Early Riser_The new standalone novel from the Number One bestselling author

by Jasper Fforde

  In truth, I found it all a little creepy.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘remarkable.’

  ‘Remarkable?’ she echoed disdainfully. ‘Beetles, trapeze artists, Rodin, hydrofoils and anything by Brunel are remarkable. What we do here is beyond remarkable.’

  ‘Inspiring?’ I suggested.

  ‘Unprecedented,’ said Goodnight, then took the clipboard, signed her name below mine, and my responsibility for Mrs Tiffen was over.

  ‘Here’s your bounty,’ said Lucy, passing me a five-hundred-euro voucher redeemable at Mrs Nesbit’s.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I know it’s usually cash, but HiberTech have got some sort of promotion going.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Goodnight, turning back to us, ‘were there any changes?’

  ‘Changes in what?’

  ‘In her,’ snapped Goodnight, pointing towards the dead woman. ‘Changes in behaviour. Her playing, her demeanour. Got worse, got better, more fractious, less fractious, what?’

  ‘She used to only play “Help Yourself” but now she only plays “Delilah”. Is that normal?’

  ‘It’s not unusual. And we’re done. HiberTech thanks you.’

  And so saying, Goodnight took the dead woman by the arm and steered her off down one of the corridors towards the cells. Tellingly and chillingly, without the bouzouki. At the same time, Lucy led me back towards the exit, and once aboard the golf cart, we were off again in as reckless a manner as before. We tore along the edge of the quad, the gardens within so wild and tall and overgrown that it was difficult to see the facility on the other side.

  ‘Used to be carefully manicured when Don Hector first arrived here,’ said Lucy, following my gaze, ‘miles of gravel paths among a variety of trees and manicured borders, it’s said. A restful place for patients to wander. There’s a waterfall known as the Witches’ Pool, hothouses – even a grotto, a bandstand and a temple to Morpheus. All overgrown now.’

  We passed back into the warmth through the double doors, the tyres squealing on the polished linoleum flooring.

  ‘Don’t you find all that redeployed stuff a little creepy?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s challenging,’ she confessed, ‘but the possibility of actually having a usable workforce with a potential eight-and-a-half-million work-hours of productivity shouldn’t be sniffed at. Imagine having the redeployed skilled enough to work in factories – the price of goods would fall dramatically.’

  ‘And Morphenox-B?’ I asked.

  ‘For roll-out next Summer, and for everyone. It’ll be a game changer – but you didn’t hear that from me.’

  She smiled, raised her eyebrows and commanded the golf-cart driver to stop.

  He stopped obediently, and Lucy climbed out at the pharmaceutical manufacturing department.

  ‘Are you heading straight back?’ she asked. ‘From what I’ve heard, you really don’t want to get mixed up with the Consuls in Sector Twelve.’

  ‘Straight home once I’ve seen someone.’

  I climbed out of the cart so we could hug.

  ‘May the Spring embrace you,’ I said.

  ‘And embrace you, too. See you next Fat Thursday. I’ll save you a burger.’

  I climbed back on board, Lucy shouted ‘Reception’ to the driver, and we lurched off once more. Pretty soon Lucy’s form was lost from sight behind a corner and we carried on in the direction of reception in as dangerous a fashion as before.

  My mind, however, was no longer worrying about death or fatal injury from golf-cart accidents, but Project Lazarus. Statistics about nightwalkers were always patchy but from what Lucy and The Notable Goodnight were saying, nightwalkers could be entering a new phase of usefulness. More annoyingly, my decision to take on an insanely dangerous overwintering gig simply to guarantee Morphenox rights might be rendered pointless if they were giving it away to all and sundry.

  My thought trail petered out as we had quite suddenly slowed to a halt. I looked across at the driver. He was leaning forward and motionless, staring at the floor ahead. I put out a hand to touch him but as I did so he suddenly turned and fixed me with a confused stare.

  ‘Will you tell her I’m sorry?’ he said in a clear, lucid tone.

  I was taken aback – it was as though he had suddenly forgotten he was a nightwalker.

  ‘Tell who?’

  ‘It was a huge mistake,’ he added with a look of bewilderment, as though he didn’t know what he was saying or quite why he was saying it, ‘and not a week goes by without me thinking about her.’

  A frown crossed his brow as though he were attempting to pick up a lost thread. He looked confused, then lost, and his lower lip began to tremble. And then tears – of frustration, I think – welled up in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.

  I laid a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Dave?’ I said. ‘Are you okay?’

  But he said nothing and we were off again with a squeal of tyres. A minute or two later and we were back at reception.

  ‘Thank-you-for-travelling-with-HiberTech,’ said Dave mechanically, ‘have-a-pleasant-onward-journey.’

  I walked over to the reception desk to return my visitor’s badge.

  ‘Charlie!’ said Josh. ‘Check out what I’ve made for you to lift your spirits, so to speak. I call it the “Full Spectrum Swizzle” and it features blackberry, mint, cola and lemon syrups. I’ve juiced seven lemons and an entire watermelon to make it using a new, efficient and incredibly unsafe technique that I’m calling hand-in-a-blender. If you find a hard chewy bit, it might be the tip of my little finger.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. In the forefront of culinary innovation,’ he added cheerfully, ‘there are always casualties.’

  He held up a bandaged finger as if to demonstrate the fact, and I stared at the drink.

  ‘You could have sieved it to get the finger out,’ I said.

  ‘Then you’d lose all the fruity bits. It’s only the tip, mind, hardly anything at all.’

  I tasted the drink, which was a cross between a smoothie and a mint latte. It was actually very good, and I told him so.

  ‘Glad,’ he said, ‘very glad.’

  I drank the rest, picked out the tip of the finger before I swallowed it and found that it was indeed quite small, and laid the empty glass on the counter.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I should report that my driver said that he wanted to apologise to a woman he once knew.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Quite sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Didn’t imagine it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, face falling, ‘how about that? I’ll make a note.’

  He opened Dave’s trip ledger and made a note. Only it wasn’t a note, it was a black cross. Once this was done, he hastily shut the book and drew in a deep breath.

  ‘An artefact from a previous life,’ he muttered, ‘a lost memory bubbling to the surface. But a memory without a functioning mind to give it relevance and context is no more than random words on a scrap of paper. Wouldn’t you agree? It’s really important to agree, you know.’

  He looked at me with a pained expression on his face.

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘Excellent,’ he said with a palpable sense of relief. ‘You can retrieve your weapon on the way out. Drop in again to see us real soon, and don’t forget about the Scrabble. Wincarnis, most mornings.’

  I thanked him and made my way to the exit. I looked behind me and noticed that he was removing his picture from the ‘Employee of the Week’ panel. I was only really happy once I was safely out of the complex.

  The Wincarnis

  * * *

  ‘… Professional Winterers were not well disposed towards those who peddled quack Dormeopathy: the self-appointed Nightshamans, Morpheists, Dreamdancers or homeodormeopaths. Citizens often thanked the spirits for delivering them from the Winter, when in reality they should have been thanking us: the porters, t
he techies, the quartermasters, the Consuls …’

  – Handbook of Winterology, 9th edition, Hodder & Stoughton

  There was still plenty of time until my train departed, so I headed into town to meet Moody, as we’d arranged. I took a right at a shuttered apothecary’s, then crossed a bridge upon which an inept driver had wedged an articulated lorry which was now frozen into the bridge by a concretion of snow and ice. Beyond this was a main square of modest proportions, empty aside from two parked cars, a post box, a phone box and a bronze statue on a sandstone plinth.

  Ahead of me and overlooking the square was the Winter Consulate, a domed granite-faced bunker that appeared to have been designed by someone whose architectural taste lay chiefly in harbour breakwaters. The style was termed Ultra-Permanence, and reflected the fashion for public buildings that could withstand the damage of glaciers, earthquakes and even a marble-sized meteorite. It reflected the mood of the Northern Fed: here to stay.

  To my right there was a newly refurbished flour mill, closed, and a public convenience beneath a town hall, also closed. Opposite me there there was a wool shop – open, curiously enough, and then a Co-op and Ottoman takeaway – again, closed. There were a few people around but no one seem to be dawdling. Mostly heads-down against the cold, faces hidden in hooded parkas.

  The Wincarnis Hotel was to my immediate left, the name of the establishment relating to a brightly coloured enamel sign advertising Wincarnis Restorative Tonics high above the door. The Edwardian lady depicted on the panel peered out at the world with a cheery grin, oblivious to the ice and snow, the enamelled colours appearing inordinately bright in the dullness of the gas lamps.

  I stepped inside the lobby and walked across to the reception desk, where there was a girl probably no older than sixteen sitting behind the counter. She wore a gingham dress under two buttoned cardigans, and her straight brown hair was cut neatly into a pudding bowl. She was poring over a stack of open books, and writing in a small neat hand in a child’s exercise book.

  ‘Welcome to the Wincarnis,’ she said in a cheery voice. ‘Haven’t seen you here before.’

  ‘Passing through,’ I said. ‘I was to meet Moody. He here?’

  ‘Nope, probably off somewhere muttering about Buicks and suchlike. What did you want to talk to him about?’

  ‘Buicks and suchlike.’

  ‘Figures,’ she said.

  She had what looked like schoolwork spread across the counter in front of her.

  ‘Homework?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s actually my doctoral thesis,’ she said with a mildly offended air. ‘Evidential confirmation of previously considered legendary or nebulous forms within the Winterstate.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means I’m trying to prove the existence of Wintervolk.’

  She might as well be attempting to prove unicorns or capture fairies in traps.

  ‘That’ll be tricky, don’t you think?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s borderline impossible.’

  ‘Because they don’t exist?’

  ‘Oh, they exist all right – it’s gathering evidence that’s hard. But I wagered a local bondsman they existed, and Jim Treacle, well, he does like a wager.’

  ‘What was the wager?’ I asked, expecting a dozen Topics or something.

  ‘Fifty grand.’

  ‘Fifty grand?’ It would take me twenty years to save up that sort of money. ‘Why so much?’

  ‘Long story. What do you make of this?’

  She opened her satchel and took out a small box and then, with the utmost care, opened it to reveal a tiny hat, less than five centimetres across.

  ‘Behold,’ she said, ‘the headgear of a Tonttu, one of the Winter little people.’

  I stared at it for a moment. The stitching was undoubtedly fine, but the material was less like leather and more like … plastic.

  ‘I think it’s from a Barbie,’ I said, ‘one of her Western outfits.’

  ‘Yes, I think so too,’ she said with a sigh. ‘The maker’s name is stamped on the inside. Look.’

  She showed me, then repacked the hat and placed it back in her bag.

  ‘It’s important to collect evidence,’ she said, ‘even if disproved. That’s how science works. Being proved wrong and then advancing. If I’m proved wrong a lot, I must be making headway, right?’

  ‘Works for me,’ I said, ‘but the Wintervolk are just stories, right? To frighten children into good behaviour and the sleep-shy into bedding down?’

  ‘I’m taking a broader approach to the traditional definition of “existence” or even “proof”,’ she said, ‘but I may have more luck here than anywhere else: the Gronk, Thermalovaur and Gizmo are pretty much only ever connected to Mid-Wales, and of those, the Gronk is pretty much brand new – the first mention of it was only twenty years ago, over near Rhayder.’

  ‘Ichabod and the cold water tank?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  I told her that Moody had said the area was known as the cradle of fable.

  ‘With good reason,’ she replied, ‘and I think the Gronk is due to return – to feed on the shame of the unworthy.’

  ‘Rich pickings here, I take it?’

  She rolled her eyes.

  ‘She’ll be totally spoiled for choice in the Twelve. Bondsmen and part-time Consul Jim Treacle is my choice if the Big G comes to call, but on the Burden of Guilt stakes, he probably doesn’t even come close to some of the oddballs kicking around. There’s Jonesy, who lost sixty soldiers under her command, Toccata who is barely herself half the time, Fodder is definitely hiding something and most of the porters here have suffered fatal losses, probably through boredom or incompetence. But my money’s on the Twelve’s very own one-man obnoxs-a-thon, Deputy Hooke. I’m Laura Strowger, by the way.’

  ‘Charlie Worthing,’ I said.

  We shook hands rather than Winter embraced; you don’t with kids unless they’re family.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘good luck on your hunt for the Gronk.’

  She thanked me and returned to her work, and I walked through to the Mrs Nesbit’s café, a good-sized room of plain rustic decor: oak beams, half-panelled walls, antique copper pans and with two large windows that looked out on to the square. There was a drowsy and a potential client sitting in a cosy alcove near the crackling log fire, discussing Impressionist painters, the usual precursor to assisted slumber. From there she might move on to literature, poetry, the lute, and – failing all that – more intimate means. Few needed to. Given the traditionally high level of drowsying skill, most clients were unconscious somewhere between Dylan Thomas and Longfellow with a few lasting as far as W. H. Auden. Lutes rarely even came out of their cases.

  The drowsy’s eyes had the vacant, deeply-fatigued look of a winsomniac; someone who hadn’t been to the nourishing abyss of slumber for years. She looked oddly familiar, and appeared to be in her sixth decade – and that was unusual, because serial overwinterers rarely made it past their fourth. Stupidly, I raised my hand and waved in recognition, and she, expressionless, did the same.

  The remaining occupants of the lounge were winsomniacs, perhaps a dozen or so. They were sprawling rather than sitting, and oozed a sense of unexcited apathy. A pair were playing chess using lightweight pieces, several were reading books, but most were simply dozing, eyes and mouth partially open, saliva dribbling down their cheeks. They languidly swivelled their eyes towards me as I walked in, then just as languidly swivelled them back and carried on with what they were doing, which was the quiet side of almost nothing.

  ‘Welcome to Mrs Nesbit’s,’ said the winsomniac closest to me. He was dressed in long hessian robes, open sandals and wore dried Spring flowers entwined in his beard. He had green-rimmed spectacles and a kindly, pious face wrinkled into folds by sleepless Winters and the elements.

  ‘Hullo,’ I said, breaking the one rule of engaging with the sleep-shy: don’t.

  He introduced himself as Shamanic Bob.

/>   ‘Deputy Consul Charlie Worthing,’ I said.

  ‘Passing through?’

  ‘Yes; here to meet with Moody.’

  ‘You’ll get more sense from lichen. What’s with your head?’

  Unlike talking to The Notable Goodnight, where I needed to be polite, this was an answer I could have fun with.

  ‘It’s the final stages of an excruciatingly painful and incurable genital wasting disease. Luckily, it’s only spread by skin contact. Sorry, I should have said that before I shook your hand. Remiss of me – apologies.’

  Shamanic Bob smiled.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘I think I deserved that.’

  ‘Yes, I think you did.’

  He stood up, moved forward and drew me into the Winter embrace. The last time I’d been hugged by a shaman was about a decade before, and little had changed. He smelled of dry hessian, mould and biltong. He was also bony. Really bony. Like a sack of pickaxe handles. After we’d stood there for so long that I thought he’d fallen asleep, we parted.

  ‘Do you want a coffee?’ he said. ‘We stock Nesbit Budget Grind. What it lacks in taste it makes up for in adaptability. Mixed into a paste it makes a very resilient tile grout.’

  ‘That’s very kind, thank you.’

  ‘The machine’s up there, and while you’re about it, make one for me. Anyone else?’

  There was weak assent from the entire room. Enthusiasm was a dirty word to winsomniacs. I walked across to the bar and made a large cafetière of coffee, then placed it on a central table. The winsomniacs made weak and ineffectual attempts to help themselves, so I handed them around. The sleep-shy were like that. Always getting other people to do stuff for them.

  ‘On the house,’ said Shamanic Bob as I handed him a coffee, then took one myself. It tasted like coal-tar soap mixed with charcoal and rust.

  ‘Are you a follower of The Book of Morpheus, Worthing?’ he asked.