Bad Dreams Read online

  I couldn’t have felt more sorry for her. After all, I read more than my fair share of books that make me keep the light on all night long. And lots of books that make me sad, or anxious, till things work out right. But I don’t end up in a state like her, halfway to fainting because of three or four grisly pages, and not even able to look at the cover of that book again without wanting to shudder.

  ‘A gift’, her mother called it. But, the more Imogen told me about it, the more I thought that that was totally the wrong word.

  ‘Curse’ was more like it.

  Yes. Not ‘gift’, but ‘curse’. . .

  www.kidsatrandomhouse.co.uk

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Anne Fine

  Bad Dreams

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  A Note from the Author

  By Anne Fine, published by Corgi Yearling Books:

  BAD DREAMS

  CHARM SCHOOL

  FROZEN BILLY

  THE MORE THE MERRIER

  Published in hardback by Doubleday:

  THE ROAD OF BONES

  Published by Corgi Books:

  THE BOOK OF THE BANSHEE

  THE GRANNY PROJECT

  ON THE SUMMERHOUSE STEPS

  ROUND BEHIND THE ICE HOUSE

  UP ON CLOUD NINE

  A SHAME TO MISS . . .

  Three collections of poetry

  Perfect poems for young readers

  Ideal poems for middle readers

  Irresistible poetry for young adults

  Other books by Anne Fine:

  For junior readers:

  THE ANGEL OF NITSHILL ROAD

  ANNELI THE ART-HATER

  BILL’S NEW FROCK

  THE CHICKEN GAVE IT TO ME

  THE COUNTRY PANCAKE

  CRUMMY MUMMY AND ME

  GENIE, GENIE, GENIE

  HOW TO WRITE REALLY BADLY

  LOUDMOUTH LOUIS

  A PACK OF LIARS

  For young people:

  FLOUR BABIES

  GOGGLE-EYES

  MADAME DOUBTFIRE

  STEP BY WICKED STEP

  THE STONE MENAGERIE

  THE TULIP TOUCH

  VERY DIFFERENT

  For adult readers:

  ALL BONES AND LIES

  THE KILLJOY

  RAKING THE ASHES

  TAKING THE DEVIL’S ADVICE

  TELLING LIDDY

  www.annefine.co.uk

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781409012924

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  BAD DREAMS

  A CORGI YEARLING BOOK : 978 0 440 86732 6

  First published in Great Britain by Doubleday,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  Doubleday edition published 2000

  Corgi Yearling edition published 2001

  This edition published 2006

  5 7 9 10 8 6 4

  Copyright © Anne Fine, 2000, 2006

  Illustrations copyright © Susan Winter, 2000

  The right of Anne Fine to be identified as the author of this work has

  been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,

  electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the

  prior permission of the publishers.

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  All our titles that are printed on Greenpeace approved FSC certified paper

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  Corgi Yearling Books are published by Random House Children’s Books,

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  A Random House Group Company

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  can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

  THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP Limited Reg. No. 954009

  www.kidsatrandomhouse.co.uk

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from

  the British Library.

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading, RG1 8EX

  For Jon Appleton,

  without whom . . .

  CHAPTER ONE

  It’s only been bothering me a tiny bit. But still, Mr Hooper saw my uneasy look.

  ‘What ho, Mel!’ he offered. ‘A trouble shared is a trouble halved?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, thanks. It’s too private.’ ‘Write it down, then,’ he told me. ‘If something’s gnawing at you, shove it on paper.’

  I waved at the books round us, shelf upon shelf of them, up to the ceiling.

  ‘Is that what the writers of some of these were doing?’

  ‘Quite a few, I should think,’ he said. ‘False names, true stories, and they make a mint. You try it. I’ll buy a copy.’

  He went off chuckling and I sat down to think. Why not? I’m good at stories. I could call it Bad Dreams. Or even, Imogen Imagines, since it would be about her, and how she came to our school and spooked all of us – especially me – with her weirdness, and all of her horrible imaginings.

  This is how it started. She turned up halfway through one morning in summer term. She came through the doorway behind Mrs Trent, who simply handed her over and left in a hurry.

  Mr Hooper had only the briefest of chats with her at the desk before turning to the rest of us. ‘Class, this is Imogen Tate, who’s joining us from another school.’

  She looked embarrassed, and we stared. She was already dressed in our boring old school uniform, with her hair in plain bunches. There was absolutely nothing special about her, but in spite of that everyone wanted to be her first-week minder. Almost all of them put their hands up.

  But Mr Hooper said, ‘And I pick – Melanie!’

  I was astonished. ‘Me?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘why not?’

  ‘I didn’t put my hand up.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘It’ll be nice for you to have someone in that empty seat.’

  I didn’t think so, but I couldn’t say. Maybe I should explain. I’m the class bookworm. I don’t mix much with the others because I like reading better. All the way up the school it’s bothered my teachers. One after another, they’ve tried to prise the books out of my hands, and get me to join in more.

  Yet I still prefer reading.

  But yo
u can’t be rude to someone who’s new, and standing there trembling. So I just patted the spare chair at my side, and she came over. And as she was busy unpacking her pens and pencils into the desk, I finally thought of something friendly to say.

  ‘I like that necklace you’re wearing. Is it gold?’

  She nodded shyly.

  ‘Real gold?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘My granny gave it to my mother, and now it’s been passed down to me.’

  I peered at it more closely. It had strange little scratchy markings, and looked fine and slinky enough to be spilled into a teaspoon.

  ‘You’re so lucky,’ I told her, still trying to be nice. ‘I’m sure no-one will ever pass anything special down to me.’

  As if I’d suddenly reminded her of something, she stopped in the middle of her unpacking and gave me a look. ‘Then maybe you’re the lucky one,’ she told me.

  I stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’

  She wouldn’t say. In fact, she hardly said anything at all after that, except things like, ‘Should I write this in the red book?’ and, ‘Do I use pen or pencil to do this?’ and, ‘Can I borrow your ruler?’

  I bet she didn’t even realize that what she’d said stuck in my mind. But it was like the first clue in a book. It just stuck out. And it was strange.

  CHAPTER TWO

  She was no good at schoolwork. You could tell Mr Hooper was amazed how badly she did in all the tests he set her. But he still made her book monitor, along with me.

  ‘Since Melly’s looking after you,’ he explained.

  ‘Must I?’ she asked him. ‘I hate books.’

  I was astonished. ‘Hate them? Actually hate them?’

  She blushed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I just don’t get on with them very well.’

  What can you say? I love books more than anything. Left to myself, I wouldn’t come to school at all. I’d spend my whole life reading. ‘Go out,’ my mother tells me. ‘It’s lovely today. Go and play in the fresh air.’ But I’d rather stay in my bedroom, and read about other children going out to play.

  ‘You’re not a bit like me, then,’ I told Imogen. ‘You know those battered old Christmas albums you see in jumble sales that have a picture on the front of a girl reading another album just the same, with a picture of herself on the cover? You know how they go on, down and down, smaller and smaller, like boxes inside boxes, until the girl’s too small to be seen?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen those.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘that’s who I want to be. That girl who’s reading all the other lives in from the outside.’

  Now it was her turn to look at me as if I were loopy. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘That’s who I’d like to be more than anyone in the world.’

  And then I showed her how to use the card index in the book corner. And how to stamp the books out, and how to tell from the coloured sticker on the spine whether it should go back in Older Readers, or Poetry, or Project Work.

  She had a funny way of picking up the books – gingerly, as if they might scorch her. After a few minutes, I asked her, as a joke:

  ‘Didn’t you have any of these in your old school?’

  She made a face. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘We had them. It’s just that I hardly ever had to go near them.’

  Strange thing to say. And I was just thinking, ‘No wonder her work’s so bad’, when, suddenly, I saw her jump.

  ‘Oh!’ she said, startled.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  But I couldn’t help noicing she hadn’t touched that book again. She was staring at it nervously.

  ‘It’s that book, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Something about it has upset you.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. But she had definitely gone red again.

  I’m not an idiot. I kept a watch. And only a few minutes later, I saw it happen a second time. Imogen picked up a different book, and dropped it as if it had stung her.

  As if it were red hot.

  ‘What up?’ I asked again.

  ‘Nothing.’

  I think, when people try to fool you, they can practically expect you to start spying on them. And that’s why I was watching so closely when, later that morning, Mr Hooper hurried past her without a single word, then, noticing her anxious little ‘new-girl’ face, stopped guiltily and thrust the book he happened to be carrying into her hand.

  ‘Here, Imogen,’ he said. ‘You say you don’t like books. Try this one – Violet’s Game. Melly says it’s brilliant. It’s about a girl called Violet. That’s her you can see on the cover, cuddling that kitten. And she—’

  He broke off because Imogen was already backing away. ‘Oh, no! I couldn’t bear it! I can’t stand stories about animals that have been hurt.’

  Mr Hooper looked a bit surprised. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t realized you’d already read it.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Imogen started to shake her head, then stopped, embarrassed. And Mr Hooper looked a little embarrassed, too. After all, just because Violet’s Game has only just come into our class book corner, it didn’t mean Imogen couldn’t have come across it back in her old school.

  ‘Well, at least it ends happily,’ Mr Hooper reminded her. Then the bell rang, and he rushed off to get his coffee.

  So I was the only one left to see Imogen running her finger gently over the kitten in the picture on the cover, and muttering, ‘Good!’

  As if she were glad to hear it.

  And as if it were news.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Was she more careful after that? I couldn’t say. If you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, you’re often not sure what you’ve seen. She acted normally enough from then on. I heard her draw her breath in sharply once or twice. But the top shelf is pretty high, and it can be tiring, reaching up over and over to put things back after wet break.

  But I was still curious about her and books. So whenever I came across one I really loved, I held it up.

  ‘Have you read this?’

  Sometimes she nodded. Sometimes she shook her head. But she never burst out with the sort of thing everyone else says.

  ‘Oh yes! Didn’t you just love the bit where his head flipped off, and it turned out he was an alien?’

  Or, ‘I hated the creepy old lady. I knew she was out to get them from the veryp first page.’

  Or even things like, ‘Did you cry when the dog died? I cried buckets. My dad had to make me a cup of tea!’

  No, she’d just put on that closed look people get when they’re trying to get past charity collectors in the street. She’d try to fob me off.

  ‘I think I read it, yes.’

  ‘You must remember.’

  She’d try and distract me. Even though hardly anyone had come near the book corner for days, she’d pretend we were so busy she had to interrupt to ask, ‘Should this book here be put away? Or do I leave it out for the next project group?’

  And I’d give up.

  But, next day, when I held one of my favourites up to her face, I did quite definitely see her shudder.

  ‘You have read this one, then? You know what it’s about.’

  ‘Well, sort of . . .’

  ‘Didn’t you get to finish it?’

  She tossed her head vaguely. You couldn’t tell if she meant yes, or no.

  ‘Well, did you?’

  She wouldn’t answer. She just asked a question of her own. ‘What did you want to say about it, anyway?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I muttered grumpily, and went back to my sorting. I had decided there was no point in trying to talk to Imogen about the books. I think, if two of you have read the same things, you should be able to have a good long chat about them, not have to put up with the other person ending each conversation by staring uncomfortably at her feet, and mumbling things like, ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ or, ‘I’m not sure I remember that bit very well,’ or, ‘Maybe that wasn’t actually the book I read.’ I fel
t so cross about it, I even complained about her to Mr Hooper.

  ‘Why have you dumped her on me? She’s not much of a reader.’

  He burst out laughing. ‘Melly, compared with you, no-one in this class is a reader.’

  I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said stubbornly. ‘There’s more to it than that. She says she’s read things when she really hasn’t.’

  ‘Maybe you intimidate her,’ he said. And then he added firmly, ‘Just make an effort to be friendly, Mel. A week’s not long. It won’t hurt you.’

  Seeing my face, he reached behind him to the shelf, and tipped a big fat book out of a jiffy bag into my hands.

  ‘There you are, Mel,’ he said. ‘Here’s a reward for all your sufferings. And don’t expect to be able to talk to Imogen about this one, because practically nobody else in the world has read it.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because it’s hot off the press,’ he said proudly. ‘A free gift from the publishers for ordering all those other books at the end of last term.’

  I turned it over. Red Rock, by Alston Byers. The cover was a bit soppy. A little girl in a blue frock was picking up stones. But some of the best books in the world have the worst covers, so I started it anyway, under the desk at the end of Maths Workbook.

  It was amazing. I thought at first it was going to be one of those stories too stuffed with descriptions. It seemed to start with an awful lot of heat hazes lying over scrubland, and people leaning against the doors of sun-blistered shacks.

  But suddenly it turned into a real nail-biter about a tribe of Indians who got fed up with tourists chipping off bits of their famous sacred red rock, to take home as souvenirs. So they put a curse on all the bits missing. Instantly, all over the world, reports started coming in of horrible deaths, and gruesome accidents, and weird diseases, as if some ghastly jump-in-your-seat horror video was playing everywhere, but, this time, for real.

  I couldn’t put the book down. Mr Hooper went through all his usual routines.

  ‘Am I going to have to take that book off you till going home time, Melly?’

  ‘I hope you’re not rushing that written work to get back to your reading.’