by Steve Harris
She thought she knew the answer to this question too. There was a fate that was worse than death and this was it. Being an immortal book character in Peter Perfect’s story.
Won’t happen, she told herself. Real people cannot be turned into fiction. And even if they can, it won’t happen because I’m pretty handy with a rolling-pin. Soon as I set eyes on the bastardy Ym going to let him have it.
Five minutes later she drew up outside her flat, got out of the car, locked it, and went in through the building’s front door.
There was no trail of bloody footsteps leading up the stairs, no sign of a struggle.
Nothing’s happened, Drezy! she assured herself. But this thought didn’t push her heart back down from her throat to its rightful position though. It didn’t produce saliva in her arid mouth or stop her hand from shaking when she held out the key for the front door lock.
She let herself in, checked the answering machine for more messages and went to her bedroom - the door of which was still closed. If someone had come in and killed Janie, they wouldn’t have closed the door behind them, would they?
S’n’J took a deep breath and went into the bedroom.
The bed’s covers were thrown back.
Janie was gone.
In her place was a brown A4 envelope.
26 - Flashback
A strange kind of somnolence settled over S’n’J as she leaned forward and picked up the latest Black Rock sample. There was an inevitability about it all. It was as if she knew this scene by heart and had played it out more times than The Mousetrap had been performed. She already knew that when she touched the sheets where Janie had been, they would still be warm. And she already knew that running outside to search for her would be pointless. All that mattered was what was written in the book.
She picked up the envelope and carried it back to the lounge, moving like a sleepwalker. The battle was lost. She would read this latest chapter and it would work its bad magic on her. And afterwards she would no longer be Sarah-Jane Dresden. Afterwards there never would have been a Sarah-Jane. Only a Snowy Dresden.
S’n’J sat down on the sofa and took out the pages. There were six of them which meant, she realized ruefully, that it was going to take no more than two or three thousand words to complete her transformation from fact to fiction.
Will I still be me? she wondered. The answer was obvious. Of course she would still be herself. In the pages of Black Rock she always had been herself. Only the job and the name and some of the historical details had been changed. To protect the innocent, I s’pose, she thought.
She would retain some of her memories, too, she assumed. Not enough for her to recall who she used to be, but a few. Those which Peter Perfect allowed her to keep.
She looked at the first page. It was headed: ‘Flashback’. S’n’J assumed that it followed on from the last sample she’d read where Snowy had finally escaped the house only to run straight into the arms of Philip Winter. It probably detailed a part of Snowy’s previous life. The one she’d had before her favourite author had fictionalized her and captured her in his haunted house.
This turned out not to be the case. This piece of Black Rock didn’t follow on from the last chapter - or have anything to do with previous sections of the book at all, as far as she could make out.
It began:
One
S’n’J had to read the first sentence three times before she was able to take in what was written there.
The effect this simple sentence had on S’n’J was colossal. And not just because she had to read the sentence three times before she could take in what was written there, either. It was like reading about what was happening to you while you were reading about what was happening to you. It made your brain want to collapse.
Me? S’n’J thought. It can’t be me. I’m not in it. I’m not in Black Rock under my own name. He can’t do it. If he swaps tracks like that, the story won’t hang together!
But whether the story would hang together or not, Peter Perfect had swapped tracks and had written her into the book.
It continued:
She sat there with the pages in her hands, not wanting to read on and not able to stop herself from doing so. The book was talking directly to her now. She knew that its author had already won. There had been no battle fought. Or thought. Peter Perfect had simply arranged things so there could be no other outcome.
James had been captured or killed, that much was certain. And so, probably, had Martin, who hadn’t yet turned up and didn’t look likely to. What kept S’n’J reading was the niggling thought that if she could discover how it had all been accomplished, there might still be a chance for her. So she read on, rediscovering things she already knew.
For example: that Billy-Joe was indeed dead. And while a dead body would be of no further use to a writer of general fiction, the same rule did not apply to a writer of ghost stories. Or a writer of biographies, come to that. To these people, being dead was only the first step. After that, things started to get very interesting indeed.
One of the interesting things that involved Billy-Joe had happened in S’n’J’s flat shortly after she’d left on her fool’s errand.
Billy-Joe’s body, which had been waiting round the corner, its head wounds covered by a ski hat left in the back of Janie’s VW, had walked to S’n’J’s block of flats concealing a weapon beneath his shirt. The weapon, ironically enough, was the very same rolling-pin with which his wife had killed him. When she had fled the car and run up to S’n’J’s flat, she had left the murder weapon behind her.
Billy-Joe’s body, which, S’n’J thought, had been animated by the willpower of Peter Perfect, followed in Janie’s footsteps. He reached the front door, chose a bell at random and pressed it.
As S’n’J well knew, the entry-phone system which connected each flat with the front entrance did not work. This, accompanied by the fact that visitors often pressed the wrong bell, was enough to trigger an acquired response in the owner of the flat whose bell had been rung. In this particular case, the owner, a Christian girl called Candy, did what any other resident would under the circumstances: she automatically pushed the button which opened the front door. If the visitor was for her, he or she would eventually find their way to the right door and begin to hammer on it. If it was for someone else, the same thing would happen.
Getting inside the building was easy.
Billy-Joe knew exactly where to go after that, which wasn’t terribly surprising since he was being driven by someone who had done this several times before. He went straight up the stairs to S’n’J’s flat and hammered on the door.
It took quite a while for Janie to wake up and when she finally regained consciousness she called for S’n’J who didn’t answer. This didn’t surprise her because the chances were that S’n’J had fallen asleep in
one of her famous comas.
Janie got up and pulled on Drezy’s bathrobe, wondering if she could escape via the fire escape which led down from the kitchen. But, she realized, it was unlikely to be Billy-Joe or the police out there, looking for a murderess - it might be Drezy herself, if she’d gone out, or Martin, who was on his way here.
She went to the front door, waited for the next bout of hammering to stop and said, ‘Drezy? Is that you?’
‘I forgot my key,’ S’n’J’s muffled voice said. ‘I went out for a newspaper and forgot to take the bloody key. Let me in will you? I thought you were never going to wake up!’
You’ve got a very powerful knock there, Drezy, Janie thought as she fought with the lock. Sounded almost as if you were knocking the door with a piece of wood or something.
The following three things happened simultaneously. Janie added the words: Like a rolling-pin, perhaps, to the end of her previous thought, the front door was thrust open, pushing her back into the hall and Billy-Joe appeared before her brandishing the very rolling-pin she’d just thought of.
‘Hiya babe,’ he said.
Janie screamed.
Until Billy-Joe prodded her in her cracked ribs with the handle of the rolling-pin. When this happened she stopped screaming instantly because the air in her lungs vanished and was replaced with something that felt like fire.
Janie dropped to her knees, clutching her chest. Through eyes that were blurred with tears of agony, she looked up at her husband, unable to make any sound at all.
Billy-Joe’s skull was in ruins and his face was covered in a cracked sheet of drying blood. His eyes were misted and vacant like those of a fish three days dead. The only thing that looked alive about him was his mouth which twitched and grimaced as though someone was working it with invisible strings.
‘Hell in a hand-basket,’ Billy-Joe said, his voice bubbling as if his throat was full of phlegm. Except we’ll actually be going in your Volkswagen. Hell in a VW doesn’t have quite the same ring to it though, does it?’
I’m going to die, Janie thought.
‘We’re going now, O love of my life. I’m going to take you for a rest cure in the Black Rock emporium of health and vitality. Poor old Ellen’s starting to run down now, like a used-up battery, and we need some fresh blood to boost her up a bit. I’m sure she’ll be pleased to see you.’
Janie squinted up at him. She managed to shake her head a little, but that was all.
‘Now, I don’t want you fighting or resisting, so I’m going to have to whack your head in a little. Don’t worry, you won’t die.’
The last thing she saw was a foot of cylindrical beech sweeping down between her wide-open arms towards her face.
A moment later, a bomb exploded inside her skull.
Then there was nothing.
Two
‘I had a strange dream last night,’ Snowy said, smiling. Philip had just kissed her awake and presented her with a breakfast tray on which stood a china bowl containing sugared grapefruit, a cup of black coffee, a rack of toast, a plate of tiny butter, pats and a selection of jams. Now he was drawing back the curtains. It was sunny outside and the light seemed to drip into the room like honey.
‘You did?’ he said turning back to her. For the thousandth time she told herself how gorgeous he was and how lucky she was to have him.
You’ve fallen right on your feet this time, Dropsy, she told herself.
Philip sat on the edge of the bed, smiling at her as she sipped the coffee.
‘How did you get on with your book last night?’ Snowy asked.
Philip nodded. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Going great guns. But I’d rather hear all about your dream.’
Snowy shook her head. ‘It’s silly,’ she said, feeling a little embarrassed. Now that she was awake, the dream had lost all its power. It no longer seemed significant. Except as a crazy, disjointed nightmare.
‘Tell me about it anyway. I might be able to pick up something I can use.’
‘Are you running short of ideas?’ Snowy asked, frowning. ‘You haven’t got writer’s block, have you?’
Philip slowly shook his head. He looked incredibly pleased with himself. His expression struck Snowy as amazingly sexual - but then, practically everything about him struck her that way. She would have him before half an hour had passed. She promised herself that.
‘You know me,’ Philip said. ‘Cornwall’s number one liar. I’ve got enough lies in me to last throughout eternity. I don’t get writer’s block. It’s not getting on with a story that worries me. The problem I have is stopping. I always want my books to go on for ever. Now how about telling me about this dream?’
‘Only if you promise me two things. The first is that you won’t laugh at me.’
Philip put his hand beneath the duvet and laid it high on her thigh. It was cool and it sent a thrill through her. ‘I promise,’ he said, solemnly.
‘And the second thing is that afterwards you’ll let me read one of your books.’
Philip frowned. ‘I don’t think you’d like them. They’re pretty horrible.’
‘I don’t care. I just want to read one.’
‘Why?’
‘Let me tell you about the dream, then you’ll understand. I dreamed I woke up in the night and you weren’t here.’
‘That’s possible. I would have been working.’
‘And I got worried about you for some reason, so I went to look for you. I stood in front of your work-room and listened and I couldn’t hear any keys clattering or anything. I knocked. You didn’t reply. I got the feeling that something bad had happened to you. Guess what I did?’
‘You broke the rules and went inside,’ Philip said.
Snowy looked carefully at him, but she couldn’t tell whether or not he was angry about her even dreaming of breaking the rule. ‘I wouldn’t do it in real life,’ she added quickly.
Philip smiled and moved his cool hand higher up her leg. ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t,’ he said. This is different. You don’t have to apologize for what you do in dreams. What did you find inside?’
‘A computer which worked even though it wasn’t plugged in. There was writing on the screen. Stuff you’d written. About me. I read it, and then something happened… the computer sucked me in and threw me through space… and I spoke to God… and he told me I had to stay in the house for ever. Then I got back into the room and I read some more - stuff about how to open the front door by aligning all the things in the lounge and diverting the power that ran through the house. I went to look for you… and you weren’t in the house… and all the food had gone and there was no water… and I thought you wanted to kill me for breaking the no entry rule. There was a note in the fridge saying that I had to be punished and that I had to stay in the house for ever. I couldn’t open the front door to get out, and I couldn’t break any of the windows. Eventually I went into the lounge and lined up all the things in there and got the front door open. And when I ran outside, I ran stra
ight into your arms.’
‘And then you woke up?’ Philip asked.
Snowy shook her head. Then everything changed.’
‘How do you mean?’
The world blew up. Or something. I don’t know. Everything flew apart in a billion tiny sparks of light like those simulations of what the Big Bang was like. Except that it didn’t just all fly away and keep going. After a second or so it all came back in towards me. It was as if I’d suddenly expanded to twice the size of the universe, and everything came back at me and passed through me. In through the front of me - through my stomach - and out of the back. And when it had finished I was someone else.’
‘How do you mean?’ Philip asked. There was a playful smile on his face but Snowy didn’t know whether it was because his hand was slowly moving closer towards the hot spot that most desired his touch, or because he was playing a game with her. It amounted to the same thing, really, she decided. Everything was a game to Philip.
‘I wasn’t me any more. Except I was me, but my name was different and I was no longer in this house with you and I had a different set of memories. I could remember things I knew I didn’t know. And things that were untrue. For instance, remember I told you how I had an affair with Ellen?’
Philip nodded. ‘I remember it in fine detail,’ he said.
‘Well, in my dream, all that I remembered happening between us was that we woke up in bed in one another’s arms and we were dead embarrassed. Each of us thought we’d been seduced by the other one. But nothing had happened. We just went to bed drunk and held each other while we slept. There was no affair.’
‘Wishful thinking?’ Philip asked.
Snowy shrugged. ‘I don’t regret what happened.’
