Drift off with Lobster Salad by Lord Dunsany, a wry and thrilling little fantasy about a very bad dream, read aloud by Martin Hewlett on Books at Bedtime, the sleep story series from Calming Anxiety.
Our narrator is climbing the perilous outside of a vast white palace, high above the craggy tops of the mountains. There are no battlements or terraces to rest on, only the sheer face of the wall, and he is dressed in a night-shirt and stout leather boots. His fingers and wrists are aching, and he dares not look down.
That the whole thing is a dream, he admits, is beside the point. We have all fallen in dreams before, and it is well known that if you ever hit the ground, you die. Every boulder on the wall has its own different terror, and something is following close behind him. Then he comes to a great gap in the wall that he cannot cross, and he has one last, desperate idea. As for that curious title, Dunsany lets you work it out for yourself.
The story
Transcribed from the audio, so the odd word may be off. Tap any line while it plays to keep the words in step with Martin's voice.
Books at bed time by calming anxiety, Lobster Salad by Lord Dunciny. I was climbing around the perilous outside of the palace of Colcule Humbros, so far below me that in the tranquil twilight and the clear air of those lands, I could only barely see them to lay their craggy tops on the mountains. It was a long no-battlements or terraced hours climbing, but on the sheer face of the wall itself, getting what foothold I could where the boulders joined. Had my feet been bare, I was done.
But though I was in my night-shirt, I had on stout leather boots, and their edges somehow held in those narrow cracks. My fingers and wrists were aching. Had it been possible to stop for a moment, I might have been lured to give a second look at the fearful peaks of the mountains down there in the twilight, and this must have been fatal. That the thing was all a dream is beside the point.
We have fallen in dreams before, but it is well known that if in one of those falls you ever hit the ground, you die. I had looked at those menacing mountain tops and knew well that such a fall is the one I feared must have such a termination. Then I went home. It is strange what different sensations there can be in different boulders.
Everyone gleaming with the same white light and everyone chosen to match the rest by millions of ancient kings. When your life depends on the edges of everyone you come to. Those edges seem strangely different. It was of no avail to overcome the terror of one.
The next one would give you a hold in quite a different way or hand you over to death in a different manner. Some were too sharp to hold and some too flushed with the wall. Those who hold was the best crumbled the soonest. Each rock had its different terror.
And then there were those things that followed behind me. And at last I came to a preach made long ago by an earthquake, lightning or more.
I should have had to go down a thousand feet to get rounded. And they would come up with me while I was doing that. For certain, sabre apes that I have not mentioned as yet. Things that had high-grished teeth and were born and bred on that wall.
That pursued me all the evening. In any case, I could have gone no further. Nor did I know what the king would do along all the wall which I was climbing. It was time to drop and be done with it or stop and await those apes.
And then it was that I remembered a pin thrown carelessly down out of an evening tie in another world to the one where grew that glittering wall. And lying now if no evil chance had removed it on a chest of drawers by my bed.
The apes were very close and hurrying. For they knew my fingers were slipping. And the crawl peaks of those infernal mountains, they seemed sure earth-neathed in the apes. I reached out with a desperate effort of will towards where the pinlay on the chest of drawers.
I groped about. I found it. I ran it into my arm, saved.