The Somnambulist v-1

by Jonathan Barnes

But Dedlock had changed. It wasn’t until hours later, when he was back home and undressing for bed, that he happened to glance into a mirror and see for the first time exactly what the Prefects had done to him, the subtlety of their promised gift.

  The scars on his torso had gone and with them the marks upon his face — those milk-white indentations which had once so strikingly criss-crossed his body — all had been wiped away, erased as easily as the Somnambulist might remove chalk marks from his slate. Dedlock looked down at his chest, unlined and newly smooth, and was disgusted by what he saw, now so commonplace, so unbearably everyday and unremarkable.

  Suddenly short of breath, he shrugged off the last of his clothes, slumped down upon his bed and did something he’d not done for almost twenty years.

  In the morning, when he called the Survivors’ Club to tender his resignation, his eyes were still puffy and red from weeping.

  The Prefects knew exactly what they were doing. But compared to the albino, Dedlock got off lightly.

  I’m not sure how much I can bring myself to tell you about what happened to Mr. Skimpole. Where should I begin? At which point in that protracted and humiliating death? The long and agonizing journey back to Wimbledon? The moment when he was ejected from his hansom cab after spewing a glutinous red substance over the seats? When he looked down at the mess and wondered, almost idly, whether some of that putrescent slime might not be the last remnants of his stomach lining?

  No. I’ll spare you that — we’ll begin, I think, as the man arrived back at his house, wrestled with key and lock for the final time, the roar of pain in his head blocking out even the sounds of his neighbors’ revelry. To steady himself, he leant against the front door for a moment, then half-walked, half-stumbled inside, rasping out his son’s name.

  Of course, there was no reply and Skimpole tottered further inside, determined to be with his only child as death collected her due. Reeking of vomit and bleeding from at least a dozen separate places, he stumbled into the kitchen, wailing for his son.

  It was then that he saw him. Or rather what was left of him.

  Even I (scarcely a squeamish man) can hardly bear to describe the thing. No doubt you have a good idea yourself — you will have guessed by now the nature of the Prefects’ ‘fee.’

  The Skimpole boy lay supine on the floor, pale and clammy, a pitiable look of terror on his face. His skin and clothes were spattered with crimson and every bone in his body was broken. He had been expertly battered to death with his own two crutches.

  Numbly, Skimpole wondered if they had taken turns.

  Too weak to scream out his rage and grief, too tired to cry, the albino fell to his knees and collapsed on his son’s ruined form. With his last remaining strength, he clasped the corpse’s hand (still wet with blood), squeezed it tight and waited patiently for the end.

  As for the murderers themselves — no policeman will ever track them down nor any court try them for their innumerable crimes.

  After they disappeared, a half-hearted manhunt was arranged but nothing came of it and the matter was swiftly dropped. To be frank, I doubt if anyone wanted to find them.

  To the best of my knowledge, the Prefects have appeared twice more since then, though I’ve no doubt that they figure in many other stories yet unknown to me — lurking at the corners of other narratives, some very old, some still to be told, some more strange perhaps even than this.

  Twelve years ago, witnesses of an atrocity carried out under the auspices of the new Russian government claimed to have seen two men bizarrely dressed as English schoolboys take a leading role in the massacre. No one believed them, naturally, but those of us who were there beneath the Monument that day recognized at once the handiwork of Masters Hawker and Boon.

  They have surfaced again more recently — some appalling bloodbath in New Zealand. I saw a newspaper story about the incident, illustrated by a blurred photograph taken at the aftermath of the scene. Most likely it was my imagination but I could have sworn that Hawker stood at the periphery of the frame. He was fuzzy and indistinct but it seemed to me as though he was grinning delightedly at his handiwork, at the destruction unraveling about him. Sadly, I am unable to verify this, as the paper was taken away from me before an hour had passed. They seem oddly strict here about reading matter.

  It should go without saying that, despite all the years that had passed since the Battle of King William Street Station, the Hawker in the photograph looked not a day older. It was as though he had been frozen in time, unaging, like a fly trapped in amber.

  Should you ever have the profound misfortune to encounter these creatures, I need hardly caution you to run (not walk) away from them, to block your ears so as not to hear their lies, to flee in giddy desperation for your life.

  Not for me the picturesque death of Mr. Skimpole. I have been subjected to a far longer and, in a sense, more gruesome execution. There was talk at one time of my being hanged for treason (I believe Detective Inspector Merryweather was especially vociferous on the subject) but I was able to outwit my captors without a great deal of effort. After some faintly degrading play-acting on my part, they put me here, in a sanctuary where the supposed mental condition of its inhabitants places me beyond the reach of the state’s bloodier excesses.

  Time is notoriously difficult to judge in a place like this, the passing of night and day almost impossible to mark save by the irregular rationing of food and drink. When I first arrived, they locked me up on my own for… how long? Days? Weeks? Even now I can’t be entirely certain.

  It’s a testament to my tremendous resilience that I was able to endure such solitary incarceration without my mind cracking under the strain. As it was, I emerged from my confinement all the stronger, if, admittedly, rather lonely. I am a sociable creature and I found that I had missed the warmth of companionship and camaraderie, the sound of voices other than my own. Consequently, I was permitted — under strict conditions — to receive guests.

  I confess I was surprised that he came to see me at all.

  “Thomas Cribb,” he said and reached his left hand (unbandaged, five-fingered) across the table. One of the guards, his beefy arms folded, observed us truculently from the other side of the room.

  “We’ve met before,” I said.

  Something like a smile flickered across his face. “So I gather.”

  “I had never previously enjoyed an opportunity to study the man at close quarters, and I cannot stress quite enough how remarkably striking was his ugliness, how compellingly repulsive.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “I want to make you a promise.”

  I noticed that he had brought a newspaper with him and I caught a glimpse of its headline — a report, it seemed, of recent events beneath the Monument. I saw my own name and below it an insulting likeness of my face.

  Cribb leant forward across the desk toward me. At the gesture, the guard unfolded his arms and reached instinctively for the truncheon which hung from the belt at his waist. The ugly man fixed me with his most piercing gaze.

  “I do not care to see my city threatened,” Cribb said.

  “Your city?”

  “I promise to do everything in my power to stop you. I’ll help this…” He glanced down at the paper as if to check some minor detail: “This Edward Moon. I’ll teach him how to thwart you.”

  I yawned. “Sorry. Don’t follow.”

  “I’ll guide him. Use him to ensure you don’t succeed.”

  I grinned at the guard. “Maybe he ought to be in here with us,” I quipped, and gratifyingly, the man smirked in response.

  “I’ve built up a good rapport with my gaolers. I think they’ve taken to me and I suspect that many of them (though it would be more than their jobs are worth to admit it) know that I really shouldn’t be in here at all.

  My visitor rose to his feet. “By the way,” he said, “history will not remember you.”

  I chose not to reply to this last, childish barb and Thomas Cribb w
alked silently away.

  Perhaps, in retrospect, I should have said more, kept him talking, found out more about his claims. As it was, I never saw him again.

  Frankly, I don’t consider it a great loss. There was always something so bloody smug about the man.

  A week passed before I received my second visitor (I say a week; of course, it might just as easily have been a fortnight or a month). You’ll think it strange, and at the time it certainly surprised me, but even after everything he’d done, some part of me was actually pleased to see him.

  “Edward,” I said, and smiled.

  For a man who had suffered so much, he looked well. A little older, perhaps, grayer, with some of the swagger out of him, and some of his vanity, his preening self-confidence, satisfyingly punctured. All in all, I thought it an improvement.

  We sat in silence for a while.

  “Why have you come?” I said at last.

  “I need to ask you something.”

  “Anything,” I said, perhaps a trifle overeager.

  “I need to know why.”

  To my — and I suspect to our — surprise, his visits became a regular fixture.

  I like to think we both gained a good deal from the encounters. I tried my utmost to give him an insight into what I had intended to achieve (though, needless to say, I was never actually able to convert him) and he brought me news from the outside world, about what had happened after I was led away in chains. Between us we were able to stitch together a complete overview of events, a comprehensive narrative of all that had transpired in the months leading up to the battle of King William Street Station.

  The body of the Somnambulist has yet to be found. In a conviction born of grief, Edward has come to believe that the giant still lives, that he sleeps somewhere beneath the surface, waiting, Arthur-like, for the city’s hour of need. It might be of some interest to you that when I last saw him, Moon had begun to hold some eccentric notions as to his friend’s identity. He showed me a postcard which depicted the two giant stone statues that guard the Guildhall — Gog and Magog, as Cribb correctly identified them — and swore that he recognized something of the Somnambulist in their features. Personally, I could never see the resemblance.

  Publicly, Moon announced him dead. There was even a funeral, though it was sparsely attended and I was not invited. The inspector was there, along with Charlotte, Mrs. Grossmith, a few well-wishers and general idlers. They used an empty coffin (constructed to unusually large specifications as though the giant really did lie in state within) and buried it, ironically, in Highgate Cemetery, scant feet from where another, more celebrated plot lies similarly uninhabited.

  But Moon also brought me happier news. The Church of the Summer Kingdom lives on; the light of Pantisocracy has yet to be extinguished. Some time ago, a small group of the faithful — six men, six women — traveled across the Atlantic with the intention of founding a community upon the banks of the Susquehanna just as the old man had planned. They have my blessing and my prayers — or would do had they asked for them. You may have seen in the popular press that these pilgrims have disowned me and my methods — understandable, of course, under the circumstances, but I’d be lying if I said that such disloyalty didn’t sting.

  Edward does not share my sentiments. He thinks the venture a fool’s errand which can only end in disaster. And he has good personal reasons to disapprove — it was his own sister, you see, my dear Charlotte, once Love 999, who orchestrated the whole thing.

  Edward always believed that his sister’s conversion to my cause was only temporary, an aberration brought about by the unusually persuasive recruitment techniques of Love, Love, Love and Love. As it turned out, the transformation is permanent and irreversible. She remains my truest convert. Curious, is it not, how it is often the worst skeptics and bitterest cynics who become the most zealous of us all.

  But Edward has further reason to be distressed at his sister’s defection. She has taken poor Grossmith with her. Deprived of a husband and confronted with evidence of his duplicity in the most upsetting manner, the housekeeper decided to throw in her lot with the new Pantisocrats. I wonder what use she can be to them, since she is well past child-bearing age and unlikely to be much good as either a poet or a farmer. Perhaps she can organize the cooking or busy herself with some light cleaning.

  It is a source of concern to me that I have not heard any news of the Pantisocrats since their departure. I have scoured the papers to no avail, begged the guards and the doctors for any whisper they may have heard in the outside world, but it seems that they have disappeared. Pity. I should like to have known how it all turned out.

  The last time I saw Edward Moon he had said goodbye to them all that very morning, come hotfoot from waving them off at the docks. I asked if Charlotte had mentioned me and he assured me that she had not. Something in his manner, however, coupled with the suspicious speed of his reply, convinced me that he was lying. He would admit only that there had been further tears and recriminations at their parting. It was, as I understand it, a final goodbye.

  Moon told me that he intended to travel. A certain respect had grown up between us in the months of our conversations and we were able to bid one another a civil farewell and shake hands almost amicably. I told him that I intended to write a full account of all that had happened, to which he replied that I should do precisely as I pleased.

  The last I heard, he had gone to Africa, wherein he traveled widely, eventually forming something of a bond with a particular tribe of its indigenous people. For all I know, he lives there still. I am reminded of some lines by the poet:

  And ne’er was heard of more: but ‘tis supposed,

  He lived and died among the savage men.

  I have a deal more time on my hands. My hosts have continued to be accommodating and I am allowed light and space in which to write, as well as a limited number of foolscap sheets and a single pencil. No pen, unfortunately — I have often requested an inkwell and nib, but there is some petty rule here about spiked implements and sharp points. They do not discourage my work, though at the end of each day everything is taken from me for safekeeping. I feel sure that my skill has grown with the tale’s telling and I am concerned that the opening sections must seem amateurish and crude in comparison with later chapters. I have repeatedly asked if I might not be allowed the complete manuscript, if only for an hour or two, so that I might make some revisions and clarifications from which the work can only benefit. To date, they denied my every request.

  No doubt you can tell from the clinical manner in which I have related this narrative that I am not a man inclined to excesses of the imagination.

  However, I have been much troubled of late by a recurring dream.

  It is not as other dreams — no fragmentary jumble of dredged-up memories and half-forgotten faces, no meaningless kaleidoscope of impossible juxtapositions and incongruities. Nor does its detail fade and vanish in the morning but lingers in my mind long after I have woken, acquiring such permanence and solidity that I wonder if what I have seen is not somehow more than the fantasies of sleep but a piece of reality. The truth.

  Every time it is the same. It begins deep in a forest, all light beneath the canopy of trees tinted a dusky green, strange birds screeching overhead, creatures chittering unseen in the undergrowth. I see twelve people — six men, six women — trekking through the woods, often having to hack and battle their way through the foliage but, rather wonderfully, always endeavoring to walk forward in pairs, in crocodile formation, like schoolchildren on a day trip to the zoo. Some of them I recognize — Mr. Speight, Mrs. Grossmith, Mina the bearded whore. Dear Charlotte is with them, too, radiant even as she battles, perspiring, with tree-roots and recalcitrant branches, her natural beauty complemented and enhanced by that of her surroundings.

  At the head of the party is a man I do not recognize at first. Completely bald, his pate gleams with sweat as he leads the others through the trees. Baffled, I watch his progress for a
while until at last it comes to me. Even though I have had this dream dozens of times before, on every fresh occasion I am astonished by the realization. It is the Somnambulist, stripped at last of his sideboards and wig, of the props and make-believe of his life with Moon, come at last into the cleansing light of revelation. His skin is untanned and, as ever, he says nothing.

  At length, the party emerges at the edge of the forest on a small promontory some feet from the ground. They look down and see below them the great expanse of the Susquehanna, its thick blue ribbon coiling through the landscape, framed on either side by lush, glorious swathes of perfect green, unpeopled, fertile, poised for Pantisocracy.

  The Somnambulist gazes upon this sliver of Eden and smiles. Then he opens his mouth and — to my everlasting surprise and joy — he speaks. His voice sounds nothing like what I had expected.

  “Well, then,” he says. “Where do we start?”

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