Early Riser_The new standalone novel from the Number One bestselling author

by Jasper Fforde

  ‘I love you, Charlie.’

  ‘I love you, Birgitta.’

  The breakers boomed and a little girl chased a beach ball towards shore’s edge with a gurgle of laughter.

  And then, I knew: for the first time since childhood, I was dreaming. I’d remembered them as being vague and hazy, but this dream felt more real than reality itself – I could feel the gritty texture in the sand, see the foam flecking on the waves, smell the salt in the sea air.

  I looked down and noticed that I too was dressed for the beach; a one-piece swimsuit in black with contrasting white pumps. They weren’t my shoes, they weren’t my feet. It wasn’t even my body. Different, taut and excitingly different. It felt like Birgitta’s missing husband’s body.

  I corrected myself. I wasn’t like Birgitta’s missing husband. I was Birgitta’s missing husband. In love with her, and loved by her. Together, as one.

  ‘Is this really me?’ I asked, somewhat stupidly.

  Birgitta blinked at me with a look of mild amusement.

  ‘You’re Charlie now, my Charlie,’ she said with a giggle. ‘Try not to think about the facility and HiberTech Security. Just today and tomorrow, forty-eight hours. You and me. What Dreams May Come.’

  ‘What Dreams May Come,’ I replied, looking around. ‘Where is this place?’

  She laughed again. She didn’t need to tell me; I already knew. We were on the Gower Peninsula. I’d been there many times as a child; the view of Worm’s Head and the rusting passenger liner was stuck to the inside of my head like glue.

  She looked at me again and smiled.

  ‘No matter what, there will always be the Gower.’

  We both laughed at the comment, which was cheesy and utterly true, all in one.

  ‘I love you, Charlie.’

  ‘I love you, Birgitta.’

  The waves boomed and the seagulls cackled, a beach ball bounced past and the same child with the same gurgle of laughter chased after it. I knew then exactly where and when I was. I had found the high point in Birgitta and Charles’ relationship, the precise moment when everything was beautiful and wonderful and pristine and right, before the shadows drew on and the Winter closed in. The holidays I’d spent there had been high points for me, too, small oases of joy in an otherwise dismal, Pool-trapped existence.

  ‘Happy snap?’ said a photographer holding a Polaroid. ‘Proper tidy you’ll look and as reasonably priced as—’

  — I was suddenly awake, drenched in sweat, my heart thumping so rapidly in my chest that I felt it might burst. I sat up and flicked the light switch but there was nothing; the only glow was from the emergency lights, which had automatically switched on. Hydro Twelve, recently on the fritz, looked as though it had failed.

  Something in the room struck me as odd and out of place, but it took me a moment or two to figure out what it was: Clytemnestra was missing. I froze, not wanting to make a single noise, lest she knew where I was. The ornate frame was still there, the background still there – painted curtains, painted marble steps, even the drops of painted blood on the painted floor. But of Queen Clytemnestra, there was nothing. It looked as though she had simply stepped out of the frame.

  I pulled my Bambi from under the pillow, then the flashlight from the bedside table, and padded softly to the living room, which was also empty. I checked the bathroom then anywhere narrow where she might have concealed herself, such as behind the wardrobe or under the kitchen units, but without any success. I went to the door, which was still locked, and for a brief moment was confused, until I noticed there was a slender gap under the door, and I figured she’d probably got out that way.

  I opened the door to a corridor still illuminated by the flickering fair dreaming candles, but this too was empty, so I trod noiselessly to the stairway that spiralled up the heat-well in the centre of the building, then stopped as I heard the soft tread of shoes against the stone. I tried to remember if Clytemnestra had been wearing sandals but could not, so waited until the footsteps were opposite my door, and then stepped out, flashlight in hand.

  It was Charles, as Birgitta had painted him. Completely naked but with no features. Oddly, he was carrying a mug of hot chocolate. He jumped, and spilt some on the steps.

  ‘Why are you out of your painting?’ I asked.

  ‘Out of my what?’ asked Charles, which was impossible because he had no mouth. But then I realised it wasn’t Charles at all but Porter Lloyd and with all the features traditionally associated with a face. He wasn’t naked, either. I lowered the Bambi.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I thought you were a thin layer of oil paint.’

  ‘A thin layer of what? Actually, it doesn’t matter. Can I help you?’

  ‘I was looking for Clytemnestra. Sort of queenly, tall, topless, fine wintercoat – oh, and carrying a bloody dagger.’

  Lloyd smiled.

  ‘No, I haven’t seen her about.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I think I would have remembered that.’

  ‘She might be difficult to see,’ I persisted, ‘because if you viewed her edge on, she’d only be the thickness of a sheet of paper and wouldn’t be that obvious.’

  ‘I see,’ said Lloyd, with a look of understanding – and about time too, to be honest. ‘Now don’t take this the wrong way,’ he said, ‘but you may have a touch of narcosis.’

  This was ridiculous, and I told him so.

  ‘Hear me out,’ he said. ‘Historical topless figures don’t peel themselves out of paintings, and you wandering naked about the Siddons in the small hours doesn’t seem very sensible, wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘I’m not naked,’ I said, shivering.

  ‘If you’re not naked,’ he said slowly, ‘then how is it that I can see your doo-dads and your hoo-hah?’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘They’re as clear as the nose on my face.’

  ‘That’s a terrible use of an idiom.’

  ‘Agreed – but take a look for yourself.’

  I looked down, and now that he mentioned it, I was naked – except for a single sock, one of Suzy’s, maroon in colour. I shivered again as the lights flickered back on, power returning, and the reality of the situation began to dawn.

  ‘Sod it,’ I said, ‘I’m narced, aren’t I?’

  Lloyd nodded kindly. Hearing about narcosis is one thing, experiencing it quite another. Lloyd took my hand and led me back upstairs to my room, the full stupidity of my actions now becoming abundantly clear. Clytemnestra was exactly where she’d been all along, happily ensconced in the gilt frame, her immovable expression of murderous intent unchanged. My clothes, which I could have sworn I’d put on, were lying where I’d left them on the back of the chair.

  ‘I think I was dreaming,’ I said with a sigh.

  ‘Of blue Buicks and oak trees and hands and stuff?’

  ‘Actually, no.’

  ‘Then probably part of the narcosis. Have this hot chocolate; I’ll make another for myself.’

  I told him I would be fine, but he insisted because I hadn’t yet put anything on room service. I agreed, and he wished me goodnight and departed.

  Once I’d drunk the hot chocolate I settled back into bed, feeling unutterably foolish. Narcosis is something that you think will never happen to you, but when it does, it’s kind of scary – but only after the event. When it’s happening, it’s the best reality in town, with the possible exception of the dream in the Gower with Birgitta. I wanted to get back there if possible, so lay back, closed my eyes again and was soon fast asleep.

  Dream, wake, repeat

  * * *

  ‘… The provenance of the Louvre Mona Lisa was finally established in the Spring of 1983, when margin notes written contemporaneously by Agostino Vespucci declared that “a fine painting of Lisa del Giocondo as she prepares to slumber is currently being [painted] by Leonardo”. Given that the Louvre Mona Lisa has her depicted as undeniably thin, the true da Vinci is now thought to be the Fat Lisa currently on di
splay in Isleworth …’

  – Art and the Sleeping Artist, by Sir Troy Bongg

  There was dreamless sleep, at first, and darkness. But not quite as I remembered the darkness, as simply shapeless, timeless ebony, but darkness as in an unlit hall – full of memories, and places, and peoples and things – the marker-stones of my life’s experience. Then a chasm, like a rent of linen, but both visual and aural, and in a second I was back: Birgitta, on the beach, blue-and-white towel, the bathing suit of fresh-leaf green and that orange-and-red parasol of spectacular size and splendour. The day was the same, the beach was the same, the Argentinian Queen was the same. I too was the same – not Charlie Worthing, but another, different, Charlie: Birgitta’s Charlie, sitting with her on the striped towel, wearing a black bathing suit and white pumps.

  She looked at me and smiled, and I felt myself smile back. The dream was, as far as I could see, identical in every detail. The gulls cackled from on high, and the scent of the tide drifted in on the breeze. She gave me her captivating smile, and pushed the hair once more behind her ear. I was Charles, and she was Birgitta, and this was their perfect moment.

  ‘I love you, Charlie.’

  ‘I love you, Birgitta.’

  The breakers boomed and then the child, with a gurgle of laughter, chased a beach ball toward shore’s edge. Again.

  ‘Is this really me?’ I asked, repeating myself before I’d realised it.

  Birgitta blinked at me and smiled.

  ‘You’re Charlie now, my Charlie,’ she said with a giggle. ‘Try not to think about the facility and HiberTech Security. Just today and tomorrow, forty-eight hours. You and me. What Dreams May Come.’

  ‘What Dreams May Come,’ I replied.

  Knowing that I might wake soon, I looked around, eager to soak in the fine detail.

  Behind us was a path leading back up to the car park, where there would be a café of whitewashed clapboard that sold the best pistachio ice cream in the nation. We were close to where Birgitta’s mother lived, and would be staying in the room above the car house with its double brass bed, boxwood panelling and lace curtains. We’d leave early on Sunday and stop at Mumbles Pier to eat cockles and laver bread, while ‘Groove Me’ played on a wireless close by. I knew all these things without knowing how I knew, and odder still, I couldn’t just remember backwards, I could remember forwards. The beach was only a memory of better times, many years before. Following this, Birgitta and I had travelled separately to Sector Twelve. She’d painted and I’d worked at HiberTech as an orderly in the Sleep Sciences Division, Project Lazarus. We’d met rarely but passionately, and then we’d been parted, this time for good.

  ‘Happy snap?’ said a photographer who was plying his trade up and down the beach. ‘Proper tidy you’ll look and as reasonably priced as anywhere you’ll find.’

  This was as far as I’d got in the dream the first time round and I expected to be awoken again, but I wasn’t. We agreed and he took the Polaroid, handed it to us and told us he would be back to pick up payment if it came out ‘to our proper satisfaction’. We watched the picture emerge, cementing the moment in time. It was the first time I got to see what I looked like. Birgitta’s Charles was ridiculously handsome, with fine features and dark curly hair that half obscured his eyes. Despite this, he looked somehow lost, hopeless and ultimately doomed—

  — I was sitting at the base of an ancient oak, looking up. The spread of the tree went almost to the periphery of my vision, and the light of a fresh Summer’s morning filtered through the leaves. I blinked several times and sat up. The beach dream had abruptly cut out. Not with a fade or a segue but a tear. I was now in another place, another dream – one that I realised very quickly that Watson, Smalls, Moody, Birgitta and Lloyd had all visited before me.

  I was sitting atop a rough stack of boulders that had been piled against the tree in a haphazard manner. The stones were large and of a bluish sandstone, smooth and flat and now an artificial island around the trunk. All about me the deep blue sky was punctuated by puffy clouds, and the surrounding grass stretched away in every direction to the horizon.

  This felt, like the Birgitta dream that immediately preceded it, utterly real. Every detail was there about me – the texture in the bark, the veins in the leaves, the yellow bursts of lichen upon the rocks. The only evidence I had that this wasn’t real was that I knew it wasn’t. Nothing else. If that was so, then I could understand how Moody and Watson might have confused the two.

  I looked at my hands. They still weren’t mine. But they weren’t Charles’ either.

  They were old. A good seven decades, wrinkled, covered with liver spots and trembling. I felt weak, too, and the left side of my body had a sort of fuzzy dullness to it. Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly given his presence in all our lives, I was now dreaming I was Don Hector. His oldness, his dignity, his manner. But I wasn’t wholly him, I was partly him. Me, dreaming I was him, or him, dreaming he was me – I could only be sure I wasn’t Don Hector as he’d died two years before.

  I laughed out loud. Not simply at the bold invention of my mind, but the clarity. If this was what dreaming was like, then I had missed a phenomenon of considerable entertainment and distraction. Sure, the extra energy spent in their subconscious creation would require additional pounds at Slumberdown, but from what I could see, it would be worth it. This was a new, exciting reality.

  This was escape.

  I inhaled deeply and the sweet scent of Summer filled my lungs, the subtle odour of warm grass and meadowsweet. I looked around to see if Clytemnestra wasn’t also somewhere about, hanging over me with her dagger, and was relieved to find that she wasn’t. But something else was, something that had been predicted along with the oak and the boulders.

  The blue Buick.

  The car was from the more reserved and elegant era of American automotive design, before the dominance of fins and chrome. It wasn’t new, and far from pristine. Rust speckled the chrome bumpers, poorly repaired crash damage had wrinkled the offside front wing and the driver’s window was jammed half down and discoloured milky-white. Next to the Buick a picnic was laid out on a red blanket, a bottle of wine in a cooler, a folding chair. Beyond the car, about a half-mile away, I could see, sitting quite by itself on the unceasing carpet of green a Morpheleum, a temple to the god Morpheus. Old, abandoned, but looking incongruous, yet somehow safe.

  I could make an intelligent guess as to how these two dream scenarios had been created in my mind. First of a woman whom I’d met and liked and mixed with her paintings and my holidays in the Gower, and secondly, the dream I had been told about, mixed with the inescapable omniscience of Don Hector and HiberTech. I already had the broad parameters; my mind had filled in the rest like so much builder’s plaster. It was quite a feat – no wonder dreams burned energy.

  I was about to step from the boulders when I stopped. Birgitta, Moody and Porter Lloyd had all warned me: stay on the rocks.

  Intrigued, I stepped down to one of the lower stones and prodded the soil with an inquisitive toe. Almost immediately a hand shot out of the ground and closed around my ankle with a vice-like grip. I cried out in horror, swayed and almost fell off the rocks, then recovered and pulled back as hard as I could, my fingernails splitting and cracking where I grasped the stone. And then, after we had tussled for a few seconds the hand abruptly let go and swiftly sank from view while I retreated to the highest point of the rock-pile. Notwithstanding the fact that I knew that none of this was real, I sat shaking, breathing in short gasps. I then noticed that there were more hands – dozens if not hundreds – and watched with an increasing sense of horror as they moved slowly around the tree, as attackers might circle a hopeless last defence. Occasionally they would halt to fuss with a tussock of grass, sniff the air and occasionally squabble before carrying on with their patrol. I knew now what Moody had meant when he spoke in horrified tones of the hands.

  No, wait, back up a moment. Upon reflection, I couldn’t have known what Moody had
been frightened of. He’d only made mention of ‘hands out to get him’. I must have simply invented the scenario to fit in with the trees and the rocks. The outline was the same, the dream was different.

  And then, quite suddenly, a woman’s sharp voice from behind me cut into my trail of thought, and that was strange, because there’d been no one there when I last looked.

  ‘We know of a remote farm in Lincolnshire,’ came the woman’s voice in a slow, persuasive tone, ‘where Mrs Buckley lives. Every July, peas grow there.’

  I turned. There was a woman standing next to the Buick, and she was staring at me with a folksy smile, had grey hair tied up in a bun and was wearing a white blouse and a red dress around which was tied a kitchen apron. It was Mrs Nesbit, as she appeared in the endless corporate logos, film and TV commercials – but not the current Mrs Nesbit actress: this was a much younger Zsazsa LeChat, from eight Mrs Nesbits ago. She looked as though she was unaware of her surroundings, and there was a sense of shimmering otherness about her – as though she were not part of the dream, but somehow trespassing within it.

  I’d added a younger Zsazsa to the dream, too.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  There was a short blast of static and she spoke again. But although the voice appeared to be coming from Mrs Nesbit, the words didn’t match the movements of her mouth. She was the one from where the voice was emerging, but she wasn’t the one speaking. It was Mrs Nesbit, and it wasn’t, just as I was both myself and Don Hector, all at the same time.

  ‘Deputy Worthing?’ she said, and her voice seemed to sear a hole into my mind like a red-hot needle. I felt myself lift out of the Dreamstate as the pain brought me perilously close to waking, and for a moment I could see the faint outline of Clytemnestra, the open door to the living room and the bedside clock before I fell back into the Dreamstate.

  ‘Steady, Charlie, we need you asleep. Now: who do you think you are?’