Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

‘Something’s happened,’ she said through the medium of the shimmering Mrs Nesbit, and Aurora held up her hand. The nightwalkers stopped abruptly but continued to stare at me hungrily.

‘We’ve got a crew inside the Cambrensis and the HotPot hadn’t been shut down at all,’ said Mrs Nesbit. ‘There’s also about thirty nightwalkers inside.’

Aurora looked at me.

‘Jonesy and Toccata,’ she said, reading my thoughts perfectly. ‘Pull out the nightwalkers and send them for immediate redeployment. No, wait. Safer to simply retire them – along with Birgitta and Webster. We can’t risk any of them being retrieved.’

And in that moment, I broke. I thought about what I’d done with the cylinder, and Aurora picked up on it immediately.

‘Porter’s lodge, lower ground floor,’ she said in a triumphant tone, ‘behind the vermin grid on the ventilation duct.’

She relayed the information to Goodnight, and Mrs Nesbit acknowledged the message, then asked Aurora if she was going to come out, retire Worthing and then get some rest.

‘I’ll see this through,’ she said. ‘I want Wonky to know what happens to people who annoy me. Besides, it will be fun. I’ll see you later.’

Goodnight agreed, and the shimmery Mrs Nesbit vanished.

‘Well now,’ said Aurora, ‘that wasn’t so very hard, was it? If you’d told us earlier you might still be alive. Driving a golf cart and brain dead, but alive.’

‘Even if I lived another thousand years,’ I said, ‘I’d never come across a more obnoxious person than you.’

‘That’s a hard call to make,’ she said cheerily. ‘HiberTech is a big place, and I’m really only the muscle, the one who does the shitty jobs that need to be done. Who’s worse? The monster who does, or the monster who guides policy and gives the orders?’

I was probably past caring at this point. Tears of frustration were running down my cheeks and freezing before they hit the ground. I’d failed – again . I looked up, and the nightwalkers continued their slow advance. There were about ten of them, and they all licked their dry lips as they stared at me. Some were missing body parts, all were in rags, and the stench of decaying flesh mixed with body odour and excrement was overpowering. I struggled to free my feet but couldn’t, and the nearest nightwalker lifted my bathrobe and placed a dirty fingernail on my stomach. I thumped it hard on the head, but it was like striking a bowling ball, and I did little except hurt my hand.

I closed my eyes and awaited my fate. If Webster could take it, so could I.

I braced myself, but nothing happened. After a few moments I opened a wary eye to see that the ticket office was no longer there; we were standing on an unbroken white carpet of undulating deep snow, the sound deadened, a dull empty whiteness in all directions. The nightwalkers were paying me no heed as they had been startled by something within the blizzard, like a pack of carrion-wolves disturbed by hunters. Within a few seconds they had all scuttled away into the white of the snowstorm and Aurora and I were left completely alone.

‘Another of your tricks, Worthing?’

‘No,’ I said, equally confused, ‘this isn’t me, I swear.’

We both stared into the empty drab whiteness all around but there was nothing to be seen aside from the smooth snow and softly falling flakes. I took a step back – the ice around my feet had melted.

Aurora drew her Bambi but it was pulled from her hands and went whirling off into the whiteness. She stared at me, and I back at her, and then, from the depthless emptiness, there was the soft chuckle of a child.

‘What’s that?’ demanded Aurora, as a sudden gust of wind sent the falling snow into a flurry.

‘It’s the Gronk,’ I said simply.

‘There is no Gronk, Worthing.’

‘I thought so too, at first,’ I said, ‘but I’ve learned a few things while I’ve been here. The Wintervolk have a free pass during our dreaming times, moving from one to another as mice move around a house behind the wainscotting. Dreams nourish them, dreams give them life. They wait, they bide their time, then they make landfall briefly to do what is right to those who do what is wrong.’

She glared at me but I think she knew I was telling the truth.

‘We can fight it together,’ she said, ‘the combined strength of us two will defeat her.’

‘I don’t need to defeat her,’ I said, ‘she doesn’t want me, never wanted me. She’s come for you: the juiciest morsel on the whole Sector Twelve platter.’

Aurora looked at me, then out at the steadily falling snow. There was another gurgle of laughter and the Winter opened up, ready to be nourished with the shame of the unworthy. I felt a shard of ice pierce my heart as the Winter welcomed me into its darkness, then watched as Aurora had the burdens of her sins drawn from her, as heat might be extracted from a hapless traveller. Every murder, every lie, every interrogation. Her face went from fear to realisation, then to sorrow, contrition, guilt, then… shame .

‘Oh sweet mercy,’ she whispered, hand over her mouth, ‘what have I done?’

And once she’d become fully aware of the enormity of her sins, she was gone. All was quiet once more, the snow gently falling, the air fresh, calm.

I wasn’t alone for long. I felt a small hand clasp mine and I looked down. There was a young girl grinning up at me, dressed in a swimming costume and holding a beach ball, the snow melting on her cheeks as it settled.

‘Hey, Gretl,’ I said.

‘Hey, Charlie,’ she replied. ‘She was unworthy, you know.’

‘I know.’

She squeezed my hand again.

‘You are noble and wise beyond your understanding, Charlie. It’s important you know that.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but I don’t feel it. HiberTech are about to retire all the nightwalkers from the Cambrensis , including Birgitta and Webster. I’m due to be murdered in my sleep as soon as it’s noted Aurora is missing or dead or however it works out there, and my nightwalker retrieval plan counted on me actually staying alive.’

‘We might be able to do something about that,’ said Gretl. ‘I have a feeling that Aurora might not be quite as dead as you suppose. There’s a reason I didn’t take her clothes, or her finger. She still needs them. Here she is.’

A figure was walking out of the snow towards us. I recognised her not by her features, but by her demeanour. She looked scared and a little confused. Actually, a lot confused.

‘I feel kind of odd,’ said Toccata, with both her eyes looking straight at me, ‘like I’m waking up from a very wild and implausible dream.’

‘Not yet you’re not,’ I said, ‘but soon. And there’s one or two urgent things I’d like you to do for us.’

She tilted her head on one side.

‘Does it involve bringing down HiberTech?’

‘It does.’

‘Then let’s hear them.’

In a desperate alliterative bid to be the first to coin a phrase, the press variously dubbed it: ‘The Wonder of Wales’, ‘The Miracle of the Marches’ and ‘The Sensation of Sector Twelve’. Ultimately, to no avail. Historically and medically it became known simply as ‘The Awakening’.

All told, there were sixty-one nightwalkers across Sector Twelve who suddenly found themselves awake, one after the other, at five and three-quarter minute intervals, continually over the space of six hours. Of those, five were being harboured at different locations in the Sector, eight were still wandering around outside, an unreliable twelve were reported from HiberTech’s Redeployment labs, and an impressive thirty-six were, for no clearly explained reason or purpose, all gathered at the Cambrensis Dormitorium.