Then there was the fact that Ash was here. In the flesh was the expression that came to mind, but it was all wrong. The transformations she had undergone the previous evening meant she was something other than a flesh and bone being.
John had steeled himself to check upstairs in daylight that morning, only to find the bedroom back to normal. No carpet, no mattress and sheets on the bed, no subtle oil lamps, no naked sixty-year-old with the body of a twenty-year-old. No monsters.
He looked at his watch, but it had long ceased being useful. Ten past nine. It might be accurate. It was dark enough. Equally, it could be midnight or three in the morning. He just had to make it to dawn. Whether it was an ancient instinct of his species or a baseless superstition, he was sure Ash couldn't touch him once dawn had arrived.
John was determined to notice the moment his dreams began, the point at which his mind made the switch from awake to asleep. He stood in the middle of the living room, practising a yoga stance Sarah had taught him to help with his bad posture. He'd spent too many hours hunched over his desk writing, drawing diagrams, or making intricate magic props.
Planting both feet on the floor, shoulder-width apart, he lifted his toes and rocked backwards and forwards until his weight was evenly distributed from the ball of his feet to his heels. Then he relaxed his feet, pushed his hips forward, brought his shoulders back, and imagined an invisible thread coming from the top of his head, leading up to the ceiling. The mountain pose not only helped with his posture but kept him alert. He hoped maintaining it would stop him missing the moment when he drifted into a dream.
When he thought of the invisible thread, John couldn't stop himself following it through the ceiling into the bedroom above, imagining Ash holding the other end, controlling him like a puppet. He brought his attention back to the living room. It wasn't there anymore.
Shit.
John was standing in the lobby of a theatre, tucked away in a side street a mile east of Harrow. Sarah had invited him to a play. One of her friends was performing, and another was directing. John had enjoyed nothing about the play apart from the fact that he was sitting next to this incredible woman. It was the weekend after he had shared coffee and sandwiches with her in a café near the design agency where she worked. He was trying, and failing, not to have any expectations about where the evening might lead. He had always assumed someone as intelligent, thoughtful, and talented as Sarah would be out of reach to someone like him. It had been a tough few years, recovering from his breakdown and rebuilding his self-confidence. He was nervous. Too nervous considering the circumstances. He was sure Sarah must have noticed. His palms were sweating, he had spilled his drink in the interval, and when she had asked if he had enjoyed the performance, he had lied unconvincingly.
Her actor friend and the director were both men; confident, brash, charming, handsome, and intolerable. Sarah chatted with them easily, never running out of questions to ask or things to say. John was caught up in the way she moved, the sound of her voice, and the smile he feebly mirrored every time it appeared. It was only later that he realised her praise had been guarded. She never came out and said how great the play was, but she found moments within it to highlight and praise. John watched enviously as her friends enjoyed her attention, and within a few minutes, their small group had attracted more actors and crew. It was the first night, and everyone was buzzing with adrenaline.
John had drifted to the edge of the group, and when a tall man carrying a bottle of bubbly elbowed him aside to offer the cast a drink, he said nothing. They were discussing going on for a drink somewhere, and he heard Sarah agree. He was miserable. He found a table near the entrance, put his empty glass on it, and pretended to look at the upcoming events poster. Five minutes, that's how long he'd give it. Then he'd make an excuse and go home.
"Bailing out on me?" Sarah held a glass of bubbly. The good mood and excitement of her friends had rubbed off on her. She looked happy. There was a tiny smudge of lipstick on one of her front teeth. John wanted to kiss her more than anything else in the world.
"Sarah!" The voice came from the far side of the room, from a woman in a purple caftan. "Come on, we're off to the pub. Jack says he's getting the first round in."
"That's Ailsa," said Sarah. "We were at university together. I haven't seen her for about a year."
John had lost his grasp of the social niceties and didn't know what to say to that. "Oh, you should go, don't let me stop you. I have a couple of things I need to do at home, anyway."
What John wanted to say was, "Don't leave. Let your friends go to the pub even if you haven't seen them for years. I've only known you for a week, and I want to see you all the time. Come home with me."
Too late. He waited for her to answer, wondering if he imagined the disappointed dip of her head at his words.
"Okay," she said. "Okay. But let's chat soon. Call me." And with that, she was gone. Not wanting to be there when the laughing, shouting group left for the pub, John pushed through the door with a half-wave to Sarah.
On the tube, he went over and over that last exchange in his mind. He wanted to believe Sarah meant it when she said he should call her, but it was more likely she was just being polite. The thud and clank of the wheels on the track as the empty carriage rattled underneath London chanted what John thought of himself.
"Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot..."
On the top floor of a bed-and-breakfast on the outskirts of Manchester, John paced backwards and forwards, moving from the window to the bed. The end of the bed afforded the best view of the television, which could only pick up BBC Two and ITV. This meant a choice between wrestling or watching the Lavender Hill mob for the fourth or fifth time, which was no choice at all. But even Alec Guinness and his cronies couldn't stop John getting up every two minutes. From the window, he could see the small car park where Sarah's Mini Metro would pull up.
She had been gone since lunchtime. Two hours had been her guess, three at most. It was now four-and-a-half hours since John had seen her beige hatchback nose into the traffic on the ring road and drive away.
Sarah's ex-boyfriend was in town. They had been childhood sweethearts from the age of fourteen until Steve had taken a year in Canada as part of his degree course. He'd decided to stay there.
Sarah had told John the story. She hadn't concealed the fact she was still hurt by what Steve had done. He had been her first love, and—at one time—they had both assumed they would end up married. After six weeks in Vancouver, Steve had fallen for someone else. He hadn't told Sarah until another six months had gone by.
Naturally, John hated Steve. It was a given, considering how he had treated Sarah. However, Sarah had agreed to this meeting when Steve called out of the blue to say he was in the country for a few days. John didn't know what to make of that. On the one hand, a six-year relationship meant they had been best friends as much as boyfriend and girlfriend. On the other hand, why would she want to spend any time with someone who had dumped her? John had said nothing. It was Sarah's decision, and when she suggested they make a weekend of it together, he agreed. Not that he didn't trust her. Not that he wanted to be close enough to keep an eye on her. Nothing like that.
The rain was getting heavier, and long slanting drops of water ran down the window. He followed the progress of every light-coloured car, only to watch them drive past without slowing.
Exactly five hours and eight minutes after she had left, Sarah's Metro turned left into the driveway and parked in front of the bed-and-breakfast. John watched her get out, lock the door, and run through the heavy rain towards shelter. Two floors down, he heard the front door open, then her footsteps on the stairs.
He felt jealous, helpless, angry at himself. The truth was, he could no longer imagine the future without Sarah, and that frightened him. He had never been happier. He was scared out of his mind that seeing Steve again might convince Sarah that John wasn't right for her. Maybe Steve had flown back to admit his mistake, beg f
or forgiveness and profess his undying love for her. John knew how easy Sarah was to love. Surely, Steve must have realised his error?
The door opened. Sarah's hair was stuck to her face, her mascara was running, and the suede jacket she had worn was ruined.
"Sorry I'm late, only the art gallery next door had a Basquiat exhibition, so I nipped in and lost track of time."
John's heart felt like a lump of lead in his chest. Did she look guilty? Happy? What had happened? He didn't want to appear a fraction as needy as he actually was, in case it scared her off.
"How's Steve?"
Sarah had unhooked the towel from the back of the bathroom door and was rubbing her hair. She stopped, her hair sticking out at all angles. She looked beautiful. "Oh, he hasn't changed at all."
John swallowed. "Oh."
"Yep," said Sarah leaning forward to kiss him, "he's still a twat."
John opened his eyes to find dust mites floating through the sunlight that streamed across the cottage living room. He groaned. He could still taste Sarah's kiss on his lips, still remember the rush of emotions that had assaulted him that afternoon in Manchester. Once again, he had been an observer in his own memory. It had been every bit as real as it had been the first time. He had forgotten how jealous he had been. He had hoped to be a better man than that, and the physical way jealousy had affected him, causing stomach cramps and a dull, thumping headache made him feel weak-willed and useless. During those hours in the bed-and-breakfast, hundreds of scenarios had played out in his mind, all of which led to him losing Sarah. The intensity of it all was almost overwhelming. And the earlier memory, the first date at the theatre, was not much better. When he looked back on how paranoid and suspicious he had been, he was amazed Sarah had come back for more.
He went to the kitchen to make himself tea, and while the kettle was boiling, the grief—which never went away, just lay in waiting for the next opportunity—ambushed him and forced him to his knees. He didn't cry, just moaned as the reality of a world without Sarah made itself newly clear to him. John had learned grief was a wound that never healed; it just left longer gaps between making its presence felt. The agony was as sweet and sharp as ever. By the time it had passed, or, rather, reduced in intensity to a level where he was numb, he stood up, re-boiled the kettle and turned his mind back to his predicament.
He missed Sarah. She would have known what to do.
Thirty-One
In the clearing, Gai was already waiting. John sat down.
"More dreams?" asked the noone.
John had told the noone about his dreams. This time he was noncommittal. "Nothing that could help us work out what she wants."
"I need to get you into the Between," said Gai. "Whatever Ashtoreth is planning, it will give you a chance to fight back."
"One question."
"It had better be good."
"What the hell's the Between?"
Even the short version took Gai half an hour to explain, and, by the end, after various warnings about the potential dangers, John was as confused as when he'd started.
"You want me to go somewhere that doesn't exist where I can learn magic?"
"Correct."
"And it can take weeks to learn how to get there?"
"But once you've succeeded, it's easy to get back."
"Doesn't help if I can't get there for weeks."
"Ah." Gai took a small glass vial out of his knapsack. "But you will take a shortcut. Humans might take an age to master getting to the Between, but noones have been doing it for millennia. We drink sap."
"Sap? Sounds tasty."
Gai uncorked the vial and handed it over. It was odourless. "Can't tell you how many rules I'm breaking," he said, chuckling. "Drink up."
Whatever form John had expected the Between to take, it wasn't this. A moment earlier he had been leaning back against the soft, moss-covered trunk of a whitebeam in the clearing with Gai. The sun had passed its zenith and was warming the left side of his face more than the right. The sap, as tasteless as it was odourless, had made him drowsy. A twig was caught in his hair, and he had been thinking about opening his eyes and removing it.
That particular thought had been the tipping point. It had arisen just as he was about to fall asleep, and it had brought him back to a state of self-awareness. He opened his eyes without opening his eyes and found himself in the Between.
John was sitting in an armchair in front of a log fire, which crackled as it gave off the perfect amount of warmth. The chair was wing-backed, leather, dark green, and extremely comfortable. This, as much as any of the other impossibilities he was about to encounter, was enough to convince John that he was no longer on Earth. He had spent much of his adult life trying to find just such an armchair. In his childhood, after seeing an illustration in a Dickens, or MR James book, he had set his heart on owning what he later described as the Platonic Chair. Plato wrote that everything in existence was an imperfect example of an ideal. Every dark-green leather armchair John found fell short of the Platonic Chair. The shade of green was wrong, it was too high or too low, the arms were incorrectly positioned; the cushion slipped when he leaned back, the metal studs dug into his elbows. Mostly, they weren't comfortable to sit in. At all. John had wasted a great deal of time and money before giving up, the final green monstrosity still sitting in his Wimbledon study like a monument to bad design.
But this chair, in front of the improbably perfect fire, was the Platonic Chair, without a doubt. If only Sarah could have seen it. She would have been as happy as he was, maybe more so. John smiled for the first time in days. He looked down. He was wearing pyjamas and a paisley dressing gown. His toes, when he flexed them, were encased in warm, comfortable slippers. Perhaps this wasn't Dickens at all, but Wodehouse.
There was a book on the polished wooden table near his right elbow. It was an old hardback, the kind of book John would scour second-hand shops and boot sales in search of, its thick cream pages hand cut. On the cover, in ornate embossed gold letters, was printed John's favourite quote about the art of conjuring: The More Secret Things Are, The More Beautiful They Are. It came from Luca Pacioli's De Viribus Quantitatis (On The Powers Of Numbers), the earliest known book on conjuring and deception. The only copy had languished in the vaults of the University of Bologna for over five hundred years. Another Platonic ideal, John supposed.
He opened the book. Every thick, creamy, textured page was blank. Disappointed, he placed it back on the table. As he leaned forward, he saw what he at first assumed was a floor-to-ceiling window to his left. He stood up and grabbed the top of the chair in fear as a wave of shock and nausea swept over him. The window was not a window. The entire wall was missing as was every other wall. When he looked down, instead of a carpet or floorboards, he saw straight through to the open ground beneath, some twelve feet below where he appeared to be standing on air.
He closed his eyes, then reopened them. Nothing changed. Taking his right foot out of its slipper, he put his weight down on it. He felt soft fibres tickle his toes, then a solid floor beneath the ball of his foot. He was standing on a carpet. The only problem was, he couldn't see it. What he could see, clearly, was snow. The ground below was covered in it and, as he watched, more flakes appeared a few inches under his feet and descended slowly to the whiteness below.
Lifting his head, he looked at the fireplace. That, at least, was reassuringly solid, as was the wall behind it. The closed door, four feet to the right of the fire, was constructed of dark wood and looked like it had been there for centuries.
John looked back at the missing wall on his left, then across to his right. Finally, he turned, still gripping the top of the armchair. The wall behind him was also missing. The landscape beyond the floating room was almost featureless. He was looking at a field blanketed with snow. The quality of the light suggested it was night, but the reflected brightness on the surface of the snow was so bright, it seemed spotlit. Turning to check every wall, John could see no roads, no hedges,
no movement other than the constant, slow fall of the snow.
He took a cautious step towards the fire, not letting go of the back of the chair until he was sure the invisible floor would bear his weight. Once he had released the chair, he became more confident, finding the courage to take a second step, then a third.
Directly in front of the fire, the warmth it gave off was the same as it had been when John had been seated. It was neither too hot nor too cold, just as the cushion on the chair had been neither too hard nor too soft.
It's a Goldilocks room.
John thought back to Gai's words.
"The Between is where your mind intersects with no-time and no-space. What you'll find there is your sanctum, which is yours, and yours alone. No one can follow you there, but when you travel back to our reality, you will be unprotected, and vulnerable. Time does not exist in any recognisable sense in the Between. You could spend days there and return before you drew another breath here. You would be ill-advised to do so, John Aviemore. The Between has its own dangers. Learn from it and, once you start to get comfortable, return."
John looked up, expecting to see either a plastered ceiling or a star-studded sky and a low moon. What he saw was neither, and the sight made him draw a long breath full of awe.
It was night sure enough, but the heavens contained a cosmic display that would have made an astronomer hyperventilate. There were more stars than John had ever seen, far more than he knew were visible from Earth. He saw layers upon layers of stars of varying brightness, most white, but some yellow, red, or blue. As he watched, stars disappeared and others took their place. He saw a moon, then another. A third described a long arc, turning as it went, before vanishing. There were planets, too, some so close, they reminded him of photographs from the Hubble telescope. But these planets were unfamiliar. There were galaxies which, as he focused his attention on them, faded or flared brightly and disappeared. There were areas of nothingness, too, which John thought might be black holes, the points of light around them being sucked into darkness like soap suds circling a plughole.
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