by Jeff Noon
In the distance he saw the broken flickering lamplight of Hesperus sparkling through the fog like a glint of precious metal. The building that held her was a towering black shape in the mist, nothing more, all of its windows dark. Only the star-shaped neon sign held out hope as it burned from the skyscraper’s peak. Who was maintaining it, who was polishing it? He told a fairy tale to himself of a renegade bulb monkey lost in the mist, feverously working at the neon, doing all they could to keep this star alight. It was enough, it was evidence of human life, and Nyquist felt his energy coming back.
Further on. Further. Keep moving…
An increasing number of cars were parked by the roadside, their doors open, their windscreens shattered. So many abandoned vehicles, abandoned stories. He followed the curve of the road. A few houses and shops were seen. One car he passed was covered in rust all over, and the interior was packed with sand; it trickled from a tiny gap at the top of a side window. The vehicle looked as though it had lain underwater for a long, long time; yet there was no water around here, only the bare ground, the weeds, the thorns, the shadowed buildings, and the mist, the endlessly curling and smothering mist.
And then his skin tingled.
He saw a low building at the side of the road, which turned out to be the remains of a transport café. The windows were broken, the door creaked open on its hinges. The painted sign told him that the place was called Darla’s Rendezvous.
His mother’s name. Darla.
She had spoken to him once as they sat by the fire in the living room of their home, of opening just such an establishment, with exactly that trade name. It was a dream of hers, a treasured escape from her part-time sewing work.
A dream only, never fulfilled.
And Nyquist knew then for certain that Dusk was a region not of the real world, but one conjured from his own inner landscape; or a land which modelled itself on his thoughts, his memories. Knowing this, he dared to look inside the café, through the half-open doorway. All was dark within, empty, inhabited only by shadows. And then something moved in a corner, a person sitting at a table. A woman, it looked like…
Nyquist’s heart clenched.
It was a tailor’s dummy, of female shape, dressed in a gown of blue and green.
His mother’s favourite colours.
He reeled away from the door, stumbled back, tried to calm himself.
It was useless. This place did not lead to calmness.
He hurried on and soon reached a patch of open land. The ground was filled with old timepieces, some of which were broken, their workings on view, while others were still intact. A dull, muffled ticking sound was heard from all around. The fog ahead was flickering with orange light. He moved closer to the source and saw a grandfather clock on fire, the flames rising from the wooden casing. It didn’t surprise him in the least, and he knew that the fire would never go out. He stared at the clockface. The time was five past seven.
He looked at his wristwatch. The dial had cleared of mist and the hands were clearly visible. They showed the exact same time: five minutes past seven. And he knew it would always be that time, no matter how far and wide he roamed this place, it would always be so until the moment of Eleanor’s death arrived, only then would the clocks move forward one more minute, and then one more…
Beyond the firelight, a thread of gold moved and twinkled in the far distance. Nyquist realised it was a locomotive making its lonely way through Dusk from Night to Day or from Day to Night, he could not tell which. But he was suddenly, intensely envious of those aboard, sitting in their lighted carriage, reading magazines or chatting to their neighbours. They were going home, or to work, or to play, or to meet the man or woman who might become their future spouse. They might have children together, and bring them up safely, half in the lighted areas, half in the dark, fully balanced human beings with their whole lives ahead of them…
He stopped moving. Dead still.
It was pointless. Doubt took him over.
He was lost and alone in a place that cared nothing for him, that offered only fantasies and pathetic symbols drawn from his own nightmares.
The girl was long gone, taken by this realm for its own ends.
Was she dead already, or injured, or suffering in torture?
Only the thought of Eleanor drove him on. It was all he had. One reason. He would either save her, or kill her.
He picked up the road once more and followed it, as it wound between fields of dry grass. The dusk was silent now but for the soft call of owls, their dark and dusty smudges floating low above the ground. A few yellow moths fluttered about Nyquist’s face. Again he saw the blue star of the evening, Hesperus, peeping into view above the fog banks. It might have been the same neon sign, or a different one, a sister star. How could he tell? He had lost all sense of orientation. Further on he came across a grand piano half buried in the soil. Hundreds of slimy, bulbous frogs were jumping around the piano’s legs. Some of them had found their way inside the open lid of the instrument, where their croaking calls reverberated against the strings, making a new kind of music: beautiful, experimental, primitive. He pressed at a few of the black and white keys: E, D sharp, E, D sharp, E, B, D, C, A. The now familiar tune of “Für Elise” played out under his fingertips, although where such musical ability came from, he could not say. As he looked round, he saw other musical instruments in the field beyond – guitars, violins, trumpets, double basses, tubas, the bones of a xylophone – and he couldn’t help imagining a ghostly ensemble playing for the lost souls of Dayzone and Nocturna.
Nyquist kept moving until he came to a small hamlet. The outlying streets were empty of life except for a dazzling white horse that walked alongside him for a while. Mist streamed around its warm, muscled body. And closer to the centre, he witnessed a gathering of spirits around the old village green, men and women clothed in the colours of twilight, who cried at the steps of a marble war memorial with its list of carved names, and were too pained to even notice Nyquist’s presence. Somewhere far off in the mist a lone trumpeter played “The Last Post”. The melody tugged at his heart, as it always did. One poor woman passed close by him. Her face was entirely featureless but for a crimson-lipped mouth. No eyes, no ears or nose, only this red maw opening and closing and babbling forth in some unknown language. Again, Nyquist felt he was seeing scraps torn loose from the subconscious of the city, bizarre remnants and offshoots of people’s dreams and fears about themselves, and the days and nights yet to come, imagined here, brought into some pitiful version of life.
He walked on, leaving the hamlet behind.
The paving stones were crumbling beneath his feet, being eaten away by decay. The road was merging with the earth and the roots. A purple glow tinged the air. Many more of the yellow moths were flitting about as the mist started to thin. The landscape was changing. A little further on he saw before him a vast field of golden flowers that swayed in a gentle breeze. A few remaining drifts of fog moved with them, but mostly the flowers were fully exposed beneath the glow of the moon, a very different moon than the one visible from the Dayzone fogline. This giant orb was violet-coloured and hung low in the sky above the fields. The moths came here in their thousands, each wing the exact same luminous colour as the petals over which they fluttered, so it looked as though the flowers themselves were taking to the air. A number of human figures walked amongst the moonflowers. They moved with the slow dazed shuffle of sleepwalkers.
Nyquist stepped into the field, his every movement disturbing the flowers and raising clouds of orange seeds that dazzled and floated around him. The moths flew around his face; he could feel their wing beats against his brow and his cheeks, his lips, his eyes, his hair. He passed near to one of the fieldworkers. This was a ravaged man, his features so eaten away that only his eyes remained, each orb coloured entirely black.
Nyquist thought of the blind fiddler who had acted as a guide in his journey; had that musician in some way escaped from Dusk?
Yet th
e worker could see, at least a little, enough to do his work. He bent down and groped around until he managed to pull a large oval seedpod from one of the plants. He placed this in a canvas bag strapped around his shoulder. Then he turned his nightshaded eyes towards Nyquist. It was such a terrible stare, such an example of broken and lost humanity that Nyquist wanted to move away in fear. But a black liquor fell from each of the worker’s eyes, down the cheeks to the broken, useless lips. He wiped at it feebly with a thin-fingered hand stained orange at the tips. Nyquist felt compassion; he reached in his pocket for his handkerchief and used it to wipe at the black substance dripping from the worker’s eyes, whatever it might be. The worker flinched at the touch but then grew calm. The linen moved back and forth until the face was clean, or as clean as it could be in such a place. The black eyes blinked, the bare remains of the mouth crinkled at the edges. A trace of humanity remained, beneath the terrible process that had turned him into a slave. Nyquist pressed the handkerchief into the worker’s grateful hands and moved on through the dusk blossoms. A few yards on he saw a second worker approaching, but with a more purposeful step. No, not a worker, a guard. This man’s face was masked in smoke, and he carried a baton or club in his hands. Nyquist reacted quickly: he lowered himself to the rich black earth and started to crawl along between the tall stems of the plants. He kept moving in this way for as long as he dared and then he stopped and pressed his entire body flat on the ground.
He drew in a long breath and held it.
And waited.
The guard moved nearer, thrashing at the stems with his baton.
Nyquist willed his body into silence, and stillness.
A torch beam illuminated the adjacent stems, and the baton took off the heads of some flowers close by. The guard’s passage disturbed the shadowy enclosed world for a moment longer, and then moved on.
Nyquist lay where he was, and then rolled over so he was facing upwards. The scent of the flowers was overwhelmingly sweet and cloying. The orange seeds were sticking to his face. He was reminded of the kia drug; it was the same colouring, the exact same perfume. And he realised that taking the drug actually carried the user into the dusklands, just for a tiny amount of time and only inside their heads, but enough to give them a peek of everything they wanted. Or feared. Paradise or hell, one glimpse at a time.
The fields of twilight closed around him.
His father had led the way, and the little boy had watched, and learned.
And followed.
Like this, Johnny. One step, another. You see? One more…
And now here he was, fully grown…
Nyquist looked up at the swarms of yellow moths as they fluttered by, and the artificial moon above them. He heard music, a soft lulling music as the many petals, leaves and stalks gently whispered against each other in the ether of twilight. All of these sights and sounds and aromas were a spell he was caught within, and he could not move his body for a good while, not until the blind worker had walked on to another part of the field.
Now he started to crawl along, keeping to his hands and knees, until he reached the edge of the field, where he got to his feet carefully. He was safe, alone once more. But he felt wretched. It was all he could do to look ahead, to see where the road continued. He set off walking. Progress was slow, his pace barely in time with his half-drawn breaths. Away from the violet moon’s dominion, the drifts of fog moved in again, thicker than before, reducing his sight all around. The ground beneath his feet was veiled, and what little he could see was covered over by weeds and fallen leaves. The road markings were no longer visible, and he would have walked on blindly, unceasingly, perhaps turning in ever-increasing circles, if a dim light had not suddenly appeared before him. He was drawn towards this beacon, his only landmark, and a little further on the fog parted to reveal a neon sign in the shape of a white five-pointed star. It turned repeatedly on its pole through a half circle and then back again. Nyquist walked under its soft glow, into the light and back out again. There was a large building ahead, its form emerging slowly from the mist. Three people were walking up the steps toward the main doorway, where they stopped for a moment under a pale lamp. Two of them were indistinct shapes; the third was a young woman.
It looked very much like Eleanor Bale.
Broken Crystals
Nyquist hurried towards the building, keeping to the shadows. He watched from a niche in the wall as the young woman disappeared through the hotel’s doorway, followed by the two men. He was close enough now to see their faces of smoke, their nervous stances. The sight still filled him with fear and anger and he stopped for a moment, catching his breath. His eyes were burning. He rubbed at them, before walking on.
The Silver Star Hotel was only two storeys high, but covered a large area of ground. It had obviously been a fine establishment, before the dusk had overrun this part of the city. Now the frontage was dirty and crumbling and pitted, and the windows were smashed or missing entirely. A tattered flag hung down from a pole. A black car with shaded windows was parked in the forecourt, a few yards down from the main entrance. Nyquist recognised the vehicle from when he’d been attacked in Cotton Springs cemetery. Wisps of fog wrapped themselves around his face, across his features as they creased into rage.
And then he realised that he wasn’t alone.
A few chairs and hammocks were set out on the hotel’s terrace. Thick tangles of weeds grew up from the decking. An old couple were sitting beneath a sunshade at a table, looking for all the world as though they were on holiday, enjoying their gin and tonics and gazing out over the fields of mist. Both of their faces were covered by masks, each in the shape of a clock, both showing the same time. Five past seven.
There were still two minutes to go…
The residents turned to stare at him.
He stared back.
One of them, the woman, raised her glass and saluted him.
Nyquist entered the hotel. He looked around the foyer but there was no sign of Eleanor or the two shadow men. The mist had partially made its way inside, enough to blur the edges of the shabby furniture and the broken display cabinets. The receptionist was a woman in a blue uniform that was torn in places and marked with dirt. Her face carried scars, each one a brave sign of her time in Dusk.
“Would you like a room, sir?” The receptionist spoke soothingly, but her smile looked like a crack in a porcelain mask, one more disfigurement.
Nyquist couldn’t bring himself to answer.
“Sir? May I help you?”
He kept staring at her. “Help me?” he said. It was either a question or a statement.
“I’m sorry?” She looked back at him with her vacant staring eyes; two uncomprehending beings reflecting upon each other.
Again the receptionist asked if he would like a room and somehow or other he managed a reply, a nod of the head, a single word: “Yes.”
“Very good. Can I take your name, please?”
“My name?”
“If you would, sir.”
“Nyquist. John Henry Nyquist.”
“Ah yes, Mr Nyquist. We’ve been expecting you.”
“You have?”
“Yes. We’ve put you in room–”
He banged his fist down on the counter. “I don’t want a room!”
The receptionist flinched slightly. Her complexion reddened around the scars.
“I don’t want a room,” Nyquist said again, quietly this time, trying to keep in control. He looked around the foyer, hoping to find something, anything, that he could focus on, that would make him feel a part of this world. But there was nothing, nothing useful. All was strange. There was an ornate clock on the wall above the elevator doors but he hardly needed to read its dial. From somewhere in the distance, from another room or corridor, he could hear a bell tolling.
He turned back to the desk, saying, “Tell me, what happened to the young woman, the teenager who came in a few minutes ago?”
“I’m afraid…” The reception
ist smiled again. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“She came inside, I watched her. She’s called Eleanor Bale.”
The woman studied a ledger. “There’s no one of that name…”
“What about Eleanor Kinkaid?”
“We have an Elizabeth Kinkaid staying with us.”
“What?”
“She’s one of our long-term residents. She came in a few minutes ago, with her two guardians. Perhaps you meant her?”
“Let me see that.”
Nyquist turned the ledger round so he could read the entry: Room 225 – Elizabeth Kinkaid. The words and the numbers danced in his sight. What could it mean? Was it Eleanor he’d seen, or Eliza?
“Give me the key for this room,” he said.
The receptionist hesitated. “Both keys have been given out.”
“Both keys?”
“Yes sir. The first was taken by Mr Kinkaid, Elizabeth’s father. He always carried it with him, and would often visit that particular room. Unfortunately…”
“Yes?”
“He hasn’t brought it back. In fact, we haven’t seen Mr Kinkaid for a while now. Some of us are getting rather worried about his absence.”
Nyquist recalled the hotel key that Detective Gardner had shown him, the one the police had found on Kinkaid’s body. Room 225.
“What about the second key?” he asked.
“The girl’s grandmother has that one.”
“Her grandmother?”
“That’s correct. Aisha Kinkaid.”
Nyquist knew he was nearing the mystery’s centre.
“Is there a master key?”
“The manager had one. I’m afraid, however–”
“Where is he?”
“He’s dead, sir. Long dead.”
The foyer drifted with smoke and echoes of footfalls. Ghostly voices called from room to room.