Jonathan Barnes - The Somnambulist

“Come on, sir. Play up, play up and play the game.”

Trotman opened his eyes. Hawker and Boon loomed before him, evincing not the slightest sign of fatigue from the long pursuit.

“What ho, Maurice,” said Boon.

“Thanks for the run, old thing. Rather exhilarating.”

Boon snatched the umbrella and Maurice Trotman sobbed.

“Oh, be a man,” chided the smaller of the killers. “Face up to it like one of the chaps.” With this, he held the umbrella high above his head — a commuter’s sword of Damocles.

“Why?” asked the Civil Servant feebly. “Just tell me that.”

“We’re doing it as a favor.”

“Old chum of ours.”

“Real brick.”

“P’raps you know him.”

“Funny little chap.”

“All white and queer-looking.”

“Skimpole?” Trotman managed as, moments before his extinction, understanding flooded too late into his brain.

“Quite right,” said Hawker.

Had he lived longer, Trotman might have protested at the injustice of it all, at the unfairness of being hunted down and murdered for nothing more than doing his job. As it happened, he had no time left to think. Book brought the umbrella down hard upon his chest and its spike entered his body, neatly perforating his heart with a crisp snap. It was, at least, over quickly.

Cackling with delight, Boon pushed the umbrella fully through the body of his victim and force the thing open. Trotman cut a strange, undignified sight, all but naked, an unfurled umbrella sprouting from his chest like a fancy cocktail stick skewering an olive. The Prefects stood back and admired their handiwork.

Hawker clapped politely. “Bravo.”

Boon rummaged around in the pockets of his blazer and drew forth a couple of lollipops. He passed one to his friend and they stood sucking contemplatively for a time, gazing at the carnage unfolding around them with the mild anticipation of men waiting for a late bus.

Hawker pulled the lolly from his mouth, making a slurping noise as he did so. “Looks like a proper scrap.”

Boon crunched and swallowed. “Fancy causing a ruckus? Bit of mischief?”

A fat man came wheezing past them, an axe clutched in one hand, the arterial spray of two dozen prominent bankers congealing on his suit. You may remember his as Donald McDonald, my oldest and most faithful lieutenant.

“I say. “’Scuse me, sir.”

McDonald careered to a stop.

“Could you tell us what the deuce is going on?”

“We’re taking back the city,” my friend gasped. “Reclaiming it from the moneymen. The age of Pantisocracy is here.”

Boon yawned. “Politics.”

“Pantisocracy?” Hawker asked, only mildly interested. “What’s that, then?”

“Freedom, food and poetry for all,” McDonald replied. “The death of commerce. A new Eden at the heart of the city.”

Hawker smirked. “It’ll never work.”

McDonald began to frame some objection but it was too late. He had already bored them.

“Your turn,” Boon said. The big man turned to McDonald, grabbed him roughly by the throat and with a desultory twitch of his hand — exerting no more force than you or I might employ to open an especially recalcitrant bottle top — snapped the unfortunate fellow’s neck.

“Another?” Hawker asked.

“Why not? Might kill an hour or two.”

They set off into the heart of the fighting, toward the Monument, killing indiscriminately as they went — police, bankers, Love, Directorate men — wild cards gleefully disrupting the game, spreading fear and disaster wherever they trod.

Like I said: a series of horrible coincidences.

Please don’t think I’ve forgotten about the Somnambulist. We left him underground, you’ll remember, deep in the vaults of Love and pinioned to the floor by twenty-four swords. You’ll have realized, of course, that something like this was never going to stop him for long. By the time the Chairman had left me, the giant had already freed himself from a half dozen of the things, tugging them out of himself one by one, like a porcupine pulling out its own quills. He worked steadily, certain that the city was in danger, knowing it was his duty to protect it.

I, meanwhile, was following the Chairman. Puffed-up, bloated and enraged, the old man was wading through the battle, knocking combatants aside regardless of their allegiance. He proved easy to follow, since he left in his wake a trail of body parts (fingers, an ear, lumps of flesh and skin) as well as a lurid green track, like a giant upright snail.

Those members of Love who encountered him were appalled by the sight of a roaring monster in place of their leader and inspiration, and as his rampage continued I could sense, palpable as smoke, the spread of dissent amongst my followers, the crumbling of their collective faith.

It now became my priority to return him to his tank in the underworld, where I harbored hopes that he might yet be saved, revivified, restored. The day may not have gone as I had planned but there was still hope for the future. And so I followed, hoping to shepherd him back underground.

“Sir,” I cried. “Sir, it’s Ned here.”

He stopped what he was doing and let out a gargantuan groan. “Ned?”

“That’s right.”

“Is that you?”

“Come with me, sir. I can take you somewhere safe.”

To my great relief, he decided to do as he was told.

Moon regained consciousness some ten minutes after we had departed. Doing his best to ignore the pain, he left the Monument and ran as hurriedly as he was able back onto the street.

The fighting had thinned out — the moneymen were either dead or had escaped into another part of the city — and the battle had become a two-way affair, the forces of Love, the police and the Directorate joined against the Prefects.

Hawker and Boon had burst onto the scene, a hurricane of pen-knives and inky fingers, dead arms and Chinese burns. They had already butchered several hundred men, felling them like skittles. As it gradually dawned upon the assembled troops that the Prefects meant to destroy whatever was closest to them without discrimination, several strange alliances were joined. Mr. Speight, for example, was seen to fight side by side with an ersatz Chinaman. Dedlock took up arms with Mina, the bearded whore.

Detective Inspector Merryweather had withdrawn from the fray and was trying to marshall his men into a concerted attack when he saw Moon appear at the foot of the Monument. “Edward!” he shouted above the din and chaos. “Over here!”

Moon ran across to join them. “What’s happening?” he gasped. “What are those things?”

“No one seems sure. I’ve heard… rumors.”

A voice called out: “ I know.”

They turned to see a squat, wizened figure walking toward them. His flesh was tugged tight about his face, his eyes hollows of pain, his skin covered with a multitude of fierce sores and lesions. Mr. Skimpole was very close to death, his life seeping almost visibly away. “They’re the Prefects,” he rasped. “And they’re my fault.” Without acknowledging either man further, the albino stumbled on toward the center of the melee, for the eye of the storm, for Hawker and for Boon.

“Where’s my sister?” Moon snapped. “Where’s the Somnambulist?”

“She’s in the thick of it,” Merryweather said bemusedly. “But I’ve not seen the giant. Shouldn’t worry, though. Practically indestructible, isn’t he?”

“Have you seen the Chairman?”

“Who?”

“Never mind.” Moon set off toward the fighting, following the green trail of the poet.

I was only a few minutes ahead of him at the time, trying to manhandle the old man back underground. It was tough and unforgiving work as parts kept dropping from his body without warning. We reached the mouth of King William Street Station and I led him inside, down past the ticket booths, along the platform, onto the track and toward the headquarters of Love. I tried not to think about how badly things had gone wrong, how my schemes and dreams had been undone, but simply did my best to concentrate on saving the Chairman, on preserving the cornerstone of my vision. I didn’t know it at the time, but as I grappled with the old man, the Somnambulist, with a look of intense concentration on his face, was pulling the final swords from his body, almost free at last.