The nightwalker’s confusion was short lived but long enough for me to wind on the camera and fire the flash again. In the bright white light I could see their bewildered expressions and wasted no time in pushing my way through the tangle of confused bodies. I ran down the steps to the lower ground floor, found the porter’s lodge and slammed and bolted the door after me, my heart racing, my hands shaking.

Every hour I was experiencing something new, every hour I was wishing I wasn’t.

The cylinder

‘ . . . The wax cylinder was the first true sound recording and playback device, and had survived over a hundred years owing to its ubiquity and the fact that it did not require electricity to operate. Given that academics often stayed up in the Winter to finish their work, it was not unusual for a secretary to be confronted with up to a hundred cylinders waiting for them at Springrise, all to be transcribed and then skimmed for reuse  . . . ’

– The Elegant Simplicity of WinterTech, by Emma Llewelyn WiEng

I clicked on the emergency light and went straight through to the bathroom, rummaged through the medicine cabinet for some iodine and then dabbed it on the bite marks, of which I had many. I’d been lucky that their hunger had come on relatively slowly. If they’d attacked me en masse as I’d walked in, I’d have been too tired and cold to defend myself. Whilst I self-administered as best as I could, I heard unpleasant noises from the lobby, where it sounded as if their hunger had been appeased on one of their own. If they’d eaten the weighty Eddie Tangiers, they’d be quiet maybe eight hours. Glitzy Tiara, ninety minutes, tops.

Still sore but having found no bites to be life-threatening, I walked back into the porter’s living area and looked around. The walls were covered with bookshelves and display cases that contained numerous specimens from the animal and plant kingdoms. Porters were never simply glorified hoteliers, they were generally people who welcomed a monk-like existence, and spent their spare hours on contemplation or studies.

There was a salt-water hippo skull hanging from the ceiling and a baby glyptodon skeleton in the process of being articulated. There was also a Dictaphone, all brass and rosewood with a large copper horn for playback. I switched on the desk lamp, wound the clockwork motor fully and slipped the cylinder onto the machine. I flicked the lever, waited for the cylinder to spin up and then gently placed the needle on the groove, half expecting to hear Don Hector’s voice, and a long explanation of what he’d found, and every single one of my questions answered.