He was half out of bed in the tight embrace of his twisted duvet, his own cry in his ears. His own bed, no sign of a brass frame. A big rectangle replaced the tiny porthole. A good thing dream fires didn't scorch or blind.
Shouts outside — an inadequate re-enactment of that wild populace.
The carpet was cool, dry land against Proffit's feet. The dream was floating off satisfactorily on an inner sea.
Down in the street a brawl. A youth was puzzled by the blood on his fingers. Two others grappled, their trainered feet doing complex dance-steps over glass shards. Another beckoned with upturned waggling fingers for anyone, just anyone to… Another hung ape-like from the park gates; with the bottle in his free hand he toasted the world. Ancient schoolyard scraps played around the action. Not intending to resume his peacemaking role now, Proffit shoved down the sash window on the few inches it had been open. A scratching remained.
He couldn't pinpoint its source with any certainty, but a hollow-ness in the sound was suggestive of an enclosed space. A rodent in the walls meant a pest problem shared by other residents, in which case they could band together and find the elusive landlord and insist he remedy the problem. Listening carefully, Proffit scowlingly realized the problem was his alone.
He padded out of the bedroom, hesitated a moment on the threshold of the living room. He went in.
He orbited the globe until he'd satisfied himself the scratching came from the inner surface and not the outer. Those scales of black paint were reminiscent of roofs, vastly out of scale in terms of the dimensions of the planet depicted, but maybe representative of an endless city, swirling around every space not occupied by mountain and desert.
The scratching had stopped; he couldn't help but think his soundless presence had brought this about. He disrupted the outer-space silence with his breaths and considered the matter.
Anything sealed live inside the globe, deliberately or not, perhaps at the time of its fashioning, should have died long since. But what if an insect, or grub, had mindlessly, and to its cost, chewed its way in — or found some pre-existing and overlooked chink? And then grown to a size preventing its egress from the point of entrance, or via any other minuscule exit? Perhaps the recent scratching had been a final paroxysm of effort to escape its paper and card prison, culminating in its death?
Proffit waited; moments later, hearing nothing more from the globe, he returned to his bedroom. He mulled over whether to leave the door ajar, so to hear the scratching should it recommence, or close it to block out that very eventuality. He closed it, against the possibility of the scratching thing escaping and making its presence known to him face to face with bites or stings.
A pattering daylight awoke him. He went into the living room. Nothing within the tapestry of rain sounds. The inhabitant of the globe must be dead, or in a similar dormant state. He pressed his ear against the globe; it felt like cold hard earth. Blood pumping in his inner ear imitated a pounding furnace at a planet's core. He tapped lightly with a knuckle. Nothing responded. A dead planet.
The clutter of furniture and collectibles rekindled the crazed multitudes in his dream. Getting rid, selling with any luck, would clear the flat — as well as his head. He'd start with the globe, but it had to be far less of a mystery first.
The city's wet streets oppressed, from bowed doorsteps, basement railings and gurgling drains, to the high peaks and sagging valleys of the upper world of slate roofing. The rain fizzed on his face, formed tears. Windows, opaque with rain, were blind to his passing, as were huddle rushing fellow pedestrians.
Proffit splashed through growing puddles, dodged through the white fog pumped from cars. Blotches and veins glowed darkly in brick and stone. He passed the sooty prison-house of Grundy Secondary Modern; its railings, like the raised spears in his dream, dared him to return.
Where the road crossed the canal he viewed the rear of the terrace, reflected in the slick black length pitted with rain. In that murky compressed perspective was the back of number seven. Esther and he had listened morosely on many a night to the rats scuttling at the water's edge. He guessed she still did. Unable to think of a pretext for visiting now, Proffit moved on.
The streets deepened beneath the piled-high architecture of the powers running the city. Old stone was gnawed and dark-stained by rain. High up, cloud mingled with mock-battlements and limp flags. Down below, Proffit felt of no more worth than the ones darkly housed in doorways, and as vulnerable while he was out here.
The city library was a temporary escape from the city. Today was the first time in a while that Proffit was here with a purpose, other than seeking shelter from Harrowby's current two-note weather system; cloudy, cloudy with rain.
The reference department was a series of slant-ceilinged groins in the roof of the building.
Home again, Proffit cranked up the assemblage that was his computer. His e-mail account hadn't lapsed despite two or three months of neglect. He entered the address, the subject (bizarre globe inquiry), then struggled to convey the appearance of the globe in words. He was on surer ground with the zephyrs, describing them as 'mean-looking infants', 'bags of bones with jazz trumpeters' cheeks'. No name or maker's mark on the globe, and his other 'extensive researches' had proved fruitless. Any other lines of inquiry would be gratefully received. Proffit thanked Humphries in anticipation and signed off.
Glad to put the matter aside, Proffit restlessly thumbed the TV remote. Mayhem on various scales; bombs in hotter climes, a soap opera family bickered, a cat and dog fought in primary colours. The globe at the corner of his eye was like a persistent fault in his vision.
Light had shrivelled to nothing over the park when he returned to his computer. He hadn't expected a reply so soon, but was unduly frustrated as his negative expectation was confirmed.
Prawn crisps, a whisky nightcap then bed. No dreams please, he asked of the silence.
Either the baby crying next door or the scratching from the living room awoke him — perhaps both. Shouts now, a male voice — angry. A door slammed. The scratching was louder, as if to be heard over the competing noise, or even drawing sustenance from it.
So the thing inside the globe survived; a big beetle perhaps? Proffit got out of bed and went into the living room.
The globe looked like solid rock rather than segments of stiff paper ('gores' as he'd learned from his limited studies) covering a sphere of air. Light from the bedroom swathed the western hemisphere in sunshine. The scratching was more pronounced, eager, as if the occupant of the globe were invigorated by Proffit's presence, rather than cowed to the listening silence of the night before.
Next door a glass smashed amidst the shouts of the parents. What were their names? All smiles on the stairs, in the laundry room. The baby ceased suddenly to cry. The adult voices were accusatory. A door shut them away; noisy toys put away for the night.
