by H. G. Parry
“You can’t think you’ll be safe with the summoner. He let a Jabberwock loose on the Street, and didn’t care whom he killed in the process. If he really cared about the lives of freeborn characters, he wouldn’t have done that. At worst, he’s lying about everything. At best, he’s ruthless to the point of cruelty.”
“I never thought he’d be kind,” Dorian said. “I’m not kind myself, you’ll remember. I don’t mind if he wants to kill me one day—he can try. I may kill him one day, if it comes to it. But he’ll kill me more certainly if I oppose him. Besides, he’ll make things happen. He already has. I have no doubt, Millie, that Charles Sutherland is a very kind person—so are you, underneath Jacqueline Blaine’s penchant for outdated idioms and bossiness. Kind people don’t make things happen. They try to prevent bad things from happening, and they fail, and they live in fear of that failure. So do those under their protection. Perhaps if we’re out in the open, with an army at our backs, I will finally go a day when I’m not frightened of anything.” He smiled, very slightly. “Unfortunately, Oscar Wilde knew too well what it was like to live in secret, consumed by concealment. And equally unfortunately, he gave me all of his vices, plus a few more, and none of his virtues. It’s so boring to be afraid all the time. I find one can live so much better without kindness than one can live with boredom.”
“Don’t give me that,” Millie said. “The summoner could read you away with a thought. Have you considered that?”
Dorian shrugged. For a moment, his seventeen-year-old face looked uncharacteristically tired. “Oh, I don’t think so. I think he needs us. But even if he does… well, there are worse places to go than one’s own book. At least I’m the main protagonist there. It’s so difficult, isn’t it, to realize that one is not always the main protagonist?”
“Not really,” Millie said. “No. But then, I went to high school.”
A flicker of a smile crossed Dorian’s face. “Goodbye, Millie.”
“Dorian—”
“One final thing,” he interrupted. “Your Charles Sutherland. He isn’t what you think he is. I’m not even certain he’s what he thinks he is.”
Millie frowned. “What do you mean?”
“He’s one of us, Millie,” Dorian said. “A reading. Conjured out of thin air. It’s my job to find such people, remember. People who appear out of nowhere, without real explanation. Who can walk through our walls, when no real person can. Well, I was suspicious, so I looked. I looked at his medical records. I looked at his birth certificate. I think you would have looked, too, if you hadn’t been so close to him. I can’t be certain—there’s no proof, of the kind I can usually find—but there’s enough that I feel confident about it. He’s one of us.”
“That can’t be true,” Millie said. Something inside her was reeling in shock, but it was very deep down. There was too much else happening on the surface. “Why are you telling me this?”
He shrugged. “Why not? I was going to save it for blackmail purposes, but I have my soul now. I need nothing from you. I thought about taking it to the other summoner—I still will, perhaps—but I’m almost certain he already knows. So take it as a gift from me—a parting gift. You have been fun, you know. So have I. You’ll miss me.”
She was still thinking of Charley. “But I met him as a child—he summoned me as a child.”
“And then you both grew up,” Dorian said. “You really do need to open your mind to what can and cannot be true. You’re not in a children’s book anymore, Millie. The truth here is rarely pure and never simple.”
“It isn’t so simple in a children’s book either.”
“Very likely.” He leaned forward, adjusted the painting under his arm, and kissed her very gently on the lips. It was a kiss from Dorian Gray, so it was light and soulless and utterly thrilling. She held herself perfectly still as he pulled away. “Goodbye, Millie. I hope I don’t have to kill you one day.”
“Oh, stop being so bloody Gothic,” she said. She ignored the sudden rush in her heart and the lump in her throat. She was ignoring a lot of things at the moment. “It’s not going to cut any ice with the summoner, you know.”
“I should hope not,” he said. “I may not have morals, but I do have standards.”
And with that, he and the others walked away. Five of them. She was thankful it was no less—at least, not yet. The Artful and Uriah Heep had not really been theirs to start with; the Implied Reader was a startling loss, but not a devastating one. But she wished that it had not been Dorian.
Cuba Street was already deserted. Courtenay Place was lit by people taking photos on their screens from a safe distance. When a car pulled up on the road in front of her, she didn’t pay any attention until she heard her name called.
Four people were climbing out of a blue Mitsubishi. Two of them were Sherlock Holmes and Charles Dickens—the latter she recognized from last night, the former was recognizable anywhere. The other two were a man and woman, perhaps in their early fifties. The man was tall, with a square, comfortable face; the woman was smaller, slightly built with her graying hair cut short. Both looked familiar, as though from a memory of an old photograph. She didn’t think she’d ever met them, so she assumed the memory came from Charley. It took a moment of fumbling around in her own head, as though through a chest left in the attic, before she unearthed it.
“Mr. and Mrs. Sutherland,” she exclaimed. “How nice to see you. You’re looking well.”
“Thanks,” Mr. Sutherland said. His brow furrowed. “I’m sorry, have we met?”
“Millie Radcliffe-Dix, girl detective.” She held out her hand. “How do you do?”
“We’ve come from the hospital,” Charles Dickens interrupted. “I’m afraid we have something of a problem.”
Millie nodded. “Tell me.”
The Street was waiting for her. Nobody else had moved from where she left them. The Darcys were seated at their table; Miss Matty, the Mad Hatter, and the Duke of Wellington were standing by the window. Lancelot and the Scarlet Pimpernel stood behind the bar, both battered and bruised from the rubble but still on their feet. Scheherazade had arrived, clutching two or three of her most precious books to her chest. The witch stood near Heathcliff’s body, tall and imposing. Matilda sat at the bar, swinging her legs. It was a friendlier room, she knew, without Dorian, and Uriah Heep, and the Artful. And yet she felt horribly alone without them. It took her a moment to realize why. All the people who remained believed in her.
She reached deep inside herself, and found the part that belonged to Jacqueline Blaine. She was acting it at the moment, but that would have to do for now.
“All right there, everyone?” she said. “Because I think we’ve found ourselves in the middle of an adventure.”
XXV
The city was in a state of emergency. The staff at reception were talking quietly about evacuating the hospital, although the cloud was still some distance away. The television screen now displayed a windswept news anchor, colored by emergency floodlights. I heard only snatches of the report, but the tone matched the gravity given to news of natural disaster.
As we drove nearer to the shadow, we saw the flashing blue lights of police cars and fire engines; closer still, there were orange traffic cones and barricades marking the danger zone. Police clustered around them in droves.
“We’ll have a job getting through,” I said.
“If it helps,” Charley said, “I can do the Secret Garden door without the book now. I practiced it with Millie Tuesday evening until I couldn’t see straight. I was trying to turn it into a portal.”
I didn’t ask. “Good. Then the easiest thing might be to get through a building that’s half-swallowed-up. They might be guarding the doors, but not the walls. And you’re a little conspicuous at the moment.”
I had looked for someone to give us back Charley’s clothes, but everybody was busy, and we couldn’t afford to wait. I had a pair of my old running shoes in the car, so he wouldn’t be barefoot. Otherwise, he
was apparently going to meet the destiny Eric had spoken of in pale blue hospital pajamas and a gray dressing gown that couldn’t have been much protection against the raging wind. He didn’t seem to mind one way or the other; as he pointed out, he’d been in pajamas at many a stupider time. I minded. He looked far too vulnerable, with the hospital logo printed on his chest and the plaster from the IV still on his wrist. The walk out to the car had made him dizzy again, although the brisk wind had revived him.
We got in through an alley that bordered the back of a Chinese restaurant. As we stepped through the familiar green door, we nearly walked right into the dark cloud. It hung in the air halfway across the kitchen, engulfing pots and pans and benches up to a point and leaving the rest untouched.
“That’s weird,” I said flatly.
“Very,” Charley agreed. “Don’t touch it. It’s swallowing everything up—you might go with it.”
“What about you?”
“The Street accepted me. I hope this will too—or else all this is for nothing.”
He reached out and let his fingers brush the edges of the cloud. Straightaway, they vanished, as they had passing through the wall in the Left Bank Arcade. It looked even stranger without a solid wall to see them disappear through.
Because I was real, and Charley wasn’t. The simplest explanation for his ability to enter the Street, and now this place, had never occurred to either of us. We had never even thought to ask. Perhaps we were just too used to Charley being able to do things I couldn’t.
“Do you feel that?” he asked, pulling my thoughts back. “That faint breeze?”
I thought I could, now that he mentioned it. It was cool on my face. “Like a draft.”
“Exactly.” One corner of his mouth twitched. “A draft from another world.”
“Someone left reality open.”
He laughed a little, and lowered his hand. “I think I’ll have to take you through. The way I did the Street.”
“Right.” I hesitated. “So—is Lydia in there? And the others? Will we find her?”
“Perhaps,” Charley said cautiously. “But, um—I actually think everything that cloud’s taken has just been overwritten. It’s not like the Street, or even the Oliver Twist house—it’s taking up real space. Two things can’t exist in the same place at once. That’s why nobody’s come out. They’re just—nowhere. I’m sorry. We’ll get her back, I promise.”
For a moment, I felt too sick to speak. I really had lost her. She wasn’t just somewhere else. She was gone.
“How do you know all this?” I said with a welcome flash of irritation. “Why do you always know everything?”
“I don’t,” he said. “Not even close. I’m just keeping my eyes open, and making this up as I go along. But it makes sense.”
He held out his hand. I took it.
“This might be more difficult than before,” he added. “This world is further through, and the edges are still growing. It might help if you could try to concentrate very hard on a story.”
I frowned. “What kind of story?”
“Any story—an important one. It might help you make sense of the reality in there—or help it make sense of you.”
I instantly forgot every story I’d ever known.
“Ready?” Charley asked.
In that moment, I would rather have died than pass through that thick black cloud and out of my entire world. But Charley stepped forward, and so I followed him.
A rush of air, a rush of words in my ears, a roar of vertigo. My eyes went dark. Every particle of my body screamed, separated, and then dissolved. It wasn’t like passing into the Street. That had just been a jump, like stepping down from a pavement in the dark. This was a leap across a canyon, or a plummet into one. I could no longer feel Charley’s hand in my own.
Then, at once, I was back. It was daylight, though the sun was low in the sky. The air was chilly and thick with fog; my nose filled with the sharp, pungent smell of mud and smoke. Charley’s hand was back, solid and tight around mine, and cold. He was usually a little bit cold.
And I was in another world. I could almost have mistaken it for the Street at first, albeit on an unusually dismal day: the same cobbled road, the same streetlamps burning dim in the fog, the same tight-packed houses. The difference was that it didn’t stop at one street. Down what would usually be the length of Courtenay Place, Victorian roads and shops and houses went on as far as I could see.
“This is incredible,” Charley said. He caught my eye, and shrugged defensively. “I don’t mean I approve. It’s terrible. It’s dangerous. But it is incredible.”
At that moment, the city gave a groan. The cobbles beneath my feet shifted, as though in a minor earthquake; the sky darkened simultaneously.
“What on earth was that?” I asked. “Another shift?”
“As I said,” Charley said, “this is—well, definitely not a safe place to be. We need to get it under control, and quickly.” He released my hand and stepped forward. Fortunately, I didn’t disappear, as I had been worried I would. I really hoped he had thought of that first. “Do you know where Beth was in the real world? It might help to find her there.”
“The light started behind the Embassy Theatre,” I said. “Which would be further up this high street, I assume. What’s wrong?”
Charley was frowning; it took him a second to recall himself. “Just a thought,” he said. “Where is everyone?”
“What do you mean? The summoner’s people?”
“No—well, yes, but I’m sure they’ll be along. I said that this place would be calling everybody. Dorian Gray and the others were ready to answer that call. They should have been here before us. Where are they?”
“Perhaps Millie talked them out of leaving,” I suggested, without much conviction. Much as I respected Millie, it didn’t seem likely.
“Perhaps,” Charley agreed doubtfully. “Well. Where did you say Beth might be?”
I started to answer, then nodded at the street instead. “You might want to ask them.”
From the distance, a horde of characters was approaching. They were moving slowly, but they were unquestionably moving toward us. Dorian Gray was not among them, nor was anybody else belonging to the Street.
“Hold still,” Charley said to me. I didn’t really need the advice. I wasn’t going anywhere.
Still, I found myself wanting to flinch away as they came to a stop near us. There was an unmistakable threat in their stillness and quiet. It wasn’t like being among the characters in the Street. Those were individual, unique; they moved and muttered and tried to kill you with lampposts. These were oddly homogeneous, as if they’d been shaped from the same bland dough on a production line and baked to the same pale, half-done crust.
“What’s wrong with them?” I kept my voice low without quite knowing why.
“Nothing’s wrong with them,” Charley said grimly. “They’re meant to be like this. They’re meant to do what the summoner wants them to do and nothing much else.”
Their eyes were blank as pebbles underwater. “Beth made them, didn’t she?”
“I’m always telling her that her readings are too reductive,” Charley said. “Brilliant, but reductive.”
“What do they want?”
“I think they want to make sure we get to where we’re going,” Charley said. He started to move toward a side street, experimentally, and at once one of the characters moved to block him. It was a young woman, her hair caught up in a messy plait and her face painted with makeup. Charley backed away, raising his hands.
“It’s okay,” he told her. “We’ll follow, if you lead.”
“We’re supposed to lead you to the house,” the woman said, much to my surprise. She looked barely capable of speech. Her accent was thick Cockney, and her face brimmed with sudden feeling as she looked at us. “But you should run. Just run away from here. Don’t let us stop you.”
“It’s okay,” Charley repeated. For a moment I couldn’t thin
k who he reminded me of, then with a start I realized. It was the way I spoke to him sometimes, on the increasingly rare occasions I was trying to be a good elder brother. “You’re Nancy, aren’t you?”
The woman nodded. It gave me a start. This was the woman Frankenstein had spoken of; or, at least, it was the echo of her that she had glimpsed in dreams. Her gaunt face took on new significance for me. I could see the lines of kindness in it, waiting to be read out.
“You’re not betraying us,” Charley said. “We want to go to the house. Please do take us there.”
Nancy gave him one last, anguished look, then her face smoothed over. She drew herself upright, and what personality there had been on her face was already draining away.
“Follow me,” she said.
The house was tall, old brick, and derelict. Many of the upper windows were boarded up, and all the lower were barred with iron; I had the unusually metaphorical impression of a blind creature grinning at me with rusty teeth. A wrought iron fence surrounded it, encompassing a deserted courtyard, and the gates were barred.
“Satis House,” Charley said, almost to himself.
“You know, I’ve read David Copperfield now,” I said conversationally. “Apart from the last two chapters, and that slow bit in the middle. I mention this because the rest of Dickens’s works are still a complete blank to me.”
“Sorry. This is from Great Expectations. It’s the house where Miss Havisham lives. She was jilted on her wedding day as a young woman—part of a scam—and keeps the house and herself in exactly the same state as it was the moment she found out she was betrayed. Wedding dress with one shoe, cake still on the table, clocks stopped—that kind of thing. Oh, and she raises Estella to wreak revenge on men.”
“Estella being the aristocratic young woman who turns out to be Magwitch’s daughter.”
