Dark Sleeper : A Novel

Written in a style reminiscent of 19th century authors like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, with tantalizing elements of science fiction and dark fantasy, Jeffrey E. Barlough's Dark Sleeper draws the reader into a complicated plot featuring dozens of fascinating characters and culminating in a surprising and unforgettable climax.

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Chapter One

BOOK THE FIRST

A GATHERING OF GHOULS

Something Remarkable

Fog, everywhere.

    Fog adrift in the night air above the river, creeping in through the estuary where the river glides to the sea. Fog curling and puffing about the headlands and high places, the lofty crags and wild soaring pinnacles, fog smothering the old university town in cold gray smoke. Fog squeezing itself into the steep narrow streets and byways, the roads and cart-tracks, into the gutters and shadowy back-alleys. Fog groping at the ancient timbered walls of the houses -- the wondrous, secret, familiar old houses -- and at their darkened doors and windows, filling the chinks and cracks in the masonry and coaxing the tightly fastened surfaces to open, open.

    Not your common ordinary fog but a genuine Salthead fog, drippy and louring -- the fog of my distant remembrance, of the days of childhood. How long ago those days were, precisely, there's no point in relating; suffice it to say that they were over long before most of you were born. My childhood! When such unimaginable vistas of life lay open before me, and the years stretched endlessly forward. Ah, Salthead -- my dear old birthplace, the seat of my irretrievable youth! How long has it been now since you've known my footsteps?

    You'll forgive a mawkish, maundering old fool if he occasionally strays, ever so slightly, from the path of his story. Life is slower now and not nearly so endless. The clocks tick and I find myself listening to them. But my story -- my true story, for know you that every word of it is the literal truth -- already I've lost track of my story. Oh, yes, I remember, I was telling you about the fog -- the old Salthead fog -- and how it was exhaling its icy vapors into the pinched faces of the passers-by, those unfortunate enough to be abroad on a frosty night. How the Salthead fog was exhaling its vapors into the pinched face of young John Rime, the cat's-meat man, one such unfortunate passer-by on his way back from an evening's ramble in the High Street.

    Young Mr. Rime has enjoyed himself immensely this night. His clothes have an interesting, devil-may-care sort of disarray about them, and his hat, tilted forward at a rakish angle, is like the needle of some fantastic haberdasher's compass pointing the way home. It was, I venture, a not-inconsiderable achievement that his hat still clung to his head at all.

    At each stop along the way Mr. Rime has drunk the health of the patrons of the worthy establishment; tendered his regards to the landlord of the worthy establishment; nuzzled the chin of the pretty daughter of the landlord of the worthy establishment; hailed and farewelled everyone with great ceremony, and hailed and farewelled everyone again for good measure -- all in all, has been the greatest friend and boon companion to himself he has ever had.

    So it should come as no surprise that Mr. Rime, like a foot soldier lost in a desert of night, having undertaken numerous unsuccessful forays into the maze of narrow streets, uncertain of his way, at length finds himself in an empty lane down near the docks, but down near very litte else with which he is at all familiar.

    The crispness of the night air, the quiet plashing of the water against the pilings, the creaks and groans of the dark-bodied ships straining at their moorings, the distant wail of a whistle-buoy -- all send restless shivers through the body of Mr. Rime. He stops for a moment to listen, and glances about and behind with an uneasy, searching expression. At length he gathers his coffee-colored great-coat more closely about him and forges on, in as straight a line as it is possible for him to trace out.

    Overhead a faint beacon of moon glows through the fog blanket, casting a diffused light by which the cat's-meat man guides his steps. To his right, the dim outlines of some broken buildings lining the wharf rear up out of the ground; to his left, in a deserted boat-yard, a landlocked fleet of disabled vessels sails silently into the fog. From somewhere among the craft in the yard comes a low growling, then a hoarse bark. Once again Mr. Rime stops to listen, and once again moves on.

    A shaft of moonlight cutting through the gloom illuminates a turning in the lane, and as the cat's-meat man negotiates this change in course he is startled to hear a voice demand harshly in his ear --

    " Are you pleased with your station in life, man? "

    From out of the fog slides a tall, lean figure, clothed in nautical garb that had seen its better days. Young Mr. Rime looks blankly at this inquisitor, uncomprehending, as if the question had been posed in an unknown tongue spoken only by the inhabitants of some remote kingdom -- so astonishing was its substance and so unexpectedly had it been uttered.

    "Well? Speak out, man! Have you nothing to say?" demands the stranger, with sudden vehemence. "Have you no thoughts? Have you no desires? Have you no regrets? Have you no opinions, you fool? What! Nothing at all going on inside that under-stuffed brain-box of yours?"

    The cat's-meat man responds by altering his vacant expression not one jot.

    "What about your life, man? Are you satisfied with it? Are you happy? Are you unhappy? Damn me -- you've got to be one or the other, or you're not living!" (These verbal sorties carried out without the least response on the part of their designated target). "Have you no regrets? No words unsaid, no deeds undone? Nothing you'd like to change, while you've got the chance? Nothing you'd like to have done differently? Have you no one you've left behind, man?"

    In his stunned condition the cat's-meat man manages only a faint shrug in reply.

    "So then we're a satisfied man, I take it. A very satisfied man. A very satisfied little squit," says the stranger, his eyes nervously darting here and there, from Mr. John Rime to the muddy tracks in the lane, to the timbered frontage of the warehouses over the way. A slight inclination of the head brings forward into the light a tangled mustache, and a gleam of gold in the lower jaw. "Oh, no, no, no. I don't think we're satisfied. I don't think we're satisfied in the least. No, no, I think we're just a liar. What do you say to that, man? Just an ordinary, common, vulgar, everyday little liar."

    No reply from Mr. Rime to this gauntlet hurled at his honor, apart from a brief, spasmodic gurgle in the throat.

    "Well, then, do you know how to caper, man? Young liar like you ought to know how to caper. Capered much myself in my shipping days. Caper, you see? Like so!"

    Whereupon the stranger proceeds to execute a ghastly caricature of a sailor' s hornpipe, an exercise that resolves itself into little more than an aimless flailing about of his ungainly limbs. The horror of this performance is accentuated by the size of the stranger's hands and feet, which are seen to dangle a trifle too stiffly for comfort from the shafts of his bones.

    "So, man," says the figure, bringing this mockery of a dance to a close. "What do they call you besides Liar? Or is it Mister Liar? Nothing else? Nothing even remotely remarkable? No, I don't believe so. For God's sake, man, do something remarkable with your life while you can! Listen to me, listen to me, I know what I'm talking about. Why --"

    At which point the figure stops, whirls about on his heels and leaps toward the cat's-meat man, with one long, bony hand thrust forward, its extended forefinger directed straight at the nose of Mr. Rime.

    "Why, it's -- it's John , ain't it?"

    Upon mention of his name Mr. Rime grows conscious of an uncomfortable dryness in his throat.

    The corners of the stranger's mouth lift up beneath the ends of his mustache in a ghoulish leer. "Ah, I thought so! It is John. John, John, John. Johnny. Ho, Johnny boy! Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. Now, Johnny WHAT , I wonder?"

    Here the cat's-meat man manages to gather sufficient inner strength to disgorge the requested item.

    " Sssssst! " The stranger pauses, swishing his extended forefinger in lazy circles round the victim's nose. "Well, Mr. Johnny Rime, I'll give you a point for that, man. You finally spoke up for yourself. You finally showed a glimmer of self-respect. Johnny Rime you are, no doubt. No lying there with a name like that! Just the common truth. Just a common fact. And facts, after all," says the stranger, coldly, "are FACTS ."

    This sudden alteration of voice causes Mr. Rime to regard the sailor with a new and wholly disquieting sense of dread.

    "Well, Mis-ter John-ny Rime," continues the inquisitor, separating his syllables for emphasis. "Well, Mr. Johnny, that's all fine and good, man, but it's time to present you with something remarkable in your life. Here, Johnny, Johnny. Hey, Johnny, Johnny. Would you mind holding this for me, man?"

    With no little anxiety the cat's-meat man accedes to this seemingly innocuous request, taking into his hands a generally oblong, weighted object about the size and consistency of a musk melon.

    "Thank you, Johnny," replies the melon, with a satisfied chuckle. "That's most comfortable. That's most comfortable indeed."

    The eyes of Mr. Rime jump from the melon to the stranger, back to the melon, then back to the stranger, and to the empty spot between the stranger's shoulders where his head used to sit -- then back to the head now resting in his hands.

    "No need to look surprised, man," smiles the head, contentedly, as if to say, Yes, this is a most enviable situation. "No need at all. Why so nervous? Ain't this remarkable, now? What! Ain't you never held a melon before, Johnny?"

    The eyes in the head of the sailor rove this way and that, while the eyes in the head of young John blow up like balloons. With a cry the cat's-meat man flings the horrific object from his hands, and staggers through the turning in the lane as rapidly as his legs will carry him.

    While in the half-darkness left behind there erupts a mocking laughter, full of a harsh and scornful arrogance, that fills the street and echoes from the building walls, growing louder and louder and soaring higher and higher until it fills the entire sky over the sleeping city, and so becomes one with the drifting fog.

Copyright © 1999 Jeffrey E. Barlough. All rights reserved.