The Dream Catcher Diaries: The Dream Catcher Diaries, #1

By Alexander Patrick

Everyone has a story to tell and this is the story of Matrix – the Dream Catcher.       

It begins in 2012 in a small cottage hospital in the Scottish Highlands. A boy with yellow eyes is born – destined to be an outcast – a god – a devil – Matrix. A man who will suffer more than any man and who will lead a revolution to free people like him from institutional abuse and murder.
Matrix can read your heart, steal your dreams and make them into your darkest nightmares. This is his promise: no more secrets; no more lies; we share each other’s reality; your reality is now mine – and mine is yours.
He promised us his truth and gave it to us in his autobiography The Matrix Solution, except it was not the complete story.
Now at last, the Dream Catcher speaks out and we finally understand the truth behind The Matrix Solution and what happened in that Bristol warehouse in June 2047.

These are the Dream Catcher Diaries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexander Patrick
• Release date: Jan 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386856979

Book preview

The Dream Catcher Diaries

Everyone has a story to tell and this is the story of Matrix – the Dream Catcher.       

It begins in 2012 in a small cottage hospital in the Scottish Highlands. A boy with yellow eyes is born – destined to be an outcast – a god – a devil – Matrix. A man who will suffer more than any man and who will lead a revolution to free people like him from institutional abuse and murder.

Matrix can read your heart, steal your dreams and make them into your darkest nightmares. This is his promise: no more secrets; no more lies; we share each other’s reality; your reality is now mine – and mine is yours.

He promised us his truth and gave it to us in his autobiography The Matrix Solution, except it was not the complete story.

Now at last, the Dream Catcher speaks out and we finally understand the truth behind The Matrix Solution and what happened in that Bristol warehouse in June 2047.

These are the Dream Catcher Diaries.

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Foreword

Everyone has a story to tell and one of the most famous of our time is the story of The Matrix Solution, first published in 2040. It sold in its millions until it was banned by the state. It is a book most of you will have read and all of you will have heard of. This is the book loved and revered by us all, because this is our story, the story of the substrata.

The life of Matrix is surrounded by myths and legends, and for many years his story has been debated in the media, but what is the truth? Matrix promised you his reality, but in the end, The Matrix Solution only ever gave you part of that reality. The Dream Catcher Diaries has put this right. Before, identities had to be hidden, people had to be protected. Now it no longer matters. This, at last, is his story in full. Nothing has been hidden and all has been revealed. We have here the true story of what happened that night in Bristol, the night of the Final Reckoning, of what happened beneath the surface of The Matrix Solution and after its publication.

Many people have agreed to contribute to these diaries in the interest of setting the record straight. Many friends and family have chosen to speak out. We have not found it easy. It has been a painful journey for us all, but one that had to be taken.

When I was asked to write the foreword to this very special book, I was at first flattered and then scared witless. Who was I to write words for such a publication? I know very little about words. I am an ignorant man who as a child spent little time at school – but then I thought again. There are few people who have known and loved this man as I have done. I may have little education, but I do have belief. From the first time I met Alexander, on that Devon beach so long ago, I knew I was meeting my saviour, my personal saviour and that of the world as well.

You doubt my word? All I can say is that he was the first and only person to believe in me. He believed when everyone around him told him the truth about who I was and what I was capable of. It never stopped him from reaching out to me. He believed I was better than I really was and he forced me to live up to that myth.

So why shouldn’t I have believed in him?

He saved me.

His story is the story of one person and of everyone. That is his secret. He is unique and universal at the same time. He is the Dream Catcher.

This is your book; read it, enjoy it, cherish it. Pass the word on to those who cannot read. You know what the word is. The word is hope. It is all we have, hold on to it and believe.

Steve Carter, September 2091

Table of Contents

Foreword

Prologue

Death of a Dream Catcher

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 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

The Matrix Solution

by

Jamie Cameron

Introduction

Part One

The Dream Catcher sleeps

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

Part Two

Bràithreachas

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Part Three

The Matrix Worm

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Part Four

The Discard Revolution

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

Chapter 98

Chapter 99

Chapter 100

Chapter 101

Chapter 102

Chapter 103

Chapter 104

Chapter 105

Chapter 106

Chapter 107

Chapter 108

Appendix 1

Code names and pronunciation guide

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Prologue

When I was a child, I used to sit with my brother and watch our favourite programme on the media known as television. The programme, a cartoon, was called ‘The Adventures of Nelson Fuller!!!’ – with no fewer than three exclamation marks in the title. The name of the hero was especially notable for me since it was a man named Fuller who proved to be my nemesis.

I move too far ahead. I only mention it now as it serves to remind me how ironic life can be. Anyway, Nelson Fuller was a small boy with large blue eyes and spiky blonde hair who, despite being born in a wonderful castle, had been thrown on to hard times by cruel fate, and was battling the world’s problems alone. The chief cause of his problems was the super villain, Matrix. Matrix was wicked and spent every episode trying out new methods to conquer the Earth – and sometimes even the Universe. Luckily for our hero, though, Matrix was not only evil but also rather stupid and tended to fall for the most obvious ploys and plot constructions imaginable. Not that such literary critique entered our juvenile heads at the time; we were rooting for Nelson at every turn.

Matrix was an ugly villain. He had a twisted mouth, missing teeth and a black sprawling scar shaped like a spider’s web that traced from the corner of his right eye, covering and disfiguring his right cheek. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Matrix hated to be reminded of this scar – which he was of course in every episode – and everyone had plenty of spiteful nicknames for him: Scar Face, Spider Mug, Web Features, that sort of thing. Not that any of them ever had the courage to say so to his face. No, they all invariably cowered before him and called him Matrix. All except our hero, Nelson, who stood up to him in every episode and called him Scar Face. He was very brave and we all loved him for it.

However, the most horrifying thing about Matrix was not the scar, although this was bad enough. No, Matrix was terrifying because of his eyes. He had terrible eyes. They were a bright, luminous yellow, a colour that only a cartoon can truly create. They shone sickly golden and could look right through buildings, objects and people. These x-ray eyes were used to devastatingly evil effects and caused our hero no end of problems. He was certainly bad news for the world, and who knows what we would all have done had it not been for Nelson Fuller, our small, plucky, blonde, blue-eyed hero.

I wish I could state at this point that I was Nelson Fuller and that as a child I had emulated his heroic life, but I can’t – hands up, I have to admit to it right now. I am not Nelson Fuller, quite the opposite in fact.

I am Matrix.

Death of a Dream Catcher

Chapter 1

June 2047

At a disused warehouse in Bristol

The General stood next to me. I was naked, dumb and covered in blood. A look of disbelief crossed his face as he surveyed the carnage around him.

We were standing in a cold disused warehouse on a deserted industrial wasteland. The room was dim and full of shadows. Porta lights were hanging from rotting, discoloured beams and sitting on cluttered, dirty shelves, casting their light across the tall, narrow room in zigzag shapes. The place was filthy; it smelt damp, stale and cold. We were standing in a world from yesterday overcome by today’s smells: the smell of death, blood, urine and a rich cocktail of drugs and whisky. I could smell it all; it lingered in my nostrils and clung to my skin, a touch of remembered pain. The warehouse may have been a mouldering, run-down building but it had kept its secrets of the past few days. Its walls had kept in the sounds of my screams; no one had heard.

‘You’ve killed them all!’ he whispered, gazing around him as he did so.

I nodded and smiled.

‘Shit,’ he muttered. He glanced back at me; then, gently he prised the gun from my hand. I didn’t want to let it go. He took my hand in his and slowly unclenched my fingers from around the gun. He passed it across to Sweeney, who was standing next to him with his mouth slightly open. Sweeney looked at the gun. ‘Dispose of it now,’ whispered the General. Sweeney jumped into action and ran out of the room.

Someone came up behind me and began to dress me. They took a bandage and wrapped the wound in my side. ‘He needs a doctor,’ a voice from somewhere in the room said. Sounds were beginning to drift into and out of focus.

‘Do the minimum; we’re getting him home to Simeon,’ said another voice.

I pointed to a body huddled on the ground.

The General crossed the floor and fell to his knees. Slowly he turned the corpse over. He said nothing as the battered face of a much-loved younger brother gazed sightlessly up. The General was a man who rarely showed emotion, but he did now, tears streamed down his face, silent tears, heavy and wet. He stood up and looked at me and I knew, at last, that he understood.

***********************

I am Matrix. It’s not my real name. My real name is Alexander James Patrick, but Matrix is a name that has stuck with me for as far back as I can remember. I have always hated the nickname. I don’t know anyone who would like to be named after a cartoon super villain – especially one as stupid and ugly as Matrix – but the name was given to me as far back as infant school. The other kids would shout at me: ‘Hey, Matrix, when are you going to conquer the world?’ or ‘Seen any naked women recently, Matrix?’

Naked women did not feature in the cartoon, but childish minds had easily and quickly leapt to the possibility of the sexual uses that x-ray eyes could pose. I was taunted constantly, unremittingly and without mercy. Other children didn’t want to make friends with me and shunned my company. They scrawled cruel names on my books and belongings and were quick to sideline me in the playground, all because I looked different to them – all because I looked like some stupid cartoon character.

The worst of it was that not only did I look like Matrix but so did my father. In truth, he looked even more like him than I did at the time. I came to resemble Matrix when I grew older, but as a child I had only one thing in common with him – well two things to be precise: my eyes. My father had the same eyes and he also had the scars to match. However, he wasn’t at my school and adults didn’t go around calling him Matrix – though they did call him Scar Face.

I digress. I have yellow eyes; kind people call them golden; they are in fact bright yellow. They are startling in their intensity and completely unnatural looking, so unnatural in fact that most strangers enquire whether I am wearing contact lenses.

When I look at people, it doesn’t appear that I am looking at them, more staring through them. The stare is so odd and blank that on first meeting me, people think I am blind. This is an added complication since my brother is blind, and so when strangers come to visit they think I am Davey. Davey, meanwhile, sits back in his silent oblivion letting me take all the pity for being blind. When this mistake is pointed out to these hapless strangers, they look at me as if I have deliberately conned them. They then turn away and apologise profusely to Davey for not realising that he was the blind one. They are told kindly, but firmly, not to worry since Davey is deaf as well as blind and so has not been offended at all. The strangers usually leave in a huff at this stage, feeling they have been deliberately made to look stupid. My mother would always shake her head and say, ‘Ah well, not to worry, they probably didn’t really need much help in that direction anyway.’

As you can imagine, our family didn’t have many friends.

My eyes now, of course, are pretty well buggered. Life has not been kind to them, and I have had my fair share of blindness, so much so that if I were now to meet those people who felt duped back then, they would feel much better about their mistakes. But, at the time, my eyes, though strange to look at, were fine.

They have never been perfect. I have what is called Hynes’ Syndrome, a condition I inherited from my father. It is a kind of pigment deficiency, something like albinism, and very rare. My father was the first in our family to have it, and I was the second. It is more prevalent in males, although females are not immune. Sadly, all my sons have it, but my eldest brother did not. Hynes’ Syndrome is characterised by the yellow or orange colour of the eyes and sensitivity to sunlight. I struggle in bright lights: the pain can be intense and so I need to wear sunglasses. I also need to apply special medicated eye drops to compensate for my poor tear ducts. Failure to keep my eyes artificially lubricated results in irritation and a sensation of grittiness in the eyes. I have weak vision in dim light and I have difficulty in tracking fast moving objects. The latter meant that I struggled with sports at school since I often couldn’t see the ball if it was moving at speed – which didn’t help my credibility at all. If I could have at least done that, it might have compensated for my odd appearance.

I spent most of my youth wearing cool sunglasses when meeting and chatting up girls, but that moment always had to arrive, that dreaded moment, when I had to take those sunglasses off. Then, I would get the startled look, the disbelief and the questions, the same inane questions. I had one girlfriend who never saw me with my sunglasses off. It was one hot summer. It was wonderful. I even made love to her wearing those sunglasses. She was not too bright; she was, however, very beautiful.

The name Matrix followed me from childhood and infant school to high school. New sets of people didn’t seem to make any difference. When I finally made it to university it was there, like an unwanted friend waiting for me – and oh how I hated it. I just wanted to be Alexander, the name chosen for me by my parents, a real name, not a name dreamt up by some half-baked cartoonist in America. The name, in the end, defined me. It defined who I was and what I became. If I am really evil – and there are many who say that I am – then blame the name. I was damned from the beginning.

Chapter 2

The General approached the battered camper van warily. It was parked next to a sludgy river amongst the debris of a past life: abandoned cars, sheets of old metal, plastic and decaying cardboard and paper, a place commonly seen after the great slump and before the mania for recycling obsessed the world and changed our industrial landscape. It was a place ignored by the decent honest people and inhabited by rats and the type of people who didn’t fit in.

It was dark, past midnight, and a cool breeze blew across the barren wasteland bringing with it the smells of the river and the decomposing rubbish. It had started to drizzle with rain. He could feel it against his face and it had started to soak through his clothes. He hardly noticed; he was staring at the van. He had a good idea what type of person would choose to spend the night in such a dreary, godforsaken place.

He made up his mind and decided to take the risk. He banged on the side of the van. The noise was designed to wake the dead. It succeeded in waking a man and a child.

‘What is it?’ a husky voice cried out from within. It sounded distinctly annoyed. A child was crying. The General could hear the voice whispering to the child to be quiet. He stood back and waited. He was sure he had picked correctly. It looked like a substrata van; it needed to be one that was loyal. When a face peered out of the window, he blessed a God he didn’t and had never believed in.

The face was pale and thin: pale blue eyes, colourless lips against freckled skin and thin blonde receding hair. The man, who was probably about thirty but looked older, saw the General and recognised at least what, if not who, he was. He smiled nervously, revealing yellow teeth with dark gaps. But the most distinctive feature of the man’s face was a terrible scar on his left cheek: an inverted cross crudely cut down his cheek, with three gouges to denote sweet-smelling roses. It was an old scar to be sure but terrible nonetheless, not just because of how it looked but for what it symbolised: the sign of the Twenty-six, the sign of the discard.

The man opened the window. It squeaked in protest. He pushed the window up and nodded to the General. ‘Sir!’ he said respectfully.

The General glared at him. ‘Do you recognise me?’

‘You’re the General!’ the man said. He dropped his gaze. ‘How can I help?’ A child crying again interrupted his request. He turned in annoyance.

‘Stop the brat from crying!’ said the General. He had no time for this.

The man turned away and briefly disappeared inside the van. A moment later he returned. ‘My wife will see to it,’ he said.

‘You have a wife there, as well?’

The man nodded. ‘I’ve told her I’m busy and to keep our child quiet.’

‘She a discard?’ asked the General out of curiosity.

The man nodded again looking puzzled.

‘Are you loyal to the Brotherhood?’ asked the General.

‘Of course!’

‘And to Matrix?’

‘He is our God,’ responded the man enthusiastically. He held up his arms; despite the fact that it was the middle of the night, his wrists were both bound in black leather.

‘I have a package for you to deliver – an important package. I require the utmost secrecy.’

‘You have it.’

Too quick! thought the General. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘If I don’t, you, your wife and your child are dead and none of you will die quickly. Do you understand?’

The man swallowed in fear; nervously he licked his pale lips. ‘Yes, General, I understand.’

**********************

Let me tell you something about my family. I have a complicated family tree, complicated by multiple marriages, adoptions and confused family ties. I have already mentioned my deafblind brother, Davey, but in fact, he is not really my brother. He is, in fact, my brother’s son. Robert, my real brother, is twenty-five years older than me and is the result of my father’s first marriage. Davey, therefore, is really my nephew even though he is actually two and half years older than me. As we were brought up together in the same house and my mother played mother to him; you can understand how confused we both were when we were children and why we always called each other brother. We played together, fought each other and defended each other against a hostile world. We were there for each other in the way only brothers can be. As far as I am concerned, we are brothers in the true sense of the word. Robert was more of a second father to me than a brother – and one that was actually stricter than my real father, much to my annoyance when I was a teenager.

I was born on 28 December 2012 in a small cottage hospital in the Highlands of Scotland, the same hospital incidentally that my father had been born in fifty-two years before. Most people think that, with a name like Patrick, we must be Irish; in fact, we are Scottish. My father was a Highlander and his mother was a proud Highlander who hated the English with a passion, to the extent that, when my father and his sister were children, she failed to teach them English. They went to school when they were five, only able to speak Gaelic, and both were promptly sent home again. That was probably the first visit of many from Social Services, as it was then called, telling her that if she did not teach her children English they would be taken from her and put in care. This was the only reason she finally complied, although Gaelic continued to be the main language spoken in their house.

Our Scottish ancestors must have been a godless clan because at some point in our history we lost the Kirk in our name. Kirkpatrick became Patrick, and that was the name I was born into in those final days of 2012. By then we were living in the West Country of England. My father had married a despised Sassenach, but we always spent Hogmanay in God’s own country. Everyone knows that Father Christmas is Scottish so it was important for us children that Christmas was spent close to his home base so that we would be first to receive presents. That Christmas, of course, I was in no position to decide where we would spend Christmas or the New Year. It was my brother who insisted on dragging a heavily pregnant forty-five-year-old woman, my father and a traumatised deaf child all the way from Devon to Scotland, and I think it was he who insisted on them all going for a walk in the snow, resulting in my mother having a fall and ending up in hospital for an emergency birth, six weeks premature. Blame my brother for all of this. I did.

Sitting here, in my wheelchair in the latter part of the century, I look back to 2012 and see a time much more tolerant and easy going than the one I now live in. We didn’t realise, how could we, how lucky we all were, at least in the West. So much was accepted, so much tolerated. We were kinder then, kinder and more innocent. It was a world where the desire for a better and more sustainable world had not yet been hijacked by the political right; where bigots were seen for what they were and not placed in positions of power and called realists; where it was fine to be different and where the vulnerable were, to a certain extent, still protected. We were more innocent then for sure or perhaps we were more gullible? In the end, we were sitting on a moral precipice and we hadn’t yet realised it. Already the world into which I entered was preparing to change. Global warming, concerns over resources and overpopulation were on the agenda and people were looking for solutions – not just solutions but scapegoats too. There wasn’t enough to go round. Someone would have to pay the price, but who and how? And who would be brave enough to find and then implement the solution that would save the planet and the human life that covered its surface?

In 2012, these were the questions that were being debated in the media, in the pubs and throughout society. But not so in a small cottage hospital in the Highlands of Scotland. Here a forty-five-year-old woman was giving birth to a baby with blank eyes, another symptom of Hynes’ Syndrome: we have no colour in our eyes for the first six to eight weeks of our life, longer for a premature baby. There was panic in the maternity ward, and nurses fainted at the horrific sight of the white-eyed baby boy. You would have thought that this hospital would have known better having seen the same sight fifty-two years earlier when my father had been born, but obviously not, and my mother was carefully given the news that she had given birth to a freak. Well, I’m sure the word ‘freak’ was not actually used; we were, as I say, a much kinder world then, but freak was what she gave birth to and she called him Alexander.

Chapter 3

I was half-carried, half-dragged through the drizzle and wind to the camper van. As I approached I could hear the General talking to someone inside. ‘Get out!’ he was saying. He was putting on his best Glaswegian accent.

‘I need to get my chair.’

The General swore violently under his breath. ‘You’re a para,’ he said.

‘Yes, do you want me to ...?’

‘Don’t bother. The package has arrived.’

I was that package and I needed complete secrecy.

I was bundled into the front seat of the van. I was sweating freely but shivering intensely at the same time. I slumped in the seat, unable to move. I felt the man turn his gaze on me and I heard him gasp. ‘But it’s ...’

‘What did I tell you!’ shouted the General. The man froze and said nothing. The General, who was still standing outside in the damp, dark night, leaned into the open window by the driver’s seat where the man was sitting. ‘You can drive this thing?’ he asked.

‘Yes, it’s been adapted for me.’

‘Well, remember what I said. Follow your instructions. You’re to take the package to the travellers’ site north of Coventry; are you sure you know it?’

‘Sure I do.’

‘Someone will be waiting for you and they’ll take the package from you. Under no circumstances are you to talk to this person.’ He paused menacingly. The General did this well. He was a violent man and everyone knew it. ‘You know what’ll happen if you do?’

‘I don’t need threats. I’m loyal to the Brotherhood and to,’ he paused and finished lamely, ‘everyone in the Brotherhood.’

‘Is this your child?’

The man turned round. ‘Yes.’

‘How old is he?’

The man opened his mouth, about to speak, but hesitated and then said. ‘Nearly five, sir.’ He dropped his gaze as he spoke.

‘Would you like him to see his fifth birthday?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then do as I say. If you fail me, he dies and so does that wife of yours. You can watch them die. Do you understand?’

‘I understand.’

The General banged the side of the van. ‘Get going. Don’t let us down. Remember that wherever you are the Brotherhood can find you. You fuck around with us and you and your family will regret it.’

‘I said I understood,’ returned the man angrily. He went to turn the ignition on. It was an old van and had one of those old-fashioned cards for switching on the engine.

The General stopped him. ‘What’s your name, friend?’ he asked.

‘My name’s Jason Morris,’ he said, ‘people call me Jazz.’

‘And your son and wife?’

‘Ben and Rachael.’

The General nodded. ‘I’ll remember your names, I promise.’

Jazz nodded in return, switched the engine on and swung the van round. Soon the abandoned warehouse in Bristol was left behind and so was the General. I felt only a moment’s misgivings and then the pain took over and I no longer cared. I was going home; that was all that mattered.

***********************

My father was not a handsome man even before he got the scars that disfigured the right side of his face. Although he was tall with a full head of hair until the day he died, those strange yellow eyes were tired and sad and were perhaps a little too close together. His face was stern and rather dour. His mouth was firm and uncompromising and set in a permanent scowl; he rarely smiled and his conversation was limited. Even those who liked him referred to him as a social cripple. If I took friends (or rarely girlfriends) home, they found him a tad scary. They tended to visit just the once and then made their excuses. Universally they felt sorry for me for having a father who, obviously, must beat me at weekends for the fun of it, which was ironic really because my father had the gentlest, kindest nature you could ever imagine.

He was unhappily married for over twenty years to Robert’s mother, Sarah. Then, at the age of fifty, he fell completely and obsessively in love for the first time. She was a tiny red-head with pale skin and large brown eyes; she was forty-three years old, divorced and childless. She fell completely in love with my father, just as he had done with her. She was beautiful, both inside and out. She was my mother.

I was the surprise package. My mother had been told she could not have children and now in her forties had given up on the idea. One day she was working at home when someone rang her doorbell. She went to the door to be met by a ragged gypsy woman. My mother was about to shut the door on her when she remembered her religion and the fact that she was a socialist so she agreed to buy some pegs from her. As she passed the money across, the woman offered to read her future on her palm for a further pound, the currency of the day. My mother, despite being English, had Irish grandparents and the Celtic blood in her was strong; therefore, she could not resist giving into the superstitious impulse and agreed to have her palm read.

The gypsy woman held her hand and peered into it. According to family legend, she gasped with terror when she saw my mother’s palm. Hastily she pushed my mother’s hand away and gave her back all the money. My mother, now puzzled and slightly alarmed, asked her what she had seen. The woman hesitated and said: ‘You will give birth to a golden-eyed God who will suffer more than any man, but you will not live to see him suffer for you will not live to see your sixtieth birthday.’ She then blessed my mother and left her standing there with her money and a bag of pegs.

My mother would probably not have remembered this encounter if it had not been for the fact that she had just met and fallen in love with a golden-eyed vet, and, although they had argued and separated at that point, he was still very much in her thoughts. She never forgot the encounter and often joked about it, calling me her little God.

The gypsy was wrong, though. My mother did live to see her sixtieth birthday. She died twelve days after that birthday from a brain haemorrhage. I was fifteen years old at the time.

Chapter 4

The General returned to the warehouse heavy with foreboding. Nothing had gone according to plan, but he was about to change that. He paused at the entrance, a dark, narrow doorway with wooden doors hanging off the hinges. Paint peeled from the wood and someone had gouged holes across its surface. A pale, subdued light drifted out of the doorway. His keen ears caught the sound of footsteps and soft voices. He didn’t have much time.

Someone approached. He didn’t move. He had so little time, but he was desperately afraid that the man he respected more than any other – a man he would willingly die for many times over – was about to do the unthinkable: die first.

‘What now?’ It was a beautiful soft Edinburgh voice.

The General turned to the voice. The man who had spoken was anything but beautiful. He was tall, too thin, with arms and legs out of proportion to the rest of his body. His face was pale, gaunt and covered in acne. His lips were pale and thin and he had yellow teeth, several of which were missing. His head was shaven and covered in crude tattoos. His name was Todd. Most people called him Sweeney, a child of the streets, of the knife. Drunken brawls, football fights and racist attacks had marked his life since he was nine years old; he was the product of a violent father, a drunken mother and damp high-rise flats. He was classic substrata. Unthinking violence had once defined him. Now, the Brotherhood did.

‘Can we trust that bastard in the van?’ he asked belligerently. He hardly knew how to speak any other way.

‘He’s a discard; what do you think?’

Sweeney hesitated. ‘Where Matrix is concerned we should trust no one.’

The General stared into the distance. ‘I have the code. I need to activate it.’

‘He gave it to you?’

‘He had no choice.’

‘But he hesitated. We all saw him.’

‘He gave me the code.’ The General turned to leave.

Sweeney grabbed his arm. ‘You are not Matrix!’

‘What do you want from me?’ cried the General. ‘My brother is dead and Matrix killed the rest. Now more will die. I’ll make sure of that.’

Sweeney released his grip. ‘How many?’

‘God willing, all of them.’

‘God? You don’t believe in God!’

‘No, but my brother did. And if he’s with his mythical God now, he’s waiting for his revenge. There are men and women sleeping in their beds who’ll not wake up tomorrow morning. I’ll make sure of that, now that Matrix has given me the code.’

Sweeney smiled. ‘Does that include the Wakefields?’

‘Aye, for sure. I’m just sorry you’re not the one to be wielding the knife.’

‘But the person who does will, no doubt, hate them as much as I do.’

‘Unfortunately, their end will be swift. No time for anything else. Meanwhile, burn this place down. If the pigs find this mess, they’ll guess who did it and this time they’ll make sure that Matrix rots in prison.’

Sweeney straightened slightly. "I’ll see to it.’ He hesitated. ‘I just wish we could trust that para.’

The General turned to him. ‘Does Matrix trust you?’

Sweeney flinched slightly, gently touching his left cheek where the old scar burnt deep within it: the inverted cross and the three sweet smelling roses. He nodded and left.

The General stood in the night, smoked a cigarette and activated the signal – the signal that should have been pressed days ago by Matrix. But it hadn’t been pressed. Matrix had hesitated, and that hesitation had cost his brother his life – and perhaps Matrix his, too. But now it was done, and tonight would go down in history as a night soaked in blood, as all across the country people would be murdered in their sleep, or relaxing in their homes, and everyone would know that the Brotherhood was responsible.

The General smiled at the thought. Yet even as he stood with satisfaction seeping through him, the sound of police sirens warned him that they had already left it too late.

He ran into the warehouse and gave the signal. From out of the darkness figures came running, darting from the building in all directions, fear giving them speed. The General raced forward down the path, across a wasteland of overturned cars and machinery, straight into a block of uniformed muscle.

The world went black.

***********************

If my father and his youngest son were freaks, his eldest son, Robert, could only be described as stunningly beautiful. When he walked into a restaurant, everyone would turn around and stare, the men with envy and the women with naked lust. He was movie-star beautiful. He moved with grace and his deep Edinburgh voice resonated. His smile was beguiling and he remained handsome into his old age. Right into his late sixties, young women fawned over him. Life’s troubles made his hair grow grey unexpectedly when he was thirty-one years old. His hair developed a white streak: it was a couple of centimetres thick, on the right hand side of his middle parting. It was wonderful. We all envied him his white streak; people paid a lot of money for that kind of thing. His new wife, Julie, was pretty annoyed about it. She thought he was much too good looking and hoped he would at least have had grey hair. It wouldn’t have made any difference if he had, he would still have been beautiful.

Robert was dark: dark hair, dark eyes and clear olive skin; he was tall, muscular and perfect in every way. He was the product of the unhappy first marriage of my father. My father was probably, no definitely, the first person to fall in love with Robert.

My father was twenty-three years old when he first met Sarah. He was establishing himself as a vet in Edinburgh and about to be married. Shortly after a one-night stand with Sarah, he received a visit from her and was informed that she was pregnant and that he was the father. For some reason, it never occurred to him to question her, and so they were married.

There was no love in the relationship and no sex. Throughout their married life they both had unhappy love affairs with other people. He had nothing but contempt for her and she had nothing but hate for him. They lived in the same house, not as strangers – which would have been bad enough – but as bitter enemies. When Robert was born, my father took one look at him and vowed to love and protect him. When Sarah kindly informed him that she would be calling her new son Robert, after his real father, it did not shake that love and devotion.

My father was not surprised to find that Robert was not his natural son. He looked nothing like him and he certainly didn’t have the freaky eyes. He was, as I say, beautiful. My father loved him and Sarah despised him. He was the reason my father suffered years of humiliation at the hands of a slightly deranged woman. He would not leave Robert. He knew that if it came to a divorce he would probably never see Robert again so he was prepared to suffer anything that Sarah threw at him in order to hold onto that precious burden.

Sarah knew this. Her main joy in life was to give my father hell – and she did.

She was, as I say, slightly deranged. Robert was terrified of her as a child and loathed her as an adult. He never forgave her for the things she did to our father, and if Robert could love with passion it is true to say that he could hate with equal passion. Years later, when she finally died and he was asked to attend her funeral, he said: ‘I can dance with joy here; I don’t need to do it on her grave.’ He meant it.

To put the record straight, Sarah was charming and beautiful. She fell in love with a professor of mathematics called Robert. That was all she ever told anyone. When she was pregnant he had told her in precise mathematical terms to fuck off. What he failed to tell her was that he was, in fact, infertile, and when she had tried to claim his paternity he had known she had been unfaithful to him. It was to be many years before DNA tests eventually proved that Robert really was my father’s natural child.

At the time, all Sarah knew was that her lover had rejected her. She was furious and, being catholic when it suited her, refused an abortion. She was too proud to be an unmarried mother so she married a man she hated: my father.

To know Sarah was to despair. She had many love affairs, but most men shied away when they found out what she was really like: a drunk, a depressive, addicted to self-harm and kinky sex. She smoked constantly and swore in private. Her circle of friends was made up of dubious characters: other drunks and perverts; at least one was a notorious paedophile who openly lusted after Robert. And on top of this she was uneducated. This ignorance and being ‘common’ were her greatest sins according to my grandmother, who refused to speak to my father when she found out he had got a shop girl pregnant and had to marry her. She never met Sarah. She never came to the wedding or their house for his entire married life.

Robert was born a beautiful baby. As a child he excelled; he was bright academically and athletically. He found school easy. He decided he wanted to be a vet at an early age and managed it with ease; he became top student in his year and won a scholarship to a major Canadian university. He married a beautiful Canadian called Maggie when he was twenty-one and was widowed by the age of twenty-five. Davey was two-and-a-half at the time. He came home with a son born perfect but damaged terribly in the same car crash that had killed Maggie.

My mother was pregnant with me when Robert and Davey came home. She took one look at Davey and loved him. He crept onto her lap and placed his small hands on her large tummy. His mother had been seven months pregnant when she died. He knew he had found his place and he took advantage of it immediately. I had not yet been born and, already, I had been usurped.

I could not compete with the beautiful child who looked so much like his father but who was also so vulnerable. The accident had left him partially sighted and almost completely deaf. From the moment he entered our house, he became the most important creature in it – for everyone, and that never changed. I was born into a family where Davey was supreme and I never questioned it.

Davey dominated my young life. He was an exacting master and I never questioned his authority. He had learned to sign and lip read – so I had to learn, as well. He was being taught Braille in case his eyesight deteriorated – so I was taught, too. He expected it of me and, young though I was, I complied.

When he was eight, he lost his sight and his hearing completely. He was supposed to be careful. The doctors had told us that a bang on the head could result in damage to his eyes or his ears. During his eighth birthday party, his new cousin, Paul, knocked me over and made me cry. Davey rushed to my defence. Davey had knocked me over enough times in the past but that was his right, nobody else’s. He attacked Paul in retaliation. Paul was older and much bigger. Overweight and solid, he carried plenty of power. He threw a punch and Davey went flying, hitting his head against the table as he did so. He was immediately unconscious. Blood trickled out of one ear: his good ear, the one that could still hear. He was rushed to hospital.

Davey lost his sight and what remained of his hearing; I gained a burden. No one said anything; they didn’t have to. I knew it was my fault. The day that Davey lost his light and sound, the rest of us lost the sunshine from our lives. Robert gained his white streak and I swore I would never leave Davey’s side again, that I would be his eyes and his ears for the rest of my life.

I let him down of course. I left him and became what I became, Matrix, Devil’s child, the Dream Catcher. I have many names. I have done many terrible things; blood stains my hands. I have taken the lives of many and smiled as I did so. I am the one many hate and others adore. I have been called a God and a Devil. Perhaps I am both. As I look back to that small, frightened child standing next to the unconscious Davey with blood trickling out of his ear, I think I knew that it would change me, that I would become a dark person, a wicked person, as a result. It was the day the light left all of our lives.

Chapter 5

The darkness was creeping in and with it came silence; yet, I was strangely aware of what was happening to me and going on all around me. I sensed something was wrong: that the General, one of my closest friends, was in trouble. How I knew this I cannot say but I did and I felt the guilt – that old friend who had been with me since childhood.

I knew also that we had stopped. Jazz, the man who had been driving the van, was leaning over me. ‘He’s bleeding,’ he was saying. His voice sounded far away and small, and yet still I sensed the desperation and the fear. He was sitting next to his God and his God was bleeding all over his van. ‘I know,’ he replied to something I couldn’t hear. ‘But this is Matrix, for fuck’s sake, and he’s dying! What do I do?’

I wanted to tell him, to speak, but I couldn’t. He had one thing to do: obey the General. As if in response to the words I could not speak, Jazz sighed, ‘I must carry on. I must trust the General.’ He started the van again and we were moving.

I don’t know how long or how far we had travelled when the motorbikes arrived. Jazz swore constantly as bright, undimmed lights atop loud, snarling machines began to buzz around his van, like so many large, unwanted insects. Their lights were glaring and intrusive and the harsh, aggressive engines were making him nervous. He glanced across at me as he tried to avoid the bikes darting to and fro, in front, behind and around him, moving at speed and moving ever closer to his van. Slowly, he was being edged to the side of the road. The van swerved and swayed, and brakes made loud screeching noises as he desperately tried to maintain control. But there were just too many bikes closing in: dark, sinister shapes behind bright, shining lights that beamed into the van, blinding and dazzling him. He swore again; it didn’t stop them coming. They were descending on him and pushing him into the hedge along the road until, at last, he came to a shuddering stop.

A child screamed and a woman tried to hush him – at least I think it was a woman. It was the child’s scream that really penetrated my thick fog; I felt the raw fear, the incomprehension, the dread.

Jazz was gasping and sweating freely. He rubbed his brow and peered out. The noise of the motorbikes had calmed down, but their lights still dominated the interior of the van, throwing those dark shapes into greater shadow and exposing the victims in stark relief. I could feel the tension as we waited.

Jazz took a deep breath and opened his window. One of the shapes on one of the bikes slowly dismounted and ambled across. He was followed by others who while keeping their distance were nevertheless a presence. It was a tall, broad shadow and it walked with arrogance and confidence. He was in control of the situation and he knew it.

Jazz leaned out. ‘Evening, friend,’ he said, trying to sound casual.

The shadow resolved itself into a mountain of a man and stood at Jazz’s window peering in. He wore an old German helmet from the Second World War of the last century; a thin, greasy ponytail hung down from underneath his helmet and down his back. He had small, dark, close-set eyes, thick lips and a squashed nose. His many chins were all unshaven, and when he smiled he showed neglected teeth. His hands were gloved in spiked black leather. In fact, he was dressed in the ubiquitous black leather all over and the legend Satan’s Child was sprawled across his chest. Jazz’s heart sank. He didn’t need this. ‘I have nothing you would want friend,’ he said. ‘We’re base substrata. We have nothing.’

The biker was chewing something slowly in his mouth. He turned his head and spat on the ground and then turned back to Jazz. ‘You gave us quite a run,’ he commented laconically.

‘You scared me,’ admitted Jazz. What did he have to lose?

‘I don’t like it when pretty boys play hard to get.’

‘I’m not a ...’

‘You’re a discard; you’ve been fucked plenty. Don’t tell me you haven’t; I expect every pervert in the North has stuck his dick up your arse. I know about your lot; I’ve read the book.’

Jazz said nothing. The cruel jibe hurt but it was not the first time it had been said and he doubted it would be the last.

‘You shouldn’t have tried to get away,’ continued the biker. ‘That was a mistake.’

Jazz felt his hands shake but still said nothing. He closed his eyes as beads of sweat trickled down his face. He wanted his nightmare to end and he didn’t know how to end it. The biker was watching him intently. ‘I like the look of your woman. I expect she could do with a good screw from a real man.’

‘Please don’t ...’

‘Give me Matrix and we’ll leave you good people in peace.’

Jazz stared at him. ‘I can’t ...’

The biker leaned in through the window. ‘You’ve no choice. We’ll take him anyway. We can take him after we’ve all fucked your missus. You can watch and then we may play with the boy some. We all have different tastes, don’t we? Then we’ll take Matrix. Or we’ll take Matrix now, and you drive on back the way you came. You choose.’

‘Please, I have orders from the General ...’

‘I don’t give a fuck about the General. Give us Matrix!’

Jazz knew he had no choice. He was hopelessly outnumbered: one paraplegic, a woman and a small child against an armed gang of Satan’s Children – but he couldn’t just give them Matrix. ‘What will you do to him?’ he asked in a small voice.

The biker leaned in close. His breath stank of old food and his body stank of stale sweat, wet leather, cigarettes and beer. ‘You know what we’ll do. We’ll kill him and you may be sure it’ll be slow. Do you want to watch?’

‘No!’ screamed Jazz. Yet even as he cried out, the passenger door was flung open and I was dragged out. I felt the rain drive down on me as I was pulled roughly outside, passed across from one violent hand to another, and into an army of leather-clad bikers. Jazz cried out again as the door was slammed shut and the seat was left empty. ‘No!’ he screamed again. But he was screaming at nothing. The biker at his window was no longer there. Jazz peered out into the searing lights trying to see beyond to the gloom. In a light-blind haze he saw the shadowy figures carry me into their midst and then he watched me disappear. Almost at the same time the roar of the engines vibrated, the smoke from the exhausts filled the air and the bikers were gone.

There was silence and night and no Matrix; just a lonely van on a lonely road in a dark night.

***********************

When Robert returned from Canada he was a broken man. He could barely deal with the loss of a much-loved wife; having to cope with a child traumatised and deaf was beyond him. He was twenty-five years old and had thought he had so much to live for. He was successful as a vet, his beautiful wife was pregnant with a daughter and our father had promised he would move to Canada and join him. Everything was perfect until that car crash, that pointless journey in the driving rain that changed everything for everyone.

Robert struggled with Davey. He did what he could but most of the burden fell on my mother. Instead he drowned his sorrows in work and alcohol. In the end, it was the latter that caused him the most trouble because he chose as his two drinking companions a gay couple who were close to my parents.

Daniel Cohen was a vet who worked in the same practice as my father. He and Robert had been electronic friends for years and, when Robert came home, he was a natural confidant. His partner, Ian Richardson, was a close friend of my mother’s. He was a landscape gardener, and if it was possible for a gay man half my mother’s age to be in love with her, then he was. He adored her.

Robert fell in with them, spending his evenings getting drunk and collapsing in their spare bedroom. They were the best possible friends anyone could have. They knew how to listen (a rare skill), they knew how to empathise and they knew how to get drunk – and they did all three with Robert.

The downside for Robert was that at some point he did recover from the loss of his wife and started looking at women again, but by that time everyone assumed he was gay. The only women who approached him were those wishing to discuss problems with their love lives. But this was not all, if a woman did finally realise he was straight, she was then confronted with Davey and the sure knowledge that a deaf child – and possibly a deafblind child – would always come first. Robert – the perfect, beautiful Robert – did not find a woman until Julie came into his