I closed my eyes and awaited my fate. If Webster could take it, so could I.
I braced myself, but nothing happened. After a few moments I opened a wary eye to see that the ticket office was no longer there; we were standing on an unbroken white carpet of undulating deep snow, the sound deadened, a dull empty whiteness in all directions. The nightwalkers were paying me no heed as they had been startled by something within the blizzard, like a pack of carrion-wolves disturbed by hunters. Within a few seconds they had all scuttled away into the white of the snowstorm and Aurora and I were left completely alone.
‘Another of your tricks, Worthing?’
‘No,’ I said, equally confused, ‘this isn’t me, I swear.’
We both stared into the empty drab whiteness all around but there was nothing to be seen aside from the smooth snow and softly falling flakes. I took a step back – the ice around my feet had melted.
Aurora drew her Bambi but it was pulled from her hands and went whirling off into the whiteness. She stared at me, and I back at her, and then, from the depthless emptiness, there was the soft chuckle of a child.
‘What’s that?’ demanded Aurora, as a sudden gust of wind sent the falling snow into a flurry.
‘It’s the Gronk,’ I said simply.
‘There is no Gronk, Worthing.’
‘I thought so too, at first,’ I said, ‘but I’ve learned a few things while I’ve been here. The Wintervolk have a free pass during our dreaming times, moving from one to another as mice move around a house behind the wainscotting. Dreams nourish them, dreams give them life. They wait, they bide their time, then they make landfall briefly to do what is right to those who do what is wrong.’
She glared at me but I think she knew I was telling the truth.
‘We can fight it together,’ she said, ‘the combined strength of us two will defeat her.’
‘I don’t need to defeat her,’ I said, ‘she doesn’t want me, never wanted me. She’s come for you: the juiciest morsel on the whole Sector Twelve platter.’
Aurora looked at me, then out at the steadily falling snow. There was another gurgle of laughter and the Winter opened up, ready to be nourished with the shame of the unworthy. I felt a shard of ice pierce my heart as the Winter welcomed me into its darkness, then watched as Aurora had the burdens of her sins drawn from her, as heat might be extracted from a hapless traveller. Every murder, every lie, every interrogation. Her face went from fear to realisation, then to sorrow, contrition, guilt, then … shame.
‘Oh sweet mercy,’ she whispered, hand over her mouth, ‘what have I done?’
And once she’d become fully aware of the enormity of her sins, she was gone. All was quiet once more, the snow gently falling, the air fresh, calm.
I wasn’t alone for long. I felt a small hand clasp mine and I looked down. There was a young girl grinning up at me, dressed in a swimming costume and holding a beach ball, the snow melting on her cheeks as it settled.
‘Hey, Gretl,’ I said.
‘Hey, Charlie,’ she replied. ‘She was unworthy, you know.’
‘I know.’
She squeezed my hand again.
‘You are noble and wise beyond your understanding, Charlie. It’s important you know that.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but I don’t feel it. HiberTech are about to retire all the nightwalkers from the Cambrensis, including Birgitta and Webster. I’m due to be murdered in my sleep as soon as it’s noted Aurora is missing or dead or however it works out there, and my nightwalker retrieval plan counted on me actually staying alive.’
‘We might be able to do something about that,’ said Gretl. ‘I have a feeling that Aurora might not be quite as dead as you suppose. There’s a reason I didn’t take her clothes, or her finger. She still needs them. Here she is.’
A figure was walking out of the snow towards us. I recognised her not by her features, but by her demeanour. She looked scared and a little confused. Actually, a lot confused.
‘I feel kind of odd,’ said Toccata, with both her eyes looking straight at me, ‘like I’m waking up from a very wild and implausible dream.’
‘Not yet you’re not,’ I said, ‘but soon. And there’s one or two urgent things I’d like you to do for us.’
She tilted her head on one side.
‘Does it involve bringing down HiberTech?’
‘It does.’
‘Then let’s hear them.’
The Awakening
* * *
The Kiki (n.): From Mid-Wales hibernatory mythology. A benign Winter spirit that manifests itself during the hibernational Dreamstate, and is generally thought to keep the inexperienced sleeper from falling too far into the abyss of deep hibernation. (See also Legends: Gronk; Slink; Dorweevil; Thermalovaur.)
In a desperate alliterative bid to be the first to coin a phrase, the press variously dubbed it: ‘The Wonder of Wales’, ‘The Miracle of the Marches’ and ‘The Sensation of Sector Twelve’. Ultimately, to no avail. Historically and medically it became known simply as ‘The Awakening’.
All told, there were sixty-one nightwalkers across Sector Twelve who suddenly found themselves awake, one after the other, at five and three-quarter minute intervals, continually over the space of six hours. Of those, five were being harboured at different locations in the Sector, eight were still wandering around outside, an unreliable twelve were reported from HiberTech’s Redeployment labs, and an impressive thirty-six were, for no clearly explained reason or purpose, all gathered at the Cambrensis Dormitorium.
‘One moment I was curling up for sleep at Port Talbot,’ explained one, ‘and the next I’m wandering around the icy wastes of Sector Twelve, wrapped in gold Dralon curtains.’ One woke up on a slab about to be parted out, and another said that she had been, as far as she was aware, ‘asleep for five years, and in that time was looked after by my husband until he was drowned in a HotPot overheat. I knew nothing of this,’ she added, ‘until I came to be seated in a golf cart at HiberTech.’
There were many physical marks of their time walking: myriad scratches, frostbite, missing fingers and in some cases malnutrition or even wrongnutrition: a nightwalker who didn’t want to be named had two pounds of carpet underlay removed from their stomach, along with parts of a car tyre, seventeen buttons – all blue – and the partially digested skulls of three cats. But of psychological after-effects, there seemed to be mercifully few: almost all of the awakees described the experience as akin to hibernation, which is technically what it was, but with vague, half-forgotten dreams of what they might have been doing, and a lingering affection for raw tripe and undercooked pork.
The most notable awakee was the singing and dancing star Carmen Miranda who despite her advanced years, would go on to spearhead the campaign for a government inquiry into the potentially dangerous side effects of Morphenox.
‘Despite considerable research, we’ve absolutely no idea how and why this occurred,’ said The Notable Goodnight in a rare television appearance four weeks after the Awakening, ‘and although we may theorise that historically other nightwalkers may also have been potentially recoverable, we have no evidence one way or the other. Obviously, we are delighted by this unprecedented event, are currently conducting considerable research into the issue, will be cooperating fully with the inquiry and have withdrawn Morphenox from the marketplace.’
It was pretty much as expected, really.
The numbers were too great for HiberTech to hide what had happened. As it was, well-engineered corporate surprise, orchestrated bafflement, faux delight, suitable soul-searching and feigned contrition won the day. The story dominated the headlines at Springrise for almost a month before they moved on to more pressing matters, such as updated wastage targets, chilling new evidence for a planet-wide runaway climatic ‘snowball’ effect and, of course, the Albion’s Got Talent odds-on favourite: a pug dressed as a clown who can bark ‘The Lambeth Waltz’.
I met up with Toccata at the Wincarnis three days
after Aurora was taken by the Gronk. She’d already tendered her resignation as both head of the Consul Service and HiberTech Security.
‘I can’t pretend to be two people for ever,’ she said, ‘and it’s impossible to hide the fact that I do now actually need to sleep.’
‘What’s that like?’ I asked.
‘It’s … glorious.’
Unable to feign the curious eye movements of her previously split personality, Toccata had taken to wearing an eyepatch that she simply switched when she took on a different persona.
‘Do you think anyone suspects anything?’ I asked.
She shook her head.
‘Too much going on. And although it could be beneficial for me to stay on at HiberTech from a RealSleep espionage point of view, I have no recollection of anything Aurora got up to, so it would only be a matter of time before I was rumbled. I’m putting it about that I need to retire on mental health grounds. I don’t think anyone’s surprised, and quite a few people are actually quite relieved.’
Shamanic Bob brought our coffees and we waited until he had departed before continuing our conversation. Toccata had woken that night over at HiberTech, and while feigning to be Aurora, specifically ordered that I not be killed as I had ‘helped out considerably’ and that the nightwalkers were no longer scheduled for retirement. She got me out of HiberTech the following morning when the storm had abated, but not before I had gone to sleep again – and dreamed, big time.
The thing is, you don’t need a Somnagraph when you have a helpful entity like the Gronk to take you into the deep dreams of nightwalkers, don’t need a cylinder from Don Hector when you came second in the Swansea Town Memory Bee with six hundred and forty-eight random words – taking precisely six minutes to recite – memorised after only two readings. Back in the Cambrensis, before I went to see Foulnap in the museum, I played the cylinder twelve times to memorise it, each time with the nightwalkers gathering behind the door. I kind of figured HiberTech would squeeze the location of the cylinder out of me, and it’s always good to have a back-up, just in case. I’ll never know for sure, but I think Jack Logan had planned something like this all along. Perhaps not with the Gronk, but certainly regarding my memory.
‘Where will you go?’ I asked Toccata. ‘In retirement, I mean.’
‘I have a house on the Gower,’ she said. ‘I’d like you to visit me every year. Last two weeks in August. I don’t have many friends.’
‘Neither do I.’
So I did, every year until she died eighteen years later, of natural causes. Sometimes we walked to the abandoned lighthouse at the end of Whiteford Sands, sometimes to Oxwich Point, where we paused at the oddly shaped tree before we made our way down to the sea and then along the coastal path to Port Eynon for fish and chips. On the last day I spent with her every year we made a point of going to the Mumbles Pier for cockles and laver bread on toast with thick-cut bacon and a large mug of tea, all consumed outside, the gulls scavenging for scraps.65
We sometimes saw Birgitta and Charles down at Port Eynon, where they now live. She paints and he looks after their daughters. I only spoke to Birgitta once, two weeks after Springrise when they were both preparing to leave Sector Twelve for good.
‘Hello, Deputy Worthing,’ she said when I opened my door one morning. I’d stayed in the Siddons. I kind of liked it there and had formed an attachment to Clytemnestra.
‘It’s Charlie,’ I said, trying hard not to stare. The return of Charles had lifted the melancholy I had seen in her earlier. I was still in love with her and would remain so for many years, but I think that was Webster’s love, carried over from his dream. If I was getting only half of what he felt, they would be happy as none other.
She asked me if I still had the painting she did of me, and could she have it back. I said that was fine, which saved me five hundred euros, and when she came in to fetch it, I asked her if she recalled anything from when she was a nightwalker.
‘I remember being under a car,’ she said, thinking hard, ‘and in the tub having my hair cut off. Other than that, zilch.’
She stared at me with her penetrating violet eyes, then held up her hand with the missing thumb.
‘I was reported retired, but someone decided I was worth keeping and spared me. I was also looked after in my room at the Siddons. I owe a Debt to someone. Do you know anything about that?’
I wanted to tell her what I felt, and what I’d done, and what I’d risked to keep her safe and just how close it had all been, but that would have only complicated matters. And to be honest the love that had kept her safe was her husband’s, channelled through me. It was his triumph as much as anyone’s.
‘I shouldn’t tell you this,’ I said, ‘but your thumb was entered into the books by Jonesy. She’s no longer with us, but I have a feeling that she might have had something to do with it. We all owe her a lot. I found this in her stuff. I guess it belongs to you.’
I handed her the Polaroid of her and Charles on the beach at Rhossilli and she gazed at the faded photo intently.
‘Those were happy days.’
‘For me, too’, I said, ‘there’ll always be the Gower.’
‘Yes,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘there’ll always be the Gower.’
She then smiled, kissed me on the cheek, and looked at her watch.
‘We’ve a train to catch. Cheerio, Charlie – and thank you.’
And that was it, although I think she might have remembered more as the years went on, as I suddenly started receiving cartes de bon hiber from her and Charles and the girls about five years later. I keep them in a shoebox under the bed to this day. Seven years later she and Charles let it be known through appropriate channels that they would be happy to work for RealSleep again, but I had a message sent that they had both discharged their duties in an exemplary manner, that the Global Hibernating Village was in part due to them, and no further contribution was needed.
Laura Strowger had to wait until the labs were open after Springrise to get the film developed, and the evidence, whilst certainly unusual and compelling, could also be open to interpretation. Not that it mattered; she retained her child option rights fully, without let or hindrance.
‘I think HiberTech had become such a toxic brand that they wanted to avoid all controversies,’ she told me at Summer Solstice celebrations, when Sector Twelve was green and verdant, a far cry from its Winter drabness, ‘and purchasing collateralised child options didn’t sit well with their improved corporate image.’
‘What about Treacle?’ I asked.
‘To him it’s all just profit and loss. Win some, lose some. He’s okay about it.’
Laura stayed in Sector Twelve and became a part of the team, along with Fodder, once he had completed his two-year sabbatical. We had no more trouble from the Farnesworths, and Laura went on to save my life two years later when I became trapped under a Sno-Trac near Llanigon, for which she was highly commended.
As for me, I carried on at the Sector Twelve Winter Consul’s office, and within five years I was made Chief Consul, the youngest ever. Sister Zygotia was extremely proud, and when I visited St Granata’s on Fat Thursday, even Mother Fallopia offered me a grudging comment of admiration and a box of Maltesers.
‘To share,’ she added.
To this day my washing is always mysteriously folded overnight.
‘It’s a courtesy,’ Gretl told me when we met at Springrise Plus Two, the Consuls disbanded, the snow and ice thawed, the population returned to life, hungry and skinny and confused. We’d replaced Moody and Roscoe and Suzy with a new RailTech team, and the first Spring train left the platform at Talgarth only 5.6 seconds late – impressive but only enough to come twelfth in the Mid-Wales Springrise Punctuality Championships.
Without Morphenox, everyone went back to dreaming from the next season, and the general consensus felt that it was better this way. Winter Wastage is up, but there are no more Nightwalkers, and the government is investing heavily in sound nutritional
strategies to aid weight gain in the run up to Winter. HiberTech still conduct research into a side-effect free version of Morphenox, but so far nothing. Don Hector guarded his work well and he kept the secret only in his dreaming mind, something that is now shared with me.
I will have to consider carefully what I do with the knowledge.
Gretl is always there ahead of me when I dream myself onto Rhosilli beach, playing with her beach ball accompanied by the familiar gurgle of a laugh now firmly etched into my mind as I sit near an orange-and-red parasol of spectacular size and splendour. These days, there is no one beneath it – the previous incumbents now happy enough not to dream of times when they were.
‘All that I am is now within you,’ said Gretl as we watched the sun set over Worm’s Head, the waves beating the hull of the Argentinian Queen like a drum, ‘don’t be dying on me or anything – finding an agreeable host is harder than you might imagine.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘Good,’ said Gretl, ‘now: what did you learn in your first Winter?’
I paused for thought.
‘I could talk about loyalty and the cold, Tunnocks Teacakes and the desolate beauty. Of the code that glues us winterers together, or the loneliness of the souls who call it home. But I think the one thing that struck me is that the Winter isn’t a season – it’s a calling.’
‘I concur,’ said Gretl with a smile, and the sun set over the Gower.
Again.
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Acknowledgements
* * *
My thanks firstly to you, dear sweet reader, for sticking with me during what I now call my creative hiatus of 2014–2016. That you are still here now (and have presumably finished the book if you are reading this) is testament to your loyalty, for which I am immensely grateful. I can only apologise profusely that it happened (I’m still trying to figure out why) and hope to return to the year-on-year books that I managed to do in the past.
Early Riser_The new standalone novel from the Number One bestselling author Page 42
