by Guy Adams
"Ryan!" Maggie shouted.
"What do you want from me?" he asked shrugging. "I'm a teenager, tits are what we think about."
"I must be a teenager too then," said Jonah, "I think about them a fair deal too."
"I think Penelope's right," said Alan, determined to bring an end to the conversation. "Let's get moving."
Penelope pulled her torch out of her trouser pocket and shone the beam into the darkness. "We need to find the route through," she said. "This is how Carruthers used to do it. You find the point at which the beam cuts off and that's the way ahead."
"And hope we don't get crushed to death while we're at it," added Alan, thinking of the couple of times he had been attacked by the wraiths.
"That too," Penelope agreed. "Ready?" she asked.
One by one they nodded and she stepped forward.
2.
Build not break. Build not break. Build not break.
Sophie knows that things are coming together. There is a point when something is more done than not done. Like when the toast – on setting number four – smells of crispness and crunch and loses its white. Like when the car turns off the motorway and starts its way along the windy roads that lead to a house. Like when you can see the plate more than the spaghetti. They are at that point now. She can see lots and lots of plate.
Library. That was the word that she kept hearing inside her head. Library.
She had been to her local library a few times. She liked it there. It was all about A,B,C and long numbers that told you exactly where everything was. She hadn't read any books when she had gone there – that had been what interested her mother, before she had got dead she had read lots of books – she had just walked the rows. Understanding the system, reading the numbers, checking people hadn't tried to break things by putting a book back in the wrong place. This happened a lot and she thought the clever people that worked there must have had to empty themselves a lot at the frustration of it. Despite that she wondered if they might let her be a librarian one day. She would have been very good at it, she thought. It would have been a job that made her Very Happy.
Perhaps that was what she was going to do now. The voice in her head wouldn't say. She hoped so.
The voice in her head had changed. To begin with it had been the House. That barking dog that she could not understand. Now it did not bark. It used a voice that she knows. To the others it is the Grumpy Controller. To her it is not. She knows the man's name and it is not Grumpy Controller. He has been speaking a lot to her. Part of her is glad. She knows the voice and it makes her think of home. Part of her is not glad. She knows the voice and it makes her think of home. This is complicated so she tries not to worry about it.
Now the voice is telling her what to do. Not all of it. Just step by step. This is good as she has enough to think about keeping everything else together. Though the House is helping with that too, it is a Very Very Clever House now. Much cleverer than her old house – not her grandparents house her Proper House the one they had all lived in before her mother stopped living altogether – that had just stood there. You had to do everything for it. If you did not close its windows then the rain would come in and soak its floors. If you did not close its doors then the leaves would blow in and you had to count them all back out again. If you did not turn on its Central Heating it got all cold. Her house had been stupid.
Every now and then she tried to listen to what was happening outside to Alan and the Lady. She had heard the Lady scream but Alan had gone to save her so that was okay. Alan was good at saving people. He had saved her and that was good.
Now the Strange Men from the Strange Ship had come and that was nice. Alan liked them, even though they were very Strange and Very Untidy. The Strange Woman was here too and Sophie took a moment to look at all her hair and it made her feel good. It was silly hair but she liked it.
They were travelling now. Going to the library like they had been told. She knew that Alan worried about putting her on his back but she didn't mind. Sometimes you just Had to Make Do and this was like that. Besides, she couldn't feel it most of the time. Most of the time she was in her head. Or the House's head. And in there you didn't feel the bag cut into your bottom or make your legs shake. In there you didn't feel anything at all.
She vanishes back in there to think about long numbers and A,B,C and…
Build not break. Build not break. Build not break.
3.
As soon as they entered the darkness they could feel the wraith moving towards them. It was a sensation rather than a physical presence, though it prickled like static and made the hair on the back of your neck frizz up.
"This is the same as the creature that stole you and Sophie away?" Hawkins asked Alan.
"The very same," Alan agreed, "though they're not normally as gentle as they were then."
"That was gentle?" Barnabas said, remembering the force with which the man and girl had been knocked off their feet and whisked away.
"From what I gather," said Penelope, "they like to play with something for a while and then pulverise it."
"Lovely," said Ryan, "you found the way out yet then?"
Penelope kept swaying the torch to and fro, watching the length of the beam for a point when it would shrink as it shone through the invisible portal they were after. "Give me time."
"All the time in the world," Ryan sighed, looking around.
"If the House wants us to do this you'd think it would call them off," said Maggie, the static sending her hair into an even wider halo than normal.
"If it can," said Hawkins. "Not all watchdogs obey their master."
"There!" said Penelope, pointing to where the beam cut off a little way ahead.
They ran towards it, Alan grimacing as Sophie bounced against him in her papoose. Behind them the wraith swooped on their heels as if brushing them out of its world, a grumpy caretaker lashing out with his broom.
They emerged into one of the House's ubiquitous corridors, deep red carpet and heavy wood panels. In the frequent alcoves there were glass domes filled with bizarre taxidermy. Alan looked at the creatures beneath the glass and found he couldn't identify a single one. He wondered if they were animals that had been constructed from the taxidermist's imagination – "cut and shut" combinations of normal creatures – or whether, on some strange world these things had once flown or burrowed or foraged. In one dome a feathered beast reared up on its back paws, threatening the air with two scythed talons that had the texture of ram's horns. Its snarling mouth showed rows of what could have been human teeth, yellow rectangles, nicked and scored on the bones of some previous meal. Its eyes were like oil in water, black with a colourful shimmer that couldn't quite be pinned down. Alan felt itchy just looking at it.
"What the hell are these things?" asked Barnabas.
"Never seen anything like it," admitted Jonah.
"Imaginary animals," said Penelope, "nightmares, like everything else in this stupid House."
They moved along the corridor, trying not to look to either side.
"Is this the way you came from the library?" Ryan asked Penelope.
"No," she admitted, "I took the scenic route, it involved three days' mountain climbing then a car crash."
"Oh," he didn't really know what to say to that.
"You're going the right way," came a rolling, yokel voice from nearby.
"Who said that?" asked Alan, shuffling forward.
"I did." On the wall was an oil painting of a rural peasant forking hay into neat stacks. The peasant had quit his work and come to the front of the picture, leaning on his pitchfork. He chewed absently on a length of dry straw. "Library's that way," he nodded in the direction they'd been walking, "though you'll have to go through the ballroom to get there."
"Ballroom?" Penelope asked. "I can live with that."
"You'd better hope so, my lovely, those that can avoid the place. It's not altogether sane."
"An insane ballroom?" Alan asked.
"I'm just a working man," the peasant said, "though I can lay claim to speaking on its behalf at the mo."
"If the House wants us to go this way," said Hawkins, "why doesn't it make sure that the way is clear?"
"Well now," the peasant chewed hard on his straw, deep in thought, "this is the essential duality of its condition you see. Part of it wants you to go that way – the rational part of it – the rest just wants to do what it was born for and kill you." The peasant smiled. "Gives you a headache just thinking on it, don't it?" he chuckled. "Like all that 'ego' and 'id' gubbins they go on about," he tapped at his head, "who really understands what goes on inside the cracked dome of our silly skulls."
"Great," said Hawkins, "lots of help, thanks."
"I mean," the peasant continued, happy to talk now he had started, "take me for example. Most days I'm happy just to get on with my job, get this hay cleared. Maybe think on what I'm going to put in my pot this evening, wonder whether the barley wine is ready to drink… you know, the usual thoughts."
"And the other days?" Maggie asked.
The peasant smiled and nodded at the portrait of a restoration duchess that hung directly across from them. "I wonder what it would be like to hold that dirty bitch down with my pitchfork and hammer her up the arse until I'm spent." He shrugged. "Takes all sorts." He turned back to his hay and began forking it towards the stack.
"Charming," said Alan, "shall we keep moving?"
"Perhaps that's best," agreed Penelope.
The corridor stretched on for some time. The rows of domed animals ceased after a while, becoming busts offering medical cross-sections of the human body. Here a head was cut open to show a smooth, pinkmarble brain, there a torso offered the route of its coiled innards in various pastel shades.
"Educational," said Ryan.
"Extremely," said Alan, straightening the papoose on his back where it had begun to sag to the left. "Whereabouts were you from," he asked, "before ending up here?"
"London lad aren't I?" Ryan replied, putting on his thick cockney accent. "Found the box in an old bloke's belongings. Used to 'find' a lot of things if you get my meaning."
"You were a thief?" Alan asked.
"It was more of a sideline to be honest," Ryan admitted, "used to help my dad with his removals business too, that was the day job."
"Day job?" How old was the kid? "What about school?"
"That's exactly what I used to ask my dad, 'what about school dad?' I'd ask,"
"And what did he say?"
"He said school didn't pay as well."
"Nice."
"Yeah… I wouldn't have minded if he actually did pay me but, you know, food and board, that was the deal."
"Sounds like he was a great parent."
"Can't say I miss him much," Ryan admitted.
The corridor finished at a large pair of double doors. To one side there was a dark wood easel with a heavy card sign on it. "Today" it announced in excessively florid calligraphy, "experience the joy of the Wurlitzer with Professor Luptna".
"The joy of the Wurlitzer," said Penelope. "I can hardly wait."
"Sooner we get in," Alan sighed, reaching for the door knob, "the sooner we can be out the other side and on our way to the library."
He opened the door and their world dropped out from beneath them.
4.
Barnabas was exhausted, but as long as the music played and his fat wife continued to sway he knew there would be no rest. He held her hand and led her around the shed constellation of stars that fell from the mirrorball above. The organ music rose and fell like a carousel's song, high twiddling notes dancing over the low hum of the bass. Whenever he looked towards the organist he was somehow unable to catch sight of him. He could see the stage, its sweeping red drapes and goldpainted ornamentation – the bulging clouds of heaven punctured by fat-cheeked cherubs blowing their slender trumpets to herald this terpsichorean apocalypse. Of the organist – or indeed his organ – there was no sign, just a shimmer of colour, like a rippling flag viewed through thick, decorative glass. Its edges moved and folded in on one another. One minute it was there, swollen and massive, then gone but for a hairline of colour. No matter how hard he tried to focus it eluded him. Not that his wife gave him much opportunity.
"You're out of time," she hissed in his ear, flecks of spittle peppering his cheek. "Do try to keep up."
Out of time… That certainly seemed like a familiar notion to him. If he tried to put his finger on why it was familiar he lost concentration on his dance steps and she kicked him. The sharp, sequinned point of her high-heels punctured his skin even through his socks. His ankles felt hot and damp from her repeated administrations.
"Sorry dear," he said, trying not to wince as she kicked him again. He imagined the skin of that ankle to be puckered and bloody, like a steak pulverised by a hammer.
"Lead with the right foot, idiot," she said and snapped her teeth at him like a dog nipping at a fly. Those teeth were mammoth flagstones, beige and glistening, smeared with lipstick, scarlet skid-marks. The fur on her upper lip bristled like corn in the wind as she fixed her showy smile back in place and tilted her head at the other dancers. Her eyes were small: hazel bullseyes at the centre of lilac eyeshadow targets. Her ashe blonde curls were piled high like dog dirt, a crisp slender flick at their summit. She was horrendous and his stomach churned to look at her. When she spoke, a noxious puff of rot billowed past those monstrous teeth. In his head it was the sort of smell one imagined erupting from the split carcass of a drowned man.
She kicked him again. "Lighter on your toes," she demanded and he tried to lift even though he felt a trickle of blood run into his shoes to boil against his hot and throbbing foot.
He tried to follow the other dancers but they made his head hurt almost as much as the elusive organist. He saw them as swooping triangles of black evening jackets or spangly gowns. Light and dark, bouncing around them like moonlight on a rough sea.
The sea, he thought, I'm much more at home on the sea.
She kicked him again.
Hawkins couldn't help screaming as Maggie dug her thumb into his broken wrist.
"You dance like a cripple," she said. Not the soft voice of the woman he loved, but a harsh rasp like a striking match. "Do better."
"I'm trying," he assured her.
"Not hard enough," she replied, digging her thumbnail into the crack of his splintered bone again. In the delirium of his pain her hair stretched like the tendrils of an anemone. Always large it now seemed to reach the ceiling, the ends probing the heavily decorated cornices and the sparkling mirrorball as if hunting for scraps of food.
He loved his wife. He loved her more than anything else in the world… he just wished she wouldn't hurt him so.
"Twirl me you slovenly arse," she said and spun in front of him, that impossible hair whirling around her head. It writhed towards the other dancers, one man turning so that Hawkins could see the scab he wore as a face, crisp yet weeping, yellow stains creeping into the starched white of his collar. Once glimpsed it vanished, replaced by an indistinct blur that swept away across the floor, vanishing into the darkness.
Chester pulled Penelope close. His face sponged his sweat onto her hers, wiping a salty snail-trail across her cheek and lips as he rubbed against her.
"I just want to explore," he whispered, the voice carrying over the music as if it weren't even there. "You'll help me won't you?"
When he spoke she saw a wisp of gun smoke trickle from between his thin lips.
"Please," she said, the word as unwelcome in her mouth as a piece of broken glass, "just don't kill me."
He smiled and the rivulets of sweat that poured from his forehead met the puckered lips and branched around it like a stream diverting around a fallen tree.
"There are worlds upon worlds," he replied, as if she had said nothing at all. "There is a box, and
inside that box is a door, beyond that door…"
She knew the answer to that one, it was on the tip of her tongue. "Beyond that door…"
In Alan's arms, Rebecca, his one time therapist, whispered non-constructive thoughts as he fought to carry her gracefully around the floor.
"Fat and ugly," she said as he tried to turn with the music. Tears of agreement coursed down his face as he lifted her arm and tilted her back, their groins pressing together. "I'd never let you fuck me," she assured him, "your dick's too small for me to even know it was there."
He lifted her upright, leading her backwards through the faceless dancers who parted before them.
