Dark Woods Read Online Free PDF Page B

her,’ he said. ‘We looked all over and she wasn’t there.’
    ‘I know,’ said Jefferson. He stared at Cal and tapped the side of his head. ‘But that’s because she’s in here. And I want you to help me get her out.’
    Cal shook his head.
    ‘That’s impossible,’ he said.
    ‘That’s what everyone thinks. But you saw the teddy bear, right? You picked it up and held it.’
    ‘Yeah,’ Cal said slowly, ‘but I don’t see—’
    ‘All right, look.’
    Jefferson was animated now. He picked up a sketch pad and began to draw with quick, flowing lines.
    ‘You see this?’ He pointed to a rough drawing of a human brain. ‘This is where you keep all your thoughts, your memories, all your images of the things that exist outside of your body, out in the real world. You understand?’
    Cal nodded.
    ‘OK, good. You ever watch TV?’
    ‘Yeah, we have that in England.’
    ‘And d’you think there are little men and women running around inside your TV set?’
    ‘No, of course not.’
    ‘No. But the people you see are real people, right?’
    ‘I guess so.’
    ‘No, you don’t guess so. You know so. They existed in a TV studio or on a film set and then they were made into little packets of digital information. Then they were beamed into space so that they could bounce off a satellite and end up in your living room a couple of thousand miles away. Pretty incredible when you think about it, huh?’
    ‘I suppose.’
    ‘Trust me, it is. But go back a while. If I’d told people a hundred years ago that such a thing was possible, they’d have locked me up as a madman. It was too advanced for them and they weren’t ready to believe it. Whereas nowadays we just accept it as ordinary. That old thing in the corner? It’s just the TV.’
    ‘Right,’ said Cal. ‘With lots of little digital people in it.’ When Jefferson had started to tell him about his dog, he’d thought it might be the beginning of a normal conversation, but now he was just rambling.
    ‘Cal!’ Jefferson reached across the table and gripped his arm. ‘This isn’t a game. I need you to listen. It’s important that you understand this.’
    ‘I am listening,’ said Cal, pulling his arm away. He had been staring into the shadows of the forest, wondering how far he would get if he ran. ‘You were talking about TV.’
    Jefferson reached for the sketch pad and hurriedly drew a stick figure with an arrow pointing towards the brain and another pointing back again.
    ‘The images in your mind have their own reality, Cal, although they correspond to another reality in the physical world. But like anything else, they need energy for their existence. It was my belief that this could work both ways.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I mean that if our brains can use energy to convert the reality of the physical world into an image that exists in the mind, then there had to be a way to do the opposite. To convert these images into something that exists in the physical world. Do you see?’
    ‘Turning dreams into reality, you mean?’ asked Cal.
    ‘Exactly. Or the things in them, at any rate. No one believed it was possible, of course. But that’s because the idea is way ahead of its time. Like TV, remember? People thought it was impossible because it didn’t fit with their view of the world. The world is flat, the world is round – what you believe depends on the science of the time. But then someone comes along and discovers something so incredible that people’s views of the world are changed for ever.’
    ‘And you think that’s what you’ve done?’ asked Cal, interested now in spite of his fear.
    ‘I don’t think I’ve done it, Cal. I have done it. And what’s more, you saw me do it with your own eyes.’
    Jefferson opened his satchel, took out the small brown teddy bear and placed it on the table.
    ‘You saw this in her dreams, didn’t you? You saw me take the image from her mind and turn it into something solid, something that exists