DAY 10: Procrustes’ Bed:

A robber of Attica, who placed all who fell into his hands upon an iron bed. If they were longer than the bed, he cut off the redundant part; if shorter, he stretched them until they fit it.

Planning aside, the next night I pushed my newly-minted luck—rolled that golden coin down those empty hallways toward the screams that echoed out from Captain America’s cell. His anguish had become more than I could ignore, and my thoughts first built a nest then roosted outside the closet at the back of the bookroom.

For the last couple of nights I’d noticed that my thoughts were turning more and more toward the Dream. It was like a physical craving. The Dream was gravity, bending my thoughts in its direction so that every one of the dozens of problems I faced seemed as though they would be most easily solved through the closing of my eyes. Each time I slept the pull was greater, the return to Nod more difficult. In fact, I was beginning to worry that each night’s sleep might be the one that never ended, the one that left Zoe alone in Charles’ dark world.

And yet, the more the Dream drew me toward it, the more I also became aware of what my fellow Sleeper was going through, awake for days on end. By comparison, the stabbing of skewers seemed a trivial thing.

Captain America’s pitiable cries were even affecting the otherwise unflappable Zoe. Indeed, this was the first thing I’d seen affect her in any way, despite the fact that she’d already seen the full menu of ‘things no child should ever see’—but which, we adults conveniently forget, they actually see all the time. Children are the eternal, silent witnesses to every human sin, and the more we tatter their purity, the more we extol the clean white blouses of ‘innocence’. Already during her short spell inside our fractured narratives, Zoe had seen both Tanya’s terrible descent and my wallowing in the muddy bottom of that fall; she’d seen spooky, twisted shapes at every corner.

When Captain America cried out, Zoe didn’t start or cry, but she stopped in her solitary play and looked down into her lap for a moment or two, the lack of expression on her soft, still-babyish face itself a kind of expression.

The rescue mission I now found myself contemplating was tricky. There was no predictable ebb or flow to life among the Awakened, no supper or bedtimes. The structure, such as it was, was all based around intense focus on individual tasks, both mundane and esoteric. Charles’ Awakened worked furiously and continually, mostly scrubbing and wiping, conjuring and praying. That afternoon I’d passed three of them gathered around an old yellow typewriter someone had dragged up from the basement. They took turns hitting random keys, eyes shut tight. After a few minutes of this, they pulled out their sheet of paper and crowded together by a broken window, anxious to see what wisdom they’d transcribed, presumably from the mouth of Nodgod. As they scanned the page, their faces twisted and fell.

To my mind, it seemed likely that the Awakened were speeding up the rate of their own decay and death through their efforts. But what did I care about that? It was the same before, when people would warn about the inevitability of environmental destruction (now looking to be reversed, assuming too many more nukes don’t go off before they rust away). Conserve, conserve, they’d whinny, knowing full well that their anaemic efforts would never make an ounce of difference. For myself, I’d always muttered, consume, consume, reasoning that the sooner we hit the crisis point, the sooner we’d be forced to stop shitting where we ate.

The practical point here is that there was no natural time at which to stage a daring rescue of the good Captain. There would be no sleepy-headed guards at midnight, no lunch-bloated siestas in the afternoon. One time was as good as another, and so I decided to make my attempt when Zoe fell asleep.

I tucked her in, grizzly on guard, then wrote and pinned a large note to the classroom door, threatening every sort of revenge I could imagine (An Iron Maiden! Procrustes’ Bed! The Dread Horrors of the Oubliette! All that good dungeon stuff) on anyone who might dare disturb her slumber.

Back in the book room, I stopped and listened at the door. Hearing nothing but that head-roar we optimistically call silence, I gingerly turned the knob and went inside.

A single candle flickered. Both prisoner and guard looked eagerly up, each hungry for a break in their common drudgery of stimulus/response. How many days had they been trapped in here together? Captain America seemed to be melting into the floor, and I wondered if he’d begun to welcome the periodic stab of that skewer as a blessed release from the monotony.

Three buckets brim-full of shit and piss stood in one corner; a couple of empty cans and a milk jug filled with murky water stood in another. I gagged and looked up. The ceiling was high enough to be invisible in the faint light. I looked back down and found Captain America’s eyes locked on mine.

‘I’m Paul.’

‘My name’s—’’

Skewer Lady screeched, obscuring whatever he said next.

‘No! He’s a liar! His name is Rag!’

The three syllable version of ‘rag’, I should note. I turned on her.

‘No. He still has his old name, just like I do and just like you do, Judy.’

She mumbled words that never made it out of her closed mouth.

‘What did you say?’

She spoke to the floor. ‘My name is Gytrash.’

I tried not to laugh but let out a smirk. Gytrash, a northern English spirit that waylaid travellers caught on the road too late at night.

‘Gytrash. Okay. Gytrash, I’ve come for ‘Rag’. The Admiral wants him downstairs.’

‘No!’

‘The Admiral wants you to stay here and be ready when he comes back.’

She scowled and shook her head.

This was going nowhere. I grabbed her and pushed her against the wall. She began to laugh.

‘You can stop me, but you can’t stop the Rabbit Hunt. Can’t save the demon children…’

‘What do you mean?’

Skewer Lady just giggled to herself. ‘Can’t save the demons! Can’t save their souls!’

‘What is a Rabbit Hunt?’ It wasn’t a phrase from Nod.

Her voice took on a sing-songy tone. ‘The Admiral will take a Thousand…drive the demons into the sea. Admiral hates dreamy little heads going to pull their bodies from the water and let us drink their blood…’

Spying a roll of duct tape hanging from a nail, I grabbed it, ripped off a piece and plastered it haphazardly across her mouth. She tried to stab at me with her skewer, but I pulled it from her hand and threw it away. I hadn’t given any thought to what to do about her when I stole her prisoner.

She kept babbling through the tape, which didn’t completely cover her mouth. I could only pick out and guess at random words as I tore off another piece and applied it.

‘Juggle…leaves…stop…shining…wave…stop…’ It was like an emergency broadcast from a group of hysterical Fridge Magnet poets.

Finally, I simply took the whole roll and wound it around her head three or four times. That silenced her. She just sat there on the floor looking ridiculous. I turned my attention toward Captain America.

‘Let’s get you out of here.’ I was in full comic book action mode now.

‘Out of where?’ he asked, tears blackening the grey fabric of his filthy T-shirt. ‘There’s nowhere to go. I just want to sleep…’

A set of keys hung beside the door, just beyond his reach. I tried one after another on the U-shaped bike lock that chained his neck to the pipe until it clicked and opened.

‘Get up.’

He shook his head. I went over to Gytrash, pulled her over to the pipe as gently as I could, and locked her duct-taped head to the pipe while she struggled feebly, animal growls emerging from beneath the tape.

Captain America still wasn’t moving, so I slapped him. ‘Get up!’

He staggered upright.

‘Now listen. When we leave the book room, there’s a stairwell directly across the hall. Two flights down and we’ll reach an exit into an alley. You understand?’

He nodded.

‘Let’s go.’

I needn’t have bothered with the rescue drama. When we went out into the hall there were a only few of the Awakened scattered up and down its length, illuminated by dim candlelight. A couple of them glanced up as we passed, but none showed any interest.

We made it to the alley without encountering anyone else.

‘Where are we going?’ Captain America moaned. ‘There’s nowhere to go!’

A good point. I had no idea where we were going. My goal had been a simple one: to get him out of the school. Now that I’d accomplished it, I might as well have turned around and gone back inside for all the ideas I had left.

‘Is there anywhere you want to go?’

He began to cry again.

‘Tell me your name again, man.’ I always appreciate the efficacy of a quick ‘man’ when it comes to creating instant intimacy. I could pull off a ‘man’, but never, quite, a ‘dude’.

‘Brandon. But there’s nowhere to go.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Brandon. Anywhere is better than where you were. Listen, here’s the deal. I can get you away from here to somewhere where you can sleep for a few hours. Are you listening? Then when you wake up, you’ll be able to think more clearly and consider your options. Okay?’

He nodded slightly.

‘Now pay attention and make sure you process this. You only have to survive for another two weeks, tops, until these maniacs are all dead. Do you remember hearing that on the news before the power went out? Do you understand?’ I shook him by the shoulders for emphasis. ‘Two weeks or less.’

Still nothing but silence from Captain Brandon, so I played my last and best card. ‘When we find you a safe place, you can sleep. And have the dream.’

His head shot up and his eyes locked on mine. They were blazing.

We padded down the alley until we reached a street that ran south, straight toward the beach. Above English Bay, the moon was obscured by a stray cloud. In the distance, a glimmer of liquorice ocean, framed by the mould-black outlines of arbutus trees. Stray dogs, usually so deferential during the day, came closer, cowered less. Ahead of us squatted a string of three and four storey apartment buildings, mute toad sentries. Trees arched over our heads, entwining their branches to obscure the stars. And quiet—a keening quiet made of listening ears—all around us.

‘What was that?’

Beside me, Brandon’s eyes were large and liquid as they stared. I heard it too: a low thrumming.

‘Watch out! Watch out!’

A shape scurried between us, so stooped as to appear to be running on all fours. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the figure burrowed back into the blackness.

‘What the fuck was that?’ Brandon demanded, his voice shaking.

‘Just one of them.’

‘No. It wasn’t human. It was a rat. A giant rat,’ he said, as though trying to stuff his foot into a much-too-small shoe. His hands were quarrelling.

‘It wasn’t a rat.’ I affected scorn, but didn’t feel it. In the shadows of my memory a giant rodent appeared as I rewound and replayed the last ten seconds. It was the Blemmye incident all over again. In Nod, words were highly infectious. Nod itself was literally a plague of words. I was going to have to be careful about what I thought, what I said.

We sleepwalked toward the beach. The thrumming grew and as it did, other sounds were slowly becoming discernible in the mix. Sounds that suggested images. I began to see shapes in the distance.

‘I need to sleep,’ Brandon moaned, but he meant dream. Then somehow he was flat on his back in the middle of the street, staring up at the trees and I was standing over him. ‘Tell me who to pray to.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is it death?’ he asked.

‘What?’

‘The dream. Do you think the dream is death?’

‘I don’t know.’

Brandon looked up at me and smiled. ‘You’ve got to laugh. If it’s death, then it’s okay. If the dream is death, then we’re safe. I hope it’s death. I hope I die. I’m ready to die.’’

‘Who were you, Brandon? Before?’

He raised himself up on one elbow. ‘Who was I?’

‘Before.’

‘I don’t know. I was…I was a bus driver. Was that what you wanted to know? Then for a while I was a fucking dart board for some crazy old bitch.’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘And now I’m lying on the road. Oh, man, I just need to close my eyes for five minutes…’

The sounds from up ahead were pulling apart from one another, taking on individual identities. Squawks and squeals. Roaring and chattering. Some sort of mob scene.

I grabbed Brandon and dragged him to his feet. Odd shadows were feeding in from the alleys and buildings around us, all heading in the same direction.

And suddenly, there we were. The beach. A mass of black shapes; a black mass of shapes.

My head spun. I had to wonder if, after three days with virtually no sleep, I was beginning to see some of the same things Tanya and Charles saw. If so, then Nod was a far more terrible place than I’d imagined. Before us was a fantastic monochromatic scene, populated by creatures both real and mythical. Writhing pythons, massive, knot-shouldered apes. I recognized a Gandaberunda, the double-headed bird from Hindu mythology; a Cretan Bull or Gyuki with enormous, hollow eyes that glowed like moons. Massive crabs, pincers clicking, and enormous spiders, spike-stepping on the sand.

Ever kick at a mound of dirt and expose an ant’s nest? That was the nature of the motion on the beach that night. Part sock hop, part orgy, part pitched battle—the beach was swarming with impossibilities. Ever close your eyes and pay close attention to the shapes that squirm behind your lids? That was what I saw. What I thought I saw. What I saw. So little light, so much black canvas for my mind to splatter. A contact high, perhaps, with the minds of a thousand maniacs.

Then a gibbous moon emerged from behind its cloud and revealed even more. A brutal democracy of size: giant, sharp-beaked robins and dwarf elephants; miniature dinosaurs and massive cockroaches and slugs. And they were busy. Fucking and fighting, cawing and screeching. Like what amphetamine-fuelled punk rockers and orgiastic Romans had thought they were doing, but now for real. That was the moment when Hieronymus Bosch came into sharp focus for me as a steely-eyed realist. A gorilla was riding a hysterical, bleating fawn while a pair of giant, grinning frogs panted approval and a six-foot tall raccoon stood on its hind legs, watching as it licked its slick and dripping paws, a huge erection clearly visible between its legs. Three giant house cats lapped at the goopy innards of a torn-open scorpion, its stinger still twitching above their heads.

But surely these weren’t really animals, but people? I turned to look at Brandon and saw, looking back at me, a massive blinking squirrel in a filthy Captain America T-shirt, its head flitting back and forth, its muzzle twitching in terror. And then I looked slowly down.

I saw my body covered in shaggy fur; I held up my arms and saw the stubby paws and long, straight claws of what could only be a grizzly bear.

Then a shape appeared on the sidewalk beside me. Another bear—a black one—its muzzle inches from my own face.

‘What do you want?’ I asked.

‘What do you want?’ the creature mimicked me, its voice a stoned drone.

I tried to step around it. ‘Get out of my way.’

‘Get out of my way.’ The creature blocked my path. Its gums were black in the moonlight, its sharp teeth burning white. Every move I made, the bear mimicked until I began to think it must be my mirror image. Then I reached my paw out and felt fur. At that same moment, the other creature’s claws raked my chest, and I felt blood trickling down like sweat.

‘Say, ‘I’m walking away now’’, squirrel-Brandon chattered into my ear.

‘I’m walking away now.’

‘I’m walking away now,’ my mirror repeated.

As I backed up, followed closely by squirrel-Brandon, so did my doppelganger. Eventually, it lost interest in us, dropped down onto all fours, and loped back into the melee.

We crossed Beach Avenue and stepped onto the sand. Directly ahead of us, a pack of howling chimpanzees held down a squirming, bloodied kitten, its four broken limbs painfully splayed outwards. When it struggled, loud grinding sounds emanated from the broken bones beneath its skin. All around, other creatures were throwing rocks at the poor creature, or slashing at it with their claws. Helplessly, we moved toward the scene.

An albino crow was hopping back and forth in front of the writhing kitten, its beak opening and shutting, its eyes milky and pupil-less. As we approached, the creature was bobbing its head and speaking into the kitten’s ear.

‘There, there, there. It won’t hurt much longer. Soon you’ll be asleep.’

Behind me, Brandon whimpered.

‘The bag!’

In response to the crow’s words, a grinning chimpanzee threw a black plastic garbage bag over the kitten’s head and held it tight around the poor creature’s neck. The bag huffed and puffed as the kitten struggled. Then it went limp.

The crow ordered the bag removed. Exposed, the fur on the kitten’s head was matted and damp.

‘Are you sleeping?’ the crow whispered into its ear.

The kitten’s head moved a little. This upset the crow, which began to hop back and forth in fury.

‘Get the dream stick!’ it screamed. The nearest chimp picked up a hefty piece of driftwood with a large knot like an eye on one end. ‘I try to help you! I try and try and try to help you sleep! And you won’t do it!’

The chimp smashed the kitten on the crown of its head, then paused, panting, to consider the effects of its actions.

‘Are you sleeping?’ the crow moved in, gentle and solicitous once again.

No response.

‘Is it still breathing?’

The chimpanzee loped over and put its ear to the kitten’s mouth.

‘Fuck, no,’ it replied with some satisfaction. ‘It’s dead.’

As the animals that had been holding the kitten down faded away into the background, the crow flew into a rage and began pecking viciously at the corpse. It was more than I could handle.

‘Leave it alone!’

The crow turned and aimed its bloody beak at me. ‘Stay out of the Lord’s work!’

The giant crow hopped toward me, stopping only when we were eye to eye. Twinned eyes, something all creatures share.

‘I helped it repent. So it should have been able to sleep! I do what I can to help, but nothing is ever good enough!’ Then the crow’s voice took on a resigned tone. ‘But it’s out of my hands now.’

‘What hands?’ I asked, but the crow ignored me.

Though its face was incapable of showing human emotion, the crow sounded mournful when it spoke again. ‘Everything’s gone. At night, we’re not even human in the eyes of the Lord any more. We’re nothing but shadows. There’s a lesson we’re failing to learn. But what? It’s a school and we’re failing.’

‘But what if you’re wrong? What if there’s no reason for any of this? What if it’s just happening?’

The crow’s eyes glinted. ‘You’re crazy. Crazy. We’re in a maze of paying, and the only way out is to figure out what for and how much. We can’t be forgiven if we don’t know what we’ve done. What have we done? What have we done? What…?’

A commotion up by the water stopped the crow’s reverie, and the crowd began to surge forward. We were pulled along with everyone else until we were reached the shore. Then I saw something I never thought I’d see again: the steady glow of electric lights far out in English Bay. A grid of unblinking white. It could only have been one thing: a ship. A big one.

As we stared at those piercing points of light, our animal shapes fell away from us and we reverted to our tattered human forms.