The Stealers of Dreams.

by Steve Lyons.

For the Monday Night Group Dave, John, Pete, Phil and Tracy for having the imagination...

It was there again, at the foot of the bed. She could hear it.

She tried to do as she had been told. She gritted her teeth and closed her eyes and made a humming sound in the back of her throat to block out its shuffling and its sc.r.a.ping. She tried to focus on that, and on the drone of the nighttime traffic far below.

It worked, for a short time. The noise was cathartic; it made her feel brave. Until she ran out of breath.

Then she lay shivering in the darkness, hot on the outside but cold on the inside, face buried in her pillow and sheets wrapped around her as if she could hide from it.

As if it might go away.

Kimmi didn't want to be a bad girl. But the monster was real. It was real and it wouldn't leave her alone.

'An overactive imagination,' the doctors at the Big White House had said.

'You're fifteen years old, Kimmi,' her mother had sobbed, tearing at her bedraggled hair. 'You can't live in this... this fantasy world any longer. It's dangerous, don't you see? You have to grow up. Why can't you... why can't you be like all the other kids? Why can't you be normal?'

Kimmi hated seeing her mother like that. That was why she had kept it from her for so long.

That, and the incident at school two years ago. It had been her first week. Her teacher had s.n.a.t.c.hed the data pad from her desk, seen the open file and let out a scandalised gasp. Kimmi hadn't thought much of it before then; she had just been daydreaming, letting her hands wander.

No one had cared about her doodles at junior school. She couldn't understand why they were all making such a fuss now; why the eyes of her cla.s.smates burned into her, some shocked, some mocking, some feeling her embarra.s.sment.

'Perhaps you can explain to me,' the teacher had said in tones dripping with contempt, 'what this diagram has to do with the lifesupport requirements of the early s.p.a.ce pioneers. What it has to do with anything real. I've certainly never seen such a grotesque creature in real life. Have you? Have any of you?'

'The product of a diseased mind,' the email home had said.

In the Big White House, they had shown Kimmi shapes on a computer. They had asked her what they were, then told her she was wrong.

She had tried to argue at first, tried to tell them about the monster, but she didn't like the taste of the pills they gave her, so she had learned to agree with them. She agreed that the shapes were just shapes and that the monster wasn't real.

And she had drawn in secret after that. Until today. Until this afternoon, when Mum had arrived home early and surprised her.

She had s.n.a.t.c.hed her pad away just like the teacher had, dashed it to the floor. She had shaken Kimmi until her bones had rattled. She had cried a lot.

Kimmi had cried too, sent to bed without supper, hysterical threats ringing in her ears. 'Do you want to have to go back to that place again? Do you?' Do you?'

She had dozed, for a time, and woken in the dark. With the monster.

She was listening for it, though she didn't want to hear it. She couldn't help it. Her senses were hyperalert.

There was nothing. She ought to have been relieved. But what if the monster was just doing as she was: staying very still and very quiet, trying to trick her?

She had no choice. She had to look. She raised her head hesitantly, praying under her breath until she remembered what the doctors had told her about prayer.

She stared for a long time, trying to make sense of the shadows. They were moving, twisting, but that was just because of the infoscreen on the building across the road, casting its light patterns through the gap in her curtains. Wasn't it?

Then, a moment's white light and she saw it. Its muscular black shape, hunched into a crouch, a wizened limb draped lazily over the seat of her chair.

Or was it just the shape of her own clothing, cast aside in resentment?

She was paralysed, her throat dry. She wanted to yell, but she knew what would happen if she did. Mum would come and she would turn on the light and the monster would be gone, and she would be upset again.

What if she turned on the light herself? What if she could will herself to cross that expanse of carpet, to reach for the sensor?

And what if the monster leaped on her from behind and clawed her down?

They'd know she wasn't lying then. Too late.

She was a big girl now. That was what Mum had said. Big enough to be logical about this. If the monster was real, then why hadn't it killed her already?

The doctors had asked her that question. She had answered that maybe it was because she had always kept as still as she could. They had glanced at one another, shaking their heads.

'We're just trying to help you. Do you want to be frightened all your life?' they had said.

And Kimmi decided now, lying in the dark, paralysed by the presence of the monster, that she didn't want that at all. She would find the strength. She would stand and walk to the light sensor. She would activate it, and she would turn and look. Towards the foot of the bed. At the monster.

Then she would know, one way or another.

She thought she heard a warning hiss as her first foot touched the floor. She thought the monster had tensed, readying itself to pounce. And she was frozen again, one foot in the bed and one out.

She heard its breathing, but it might have been her own breath loud in her ears. She caught the glint of its eye, but it might have been a flicker from the infoscreen outside reflecting off the smaller screen in here.

She heard it growl, and this time she was suddenly, terrifyingly sure.

Kimmi leaped out of bed as the monster sprang for her. She felt it brush against the back of her nightdress, and the impact as it thudded into the mattress behind her. It roared, and she screamed as she leaped for the sensor, desperately praying that she'd reach it in time, that the light would work.

Then the monster was upon her. She could feel its hot breath, flecked with spittle, on her neck, and its claws in her shoulders and ribs. She could feel its thick tail binding her legs, tripping her. She fell, and its weight bore her down. She was wailing and kicking and hammering her fists into the carpet impotently.

And somehow she managed to dislodge the monster from her back, managed to roll over and, for a heady instant, thought she could escape it.

But then its great black ma.s.s was rearing over her again, and its claws stabbed through her shoulders and pinned her to the floor. And all Kimmi could see was its big black mouth, with its triple rows of teeth.

And little tufts of blue hair sprouting from the monster's bottom lip.

Just like in her pictures.

ONE.

Chips had been a mistake. Rose blamed the Doctor. He was used to this travelling lark. Other worlds, other times. He ought to have tipped her the wink, explained to her that chips here weren't chipped potatoes but chipped somethingorotherelse. Some local vegetable, a bit too soft, a bit too blue, with an oily texture and a peppery aftertaste.

As she pushed her plate aside, though, she felt a familiar tingle. Sometimes it took just that sort of incidental detail to remind her how far she was from home; that she was breathing the air of the future. The air of another world.

Another world...

Rose still found it hard to take in, as if it was too much for her mind to process all at once and it would only let her focus on one thing at a time. It didn't help that this particular world was so human, so... mundane mundane. Crowded pavements littered with discarded wrappers, streets clogged with traffic, and the buildings... Almost without exception, they were concrete towers, devoid of character, no more than boxes to hold people. Like the ones on the estate back home, thought Rose, built before she was born. How disappointing!

It could almost have been London, or any big American city. Peering through the greasestreaked window beside their table, she eyed a line of cars simmering resentfully at a nearby junction. She would hardly have been surprised to see a big red bus turning that corner.

Look at the details, she thought. Like the menu, no thicker than a normal piece of cardboard and yet it projected lifesized aromagrams of its featured dishes. And the way the cars floated over the roadway on air jets, churning the gravel beneath them. And the TV screens, as flat as posters, seemingly attached to every available surface.

That had been her first impression of this place: newsreaders looking down at her from the sides of every building, their words subt.i.tled so as not to be lost in the everpresent traffic grumble. There were two screens in the cafe itself, one behind Rose and one on the wall in front. She kept finding her eyes drawn to this second one over Captain Jack's shoulder: Mr Anton Ryland the Sixth of Sector FourFourKappaZero was celebrating today after a wellearned promotion. Mr Ryland, who has worked for the Office of Statistical Processing for thirtyseven years, is now a Senior a.n.a.lytical Officer, Blue Grade. Commenting on his rapid rise, Mr Ryland said, 'It means I earn an additional 2.4 credits per day before tax, and my parking s.p.a.ce '

The Doctor had been attacking his food with the same gusto with which he tackled Autons and Slitheen and other alien menaces. As he glanced up between forkfuls, though, his eyes followed Rose's gaze and his lips pulled into a grimace. 'Yeah, I know,' he said, 'not exactly "Man Bites Dog", is it? You want those chips?'

'Suits me to have a bit of downtime,' said Jack nonchalantly, biting into his burger and Rose didn't even want to think about what manner of alien creature that might have come from. Those chips had opened up one h.e.l.l of a mental can of worms.

Jack hadn't known the Doctor for as long as she had, but the lifestyle was nothing new to him. Born in the fiftyfirst century allegedly he claimed to have spent his life in the s.p.a.ce lanes, even travelled in time.

Of course, you couldn't always believe a word Jack said.

'Wouldn't wanna live here, though,' he continued in his American drawl. 'This must be the most boring planet in the universe!'

'Er, do you mind?' said the Doctor. 'I don't do "boring". There's something new and exciting to find on every world if you look for it.'

'Y'know,' Rose teased, 'I thought it was only in naff old films that people in the future wore those onepiece jumpsuits.'

'Yeah, I figure that's why they've been giving us the eye,' said Jack. 'Our gear.'

The Doctor frowned. 'They have?'

'A few of them, discreetly. They must think we're pretty eccentric.'

'A while since I've been called that,' said the Doctor.

'Hey, maybe there's a few credits to be made here. What do you say, Rose? Start this world's first fashion house. You design 'em, I flog 'em.'

'This is Rose's future,' the Doctor reminded Jack. 'I doubt she could show these people anything they haven't seen before, at some point in their history.'

'So the carmechanic look is what?' said Rose. 'A fashion statement?'

'I'm more bothered about the time,' said the Doctor. 'I make it just gone ' he did his usual joke of glancing at his wrist.w.a.tch at least, Rose a.s.sumed it was a joke '2775, but the technology here's still stuck in the twentyseventh century. Earlier.' He sniffed the air thoughtfully.

'And?' Jack prompted.

'And that usually means trouble,' said Rose, relishing a chance to show off her experience. 'It means someone or something is holding back progress, right, Doctor?'

'Maybe. Don't you think it's odd? That these people escaped Earth, found their brave new world, and all they've done is copy what they left behind?' He gave her no time to answer. 'How long do you think this city has been here? Long enough for the dirt to be ground in. Long enough to be bursting at the seams. But what have these people what have any of them done about it?'

He raised his voice as he went on, as if personally accusing everyone at the neighbouring tables. Rose leaned forward and spoke quietly, hoping to regain some measure of privacy. 'They are are building, though. We saw builders on the way in. Remember, they used those floatingdisc things instead of scaffolding.' building, though. We saw builders on the way in. Remember, they used those floatingdisc things instead of scaffolding.'

'On car parks and squares.' The Doctor waved a dismissive hand. And I doubt there's a blade of gra.s.s left in this city.'

'He's right,' said Jack. 'They're bulldozing skysc.r.a.pers to replace them with bigger ones. Building upwards, not outwards. How much of this world did the TARDIS say was jungle, Doctor?'

'Over 90 per cent of its landma.s.s but we saw no sign of construction at the edge of the city as we came in.'

'The settlers must have cleared an area when they got here.'

'But they haven't expanded since then,' realised Rose. 'They're just... just trying to squeeze more people into the same s.p.a.ce.'

'I think it's time we found out a few things about this place. Its name, for a start.' The Doctor twisted in his seat and spotted a middleaged woman leaving the table behind him. She had just swiped a plastic card through some sort of a reader, and was fumbling to replace it in her hip pouch as she headed for the door. 'You look as if you could settle a bet for us,' he said. 'This planet, what's it called?'

Rose made a show of wincing and covering her eyes. Jack just grinned.

The woman was fl.u.s.tered. 'What is this? You trying to trick me?' She looked around suspiciously, as if expecting to see a camera.

Peering between her fingers, Rose saw the disapproving looks and despairing headshakes of the cafe's other customers.

'This is Colony World 4378976.DeltaFour,' said the woman. I know it by no other name and I'm sure I don't know what you're suggesting. Good day to you!' She barged past the Doctor and bustled out onto the street without a backward glance.

'You see?' said the Doctor triumphantly. 'Scratch the surface and there's usually something going on underneath. Fantastic!' He seized a handful of Rose's chips and stuffed them into his mouth. Then, catching her raisedeyebrow stare, he glanced around and mumbled, 'Oh, let them look. We're the most interesting people in this room.'

'You're mental, you are,' laughed Rose.

'Excuse me, gentlemen, lady. I'm afraid I must ask you to leave.'

A man had appeared at the Doctor's elbow. He was short and stocky, his jumpsuit white instead of the usual grey. He held his head at a tilt and looked down his nose at them. 'Your appearance and behaviour are, ah, confusing my other patrons.'

'Confusing them?' The Doctor leaped on the words.

Rose didn't know whether to be angry or amused. 'We weren't disturbing anyone.'

'You mean to say you're kicking us out for dressing a little differently?' said Jack.

'Listen, mate, this is hardly the Savoy!'

'Go now,' said the whiteclad man sniffily, 'and I might overlook the fact that you were all heard lying on these premises.'

'It's all right,' said the Doctor quickly, leaping to his feet. 'Time we were off anyway. And you were right about the chips, Rose. They're rubbish.'

The manager cleared his throat meaningfully. 'There is the matter of your bill, sir.'