The Shadows: A Novel by Alex North

in half and stapled at the crease. Charlie’s dream diary was on the table in front of him. It was a black notebook, exactly the same as the ones I used for my stories and the one I had started to use to record my own dreams. For some reason, this made it feel as though there were some kind of unspoken battle going on between the two of us.
    “Okay,” Charlie said. “Who wants to start? James?”
    James shuffled awkwardly in his seat.
    Jesus, I thought. Pull yourself together, mate . I didn’t know whether I wanted to reassure him or shake him. But it turned out I didn’t need to worry about doing either, because there was no way Billy was going to let James steal his rightful position as Charlie’s second-in-command.
    “I had a lucid dream.” Billy smiled, pleased with himself. “It really worked—it was just like you said. One night, I dreamed I was in my dad’s workshop, and then I dreamed the same thing the night after. And that time, it was like a switch flicked or something. I totally woke up in my dream. It was amazing. I used the nose trick and everything.”
    “What’s the nose trick?” I said.
    “We’ll come to that.” Charlie didn’t look at me. “Billy, I’m so pleased.”
    Billy beamed quietly.
    “How long did you dream lucidly for?” Charlie said.
    “Not long. I woke up almost straightaway. It was the shock of it.”
    “So you didn’t use the environment technique?”
    “No, I didn’t remember.”
    Charlie looked disappointed, and Billy stopped smiling, looking sheepish now instead. For my own part, I was just trying to keep up. Glancing to one side, I could tell that James was feeling as bewildered as I was. The way Charlie was talking, it was like we’d been set a test without being given the classes to prepare for it.
    “What the fuck is the environment technique ?” I said.
    “I said I’d explain.” Charlie turned to me. “What about you, Paul? How did you do?”
    I hadn’t actually decided for certain whether I was going to talk about the success I’d had, but I didn’t like the way Charlie phrased that right then. How did you do? As though I had to prove myself to him.
    “Nothing at all,” I said.
    “No?”
    “Maybe if I’d have known about the nose trick .”
    Charlie ignored the jibe and simply nodded, as though it was what he’d been expecting. With me, there was none of the disappointment there had been with Billy. He moved on.
    “What about you, James?”
    James pressed the stapled papers down onto his lap and looked awkward.
    For fuck’s sake, I wanted to tell him. It doesn’t matter.
    “Nothing,” James said miserably. “Just like Paul.”
    The words stung a little, but it was the tone of his voice that hurt the most. He made it sound as though being like me was such a failure.
    “You didn’t notice any patterns?” Charlie said.
    “Nothing at all. It was all just a random jumble.”
    “That’s fine. It just takes practice and experience. Give it another week or so, and you’ll get there. You’ve done well just for trying.”
    James gave Charlie a nervous smile.
    Billy looked at him. “So what did you dream?”
    James glanced down at what passed for his notebook. “Nothing interesting.”
    “No, go on.” Billy leaned forward and made to take the dream diary away from James. “Maybe we can find some patterns there even if you can’t.”
    James leaned away from him. “Don’t.”
    “Just tell us, then.”
    “Well … last night, I dreamed about the woods.” James glanced at me. “The ones behind our town. The Shadows.”
    He looked slightly guilty. Perhaps that was because, after all of the weekend expeditions the four of us had done, the town and the woods no longer felt like ours anymore. It might have been where James and I had grown up, but it was Charlie who had started taking us into the woods and making up stories about ghosts.
    “Go on,” Charlie said.
    “It was dark in the dream. I was standing in my yard, at the edge of