Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

‘You kept it?’ she said. ‘Seriously bad move. I’ll destroy it.’

She shoved the Polaroid in her pocket and we stared at one another for a few moments. If the beach had been the high point, this was the low. It would be the last time we/they’d see one another, and I think we/they both knew it. Our final words came easily enough.

‘I love you, Charlie.’

‘I love you, Birgitta.’

We said the words tonelessly, without feeling, just as the nightwalker Birgitta had been saying them to me out in the real world. She hadn’t been saying them in a dull monotone, she was repeating them exactly as she’d last said them. Unhurried, an expression of fact, not an anthem of passion.

And then she was gone, back out of the window and away down the fire escape. The door wobbled as someone outside loosed off a Thumper, and the lock flew off with a loud report and embedded itself in the far wall. A second thump reduced the door to a cloud of wood splinters and—

—I was under the oak tree, sitting on the jumbled heap of scratched boulders, the air heavy with the scent of Summer, the sky an azure blue, the light filtering through the spreading boughs to scatter a dappled light upon the ground.

Like before, there was no transition, no warning, nothing. One moment I was in the Cambrensis about to get busted, the next I was under the oak. I sat up and looked around. I wasn’t Webster any more, I was Don Hector. My skin hung slackly from my jowls, my limbs ached and my vision felt dim and constricted. The fuzziness was still there on my left-hand side, and deep inside my chest I could feel a rattle that I knew was not a passing infection, but a funeral march.

I climbed unsteadily to my feet and looked around. The blue Buick was there, the Morpheleum was there on the horizon, the picnic was all laid out – and Mrs Nesbit was there, the wavy bluish aura crackling around her.

‘We know of a remote farm in Lincolnshire where Mrs Buckley lives. Every July—’

She didn’t get to finish. Her voice was abruptly cut out by the other voice, the hectoring Mrs Nesbit that didn’t match the mouth of the shimmering vision. This time, I recognised it. The Notable Goodnight.

‘Worthing?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you there, under the oak, in the sun, the blue Buick and the picnic close by?’

‘Yes,’ I said, staring at where I could see a hand hiding behind a flower a few paces away.

‘Where did you go just now? You were dreaming of something. Was it relevant to our search for the cylinder?’

‘No,’ I replied quickly, ‘just some stuff from the Pool – a memorable game of indoor cricket when Billy DeFroid knocked the hand off the statue of St Morpheus, then mended it with chewing gum while sitting on the shoulders of Ed Dweezle.’

‘That’s very interesting,’ said Mrs Nesbit.

‘Is it?’

‘No. It’s probably the least interesting thing I’ve heard. There’s only one dream I want to hear about, and that’s the one that contains the cylinder. We need to know where it is. We need it back.’

I knew now what the cylinder was, at least physically: a recording cylinder, probably made of wax and with an audio soundtrack, and hidden up the chimney back at the Cambrensis .

‘The one that Kiki is after?’ I asked.

There was a pause.

‘That’s right, Worthing. The one that Kiki is after.’

‘What’s on the cylinder?’ I asked.

‘Nothing that concerns you. Just try and remember who Don Hector gave it to, or where it is now. It’s important. Try and get to the Morpheleum. You may have better luck than the others.’

‘Others?’

‘I meant… the other time you tried.’

But I wasn’t really listening. I knew Webster had been given the cylinder but I wanted to know where he got it. Close the circle, if you like. What was more, I knew that I had to get to the temple of Morpheus, the one I could see on the horizon. I climbed down from the boulders as fast as my limited mobility would allow, then limped off across the open ground towards the Buick, feeling in my pocket for the rabbit’s-foot key ring. I kicked away a hand that had grabbed my trouser leg, then yanked open the car door and climbed in. There was little short-term gain; within a second the hands were swarming across the bonnet in an aggrieved manner, their skin squeaking on the glass as they tried to squeeze in through the slot at the top of the driver’s jammed window. Their numbers were soon so great that they appeared less like hands and more like finger-sized maggots writhing in a tin.

I fumbled for the car keys, started the engine, slammed the car into gear and was off with a jerk. Fortuitously, most of the hands fell or slid off the car and the ones that were inside I simply tossed outside. Pretty soon I was quite alone, driving across the grassy landscape, the only sound the wheels as they rumbled across the turf.

The temple took less than a minute to reach, and I pulled up, stopped the engine and climbed out. The hands that had remained stuck to the car seemed to have been stunned into inactivity by the sudden change in events, and were now silently observing me while rocking on their knuckles.

I walked towards the Morpheleum, which had been realised perfectly within my dream – lichen blooms had erupted upon the age-softened carvings, cracks had opened up in the masonry and ivy had locked the building in a tight death-grip.

‘Are you at the temple?’ asked Mrs Nesbit, who was still there, standing right next to me, shimmering softly.

‘I’m there.’

‘The first to do so,’ she said, ‘you are doing well. But there is no respite until you find the cylinder. Only death frees you from this dream.’

‘You’re a bundle of laughs, Goodnight,’ I said.

‘I am Mrs Nesbit,’ said Mrs Nesbit after a pause that was too long to mean anything other than that she wasn’t. ‘And if I was Goodnight – which I’m not – you should use the accolade “Notable”. I think she’s deserved it after a lifetime of selfless toil, don’t you?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Find the cylinder. Explore the temple. Go.’

I tentatively reached out to touch the building and with an almost seamless transition moved to a different dream. I was still Don Hector but it wasn’t high Summer any more, it was late Autumn, and a grey overcast portended of rain to come. I shivered, even though wearing an overcoat, and looked around. The blue Buick had gone but the Morpheleum remained, looking darker and more forbidding but identical and now in an overgrown wood with dead brambles, silver birch and saplings of ash, their branches bare, ready for the Winter. I knew where I was – in the overgrown gardens within the quadrangle back at HiberTech. This was the place where Don Hector went for peace and solitude. His and his alone.

But if I had thought I’d left Mrs Nesbit behind, I was mistaken. She was right there next to me in the Morpheleum. She wasn’t attached to the landscape, she was attached to me .

‘What’s happening?’ she said.

‘They’re not dead,’ I said in a state of confusion, airing my views about nightwalkers before I’d even realised it. ‘The catastrophic neural collapse brought on by Morphenox-induced Hibernational Hypoxia is not a collapse at all – it’s a state of displaced consciousness below the threshold of detection.’

I didn’t know what I was talking about; this was Don Hector speaking, not me.

‘We know that,’ said Mrs Nesbit, ‘hence the need for the cylinder. Now, let’s take this one step at a time. Are you still outside the temple to Morpheus?’

‘Yes.’

‘Go inside.’

I stepped forward and squeezed between the heavy bronze doors. The interior was the size of a badminton court and illuminated by narrow windows set deep into the thick masonry. There was a central aisle with two arcades running parallel on either side, separated from the main chamber by a series of arches that sat atop columns of a simple, unfussy design. I walked to the sanctuary at the rear, where a domed roof was centred above a dusty altar covered in offerings to ensure sound and safe sleeping. Mostly flowers and foodstuffs, they had rotted away many years before and were little more than desiccated scraps.