office, trying to make sense of what was happening to him.

The persistence of Jack's nightmare scared him and his need to make sense of it had become an obsession. He had come to feel connected to it in some way, to believe that the key to deciphering it lay somewhere in his own past.

All day he'd dredged his subterranean memories but had come up empty. As he left the building after 6:00pm, he wondered if in fact he was afraid to probe too deeply. Maybe there was something there he wasn't ready to deal with, some secret he didn't want to discover about himself.

He stopped in the Joiner's Arms on the way home, but found neither relief nor pleasure in the two pints of Three Cliffs Gold he drank, nor in the company of the few regulars who acknowledged his presence but who, faced with his patent desire for isolation, left him to his fretful ponderings.

Jack was watching TV in the living room when Caleb got home. He glanced in at his son then walked by the door and on through to the kitchen. Polly was reading a book at the kitchen table, sipping a glass of red wine. She looked up as he came in and managed an uneven smile. "You okay?" she said.

Caleb shrugged, took a glass from the wall unit and poured himself some wine. "How is he?"

"Okay, I think. Keeps asking about you."

"What's that?" he asked, meaning the book.

She showed him the cover. It was called Children's Minds. "Picked it up in town today. Thought it might help us figure out what's going on with Jack."

"And does it?"

"It helps me."

"I'm going to sit with him tonight," Caleb said. "Watch him. I'll try to wake him before it takes hold."

Polly frowned. "You really think that will help him?"

"As much as that book."

She got up from the table and took his hand. "Caleb, can you be honest with me?"

"I thought I was."

"About Jack, I mean. About why he's so afraid for you."

"Jack's not afraid of me," Caleb said, agitated.

"That's not what I said," Polly said, confused. "Jack's afraid for you — not of you. Why? Have you told him something? Something you're not telling me?"

Her questions shook him, filled him with doubt. "Don't — don't be stupid."

"I'm not," Polly said, her voice rising. "I'm scared for our son and I'm worried about you. You're not yourself, Cale. Something's eating you up."

"Please, Polly," Caleb said, trying to hold himself together. "Don't presume you know what's going on in my head. Can you do that? Is it asking too much?" He didn't wait for an answer but hurried upstairs where he stripped off his clothes and took a long, almost scalding shower, as if to burn away the stain of some long forgotten sin.

Later, Caleb apologised to Polly and told her he'd look at the book she'd bought. Maybe it would help him understand what Jack was going through. After dinner, he went to his son's room. Jack was already tucked up in bed, and despite the broad smile that crossed his face, Caleb could see none of his usual vitality and zest for life.

"Mum said you're going to stay."

He stood by the edge of the bed, feeling a sudden, intense pang of guilt. "That's right," he said. "Keep the bad dreams away."

"Are you going to read to me?"

Caleb saw The Wind in the Willows on the night table. He shook his head. "Not tonight."

"D'you read it when you were a boy?"

"Yes, though I'd forgotten most of it until I started reading it to you."

"D'you forget your dreams too, Dad?"

Caleb stared at his son, not sure how to respond. He wanted to say the right thing, but he no longer knew what that was. "Most of them."

"Did you dream about —»

"Ssshhh, Jack. Go to sleep."

Jack was silent a moment, his face troubled. Then, as if having plucked up the courage, he said, "Will I die if I dream at thirteen o'clock?"

Caleb leaned over the bed and took hold of Jack's hand. "No," he said, squeezing. "There's no such time as thirteen o'clock."

Jack nodded but seemed unconvinced. He reached up and kissed his father's cheek. "I'm okay, Dad, really," he said, but Caleb saw a wariness in his eyes.

"I hope so, son," he said, letting Jack's hand fall. He moved to the window and sat in the armchair, watching as Jack turned on his side to face him. He'd brought Polly's book upstairs, but after flicking through the first few pages, he let it fall to the floor and focused his attention on his son.

He woke that night with the sound of screams still echoing in his head. Violent tremors shook his body as he crouched in the shadows, clenching his teeth to still their relentless chatter.

A sickly, cloying dread hung in the air, and his flesh recoiled from its touch. Through the fog of dreams that swirled all round his semiconscious mind, he recognized Polly's voice, splintered to a thin, fragile whisper "Caleb," she was saying, "what happened to you? Where have you been?"

The stench of foam was in his nostrils, the taste of salt on his lips. "Poh-Polly?" he groaned.

"Jesus Cale." Her arms were around him and he felt the heat from her body seep into his cold, damp flesh. "It's okay, you had a nightmare."

He saw the darkness outside the kitchen window. He was crouched on the opposite side of the room, the slate tiles wet beneath him, and the distant pounding of surf reverberating in his head. Cyril cowered behind Polly, as if wary of him. "How did I get here?" he asked.

Polly shook her head, her face drained of colour in the pale light. "Something woke me and you weren't there. I was going to Jack's room when I heard you cry out down here."

"This can't happen, Polly," he said. "I–I can't let it happen to him."

"What can't happen, Cale?" Her grey eyes searched his face. He felt cut off from her, drifting beyond her zone of familiarity." What are you talking about?" she said.

He wondered at her inability to comprehend the vague shapes and shadows that flowed around him. Nothing he saw reassured him, not even her face. Her lips were moving but the words were drowned by the sound of the blood rushing through his brain. Someone had been outside, watching the house. Was he still there, waiting? For Jack?

"Listen to me," he said, trying to warn her, but there was something else too, something he needed to know. The shadows beyond Polly were melting into the floor.

"It's all right, Cale. It's over."

She didn't get it. The dream was there, but all scrambled in his mind. He'd seen this before. Years ago, he thought, when he was a child. The same nightmare Jack was having. A pitiful cry came from elsewhere else in the house.

"Oh please no," Polly whispered, rising to her feet.

Instinctively, he grabbed her hand and said, "What time is it?"

"It's Jack," she said, pulling away from him, heading towards the stairs.

He realized what it was she'd heard. Jack was screaming upstairs. He struggled to get up from the floor. Heart pounding ferociously, he forced himself to look at his watch. It was twelve forty-five. Bad memories stirred inside him.

Caleb looked out through the crack in the curtains, at the three-quarter moon hanging over Three Cliffs Bay and the mist rising silently up over the fields towards Penmaen.

He leaned back in the armchair. Jack was sleeping. Polly had phoned the doctor again that morning, asked him to refer Jack to a child psychologist. Caleb knew it would do no good but he hadn't stopped her. He'd wanted to tell her that only he could help their son, but fear and a sense of his own weakness, had prevented him from articulating this certainty.

What mattered was the hour in which Jack's nightmare came. The same hour in which it had come to him when he was a boy. The thirteenth hour. How many times had it haunted his sleep thirty odd years ago? That feeling of dread. A sense of being apart from the world, an isolation that had filled him with absolute dread. Lying in bed at night clinging to consciousness, fighting to keep the terror of sleep at bay. At least until the hour was past and even then not letting himself fall all the way, anchoring one strand of thought to the shore of reason.

It had withered inside him, he supposed. Withered but not died. He'd buried it deep down in the darkest recesses of his brain where it had lain in wait all these years until it had sensed the nearness of an innocent mind. The idea of it appalled Caleb. Every fibre of his reason screamed against the possibility. Yet he could no longer deny that his own childhood nightmare had transmigrated into the fertile ground of Jack's unconscious.

All day Caleb had thought about the nightmare, trying to collate his own hesitant memories against Jack's fragmented rememberings of the dream. They had both sensed a presence outside, watching the house. Jack had heard the stranger calling out, but he said it sounded a long way away. Sometimes he was inside the house, in the hall or on the stairs. Jack had never seen the nightmare through to the end, and if Caleb had ever done so, he'd forgotten what he'd seen there.

In the dim light, Caleb glanced at his watch. Eleven thirty. Knowing that Jack would soon begin to dream, he prepared to abandon himself to the lure of sleep. Even as it tugged at his mind, he felt the stirring of a residual fear, urging him to resist.

His eyes flickered open for a moment but darkness breathed over them, drawing them down. The strands of reason stretched one by one and snapped as he hovered a while on the edge of consciousness, before drifting across the border into the deep of dreams.

Nothing moved in the room. The chill cloak of darkness made everything one and the same. Caleb held himself still, waiting. His hands hurt from gripping the arms of the chair and every nerve in his body strained for release.

He listened, trying to shut out the pounding of his heart and the crackling white noise of nameless fears. Until, above the sound of his own terrible thoughts, he heard again a muffled footstep on the stairs. Silence again for a moment, followed by more footsteps, coming closer. He caught his breath as they stopped right outside the door. Where was Cyril, he wondered. Why wasn't he barking?

His flesh crawled as he waited for the sound of the door handle turning. Instead, the footsteps began to recede. He exhaled slowly, peering into the darkness where he imagined the door should be. He turned on the lamp. Dim light pushed feebly at the shadows, barely strong enough to reveal the open door, the empty bed.

He choked back a cry and rushed out onto the landing. There was still time, he told himself. His breath misted in the chill, salty air. There were damp footprints on the stairs. Following them down, he felt the fear clawing at his back, wrapping him in its clammy embrace.

The wet prints marched along the hall through the kitchen, to the open back door. A shroud of mist hung over the garden. Caleb hesitated, his arms braced against the doorframe. His son was out there. "Jack," he whispered, despairingly. "Please Jack, come home."

Hearing the dog bark out there, he forced himself to move, out across the crisp grass that crunched underfoot. He went through the gate at the bottom of the garden, then turned and saw the house rising up out of the moon-yellowed mist.

He felt a terrible loneliness and could barely keep himself from rushing back towards it. But he caught the sound of a soft voice calling to him.

He hauled himself up over the ditch and ran on through the fields that sloped down into tangled woodland. He could no longer hear Cyril as he beat his way through trees and undergrowth, slipping and sliding on the soft earth, until finally he stumbled out onto the muddy banks of Pennard Pwll.

He followed the stream as it meandered out of the valley into the bay. Above the rustling of the water, he could hear his son calling to him.

Impatient, he stepped into the stream, wading across the gushing, knee-high water. He stumbled over a rock, fell and picked himself up again. "Jack!" he cried, as he struggled up on to a sandbank.

Some distance ahead and to his left he saw the three witch-hat peaks that gave the bay its name clawing the night sky through the mist. Having got his bearings, Caleb raced across the sand towards the sea, energized by the blood pumping through his veins.

The jaundiced mist billowed around him as he splashed into the wavelets lapping the shore.

He waded out deeper, ignoring the current that tugged insistently at his legs. He beat at the mist with his arms, trying to open up a space through which he might spy his son.

The sea was perishing, forcing him to snatch shallow, ragged breaths. One moment it was swirling around his waist, the next it was surging up to his chest. The mist seemed to be thinning out and he caught glimpses of the moon up over Cefn Bryn. A wave swamped him, leaving him treading water. The current began to drag him away from the shore.

"Jack, please," he called frantically, as he tried to keep his head above the surface.

Another wave washed over him and when he came up he could see clearly out into the bay. The sea sank its bitter teeth into his flesh. He was swimming hard now, just to stay afloat. He was growing weaker but still he searched for his son, chopping through the moon-silvered water, all the time following the sound of a voice, his own voice, but distant and younger, calling to him from out of a long-forgotten nightmare.

More water poured into his mouth as he went under again, still fighting. He rose in time to hear a distant church bell strike the hour. At one, there was still hope. At two, it began to fade. He heard the thirteenth strike as a muted sound beneath the surface, a strange echo of the pressure of the sea filling his lungs.

It seems like dawn, or maybe dusk. He has difficulty now, telling the time of day. It seems to be always twilight. But still he waits for them, anticipating the moment, imagining a different outcome this time.

But when they appear in the garden, the desperate longing he feels is as overwhelming as it always was. Jack looks bigger, more filled out. He must be ten, at least. Colour reddens Polly's cheeks again, and the small lines around her eyes signify acceptance more than sorrow. He wonders what that means.

He places a hand on the garden wall and as he does so, the house recedes a little, as if wary of him. He calls out their names and for one second, Jack looks up and stares directly at him. "Jack," Caleb cries out again, waving to him. "I'm here." For another moment, Jack continues to look his way, shielding his eyes from the sun. But then he turns and as Caleb looks down in despair, he sees no shadow on the garden wall, only sunlight falling right through the place where he stands.