Daniel's Dream Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Also by Peter Michael Rosenberg

  Acclaim for Peter Michael Rosenberg

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About the Author

  DANIEL’S DREAM

  by

  Peter Michael Rosenberg

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  DANIEL’S DREAM

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  Copyright © 2011 Peter Michael Rosenberg. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Cover designed by Graphicz X Designs http://graphiczxdesigns.zenfolio.com

  Published by: Mojito Press http://www.mojitopress.com

  Visit the author website: http://www.petermichaelrosenberg.com

  Version: 2012.01.15

  Also by Peter Michael Rosenberg

  Novels:

  Kissing Through a Pane of Glass

  Touched by a God or Something

  Because it Makes my Heart Beat Faster

  Daniel’s Dream

  Implicated

  Short Stories:

  The Fig Tree - a fable

  Writing as Tyler Montreux

  Novels:

  The Uncertainty Principle

  Acclaim for Peter Michael Rosenberg

  "An accomplished storyteller" – THE TIMES

  Kissing Through a Pane of Glass

  "A deep and insightful portrayal of tortured love... powerful and disturbing" - LITERARY REVIEW

  "A disturbing cautionary tale about the danger of demanding your heart's desire... a compelling guide to romantic pain and responsibility" – SHE

  "Very readable... Rosenberg writes about sex with a beguiling honesty" – TIME OUT

  "The story is a moving one, skilfully told" – FINANCIAL TIMES

  "A touching story" – SPECTATOR

  "An impressive debut" – NEW WOMAN

  "A wonderfully written and at times quite chilling story of obsessive love... I am convinced we have a major new novelist breaking through here" – TAMWORTH HERALD

  Touched by a God or Something

  "Enjoyable and tautly paced... Mr Rosenberg has proved that his third novel will have an eager audience" - SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

  "This is a great novel, full of intrigue, invention and superb characterisation – Peter Michael Rosenberg is a superb modern novelist who writes with skill, style and great imagination. Roll on the third novel!" – TAMWORTH HERALD

  "After finding this book in a library the description grabbed me enough to give it a try. I'm glad I did. It's a solid story neatly written and with exactly the kind of ending I like in a book - anything but happily ever after. It confidently touches on the subject of gender roles and leaves you thinking long after reading it. I went on to read most of Peter Michael Rosenbergs books and found them enjoyable too. None stayed with me as much as this one. It's a shame that Rosenberg's books aren't as popular as they deserve to be." – Amazon 5 star review

  Because It Makes My Heart Beat Faster

  "A dark tale which touches on the latent violence lurking beneath the most civilized of exteriors... compelling" - THE TIMES

  Daniel's Dream

  "I read 'Daniel's Dream' while on holiday some years ago and it's a terrific read. Rosenberg's writing really shines in the vivid dream sequences where the main character, suffering from the effects of a serious accident, finds another existence in a remote Greek village. You can almost smell the Greek food and feel the warmth of the sun as you're reading it. I've read a couple of other Peter Michael Rosenberg books ('Touched By A God Or Something' & 'Because It Makes My Heart Beat Faster') and he seems to have the ability to create stories and characters that stay with you long after you've read the last page. For a well written and ultimately moving story `Daniel's Dream' comes highly recommended. – Amazon 5 star review

  This book is dedicated to the memory of Vicky Allen (1958-80)

  Chapter 1

  On the morning of the sixth of May, exactly six months after the accident, Daniel awoke from a dream unlike any he had had before. Ever since his premature return from India, trussed up like a chicken with his right arm in a sling and his neck in a brace, sleep - or more particularly, the opportunity to sleep comfortably - had eluded him. For the first two months, the sheer physical discomfort of his injuries had tormented him, and snatching anything more than a quarter of an hour of restful sleep had been impossible. This made him testy and irritable, but he had resigned himself to the fact that, until his collar-bone had mended, his bruises had healed and the osteopathic manipulation that he urnderwent every week had taken effect, he had no choice but to grin and bear it. That he did so with ill grace was not something that could be mentioned without rousing Daniel’s wrath.

  Many of those around him during the weeks after the accident believed that, considering he had almost lost his life, a little insomnia was a small price to pay. However, if anyone so much as hinted at this, Daniel swiftly disabused them of the notion.

  But then none of them, except his wife, Lisanne, knew about the nightmares. Even when the sling had long been abandoned, his nights were still plagued with misery. And although the osteopath no longer took his head in an arm-lock and jerked it until his neck made a sound like a walnut being cracked, his recurrent, tormented visions ensured that, for half a year, he had not yet woken from a decent night’s rest. This recurring dream - a classic, hallucinatory roller- coaster ride - never differed, in either content or intensity, and was both numbing and exhausting in its regularity.

  In the dream, Daniel was alone in his bedroom, caught up in a continuous cycle of somersaults, rolling over and over round his bedroom floor, slamming periodically into the walls and furniture, the forward, circular momentum propelling him indefinitely, the room twisting and turning; a dizzy, sickening motion that never ceased. No sooner had he slammed into one wall with an urgent, rib-cracking thud, than he was off again, unknown forces bending him double and sending him hurtling head over heels, in
to another wall, a door or a wardrobe.

  Over and over.

  Only when morning broke was Daniel released from this agony. For six months he had woken, every morning without fail, covered in a cold, clammy sweat, his body trembling, his head spinning. The night-time exertions left him parched, his throat dry and harsh like cracked, sunbeaten leather. Desperate for rehydration, he would reach across to the bedside table for the glass of water - a constant fixture these days - and drain its contents in one.

  And when he wiped the perspiration from his forehead, neck and chest, he invariably used the same towel to dry his eyes and tear-moistened cheeks.

  No matter what the hour, there would be no more sleep for Darniel, and he had become used to lying awake in bed, quietly, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the sun - and the rest of the world - to rise.

  But not on the morning of the sixth of May. On that morning, Daniel awoke from his dream with a clear mind and a dry, cool forehead. He was neither dizzy nor anxious, nor did his throat feel as if it had had to contend with a sandstorm during the night. Even his neck, which was usually sore - the muscles tense and knotted like an intricate piece of macramé - felt relaxed, as if he had just had a deep massage, and there was an easy mobility when, from force of habit, he reached for the glass of water.

  He sat upright in bed, glass in hand, but did not drink. He felt curiously calm and refreshed. It was a little after dawn and a cool, early light filtered through the gaps in the curtains, the thin, sparse white shafts fingering the walls, the carpet and the furniture with an innocent caress.

  He gazed round the bedroom as if seeing it clearly for the first time in ages. Even though nothing had changed - the wardrobes had not moved, the digital alarm clock still blinked myopically on the bedside table, and his clothes still tumbled chaotically from the chair - there was something different about the room, a sense that it had changed in some intrinsic, organic manner which he could not identify.

  And then it became clear, for just a moment. Not a clear image or vision, just a sense that there was, of all things, a tree, in the room - an old, gnarled olive tree, its branches curled and twisted - growing straight out of the carpet at the foot of the bed.

  Daniel peered into the space ahead. Whatever he had seen or sensed, it was no longer there. A trick of the light? Or something left over from his dream, perhaps, lingering like the faint aroma of freshly ground coffee, persisting in the air long after the beans have been ground.

  Daniel breathed in deeply, and savoured the smells of the bedroom as if they were something new and exotic rather than the usual amalgam of stale air, the remnants of deodorant and sweaty socks, He was sure that, among the familiar smells he could detect a hint of mimosa and pine. Had Lisanne been using an air-freshener? It didn’t seem likely. He had, much to her relief, stopped smoking in the bedroom some months ago, so there would have been no need to perfume the room artificially.

  He sniffed once or twice; it was fainter now, but still there, the merest hint of fragrance, of othemess; it was strangely intoxicating. Even more potent than the curious vision and strange smell were the unusual sounds that echoed inside his head, like the last remnants of a dream.

  None of the usual noises of late-twentieth-century London intruded into the bedroom. There was no traffic, no roar of motorcycles revving up, no coughing, spluttering diesel engines, no cries of children or screams of drunks. Even his home, a late-Victorian terraced house that usually creaked and crackled with a comforting familiarity, was oddly silent, and the only sounds he could hear were the exotic timbres and fading harmonics of the final notes of a haunting melody, vaguely oriental, played on what could only be a bouzouki.

  Since the nightmares had become a regular part of his life, Daniel had taken to keeping a record of his impressions and feelings in the vague, and thus far vain, hope that they might assist him in his enforced convalescence. It was not a diary - Daniel did not possess the necessary discipline to keep a diary on a regular basis - but its contents were none the less revealing.

  It had been Dr Fischer’s idea, and although Daniel was at first reluctant to use it, over the months he had found a certain, if remote, solace in being able to commit to paper some of the dread of his night-time excursions into the dark.

  Daniel grabbed the cheap, faint-lined, spiral-bound notebook and pen from the bedside table and, turning to a fresh page, scribbled down a few words which, he felt, most accurately represented his visual impressions, now fading swiftly: hat, sunny, blue, bouzouki, olive tree? He drew a line across the paper and underneath wrote a few remarks: sound of ocean, smell of pine needles, not a soul to be seen. He did not know what any of it meant, but as he had developed the habit of writing even his most obscure thoughts in the notebook, it seemed the right thing to do.

  Besides, it made a refreshing change from the macabre and depressing thoughts and intentions that were usually committed to paper at that hour of the day.

  What was the matter with him? he wondered. What exactly had he been dreaming about? Perhaps it had something to do with the sleeping tablets? For the first time in weeks he had not taken the barbiturates the doctor had prescribed. He had become fed up with their inefficacy and the sickening side effects that ensured, come what may, sleep or no sleep, he would greet the day with an abominable hangover, and now, having cut them out for just one night, instead of waking depressed and anxious, he felt relaxed and clear-headed.

  Without further thought, Daniel grabbed the bottle of barbiturates off the bedside table and threw it into the waste bin beneath the window, where it landed on the heap of used paper tissues and irredeemably torn tights with a dull thud.

  Wide awake now, albeit still a little baffled by the remnants of his dream, Daniel decided to get up. lt was a small, simple decision, but even so it was out of keeping with his recent behaviour, and he knew it. It was weeks since he had bothered to get out of bed before Lisanne. Even on the rare occasions when he woke to find her beside him, he usually turned over and buried his head in the pillow, preferring to fake sleep and stay in bed rather than rise to a house that had yet to show signs of life.

  This morning, though, without disturbing Lisanne, he slipped out from between the sheets and put on the white towelling robe that, like a security blanket, was never far from hand. Of late he had been living in loose, casual clothing, sometimes not even progressing beyond the bathrobe. Without work his days had become unstructured and meaningless; he had sometimes not bothered to dress properly or even shave. After all, what was the point of making an effort to look presentable when he wasn’t going to leave the house?

  He knew that this slovenliness upset Lisanne, but he could do nothing about it. Besides, in one way or another, everything he did these days upset Lisanne, so what difference would one extra annoyance make?

  Downstairs in the kitchen Daniel filled the kettle, fished a tea-bag out of the box, located a clean mug, tossed the tea-bag in the air and caught it successfully in the mug. Then he smiled. It was a long time since he had caught himself acting so capriciously; he rather wished that Lisanne had seen him. He fetched a pint of milk from the refrigerator and set it down carefully beside the mug, then waited patiently for the water to boil.

  Once again he became strangely aware of a change in his overall mood, as if a terrible curse had been lifted from him during the night and no one had told him about it. There could no longer be any doubt. It wasn’t just the sleeping tablets.

  Something had happened, something important.

  He reached across to the radio and switched it on. It was tuned in to a local radio station that played a non-stop selection of hits from the sixties and seventies, songs that Daniel had grown up with, songs whose words and tunes were so familiar that he barely noticed what was being played.

  It was only as he was pouring the boiling water on to the tea-bag that he realised with a start he had stopped singing Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” and, for several bars, had been crooning along with the Everly
Brothers’ “All I Have to Do is Dream”.

  Of course, thought Daniel. It wasn’t simply a case of having dreamt something new. In fact, the contents of the new dream might even be irrelevant. What was different was that he hadn’t had the nightmare; he hadn’t spent a long, lonely night turning endless somersaults and crashing into brick walls. In its place had been... what? What exactly had he dreamt?

  He tried to concentrate but realised within moments that the process of remembering the contents of a dream had nothing to do with active thinking or hard concentration, In fact, both were probably self-defeating. Dreams didn’t work like that. Daniel was not an expert, but he knew it required more abstract methods to bring dreams back from wherever it was they resided once you had woken up.