Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

‘They’ll always get you, Charlie. Trying to drive to the temple, not being able to. Anything to stop you finding the cylinder, stop you reaching the Morpheleum. But the cylinder is in there somewhere. The temple is a good start. The clock is running – I suggest you start driving, and fast.’

I elected to do as she said, but then noticed with a feeling of dread that the hands were not simply severed hands, but small hand-like creatures , the wrist domed over with skin like a healed stump, and not looking like part of a human at all. I put my own hand in my pocket, pulled out a rabbit’s-foot key ring and made a dash for the Buick.

I couldn’t run as fast as I wanted. I was weak, and my feet felt draggy. Within a few paces I could sense the hands grasp the hem of my trousers, and from here they started to climb my legs, making me heavier, impeding my progress. I made it to the car and tried to get in but the weight and volume of the hands made it impossible to move, let alone drive. I kicked and pushed and tore at the hands but even if I dislodged one, two more would stream out of the earth to take their place. I heaved myself into the driver’s seat and slipped the key into the ignition. The oil and generator lights flicked on and the car’s engine burst into life. Without a foot to work the clutch, I simply pushed the gear lever into first. The gearbox clunked, the car lurched and the engine stalled. I shouted as a wave of hands erupted from the soil, flowed into the car in a flood and covered my face and then dragged me outside. I had a fleeting glimpse of the shimmery Mrs Nesbit before I was pulled beneath the ground, the taste of soil in my mouth, the earth above me pressing heavily on my chest and a sense of enveloping darkness. I tried to yell but my mouth was full of dry soil and—

—a voice. But not Mrs Nesbit’s.

‘What are you still doing here?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I’ll rephrase that: what in all that’s cold and dead and putrid are you still doing here?’

I didn’t recognise the voice, but figured it was a Deputy sent by Chief Logan to make sure I didn’t lapse into full hibernation, always a risk with first-time Winterers. I was grateful to be back in Cardiff . Spending my first assignment in Sector something-or-rather at the Sarah Whatsit Dormitorium hadn’t sounded like a huge barrel of fun, although I couldn’t as yet remember how I’d managed to get back.

On the Railplane, I expect.

‘You with me, Worthing?’

‘I’m with you,’ I croaked, my throat dry, my vocal cords stiff with disuse.

‘Truly?’

‘No.’

I felt myself groan. My head felt like mud, my eyes were gummed tight shut and I really only had one thought in my head: that I desperately, urgently, painfully wanted to go back to sleep.

‘There was a striped towel,’ I said, as memories started to return, firing randomly around inside my mind like lottery balls, ‘and a beach ball. A child, a girl, laughing. A woman in a swimsuit, a wrecked liner – the Argentinian Queen. ’

‘It’s called Arousal Confusion,’ came the woman’s voice from the darkness. ‘You won’t know shit for a couple of minutes and you’ll talk utter bollocks.’

‘She took a Polaroid,’ I said, ‘and the orange-and-red parasol was of spectacular size and splendour.’

‘As I said,’ remarked the voice, ‘utter bollocks. Your mind has been dormant, and your memory is still remapping. Until it does, you’ll be all over the shop. Can you remember your name?’

I lay for a few minutes in the blackness, my eyes still gummed shut, and waited for my thoughts to gather.

‘Charlie Worthing,’ I said as soon as the fact popped into my head, ‘BDA26355F. I’ll be twenty-three on the ninth after Springrise and I’m resident at room five-oh-six at the Melody Black , Cardiff.’

‘Better, but still nonsense,’ said the voice, ‘but to go back to my initial enquiry: you told Laura and Fodder you were leaving on the last train. So: what are you still doing here?’

I had to think really hard. There had been talk about taking a Sno-Trac somewhere. Nope, it had gone again.

‘Okay,’ came the voice, ‘I think it’s time to draw back the curtains.’

She placed something damp in my palm and I gently massaged the hard sleep-crust that had sealed my eyes tight shut. I pulled at my top eyelid, the crust broke with an almost-audible snik , and in an instant my vision returned – garish and distorted to begin with, but as my long-dormant cortex kicked into life, the world pulled itself into some semblance of order.

I saw Clytemnestra first, exactly the same as I’d seen her last. But with Clytemnestra came the unwelcome news that I had not returned to Cardiff.

‘The Sarah Siddons ,’ I sighed, ‘Sector Twelve.’

‘It grows on you like mildew and needy cousins,’ said a woman who was sitting on a chair next to the bed. ‘We call it “The Twelve” or more usually “The Douzey”. You may get to enjoy it. It’s not likely, but you might.’

She had mousy-brown hair cut short, was dressed in the off-white Winter combat fatigues usually favoured by Consuls, Footmen and the military, and was looking at me with a bemused smile. She was either a very healthy forty or a horribly unhealthy twenty, had faintly Southern features and above her name badge wore a pair of silver storks. She carried a pair of Bambis on her hips and, like Fodder, had a D-ring sewn into her shock-vest.

‘Hello,’ I said, blinking away the gumminess from my vision.

‘I’m Vice-Consul Bronwen Jones,’ she said. ‘Everyone calls me Jonesy. Bit obvious for a nickname and I’m not dead keen on it. I wanted something more along the lines of “IceMaiden” or “BlackWidow” or “FrostCrumpet” but you don’t get to choose these things.’

‘FrostCrumpet?’

‘That was always a third choice,’ she admitted, ‘not my favourite either.’

‘I used to be called “Wonky”,’ I said, hoping to ingratiate myself with the thinnest of shared experiences, ‘I’m hoping that doesn’t stick.’

‘It will now.’

She offered me her left hand for me to shake. Her right was mostly missing, and what remained had healed raggedly: Winter patch-me-ups always ended up looking worse.

A kettle started whistling somewhere and Jonesy got up and vanished into the next room while I stretched, my muscles quivering with the effort and instantly tightening into a crampy spasm. I tried several times to get up with varying levels of success, and could stand unaided by the time Jonesy reappeared with two mugs. It was hot chocolate, sweet and thick, and as I drank I felt my core temperature rise. The clouds in my head began to part more rapidly, and with this, unwelcome memories returned. Aurora had thumped Logan so hard he’d been embedded into a wall, I’d been marooned in Sector Twelve and was spending a few nights in the Sarah Siddons before I was to drive myself out. I also had an uncomfortable feeling that I might have dreamed myself back into the Gower from a memorable holiday when I was a kid, mixed up with several paintings and the artist whom I’d inexplicably named Birgitta, which was kind of odd as the only Birgitta I’d known was a bitey spaniel with smelly ears once owned by Sister Placentia.