Strange Shores

39

In the middle of the night he wakes with a jolt from a dream and blinks at his surroundings. He sees only darkness beyond the lantern’s ring of light but can still sense the presence of the boy in his dream. At first he isn’t sure whether he has been asleep and dreaming, or whether it was something else. A sudden dread seizes him, followed by a flood of relief when he realises it was only a nightmare. Curiously, it had felt like the re-echo or revisiting of a dream he’d had in the most wretched period of his youth, which he has never forgotten.

In the dream, which shocks him so violently awake, he is lying on his side, alone in the house in his sleeping bag, covered by a blanket. The house is open to the elements. It is dark and eerie. All at once he feels a presence behind him. Turning deliberately, he peers blindly into the blackness, until a vision materialises of a dejected-looking boy whose eyes meet his.

The vision vanishes.

Erlendur lies in the darkness, meditating on the dream that had woken him once long ago with such a terrible start. He recognised the boy in the vision: it was himself.