by Guy Adams
The street shook. "It's happening now," she said, "feel it?"
He nodded. She took his hand. "It's for the best."
Her face twitched and for a moment she flickered like a badly tuned TV station.
"What is it?" asked Ashe.
"Renegade progressing faster than anticipated," she replied, her voice that of the Grumpy Controller rather than her own. "Need diversion."
A door appeared in the centre of the sidewalk, Sophie turned to him. "Go home, there's nothing left for you to do. I miss you."
She vanished and, after a moment, Ashe stepped through the door.
19.
"This'll do," said the Grumpy Controller, reappearing on the library screens. "We can't wait any more. Set her down."
Alan laid Sophie gently on the wood of the bookcase and took a step back.
"What are they going to do to her?" asked Hawkins, behind him.
"It's more a case of what she's going to do to them," Alan replied, "this is all Sophie. They're not forcing her."
"Alright then," said Penelope, "what's she going to do?"
"Restore the House," Alan said, "bigger and more powerful than it was before."
"And that's a good idea?" asked Ryan.
"It's the only option we have left," Alan replied, "and whatever Ashe may have hoped otherwise I think it was always going to happen."
"Build not break!" Sophie shouted, arching her back against the bookcase.
"House now contemporaneous," announced the Grumpy Controller.
"Oh yeah," said Barnabas, "one of those contempranyusess is it?"
"The House exists outside time," explained Alan, "but for this to work that has to change. Think of two ships pulling alongside one another. Lashing themselves together so that one can steer the other."
"The House is steering?" asked Maggie. "I can't say that makes me feel comfortable."
"You should see the driver of the other boat," Alan replied.
Sophie thrashed against the bookcase again. "Too quick, too quick!" she shouted.
"Renegade progressing faster than anticipated," said the Grumpy Controller and the image on the screens changed from his face to the view of that field in Florida.
"Is that Miles?" Penelope asked, craning her neck to peer at the screen. "I think it is."
They could see both Miles and Carruthers, little more than silhouettes against the building orange light.
20.
The orange light, so thick it positively dripped from the prisoner's hands, began to glow even brighter. Miles and Carruthers huddled together facing away from the prisoner. The earth around them rippled, the solidity of everything so close to the intrusion slipping as this reality, this world, began to lose cohesion. Looking towards the highway, Miles saw that it was whipping around, winking out of existence then returning but with the translucent look of a mirage rather than a solid thing of concrete. The buildings followed suit, stretching and fattening alternately, a world slipping in and out of focus.
"Miles?" Carruthers' voice was faint, as barely there as everything else. "I think we've bitten off a little more than we can chew."
"You think?" Miles replied, surprised to feel his face twisting into a smile.
From the mess of shifting reality around them, a figure appeared, coalescing out of the liquid of dirt and air and walking towards them. It was Sophie.
"I need your help," she said, coming to stand directly in front of them.
"Oh well," said Miles, "you know us, always pleased to be of service."
"I need you to slow it down," she said, "we can stop it if you buy us just a little time."
"And how are we supposed to do that?" Carruthers asked. "Forgive me but we seem somewhat at a disadvantage."
"I am doing my best to create a small bubble of protection around you," she replied. "You were inside me for long enough that I can do that, keep you one step outside this world."
"Inside you?" asked Miles. "I'm sure I don't remember anything like that…"
"It's the House," Carruthers interrupted, "not Sophie, am I right?"
"There's no difference anymore," she replied, "we're all the House, build not break."
"What can we do?" Miles asked.
"Just distract it," she replied, "any way you can, a few seconds will be all I need."
"And the chances of us surviving that?" asked Carruthers.
"None, sorry. But if you don't none of us will survive anyway."
"When you put it like that…" Carruthers didn't finish. He had nothing more to say.
"If we can distract it," Miles asked, "will everyone else…?"
"I can save them," she replied, "probably. If there's anything you want to say, they're watching…"
"Watching?"
"In the House. They can see you."
Miles thought about that for a moment. "I don't want them to," he replied. "Stop them from seeing, then we'll try."
21.
In the library the screens went blank.
"No!" Penelope shouted. "Bring them back, I can't…"
Alan took hold of her, tentatively at first then stronger once it became clear she wouldn't fight him. "He doesn't want you to see this," he said, "I'm sorry…"
Ryan had stooped down next to Sophie, taking her hand and doing his best to whisper constructive thoughts. It wasn't helping her much but at least it made him feel useful.
"I can hear the changes," Jonah whispered, "corridors unfolding, rooms cracking open… can you hear any of this?"
"No," Barnabas admitted, "though you can feel it, a vibration in the ground."
Maggie held onto her husband's hand. "Whatever happens," she whispered to him, "you did the right thing, always."
He smiled. "Nobody ever does the right thing all the time," he replied, "but bless you for trying to convince me otherwise."
The shaking in the bookcase increased, the books jumping up and down on the shelves as if eager to be read. Sophie felt every one of them. Each of the books opened to her, showing their histories, their essence. All of that power, all of that imagination, fuelled the restoration. The House had always been the byproduct of these dreamers, a physical object brought into being by the thoughts of mankind – by their greatest fears and most surreal night-terrors. Now every ounce of that imagination was wrung dry, mortar for the new House, the perfect House, the prison to hold them all.
22.
"You know how you abhor violence?" Miles asked Carruthers.
"Life is filled with exceptions."
"Glad you agree."
They stood side by side, eyes squinting at the unfolding light ahead of them.
"Good to have met you," said Miles.
"You too, Miles," Carruthers agreed, "you were a good friend, an honour to know."
Miles smiled. "You wouldn't have said that if you'd known me before I came here."
"I would always have said that," Carruthers replied. "You are who you are, and I count myself lucky to have spent time with you."
Miles couldn't reply to that, just held out his hand to the old explorer and led the pair of them forward.
The light blossomed as they drew closer, great gobbets of it tumbling to the earth where it fizzed and remade what it found. At the heart of it, the prisoner felt his essence touch that far distant realm that it knew as home. "Yes," it said to itself, "I've learned my lesson. Forgive me?"
Miles and Carruthers grabbed at the figure in front of them, an amalgamation of Dutch Wallace and the creature that rode his back. Their hands burned as they touched him but they refused to let go, desperate to tug it away from the rift, to hold its attention for just one moment.
The prisoner felt them, ants climbing up their hill to demand an audience. It chuckled. "Just burn," it said, "I have no time for the likes of you anymore."
The body that had once answered to Dutch Wallace crumpled forward. The prisoner may be strong but Dutch was not and Miles and Carruthers toppled him, pushing him down into the undulating eart
h even as the sky erupted around them. It was enough, the prisoner torn from the rift momentarily, his concentration broken.
"When will you learn?" it shouted. "You're nothing, ants under the bottle… a distraction to a god, nothing more."
"Yeah," said Miles, "well, God has the breath of a barbecued pig's fart."
They weren't the most noble of last words, he thought, but in keeping with the rest of his life.
As the light consumed them, Carruthers hand still firm in his as they burned, the last thing he saw was the sky changing, the distorted blue and the black of the void cut off to be replaced by distant ceiling panels. What do you know, he thought, I think we've saved the world…
The sky solidified, the House expanding in that free moment when the prisoner had been torn from the rift. It exploded outwards, its ceiling appearing in every skyline worldwide, cutting out stars and the warmth of the sun. It swallowed our reality whole, no longer an adjunct to it, loitering just outside our perception, but a container, four walls enclosing everything.
As the ceiling cut off the rift above that patch of land in Florida the force of the prisoner's intrusion flowed backwards, like a river instantly dammed. The light flooded outwards, searing into the earth, evaporating the remains of Roger Carruthers, Miles Caulfield and Lieutenant Dutch Wallace. It kept rolling, past the highway and further still…
23.
Captain Warren Shepard stood in the parking lot of the Ponderosa Steakhouse and waited for the sickness in his belly to quieten down. He had a feeling it would be some days before it truly went away. Just another memory to be revisited at night, he thought, getting to be quite a few in there now, much more of this and I'll never sleep again.
Glancing up he was surprised to see the sun setting already, a fat ball of orange pouring itself over the land towards him.
Well now, he thought – his last thought before the heatwave hit him – at least this place can still be beautiful when it tries.
24.
"It's done," Sophie said and then lay still.
"What's done?" asked Penelope. "What did she do?"
A door appeared in front of them, hovering a couple of inches above the bookcase. "Go now," said Sophie.
"I'll show you," said Alan, holding out his hand and leading them all through the door and into the world on the other side.
"We're outside!" Jonah sighed as he stepped through and felt the sunshine on his face.
"Not quite," said Hawkins, looking up at the distant ceiling that hung, pale in the sky above, "just another big room."
"This is all there is now," said Alan. "The whole world inside the House. The two of them joined together."
Penelope stared at the sky. "But that's awful! That's the worst thing that could have happened."
"No," Alan replied, "it wasn't. This was our only way of killing the prisoner and keeping our world intact."
"Intact?" asked Maggie. "As just another room in the House? I'm not sure that's not worse…"
"Of course it's not," said Alan. "At least this way there's life and hope, we'll make the best of it. Just like we always do. Besides, the House isn't quite as bad as it once was."
He looked over his shoulder, not altogether surprised to see the door had vanished. Sophie was gone, his own little goddess running the world the way she saw fit. If nothing else it would be tidy.
"Come on," he said, "let's make ourselves at home."
Epilogue
The door had appeared during the night. Alan knew this as he had patrolled that edge of their land the evening before, Penelope having sworn she had seen the light move funny. "I'm telling you it shimmered," she insisted. "The trees went out of focus, just for a second, and the air had that look of a heat haze."
"I'll take a look," he had promised. "Don't worry about it."
And he had and it had been fine. No sign of anything, no disturbance and no intrusion – and certainly no wraith, that's what she had been afraid of he knew, ever since one had appeared on the Colson farm a few miles north and flattened their cattle she had been terrified of the same happening to them. He had assured her that he believed her. And that had been true, he always did, it was only her that seemed convinced that everyone dismissed her because she was a woman
"Something definitely moved out there," she had insisted over dinner. "I know what I saw."
Georgie had scoffed at that, but then their daughter – and Alan thought of her as their daughter, biological father or not – scoffed at most things. It was all a joke to Georgie. That's Miles Caulfield's genes, Alan often thought but did not say. He didn't mention Miles unless Penelope did, even after all these years it felt too sensitive to discuss. He often wondered if Penelope saw him as a shallow replacement. Another thing he thought but never said. They were all living in the shadow of dead men these days.
"Whatever it was," he had said, "it's gone now. I'll check it again in the morning."
That night they had lain in bed, even quieter than normal. He not able to express himself, she not able to forgive him for what she saw as his part in this new world of theirs. Twenty-odd years and she still hadn't forgiven him. As if he had done anything that needed forgiving, he had been a spectator as much as any of them…
Perhaps it was just that he had lived and Miles had not. Perhaps it would always be that simple.
The next morning he headed out towards where she had seen something move and came across the door. In itself it wasn't unusual, there were doors everywhere these days, leading from one part of the world to another or into rooms of the House (it's all the same, he reminded himself, we're all just rooms these days). But it hadn't been here before and that was a concern. Where did it lead?
He gripped the frame and stuck his head through, it was dark, the little light that shone from his world illuminated a bookshelf, stretching on into the darkness. The library, he thought, it's time…
He returned to the house, grabbed his old revolver, loaded it and popped the spare shells in his coat pocket.
"Where are you going?" Penelope asked him as he stepped into the kitchen to grab some food before he started his journey. Then, as she recognised the long coat and the hat in his hand she sighed and held onto the worktop for support. "Don't leave," she said, "we know there's no point."
"This time it may be different," he said, "I might change everything."
"You won't," she said, "we know you won't."
"But I have to try…"
She stormed out of the room, unwilling to watch someone else she had grown close to vanish.
Alan – Ashe, he thought, need to think of myself as Ashe now – ate some leftovers from the fridge and made to leave. He came across Georgie on the front porch, stripping her rifle, that absurd purple woollen hat on her head.
"I'll never understand why you wear that thing," he said, "it makes your head look like a lampshade."
"Keeps it warm too," she replied. "Anyway, says you looking all Clint Eastwood." She had worked her way through his DVD collection time and again, loved those old Spaghetti Westerns almost as much as he did. She is my daughter, he thought, some of her at least.
"I have a town to clear up," he said in a passable Eastwood impression. "Don't wait up."
"Yeah right," she chuckled, "more like potatoes to harvest, mum'll kill you if you don't get that done soon you know?"
"Yeah, I know."
He wanted to say goodbye to her but didn't want her to know that was what he was doing. How stupid was that? He might never see her again and here he was considering just walking away.
"What are you doing today" he asked, prevaricating.
"Oh, you know, the usual, tidying up after you!" she smiled. "There's always work isn't there?"
"Yeah." Maybe it'll be easier one day, he thought, realising he wasn't going to say goodbye after all.
He dropped his hat on his head and walked off towards the door. Maybe it'll be easier one day… yes, maybe it will.
Maybe this time around it w
ould all be different.
About the Author
Guy Adams trained and worked as an actor for twelve years before becoming a full-time writer. If nothing else this proves he has no concept of a sensible career. He mugged someone on Emmerdale (a long-running British soap opera, consisting largely of mud), performed a dance routine as Hitler and spent eighteen months touring his own comedy material around clubs and theatres.
