If you ask Peter what his worst nightmare is, he will reply with two simple words.

Dream Devils.

Dream Devils trap you in your dreams. Once you fall asleep, you are in their realm. Strange marks appear on your body in the morning, injuries you don’t remember getting, not in the real world anyway. Escaping is useless. You strike a deal with a Dream Devil. What a fool you are...for they will pursue you unto death, until one day, your dream self dies.

Peter knows a lot about this. He has read stories, vivid and dangerous, stories about souls in hell who have to feed each other across a table with chopsticks so long, that no food ever touches their lips; a punishment for gluttony or greed. The endless cycle of trying over and over; Prometheus would know, his liver reforms only to have it pecked out continuously by an eagle. Or being in a building with stairs leading to blank walls and no exit, and rooms to unknown destinations. Some may say worst of all, are the horrors of your own mind. But this is not a dream world. It is Peter's reality.

Alex's body is by the lockers. There is blood.

“Peter, to the office! Oh, look what you’ve done…” Jane Morgan clutches her pencil until it’s ready to snap. It is not good for her weak constitution; her wispy grey hairs and dark circles that melt down her cheekbones like sorbet in summer. Who has grey hairs in their 30’s? Nearly all of her friends if she was being honest.

“I’m disappointed, so disappointed kids.” Their form tutor wants to get back to her marking, to reach the summit of her work before school’s end. She glances helplessly at her books, then at the class, who are jeering and yelling with shouts of ‘ooohs’, and ‘ahhhs’.

“Class, settle down! I won’t say it again-” But they are too excited to listen. They never listen. Are you the devil’s children? She wants to ask, why give me so much trouble? So, she remains in her seat amongst the yells and taunts, and lets them get on with it. Her eyes stray to the clock, ticking with regularity. Fifteen minutes until lunch.

In pre-school, she remembers this much, the two boys had been neighbours. Alex was big, stout and silent; a bull. His parents had split before he was born, and he lived with his mother on the edge of town in a semi- detached, painted a lurid shade of yellow. The garden was unkempt and a broken rocking chair had stood abandoned on the pavement, almost with a life of its own, warning passers-by to give the family a wide berth. It worked.

The boys had been as different as two sides of a coin, Peter an optimistic yet shy boy who had a way with adults; ‘how’s your day Ms M?’ he would ask, akin to their moods. Brow furrowing with sympathy even before they’d realised they had been having a rough day and been called to account.

He looked after the frogs and hedgehogs in the back yard. In fact, there had been a time he started a farm in the playground, charging 10p for the other kids to pet. He was bright, she had to give him that. Yet, with an almost sixth sense, she knew there was a fuse lurking in the darkness, as the years tolled, a fuse that had just been lit.

Trouble was brewing.

*

Peter was seven years old when Alex Donoghue moved next door. He’d bounded into the garden to search for some stinkbugs to populate his new ginseng fiscus plant, when something made the hairs on the back of his arms rise. A pair of fierce eyes were peeping through a hole in the fence, watching him sullenly. He could hear the slam of a door, a huge orange van backed up to the curb, sweaty movers hauling cardboard boxes and the hissing of an awful white Persian cat that would, in time, lurk around the neighbourhood attacking anything that moved. Even from here, Peter noticed something unusual about those eyes, one brown one green, which he’d later learn had a scientific name; Heterochromia.

He should have taken that day as a warning for what was to come.

Two months later, the unspeakable happened.

“Sammy!”

Alex's satisfied face peered over the top of the fence, alight with horror and a mixture of morbid fascination at what he had done. This was the undeniable fact; Peter's dog Sammy had been poisoned with weed killer. Her body was lying by the back gate. There was weed killer in her food bowl. Peter saw all of this with a detective’s eye for detail and a detachment of feeling that sometimes happens when you’re too upset to grasp what is going on. He could only gape, with bitter tears falling onto Sammy’s fur, who was convulsing. A dribble of froth leaked from her mouth. Peter helplessly scanned the scene of crime, chest tight.

“Mum!” he’d screamed when he’d finally found his voice, as time stood still. He’d been ushered aside. He was afraid to look at his mother’s face, and when he did, it confirmed his greatest fears.

Drained of colour, her hands had trembled, running them slowly through the golden yellow fur he’d spent years of his life brushing and stroking. The way Sammy’s fur faded to white on the stomach, and the curled question mark of her tail, normally swishing in happiness.

His mother gave Peter a sad smile that broke his heart anew. Placing her hands tenderly on Peter’s shoulders, she firmly took charge. Telling him not to look, to be a good boy and go fetch his father, and why didn’t he go watch the TV? Wacky Races was on. She’d take care of this. He remembered walking into the cool, shaded interior of the house and sat, a little bit lost, against the wall.

Such was his first brush with death.

After a sleepless night of reflection, Peter arrived at school bright and early the next day. 29 degrees in the baking sun, an unusual heatwave for a British summer. His shirt stuck to his shoulder blades. Other kids who were later asked, saw him dump his rucksack by a bench, wipe the sweat from his brow, and with the casualness of a friendly reunion, try to strangle Alex in the playground. It was the element of surprise. Alex didn’t expect it, or if he did, he was hardly in a position to argue. He was caught in a head lock and the genuine fear of death made him weak at the knees.

He had been purple in the face when their Physics teacher Mr Graham had finally pulled him off. To Peter, it meant failure; he had not killed Alex like he had intended, and he had wanted to kill him.

Three months later, Alex moved to a cul-de-sac somewhere off the town radar but it didn't matter - it was war. A tug of war of victories and losses; the building of reputations, that was by far the hardest, and a grudge unwavering.

Now, ten years on, Alex begins to awaken. He splutters, shakes his head and lets the dregs of life return to his eyes. Peter should feel relief, but he doesn't. He retreats and leaves the classroom, thinking only of Dream Devils and his hatred of them.

*

When Peter joins them in the library, Kary and Tony are huddled clams in their seats. Kary, with her coat hanger shoulders and slender neck is painting her nails; a purple of blackcurrant sweet wrappers.

“What did the headmaster say?” Tony asks quickly. “Punching Alex wasn't the smartest move.” He sniffs into a tissue, bunching up his freckles. He hates hay fever season.

“Detention.”

“Well that's great! You didn't get expelled!” claps Kary.

“I doubt he would have been expelled, seems a bit drastic.” Tony argues for argument’s sake. Kary glares at him.

“Where’s Dinah?” Peter slings his coat over his chair. The top of her chestnut hair bobs in the left aisle. She has 'David Copperfield' wedged in the bookcase, forehead creased up like folds in linen.

“It's like she's trying to decode it.” Tony lowers his voice.  “Have you asked her?”

“Not yet.” Peter finds himself thinking about the future, 5 years; 10 years from now. His dreams, his careers; his decisions. The road ahead has flags of achievements and failures. Everyday pushes him towards a new challenge that scares him. But there is one thing that scares him beyond all else: change. It is like emerging from a pool and dispelling the tranquillity of the waters, the present slips from his grasp; and then it is gone.

“Ask her what?” Kary frowns, leaning in. She gets nail varnish on her white blouse and curses.

“Never mind Kary,” begins Tony with a pale face; his panda eyes testimony of his sleepless nights revising. “I had an aunt once, extremely loveable, a headmistress in fact. She wouldn’t step outside her house for fear the flowers would suck her memory dry and steal her family.”

“What’s the point of this?”

“I’m worried,” says Tony with the jabbing of a forefinger at Peter’s chest, “she’s becoming like that aunt.” Dinah may appear cautious and hard to read, but Tony has seen her core of steel, the mental strength that carries her through even the darkest night. When she laughs the world holds on. But when strangers meet her they stay away from the ice queen, never getting too close for fear bad luck will spread.