The Roar by Clayton Emma Read Free Book Online Page B

and wasn’t shocked by anything.
    ‘I’ve been having nightmares again,’ he said suddenly.
    ‘Oh yes,’ she replied, breathing heavily as she walked back to the sofa with the biscuits. ‘Anything good?’
    ‘Not good exactly,’ Mika replied, smiling – he liked her sense of humour.
    Helen settled herself comfortably on the sofa as if she was about to watch a movie and held out the biscuits. They were digestives, the same packet she’d got out the week before and he knew they were stale and probably went out of date a year ago but he took one anyway.
    ‘Thanks,’ he said, trying to eat it without grimacing.
    ‘Well, are you going to tell me about your nightmares or was that just a trailer?’ she asked.
    ‘If you want me to.’
    ‘Fire away,’ she said enthusiastically, ‘I like a good horror story.’
    He finished his biscuit and she offered him another, he took it, but held it in his lap.
    ‘Are the nightmares all the same, or different?’ she asked.
    ‘The same,’ he said.
    ‘How do they start?’
    Mika pictured the beginning of his nightmare and wasn’t sure whether he wanted to tell her. He could feel the sickening dread that was still with him the next morning – the dark cloud in his peripheral vision that accompanied him while he walked to school.
    ‘Have you changed your mind about telling me?’ Helen said, watching him fiddle with his biscuit. ‘It doesn’t matter. We could talk about something else if you want, or play poker.’
    ‘No, I want to tell you,’ he decided, turning to her. ‘It’s just horrible, that’s all.’
    ‘Come on, I’m intrigued.’
    ‘OK,’ said Mika. He took a deep breath. ‘It starts with me lying on a bed and it’s like the time when I went to hospitalbecause I was choking. I wake up and there’s a green curtain around me and I realize they’ve taken my clothes off and that I’m wearing one of those long white gowns that doesn’t cover your bum.’
    ‘Oh, I hate those,’ Helen said. ‘Most undignified – but appropriate wear for a nightmare. Sorry, this is good, carry on.’
    ‘The curtain around me starts to move as if someone is about to open it, but not just in one place, all around me, the curtain’s sort of shuddering and I can see the shapes of people pressing against it. Then all of a sudden it’s gone, as if I’m in a theatre and the curtain’s been lifted, and I find myself surrounded by these horrible people, crowding round the bed, pushing against each other and moving their heads from side to side so they can all see me.’
    Helen nodded. ‘What don’t you like about them?’ she asked.
    ‘Their heads,’ Mika replied, beginning to feel anxious. ‘It’s going to sound stupid.’
    ‘Try me.’
    ‘Well, instead of normal heads they have old television sets, the type that look like square boxes with a glass screen on the front, really big and heavy. They look too heavy for their shoulders.’
    ‘I had one of those when I was kid,’ Helen said. ‘It was my bedroom telly. The picture was dreadful.’
    ‘Chrise, you must be really old,’ Mika said, then immediately regretted it. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that.’
    She laughed. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I am really old. So, have these people got faces?’
    ‘Yes,’ Mika replied. ‘They’re on the television screens. They’re gruesome. They scare me. They look like skeletons with eyes, their skin stretched and kind of papery and dry with hardly any hair like Egyptian mummies with their bandages taken off. They start talking, discussing how they want to eat me, as if I can’t hear them, and they’re arguing because some of them want roast beef and some of them want enchiladas. And at the end of the bed isthe Knife Sharpener, he doesn’t speak at all, he just scrapes his long knife on a stone and stares at me – and I’m really scared because I’m lying there, trying to move, but I can’t. I’m paralysed. And suddenly it’s dark around the bed and all