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  He felt it first. His skin prickled, a shiver running down his spine at the sudden coldness that enveloped his body. He could see something, in the corner of his eye, just out of sight. It was as though the shadows of the room had come alive, and taunted him for his ignorance. He spun around, dreading what he would find. But the room was empty. He did a double-take, not trusting either his sight or his head. He was messed up, seriously messed up. Maybe he needed a counsellor. He blinked again, as if expecting his hallucination to return. It did not.

  That was it. He couldn’t just ignore it any longer. He didn’t want to voluntarily appear weak in front of others, but he was scared dammit and he had a right to be. Shakily, he threw on an old sweater and stumbled out of the room as quickly as he could without waking the whole household. Mother needed her beauty sleep after all, otherwise she would be in an even worse mood than usual. So instead, he chose to knock on the door two rooms down from his. He had to wait for a long time in the darkened landing, casting cautious glances about him every few seconds, but after the sixth knock the door creaked open with a weary sigh that seemed in perfect harmony with the person behind it.

  “What the hell do you want?” came the ever-so-polite snarl. The door opened a little further and in its place stood the tall, bent figure of his brother. He had a pale complexion and sharp features; it was a face that exuded both intelligence and pride. Two sunken, pale blue eyes encircled by dark bruises stood out in the half light and he ran a hand through his tousled hair in annoyance.

  “Can I come in?” Sean asked.

  “It’s four in the morning,” the other pointed out, scowling.

  “You never sleep anyway, Hayden. Now let me through the damn door.”

  Hayden seemed to sense the urgency in his voice and did so. Sean slumped onto the lumpy bed where Hayden’s iPod was still playing. He was an insomniac, after all. He didn’t sleep – at least not for more than four hours a night – and music made a good distraction.

  “So then,” his brother started once they were settled. “What brings you here at this hour?”

  Sean fidgeted, suddenly nervous under the scrutinising gaze. “Do you know anything about…schizophrenia?”

  The older boy raised an eyebrow. “What makes you ask that?”

  “I asked first.”

  “Well what do you want to know? It’s a mental disorder that affects your perception of reality. It makes you hallucinate: see and hear things that aren’t there.”

  “Is that it?”

  “There are hundreds of odd little facts I could tell you about it, but I doubt you want to stay here for the rest of the night.” Hayden paused. “Anyway, what’s happened? Explain yourself.”

  Sean sighed. He knew he would have to explain eventually, but the idea was unappealing. Still, he had to do this. Hayden had taken an A level in psychology. If anyone could help, it was him. “The truth is, I think I’m sick.” He watched with interest the various emotions that flickered through his brother’s normally impassive eyes. They were hard to discern in the limited light, but he caught the three most prominent ones: disbelief, confusion and concern. A tense silence drowned the room. Sean hated silence. He had too many connections with it already, too many encounters with silences just like these. They never ended well. “So?” he prompted finally, unable to bear it any longer.

  “Well, little brother, we’ve always known you were sick. Why bring it up now?”

  Sean had to force back a fierce glare at the reference to…that, due to more pressing matters. “I’ve been having dreams,” he admitted.

  “Like most other human beings, apparently.”

  “Just shut up and let me explain first, would you? I’ve been having the same dream for months now. It’s always about a door, and there’s someone knocking on it. But whenever I manage to open it all I see is this hazy figure before I wake up.”

  There was a small frown on Hayden’s face and his brow was creased with thoughts that Sean would never be able to fathom. They were so alike and yet so far apart, he mused. Their rooms were almost identically messy. They were both creative. But while Sean preferred art, Hayden’s passion was poetry. And this…this was the perfect gothic setting for a writer.

  “It’s probably nothing.” After all of that thought, Hayden’s dismissive reply made Sean scowl.

  “You think I would have come knocking on your door at four in the morning if it was ‘just nothing’?” he growled, indignant. “It’s not ‘nothing’ it’s…it’s…” he rubbed at his weary eyes as the fatigue began to wear on his frayed nerves.

  “What, then? What is it?”

  “It’s scaring me, Hayden.”

  It was a long while before the other boy spoke again. There was a more urgent, concerned expression on his face now and Sean was glad that the gravity of the situation had finally gotten through to him. “You say you’ve had the exact same dream, right?” Sean nodded. “And when did they start?”

  “A few months ago, but they’ve been getting a lot worse in the past few days.”

  “Maybe they’re trying to tell you something,” he suggested. “In Victorian times there was an Austrian psychologist, Freud, who studied the interpretation of dreams. He wrote a book all about it. He claimed that our unconscious selves and therefore our dreams are the secret desires and thoughts that we normally suppress due to the influence of society. In other words it’s still our minds, just uncensored.”

  “So,” Sean clarified. “According to you, my ‘unconscious self’ has a burning obsession with doors.”

  His brother let out a low chuckle. “In literature there is not a single door that is opened without a particular meaning behind it.”

  “And what does this have to do with me?”

  “Doors can mean lots of things. Opening doors can mean opening one’s mind to a new way of thinking, or a new lifestyle. Closing one can mean the opposite – shutting oneself away, or the end of a story.”

  “So then what about locked doors?”

  “They generally symbolise withheld information. But in your case, it sounds more like something trying to open your door, open the door into your mind. Something, or someone.”

  Sean paused for a moment, letting this new revelation sink in. He had no idea how his brother had come to this conclusion – open the door into his mind? There was no such thing. “That’s really creepy,” he muttered. “What do you mean, ‘open the door into my mind’?”

  “Exactly what it sounds like. It could be a memory, some form of your true primitive nature, anything really.”There was still a deadly serious expression on his face which Sean did not like. In the strange, prancing shadows cast by the flickers of moonlight it looked desolately grim.

  “But that’s just assumption,” Sean stated, more to convince himself. “Stop comparing my life to ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,’ okay? I don’t have a hidden ‘primitive nature’. I’m just Sean. No evil alter-egos.”

  “If you don’t want to believe me, then fine. You never know, it might be your memories coming back.”

  “It’s not that,” he shook his head. “It’s more than that. In fact, it’s not just the dreams. I keep getting this feeling that someone’s watching me, but there’s never anyone there. And, just now, I think I had a hallucination.”

  “Of what?”

  “There was something in my room, I know there was. But when I turned around, it was gone.”

  Hayden managed to hide his worry well, but Sean could still see it. When it came to the paranormal, psychology and the solar system his brother was undoubtedly a walking encyclopaedia. He had watched documentaries, read the accounts, even gone to some of the ‘haunted’ sights. He found the idea of something beyond the realm of reality to be fascinating, and had often talked in the past about wanting to one day witness a real haunting. Sean couldn’t help but wonder grimly if his brother would get his wish.

  “You don’t believe in the paranormal, do you?” Hayden suddenly asked.

  �
�Of course not,” Sean gave the expected reply, one he’d used many times. “Ghosts don’t exist. I’m just delusional, that’s all.”

  “You know that may not be true…”

  “I know what you want to believe, but I’m not like you. Ghosts don’t exist. I’m just delusional.”

  Hayden let out a frustrated sigh. “Fine. Whatever. It’s your life. Just don’t do anything stupid.”

  “I won’t.”

  Hayden leaned over to a drawer beside his bed and pulled out a piece of blank note paper and a pen. He handed them to Sean. “Here,” he said. “Whether this is real or not, I want you to draw that figure that you see in your dreams. Draw whatever you think was in your room. Anything really, just whatever comes to your mind.”

  Sean deliberated, before nodding in defeat and silently obliging. He took the paper and cradled the pen for a moment, staring out of the window into the night as a thin layer of cloud-like white mist veiled a new moon. And then he started to draw. His mind was blank as the pen scratched lightly and scribbled intricate cobwebbed lines across stark white paper. He could see that figure again, dominating his vision, stamped onto the forefront of his memory.

  When he was finished, he looked down to admire his work. The picture was a simple yet clear sketch, each stroke of the pen standing out clearly. It was a boy; short, dressed in a long trench coat with large buttons and a high collar that hid a lot of his face. Stray wisps of hair escaped to frame the chin while the rest was hidden, except for the eyes. Even through a simple sketch, the eyes were piercing and intense.

  Hayden took one look at the sketch. In that moment, Sean no longer needed the extra emphasis of the silvery moonlight to see that his face had gone from sickly pale to stark, deathly white.

  People compare life to lots of things. They compare it to blank canvases just waiting to be shaped and made into something beautiful, or merry-go-rounds and full circles. They say life ends exactly where it started. Except, no one knows where that is. So to fill that black, gaping hole they make up theories. ‘Somewhere up there’ they say, ‘that’s where we go when we die.’ Some people like to believe in heaven and hell because it’s something to cling onto; they like to believe in another world so much better than this one above the clouds. But that’s not reality – that’s myth.

  Sean Lane was not one of these people, unlike his brother who still had an odd fascination with stuff like that. Sean would never understand it, and he would never try. He was logical and down to earth in every possible way. He did not believe in heaven, hell or spirits. He believed in the evolution theory, he believed that the ‘big bang’ was simply a coincidence involving reactive gas and substances meeting and exploding to form the sun. Maybe he was disillusioned or cynical, or just reliant on facts to give his life some order. He could never remember where his opinions on these issues had formed. However he was quite accepting of other’s beliefs. It was probably years of living with Hayden that had made him so accommodating. He did not agree with him, but he would tolerate him.

  However by the next morning Sean found himself still wide awake and Hayden’s words refusing to leave him in peace. Did the idiot have to jump to conclusions so quickly? He almost regretted telling him now. He had not gotten any answers after all, just a few vague theories that were nothing more than his brother’s own personal fantasies. Sean knew well what his brother hoped for. He wanted to experience a real ‘haunting’ so that he could ‘study’ it and make some sort of scientific breakthrough and force his silly beliefs on others. Well, it wasn’t going to happen. It would never happen. The dreams, the hallucinations, the feeling of being watched – it was all just sleep deprivation induced madness that he was slowly but surely sinking into.

  With that troublesome thought, he forced himself out of bed. It was another half an hour before Sean was decently dressed and the large porcupine-like spike in his hair had been wrestled down by what he hoped was gel. Usually he would never have bothered, but he knew Ali would nag otherwise. He made his way into the kitchen and dug around for cereal. Mother was still asleep and probably would be until afternoon. Hayden still refused to leave his room. He had been like that ever since Sean had shown him the picture of the boy and had been promptly thrown out only to have the door slammed in his face.

  The bus ride to school was the epitome of ordinary, but for once he was glad for the normality. He met Ali, got on with her and found a pair of grubby, chewing-gum smothered seats near the back. “Are you okay? You don’t look so good,” was her first remark as a group of boisterous students clambered onto the bus and took the back row.

  “Just didn’t get much sleep,” he muttered.

  “Something bothering you?” She asked, as the bus lurched and began to rumble along the road. “You’ve been acting a bit off lately.”

  Sean shrugged. “It’s…it’s nothing. I just had a weird dream last night.”

  “What about?”

  “I’m not sure. But I know I’ve been having that same dream for a while now. I-” he stopped, unsure how to continue.

  “What?”

  “I get the feeling that it means something important,” he admitted uneasily.

  “Can’t you remember anything from it?” she questioned, concern clear in her eyes. “Maybe if you told me I could help.”

  Sean shook his head. “Look, Ali, thanks for the offer but I don’t think you can. It would be best if I had a little space for the time being.”

  She looked hurt, and when she spoke her voice was thick with it. “Are you saying you want me to stay away from you? You don’t have to make up some crazy story to get rid of me. Just say so.”

  “It’s not a story. I’m being serious.”

  She still did not look convinced. “Whatever. I’ll keep away from you, if that’s what you want.”

  “Ali,” Sean ran a hand through his hair, feeling extremely awkward and a little guilty. “Stop over-reacting, would you? You’re getting like Hayden, turning this into some huge deal. I wouldn’t lie to you, not about this.” He tried to put as much sincerity in it as he could. She deliberated for a moment with narrowed eyes. Then her expression softened.

  “So Hayden knows about this too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You are being serious, aren’t you?”

  “As I said before, yes.”

  She looked suddenly guilty, probably for not believing him. “Well, I’m sure there’s an explanation. Maybe you can talk to someone at school about it-”

  “I’m not going to school today.”

  “What?” she turned to stare at him in surprise, eyes wide. “You’re skipping school? You can’t do that! What if they catch you?”

  He rolled his eyes. “People skip school all the time, it’s no big deal.”

  “And when are you going to come back?”

  “I’m not sure, Al. I guess when I’ve got my head around things. You’ll have to trust me on this.”

  She turned away from him, to stare out of the window at the passing scenery – a shiny blue car, some decrepit houses and a man walking his dog. “Maybe you should trust me to help you sometimes.”

  Sean sighed. “I do, but this time’s different. I need to do it alone. If I find answers, I’ll let you know. Please, just cover for me until then, will you?”

  She was silent for a moment, but then a look of defeat entered her eyes. “Sure,” she said flatly. “Of course I will.”

  Sean wanted to say something more, he almost wanted to confide everything to her, tell her exactly why he wanted her to stay away from him. But he couldn’t. Although he didn’t like it, it would be best for her not to get involved. So in the end all he said was a simple “thanks,” and hoped it would be enough. When the bus next rumbled to a stop with a large heave of annoyance, Sean stood up and pushed his way off. He did not look back to see Ali’s expression.

  The rest of the day was spent in idle boredom. It was cold, and the sun had taken refuge behind the clouds. At some point it had also s
tarted drizzling. Sean managed to find his way to the high street and spent most of the morning reading newspapers for free until he was chased out of the shop. Then he ended up sitting in the deserted park on his own. He almost wished he had gone to school now – at least school would have been a little more interesting than this. It seemed skiving was overrated. For a few brief moments, he wondered what Ali was doing and almost wished he had asked her to come with him.

  By lunchtime, the rain had gotten worse. Sean stared up at the clouds with a quiet sigh and let the raindrops splatter across his face, revelling in the feeling. The truth was that he would be bored whatever he did. Life in general was boring, or maybe it was just him. He was a pretty boring person. Sometimes he wondered if death was any more interesting. Sometimes, he wished that he could give his life to someone who would appreciate it more than he did.

  And it was then that something interesting finally happened.

  He had subconsciously walked out of the park and was just crossing a rather empty road when he felt it again. He felt someone watching him. It sent a chill throughout his body that he couldn’t explain. He paused, for a fraction of a second, to glance behind him. Yet in that fraction of a second a car had come careening around the corner, completely disregarding any speed limits, and Sean knew that he had made a fatal mistake.

  He was rooted to the spot, unable to do anything except stare in horror as the horn blared, the car tried to slow down and the brakes squealed. They say your life is supposed to flash before your eyes as you die, some sort of built-in reflex that is supposed to make you realise just how lucky you were so that you can finally appreciate everything before you’re killed anyway. But Sean felt none of that. He never had a chance too; everything was moving too fast. In the next second a burning, overwhelming pain had wiped all thought from his mind and he was vaguely aware of flying – rather spectacularly – through the air. For that one moment however, before the pain, he felt strangely content. It was an odd feeling, a feeling of not being alone. It was a feeling that he had never felt before, but it was soothing. Like the feel of icy water on burnt skin.