Ian Hocking - The Amber Rooms

‘Are you sure?’

As he felt the scar, Saskia watched his fascination.

‘I had the amputation reset by a butcher,’ she said. ‘He was no medic, but he knew how to tidy meat.’

‘You’re unusual.’

‘Pavel Eduardovitch,’ she said, ‘I will be honest with you. Then you will be honest with me. Do you agree?’

‘I don’t know. What do you wish to honest about?’

Smiling, she said, ‘I have a particular nightmare. Once, sometimes twice, each week, I open my dream eyes in a metal carriage. It is like a train, but it flies through the sky. I know this is the future. Decades from now. I’m sitting at the rear of this machine. Next to me is a little girl. She is dead, but I reach across and take her hand. I know that the flying machine is about to crash. It will crash in a forest. I’m sad because I love the forest, but this is a forest I will never see. When the flying machine does crash, I see its metals and plastics wash towards me like a great wave. Something fires down the aisle. It is a piece of an engine. There’s a bright pain in my wrist.’ She lifted her stump. ‘And I know that the girl has gone, and I have returned to the forest.’

‘It sounds horrible.’

‘It is.’

‘Do you think of it during the day?’

‘Sometimes. But, in daylight, it seems powerless. It does not scare me. At those times, I can hear the nightmare whisper in my ear: “tonight, then you will be scared”.’ Saskia put her elbow on the bed. ‘Do you know the English word for koshmar?’

‘Nightmare.’

‘Good. The word derives from mære, which was a supernatural beast thought to sit on one’s chest at night. Its pressure caused sickness and death.’

‘Is that why the English say, “Get it off your chest”?’

‘Perhaps. Tell me about your nightmare, Pavel Eduardovitch. Quid pro quo. What happens when you open your dream eyes?’

‘I don’t want to tell you.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’ll tell Mother. I don’t want her to … apply her theory.’

Saskia smiled. ‘I won’t tell her.’

He looked at the ceiling through the open square of his four-poster. ‘I’m in a leafy place. It might be Alexander Park in the Tsar’s Village. It’s summer, but a rain is falling. I walk through undergrowth but my footsteps make no sound. I might be a ghost. I …’

‘What?’

‘This sounds strange, but I feel like this is not my dream. Someone real is dreaming me.’

‘I see.’

‘I feel lost,’ he said. ‘There are no memories of what I was doing just before I came to the forest. I struggle to hear birdsong. There is none. Then, just as I am about to call for help, I hear a beautiful song.’

‘Hum it for me.’

Pasha turned away. ‘I know that I should ignore the sound, but I can’t. I walk towards it. As the singing grows louder, and more distinct, I can make out the words.’

‘Which words?’

‘I can’t remember. But in the nightmare, I recognise them.’ Pasha turned to her. His eyes were wide. ‘Finally, I reach a clearing. There is a beaten track leading to a circle of stones. The stones are uneven. An iron mesh covers the top. The singing is clear. It’s too clear. It feels like the notes are needles that reach deep inside my ears.’

‘Think. Is the voice male or female?’

‘It has the qualities of both. A woman’s pitch; a man’s anger. Just as I am looking down, I see a flash of sky reflected in the pool at the bottom. It seems far away. Then I realise that the iron mesh no longer covers the well. It has been pulled away. Two dots flash in the darkness. They might be eyes. The singing stops.’

‘What happens next?’

‘It varies. Sometimes I slip into the well. Other times, I get pushed.’

‘But you fall in?’

‘I start to fall. Then I wake up.’ He looked into her eyes, judging her reaction. ‘What do you think?’

‘I have no theory, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Why are you worried about the song?’

‘I heard it a long time ago, when I was walking the Caucasus.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’ Pavel Eduardovitch touched her forearm. She had not expected it. The hairs rose and she tried to pull away, but he held on to her. ‘You’re not a mathematics tutor, are you?’

‘Let go of my arm.’

But he did not. He frowned at something he could feel above her elbow. He pushed back the sleeve to reveal a dark band. Saskia saw it through his eyes: unaccountably black, unreflective, and restless. It seemed to creep. And yet it was still.

There was a moment when Saskia thought the world had stopped, crashed, as his finger came within an inch of the device.

Then he grasped it.

Her mouth opened a little.

‘One,’ he said, closing his eyes.

‘One what?’

‘One. Zero. Zero. Zero. One—’

Saskia looked from his slack, empty face to the band. She was certain that the band was pulling something out of him. It was an illusion, however. The reverse entropic field was affecting his speech.

‘Stop, Pavel Eduardovitch.’

‘One. Zero. Zero.’

She tried to remove his hand from the band, but his grip tightened. Was the band doing this, too?

‘Zero,’ he said, emphatically. There was bubbling throat in his throat. He swallowed. ‘One, zero, one, one.’

Now she squeezed his hand to reassure him, even as his fingers dug into her elbow, throttling the blood.

‘Zero,’ he said. ‘Zero, zero, zero.’

His hand slipped from hers. Saskia felt the blood return to her forearm. She leaned towards Pasha and demanded of herself that she know his condition. With that imperative thought came pieces of a reply: Pasha’s brainwaves featured a pronounced alpha wave component, which suggested he was calm and alert. His breathing was normal for his age and weight. Odours consistent with the decomposition of stress hormones spilled from his pores and his breath. His head lolled to one side, and the electrical activity of his head and neck muscles briefly made his brain waves difficult to interpret.

‘Pasha?’

He opened his eyes. ‘I heard myself saying numbers.’

‘Do you remember them?’

‘It hurt to speak.’

Saskia rolled her sleeve down. ‘You hurt yourself. Don’t touch things you shouldn’t.’

‘There were twenty five in total.’

Coldly, she said, ‘Forget them.’

‘Ms Tucholsky…’

‘I said, “Forget them”.’

Pasha reached out to her. ‘I don’t mean that. It’s your arm. Something is happening to it.’

Saskia looked at the band. It was glowing beneath her night shirt. A new coldness bit into her skin and she gasped, clapping a hand over it. The room seemed to brighten for a moment. In alarm, Pavel Eduardovitch sat upright. His eyes were fixed on the light coming from the band. Then the filaments in Pasha’s bedside light flared and died. The band darkened, too.

The room was utterly dark once more.

‘I can’t see.’

‘It’s all right.’

Saskia stepped back from the reaching hands of the boy. Silently, she walked to the foot of his bed. ‘Good night,’ she said.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Tell me what the number represents.’

‘I don’t know what it represents.’

‘That’s a lie. Remember I was honest with you.’

Saskia sighed. She admired his curiosity and felt a duty to cultivate it.

‘It is a secret. Do you agree to tell no-one?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said brightly.

‘The zeros and ones make a sequence of twenty-five, as you guessed. They describe, I believe, a base-two number system known as binary notation.’

‘Precisely,’ said Pasha. His voice was hurried. ‘It’s of the form invented by Leibniz, yes?’