Early Riser_The new standalone novel from the Number One bestselling author

by Jasper Fforde

  I was just beginning to wonder when Birgitta would turn up when – predictably enough, given this was my dream – there was a tap on the window, and I saw her wave at me from the fire escape outside. But she wasn’t the Birgitta from the beach, it was a serious Birgitta, a late-season Birgitta, a bulked-up-make-baby-in-the-Spring Birgitta, a worried Birgitta – and not, I think, for herself.

  ‘For God’s sake, Charlie,’ she said when I opened the window and helped her climb in, ‘didn’t the porter show you my note?’

  But at least she was there, even if pissed off. Her dark hair was loosely bunched up in a ponytail, and beneath her parka she was dressed in paint-spattered dungarees.

  ‘I did get your note,’ I said, going along with the narrative, enjoying the frisson of danger. I’d seen the Cambrensis in the distance, knew where Webster had lived; I’d seen his address on file. I was filling in the gaps. This was a dream to be savoured, an experience to enjoy. The adventure was wholly in my head, and I was going to enjoy every moment.

  ‘Then why didn’t you go to the safe house?’ she continued, her anger rooted more in concern than annoyance. ‘Kiki would have arranged your evacuation.’

  The dream was becoming more like a spy thriller by the second: Birgitta and I were not in the Douzey as economic migrants. We were engaged in infiltration work for the Campaign for Real Sleep. I was in deep cover at HiberTech, working my way up the unskilled labour chain to gain access to sensitive information.

  ‘I’m just an orderly. I’ll act dumb. They’ve got nothing.’

  ‘Not this time. She was there, in the phone booth, when I walked in. She knows.’

  I didn’t know what I was meant to say right then, but it was okay; Birgitta spoke for me. And when she did, it was pretty much as expected.

  ‘Kiki needs the cylinder.’

  Of course. She would say that. I was still filling in the blanks with whatever was to hand. I’d said it before: a dream is just the subconscious mind attempting to form a narrative from a jumble of thoughts, facts and memories.

  ‘It’s safe,’ I said, meaning the tube I’d just hidden up the chimney, ‘and I’ll come back for it, I promise – and get it to Kiki.’

  She raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I’m not leaving Sector Twelve until you do.’

  There was a thump on the door. It was expected, but we jumped, even so.

  ‘Webster?’ came a voice that could have belonged to either Toccata or Aurora.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I asked in an innocent, sing-song sort of way.

  ‘Who do you think?’ came the voice again. ‘The Gronk? Open the sodding door.’

  Birgitta and I looked at one another.

  ‘They’ll search the place,’ I whispered, ‘there must be nothing linking you and me. Here.’

  I reached up and plucked a faded photo from where it was hidden beneath the star-shaped clock. It was the Polaroid of us both, a wafer of time from that perfect and now distant moment back on the Rhosilli. I handed it to Birgitta.

  ‘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 th
e 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.

  ‘Don’t make us do anything you might regret,’ said Mrs Nesbit, who was now in the temple and casting a bluish glow onto the stonework, ‘because we can make our dreams into your nightmares.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘you could make that your mission statement and company motto.’

  ‘Bravely spoken,’ said Mrs Nesbit, ‘but we’ll have the last laugh. You’re almost out of dreamtime. We’ll speak again.’

  She vanished abruptly, and my ear twitched as I heard the scratch of a shoe against stone. Partially hidden in the shadows was a man dressed in a medical orderly’s uniform of a collarless white jacket with a flap buttoned diagonally up the front. I recognised him immediately: Charles Webster, my confident and distinctly unwonky sleep-avatar.

  I had been him only two minutes before, now I was looking at him.

  ‘Don Hector?’ he asked in a nervous voice.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m a friend of Kiki.’

  I beckoned him closer and gave him a plain cardboard tube, the same one that Webster would hide up the chimney, moments before being arrested. It was all backwards, but dreams, I learned, were rarely linear.

  ‘Look after the cylinder as you would your life,’ I said, ‘and get it to Kiki. We’ll not speak again.’

  Webster understood the gravity of the situation and swiftly departed. Within a few minutes there were criss-crossing flashlights outside and The Notable Goodnight entered, followed by Hooke and several other people I presumed were HiberTech Security. They were one step behind both of us. Right now, Webster was on his way to hide the cylinder.

  ‘Where is it?’ said Goodnight, striding towards me. ‘What have you done with it? Who did you give it to?’

  I gave her a smile, then the middle finger.

  ‘All our work,’ implored Goodnight, ‘everything we stood for, everything we built. Please, Don Hector, do the right thing.’

  I smiled. Don Hector didn’t have to justify his/my actions to anyone.

  ‘We’ll squeeze it out of him,’ said Agent Hooke. ‘He might resist out here, but not in his dreaming mind. We’ve drawn worse secrets out of better people than him.’

  ‘Blue Buick,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ asked Goodnight.

  ‘I said, “blue Buick”. Because it’s all you’ll get from me. A picnic I once had, on my own, in a field overlooking the Wye where there’s this glorious oak that has large stones piled up around the trunk. I used to sit and read, the car parked close by, some wine in a cooler, cheese. That’s what’s in my mind, and that’s all I’m going to dream about. I’ll be adding a few guardians of my own, too. Severed hands like hairless mole-rats, just in case you decide to go in, or send others in your place. You’ll get nothing from me.’

  ‘Take him,’ said Goodnight, but I was already gone – back to the pile of boulders around the oak, the blue Buick parked close by, the picnic half eaten. I knew the dream was about to end as the carpet of rippling hands flooded towards me, across the ground, over the boulders. I didn’t struggle as they ran up my body. I didn’t care when their combined weight toppled me and I felt a tooth break as I hit the rock below me; didn’t care as I felt myself being pulled through the gaps in the stones; didn’t care as I felt myself once more suffocating beneath the soil, the damp earth pressing heavily on my chest. I didn’t care because—

  Dawn and the dead

  * * *

  ‘… Average temperatures across Wales are a balmy sixteen degrees, but with seasonal highs and lows of plus thirty-two and minus sixty-eight. The residents are well adapted to the climate, being generally impervious to hardship, more hirsute, and with a propensity to minimal weight loss during slumber …’

  – Handbook of Winterology, 4th edition, Hodder & Stoughton

  My eyes flickered open, my temples throbbed, my mouth felt dry. For the briefest of moments I thought I was once again safely back in the Melody Black, but no. Clytemnestra was staring down at me with a look that was beginning to feel increasingly oppressive, and next to her, the portrait of me wearing Birgitta’s husband’s body seemed also to have changed – he was looking less like someone in love, and more like someone with severe wakestipation.

  I stretched, downed the glass of water I’d left for myself, then swung my legs out and lowered my feet to the soothingly cold boards of the floor. Regardless of the weirdness, I’d enjoyed the dream. It looked as though I had created a narrative that had all the ingredients of a thriller: a good-looking young couple in love and working for a shadowy organisation, an agent in peril, a missing recording cylinder, an interrogation, loss, betrayal. And all with me centre stage. Perhaps this was subconsciously what I saw for myself, my dream-fuddled mind generating a sense of excitement and drama that so far had been absent from my utterly conventional life. If I had another life, I�
��d dedicate it to non-Morphenox slumber, with all the dreams that come – and the attendant dormelogical risks. Perhaps Shamanic Bob and his dreamers had something after all.

  There was a knock at the door. I guessed it must be Aurora, and I was correct. Her left eye was staring off and up to the right, while the right fixed me with a keen sense of clarity. The abrasively offensive Toccata part of her was gone; she was back to her more ebullient self. I actually felt quite relieved to see her.

  ‘I was passing,’ she said cheerily, ‘and I wanted to check you were okay.’

  I didn’t know what to say, so said what I was thinking.

  ‘I didn’t realise you and Toccata were—’

  Aurora glared at me with such a look of hurt, anger and confusion that I stopped mid-sentence.

  ‘I was about to say,’ I began again, ‘that I was unaware you and Toccata were … so alike.’

  She stared at me for a while, her good eye unblinking while her unseeing left eye twisted in its socket in a disturbing manner.

  ‘We are not alike,’ she said finally, ‘not even the slightest bit. Does that woman think we are?’

  ‘Well, no,’ I replied, truthfully enough.

  ‘Exactly. And that’s the way we’re going to keep it. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  I filled the empty pause that followed by offering her coffee.

  ‘You have some?’ she asked. ‘The real stuff, I mean?’

  ‘Sadly not,’ I replied with some regret. ‘Nesbit Value Brand.’

  She shrugged, told me it couldn’t be helped and then walked in, quietly closing the door behind her. She took off her coat, dumped it on a nearby chair and jumped up to sit on the kitchen counter.