The Somnambulist

some still to be told, some more strange perhaps even than this.

Twelve years ago, witnesses of an atrocity carried out under the auspices of the new Russian government claimed to have seen two men bizarrely dressed as English schoolboys take a leading role in the massacre. No one believed them, naturally, but those of us who were there beneath the Monument that day recognized at once the handiwork of Masters Hawker and Boon.

They have surfaced again more recently — some appalling bloodbath in New Zealand. I saw a newspaper story about the incident, illustrated by a blurred photograph taken at the aftermath of the scene. Most likely it was my imagination but I could have sworn that Hawker stood at the periphery of the frame. He was fuzzy and indistinct but it seemed to me as though he was grinning delightedly at his handiwork, at the destruction unraveling about him. Sadly, I am unable to verify this, as the paper was taken away from me before an hour had passed. They seem oddly strict here about reading matter.

It should go without saying that, despite all the years that had passed since the Battle of King William Street Station, the Hawker in the photograph looked not a day older. It was as though he had been frozen in time, unaging, like a fly trapped in amber.

Should you ever have the profound misfortune to encounter these creatures, I need hardly caution you to run (not walk) away from them, to block your ears so as not to hear their lies, to flee in giddy desperation for your life.

Not for me the picturesque death of Mr. Skimpole. I have been subjected to a far longer and, in a sense, more gruesome execution. There was talk at one time of my being hanged for treason (I believe Detective Inspector Merryweather was especially vociferous on the subject) but I was able to outwit my captors without a great deal of effort. After some faintly degrading play-acting on my part, they put me here, in a sanctuary where the supposed mental condition of its inhabitants places me beyond the reach of the state’s bloodier excesses.

Time is notoriously difficult to judge in a place like this, the passing of night and day almost impossible to mark save by the irregular rationing of food and drink. When I first arrived, they locked me up on my own for… how long? Days? Weeks? Even now I can’t be entirely certain.

It’s a testament to my tremendous resilience that I was able to endure such solitary incarceration without my mind cracking under the strain. As it was, I emerged from my confinement all the stronger, if, admittedly, rather lonely. I am a sociable creature and I found that I had missed the warmth of companionship and camaraderie, the sound of voices other than my own. Consequently, I was permitted — under strict conditions — to receive guests.

I confess I was surprised that he came to see me at all.

“Thomas Cribb,” he said and reached his left hand (unbandaged, five-fingered) across the table. One of the guards, his beefy arms folded, observed us truculently from the other side of the room.

“We’ve met before,” I said.

Something like a smile flickered across his face. “So I gather.”

“I had never previously enjoyed an opportunity to study the man at close quarters, and I cannot stress quite enough how remarkably striking was his ugliness, how compellingly repulsive.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“I want to make you a promise.”

I noticed that he had brought a newspaper with him and I caught a glimpse of its headline — a report, it seemed, of recent events beneath the Monument. I saw my own name and below it an insulting likeness of my face.

Cribb leant forward across the desk toward me. At the gesture, the guard unfolded his arms and reached instinctively for the truncheon which hung from the belt at his waist. The ugly man fixed me with his most piercing gaze.

“I do not care to see my city threatened,” Cribb said.

“Your city?”

“I promise to do everything in my power to stop you. I’ll help this…” He glanced down at the paper as if to check some minor detail: “This Edward Moon. I’ll teach him how to thwart you.”

I yawned. “Sorry. Don’t follow.”

“I’ll guide him. Use him to ensure you don’t succeed.”

I grinned at the guard. “Maybe he ought to be in here with us,” I quipped, and gratifyingly, the man smirked in response.

“I’ve built up a good rapport with my gaolers. I think they’ve taken to me and I suspect that many of them (though it would be more than their jobs are worth to admit it) know that I really shouldn’t be in here at all.

My visitor rose to his feet. “By the way,” he said, “history will not remember you.”

I chose not to reply to this last, childish barb and Thomas Cribb walked silently away.

Perhaps, in retrospect, I should have said more, kept him talking, found out more about his claims. As it was, I never saw him again.

Frankly, I don’t consider it a great loss. There was always something so bloody smug about the man.

A week passed before I received my second visitor (I say a week; of course, it might just as easily have been a fortnight or a month). You’ll think it strange, and at the time it certainly surprised me, but even after everything he’d done, some part of me was actually pleased to see him.

“Edward,” I said, and smiled.

For a man who had suffered so much, he looked well. A little older, perhaps, grayer, with some of the swagger out of him, and some of his vanity, his preening self-confidence, satisfyingly punctured. All in all, I thought it an improvement.

We sat in silence for a while.

“Why have you come?” I said at last.

“I need to ask you something.”

“Anything,” I said, perhaps a trifle overeager.

“I need to know why.”

To my — and I suspect to our — surprise, his visits became a regular fixture.

I like to think we both gained a good deal from the encounters. I tried my utmost to give him an insight into what I had intended to achieve (though, needless to say, I was never actually able to convert him) and he brought me news from the outside world, about what had happened after I was led away in chains. Between us we were able to stitch together a complete overview of events, a comprehensive narrative of all that had transpired in the months leading up to the battle of King William Street Station.

The body of the Somnambulist has yet to be found. In a conviction born of grief, Edward has come to believe that the giant still lives, that he sleeps somewhere beneath the surface, waiting, Arthur-like, for the city’s hour of need. It might be of some interest to you that when I last saw him, Moon had begun to hold some eccentric notions as to his friend’s identity. He showed me a postcard which depicted the two giant stone statues that guard the Guildhall — Gog and Magog, as Cribb correctly identified them — and swore that he recognized something of the Somnambulist in their features. Personally, I could never see the resemblance.

Publicly, Moon announced him dead. There was even a funeral, though it was sparsely attended and I was not invited. The inspector was there, along with Charlotte, Mrs. Grossmith, a few well-wishers and general idlers. They used an empty coffin (constructed to unusually large specifications as though the giant really did lie in state within) and buried it, ironically, in Highgate Cemetery, scant feet from where another, more celebrated plot lies similarly uninhabited.

But Moon also brought me happier news. The Church of the Summer Kingdom lives on; the light of Pantisocracy has yet to be extinguished. Some time ago, a small group of the faithful — six men, six women — traveled across the Atlantic with the intention of founding a community upon the banks of the Susquehanna just as the old man had planned. They have my blessing and my prayers — or would do had they asked for them. You may have seen in the popular press that these pilgrims have disowned me and my methods — understandable, of