The Boy in Your Dreams

By Tanya Cutler

Max has ended up somewhere he doesn’t know, but it’s familiar. He’s been here before, but everything is different, brighter, and everyone is ignoring him. There’s a girl in the distance; he doesn’t know her, but she knows him, and she has a lot to tell him.
There are others that come to this place, they will meet Max and explain more. But for now he needs to find out where he is and why he’s here. He’s on a mission to get some answers. Will his life ever be the same again?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398426375

Tanya Cutler

Tanya is a devoted mother of three children. She loves to tell her children stories as much as they love to hear them. In her spare time, she likes to go on days out with her children. She loves being creative and loves to draw and paint, as well as crochet clothes and toys. She loves to read – a lot, typically enjoying the mystery and horror novels. Her children inspired her to write this book and she hopes to write more.

Book preview

About the Author

Tanya is a devoted mother of three children. She loves to tell her children stories as much as they love to hear them. In her spare time, she likes to go on days out with her children. She loves being creative and loves to draw and paint, as well as crochet clothes and toys. She loves to read – a lot, typically enjoying the mystery and horror novels. Her children inspired her to write this book and she hopes to write more.

Dedication

To my busy dreamers; Ruby, Joshua and Oscar. Chase your dreams, they know the way. Love, Mum.

Copyright Information ©

Tanya Cutler 2022

The right of Tanya Cutler to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398426368 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398426375 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Chapter One

Sleep wasn’t going to come easy. He knew that he didn’t know this house, he had never been here before, let alone sleep here before and he had always wondered why he found it difficult sleeping in new places. He led there and wondered to himself but the wondering didn’t last long because he heard a voice say, Good night, boys! It was Ryan’s mum. As she said it, she pulled the bedroom door to the brink of being closed. All the boys could now see the tiny yellow tinged line running vertically on Ryan’s bedroom wall from the hallway light which was still on, now highlighting his superhero poster (the poster was of a superhero stood in very tight clothes, wearing a cape that was blowing in the wind behind him. He had his hands in fists, resting on his hips and he was looking into the distance with a very serious face, almost a smoulder. He, of course, was ‘Captain Extraordinary’, both boys were superhero fanatics). They had a few things in common, their passion for superheroes and the fact they both went to the same school and both enjoyed nachos and chocolate. They spoke amongst themselves for a little while, laying in the darkness they were laughing and joking about how they could make a secret group which only spoke of superheroes and eating snacks, which consisted of nachos and chocolate. It would probably only be them that attend though. Max asked Ryan, Could you really imagine Justin attending? (Justin was the school tough guy) They both were in fits of laughter – the kind that made your ribs and tummy hurt! They laughed together a lot and Max liked that. He had always considered himself as a bit of an introvert and found it difficult to find friends like this. He did have two best friends where he used to live, but he knew them from when he very first started school and now he is 13 and it felt harder to make new friends. But he was here in a strange house, smelling different smells and hearing different noises. He assumed that’s why he can’t sleep so well in other places apart from home because of the different smells and noises.

Max, his mum, dad, sister (Regan) and brother (James) had moved here from their hometown after their mum’s work was re-located. Max and his siblings weren’t very happy about the move but their mum had told them it would be good for them all; a fresh start, a new town, new school, colleges, heck and there will be new parks. She had always said how well they all made new friends but Max begged to differ! He had always struggled with striking conversation with any other human being. He had a bad habit of making jokes or saying the wrong thing, he was socially awkward but only because he liked what he liked and he struggled to understand why people would want to go out of their way to change themselves. He was so reluctant to leave his old friends, thinking that he would never make any new ones where they were moving to but his mum told him they could come to stay at the new house (which was still yet to happen) but he had met Ryan…Ryan is cool. He is about the same height as him, same age (13), he was covered in freckles with bright ginger hair and thick glasses. He was average build and always wore superhero trainers (apart from when they were at school and had to be in uniform – although Max thought if he could get away with it, he would wear them to school too) but none of that bothered Max! He loved superhero…well…everything! Just like him. Max thought a lot of Ryan; he took the effort and was the first to talk to him on his first day at school. In fact, he was the only one that spoke to him for the first few days. Then other kids started asking him questions and Max, being the socially awkward person, didn’t really feel the need to divulge too much information. But Ryan made it so easy to talk! And talk they did and they did for hours on end! Laughing about the silliest of things and talking about the newest superhero film that had come out, what kind of superpowers they’d both have had; Max’s would have been invisibility…oh, how much you could do with that! You could go and cheekily help yourself to one of Mum’s freshly baked cookies (they were heavenly), Ryan’s superpower would have been the ability to be able to speak in any language. He said that if you could do that, you could just about speak to anyone in the whole entire world; they would have to use you to be an interpret between world governments to save the world! Max couldn’t quite figure that one out but hey, what harm was Ryan doing?

Ryan was a busy dreamer, Max thought, always dreaming up superheroes of his own and creatures that they’d have to defend the world against! You could say that Max thought Ryan was great! They had been planning this sleepover for about a month now. They wanted to do it sooner but their mums had to match their schedules and the time was closing in and both boys were so excited about it. They had planned to build a den and sleep in it. Ryan had told Max that they had plenty of blankets to use and they both got very excited but the next day Ryan had to break the news to Max that his mum wasn’t too happy about them sleeping in the lounge as Ryan’s brother wanted to use the living room when he got home from work; he was at college but needed a job to earn his own money, something that Ryan’s dad told him he couldn’t just have money for free!

Ryan’s brother is considerably older than Ryan. He has always felt like an only child, so to find a friend like Max, he felt like he had hit the jackpot. They settled for sleeping in Ryan’s bedroom, they were still having a sleepover after all so they couldn’t really complain too much! They watched some superhero films and ate all the snacks that Ryan’s mum had bought and prepared – both turning their noses up at the carrot sticks and hummus. Ryan asked his mum, Who even has healthy food at a sleepover? But being told if they didn’t eat those first, they couldn’t have any of the ‘sweet stuff’, so they begrudgingly ate them as quickly as possible. Max tried to shut off his taste buds and swallow as quickly as possible. He absolutely hated carrots, he didn’t mind other vegetables but raw carrots were his enemy. They then laughed when Ryan’s mum tried to find where they had stashed them. She searched for about five minutes behind Ryan’s desk, that was in the corner of his bedroom, opposite his bed and then grabbed a torch off the top of his ottoman that housed all the toys he had ‘grown out of’ (so his mum liked to say but he got them out every so often when it was raining and he couldn’t go out or he was bored of his computer games). She even picked up cushions on Ryan’s bed and then lifted up Max’s sleeping bag with eager curiosity and announced that she cleaned every corner of this house and will find them if they had stashed them. She was joking, of course, she secretly knew that they had eaten them but she liked to make them laugh either way.

The time had come when Ryan had fallen asleep and Max just could not drift off, he thought it could be due to the fact that this was the first sleepover he had been at Ryan’s house; well, the first time he had been there full stop or could it be due to the fact they had filled their bellies with a sugar overload and Max just hadn’t crashed yet like Ryan? He wasn’t entirely sure why he couldn’t get to sleep but he certainly wanted to! If he had been at home, he would have gone to the cupboard, got himself his favourite ‘choco-hoops’ mug that he had gotten with an easter egg one year, put it on the wooden kitchen work top, gone to the tall white fridge freezer, got his favourite type of milk…the full fat (not his mum’s skimmed milk that was like mixing his favourite milk with half a cup of milk and half a cup of water) and poured himself a glass, put it in the microwave for no more than a minute (otherwise it’s far too hot to drink) and then he’d have sat at his lovely wooden dining table, which was his nan’s, his dad’s mum, she was so lovely and he had fond memories of eating Sunday lunch around this table with her and his granddad (his nan had passed away about a year and a half ago, leaving his granddad in the house that he loved. His granddad was always so pleased to see them all. He once asked his granddad if he was OK without his nan being around. His granddad told him he was doing just fine and he really believed him but they had been married forever, so Max suspected there were times that his granddad felt lonely and since they moved away, even lonelier, so Max made an effort to call his granddad regularly) and drank it, gone to bed and got to sleep but alas, he wasn’t at home, he was at Ryan’s…Ryan’s where he couldn’t just wonder downstairs to get himself a drink (even though Ryan’s mum had told him to make himself at home).

Ryan’s mum said, Sweetie, help yourself to anything. He looked at Ryan’s superhero alarm clock on his desk (it illuminated blue, so you could read it in the dark) and it said 12:13. He thought to himself that he is going to be tired tomorrow, just when the best part of this sleepover was happening – the day at the beach! He loved and missed the beach so much, back where he used to live, it was a ten-minute bike ride there and he could go with his friends at the weekends. It was a busier town here and the beach was further away, so his mum wasn’t so comfortable letting him go alone, so he had to wait for his mum or dad to take him and they were rarely free to take him because they both worked a lot.

Max got up to go to the toilet, hoping that once he had, he would be fully prepared to even just drift off please! He thought, he stood and when he stood, he had a dizzying spell wash over him and a bluish tinged haze in his eyes! Ah, well, this is a good sign because it means his body is tired now, he thought to himself. He