Jonathan Barnes - The Somnambulist

Then a young man spoke up. “A god, perhaps?” His voice was squeaky with nerves. “A king?”

“Wait,” said another. “There’s a name.”

As the mud was wiped away from the bottom of the head, a three-letter word emerged.

The young man read it aloud. “Lud!” he cried. “The founder of London, King of the city.”

“Impossible,” said one.

“I can’t believe it,” said another.

“Lud?” Moon pressed closer as the rest of the clay was brushed aside and he felt an acute, vertiginous sense that he had walked willingly into a trap. The head’s features began to swim queasily into view — something disturbing and familiar brought inexorably into focus. The face revealed at last, several present gasped.

“Here,” the old man said, belatedly suspicious. “Which newspaper did you say you were from?”

Moon ignored him. “It can’t be,” he murmured.

The bronze head was clean, history wiped away to reveal — calcified and perfectly preserved — an effigy of the first king of London. Lud unveiled.

And Edward Moon could only stare hopelessly down at it, biting hard on his lower lip in an effort to stop himself from crying out, as the unforgettably ugly features of Thomas Cribb gazed sightlessly back across the centuries.

He turned to confront his companion, but, as though in some marvelous illusion, the ugly man had disappeared, vanished back toward the river, leaving nothing behind to prove that he had ever been there at all, nothing to say that he wasn’t merely a figment of the city’s imagination.

When Moon returned to his hotel, he found Mr. Speight waiting for him in the street outside. The tramp was dressed in his usual filthy suit and his face was covered with fresh sores, only partially hidden by his riotous, scratchy beard. A bottle of something yellow bulged from his jacket pocket and he had propped up before him his trademark placard:

SURELY I AM COMING SOON

REVELATION 22:20

“Afternoon,” he said, ebullient but not yet quite drunk. The doorman gave him a dirty look and Speight nodded back. “This one’s been trying to turn me out for hours.”

“What are you doing here?” Moon was so bewildered that he felt half-convinced the man before him was a mirage.

“I’ve tracked you down,” Speight said proudly.

Moon blinked, still not entirely certain that this exchange was really happening. “What can I do for you?”

“To be honest… money. Since the theatre… I’ve had nowhere to doss down. Things have got difficult. You were always so kind to me-”

Moon cut him off, reached into his pocket and passed the man a pound note. “Here. Spend it wisely.”

“Actually,” Speight admitted, “I’ll only spend it on drink.”

Moon pushed past him and clambered up the steps to his hotel. “Frankly, Mr. Speight, just at the moment, I’d happily join you.”

“Something the matter?” Speight seemed genuinely concerned.

“Have you ever had everything you ever believed in ruined in a few hours?”

“Can’t say I have, sir, no.”

“Have you ever seen all logic and reason dissolve before your eyes?”

“Again, sir — I’d have to say no.”

“Have you ever been thrust into the most acute existential crisis by the sheer impossibility of the truth?”

The beggar gave Moon an embarrassed look. “P’raps you’d better have a lie-down, sir. Thanks again for the cash.”

With a heavy sigh, the conjuror stepped inside.

Six hours later, slumped at a table in the far corner of the hotel bar, a bleary-eyed Moon watched Arthur Barge shamble amiably past. The detective crooked his little finger and beckoned him across. “Mr. Barge?”

The human toby jug beamed. “Good evening to you.” He walked across to Moon, tripping over a stray barstool as he did so.

“I’ve been meaning,” Moon said with that ponderous solemnity unique to the seriously drunk, “to have a word with you.”

“I suppose this is about me and Mrs. G. She’s a wonderful woman, sir. A real lady. Frisky like, though, when she wants to be.”

Moon steepled his fingers. “Mr. Barge, Mrs. Grossmith has given me years of faithful service. I am not entirely without feeling and I’ve no wish — to dabble for a moment in the vernacular — to see you break her heart.”

Barge chuckled. “Are you asking me if my intentions are honorable?”

“Yes,” Moon said, unsmiling. “How did you know?”

Barge blustered, “Rest assured. I’ll do right by her.”

Moon finished the last of his drink. “You’d better. If I find you’ve mistreated her in any way…” He paused, unable to think of a sufficiently menacing threat. “Believe me,” he finished feebly, “I’ll get you.”

Barge looked back, astonished at this sudden burst of aggression so ineptly delivered. “Sorry if I’ve offended you. Really. I don’t know what I’ve done, I’m sure.”

Moon glared impatiently. “I’ll be watching.”

“I love her,” Barge said meekly, then walked to the exit, narrowly avoiding spilling several patrons’ drinks in the process. He struggled with the door, fruitlessly trying to tug it open when it would have submitted to the gentlest of pushes. Only the entrance of the Somnambulist afforded him an opportunity to escape. He stopped to whisper his thanks but the giant stomped grumpily past without acknowledging him.

When Moon saw his friend, he groaned and pushed aside a few of the legion of empty glasses lined up before him in a vain attempt to disguise the quantity of his drinking. The Somnambulist, however, was in no mood to be fooled. He pulled a stool up to the table, lowered his vast form upon it and wrote furiously on his blackboard, the ferocious tap of chalk on board sounding to Moon like the dull roar of distant cannon fire.

WARE WERE YOU

Moon squirmed. The Somnambulist gesticulated angrily at the message.

“Out,” Moon said and stumbled to his feet. Faltering, he floundered and, his balance unsteady, fell heavily back onto the chair. The Somnambulist ignored these pratfalls.

CRIBB

“Yes,” Moon admitted, a chink of emotion in his voice.

DONT TRUST

Moon looked up. “You recognize him, don’t you?”

STAY AWAY

“I don’t understand. Why won’t you tell me what you know? Why won’t anyone tell me what they know?”

TRUST ME

Moon sighed.

PLEESE

The Somnambulist frantically underlined the word.

Moon clutched his head. “Very well. If it makes you happy. I shan’t see him again.”

The Somnambulist nodded gravely.

“But you promise one day you’ll tell me why?”

The giant shrugged.

“Fine,” spat Moon. “If that’s the best you can do.” And he staggered up and lurched from the room.

Once he got to his suite, in a vain attempt to counteract the effects of the alcohol, her forced himself to consume three glasses of water before collapsing helplessly onto his bed. In the seconds before he passed out he watched, too weak to stir, as Skimpole’s man peered into the room, realized his condition and pulled the door discreetly shut. His last thought was a drunken conviction that the strange events which had filled his life since Cyril Honeyman had fallen from the tower must have a pattern, that they shared some undiscovered connection, were bound together by an invisible plot. He could see only the tiniest part of its design — like looking at a single filament of a spider’s web through a microscope — but he felt certain that all he needed was to step back, gain some perspective and watch as everything came into focus. He tried to keep hold of the idea but he was befuddled by drink and it leapt and wriggled away from him, struggling frantically like a mackerel on a hook until, in the end, he gave in and the darkness came to claim him.