“Seek the centre of the maze through the deadly mist and haze,” Ren recalled. “I’m presuming something horrible is going to happen when we breathe that stuff in.”
Cecily rubbed her shoulders. “And Milo said we have to navigate the maze alone, so we won’t be able to help each other.”
Arthur was still ruminating over Milo’s warning that the maze would test their greatest fears. His palms sweated, wondering what he might soon be facing. “I’ll go first,” he said, wanting to get it over with. They were so close to going home they couldn’t fail now. He stepped between the gargoyles and hesitated, looking back over his shoulder.
Beneath their hoods, Ren and Cecily’s faces were in shadow. “I’m sure I read somewhere that there’s a method for solving mazes,” Cecily said. “You have to keep touching the left-hand wall. That way you won’t get lost.”
Ren’s Wondercloak showed designs for a suit of armour. “We’ll see you in the centre,” she said firmly. “Whatever happens, don’t give up.”
With their advice ringing in his ears, Arthur set his jaw and walked into the smog.
At first, all that happened was a lot of coughing. The gas tasted of strong chemicals, which cloyed at the back of Arthur’s throat like hairspray. Unable to see beyond the end of his nose, he kept his fingers against the wall on his left as Cecily had suggested, and staggered forwards, zombie-like, with his other arm held out in front of him, hoping he might be able to feel his way to the centre.
Eerie noises filled the air. Doors creaked; wolves howled; voices shrieked. It was as if someone had edited together all the jumpy sounds from a horror movie and was playing them back over a loud speaker. He tensed as something brushed past his leg, but when he glanced at the floor he couldn’t see anything.
His mind churned, imagining what might be lurking in the mist around him. When he was little, he’d been scared of the monsters in Doctor Who and had hidden behind the sofa whenever his dad watched the show on TV. If the maze was tailored to his own fears, Arthur wondered whether some of them might be about to pop up now.
He curled the toes of his trainers around the cobbles, hoping to keep his feet gripped to the floor – and himself gripped to reality. It’s a game, he reminded himself. Whatever happens, this is all just a game.
Following the wall to his left, Arthur made several turns, venturing deeper into the maze. Slowly, the fog began to subside; the ground became spongy underfoot and hulking shapes appeared around him. His knee hit something hard and when he looked down, he saw a wonky tombstone sprouting from a patch of grass. Another couple of steps, and he came across several more. The maze must have a graveyard, but he couldn’t remember that being in the Frankenstein movie either. He swallowed, wishing Ren and Cecily were there beside him. He understood why it was more difficult to explore the maze alone: because then you weren’t just fighting whatever obstacles it threw at you, you were fighting the fear and worry that came with loneliness.
“Arthur?” called a familiar voice.
Arthur froze. It was unmistakable. “Dad?” His fingernails scratched the wall as he ran forwards and bumped into another gravestone. “Dad, is that you?”
“Arthur! I’m over here!”
Arthur wanted to believe the voice was a trick of the maze, but could he really take that risk? It was possible, he knew, that Tiburon had travelled back in time, captured Arthur’s dad and brought him to the Wonderscape in order to punish Arthur.
“Arthur, please!”
His dad sounded panicked. Fear bubbled in Arthur’s throat and before he knew it, he’d let go of the wall and was weaving through the tombstones, heading in the direction of his dad’s voice. “It’s all right, Dad, I’m coming!” He stumbled over the uneven earth, splashing cold mud onto the back of his jeans.
The mist was disorientating and after following his dad’s voice for a while, Arthur started to wonder if he was going in circles. Every time he thought he was getting closer, a shout came again which sounded further away.
Eventually, Arthur came to a thinning patch of mist where two gravestones stood next to each other. “Dad, where are you?” he called again.
“Over here,” replied the voice. Only this time it sounded muffled, like it was coming from behind a thick wall. As Arthur picked up his foot to continue, he tripped and fell into the earth. “Erg,” he grunted, lifting his head. “Don’t worry, I’m—”
Then his body went rigid.
The pair of gravestones displayed names he recognized. The first he’d kneeled beside many times before – Mary Louisa Gillespie – his mum. But the second stone was newer and freshly chiselled with a different name: Simon Gillespie. Arthur’s dad.
His throat tightened as his hands started shaking. This was it, wasn’t it? His greatest fear was losing the one parent he had left and ending up alone. Tears prickled at the corners of his eyes as he imagined life without his dad. He already missed him so much. “Dad?” he whispered.
A warm, chuckling voice sounded in the corner of Arthur’s memory. There’s nothing to be frightened of, Arthur, his dad said as Arthur crawled out from behind their sofa. It’s just TV. It can’t hurt you. It’s not real.
It can’t hurt me, Arthur repeated, sniffing. It’s not real.
As he wiped his nose on the back of his hand, he noticed that his skin felt slimy. When he touched his jeans, they were slippery too. The mist must have condensed on the surface of his clothes. He wondered what it was made of and why it was there. Perhaps it was affecting him somehow, distorting his sense of reality?
He shook his head and tried to straighten his thoughts. He was trapped in a maze that was designed to test his greatest fear. If he wanted to escape, he would have to face it head-on.
To bolster his confidence, he thought of Ren and Cecily and everything they’d overcome together. With friends like that, he didn’t think he’d ever feel alone. He took a deep breath and looked back at the gravestone…
His dad’s name was gone. Arthur ran his fingers over the surface of the stone, but it was smooth. He wondered if the letters had ever been there, or if they – and his dad’s voice – had all been in his head.
Slowly, he pushed himself to his feet and gritted his teeth, the memory of his dad making him more determined than ever to get home.
Scrambling on, he reached out on both sides for the maze wall and rejoined it after a few metres. As it guided him around a corner, he started to feel taller. He was walking with purpose now, each step taking him closer to home, to his dad. It was strange – the stronger he felt, the more the fog seemed to disperse. Soon the air cleared completely, and he found himself in a square courtyard enclosed by tall castle walls.
Several stone doors, similar to the one that had appeared in the Wonderway, were positioned around the edge. They all had words etched into their surfaces. He wasn’t sure if he was in another section of the maze, or if he had, in fact, reached the centre …
… until Cecily ran out of the fog behind him.
“Arthur!” She looked ragged and wide-eyed. The sunflowers on her cloak were trembling.
“What happened? Are you OK?” he asked, wondering if she’d had to survive another swinging-boulder run or something else that triggered her vertigo.
She rubbed the sides of her face. “It was a nightmare. My parents… They didn’t even know who I was. It was like they’d forgotten I exist.”
Arthur figured she’d endured a similar experience to him. He was still shaken up about seeing his dad’s gravestone, but he tried to push his feelings aside. “It wasn’t real,” he told her assuredly. “You know that, right? Your parents would never forget about you. Ever.”
As she nodded, Ren burst out of the mist, panting. She was sheet-white and her quiver was empty, except for one arrow which rattled around as she trembled. “Spiders,” she hissed. “Really. Big. Spiders.”
Cecily pulled her in for a hug. “Well done. Mine was horrible too.”
While they shared horror stories
, a churning ball of red gas appeared in the centre of the courtyard. Arthur raced over and collected the realm-key, then hurried around the edge of the courtyard. “Botanical Science, Astronomy, Theology,” he read on the doors. “These must lead to the different departments of the university.”
“So where would Victor Frankenstein’s lab be?” Cecily posed.
Ren kicked the bottom of a door with a suspicious blood-red stain on it. “It’s got to be this one.”
Arthur read “Anatomy” on the front, and shuddered. “Yeah, sounds about right.”
Through the door, they crept along a corridor lit by flaming torches and up some winding stairs. The rain beat loudly against the castle walls and soon the rumble of thunder joined the roar of the storm outside. At the top of the steps, they found themselves in a shadowy entrance hall with a grand, curving staircase that led to a balcony above. The floor was covered in thick, red carpet and a flickering chandelier hung from the ceiling.
“Hxperion has told wanderers to leave this realm,” a voice called.
Arthur hesitated. The voice sounded like it had come from behind the stairs, but everything echoed so much, it was hard to tell.
“We’re undergoing a security drill,” the speaker continued, in a polite English accent. “It isn’t safe for you to remain.”
Arthur briefly considered what the voice was saying. Tiburon Nox must have wanted the place cleared of wanderers. Arthur wondered why…
“The person talking has to be Mary Shelley,” Cecily hissed over Arthur’s shoulder. “There’s no one else here.”
Arthur straightened his Wondercloak – the only part of his outfit that was somehow completely dry – and ventured into the middle of the hall. “Err … good evening,” he said, immediately realizing he actually had no idea what time of day it was in that realm. “Mrs Shelley?”
“As I said, you need to leave,” the speaker repeated.
“We can’t,” Ren replied, dripping onto the carpet as she stomped forwards. “We’re from the twenty-first century and we’ve got to get to Frankenstein’s laboratory in the next two hours, or else we’re going to turn into slime.”
There was silence for a moment.
“I see.” The speaker sighed impatiently. “In that case, will you do me the kindness of not staring?”
A hulking, seven-foot figure plodded out from the shadows. As it came into the light, Arthur’s legs turned to jelly.
Mary Shelley was a monster. Specifically, she was a version of the creature from her novel, with yellowish skin and milky eyes. She had a lumpy, balding scalp, a black slash of a mouth and criss-cross scars over her cheeks where she’d been stitched together. Her outfit, in contrast, was stunning. She wore an off-the-shoulder crimson velvet dress with large puffy sleeves and a full skirt. Dainty white lace gloves covered her large hands and a jewelled necklace with a huge ruby hung around her neck.
Cecily whacked Arthur on the arm. “You’re staring.”
He shook his head. “Err, Mrs Shelley, my name’s Arthur and this is Ren and Cecily,” he spluttered. “We need your help.”
25
Mary Shelley curled her mouth into a smile which was both friendly and terrifying. “You’re soaking wet,” she observed. “Follow me.”
She guided them into a much smaller room with a crackling fireplace flanked by more stone gargoyles and pulled up some armchairs. Feeling guilty about his reaction to her appearance, Arthur decided to sit right next to Mary Shelley. Despite her grotesque features, she had intense hazel eyes and patches of fine red-gold hair. He could imagine her as a human woman; elegant and beautiful. Given how Tiburon admired Mary Shelley’s writing, Arthur wondered why he’d chosen to create her mimic in such a cruel way. Maybe Tiburon feared her more than the other heroes and wanted to exert his control…
Beside Mary’s extra-large chair, a china teapot, jug of milk and stack of cups sat on a trolley. “Drink this,” she said. “It’ll warm you up.”
“Err … we don’t really have time.” Arthur didn’t want to seem impolite, but they were in a rush. “We know what Tiburon Nox did to the heroes in the Wonderscape,” he said gingerly. “But we weren’t aware they’d put you into this mimic.”
Mary Shelley sipped some tea. Arthur could see the stitches in her shoulder stretching. “Women have lived through worse,” she said defiantly. “I’m not expected to wear a corset here, which is something at least.” She returned her teacup to its saucer and surveyed their faces. “I would be eager to learn what the twenty-first century is like. I only have books to tell me.”
Arthur scanned the room. It was a palace of learning. The walls were lined with bookshelves and in the light of a candelabra, someone – Mary Shelley, he assumed – had been writing at a desk.
Ren cleared her throat. “Mrs Shelley, not wishing to be rude, but if Tiburon Nox realizes we’re here, we won’t ever get home. It’s important that we hurry.”
“Nox.” Mary Shelley squeezed the armrests so hard Arthur heard the wood crack. “That man is a villain.”
“The reason we need to get to Frankenstein’s laboratory is because we’re meeting Milo Hertz there,” Arthur explained, racing through an account of the situation they found themselves in. “He wants to stop Tiburon and free you and all of the other heroes.”
“Then you’re right, there’s no time for tea,” she decided, standing from her chair. Her heavy dress shuffled over the floor as she headed for the door. “Come, let’s discuss plans with your friend, Mr Hertz. Oh, and please excuse the ghosts. They have the worst manners.”
They followed Mary Shelley down several flights of twisting stairs. “I don’t get it,” Arthur said as they descended. “There are no ghosts in the movie version of Frankenstein. Do they only appear in the book?”
“Absolutely not,” Mary Shelley said. “The ghosts were added to this building after wanderers complained that this realm was too frightening. Their programming malfunctioned several years back and now they operate outside of Tiburon’s control.”
Arthur exchanged confused expressions with Ren and Cecily, unable to understand how ghosts would make anything less scary. Were they cute and cuddly?
“After the ghosts went rogue, they developed an obsession with stealing things from wanderers – trinkets, gemstones – anything shiny.” Mary Shelley touched the ruby hanging around her neck. “They’ve had their eyes on this for years.”
At the bottom of the steps, she opened a heavy wooden door labelled Anatomy Theatre and a long groan echoed in the space beyond. Lifting her skirt above her lumpy yellow ankles, she clomped over the threshold, leaving everyone else to follow.
The anatomy theatre really did look like a theatre. It was a large, circular hall with steep, tiered seating built around the edge. Rain drummed against a round glass roof which peered up at the stormy sky. Frankenstein’s laboratory was arranged in the centre, although it appeared more like a luxury hamster gym than a place to carry out scientific experiments. There were transparent tubes running everywhere, in all directions. One came down from the roof, spiralled around a long coffin-shaped box, and then connected to some metal apparatus standing on the floor. Another tube ran along the edge of a table topped with flasks of different coloured liquids. Arthur’s heart soared when he spotted doggy-Cloud curled up in a soggy lump under a chair.
Kneeling at the foot of a Wonderway frame, Milo lifted his head and smiled as they entered. “You made it!”
His face immediately dropped when he saw Mary Shelley.
“Sorry to give you a shock,” she said. “You were expecting these three, I believe.” She signalled to Arthur, Ren and Cecily as they hurried out from behind her.
Milo rushed to greet them. “Are you OK?”
“We’re fine,” Arthur whispered. “But Mary Shelley…”
His voice was grave. “I can see.”
The seating creaked as Mary Shelley lumbered down after them. Milo took her fingers in his hand and tipped his head, like a Victorian
gentleman. “Mrs Shelley, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m so unimaginably sorry.”
Mary Shelley regarded him curiously. “From what I understand, you’ve been through quite an ordeal yourself,” she said frankly. “Tell me, how are you planning to stop your brother?”
As Milo started to explain, Arthur was distracted by a rattling noise coming from under a table. Crouching down to investigate, he discovered a trembling cupboard door and tugged on the handle experimentally.
“No, wait!” Milo cried.
But it was too late.
A flurry of pineapple-sized ghosts erupted out of the cupboard like confetti from a party cannon. They were dressed in clownish onesies with pom-pom buttons, and apart from their size and transparent green skin, they looked fairly human. Hanging from their earlobes, necks and wrists was an assortment of glittering jewellery, as if they’d raided Tutankhamun’s tomb. One blew a raspberry in Arthur’s face before flying up to the glass ceiling to laugh and dance with the others.
“Well done, numbskull!” one of them called down. “You found us!”
“What a dodo-head!” another squealed.
Arthur groaned as he wiped ghost spittle off his cheeks. The ghosts weren’t just holographic projections; if their spittle was real, then they must be too. He wondered if they were perhaps another type of mimic. “I see what you mean about their manners.” And about them making this place less frightening. It was difficult to be terrified by anyone throwing Victorian playground insults.
“I’d convinced them to play hide-and-seek,” Milo explained with a sigh. “It’s the only way to keep them contained. They’re built using nano-particles, so they can normally pass through whichever walls they like.” He shook his head and tapped a few numbers on the keypad at the bottom of the Wonderway. Arthur recognized the time and date – it was the same morning, three days ago, that he, Ren and Cecily had left the twenty-first century and arrived on the Principia. “As I was saying, once you three have been sent home, I’ll share M-73’s recordings with every news association in the Known Universe. With Tiburon’s true actions revealed, he’ll be forced to answer for his crimes.” He glanced at the time-key on Cloud’s collar. “Then I’ll liberate the heroes and destroy all three time-keys once and for all.”
Wonderscape Page 22
