“I won’t be forcing anything,” I said, because I didn’t mean to sleep at all. I thought the most demanding task might be to keep my eyes shut. Before I could grow too afraid of learning how her hand might feel, I reached to squeeze it. It was firm, not like Toph’s had felt. This was such a relief that I might have kept hold, but for fear of embarrassing her if not myself I let go. We were sitting in a silence that felt like rediscovering friendship at its calmest when Christian Noble leaned out of the entrance in his reptilian way. “We’re ready for you, Dominic,” he said.
21 - Beyond Sleep
I’d only just crossed the threshold when I realised I’d been so preoccupied with rousing nobody’s suspicions that I’d failed to arrange the situation as I should. “Mr Noble,” I said as neutrally as possible.
“Please.” As he looked back at me Bobby shut the front door, and I could have thought Noble’s face had attracted darkness. “I’m sure we know each other well enough by now,” he said. “Christian, by all means.”
“I wanted to ask if I can be close to Toby.”
“Isn’t that your mission here?” His eyes gleamed, though I could have imagined very little light was involved. “You’re proposing to lie beside him,” he said.
“I think that might be best.”
“Best for whom?” The gleam sank into his eyes, but the darkness in them stayed alert. “Do come and see,” he said, sounding not far from playful. “Everything is as it needs to be.”
He led the way into the right-hand corridor. Though the door at the far end was open, I couldn’t see my son. Children lay face up on the middle row of mattresses, but the mattress closest to the door was unoccupied. Now I realised Christian Noble was bound to take that place, blocking anyone’s escape. If I’d anticipated this sooner, what could I have done? I strove to think as I followed him into the sleeping room with Bobby at my back.
Children were reclining on all three ranks of mattresses in the splayed pose I’d begun to find dreadful. If they still looked as though they were stretching out their arms in search of companionship, I couldn’t have said whether they were seeking one another’s comfort or inviting some experience I might prefer not to imagine. Toph lay on a mattress at the far end of the room with his eyes shut, but as I ventured into the room he called out “Welcome Dominic Sheldrake.”
All the children opened their eyes wide as he did and turned them towards me. “Welcome Dominic Sheldrake,” they said, so much in unison it sounded like a prayer.
I didn’t want to fancy they were somehow interceding on my behalf. Surely this was how they greeted any newcomer. While I was acutely disconcerted to hear my son join in, at least it let me locate him at the near end of the left-hand row. I tried not to be dismayed by how pleased he looked that I was there—how eager to involve me. Christian Noble had halted beside him, and swung around to clasp my shoulder. “There’s your place,” he said. “I trust it will suit your purposes.”
He used the hand to point before I could decide how firm it felt, though the touch had come close to making me shudder. He was indicating the mattress nearest to the door, between Toby’s and the one where Phoebe Sweet sat up, sending me an earnest smile. “I’m here if you need me, Mr Sheldrake.”
“Phoebe deals with any medical issues that may arise,” Noble said. “They haven’t for a long time, have they, children?”
“No,” they said in chorus—Toby as well, and Claudine next to him.
Noble paced to a mattress halfway down the left-hand row. Perhaps his speed was designed not to disturb the children, but it looked as ritualistic as a priest’s walk down the aisle of a church. His place was opposite Tina’s across the room, while Toph lay at the other end of my row, the four of us marking out the corners of a parallelogram. As this started to remind me of Christian Noble’s rite in the moonlit field more than thirty years ago, Toph raised his head so nearly vertical that I wondered how his neck could bear it. “Go like us, Dominic Sheldrake,” he said.
“Like me, Dom,” Bobby said and shut the door behind me as a prelude to tiptoeing between two ranks of supine children to the nearest empty mattress, some way along the left-hand wall. As she sank onto it she had to support herself with one arm, and I found her clumsiness unexpectedly reassuring. At least she hadn’t acquired that unnatural gracefulness the Nobles displayed, Toph in particular. Once she was seated she raised a fist towards me and shook it slowly twice, our old code for the Tremendous Three. I remembered our adolescent vow and Jim’s—that we’d always be friends and look out for one another—and was dismayed to think that while she’d looked out for me, I was failing her. Though my son had to come first, I felt worse than guilty. She gazed so steadily at me that I thought she’d sensed my doubts until she said “We have to lie down.”
The sight of Toph had made me loath to do so—the sight of his face almost as pale and smooth as a new memorial, raised towards me like a stone at the end of the mound of the rest of him. I couldn’t delay any longer in case I attracted more scrutiny, and I fell to my knees on the mattress before lowering myself onto my side and then turning on my back. I stretched my limbs wide in the approved pose, wishing I could touch Toby’s hand, but all the mattresses were too far apart for any contact of the kind. “We have to close our eyes, Dom,” Bobby said.
If everyone’s but mine were shut, how would anybody know if mine were? Surely keeping them open would help me resist whatever the Nobles might do. Perhaps if I kept them practically shut, nobody who looked to make sure I’d obeyed would notice. I’d left them open just enough to capture a sliver of sunlight, which appeared to be flickering with nervousness, when Toph said “All eyes.”
“All eyes,” Tina Noble and her father said in unison, and I felt as if they were confirming a command. From their voices I could tell that all three Nobles were wholly supine, and might have concluded that none of them could be aware of my ruse, but I had an uneasy sense that one or more of them had found me out. I let my eyelids sag shut, and Toph spoke at once. “Our lullaby,” he said.
I heard a faint but widespread noise that I wasn’t sure I understood. Quite a number of the children had shifted on their mattresses, but I couldn’t judge whether they were preparing to sleep or betraying some other form of anticipation. When I risked a sideways glance at Toby, he appeared not to have moved. I was so wary that I shut my eyes tight at once, and Toph said “The words.”
At first I didn’t know if I was hearing a response, and then I made out a whisper. It seemed to be rising all over the room, though I couldn’t judge how many voices were involved. The harder I strained my ears, the more elusive it grew. It might almost have been just a succession of slow deliberate unanimous breaths, and my own took on its rhythm. Now I began to distinguish syllables, though I couldn’t identify a single word, Here came a trinity of sounds I’d already heard, which might have been controlling the rhythm of the whisper. They commenced with a consonant almost too softened to function as one, which led to a syllable that seemed to be reaching for another, only to find an extended sound as emptily hollow as space. This brought the whisper to a final syllable in which the consonants dissolved so as to be subsumed into the exhalation. I knew I was hearing the name I’d read in Christian Noble’s journal and heard him speak in the Trinity Church of the Spirit, but each time it was repeated I had the impression that it had grown less defined, as if to help it infiltrate the whole of me. It was intensifying my awareness of my posture—of my outflung limbs that made my body feel as though it was yearning for the sky or for a dream. I fancied that the whisper was growing more remote, and perhaps this meant I’d entered a dream, because I saw the cloudless sky overhead. How could I see it except in a dream when I was still in the sleeping room? In fact it was darker than ever within my eyelids, and the last of the whispered chant merged with that darkness. It was so dark that I wanted to open my eyes to reassure myself with just a glimpse of the room, but I’d lost the ability to open them, unless I’d forgotten how to do so.
No, I had no eyes to open. I’d left them along with the rest of my body far below me, and now I was out in the vast dark, beyond the sky I’d seen.
Even if I’d anticipated some experience of the kind, shouldn’t I have felt considerably more terrified and helpless than I did? I had to assume that the chant had lulled if not hypnotised me as well as enticing me out of myself. Perhaps the spectacle of the infinite night between the worlds and stars inspired so much awe that it passed beyond terror. Above all I felt safe because I seemed to be merely an observer, as if I were sharing someone else’s dream. Surely I can blame the ritual more than myself for robbing me of thoughts I should have had.
I was more than glad to find that it wasn’t entirely dark. The shock of inhabiting the void must have limited my senses until they were ready to venture wider. I saw I was surrounded by distant lights, though the closest objects had no illumination of their own. For a moment, if time had any significance out here, a world as ruddy as a dying coal looked close enough to visit, and then it was left far behind. Further still across the black abyss I saw a planet I knew was colossal, although now it was less than a marble composed of storms, and another shrunken globe that was encircled by a prodigy like a faded rainbow made of stone. The outer worlds grew successively darker, and the last one resembled a ball of black ice too far removed from the nearest light even to glint. Then it was gone, and there was only the starry void.
Except for my sense of sharing a dream I might not have been equal to the experience. I could have fancied that the void was drawing me onwards much as a vacuum sucks in air, mindlessly determined to fill itself with whatever was available. Despite the distant presence of a multitude of stars, I felt surrounded by sterile emptiness. The fragments of dead worlds—omens of the crumbling of the universe—that wandered it at random brought no relief. The stars were so remote that they kept most of their light to themselves, and whenever my headlong progress brought me closer to one I saw how it blazed in absolute silence, which made the whole spectacle resemble a dream more than ever.
Galaxy succeeded galaxy, separating into hordes of stars, each star immensely distant from its neighbours. Occasionally I saw a pair of stars that might have drawn together in cosmic companionship, but even their doubled light looked like a vain attempt to fend off the infinite dark. By now I felt as though the void had swallowed time, and began to wonder if my journey was to be as endless as the universe, a prospect I found unexpectedly manageable, possibly even alluring. Helpless awe might have swept away most of my ability to think, though I suspect the ritual had, and I was content to feel both escorted and protected. I’d begun to succumb to a kind of attenuated calm when I saw movement ahead.
It was beyond one of the immense spaces that made up most of a cluster of stars. It wasn’t a meteor swarm or a comet; it didn’t move as they did. It was pale and globular, and appeared to be ranging here and there among the stars. I wondered if it could be an errant planet at the mercy of their gravity, however fanciful this was, and then I saw it veer towards the largest nearby star, too purposefully to be drifting. It put me in mind of a moth attracted by the light—more grotesquely, a moth’s egg that had somehow grown mobile, since the spectacle was just as abnormal. Now I saw that the pallid globe was so thoroughly pitted, presumably by meteors, that it looked as decayed as an ancient skull. This had to mean its substance was solid, but it wasn’t as firm as a planet ought to be. As the object several times the size of the world I’d left behind approached the star, that side of its circumference began to swell towards the light. It looked eager to borrow the glow. No, it was absorbing the brightness, and as it began to shine with a pallor reminiscent of a light above a marsh, it came dreadfully alive. All over the increasingly gibbous sector that was consuming the light of the star, great holes had begun to gape.
Quite a few contained eyes, although the bulging whitish orbs were as pitted as the rest of the deformed sphere. Other holes were mouths of various sizes and shapes, all of which began to work and then to speak, by no means in unison. I couldn’t have been hearing them in any ordinary sense, which made the elaborate chorus of whispers all the more insidious, as though the mass of simultaneous words in an utterly alien language was penetrating my essence. I had the unnerving notion that I might grasp them before I consciously understood them, or else they would grasp me. The colossal pallid sphere had started to rotate with a terrible deliberation as though to bathe its entire surface in the starlight it was feasting upon, and my unnatural composure faltered. All at once I dreaded being seen.
Surely I needn’t panic. How could I be noticed when I was unable to distinguish even a trace of myself? The ponderous rotation of the relentlessly vociferous mass was about to confront me with a number of its sluggish pockmarked whitish eyes, which might mean I would glimpse the kind of consciousness that lived in them. Surely if anyone caught their attention, my escorts would instead of me—and at once I was appalled by realising who that had to include: Toby and the other children. The lurch of recognition was so violent that it wrenched me back into myself, where I was lying on the mattress.
So I hadn’t ventured as far as I’d imagined, if my return was so instantaneous. The insight let the vision I’d just had feel no worse than an especially bad dream. For a moment this was pitifully reassuring, and then I understood that I’d shared the children’s experience—that I’d been lured into using them as a kind of proxy, just as the Nobles used them. The idea dismayed and infuriated me so much that I barely succeeded in stifling a cry of disgust, not least at myself. I needed to postpone my feelings if I was to carry out my plan, and I focused on opening my eyes, only to find the task far harder than it ought to be. It felt as though my mind was no longer fully synchronised with the rest of me—as though I had to relearn how my body worked. Even when I managed to raise my cumbersome head and blink my reluctant eyes wide, I couldn’t immediately make out the room, and I was terrified that someone might have seen me move.
Everyone was lying face up in the trance pose. Every eye was shut, but I couldn’t tell how long I might have before someone noticed I’d stopped participating in the ritual. I sprawled on my side and thrust myself to my feet with one wavering arm. I still felt less than perfectly aligned with my body, and as I wobbled away from the mattress I stumbled against the door. The thump my elbow dealt it sounded loud enough to waken the entire room.
Nobody stirred. Not a single eyelid flickered, and I told myself that nobody was pretending they hadn’t heard—not Christian Noble or Tina, not even Toph. I fumbled behind me for the doorknob and turned it almost gradually enough to prevent it from emitting a muted squeak. I edged forward while easing the door open and then leaned against the frame as I inched the door wide, by which time I was close to regaining my balance. I was afraid to delay any longer, and I supported myself with one hand on the wall as I stepped over my mattress to reach my son.
Stooping to lift him revived a dizziness that felt too close to a threat of leaving my body behind. I had to rest my clammy forehead against the wall as I slipped my hands beneath Toby’s shoulders and behind his knees. When I straightened up I was afraid his weight might prove too much for me in my unwelcome condition, but he felt distressingly hollow, as if his body had lost substance or was yearning to abandon gravity. His unforeseen lightness made me stagger backwards, and my heel caught the mattress I’d vacated. I blundered across it towards Phoebe Sweet, and my foot struck the floor beside her with a resounding thud that shook the boards. I was so sure I must have roused her that I couldn’t move for several seconds, and then I floundered out of the room.
Nobody followed us along the corridor, and I heard no sounds except my own all the way to the front door. The massive doorknob needed both my hands to twist it, and I laid Toby down on the stair I could most conveniently reach. He still hadn’t moved when I returned to him, having hauled the door wide, and I didn’t know whether to feel concerned about his quiescence or grateful that he wasn’t causing any problem,
I picked him up and tramped down the steps to my car, where I had to lower him onto the hood in order to unlock the doors. At least the metal wasn’t hot enough to trouble him—in fact, I had the impression that the sun was scarcely higher than it had been when I’d closed my eyes in the sleeping room. I carried Toby to the back seat and strapped him in, and peered at his unresponsive face before ducking out of the car, slowly enough not to revive my giddiness. “Do you think that’s advisable, Mr Sheldrake?” Christian Noble said.
He was leaning out of the doorway, splaying his fingers on both sides of the frame. He looked poised to launch himself at me, and perhaps that was what his faint amusement signified as well. Further stealth would have been pointless, and I slammed the passenger door as if this could keep Toby safe. “What?” I said as steadily as I could.
“You’ve just done it again.” With a smile so faint it looked drained of meaning Noble said “Do you think you should risk waking anyone from our sort of sleep? They used to think it was dangerous even to waken a sleepwalker.”
His apparent concern inflamed my rage. “A lot less dangerous than leaving anyone with you.”
“Why, Mr Sheldrake, there’s safety in numbers, you know. I must say I’m disappointed you’re so unreceptive. I remember when you had more of a mind.”
I was appalled to be reminded how the ritual had reduced the children to a single undifferentiated consciousness, a human buffer shielding the perpetrators of the rite from directly encountering its effects. Worse still, I’d failed to recognise my own son within that composite intelligence— even to remember he was there. Before my fury could find words Noble said “You shared so little of our vision I’m surprised it proved too much for you. You’ll have gathered it wasn’t too much for the children.”
I felt dizzy again, mostly with nausea. “I was never here for that, but I’m glad I’ve seen exactly what you’re up to.”
Born To The Dark Page 23
