Read Online The Waking That Kills by Stephen Gregory - Free Book Online

had a drink or two or three and watched the darkness fall until the river was black and the forest was black and even the sky was a whirl of blackness... and I might fall asleep on my balcony, in my easy chair, and slop the drink into my lap.
    And then wake up. And see the trees alight with fireflies. Hundreds of them, or thousands. The forest of Borneo a spangle of silvery lights, and their reflection in the river... a marvel... and for me, who would set my alarm for five in the morning, time to climb out of my armchair and stumble indoors to bed.
    Now I was dreaming of fireflies, in my bed in my room in Chalke House in Lincolnshire, England. But when I woke with a start I saw nothing. The space around me was utterly black. Not a single glow in a slumbering forest, not a gleam in a mighty, mysterious river.
    Nothing. Wide awake, I got out of the bed. I had to, I had an urge to look and look and find a vestige of my dream...
    And when I peered out of the window I saw it. A light in the darkness, as if a tiny piece of my dream had escaped and found its way into the real, waking world...
    There was a light in the trees.
    I opened my window wide. The night was cool and fresh after my stupor of sleep. The trees moved in a lovely breeze. The foliage stirred. And a light flickered, beyond the pond, in the darkness of the woodland.
    Was it real, or a part of my dream? Was it real, or one of the fireflies I’d been dreaming, burned onto my eyeballs and still there, although I was awake?
    I closed my eyes and rubbed their lids. I opened them again and saw the trees stirring. I felt the cool breath of a spring night on my face and on my neck.
    But the light was gone. Nothing. No starlight above me, not a glimmer of moonlight on the surface of the pond.
    I slipped back into bed and dreamed of nothing.

Chapter Nine
     
     
    W E WERE ALL a bit quiet at breakfast the following morning. Juliet looked wanly at me over a mug of coffee, blew on it and sipped and then smiled with a frothy moustache.
    ‘How do you do it?’ she said, with a husky, hung-over voice. ‘I mean, how do you drink gin like that and then get up at five o’clock in the morning?’
    ‘I have an alarm call,’ I answered. My voice was a bit throaty too. ‘The mosque. At five o’clock... it feels like the dead of night and I feel like death, and this guy is wailing from a bloody great loudspeaker a couple of hundred yards from my house...’
    I grimaced at her, deliberately dunking my mouth deep into my coffee to imitate her moustache. ‘But no, really, I don’t drink like that in the week. I guess I was showing off last night, trying to look like an old Borneo hand...’
    Unusually early, Lawrence was there too. He pulled a face, a snarly sneer with his upper lip, listening to me and his mother exchanging our morning-after banter. We were in cahoots, me and Juliet... he must’ve thought we’d been drinking and talking and spilling all sorts of beans while he was upstairs alone in his tower. He narrowed his eyes at his mother, as if, by doing so, he might burrow his brain into hers and find out what precious secrets she’d divulged to this latest incomer. That was why he’d got up and come down so early, in his t-shirt and shorts, because he knew we’d been up late together and he wanted to intercept any more indiscretions. But she just fluttered her eyelashes at him and then mock-rubbed at her temples, signifying that she was an adult with an alcohol-induced headache and he was excluded from the aftermath, because he was a boy and he should mind his own business.
    He was miffed. Good. I winked at Juliet and she winked back.
    He noticed. I think she meant him to notice and tease him, because he was in a funk of jealousy over her cosiness with me. He made a big play of nonchalance, busying himself with the toaster, and, to try and jolly him out of it, she leaned over and touched his downy arm. ‘Hey, isn’t it about time you changed into another shirt?’ she