The Dream Thief (Horatio Lyle)

by Catherine Webb

  Thomas staggered by, ignoring him, feet tied to the floor with chains of lead. The door was just there, just there at the end of an infinite fall and there was this shape in front of him and he could smell . . . leaves on a forest floor.

  So close.

  Not quite close enough.

  Before the world went out.

  Lyle had fallen over the books in his sitting room the second he’d tried to cross the floor. His shin had banged against leather spines, his knees had twisted and tumbled onto the unseen floor beneath. He crawled, feeling his way to the chest of drawers by the far wall, opening it and fumbling through: gloves, notes, pens, papers, bottles of ink, old magnets and ancient tubes, pieces of singed rubber and twisted wire that he’d thought he might one day have a use for, and never had, until at the very back he found what he needed, thick and hard and made of rubber and glass. He pulled the goggles over his eyes, wheezed and coughed and spat dirty slime as he tried to blink his way back to some sort of vision.

  Across his brain the random giddy thoughts of gas and drugs started to sing their little songs: Once upon a time in a land where all the horses ride across the moor beneath kites of string lightning and the child ran away to the—

  ‘If I take one white pea,’ moaned Lyle, clutching his head and staggering across the floor, ‘and one green pea, and I attempt to pollinate the one with the other . . .’ Piles of books fell before his shuffling feet: the old classics, the fairy tales that had sung him to sleep as a child, Newton and Hooke, Faraday and Galileo, the drawings of da Vinci, the musings of Copernicus. Newer things too: the strange ideas of an Austrian monk about the breeding patterns of peas; the contemplations of Darwin and his cousin Galton and his weather maps; of a young Scot with interesting ideas about temperature and pressure; of a man called Nobel who couldn’t understand why mixing clay with nitro-glycerine could do anything but good.

  Once upon a time . . .

  ‘No!’ moaned Lyle, leaning against the door and wheezing for breath. ‘If I . . . if I have a solar object of mass “M1” acting on a solar object of mass “M2”, at distance X where the value of G can be said to be 6.67x10-11 and I . . . and I . . .’

  He reached the bottom of the stairs and started to climb through the gases falling down past him from every lamp. Oh God, Tess.

  A door stood half open, a black way down, a thick smoke, fumbling, feeling step by step towards the pipe room, the place where it had all begun all that time ago, all the adventures, all the experiments, all the dangers he’d put the children in. Please, not Tess. Please, not now. Please . . .

  He half walked, half fell into the laboratory, pulled himself up by the nearest table top, saw Tess on the floor, her eyes closed. He saw a man, a grown-up man, wearing a lion’s skin and a pair of too-tight white trousers, saw him bending over her, saw his fingers open for her throat. Lyle screamed, ‘Murderer!’ and was across the floor in a second, throwing himself onto the man’s huge back, digging his fingers into the man’s eyes, his teeth into the man’s neck, all thoughts of numbers and stories and foggy gaseous sleep gone from his mind, an animal clawing at animal skin. ‘Murderer, murderer, murder!’

  The great man, twice the width of Lyle and about the same height, groaned like a startled bull. He reached behind him, flailed at Lyle’s head and tried to grab him. But if his fingers caught anything or did harm, the furious creature on his back didn’t notice or care, but slammed his elbow into the back of the other’s neck and his knee into the base of his spine so that, with a groan, the strong man fell to the floor, shaking and rubbing at the blisters forming across his mouth.

  But then, with a great heave, he threw Lyle off, and staggered to his feet, wheezing and groaning, swaying from the effect of the gas. Rather than attack and finish the job, he just stared at Lyle, tears rising in his eyes, lower lip trembling. Suddenly he gave a rumbling cry of, ‘Didn’t mean nothin’!’

  Lyle didn’t answer, but threw himself nails first at the man again, no grace or skill, but pure animal vengeance in his attack. The man batted him aside like an angry puppy nipping at the heels of a lion, knocking Lyle to the floor, and causing his goggles to bounce off. He blurted out, ‘Don’t wanna play!’

  If there was any logic in what the other man said, it vanished as, with a strange, child-like wail somewhere between a sulk and furious indignation, the giant hurled himself at Lyle. He caught him square in the chest and plucked him off his feet, then kept on moving, carrying him as lightly as a flower, and slammed him into the opposite wall. Tears were running freely down the man’s flushed cheeks. But, Lyle realised, there was no anger in his face, but something . . . ignorant, confused. This reasonable thought quickly faded as, with a groan, the man drew back a fist like the jaws of a giant squid, and it occurred to Lyle that even if the punch it threatened didn’t kill him, it’d certainly ruin his sense of smell.

  At that moment, someone who wasn’t Lyle or the man in the lion skin, whispered, ‘Lambkin.’

  A look of surprise passed over the face of the other man. His fingers opened. His eyes curled upwards. And with the grace, majesty and Newtonian inevitability of a tree falling in a forest, he fell over backwards.

  Lyle slid to the floor.

  A few inches away, he could see the sleeping face of Tess.

  He crawled towards her, felt blood running down somewhere at the back of his head. Somewhere at the top and bottom of his eyes, an invisible theatre manager was pulling the curtains shut on tonight’s performance. Good night, sweet dreams, try not to think of catalysing products and dead children, these things are taboo in the polite world of modern parenting. What would Mrs Bontoft do?

  ‘Tess?’ he whimpered, fumbling across the floor towards her. ‘Tess?’

  And a voice, a woman’s voice, soft as feathers breathed, ‘Everything’s going to be all right now, you lucky thing you.’

  And what was left of the lights that shone in Horatio Lyle’s world, went out.

  CHAPTER 11

  Clowns

  The sun rose across London, and London wondered why it had bothered.

  In the quiet suburb of Hampstead, a chubby woman with greying hair and a gentle, bewildered expression, opened the front door of her new retirement house to an unlikely sight.

  This consisted of Thomas Edward Elwick, who, with the aid of a helpful policeman called Charlie, who wasn’t sure if this was legal, held between the two of them a sleeping clown. Behind them, another equally puzzled constable, who wasn’t sure where promotion lay, held the peacefully sleeping form of Sissy Smith. As the lady looked down, an exceptionally grumpy-looking Tate padded through her parted legs and into the house without so much as a glance in her direction, while, wearing a slightly sheepish smile, Horatio Lyle said, ‘Um . . . hello, Mam.’

  In his arms, Teresa Hatch lay asleep.

  ‘Horatio, dear,’ said Milly Lyle, ‘am I to assume you’re not just here for my mince pies?’

  Thomas Edward Elwick sat with his feet in a tub of steaming hot water, a steaming hot towel across his shoulders and an icy cold towel across his forehead, eating mince pies and, all things considered, milking it. He had never been so tired. The second he’d been offered a seat in the kitchen of Milly Lyle, mother, widow, and other careers in her life that she merely described as ‘Before their time, dear’, he had been hit by the full force of his exhaustion.

  On the other side of the kitchen table Milly Lyle dabbed at the great mauve-and-blue bruises emerging on Horatio Lyle’s face.

  ‘Ow! It bloody hur—’

  ‘Language!’

  ‘Sorry, Ma,’ mumbled Lyle sulkily.

  ‘Get punched by a circus strong man, did you?’ Milly asked her son.

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact,’ grumbled Lyle.

  ‘You know,’ sighed his mother, ‘I would never have guessed. Unless, perhaps, I had noticed the size of the finger marks, the degree of damage, the hints of torn lion skin under your fingertips, the smell of well-oiled body odour that is very un
like yourself, may I say, and, of course, the unconscious clown in my privy.’

  Underneath the table, Tate whimpered.

  Thomas thought he could almost remember having found Tate. This led to another vague recollection, of . . .

  . . . oh, my . . .

  . . . had he really (oh, yes, here it comes) - had he really (yep, you bet) - had he really, really run through a gas-filled house, assaulted a clown with a poker, faced a man armed with a set of throwing knives, dragged an unconscious girl (yes, that would be it, another hot towel for the shoulders, please) by the armpits, crawled down the stairs half overcome with fumes, tripped over a delirious organ grinder and pulled Sissy Smith to . . .

  . . . to . . .

  Funny, that.

  He couldn’t quite recall having pulled Sissy Smith to safety.

  In fact, he was fairly sure that . . .

  ‘Tea, dear?’ asked Milly.

  ‘Um, yes please, Mrs Lyle.’

  Silence descended on the kitchen, punctuated only by the occasional grumble of the recovering Tate and the whistle of a boiling kettle.

  Tess hadn’t been greatly impressed at her rescue, when she’d finally woken up. She’d begun with, ‘Why the bloody hell do me arms feel like someone went an’ tried to pull them out of me bloody shoulders?’ and was about to embark on a stream of obscenities when Lyle, showing remarkable powers of recovery had burst out of his chair, crossed the space between her and him in two giant strides, grabbed her by the shoulders and said, voice trembling on the edge of that strange, ungentlemanly thing that Thomas had sometimes heard described as passion, ‘Never, ever, ever go mixing low-pressure vapours with high-pressure airborn narcotics without asking me ever, ever again, you understand?’

  Thomas couldn’t help but feel there was a context to this remark that perhaps he was missing.

  Milly Lyle sent the children to bed.

  ‘But it’s mornin’!’ wailed Tess.

  ‘It’s morning and you haven’t had any sleep,’ confirmed Milly Lyle. ‘Good grief, but if I were your mother I would be ashamed of myself, letting two children of your age run around all night playing with noxious substances and murderous types!’

  In his corner, Lyle hung his head.

  ‘But I wanna—’

  ‘Teresa Hatch!’ Milly’s voice rang with imperious authority. ‘You know that you are not being sensible about this, and if there is one thing I have little patience with, it is a child that is being wilfully immature!’

  And to Thomas’s amazement, that was that.

  Horatio and Milly Lyle sat alone in the kitchen.

  Milly said, ‘More tea?’

  ‘Ta, Ma.’

  ‘Long night.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The burns on the child - Sissy Smith? - the burns round her lips suggest some sort of ether-derived compound. Probably mixed with a form of nitrous gas to get the right concentration. Am I right?’

  Lyle didn’t answer, but tenderly touched his swollen face.

  ‘The bruising round her throat and jaw suggest that someone attempted to throttle her,’ added Milly. ‘And of course, someone is always out to punch you, aren’t they, dearest?’

  ‘Suffocate,’ corrected Lyle. ‘Someone tried to suffocate Sissy Smith. With a pillow. A grown man - a man from the circus, took a pillow to a sleeping child and tried to kill her. And someone else tried to poison her, and someone else again tried to make it look as though she were dead, right down to the doctor’s certificate. And . . .’ His voice trailed off.

  Milly waited.

  ‘They nearly killed Tess.’

  Silence.

  ‘They could have killed her, Ma.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Children! They . . . Who hurts . . .? I. . . I was there and I couldn’t . . . What if I hadn’t been able to . . .? They could have killed her.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ added Lyle with a scowl, ‘if Mrs Bontoft’s Practical Advice has anything to say on this.’

  (Somewhere in the smoke-filled, stinking rooms of Lyle’s house, a draught from a chimney turned the pages of a book fallen on the floor, to reveal . . . A parent cannot protect a child for ever . . .)

  ‘It all leads back to the circus,’ added Lyle wretchedly. ‘About as subtly, may I add, as a bottle of nitro-glycerin and a sudden fall.’

  Milly hesitated, then said, ‘How did you get out?’

  Lyle glanced up. ‘My . . .’

  ‘Your pupils were slow, yes,’ she said easily. ‘Which means you were unconscious when the bobbies found you in the street.’

  Lyle sighed and leant back in his chair. ‘I don’t know,’ he said finally. ‘This . . . this man was trying to punch me, and there was smoke everywhere, and someone said, “lambkin”. And then it all went . . . peculiar, and the next thing I know, I’m lying in the street and there’s Tess, Thomas, Tate and Sissy all laid out next to me - Oh, and an unconscious clown - and I promise you, I did not get any of them there.’

  ‘“Lambkin”. Well, at least she has a sense of humour.’

  ‘She?’ asked Lyle quickly.

  ‘She,’ replied his mother. ‘Find me a man who walks into a house of gas, smoke and, not to put too fine a point on it, murderous clowns and remarks in the face of all this, “lambkin”, and I shall show you Disraeli’s maternity gown. And you’ve just had an idea.’

  ‘What? No!’ spluttered Lyle.

  ‘Yes, you have, dearest,’ said Milly, patting him on the shoulder. ‘You’re thinking about a woman who might say “lambkin” and, may I say, you are turning the colour of dissolved iodine while doing it. Never mind. I long since gave up on you having a traditional relationship with any creature that wasn’t at least three parts hydrogen, so why don’t you have a mince pie, and tell me everything that’s happened?’

  Lyle, however, was silent.

  Milly pushed the plate of pies across the table, and still he said nothing.

  ‘Oh,’ she sighed, ‘maybe you had better tell me about her first.’

  Lyle smiled. It was a small, tired smile, that found its pleasure from something far away, and fading. ‘There was a woman.’

  ‘Who said, “lambkin”?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know. I met her a few months ago, when there was . . . in this business with . . .’

  ‘It is traditional for sons not to tell their mothers everything,’ intoned Milly wearily. ‘I don’t even need to read a book to know that. Who was she, this gentlewoman?’

  ‘Her name is Lin Zi.’

  ‘Chinese, perhaps?’

  ‘That begins to cover it, yes. A group of scientists and ill-inclined individuals were attempting to hurt her people. I’m sure you can imagine the kind of thing - explosives, magnetic waves, some really, really big capacitors, guns, chases, sewers, prison breaks, the whole works. We helped her. She helped us.’

  ‘And what is she like, this Lin Zi?’

  Lyle let out a long, distracted breath. ‘She’s a knife-wielding demon-lady from the darkest reaches of lore, who bleeds white blood, is allergic to magnetism in all its forms and can manipulate the minds of mortals with a single glance from her bright green eyes. We danced one night on Westminster Bridge, and then she said she had to go and told me there were things that were not allowed, even for her. She pinched two bottles of potassium iodide from my coat pocket as well, and went away.’

  Milly was silent. Then she said, ‘You know, while, naturally, I have contemplated the possibility that my one and only son might one day meet a woman worthy of his woolly socks, I never quite pictured the circumstances you describe.’

  Lyle shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it, Ma. She’s gone now.’

  ‘But she might have said, “lambkin”?’

  ‘It’d be the kind of thing she’d do, yes.’

  ‘And she might have saved your life?’

  ‘That too is a possibility.’

  ‘Can she cook?’

 
‘I can’t imagine so.’

  ‘Did you like her?’

  ‘Ma! She was a demon-lady! She threatened to cut off my little finger when we first met and refers to most humans as “cranially confined monkeys”. She can’t tell the difference between oxidisation and reduction, between endothermic and exothermic. She just asks, “Will it blow stuff up?” as if that was all that mattered, why on earth should I—Oh God, I really liked her.’ Lyle buried his head in his hands. ‘What am I going to do now?’