by Guy Adams
"You came to my rescue, yes." Her tears were under control again now, that icy Helen Walsingham exterior closing back down around her. "I think maybe I can stand up but you'll have to help me."
"I'm not sure that would be befitting," said Leo but she shot him such a cold look that he shut up. He walked over and put her arm around his shoulders. "On three," he said, "one, two, three…lift!" he pulled her up, her hand digging into his shoulder as her wobbly legs tried to lock beneath her. Through an absolute refusal to give up she got there in the end, though couldn't quite bear all her weight without his assistance.
"Need to move," she said, "get the blood moving."
Leo nodded and helped her march backwards and forwards through the undergrowth until, eventually, she was able to let go of him and manage on her own.
"Thank you," she said, "I am almost myself. Though somewhat overdressed for the climate." She began to peel off her coat, still moving stiffly as the circulation returned to her arms and torso. She stripped down to a thick shirt, carefully folded the coat and jumper and laid them down amongst the leaves.
"Cool," said Leo.
"Not quite," she replied, "but I can hardly remove anything else."
"I meant… never mind." Her speech was old-fashioned, her clothes were old-fashioned… Leo had an advantage over Helen in that he'd seen enough movies to be able to imagine what was utterly beyond reason to her. "What year is it where you're from?" he asked.
She stared at him as if he was an utter simpleton. "What year?"
"Yeah."
"1904, obviously."
"Obviously", thought Leo. This was going to be hard work… "On the other side of the door I came through it was 2006," he said.
"Don't be ridiculous," she said, though a nervous twitch ticked around her eye. He hoped she didn't start crying again, he just couldn't stand being around women when they cried, reminded him of that girl who got him the damned Sinise audition.
"Yeah, because magical doors that transport you into Jungle World make loads of sense don't they?" he said. "But time travel? That would just be mad."
"I don't know anything about these doors of yours," she said.
"No, you prefer magic boxes, whatever…" he began to walk into the jungle.
"Where do you think you're going?" she asked.
"Wherever I like!" he replied. "I tried to do you a favour and you've done nothing but give me shit since. I should have stayed on my own side of that fucking thing…"
"Sir!" she cried. "Your language is an insult to the ears."
"Yeah?" he turned and grinned, "if you don't like it you kiss my motherfucking ass. I'm looking for a way out of here."
Her face fell. Oh no, he thought, here come the waterworks… He turned around and came face to face with a group of people pushing their way out of the undergrowth. They were dressed in ragged clothes, most of them dangerously thin.
"Hello," said the woman at their head, "my name's Lauren. Welcome to the House."
PART NINE
Where People go to Die (3)
1.
Night time in Florida and someone has finally switched the damned sun off. It's still hot enough to steam seafood in your pockets but at least you can breathe a little. In downtown Orlando the bars and clubs are still only coasting, the music light, the clientele friendly. Later, as the clocks crawl towards midnight, the nightlife will hit ramming speed and then god help the sober and the tasteful.
People look up at the sky and think about storms. The air has that feel to it, heavy and portentous. Like something Wagnerian is about to kick the shit out of the horizon. They're right to feel something's coming. However evolved we claim to be, however much we distance ourselves from the other animals by staring at them in zoos or putting a bullet in them from a distance, we still know some of the old tricks. If there's one thing you just can't evolve out of a species it's the ability to sense extinction. The common sense to do something about it? That's different.
Still, it's not like there's much you can do about the really big stuff. It's all very well being wise and considerate, minding your emissions, clearing up your trash. But when that meteorite drops and the sky fills with thunder it really won't have got you more than a clear conscience.
Only an idiot fights the apocalypse, the rest let their hair down and party like it's the last night on Earth.
2.
It had taken Miles and Carruthers several hours to loop back into Orlando on foot. By the time they were climbing the steps to their hotel it was dark and their feet hated them.
"Don't say a word," said Miles, "we're just going to walk straight past the concierge to the lifts, OK?"
Carruthers nodded and they pushed through the double doors and into the faded brown hell of the foyer.
"Good evening gentlemen," said the concierge, sparing them a brief glance from behind the pages of his paperback. "Would you be interested in a discount from our friends across the way at Ribs For Pleasure?"
"That sounds lovely," said Carruthers heading straight over, "what is it?"
"A rib restaurant," said the concierge, staring at Carruthers as if he might just have found the most stupid man on earth, "for dinner?"
"Do we like ribs?" Carruthers asked Miles who was leaning against a tastelessly upholstered pillar and trying not to punch the explorer in the back of the head. The thought of food set a bomb off in his guts and he suddenly realised that he was starving.
"We just might," he said, stepping forward and holding out his hand for the voucher.
Relieved that everything was back on conversational autopilot, the concierge handed the voucher over. "Ten percent off all entrees and free ice cream for the kids," he said.
"They will be thrilled," said Miles and yanked Carruthers towards the lift.
3.
Shepard sat behind his desk and stared at a cup of coffee as it slowly grew cold in front of him. He just didn't have the energy to drink it.
"Just heard from the team at the diner," said Cheryl, popping her head around the door. "They're starting to catalogue stuff now but you don't need me to tell you that they're going to be there all night."
"No Cheryl," Shepard agreed, "I guess I don't. What about Dutch?"
"He knows he's pulling an all-nighter too, the press have started to show and it's all he can do to keep the goddamn rubberneckers away. Things are going slow, we just don't have enough clean-up boys for this kind of workload."
Shepard shook his head and continued to stare at his coffee.
"Get you anything?" Cheryl asked.
Shepard looked up. Shook his head and returned to staring.
Cheryl left quietly.
4.
The stranger sat in the middle of the undergrowth and listened to the night insects as they sang to one another. Next to him, lying flat on his back, was Chester.
"You see it's all about intention," the stranger said, though there was no sign that Chester could hear him. "Right now I'm going to leave you here. I'm going to pretend that I might not break this world of yours down the middle. That you can wake up in the morning and set to wandering down that road, just in time to meet the future. I'm going to pretend that. Because while I pretend that, everything stays as it should, a neat little framework of cause and effect, of what we know will be."
The stranger plucked a thick blade of grass, split it down the middle, raised it to his lips and whistled with it.
"I'm going to pretend that," he continued. "Because it might be fun, just for one night, to pretend this world has a future beyond tomorrow."
5.
"I'd like a Baby Back Boomer with fries, extra coleslaw, onion rings, garlic bread, breaded mushrooms and a selection of dips," said Carruthers, lowering the menu and looking over to Miles. "Might I also want a side-salad with extra croutons and bacon bits?"
"Depends if you're hungry."
Carruthers thought for a moment and then looked back to the waitress. "The salad too please Laura, if you would be
so kind."
"Extra side-salad," repeated their waitress, noting it down on her little pad before looking to Miles.
"A Big Ben burger please, with fries and bacon."
Laura smiled, turned on her heels and vanished towards the bar.
"I think Laura's lovely," said Carruthers giving her a dreamy look as she poked the order through to the kitchen.
"Good," said Miles, "glad you're enjoying yourself."
"I wonder if she'll dance with me later if I ask her very nicely."
"What's come over you?"
"A not altogether unpleasant sense of fatalism," Carruthers replied. " It's not beyond reason to imagine that this is the last night I shall see after all."
"That's it, think positive."
"I honestly hope it's not the case but even if it is I shall leave this earth having lived well. There is not much I haven't experienced."
"Except Laura's dancing?"
"Indeed," Carruthers, fidgeted with his serviette, folding it into halves.
"Or anyone's dancing?" asked Miles.
"Indeed," Carruthers admitted, "there was a woman once, my dear Vanessa, but it wasn't to be. I'm rather afraid I let exploring this world of ours get in the way of any future courtships."
"Do you regret it?"
Carruthers thought about that for a moment. "No. I couldn't have been successful in both pursuits and I wouldn't have missed my travels for anything. I always imagined I'd stop travelling one day and then... well, who knows? I would have tried to take a place in society. Take a wife if one would have me. But somehow I've just never managed to stop. There's always been somewhere else to lose myself. Somewhere dark and unknown demanding I roll up my sleeves and push my way in."
"Which, coincidentally has been my exact experience of women."
Carruthers rolled his eyes and sipped some of his bottomless soda. He ignored the fact that he could see the bottom only too clearly, perhaps they had lost their depth perception in the future.
"If this is the last night on earth," said Miles, "I'm glad I'm spending it in your company. But you know what? Let's not talk about it. Let's do this properly, if it has to be a last supper then let's eat it well, let's have a laugh, a few drinks and leave the rest outside for a few hours. Tomorrow can wait."
Carruthers smiled and raised his glass. "I'll drink to that."
They clinked glasses.
PART TEN
The Attic
1.
Had Penelope truly believed that once they had exited the ballroom their journey would be over? Yes, she supposed she had. Given her experience of the House this had been more than naïve she realised. It had been stupid. Nothing in this building was so quick and, as perilous as the ballroom had been, it was just another stop on a journey that would be filled with such horrors.
They had found themselves back in a House corridor. An easel that corresponded to the one on the other side of the ballroom announced that "Professor Luptna's Joy of the Wurlitzer" was cancelled for the foreseeable future.
"Best news I've heard all day," said Barnabas, still limping on his raw ankles. The experience had clearly had an effect on the man, a good deal of the arrogance was gone and when he looked at Penelope his face showed respect. They had survived yet another obstacle. He wasn't blind as to whom he had to thank for that.
Penelope felt no pride, just relief and, as they began to walk along the corridor she was filled with a tiredness that was so all-consuming she wilted a little. Her footsteps were that of a drunk, unsteady and cautious, and she found herself reminded of Dolores. Her friend had walked this way a lot, always trying to hide the alcohol in her system. She supposed, looking back on it, that for all Dolores' bluster and shocking humour there had been a rather weak person beneath, one that needed a constant top-up from her hip flask to keep that confident mask in place. Poor Dolores, Penelope would miss her.
"You alright?" Alan asked her, only too aware that she was struggling to walk.
When he had expressed such concern back at the station, it had angered Penelope, determined not to be seen as needing anyone's support, least of all his. Now that attitude seemed unreasonable.
"Shaky," she admitted, "I think the shock of that place is just creeping up on me."
"What did you see?" he asked, immediately adding, "I understand if you don't want to say, I shouldn't ask, sorry."
She thought about it for a moment and then decided that there needed to be an honesty between them. "Chester," she said, looking at him to judge his reaction. The look on his face – a mixture of embarrassment and fear – told him all she needed to know. "You know about him don't you?" she asked, not with an air of confrontation but rather encouragement. Let's get this out, that tone said, let's have this done.
He nodded. "Ashe told me," he said. "I had always suspected something, was seeing a therapist about it in fact. That's who I saw," he admitted, "telling me that I was better off dead."
"Very helpful."
"I'd be lying if I didn't say I agreed with her most
days." Once said that was something he couldn't pull back and it hung there between them for a moment.
"Sophie needs you," Penelope said, "and I can tell by the way that this lot look at you that they consider you a good friend."
"They don't know me though," he replied. "Not really."
"They know you as you are now," said Penelope, "that might be enough."
"I suppose it'll have to be." Alan couldn't quite meet her eyes as he said: "I'm sorry though, truly, for what he… I… did to you."
"So am I," she said. "And I'm not going to lie, I'm finding it hard to forgive you for it. I know the worms took most – if not all – of what you were. I know logically, that you're a different man. But I find it hard."
"I understand."
"No, you don't, but that's OK because I can't expect you to. I want to learn to trust you. I want to learn to forgive you. It will take a little time but I think I'll do it. I think I'll accept you as the man you are now, not whoever you were, just as they do," she gestured towards the Intrepid crew behind them, "because you obviously deserve that trust and forgiveness, you wouldn't be the man they know..." she nodded at Sophie, "...the man she knows if that weren't the case."
"I suppose not," Alan replied. "Thank you for trying I guess."
"Thank you for being worth the effort."
This corridor was decorated with doll's houses of various shapes and colours.
Maggie couldn't help but admire one as they passed. "I used to dream of owning one of these," she said to her husband. "To build and cherish and fill with beautiful things." She reached out to stroke the paintwork of one of the tiny windows, pulling her finger back just in time to avoid the teeth that appeared at the top and bottom of the window, snapping down to bite her. "Maybe not one quite like this," she admitted. "When will I learn not to trust a thing in this place?"
The corridor took them from one impossible room to another: a bedchamber filled with mountains of down that they slogged through like snowdrifts; a study filled with antagonistic candlesticks that howled and spurted blue flame (until Ryan chanced upon a set of bellows that dealt with the opposition in short order); a drawing room where sewing machines whirred and clacked like typewriters in a newspaper office, constructing reams of disturbing samplers: "A Stitch in Time Saves Childbirth", "Life is Silver, Death is Golden", "A Bird in the Hand Gushes When You Squeeze". All the time drawing closer – they presumed – to that impossible library that lay at the building's heart. With each new door their hopes swelled only to be dashed again once opened.
The paintings continued to be communicative. A selection of Dutch Masters argued with them – and each other – as they passed, some insisting that they were on the right track, others warning them that they had veered wildly off course.
"Ignore them," Hawkins had insisted. "I'm done taking advice from art that gets above itself."
Frans Hals' portrait of a Laughing Cavalier found this mo
st amusing.
Klimt's model in Mulher Sentada interrupted her important business to point her slick fingers upwards. "You need to climb," she said breathlessly, "through the attic and then descend via the third hatchway."
