The Shadow Cabinet

by Maureen Johnson

  “Maybe we should . . .”

  “Trust me. You’ll want to see this. While they’re still talking. She’s a bit of a tyrant, to be honest. She probably wouldn’t let me take you upstairs if she knew. Come on.”

  She seemed so eager, I felt like I had to follow her. We went upstairs, passing the doorway where Thorpe and Dr. Marigold were talking, and then up one more floor above that. The noise of the TV blared up in the space between the landings. It was really loud, so loud that Charlotte had to raise her voice to be heard.

  “It’s this one here,” Charlotte said, opening a door at the end of the hall. “See for yourself.”

  I stepped to the open doorway of what appeared to be the master bedroom, a wide room with three windows overlooking the trees of the square. There was a king-sized sleigh bed against the window wall.

  “Go look,” Charlotte said, smiling.

  There was something about her smile I didn’t like. It was reminiscent of the one she’d used in the dining hall at Wexford on the night I’d decided I didn’t like her. I still took a few steps into the room. It took me a few moments to process what I was looking at. I had to concentrate very hard in order to put the facts together in my mind and accept the reality.

  Stephen was in the bed.

  19

  THE MOMENT I SAW HIM, THE WORLD REARRANGED ITSELF, but not into a recognizable pattern.

  He looked very much like he had on the hospital bed. Peaceful. His hair had been combed. The cut on his head hadn’t healed or changed in any way. The only thing different, aside from his location, was that he was wearing a plain white T-shirt instead of a hospital gown.

  “Go on,” said a voice behind me. “Go to him.”

  It wasn’t Charlotte’s voice. Somehow, this was not a shock to me. Maybe you can’t be shocked from two directions at once. My brain was processing too much information. I had seen him die, and yet, he was on this bed and somehow not dead. We hadn’t been able to find Stephen because he was here all along.

  “What did you do to him?” I asked.

  Jane crossed around and walked past me, stepping over to Stephen’s side. Charlotte stood there, beaming smugly, the prefect once again. Jane’s prefect.

  “Nothing,” Jane said. “I believe it’s more likely that this is something you did to him, and that’s no bad thing.”

  “I saw him die,” I said. “What’s happened to him? He looks . . .”

  “Asleep? Yes, he is, after a fashion.”

  I wasn’t going to think about Charlotte right now, or how she’d gotten this way. But Thorpe and Marigold—I did have to think about them. Thorpe had gone upstairs and Charlotte had turned up the television, drowning out all noise, probably so I wouldn’t hear what happened. The doctor I didn’t know, but I had a surge of affection and concern for Thorpe.

  “What did you do to them?” I asked.

  “They won’t be joining us.”

  “Did you hurt them?”

  “They’re quiet now,” she said. “What happens next depends in all ways on you. You have nothing to fear. You can leave if you like. No one will stop you. Go right ahead! Or you can stay and hear what we have to tell you. Such good news, Rory.”

  “You need to listen to her, Rory,” Charlotte said. “She can help. She can help so many people.”

  I was deeply torn between wanting to understand how Charlotte had gotten to this point where she was shadowing Jane with such clear devotion and wanting to grab her by the hair and shake her until her eyes fell out. I wanted to hold Stephen, but I wasn’t going to go anywhere near him. Just seeing his face, though, I was dizzy. My knees were going out from under me.

  “Charlotte,” Jane said, seeing this, “tell Jack to bring up water. Now, hold on. Come here.”

  She came over to me and mothered me into a chair, where she put my head down between my legs and had me breathe deeply. A glass of water appeared in front of me, but I didn’t take it.

  “It’s just water,” she said. “I assure you.”

  “Get the hell away from me.”

  “If you don’t want the water, then continue the breathing. Nice, slow, and steady. Deep breath in. Hold. Relax. And out, nice and slow. It’s a lot to take in.”

  Charlotte brought in a chair from another room and put it next to me so Jane could sit with me. I picked up my head. The world was slightly less wobbly, and Stephen was still in the bed.

  “Is he alive?” I asked, nodding at Stephen.

  “Not precisely,” she said. “But more important, dear, he’s not exactly dead either. And it is my belief that he can be restored.”

  “Restored?”

  “You see, you and I have the same problem. We both have people we care about who are deeply asleep, and you, my dear, could be the one who wakes them. But I realize that you most likely don’t quite believe or trust me at the moment. I will tell you the truth. You deserve the truth, and the people around you haven’t given it to you.”

  “How do I wake him up?” I said.

  “I have always been honest with you, Rory. You may not like what I have done, but I have always told the truth. I told you that when I was a girl, I was attacked in a field and left for dead. I told you that after that experience, and when I gained my sight, I went to London and met the people who would forever change my life. Their names were Sid and Sadie, and they were the greatest seekers of their time.”

  “Yeah, I heard about them,” I said. “I heard that ten people who followed them disappeared in 1973.”

  “There were ten of them, yes.” Jane’s tone was infuriatingly reasonable. “They were my friends. I was there that night, and I will tell you what happened to them. You see, Sid and Sadie are extremely special people. They came from a very wealthy family. When they were in their teens, the entire family was in a car accident. Sid and Sadie survived, and their parents did not. They gained their sight that day. But with Sid and Sadie, something was different, most likely because they were twins. Something in them was magnified. They were very powerful, and very wise. They inherited their parents’ fortune when they were quite young and instead of going to university, they spent their time and money traveling the world, learning. They accumulated a great amount of esoteric knowledge. They understood that people who have the sight stand in the doorway between worlds. And doorways—well, they go both ways, in and out. Doorways are just passages. What would happen, they asked themselves, if someone simply removed the door? They looked back, to the time of the Greeks, when it was understood that the underworld was a place that humans could pass in and out of. They looked to the old rituals. They looked to the goddess Hecate, she who guarded the doorways and the liminal spaces. They looked to Demeter and her battle to reclaim her daughter Persephone from Hades. They realized these were not just old stories, but actual facts, lost to time. They sought to reclaim that knowledge. What they discovered was that there was a ritual to break down that door. But it was not a simple affair. Are you sure you won’t have some water? You’re still quite ashen.”

  I waved the glass away.

  “In any case,” she said, “something went wrong. I have spent the last forty years trying to figure out what, but it’s not been easy. Sid and Sadie retained most of the information themselves. True mystical teachings are often not written down—they’re simply too powerful. The ceremony we performed that night in 1973 was called the Blood of the Light. It required a very potent exchange of energies. Namely, we needed to open a channel between worlds. This required a certain sacrifice. Ten followers gathered in the house. We gave them a drink laced with poison. When those ten people left their bodies, a certain amount of energy was released.”

  “Left their bodies,” I repeated. “When you killed them.”

  “We do not believe in death. But that night, once they had left their bodies, we took a small amount of blood from each. Sid and Sadie then complete
d the ritual by consuming that blood, along with a dose of the same poison. They also wore these.”

  She opened her large necklace and revealed that inside, behind a bit of glass, were two dirty-looking clear gemstones.

  “I believe you call this a terminus? It’s what you are. It’s actually two pieces of a diamond called the Eye of Isis. It was broken into many pieces. Sid and Sadie managed to get two.”

  She closed the locket again and patted it against her chest.

  “My job was to watch and wait. What should have happened was that the energy exchange should have blown open a passage between the two worlds which all of us in the room could perceive quite easily. What actually happened was that Sid and Sadie seemed to fall asleep. And they have been asleep since that night. I have taken care of them since that time, guarding them, moving them as necessary. I acquired a house for them to rest in and modified it. You saw the house and the space under the floor. That is where they have been for some time now. They are exactly as they were. Nothing has changed.”

  “What happened to the ten people you poisoned?”

  “Had it all gone to plan, we would have brought them right back again. I believe I can still reach them. At the time, all I could do was deal with the remains. It was not the most pleasant task I have ever had to undertake, but I knew it was for the greater good. I have always tried to do the greatest good, Rory. I know this may be hard for you to believe, but it is true. The world lives in blindness! Most of the people you see—they don’t know what reality is. They can’t perceive what’s really around them. We can. Fear drives people to do terrible things. Fear causes war. Fear causes violence. Remove the fear of death, and the world could be cured of so many ills. What if we didn’t need to fear death at all? What if we could exist in more than one state? It would be the greatest achievement of all mankind.”

  Charlotte was nodding, eyes half closed, enraptured.

  “As I said, I’ve been working on this problem for quite a long time. I found the answer some time ago, but it required things I could not get—things I wasn’t sure even existed. But when you came along, I realized what had gone wrong. You’ve probably heard the expression ‘like getting blood from a stone.’ It means, of course, an impossible task. Stones do not bleed. You, Rory, you are the stone, but you are also the blood. You are the stone made live. I believe there were more like you in the past. I believe someone like you is the key to this ritual—you, and a stronger stone. With you and the Oswulf Stone together, wonderful things will happen. Our friends will wake again. He will wake again.”

  “So why did you need Charlotte?”

  “Charlotte played a role. She helped push you to find the stone. From what we understand of the historical record, the stone was moved by someone in the government many years ago, which means that there was likely a record within the government of what had happened to it. We had faith that the powers that be could muster themselves enough to determine the location of a stone. We need to know where it is, Rory. If it has been found, and I suspect it has from the look on your face . . .”

  My face. My stupid face doing things I didn’t know about.

  “. . . then we must know. The information is important enough that we will endeavor to get it from one of you, either you or the man with you. But, Rory, Stephen needs it. Without it, he will be like this forever. All you have to do is tell us, and I can help. I want to help more than anything.”

  “How do I know this will even work?” I said.

  “My magic work is solid, Rory. I’ve been doing this for quite a long time. I’m not a crank working in a bookshop.”

  “Stephen had a head wound,” I said. “His brain had been injured.”

  “This ceremony undoes the process of death. In recorded histories, people with far greater injuries are returned. The person is restored. The body and soul reunited. It is my belief, truly, that Stephen as you knew him will return. Your blood, my knowledge, and all we have lost will be restored. He will come back.”

  I felt the urge to throw up, but fought it.

  “Let me see Thorpe,” I said. “I need to make sure he’s okay.”

  Jane turned around and nodded to Charlotte. Charlotte moved instantly. I heard her speaking to someone in the hall. A minute later, Thorpe was carried in and set on the floor like a sack of potatoes in a suit.

  “What did you do to him?” I said.

  “He’s unconscious,” Jane said. “But perfectly safe. Now, stand up. Come here.”

  When I wouldn’t stand on my own, someone hoisted me up. It was Jack, the weird blond guy from her house, the one dressed like some kind of romantic space cowboy with slicked-back platinum hair. The last time I’d seen him, he’d tackled me in Jane’s foyer and held me down in the backseat of her car. He was gentler now, as if he was really trying to help. They moved me over to Stephen’s bedside. When I kicked and dug in my heels a few feet away, they stopped.

  “That’s close enough,” Jane said. “She doesn’t want to go closer. You think you can destroy him, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “And I’m not taking the chance.”

  “You’re quite safe. Watch.”

  She took the necklace from around her neck and dropped it onto his chest. I coughed out a scream. But it bounced and slid off, apparently harmlessly.

  “He’s not a spirit,” she said. “He’s flesh and blood. The terminus has no destructive power on him. Go ahead. Go to him. It’s perfectly safe.”

  I put my hands on the bed first, then I crept them ever so slowly closer to Stephen until they were both flat on his unmoving chest. No breath. No movement. But it was him. This was the same chest I’d pressed against that night. I put my hand on his cheek. He was cool to the touch, but not cold. Jane laid her hand on mine, pressing it down into his face.

  “He needs you,” she said. “You are the only person who can help him. You can help everyone. All you need to do is tell me.”

  “And I’m supposed to believe you?”

  “What I propose can only help us both. If my friends wake, Stephen wakes. I promise to you, on all I hold sacred—I promise on blessed Demeter herself—”

  “Blessed Demeter,” Jack said.

  “Blessed Demeter,” Charlotte echoed.

  “I promise to her and her daughter that I will keep my word to you. We will wake him. We will wake my friends. We will serve the greater good. May my soul be locked away forever if I lie, down in the depths of Hades.”

  There was little question in my mind that she meant this. A reverential silence had blanketed the room. Charlotte even put her head down, like she was praying.

  All I had to do was tell her where to find a rock. That was it. I didn’t really know anything about this rock except that if it brought back Stephen, it was a rock worth having.

  “Please, Rory,” Jane said. “If you delay, we’ll be forced to be aggressive. We will find out where it is. Jack, show her.”

  Jack pulled something from his pocket that I thought was a harmonica at first—because of course Jack would have a harmonica. Of course, Rory. But it was that shape and size, and it had some pearled inlay on the surface. He flicked his wrist, and a blade came out. He stood over Thorpe’s body on the floor, one leg on either side. He leaned down and put the blade at Thorpe’s eye.

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “Rory, that’s up to you. I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want to hurt Stephen here either. Or the doctor. But we must know. This is bigger than all of us.”

  Thorpe, Stephen, Dr. Marigold . . . even Charlotte, whatever had happened to her. All of these people needed me now. We could work something out later. We always did. I needed to do something now.

  “Rory, Jack’s impatient,” Jane said quietly.

  Jack moved, and I put up my hand.

  “It’s under a pub,” I said, “called the Boat
man. It’s somewhere near Marble Arch. The stone’s in the basement, in the floor.”

  Jane grasped both my hands.

  “That’s good, Rory,” she said. “That’s very good. It pains me you don’t know the good you do.”

  Charlotte came around and clapped her hands on my shoulders, like I’d done something in field hockey aside from get hit in the faceguard with the ball.

  “I want to stay here with him,” I said. “Let me stay here with him.”

  “That’s fine,” Jane said. “There’s time now. You stay with your friend. We will prepare. You have done a great thing today, Rory.”

  I looked down at Stephen’s sleeping face and wondered what he would make of all of this, then I decided not to think about that again.

  THE BOATMAN PUB

  LANCASTER GATE, LONDON

  ALLIE LANGLY NEEDED TO WORK ON HER “NO.” SUCH A simple word. No. “No, I don’t want to come to your Christmas party, Gertie. I’d rather dip my hair in the shredder.” “No, Gert. The last time I went out with you, you came back to my flat and vomited on my cat.” “Actually, Gert, I’m going to have myself put into a medically induced coma that day. Sorry.”

  That’s all it would have taken.

  Gertie worked with the worst people in the entire world. They’d only left uni last year and they weren’t even good friends while they were there, so why did Allie feel so obligated all the time? If she’d said no, she would have been at home. Her roommates were out at their own party, so she would have had the flat to herself. She would have gotten a nice Indian takeaway, which she would have spread out on the coffee table. She could watch telly on her own, then take a nice long bath with no interruptions—a proper bath, with music on and a book and a cup of tea. It would have been heaven.

  But Allie couldn’t say no. It was like she was physically unable to do it. And now here she was, at some pub in the middle of London, surrounded by people she didn’t know and didn’t want to know. They were all pissed. The normal Christmas party things were all present and correct—Christmas crackers, paper crowns, Bing Crosby and Slade playing in the background. There was awkward, drunken dancing and toffee vodka shots. There was a lot of talk of branding. And then, to top it all off, someone knocked over an entire tray of pints, which went crashing to the ground. Allie jumped out of the way, but everyone around was soaked to the knee. Allie turned when this happened and saw a slip of a girl duck under the bar and pass through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Maybe she was going for a mop.