Dream Guy Read online

  Table of Contents

  Legal Page

  Title Page

  Book Description

  Dedication

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  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

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  New Excerpt

  About the Author

  Publisher Page

  Dream Guy

  ISBN # 978-1-78651-761-6

  ©Copyright AZA Clarke 2016

  Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright April 2016

  Edited by Jamie D. Rose

  Finch Books

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Finch Books.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Finch Books. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2016 by Finch Books, Newland House, The Point, Weaver Road, Lincoln, LN6 3QN

  Finch Books is a subsidiary of Totally Entwined Group Limited.

  Battalions of Oblivion

  DREAM GUY

  AZA Clarke

  Book one in the Battalions of Oblivion series

  Every teen has dreams, but only Joe Knightley can make his dreams reality. Even the nightmares…

  There can be only one Dream Master.

  Joe has been falling asleep everywhere, and he has enough on his plate with wrangling his wayward best mate, suppressing the urge to murder his little sister and facing off with Charlie Meek, the knife-wielding bully who makes school a misery for so many.

  Joe does not need the discovery that he can make his dreams come true. At first, turning a classroom into an aquarium and conjuring up a Lamborghini are amusing ways to use this new power. But Joe soon realizes he’s roused an enemy far deadlier than Charlie Meek.

  Drawn into a duel with a being who has had centuries of experience, Joe must fight for everything he cares for. But deciding exactly what he holds dear is perhaps the biggest battle of all.

  Dedication

  For Hugo who may read it,

  Sebastian who suggested it

  and Peter who has read it.

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Radio Times: Immediate Media Company Ltd.

  Olympics: United States Olympic Committee

  Playstation: Sony

  MTV: Viacomm International Inc.

  Tintin and Snowy: Hergé

  Thompson and Tompson: Casterman

  Dennis the Menace: North America Syndicate Inc.

  Gnasher: Barrie Appleby

  Desperate Dan: David Parkins

  Batman: DC Comics General Partnership

  Superman: DC Comics General Partnership

  X-Men: Marvel Characters Inc.

  Spider-man: Marvel Characters Inc.

  Simpsons: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

  Abdullah: Matt Groening

  Sandman: DC Comics General Partnership

  Raw: Penguin Books

  Tony Hawk: Hawk 900 Brands LLC

  Godzilla: Toho Co. Ltd.

  Murciélago: Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A.

  Lamborghini: Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A.

  Don’t Stop Me Now: Freddy Mercury

  The X-Factor: ITV PLC

  McDonald’s: McDonald's Corporation

  Tesco: Tesco PLC

  Gallardo: Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A.

  Volkswagen: Volkswagen Aktiengsellschaft Corporation

  Golf: Volkswagen Aktiengsellschaft Corporation

  War and Peace: Leo Tolstoy

  Maybelline: L’Oreal USA Creative Inc.

  Google: Google Inc.

  To Kill a Mockingbird: Harper Lee

  Nurofen: RB UK Commercial Ltd.

  Concorde: EADS and BAE Systems

  Fiat: Fiat Group Marketing & Corporate Communications S.p.A.

  Maglite: Mag Instrument Inc.

  Armani: Georgio Armani S.p.A.

  Disney: Disney Enterprises Inc.

  Red Bull: Red Bull GMBH Corporation

  iPod: Apple Inc.

  Learjet: Learjet Inc.

  Vogue: Advance Magazine Publishers Inc.

  Velux: VKR Holding

  Scrabble: Hasbro Inc.

  Coke: Coca-Cola Company

  Levi’s: Levi Strauss and Company

  Titan: Titan Comics

  Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 20th Century Fox Television

  Camper: Camper SL Corporation

  Maltesers: Mars Inc.

  Clark’s: C&J Clark International Ltd.

  Blake and Mortimer: Edgar Jacobs

  Sprite: Coca-Cola Company

  De Beers: De Beers Diamond Jewellers Inc.

  Princess Leia: Lucasfilm Entertainment Company Ltd.

  Timberland: TBL Licensing LLC

  Gameboy: Nintendo

  Monopoly: Hasbro Inc.

  Sainsbury’s: J Sainsbury PLC

  Radio Four: BBC

  Central Southern: Reading Community Radio Ltd.

  Forbidden Planet: Forbidden Planet LLC

  Nike: Nike Inc.

  Sony: Sony

  Nokia: Nokia Corporation

  Bailey’s: R & A Bailey and Company Ltd.

  Billy Elliott: Elton John & Lee Hall

  Chapter One

  Fishpeople

  A late lesson on a damp November afternoon… Joe had already had sports and maths, psychology, English and French. He was shattered, especially after having walked away from so much aggro from bloody Charlie Meek during break and lunch. His classroom was dark and sweaty. There was no need for blinds—none of which worked anyway—but the windows were moist with condensation, and the room was quiet, apart from the hum of the projector and numerous teenage jaws masticating chunks of gum.

  Joe was trying to stay awake. He liked looking at Mr. Crosbie’s pictures, and these were strange—full of intense, somber colors. There were snowy scenes marred by the blood of children being killed against sunsets gleaming through bare branches, crucifixions with crowds of blokes looking as though they’d come from the pub after a heavy Saturday night then contorted bodies surrounded by flying fish and walking rats with hats and curled mustachios. That couldn’t be right. He squinted, but the familiar heaviness of his head and eyelids assailed him. He pinched himself to stay awake, but the heat was too much. Even the discomfort of the creaking plastic chair couldn’t st
op him from drifting away from the classroom and into the deepest sleep.

  Then he opened his eyes. Something had woken him. He looked around and recoiled. Every student in the class had a fish head—wispy catfish whiskers over suckery open mouths, barracuda jaws, weird mola mola fins where their hair ought to be, a couple of trout with delicate little teeth and tongues. They all had those glassy eyes, just like it said in recipe books—bright, moist, black eyes. They were breathing air. Then it seemed to occur to them that they were breathing air and that, technically, they couldn’t.

  Their sucky mouths gaped, fishy lips opening and closing faster and faster. They began bumping into one another, blundering about, their bodies still human but their brains too small to govern those bodies. Then they revolved with the swirl and drive of a shoal of mackerel in the sea, no longer threshing, now turning on Joe with glazed stares—glares that turned from accusation into threat. They were an exact copy of the fish in that slide of Crosbie’s.

  Joe scrambled out of his seat and stood by the door. One of the fish-people stepped forward, then another, and they came at him. He raised his hands to fend them off then the first one reached him. He felt its fishy lips puckering and flapping against his palm. It was real. He wrestled with the door handle then fell into the corridor, slamming the door as he left the room, only to hear the sodden thump of a fishy nose against the wood. He slumped against the wall. The fluorescent lights were bright, and there was a chilly draft from the fire escape that had been left open by someone making a break for freedom after period seven. An English teacher was approaching, but he took forever to reach Joe because with every step, the corridor got longer.

  “Joe Knightley, isn’t it? What are you doing out here?” Mr. Tucker’s voice was distant. “You look as green as this wall. Hey, Joe, are you all right? Joe, grab my hand, quick.”

  But Joe didn’t have time to take Mr. Tucker’s hand, because he’d been absorbed into the wall and was now trapped in the layer of mesh and plaster, gasping like the fish in Mr. Crosbie’s room. The teacher was running his hands over the wall, calling his name over and over. Then Joe disintegrated and melted right through it, back into the classroom that was full of water like the fish tank at the fishmongers where they kept lobsters. Now the classroom was awash and the fish people were swimming around and around and around, their bodies still in their school uniforms, all of them chasing after one another until they became a shoal like in a documentary—swooping, splitting, dipping and recombining. Joe swam to the window to check his reflection. He had a human head, which meant he would drown if he stayed in the fish tank.

  Mr. Crosbie was there, still showing slide after slide, but he was wearing scuba gear, apparently unfazed by the transformation of his habitat. Joe swam to a window and wrestled with it. He pushed up the lever handle then took hold of the catch to ease it open. Water started gushing out, and Joe pushed his head free, taking long gulps of cold air. He turned around as water cascaded around him. The fish-people pressed up against the window and tried to flap it shut, but the volume of water was too great, pouring out and out and out onto the ground. Fortunately for Joe, fins weren’t equipped to close windows. Mr. Crosbie waded through the water, still thigh-high in the classroom, and he flicked on the light. Everyone turned to look at him. They shook their heads in bafflement and in the whir of movement, one by one, they regained their normal heads, although these were now soaked, causing some dismay among those who’d used gel or mousse to maintain their favored hairstyle.

  “Joe, I know Hieronymus Bosch can seem a bit strange, but he doesn’t normally cause my students to chunder out of the window. Have you quite finished?” Mr. Crosbie took off his aqualung and diving mask.

  “I wasn’t being sick, sir. It was the water.” How can I explain? It started as a dream…then somehow I made my dream actually come true. They’re going to think I’ve gone bonkers. I think I’ve gone bonkers, but it did happen. It really happened. My dream came true. No way I can say that out loud.

  “Give him a detention, sir,” urged several girls, their hair hanging in limp rats-tails. “Go on. He pinched the condoms from last time and used ’em to make water bombs. It was him. We saw.”

  His friend Smokey spoke up. “How can you have seen anything? Anyway, look around you. There isn’t any evidence.” Smokey’s tone was customarily derisory. “Witless bimbos.”

  The girls turned as one on Smokey. “Give him a detention an’ all, sir. Go on. He’s abusing us. That’s bullying that is, calling us bimbos. Go on, sir. Give him one.”

  “Smokey, Joe, get out of here before the lynch mob gets you. And Joe, try not to nod off in next week’s lesson.” Mr. Crosbie nodded at the boys. As they left, Joe heard him address the hyena-like hoydens surrounding him. “Now, girls, where’s your sense of humor? What sort of fish did you turn into, Kaylee? A monkfish, I think—not particularly attractive but very tasty grilled with a saffron sauce.”

  As they came out, Mr. Tucker was waiting outside the classroom with the school nurse, pointing at the wall and saying, “Look. He was standing here, then the wall just sucked him up.” The teacher closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the wall, as if fighting off tears.

  The nurse looked understanding and patted him on the shoulder. “I think you should see someone about this, Mark. Really I do. Look. Here’s Joe Knightley now. Everything all right, Joe?”

  “Yeah, fine, Mrs. Naismith.”

  “You see, Mark? Joe’s absolutely fine. He’s been in Mr. Crosbie’s classroom all this time. Learn anything useful in PSHE this week then, Joe?”

  “Not really.” Joe burrowed into his rucksack for the brochure Crosbie had handed out. It was sodden and disintegrating. He offered it to the nurse. “Here. It’s about how to be a town councilor, I think.”

  “Off you go then, Joe. And is that Silas with you?”

  No one was meant to call Smokey by his given name, but Joe could see that he was too keen to ask Joe what the hell was going on to make a big issue of Mrs. Naismith’s slip. Joe let Smokey hustle him down the corridor and out of the building before anyone else could interrupt.

  “So?” Smokey stopped as they rounded the corner of Ashgate Way and sat down on someone’s garden wall.

  Joe bit his lip. “So what?”

  Smokey reached into his jacket for his cigarettes and lighter. With disgust, he took one sodden fag out of the packet then scrunched up the whole squelchy mess and tossed it into the garden behind him. “Four quid down the drain. So why did we all grow fish heads, and you didn’t? If it hadn’t been for you, we’d all have been swimming around there for the next week without anyone noticing. Mind you, it was quite cool being a piranha. I was just about to give Lisa a little nibble, then you came along and opened the window.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t understand anything.” Joe shook his head. A flurry of movement caught his eye, and he hauled Smokey away as an irate woman emerged from the house on whose garden wall they were sitting. She yelled at them, snatched up Smokey’s crumpled cigarettes and hurled the pack after them with a force that should have earned her a place on the Olympic javelin team.

  “Don’t do that again, you little sods!”

  Smokey made to turn around so he could tell her to eff off, but Joe was still tugging at his sleeve, determined not to let things get out of hand. Smokey shrugged then went back to the fishy business.

  “What do you mean, you don’t understand?”

  “I was asleep. I just woke up, and it’d happened. Wasn’t Tucker looking sick as a parrot? That was worth it. Weird though. Could you breathe? What was it like when the water came in?”

  “Crosbie made it happen. He just whipped out his scuba kit from somewhere and turned a stopcock and the whole place filled with water really quickly. Remember when we went on that trip to the battlefields in Belgium?”

  “Yeah. Flanders field trip. What about it?”

  “Remember that weird fountain outside Ypres? The tap standing in the
middle of nowhere and just pouring out water?”

  Immediately Joe recalled the huge blue tap with water gushing out of it, suspended in the air on a little roundabout on the way into Ypres.

  “Well, it was like that,” continued Smokey. “Just a big tap with loads of water filling the place up in seconds. It was a relief, speaking as a fish, I can tell you. We were all lying around flapping our gills until then.”

  “Why was the projector still working? When I came back in the room, it still had that weird picture up on the wall, but you guys were all swimming around, all going in the same direction. Did you know you were a fish, or were you just in a fish state?”

  “I had conscious thoughts, like how fat and juicy Lisa’s legs looked, but I didn’t think, ‘Hey, man, how did I get to be a fish?’ That seemed natural.” Smokey paused. “Do you think you made it happen when you fell asleep or something?”

  “Don’t be daft. How could I do anything like that?”

  “You’re bonkers, you are. Look. I’m going to be late back. I’d better get home.”

  Smokey nodded and thumped Joe on the back before loping off into the darkness. Joe adjusted his backpack and walked on toward his house. He felt damp and increasingly cold, so he quickened his pace and was almost running by the time he reached the path. The lights were on in the front and upstairs, which meant that Mum was home.

  After his shower, he came downstairs in shorts and a T-shirt. His parents might nag about money, but at least they kept the house at a decent temperature, despite moaning nonstop about heating a drafty Edwardian barrack. Joe still remembered going around the house the first time six years before. They’d left Liesel, then three, with Gran, but both Ben and Joe had wanted to see the house. High ceilings, weirdly shaped rooms, the old-fashioned bathroom and the open-plan kitchen leading into the walled garden with an apple tree and a mass of rhododendrons… They’d all loved it. It had been way too expensive, but somehow his parents had scraped together the deposit. Joe had been eight when they’d moved in. First he’d shared with Ben, but when it came to Ben’s GCSE year, they’d moved Joe upstairs to the third-story loft, which had been converted into two bedrooms and a shower room.