Dreamhunter

by Elizabeth Knox

  The conductor moved away from the door before sliding it shut. As he did so he let more light into the compartment, whose lights were turned down low. The light from the carriage passage made a reflection appear in the carriage window. A reflection of the man’s hidden face. It gave the conductor a fright for a moment — though it must only have been a trick of the light. The conductor closed the door. He walked off shaking his head, telling himself he hadn’t seen — couldn’t have seen — the face of a statue, stone, but with eyes full of a seething glitter of aliveness that wasn’t quite like life.

  LAURA WANTED TO sleep in order to escape her memory of the dreadful dream. But she knew that, once she slept, she would be back in that stifling box. She dared not close her eyes, but there was nothing to look at. It was night and the carriage window was black.

  Laura slid along the seat and huddled against her sandman’s bundled form. She said, ‘There’s nowhere else — nowhere to go.’

  Her servant turned to her. She peered up into his face. It was statuesque and superficial and offered her no comfort. ‘I hate this dream,’ she said.

  ‘And you are going to give it to other people,’ Nown said.

  Laura stirred uncomfortably. ‘I’m doing what my father asked me to do,’ she said. ‘We need to make people see what it is like for the prisoners. To make them feel pity.’

  ‘Do people who are frightened feel pity?’

  Laura considered, then said, ‘The dream frightens me. But it does make me feel sorry for the prisoners, and responsible.’ She gripped the sleeve of the coat Nown was wearing. ‘You must stop acting as if I’m a child and you’re an adult. You’re not an adult. You’re not really a person.’

  ‘Do you think you should be talking to an adult about what you plan to do?’ Nown said.

  ‘You’re doing it again!’ Laura pushed herself away from him. She retired to the opposite corner of the compartment and glowered at him.

  ‘Laura,’ Nown said, ‘why do you think it is that the Hame servant cannot be undone until after its final N has been inscribed?’

  Laura remembered how she’d undone the eighth Nown — wiped him out of existence. She recalled with horror the dry sigh of his undoing. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I did that to you. Or the eighth you.’

  ‘That isn’t something I have feelings about,’ Nown said.

  ‘Do you have feelings?’

  ‘I find I feel afraid for you, Laura. No Hame can undo a servant without first giving it a voice so that it can talk to its maker, give its maker an account of what it has done, what it has been asked to do.’

  ‘I have to do this, Nown,’ Laura said, desperate. ‘This is what my father wanted me to do! The only thing he asked me to do!’

  ‘Your father said to me, “Laura isn’t very good at thinking for herself.”’

  Laura cried at her servant, ‘Stop! You’re hurting me!’

  Nown fell silent.

  Laura turned away from him. She put her eye to a gap in the compartment’s curtain and watched two men standing in the train’s corridor and smoking pipes. They looked peacefully involved, and very human.

  Laura wiped her eyes on her sleeve, then put a wad of Wakeful into her mouth — her fifth in three days. Her tongue went numb, then, a moment later, the drug roared into her head like oxygen and electricity and fury.

  The train slowed into the first turn of the spiral at Mount Kahaugh.

  Four

  At high tide, late in the afternoon of St Lazarus’s Eve, the schooner Morningstar tacked towards the ocean shore of So Long Spit, where it put in to its first stop, an ironwood platform built at the low tide line, beside the lighthouse.

  The head keeper and his son waited on the platform. They had tied up their boat and were ready to catch the line thrown to them from the deck of the schooner. Between them, the seamen, the head keeper and his boy brought the schooner alongside the platform. They were all practised at this monthly manoeuvre, and it was easy on a day like this — a day with a calm sea and only a light breeze.

  The seamen delivered the lighthouse supplies: boxes of canned food, barrels of flour and rice, and whale oil. All were winched over the side in a rope net. The head keeper and his son guided the net gently down on to the platform.

  The captain of the Morningstar was supervising the unloading and passing the time with the keeper, handing on the news, wishing the man and his family a happy St Lazarus’s Day. When the captain had done that he glanced over his shoulder and leant closer to confide. He spoke in a loud whisper — for the deck and platform were separated by eight feet. ‘We have a visitor for you,’ the captain said.

  ‘Someone from the Keepers’ Service?’ the head keeper said, worried.

  ‘I don’t know his business. He just asked to be put off — though his passage is paid all the way to Sisters Beach.’ The captain looked over his shoulder again. ‘Here he comes,’ he warned. ‘I told him to stay out of the way till we had finished unloading. I wanted to let you know.’

  The seamen unrolled a ladder. The passenger appeared beside them, a tall, well-dressed man sporting a hat with earflaps. One seaman passed the man’s bag over the rail. The head keeper stood under the ladder as the passenger straddled the rail and lowered himself on to it. The keeper helped the man on to the platform, and then ignored him for the next several minutes while the Morningstar cast off. Then the keeper’s son jumped down into their boat, and his father began to pass the barrels and boxes to him.

  The visitor didn’t offer to help — which was fine by the keeper, who thought inexpert help slowed down any job. They were finished in only a few minutes; then, ‘Sir,’ said the keeper’s son, and practically snatched the visitor’s bag from him.

  ‘Careful, boy.’ The keeper understood that his son was in a hurry. His boy always liked to race the Morningstar along the shore for a little way. It was a game he had played for some time now.

  The keeper handed the visitor down to the boat. He was feeling a little awkward by this time since he had tried a number of times to catch the man’s eye and had been avoided. Nor had the man made any attempt to introduce himself.

  The keeper and his boy took an oar each and pulled to shore — not quite straight, since the boy was too keen and was putting a little more into each stroke. They bumped on to the sand, and the boy jumped over the side and waded in to hold the bow as the visitor made a well-timed leap up on to the beach, beyond where the waves were breaking. The keeper and his son ran the boat a few feet up the beach and began to unload.

  This time the visitor offered to help.

  ‘Oh, no, it only takes a few minutes,’ the boy said. His eye was on the schooner, whose sails were set and filling as she came around to head along the Spit and a little out to sea.

  The keeper and his boy went back and forth with boxes and barrels across the short stretch of sand between the water and the first clumps of spinifex, marram and pink flowering ice plants. As the keeper worked, he spoke to the visitor. ‘We have inspectors from the Lighthouse Keepers’ Service who visit. We have surveyors, and birdwatchers, and the parish priest, Father Paul …’

  None of this inspired the visitor to volunteer his name or mission. He watched the keeper. His face was tense — and tender around the mouth, as though he were near to tears. ‘Come on up then,’ the keeper finally said.

  He led the man to the sandy track up on to the crab grass, and under the wind-tortured pines that had been coaxed to grow in soil hauled in by carts from the farm at the base of the Spit. The keeper pointed out the three houses and said, ‘There are nine of us here permanently. Myself and my wife, my boy and my two girls; the second keeper and his wife — they have a baby on the way — the third keeper and the reserve man.’ The keeper shot a glance at the visitor, trying to read him.

  The priest, Father Paul, had asked the head keeper to stay quiet about ‘the reserve man’ — the man who had come five months before and was now fit for a few duties like cleaning whale-oi
l smoke from the lamp. Whale oil burnt bright, but not clean, and it took eight man-hours every day, seven days a week, to keep the crystals clean.

  The head keeper had taken the reserve man in as a favour to Father Paul — and it wasn’t the first of that sort of favour. The reserve man was called Mr Thomas — but he wasn’t the keeper’s first ‘Mr Thomas’.

  Of this latest Mr Thomas, the keeper knew only this: that he had been injured in an accident in the railway yards of Westport, and had been given up for dead by a dandy of a doctor. For weeks he had occupied the bed nearest the door in the crowded men’s ward of Magdalene Charity Hospital. He had lain with the curtains drawn around his bed, and the sisters waiting every moment to sew him into his bottom sheet. For weeks he lay still, balanced on the border of life and death — and then lived. No one came to claim him. And, when he was waking — but not yet awake — the sisters claimed that he somehow disturbed the sleep of their other patients. It was the sisters’ unwillingness to keep him on the ward that brought him to Father Paul’s notice perhaps. Father Paul took an interest in him, and when he had improved enough to travel, Father Paul brought him to the lighthouse to convalesce. Mr Thomas. And all Father Paul’s former Mr Thomases had been in hiding from the law.

  CHORLEY COULD SEE that the new lighthouse was built only a little way from the base of the old one — a wooden structure whose timber had rotted. The new one stood on four steel legs and was of plate steel, like the hull of a ship. The lighthouse had a widow’s walk at its top, around the windows that let out the light.

  As they came up the track Chorley caught sight of a man standing on the widow’s walk, wiping his hands on a smudged rag. Chorley shaded his eyes to get a better look, but couldn’t see for the scintillating dazzle behind the man — the setting sun reflected in the crystals of the lamp.

  Chorley hadn’t known what to say — or who to trust. The keeper had mentioned a ‘Father Paul’ among their visitors. Father Paul might connect this place to the Temple.

  Chorley had followed the Grand Patriarch’s instructions. He had got off the schooner at its first stop.

  There were several huts in the lighthouse’s windbreak, Chorley saw, but only one that had a porch. The sun coloured the salt-silvered weatherboards of the huts. The ground under the pine trees was as russet as oxidised iron. The setting sun was warm on Chorley’s back.

  ‘Wait,’ said the keeper, and touched Chorley’s arm. ‘Look.’

  Chorley looked where the man pointed and was in time to see the last sliver of the sun disappear below the horizon. Then he noticed the keeper’s boy, who was some distance along the shore, sprinting, apparently racing the schooner.

  ‘That’s a regular game of his,’ the keeper said. ‘And look —’ He called Chorley’s attention away from the boy.

  Chorley turned, stunned into obedience.

  The shadow was climbing the lighthouse. It was the shadow of the sea horizon, the shadow of the world. And when the sun vanished from the very tip of the tower a sliding glitter showed in the tower top, then a bright flash as the light came around to probe the open sea.

  ‘Now my boy will turn back,’ the keeper said. Sure enough the boy was looping back. The Morningstar had changed her heading to sail away from the Spit.

  ‘He always does that, you say?’ Chorley said.

  ‘Yes. We lead very quiet lives here, and he’s learnt to find a lot of pleasure in little things.’

  Chorley hadn’t shared Laura’s first dream, had only had it described to him by Grace. But he knew that the man in Laura’s dream, a convict, broken by hardship, had remembered being a boy racing the schooner along the shore of So Long Spit. The convict in Laura’s dream had remembered being this boy. And so Laura’s dream had taken place in a time further on from now. Laura’s dream was about something that would happen in the future.

  The keeper said, ‘My lad is bound to pepper you with questions, sir, the moment he reaches us.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Chorley said. ‘I haven’t introduced myself.’

  ‘I did think you might be another Mr Thomas,’ the keeper said.

  ‘Mr Thomas?’

  ‘We have had several Mr Thomases here. Named after the apostle Thomas. Doubting Thomas.’

  ‘You mentioned a Father Paul.’

  ‘Yes. But I shouldn’t have mentioned anyone without knowing who you are.’

  ‘I think I am another Thomas who has his doubts,’ Chorley said.

  The keeper smiled. He said, ‘None of us here knows anything much. We’re only hospitable. We have all been the world’s guests, and we must pay for the world’s hospitality.’ This last thing he said as though quoting someone. He took Chorley’s bag from him, and they turned back to the light. The boy came up behind them, his bare feet thumping on the crab grass. He eyed Chorley, panting.

  Another person appeared ahead of them on the path. A person in shirtsleeves with a grubby rag slung across one shoulder.

  Chorley cried out and ran up the short slope. He pulled Tziga to him and held him. Then, horribly, Tziga jerked back in Chorley’s arms and began to flop about. Chorley lost his grip, and Tziga dropped at his feet. Tziga’s jaw was clenched, his breath hissing through his nose, his legs and arms trembling spasmodically.

  The keeper and his boy hurried to help. The keeper pulled a rubber bung out of his pocket. He forced Tziga’s mouth open, and wedged the bung between his teeth. The keeper said to his son, ‘Run and tell your mother that Mr Thomas is having another of his turns.’

  Chorley fell to his knees beside his brother-in-law. He was afraid to touch him.

  ‘He has these fits,’ the keeper said. ‘It’s because of his injury.’

  Chorley had had no trouble recognising Tziga. He had appeared above them on the track, his face indistinct in the dusk, but his stance instantly recognisable. Chorley now saw the changes in Tziga’s appearance. Tziga had one mutilated ear, dents and lumps of shiny scar tissue on his forehead, one eyebrow smeared nearly out of existence by scarring, and one cheekbone caved in. All the injuries were on the right side of his head. Chorley found the courage to touch Tziga again. He helped the keeper, who was gently restraining Tziga’s quaking arms.

  The tremors gradually quieted. ‘He will come to shortly,’ the keeper said. ‘He’s always very tired and disorientated after these fits.’

  Chorley asked how often Mr Thomas had fits.

  ‘Every few days. It’s very hard on him.’

  A woman arrived with the boy, a lamp and a blanket. She spread the blanket over Tziga and put the lamp down on the turf beside them.

  ‘It’s best not to move him till he is awake,’ the keeper said. ‘I have to go and fetch the boxes up from the beach before it’s completely dark.’ He and the boy went back down to the water, leaving Chorley alone with his wife and Tziga. After a time the woman got up too. She said, ‘The men will be back and forth. Let them know if he wakes up before I return. I’ve left my girls minding the cakes, and I don’t quite trust them.’ She turned back towards the house with the porch.

  Chorley could smell the cakes, their cinnamon and sugar. He could smell pines, eel-grass on the ponds among the dunes, and the sap from the green claws of the ice plants he had stepped on. He imagined he could hear the waves on both shores of the Spit — the ocean, and Coal Bay.

  Tziga was lying curled like a sleeping dog, his arms stretched out in front of him. Chorley put his head down to listen for Tziga’s breathing. It wasn’t yet quiet; it still sounded as though Tziga were recovering from a steep climb. Chorley felt Tziga’s sweat-slick face and ran his fingers over the scar tissue. Then he touched Tziga’s throat, and tested his weight by pushing up his frayed shirt cuffs to clasp his bony wrists. Chorley lifted a hand and kissed it. The hand smelt of charred benzene spirit — whale oil.

  Tziga’s eyelids fluttered.

  ‘Wake up,’ Chorley whispered.

  Above them the beam of light probed the dusk. A warning, and comfort to all within its thirty-mile r
ange, it too seemed to say, silently, urgently: ‘Wake up. Wake up.’

  Five

  Shortly before the evening performance began, when most of the patrons were already inside and in their sleepwear, the guards at the Rainbow Opera set out to patrol the Opera’s perimeter. It was generally a dull, everyday job. It had been years since anyone had succeeded in parking himself near enough to the Opera to pilfer a dream. These days guards were mostly for show. The Opera’s prices were such that it wasn’t a likely haunt for drunks and troublemakers. On St Lazarus’s Eve things were only a little different. Busier. Security a little tighter.

  There were more cars and carriages, chauffeurs and grooms than usual parked in the space around the perimeter. The President of the Republic was at the Opera, so his guard of honour — a dozen military men with sabres and pistols — were standing to attention by the President’s vehicles, while the chauffeurs and grooms of other rich patrons lounged about smoking.

  The Opera’s guards always patrolled in pairs. Each pair was responsible for one section of the Opera’s blind outer wall. The two men who were in the best position to raise the alarm that night had been assigned the quietest section, a forty-yard stretch that faced the river at the far side of the perimeter from the main gate. This stretch of wall was interrupted only by the dreamer’s door — a stage door by which the dreamer entered the Opera — and, right beside the dreamer’s door, a drinking fountain in an alcove.

  The men set out, making their way around their stretch, one swinging the padded club he carried, the other thumping the wall with his gloved hand as he walked. When they came to the alcove they stopped. They stopped and stared. Where there had been a drinking fountain, there was now a statue.

  The statue of a man, a little bigger than life-sized, was crammed into the alcove, a beautiful, bald-headed figure — who should have been posed like a sentinel. Instead, the statue was stooped and had his head over at an angle in order to fit into the arch of the alcove.