The Valley

Running

When she was a child, Sam had often awoken in her narrow starter bed; the one with the gold tipped bedposts which glinted in the milky streak of moonlight sneaking between the yellow candy-stripe curtains. Her heart thumped loudly beneath her Care Bears nightie, the ghosts of dream monsters still flitting around her. She would take a deep breath before slipping her feet out of the safety of the duvet and planting them onto the soft embrace of carpet. Quickly rounding the foot of her bed, she buried her face in the soft fur of Mr Wiggles, her favourite bear, as she passed the softly glowing unicorn night-light in the plug socket. Its dreamy smile seemed changed to a too-wide grin in the aftertaste of her nightmares.

The door to her mum's room was a left turn on the landing and she knew just how much to push without it creaking a protest at having to work in the small hours of the night. Her small feet padded across the thinner carpet, trying to avoid the toys and clothes that littered the path, like a soldier crossing the battlefield. Mr Wiggles was thrown to safety first, landing on the enormous bed before she clambered up and cocooned herself in the plush duvet.

'Bad dream, again?' her mum would whisper into the darkness, thickly.

Sam wriggled closer to the voice and nodded her head against her mum's chest, breathing in the rich night-time scent of her warm skin and coconut body butter.

'Is Mr Wiggles okay? Did you protect him? You know how much of a scaredy bear he is.'

Sam giggled. 'Mhmm.' She hugged Mr Wiggles as her mum's arms enveloped them both snugly. They chatted lazily like this until the sun pinked the sky and her mum got up to make them breakfast in bed, or until Sam's eyelids drooped and the nightmare was long forgotten in the pleasant rising and falling of her mum's easy breaths.

Soon though, the toys were no longer an obstacle course across the carpet but instead packed up into plastic boxes and the clothes sealed into translucent bags which had to be vacuumed to lie flat. New tables appeared on the landing with vases of flowers and dishes of shiny pebbles, and breakfast in bed became a toast-crumb issue.

'Reg likes the place to look nice,' her mother said, simply.

Reg was a grizzly-faced, stocky mechanic who wore white tank tops that invariably had yellowed and crusty stains under the arm pits by the end of the day, and thought slapping a woman's behind was the ultimate compliment. He insisted on calling himself Sam's stepdad, even though he'd never cough up the cash towards a wedding and had all the parenting skills of a sledgehammer.

Now there was no room for Mr Wiggles or Sam when she sneaked through to her mother's bedroom at night.

'Go back to your room,' Reg would grunt, and when Sam didn't move, he added, 'Aren't you a bit old to have a teddy? No wonder you have so many nightmares.'

Sam would leave, eyes stinging, though she never let the tears fall.

Her mother tried to mediate between them. 'Ohh, honey. You know Reg has to work early sometimes. That's all it is,' she said one morning over the frosty atmosphere at the breakfast table. With a dismissive ruffle of Sam's dark hair, she handed her a bowl of coloured hoops, and received a light tap on the bottom and a crinkled wink from Reg for her trouble.

So, as the years went on, the routine changed. Instead, Sam would pull her trainers on in the pitch black of her room, under the watchful gaze of the occupants of the band posters lining her walls. Mr Wiggles had succumbed to the monster under the bed long ago and lay there gathering dust, his one remaining eye peering out at her feet from his nest of too-small rollerblades, old diaries and dead socks. Sam crept out to the landing and with a glance at the bedroom door to the left, turned right and softly padded down the stairs and out into the cold reality of night and the lonely, abandoned park that lay beyond the crest of the hill.

By seventeen, she was lying awake in the uneasy darkness of the unfamiliar room of whatever lad she was seeing at the time. After their clandestine fumbling and short-lived breathy passions, she lay awake awkwardly, staring at the ceiling, and listened for the longer breaths or faint snoring as he finally drifted off to sleep. Then she'd quietly get up. She slipped her underwear back on, then her jeans – stuffing her hand into the pockets to find the pill she kept there, and gulp the right day down – and once she had her hoodie and boots on, she climbed carefully back out the window she'd entered by, and off to the park to swing and smoke in silence before getting home as the sky bloomed open.

Not much changed even after she moved out. She hadn't been back to the house even after Reg left her mother for some blonde waitress, but even in her apartment waking up in the middle of the night brought back the swarm of memories. Only now, living in the city, she could quash them in 24 hour bars and drunken kisses instead of in parks, alone.

It was a strange sensation then, to wake up screaming in the middle of a Welsh valley surrounded by five complete strangers. Especially when those strangers were crying out too.

As the noise died down, they all stared at one another in the uncomfortable silence that followed, punctuated only by their heavy breathing.

'Jesus...' Brett said, finally. His shaven head had wet sweat trails snaking across it in a strange pattern. 'What the fuck?'

Naveen was sitting up with his knees bent but together, staring with his wide brown eyes. 'I-I had the weirdest dream.'

'Yeah, no shit, bro. I think we all did.' Brett blurted. 'I was running. Like, not pansies on a feckin' treadmill running, but holy crap, some Die Hard, dead-if-I-don't, running.'

Sam's skin blushed uneasily like a tickle of a spider running over her body. The dregs of her dream were hazy, melting away like ice on her tongue, but something about running made her stomach vault.

Naveen was nodding fervently as Brett spoke about not remembering much but he thought something was there with him. Naveen added a detail from his dream, smelling something earthy at first and then a horrible, sickly smell, and seemed to gasp when Brett said that sounded like his dream too. They turned to Alice then, who was crying softly, and asked if she had the same dream. She nodded silently and Naveen hesitantly gestured as if to hug her, which she seemed to think about and eventually decided it was okay. Mike had his notebook out and seemed to be trying to write down what he could remember from his dream. Maggie, the auburn haired lady narrowed her eyes at the group, though her face seemed softer as her icy demeanour was punctured, clearly unnerved. She buried herself into her Bible. And then all eyes were on Sam.

'Sam? What did you dream?' Mike probed, gently, pen in hand.

Sam opened her mouth. Her gaze darted from one expectant face to another in the circle and back again, as they waited for her to lay herself bare right here, right in front of all of them on the cold, damp valley basin by the dead fire. Her palms felt clammy and her mind jolted in a weird sense of dreamlike déjà vu. She scrambled for a bit of composure but her reactions had already kicked in, honed through years of practice. She was up, grabbing her holdall and an empty drinks bottle from the day before. 'Uh, nothing. I don't remember,' she lied awkwardly and took off at a quick jog, ignoring the calls of Mike and the almost tangible gaze of the group upon her back. The sun licked the horizon now and breathed a twinge of light blue into the blanket of dawn as Sam ran past the shelled train carriage and towards the line of thick trees and the cool, shadowy solitude they promised.