"Another Fairy-Tale part 2 - Dreams and Echoes" by Helfried ´RRJ´ Haider

It was another night of long talks for Peter and his father, Marcus. Once again, Peter’s father had a long talk about Peter’s behaviour when it came to the other kids. And, once again, Peter was amazed about the gullibility of his father.

“You really should try to fight them back. Once you gain their respect, they’ll leave you alone.”

“That may have worked with you, dad, but I guess they’ll pay me respect when I finally grow some inches. They pick on me because I’m small and have pimples all over my face. The rest doesn’t matter to them, and if I try to fight back and actually hurt them, they’ll get even more angry.” Peter had to let out a sigh. They had had this discussion before, and it always ended with both of them sticking to their opinions.

“So, what do you want to do? The summer holidays are here. Do you want to stay inside all the time? You have to lose your fear.”

“At least Jeremy will be gone for a few weeks, he’s going camping with his dad. They’ll leave me alone. Don’t worry.”

A sour look came on Marcus’ face, as Peter mentioned camping. Peter saw it, of course, and he knew what that meant. They wouldn’t go on a camping trip, nor would they spend any time of their holidays somewhere else. Marcus was just an employee of a big firm, and he didn’t earn very much, so he had to work very hard all the time. He scarcely got a day off, but when he did, he made an effort to spend time with Peter.

Being fourteen and a half, Peter didn’t always like that, but most of the time it was okay; his dad took him to places Peter liked, and didn’t force him to go fishing or go to some other gruesome place Peter didn’t want to go to.

Still, it was a long evening for both of them. In the end, Marcus put a video into the VCR and invited Peter to join in watching, and although Peter would have preferred to read in his new old book, he decided to join his father.

Halfway through the film, his father turned to Peter. “Ehrm, there is something else I wanted to ask you.”

Peter turned his attention from the film and looked at his father. “Yes?”

“I wanted to talk to you about it, before I did this, because I want you to be okay with it …”

This sentence actually did catch Peter’s attention, he was anxious to know what this was about.

“… It’s just that I recently met someone I like, and I wanted to know if it’s okay if I went on a date with her.”

Peter sat there silent for a minute, too stunned to talk. His mother had died about two years ago, without any apparent reason, one morning, he woke up and she was dead, simple as that. He often thought about her and how much he missed her, and he knew how much his dad was suffering because of the loss.

Realizing that he should say something, Peter searched for the first words in his mind. “Is she nice?”

Marcus grinned to this (obviously taking it as a good sign). “Yes, she’s very nice, and I think she likes me, too.”

“Does she know about, well … me?” Peter asked, unsure if he wanted to know the answer to that question, but to his joy Marcus nodded.

“She even has a kid herself, a thirteen year old girl. Her marriage went down the drain four years ago, and she has been living alone with her daughter ever since.”

“Well …” Peter thought about it, his brain processing this new information, searching for hints of joy or sadness. Their was neither to be found at the moment, so Peter just shrugged his shoulders. “Sure, why not?”

His father smiled and looked relieved. “Thanks, boy.”

Peter smiled back and realised that this was the first time in a long while that his father was smiling so happily.

As soon as Peter closed the door of the room he went to his writing desk and opened the drawer to fetch his book. Although the evening with his father had been quite nice, he had longed to return to his “book of rules”. He was determined to find out what rules they were and if he could find out who this Harold K. Shimmer was.

He jumped onto his bed, book in his hand and opened the next page to read … then turned around so he could have better light for it. The handwriting was much smaller than on the frontpage, and more difficult to read. Peter squinted his eyes and held it close, and tried to read it letter by letter. There were some words Peter could figure out on the first page:

“… catching … and feeding … once … noticed that … … sealed… master … open this cage… release … admitted … curse me … so I am … release … hope … bidding … tightly sealed …”

The rest were wild guesses, and Peter didn’t think that the second sentence could mean “Homely where urgent master lay, or than open this cage, and darely release there ashamed.”

He tried another side, and could figure out some words again, but he couldn’t figure out even one small whole sentence. His eyes blurred after a few minutes, growing more and more tired as the letters seemed to fade from view now and then.

Maybe he just needed to rest and try it again tomorrow.

Peter clutched his pillow and snucked under his blanket, and after a few minutes he started to doze off. He liked this moment, when he was stuck between the waking world and the dream world, because that was the moment when he could shape his life the way he wanted it to be. In this small fragment of the day, he was neither small, nor pimpled, he was an ordinary boy, like everyone else, and he had many friends who liked him.

It was a perfect world, where everyone had respect for the other, where no wars or fights raged.

But soon after this moment, he drifted off, and his visions became dreams that had a life of their own.

It had been a while since Peter had dreamt about his mother, maybe two months, and she faded more and more, becoming a distant memory, although he didn’t want to.

But today, his mother appeared as soon as he closed his eyes to dream, and she was smiling at him. They were walking through a beautiful garden, on a warm sunny day, and his mother was smiling at him. Peter was smiling back, feeling happy, looking at the pretty flowers and butterflies in the air.

Suddenly, he had a curious sensation, as he looked over to one of the bushes ahead of him, because he felt that the bushes were staring back at him. He couldn’t say why he knew, but he knew. Reluctantly, he let the hand of his mother go, and headed for the bushes, to see who was watching him, and parted them with his hands as he was there.

There was no one in the bushes except for some butterflies, who flew up and fluttered away, but he could see a bench through the bushes, and on it sat his father with some woman, who definitely wasn’t his mother.

At first, Peter became angry, but then he realised that his mother was dead, and that he himself has told his father that it was okay to go out with another woman.

‘But she just held your hand.’ A little voice inside his head called out to him.

Peter turned around to go back to his mother, but she wasn’t there, she had disappeared from sight. For a moment Peter called himself a fool for letting go of her, but then he decided that he should just search for her.

He spent the rest of his dream looking for his mother, calling her every now and then, but she didn’t answer. And wherever he went, he found his father with this other woman, and whenever he looked at them, they had an expression on their faces that was telling him they would kiss any moment.

A butterfly landed on Peters shoulder at that moment, and he turned to look at it, but instead, he woke up.

It hadn’t been the best of dreams, Peter thought, as he was brushing his teeth in front of the mirror, but it could have been worse. But now he had doubt again, if he really was okay with the date his father had, but at the same moment, a reasonable voice called him from inside his head. ‘Now don’t be a fool, young man. Your father surely deserves to be happy, too. And maybe this friend of his is very nice, and her daughter, too. It was just a dream, you know?’

Peter nodded to his inner self. His father had already gone to work, anyway, and he didn’t want to cause him discomfort. Mother would understand, he told himself, but he still felt a little guilty.

After carefully putting on some more pimple-vanishing creams he went into his room to dress himself. Once more, he glanced at the cage, but there was nothing to be seen (he had suspected as much).

But still, the book intrigued him, although he didn’t know how to read it properly. Maybe the old man could help him?

Peter considered the possibility a while, then decided, that would probably the best course of action, although this voice in his head came again, this time mimicking the old man. ‘Can’t read the book, lass? Thass no good then, give’it back, an’ bring the cage, too. Yer not werthy of it af’er all.’

Although Peter didn’t really believe the voice this time he decided not to take any chances and spent the next hour copying the first page of the book, very carefully. He didn’t want to miss a dot or swing somewhere.

He was about to leave when he remembered the cage and decided it wasn’t a really good idea to leave it standing around. If his father came home earlier than Peter, he might throw it out, and it had cost Peter a dollar, even if he convinced himself he actually had paid it for the book.

After a minute he decided that he could put it in the compartment under his bed, he didn’t use it anyway, letting his sheets on the bed the whole day.

Then, whistling, he put the book in the writing desk again and headed off to the dark alley.

The only problem was: it wasn’t there anymore. Chow-Mein was there, and Burgis’ Bookstore, but the dark alley between the two buildings had gone.

The eerie feeling that had swapped over Peter yesterday when he was in the dark alley was creeping back on him. He had told himself (subconsciously) that he must have been mistaken, that the alley had been there, but that he hadn’t seen it. But now, it was gone again, and Peter knew that something weird was going on.

He pondered his possibilities for a few minutes, and then decided to head into Burgis’ Bookstore. Maybe someone in there could help him with the scribbling in the book. Clutching the sheet of paper to his chest, Peter went into the store.

He had expected an old bookshop, one with the smell of dust in the air, and an old man behind the counter, but his expectations were not met. The interior of the bookshop was quite bright, and a young woman of about twenty was standing behind the counter, wearing a short T-shirt, that gave a good few of her bellybutton piercing when she moved.

“Can I help you?” she asked, looking down at Peter with a nice smile on her lips.

Peter became a tad nervous, but walked up to the counter. The woman was almost a foot taller than he was, and looked down at him, but she was smiling nonetheless.

“Well …” he began to stammer. “… I have bought this old book recently, but I can’t read it … I thought maybe you could help me.” He put the sheet of paper on the tray.

The woman looked down at it for a few seconds, then squinted her eyes. With a sigh, she opened a drawer and took out glasses, then bent over to examine the paper more carefully.

Peter was looking at her expectantly; he was hoping that she was now going to read it out loud, as she carefully studied the paper.

“That’s a very old writing.” she said after a minute. Although Peter had hoped for more, at least he was pleased that he had been right, the book had to be worth a lot.

“The problem is not only figuring out the writing, but also the meaning of the words.” The clerk continued, and Peter stood on the tip of his toes to better see what she was reading at the moment. “The best thing to do would be to take the whole thing to the library, and ask a professor there, they would be able to sort this out.”

The clerk straightened herself, and put the glasses away again. “I’m sorry, but the best thing I could do would be to order a book explaining the meaning of middle-age words. Maybe that could help?”

For a moment, Peter considered it, but then he realized that he wouldn’t have the money to buy such a book, so he shook his head. “Thanks a lot for your time.”

The girl smiled again, which seemed to warm up Peter’s heart a little more. She handed him the piece of paper back again. “Sorry I couldn’t help you more.”

“That’s okay.” Peter folded the paper and put it into his jeans. “Maybe I’ll go to the library, as you suggested.”

The girl nodded again, and Peter was on his way to the door, when he turned around again, blushing a little bit. “Can I ask one more question?”

She nodded. “Sure.”

“And please, don’t think I’m crazy or something … Wasn’t there an alley between this shop and the Chinese restaurant next door?”

By the look on her face, he could already see that she was sure there had never been a dark alley between the two buildings, but she confirmed anyway. “No, we’ve always been wall to wall.”

Peter tried not to look surprised when he shrugged his shoulders. “Must’ve been somewhere else, I guess.”

He waved bye-bye and exited the shop, a sigh on his lips.

Lost in his thoughts, he went down the street. Something very weird was going on, and he didn’t know what it was.

He froze as he suddenly heard a voice from behind him. “Well, if it isn’t Peter Pimples.”

Without turning around, Peter began to ran. The words of his fathers echoed in his mind as he sprinted away: ‘Stand and fight, like a good boy, my son!’, but his feet were having a mind of their own, not allowing him to turn around or turn back.

‘Don’t let them catch me, don’t let them catch me.’ He thought, as he ran into the next street, but he could already hear the footsteps behind him, getting closer, and closer still.