Early Riser

The Sarah Siddons

The Siddons was at least thirty storeys high and unusually broad, a sure sign of a once-desirable residence. The façade had been rendered and then scored to emulate Portland stone, with a decorative doorway that represented yawning night-satyrs and snow-nymphs. It was impressive but shabby, and not assisted by the location: light industrial units had been built on the cheaper land this far from the centre of town, and the area looked run down and depressed.

‘Yes, I know,’ said Aurora, ‘a bit of a dump. When built, it enjoyed full sun and wasn’t obscured at all, but more modern dorms have been built in front of it over the years.’

Once we’d hung up our outclothes and swapped our snow boots for slippers, I looked around. Someone had made an attempt to reinvigorate the scruffy interior, but it hadn’t really worked. Mismatched carpet and threadbare modernist furniture only made the once-impressive lobby look cheap and neglected, and the numerous coats of clumsily-applied paint stole the subtlety from the plasterwork. I sniffed the air. As in the John Edward Jones back in Merthyr, there was the subtle yet unmistakable odour of slumber in the air – gummy sweat and the eggy whiff of hibernation mixed with semi-stale air breathed out past unbrushed teeth.

The porter was waiting to receive us. He was impeccably dressed, quite bald and wore small, gold-framed spectacles upon a face that seemed as close to a sphere as a human head is ever likely to get. I was suddenly put in mind of Bunsen Honeydew[44] from the Muppets, and chuckled. He stared at me and narrowed his eyes.

‘You were just thinking of Bunsen Honeydew, weren’t you?’

‘No.’

He raised an eyebrow.

‘Yes – okay, a bit. Sorry.’

‘Deputy Worthing,’ said Aurora, ‘may I present Porter Lloyd?’

I must have looked surprised for he sighed and said: ‘Yes, that Porter Lloyd. Worst thing I ever did, being Volkbait for Ichabod.’

‘Because it was frightening?’

‘No, the endless repetition of the story. I’ve had the words to “Lonely Goatherd” running around in my head for two decades, and while sometimes annoying, on the plus side it does put a jaunty step in my stride when I’m feeling down.’

Aurora yodelled the chorus and gave us both a grin.

‘There’s always one,’ said the Porter good-humouredly, and walked around to embrace me. He smelled of lemon soap, Hoover bags and mothballs and was a head shorter than me.

‘Welcome to the Douzey,’ he said. ‘It’s not as bad as people say. I was sorry to hear about Moody. Who pulled the trigger?’

‘Mr Hooke,’ said Aurora, ‘and in self-defence, before you ask.’

‘News travels fast,’ I said.

‘There are seventy-six porters in the Sector,’ said Lloyd as he returned to his place behind the reception desk, ‘and none of us venture out in the Winter. Having a permanently open line on the telephone network helps. Pick up the receiver and just talk. There’s usually someone listening, and if there isn’t, there soon will be. If all else fails, you can always talk to yourself or listen to the static. To be honest, listening to static can be more relaxing than listening to many of the others – especially Mr Rubucon over at the George Melly. What can I help you with?’

‘A place to stay for one to three days,’ said Aurora, ‘billed to HiberTech.’

‘You’ve come to the right place,’ said Lloyd happily. ‘We’ve only had nine illegal bedroom incursions since 1990: three snaffles, one Dormicide and five incidents of Trespass – three visual, one tactile and an unspeakable. We’re not proud of that, obviously, but it’s the lowest rate of hiburnal outrage in the Sector. You’ll also be pleased to know that no resident has been eaten in their sleep here for almost thirty-seven years.’

The lights flickered for a moment, went out, then came back on again.

‘Hydro Twelve has been on the fritz recently,’ said Lloyd by way of explanation. ‘What sort of room had you in mind? Cell, Basic, Featured, Deluxe or Super-Deluxe?’

‘Do you dream?’ asked Aurora quite suddenly, while fixing me with a quizzical expression. It wasn’t usually the sort of question you asked, but she was the head of HiberTech Security.

‘Not since I was eight.’

She looked at me for a moment.

‘Suzy Watson was recently gathered into the night,’ said Aurora, ‘why not hers? The positive energy of a young sleeper will drive the bad dreaming from the room.’

‘O-kay,’ said the porter.

‘Why did you ask if I’d dreamed?’

‘No reason. Worthing here will also need to hire your Sno-Trac,’ she said to Lloyd. ‘We’ll get it back to you as soon as we can. And this next bit’s delicate: we’re hoping to keep Worthing’s presence as something not to be broadcast any wider than between ourselves. Worthing here was partially to blame for Jack Logan’s death and you know what Toccata’s like.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I wasn’t really—’

‘I heard about Logan on the Open Network, too,’ interrupted Lloyd, ‘a great loss. Might be wiser keeping quiet. Do you need anything else?’

I thought for a moment.

‘I’d like to fax my office back in Cardiff, tell them I’m delayed.’

‘Leave that to me,’ said Aurora. ‘I’ll say you’ll be back in three days, five at the outset. I have to report about Jack Logan anyway – and absolve you of any wrongdoing. Least I can do. Get a good night’s sleep – the first few days in the Winter can be tough.’

I thanked her and she wished me well, gave us both a cheery wave, and was gone.

Once the front door had clicked shut, Lloyd had me sign for the Sno-Trac keys.

‘It’s in the basement,’ he said. ‘Do you want to take it now?’

‘Aurora didn’t think travelling at night wise,’ I said.

‘True,’ said Lloyd, suddenly looking a little uncomfortable, ‘but, well, things in Sector Twelve have a way of getting complicated very quickly. You might think the risk of a night journey less than a stay in Sector Twelve.’

‘You think I should get out?’

He looked to left and right and lowered his voice.

‘Entirely a matter for you.’

I considered it seriously, until I looked outside. The wind was getting up and visibility, while not yet zero, could make driving very tricky – and I had no desire to be stuck in a Sno-Trac somewhere between nowhere and nowhere.

‘I’ll see how it looks in the morning.’

‘Very well.’

Lloyd picked my room key off the board and we walked towards the lift. As we crossed the semi-circular lobby under the watchful eye of the ever-present portraits of Gwendolyn XXXVIII and Don Hector, I peered into the dark, wood-panelled Winterlounge, and could see a half-dozen individuals scattered around either reading, playing board games or talking quietly. All of them boasted the beautifully corpulent curves of healthy Autumn weight, and were languid in movement and manner.

‘That’s a lot of yawners,’[45] I said to Lloyd. ‘What’s keeping them up?’

‘This viral dream stuff has spooked the residents, and none of them want to go to sleep in case they dream the Buick dream and then go the way of Watson, Smalls and Moody. Mind you, this bunch are fighting a losing battle anyway.’

As if to punctuate his statement, the most healthily bloated of the sleep-ready residents yawned. When you get to that size and the ambient cools to fifteen degrees Celsius or below, it takes a Herculean[46] effort to stave off the slumber.

The paternoster lift started up as soon as we stepped in and slowly hauled us upwards with a gurgling of water from the auto-ballast. There were no doors on the elevator and the view of the corridors as we drifted upwards was dull, but uniform. Offerings to Morpheus were at the foot of most doors, along with fair dreaming candles freshly lit. There were a lot of them, too – the corridors were alive with hundreds of little lights, flickering in the faint breeze that occasionally wafted through the building.

There was nothing like this in the Melody Black back in Cardiff, but that was Alpha payscale and Morphenox – without pharmaceutical means to mitigate the fat-burning ferocity of the Dreamstate, the residents of the Siddons had retained their superstitious beliefs. Those of us on Morphenox no longer needed a deity to enter our dreams and watch over us, for the drug had rendered the god redundant. Veneration had moved from the spiritual to the pharmaceutical – and if what Lucy had suggested was true, all of this might be gone by next Winter.

‘Tell me,’ I said as Lloyd and I passed the third floor at a speed that was probably only marginally faster than taking the stairs, ‘do the yawners in the Winterlounge really think they’re going to catch the viral dream?’

‘They do – and I kind of agree with them.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’ve dreamt scraps of the dream too. Hands, an oak tree, scratched boulders, the blue Buick. But this is what’s weird: when I compared my dream with Moody and Smalls, there were other similarities, details we’d never discussed that were the same. Something is going on.’

‘Why didn’t you go nuts the way of Moody, Roscoe and Suzy?’ I asked. ‘Any ideas?’

‘No idea at all. But as I say, I only got scraps. I have this feeling that I dream more than I remember, and that I never left the rocks. If you do dream, you’d be advised to do the same.’

‘But I don’t dream.’

‘I know that, but if you do. This is our floor.’

We stepped off the lift, which carried on for a couple of seconds before the delicate balance system sensed it was no longer under load, and stopped.

‘Okay, then,’ he said, clapping his hands together, ‘in an emergency I’m in 801, below you, one floor down. Oh, and since HiberTech are footing the bill, will you make good use of room service?’

I said I would. He wished me goodnight and stepped onto the ‘down’ side of the paternoster, which gurgled for a moment, then sank with him out of sight.

Room 901 was halfway around the corridor on the southern side of the building, opposite the stairs. Pictures of a young woman had been laid at the bottom of the door along with condolence cards. I’d taken over a dead person’s room or bed or even shoes or best friend before – we all have – but this time it felt odd, and I shivered.