Bridge Between the Worlds (Dreamwalker Book 1)

  R. B. L. Gillmore

  Bridge Between the Worlds

  Book 1 of the Dreamwalker Series

  This book started as a project for my own satisfaction, as so many new books do. It has come to fruition with the help and support of Christine, Lachlan and my amazing wife Desiree. I cannot thank them enough for everything they have done.

  Author’s Notes

  THE VAST MAJORITY OF DETAIL IN THIS BOOK was factually accurate at the time of writing, with ‘earth’ locations and their descriptions taken from real life experiences. However, the descriptions have been altered where necessary for the purposes of the novel. The English-speaking school, for example, does not, to my knowledge, exist as described in Budapest.

  Many of the names used within the ‘Otthon’ world are Hungarian derivatives, the reason for which shall become clear to the reader throughout the book. Even the name of the world itself, ‘Otthon’, is the Hungarian word for home.

  A noteworthy change is the spelling of the name Martay. In the original Hungarian this should be Máté but it was felt that this could cause significant confusion with respect to correct pronunciation.

  Dreamwalker Copyright © 2017 by R. B. L. Gillmore. All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover artwork by Lachlan Craigie

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First Printing: Mar 2018

  ISBN: 978-1-64255-128-0

  Contents

  Author’s Notes

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 1

  “Amy… Amriel!”

  Martay nudged Amy firmly with his elbow as he whispered loudly at her. Her soft grey-blue eyes blinked open in a dazed, weary kind of way. It took a moment for her to wake up fully and remember where she was. Her long, dark brown hair flicked across her shoulders as she looked about the classroom to regain her bearings. The breeze drifting in through the window had been cool and relaxing and her teacher’s voice had been droning away gently for some time.

  She was used to having odd daydreams, as she had them on a fairly regular basis. In this daydream she had still been in her classroom but all around her were autumn leaves of red, yellow, brown and gold, falling from the ceiling. A quick glance out of the open window explained where the muse for this had come from. The trees in the park next to her school were waving listlessly in the light wind, their leaves dropping away here and there to flutter slowly to the ground. Her school was located on the outskirts of Budapest on the hilly Buda side. It was one of the only English speaking high schools in the city and at seventeen Amy was in her final year.

  Philosophy was actually one of her favourite subjects but she had a terrible habit of nodding off in any and all of her classes. As a result, her marks were not exceptional and her teachers frequently noted on her school reports, “Amriel could achieve very highly if she applied herself and concentrated more in class.” She was by no means a rebellious student. She did try to stay focused but too often her imagination would simply run away with her. This was precisely what had happened now, despite a relatively interesting discussion. The class had been considering the concept of God, which normally would have had Amy actively participating. And yet, somehow the rhythm of her teacher’s speech and the calming breeze had lulled her into daydreams yet again.

  “Amriel,” Martay hissed, “Mrs Nemeth asked you a question.”

  Martay looked nervously from Amy to Mrs Nemeth who was looking at Amy with barely contained frustration.

  “If you are quite ready to pay attention again Amriel, would you be so kind as to repeat back to me what your assignment is this term?”

  Mrs Nemeth’s voice perfectly matched her strict and orderly appearance. She was a teacher who commanded respect from her students without ever needing to ask for it and despite her persona, got on very well with the more engaged members of her class. As a matter of fact, she was quite fond of Amy but her patience was consistently tested by Amy’s apparent inability to focus.

  “I… Sorry Mrs Nemeth, I didn’t hear what it was. I got a bit distracted.”

  Mrs Nemeth rolled her eyes and clucked her tongue in an exasperated way.

  “A two thousand word essay on the connection between creation and Godliness” she stated firmly. “Very well, class dismissed. If anyone has any questions about the essay, you may discuss them with me in my office. You know my contact hours.”

  The class filled with the noise of chairs being slid back as the students rose to their feet, gathered their things and bustled towards the door. Amy turned to her friend Martay who was also putting his books away, preparing to leave.

  “Thanks for trying to get my attention. I don’t know what happened!” Amy said ruefully.

  Martay responded with a warm smile. They had known each other for quite a while now. Something about their oddities had drawn them together and they had become fast friends. They were both very artistic people in their own way. Amy was a very talented violinist and a bit of a writer, whilst Martay was an exceptionally talented painter. However, this was not a talent which a stranger would have expected of him based on first appearances. Martay was tall and solidly built with noticeably strong arms and legs. He had dark brown eyes which matched his somewhat scruffy hair and a strong angular face. Most people assumed when they met him that he must have been either a footballer or a water polo player but this was far from the truth. In fact, Martay was utterly disinterested in most sports with the exception of skiing. Unlike Amy he was also a native Hungarian who had been sent to the high school to improve his English. Aside from occasionally muddling terms, his English was excellent despite his very strong Hungarian accent.

  “It’s nothing new Amy. You fall asleep in class more consistently than our mailman delivers the post.”

  Amy had to grin. They were the last people left in the room and as they picked up their bags and headed for the door Amy realised that no one had closed the windows. She strode over, quickly pulled the windows in and latched them shut. She took a moment to look out at the trees in the park. She loved autumn. It was her favourite season by far, a beautiful blend of colours in the leaves, filling the sky and covering the ground.

  They were making their way towards their lockers to drop off their bags when Mrs Nemeth approached them heading in the opposite direction. Thinking she knew why, Amy told the teacher in passing, “It’s alright Mrs Nemeth, I shut the window before I left.”

  “Thank you Amriel,” she replied, “but actually I left some paperwork in my desk that I need.”

  Mrs Nemeth continued down the hall to the classroom they had just left. When she entered however, she stopped dead. Amriel had indeed shut the windows but the entire room was covered in a layer of leaves.

 
Amy’s final class had been Hungarian which Martay, naturally, did not need to attend. This meant that on days like today he was allowed to leave a good hour earlier than everyone else.

  Amy soon bade her other friends farewell and they went their separate ways. Richard and Michelle caught the bus whereas Amy walked through the park. By foot at least she lived relatively close to her school but the park between it and the suburb where she lived forced cars the long way around meaning walking was just as quick. It was a relatively long walk along the twisting path but she enjoyed the peace and quiet. Amy certainly preferred it to catching the bus and even walked in winter when it got properly cold. Today she also hoped to meet up with Martay. He often went to the park to do some painting when he had an early afternoon. There was a secluded area near the middle that was hidden from the path by a dense thicket of trees and this was the place Amy expected to find him. She and her friends often went there together.

  She set off at a casual pace. Leaves rustled around her feet and after a few minutes this was the only sound she could hear besides the wind gently rocking the tree branches, making them creak. Occasionally another person would walk past in the opposite direction or she would be overtaken by a push bike. Soon she reached the line of trees that marked her friends’ hideaway and she left the path. To her delight she found Martay there as expected, cursing angrily in Hungarian as he gingerly plucked a leaf off the canvas he was working on. As Amy approached he finally looked up.

  “I wanted to paint the falling leaves but the stupid things keep getting on my canvas!”

  Amy walked up beside him and took a good look at the painting. She couldn’t help but smile. A leaf print was clearly visible, etched into the fresh paint. “I think you should keep it like that” she said. “It’s sort of like the meeting of an object and its own reflection in water. Very...” she paused to summon all the cheek she could, “artistic!” she finished with a smirk. “Seriously though, it actually looks pretty cool.”

  “You’re just trying to see something good in something bad” Martay replied but in truth his heart was lightened knowing that Amy had praised his work.

  “Are you about to head home or are you going to keep painting?” she asked him.

  “I was about to pack up. The light won’t be any good soon anyway.”

  Amy was still smiling at him and he smiled back.

  “Amy, I was thinking…”

  He paused. In truth he had wanted to ask Amy out on a date for a long time now but had never worked up the courage. The problem was, they had been close friends for so long now that they did most things together anyway. Making it clear that he wanted to define one of their catch ups as a date could be embarrassing and awkward. If he spelt it out, Amy would know exactly how he felt and he didn’t really want her to know that for sure, unless he knew that she felt the same way about him first.

  “Would you like to come for dinner tonight? I know your parents are away at the moment so if you come around you won’t have to cook.”

  This was a copout and Martay was instantly furious with himself. With the wind blowing Amy’s hair gently about her shoulders she looked almost surreal, like something out of a movie. He felt sheepish as he waited for her response.

  “Thanks, but I have to get that new philosophy essay started. My next two weeks are crazy for assessment so I need to finish it as quickly as I can.”

  Martay’s heart sank. He knew this wasn’t a rejection of any kind. She was still wearing a warm smile which clearly told him that she was responding as a friend to his invitation and nothing more.

  “No problem,” he replied, “I suppose I should get started on it as well.”

  He tried to keep his voice casual and carefree, and mostly managed it. This wasn’t the first time he had been in a situation like this with her.

  “Do you need any help with it?” Amy asked. “I know you don’t always get enough time” she said carefully. The fact of the matter was Martay’s father had left their family when he was very young. His mother was a good financial provider but she was almost never at home because of her work. This meant that Martay had to look after his siblings as if he was their father and it made his life very hard sometimes.

  “No, it’s ok,” he replied. “Mum said she could afford a baby sitter for our test period this year. Thank you though!” He put on a strong face and Amy nodded her understanding.

  Martay quickly packed up his things and they headed back to the path towards their home suburb. It was a little under ten minutes before they reached the end of the park. Here they separated. Amy lived directly ahead to the south whereas Martay lived a few blocks to the east, back towards the Danube.

  Amy strolled through the streets and it wasn’t long before she reached her house. Both of Amy’s parents were very well off and her house would have better been described as a small manor. It was three stories high on a steep hill and the view offered from its upper windows was staggering. As daylight faded and the lights of the city flickered on, Amy had a beautiful view of the old palace on her right and the Parliament house across the Danube, glistening brightly amid the stunning city skyline. At the moment Amy took little notice of it. She made herself a very rushed dinner before settling down in the lounge room to begin work on her essay.

  She considered the matter for a long time before starting to form a draft of the essay itself but even then, it was only really a skeleton outline. The fire she had lit had well and truly died down. She gave up, deciding she couldn’t do anything else tonight. In her experience, the best way to encourage fresh ideas was to sleep on it. She frequently solved problems while she was sleeping, often waking up in the middle of the night with solutions. She hoped this strategy would work for her tonight as well.

  It might have been a good plan but it was only nine thirty in the evening and Amy didn’t really feel tired so much as frustrated. She re-stoked the fire with fresh wood and grabbed a novel off one of the bookcases which lined the walls. After settling down into the armchair again she read late into the night without giving any real heed to the struggle she would have getting up the next morning. She had become so engrossed in the book that she eventually fell asleep in the chair where she was. Her head lulled gently to the side and the book she had been reading slowly slipped out of her hand, falling with a dull thud to the ground. The noise wasn’t enough to wake her. At first her dreams were random and incoherent. Then they changed, replaced by a long coherent stream of thought, unbroken and much fuller in detail than most.

  Amy walked down the long, wide corridor. There were doors on either side of her and in places the walls between the doors were lined with lockers. The ceiling here was high and airy and allowed a lot of space for sound to move around in, rebounding loudly off the mix of wood and brick. Amy’s steady footsteps echoed around her in a way she had never heard here before. Normally the corridor was full of movement and activity, with students running about trying to get to classes. At the moment though, there was no one else around to make a single sound. Amy was entirely alone. She continued to walk ahead with conviction. She needed something out of her locker. She couldn’t remember what it was at the moment but she was certain she needed something from it. She strode without hesitation all the way to the end of the corridor, then right, into the senior’s wing of the school. The sunlight streamed brightly through the tall, framed windows here. Amy had always loved those windows. She admired them as she walked; large panes of glass set into a roughly painted wooden frame that separated each window into four rectangular parts. She often enjoyed sitting in the wing at lunch, soaking up the warmth that the sunlight offered on an otherwise cold day in autumn, but there was no warmth in the sunlight today. The hair on Amy’s arms prickled.

  She knelt down and grasped the lock in one hand whilst starting to twist the dial with the other. She stopped for a moment to notice a long scratch across the number panel which stood out at her. It had been dropped earlier that year onto the concrete floor, receiving the
long scratch as a result. She shook herself. She wasn’t even sure why she had suddenly stopped to look at it in detail, it wasn’t as though it was of any concern. The detail had simply grabbed her attention. She flicked the dial around clockwise, counter-clockwise and back again instinctively until the lock clicked open with a gentle tug. She swung the locker door open and grabbed the philosophy book she needed. Of course, that was why she had come to her locker. She needed the book for her work on the philosophy essay. She hastily stuffed the book into her backpack, snapped the lock back into place and hurried back the way she had come, heading for the exit.

  She found the school strangely eerie when it was empty like this. Every noise that she made seemed to be amplified excessively so that her footfall, the rustle of her clothes and the jingle of the zipper tabs on her bag were played back at her off the walls. The sensation became a bit overbearing and she started to feel oddly nervous. Did it really make sense for her to be completely alone here? She didn’t think too much more about it but instead quickened her pace down the corridor to the entry hall. Something was definitely out of place. That much she was sure of.

  She tried to break into a run but her legs wouldn’t move properly beneath her. It was as if her muscles were all half asleep and her legs nearly collapsed from under her at the sheer effort of trying to run. Her nervousness increased at the bizarre feeling. Her feet were heavy like lead and felt awkward and foreign to her as she forced herself onward at an odd hobbling pace. She pinched her arm firmly as she moved. It hurt like crazy. She couldn’t be dreaming, she thought. So where was everyone?

  She finally made it to the front door and pushed against it heavily so that it swung wide open with a clang. The sunlight here shone directly down into her face and her eyes reeled in pain. She pulled a pair of sunglasses out of her bag in response.