by Garth Nix
The minute hand. The Key. It definitely hadn’t been there only a few minutes before. Arthur always put his hands under the pillow when he lay down. Perhaps it materialised when Leaf handed him the Atlas? Like the magical objects in stories that followed their owners around?
Only in the stories, most things like that were cursed, and you couldn’t get rid of them even if you wanted to . . .
‘Stay still,’ commanded the nurse. ‘It’s not like you to flinch, Arthur.’
Three
ARTHUR WENT HOME on Friday afternoon, with the Key and the Atlas securely wrapped up in a shirt inside a plastic bag. For some reason Ed and Leaf never returned to the hospital. Arthur had thought of trying to call them, but since he didn’t know their last name, that had proved impossible. He’d even asked Nurse Thomas if she knew who they were. But she didn’t, and the hospital had got busier and busier through the week. Arthur figured that he’d see them Monday at school.
His father picked him up and drove him home, humming a tune under his breath as they cruised through the streets. Arthur looked out idly, but his thoughts, as they had been the whole week, were on the Key, the Atlas, and Mister Monday.
They were almost home when Arthur saw something that snapped him straight out of his reverie. They were coming down the second-to-last hill before their street when he saw it. Down in the valley, occupying a whole block, was an enormous, ancient-looking house. A huge building made of stone, odd-shaped bricks of different sizes, and ancient timbers of many kinds and colours. It looked as if it had been extended and added to without thought or care, using many different styles of architecture. It had arches, aqueducts, and apses; bartizans, belfries, and buttresses; chimneys, crenellations, and cupolas; galleries and gargoyles; pillars and portcullises; terraces and turrets.
It looked totally out of place, dropped into the middle of what was otherwise a modern suburb.
There was a reason for that, Arthur knew.
That huge, crazy-looking house had not been there when he left for school last Monday.
‘What is that?’ he asked, pointing.
‘What?’ asked Bob. He slowed down and peered through the windshield.
‘That place! It’s huge and it . . . it wasn’t there before!’
‘Where?’ Bob scanned the houses he saw. ‘They all look pretty much the same to me. Sizewise, that is. That’s why we went a bit farther out. I mean if you’re going to have a garden, you’ve got to have a real garden, right? Oh, you mean the one with the Jeep out front. I think they painted the garage door. That’s why it looks different.’
Arthur nodded dumbly. It was clear that his father couldn’t see the enormous, castle-like building that they were driving towards. Bob could only see the houses that used to be there.
Or maybe they are still there, Arthur thought, and I’m seeing into another dimension or something. He would have thought he was going insane, but he had the Atlas and the Key, and his conversation with Ed and Leaf to fall back on.
As they went past, Arthur noticed that the house (or House, as he felt it should be called) had a wall around it. A slick, marble-faced wall about ten feet high, that looked smooth and very difficult to climb. There was no visible gate, at least on the side they drove along.
Arthur’s own new home was only another mile or so, on the far side of the next hill. It was in a transition area between the suburbs and the country. The Penhaligons had a very big block, most of which was a fairly out-of-control garden. Bob said he loved gardening, but what he really loved was thinking and planning things to do with the garden, not actually doing them. He and Emily had bought the land and established the garden several years before, but had only decided to build a house and move quite recently.
Their house was brand-new, notionally finished a few months before. There were still plumbers and electricians coming back every few weeks to fine-tune various bits and pieces. It had been designed by a famous architect and was on four levels, cut into the hill. The bottom level was the biggest, with garage, workshop, Bob’s studio, and Emily’s home office. The next level was all living spaces and kitchen. The next was bedrooms and bathrooms: Bob and Emily’s and two guest rooms. The top level was the smallest and had bedrooms for Michaeli, Eric, and Arthur, and one bathroom that they either fought over or were locked out of and had to go downstairs.
No one was home when Arthur and his father returned. A screen on the refrigerator door in the kitchen had the latest posts and emails from the various members of the family. Emily was held up at the lab, Michaeli was simply ‘out’ and would be back ‘later’, and Eric was playing in a basketball game.
‘Do you want to go out for dinner? Just the two of us?’ asked Bob. He was humming again, a sure sign of imminent song composition. It was a sacrifice for him to offer to go out when it was obvious he was itching to get at a keyboard or a guitar.
‘No thanks, Dad,’ said Arthur. He really wanted to be alone so he could check out the Key and the Atlas. ‘I’ll grab a snack later, if that’s okay. I might just check out my room. Make sure the others didn’t trash it while I was gone.’
They both knew that was just Arthur being kind and letting Bob go and work on his song. But that was also okay with both of them.
‘I’ll be in the studio, then,’ said Bob. ‘Buzz me if you need anything. You’ve got your inhaler?’
Arthur nodded.
‘We might get a pizza later,’ Bob called out as he headed down the stairs. ‘Don’t tell Mum.’
Arthur went up to his own room, taking the stairs slowly. He was breathing fine, but was weak after five days of lying around in the hospital. Even a few flights of stairs was hard work.
After locking the door in case his older siblings returned, Arthur put the Atlas and the Key on the bed. Then, without knowing why, he turned off the light.
Moonlight shone through the open window, but it was quite dark. It would have been darker, but both the Key and the Atlas glowed with a strange blue light that shimmered like water. Arthur picked them up, the Key in his left hand, and the Atlas in his right.
Without any effort on his part, the Atlas flipped open. Arthur was so surprised he dropped it back on the bed. It stayed open, and Arthur watched in amazement as it grew, becoming longer and wider, until it was about the same size as his pillow.
The open pages were blank for a moment, then lines began to appear, as if an invisible artist was hard at work. The lines were strong and sure, appearing faster and faster as Arthur stared. It only took a few seconds before he realised he was looking at a picture of the House he had seen. A picture so well realised that it was almost like a photograph.
Next to the picture a handwritten note appeared:
The House: An Exterior Aspect as Manifested in Many Secondary Realms.
Then another few words appeared, written much smaller. Arthur craned forward as the writing appeared, with an arrow that pointed to an inked-in square on the outer wall.
‘“Monday Postern,”’ Arthur read aloud. ‘What’s a postern?’
There was a dictionary on the bookshelf above his desk. Arthur pulled it out, while keeping an eye on the Atlas in case it did something else interesting.
It did. Arthur had to put the Key down to get the dictionary out, as it was too jammed in with other books. As soon as he dropped the Key on the desk, the Atlas slammed shut, scaring the life out of him. In less than a second, it had also shrunk back to its pocket notebook size.
So you need to have the Key to open the Atlas, thought Arthur. He left the Key where it was and looked up postern in the dictionary.
Postern n. 1. a back door or gate 2. any lesser or
private entrance.
So there was Monday’s gate in the otherwise seamless wall. Arthur put the dictionary back and thought about it. The picture of the House and the indication of an entrance was clearly an invitation of sorts. Someone . . . or something . . . wanted him to go into the House. But could he trust the Atlas? Arthur was pretty cer
tain that Mister Monday and Sneezer were enemies, or – at the very least – not friends. He wasn’t sure about the whirling type, the words in the air that had taken over Sneezer and then given him the Atlas. He supposed those words had given him the Key too, or at least had tricked Mister Monday into doing it. But what was their . . . its purpose?
There was only one way to find out. He would take a look at the House as soon as he could, either tomorrow or on Sunday, and try to get in through Monday’s Postern. Depending on what he saw there, he’d tell Ed and Leaf and get their help. They would probably be able to see the place, he thought. After all, they’d seen the dog-faced searchers when the assistant principal couldn’t.
In the meantime, he would hide the Key and the Atlas in the best hiding spot he knew. In the belly of the life- size ceramic Komodo dragon that sat on the rooftop balcony just above his bedroom. The dragon – a huge lizard really – was hollow, but its mouth wasn’t open enough for anyone with hands larger than Arthur’s to reach inside.
No sooner was this mission accomplished than his mother came home, immediately transforming the place from a quiet retreat into a family home. After checking on Arthur, she insisted that Bob emerge from his studio so the three of them could have dinner together. Emily was happy and relaxed, because Arthur was okay and because for the first time in ages she was not working frantically to develop a vaccine or cure for some new influenza strain. Winter was coming, but it looked to be a reasonably quiet one from the point of view of sickness.
Arthur’s plan to go look at the House failed its first test when he was not allowed out of his own house.
‘You have to take it easy,’ his mother instructed him. ‘Reading, television, or the PC, that’s it. At least for the next few days. We’ll take another look at the situation next week.’
Arthur frowned, but he knew better than to argue. It was going to drive him crazy thinking about the House just waiting there, but he knew he had no choice. If he sneaked out now, he would be grounded for a month. Or a whole year.
‘I know it’s hard not doing anything active,’ Emily said as she gave him a hug. ‘But it’s only for a while. Give yourself a chance to get stronger. I think a day at school will be tough enough for you on Monday.’
Forbidden to do anything useful, the weekend dragged for Arthur. His two elder siblings were busy with their usual mysterious activities, Bob was still composing, and Emily was called back to work to check out some strange admissions at the local hospitals. She was regularly called whenever there was a rise in patients exhibiting unusual symptoms. Arthur always felt tremendous relief when she came home and said it wasn’t serious. Losing his birth parents as he had, Arthur was acutely aware of the potential tragedy in every report of a new flu strain or potential virus outbreak.
By Sunday morning, Arthur couldn’t resist the temptation to get the Atlas and the Key back out of the Komodo dragon. Once again he held the Key and the Atlas open to the same double-page spread with the picture of the House. Though there were no details and no other writing besides the note about Monday’s Postern, Arthur spent hours looking at it, trying to work out how it was all put together and what it must look like inside.
Finally it was Sunday night. Arthur restored the Key and the Atlas to the lizard’s innards and went to bed early, in the hope that sleep would come and make the time go quickly. But of course it didn’t. Arthur tossed and turned and couldn’t fall asleep. He read most of a book and then simply lay there, thinking.
When he did fall asleep, it wasn’t for long. Something made him wake up. He didn’t know what it was for a second. He turned his head and saw the digital clock, red in the darkness. 12:01.
One minute after midnight, on Monday morning.
There was a noise at his window. A scratching noise, like a tree branch scraping. But there was no tree in the garden tall enough or close enough to reach Arthur’s bedroom window.
Arthur sat up and snapped on the light, his heart suddenly pounding. His breathing began to get more difficult, his breaths shorter.
Control, thought Arthur desperately. Calm. Breathe slowly.
Look at the window.
He looked and jumped back, falling down behind his bed. There was a winged man hanging in the air a few feet from the window and easily fifty feet above the ground. An ugly, squat man with a jowled face like a bloodhound. A dog-faced man. Even his rapidly beating wings, though feathery, looked ugly and unkempt, dirty grey in the light that spilled out from Arthur’s room.
He was wearing a very old-fashioned dark suit and carried a bowler hat in his hand. He was using the crown of the hat to tap on the window.
‘Let me in.’
The voice was distorted through the glass, but it was low and husky and full of menace.
‘Let me in.’
‘No,’ whispered Arthur, thoughts of every vampire film he had ever seen flashing through his head. This was no vampire, but it was asking to be let in, so maybe the same principle applied. It couldn’t get in unless it was invited. Though in the films, they normally hypnotised someone to let them in –
The bedroom door opened.
Arthur felt as if his heart had stopped cold in his chest. Someone had been hypnotised already! They would let the dog-faced thing in . . .
A long forked tongue flickered around the door, tasting the air. Arthur picked up the dictionary, which he’d left by the bed, and raised it above his head.
A scaly head followed the tongue, and a clawed foot. Arthur half-lowered the dictionary. It was the ceramic Komodo dragon from the balcony. No longer ceramic, or maybe it still was, but alive and moving swiftly.
Slowly, Arthur climbed back onto the bed and pressed himself against the wall, keeping the dictionary ready to throw. Whose side was the Komodo on?
‘Let me in.’
The big lizard hissed and ran forward, shockingly fast, to rear up in front of the window. It opened its mouth and brilliant white light shot out, powerful as a searchlight. The dog-faced man screamed and threw up his arms, his bowler hat flying through the air. Still screaming, he hurtled backwards, wings thrashing, and disappeared in a coiling puff of coal-black smoke.
The lizard shut its mouth with a snap, and the intense light disappeared with it. Then the reptile slowly stepped back from the window and ponderously trod to the end of Arthur’s bed, where it stopped and settled into its usual stance. Its skin rippled as if every muscle was suddenly galvanised, then it was still. Totally ceramic once more.
Arthur dropped the dictionary, picked up his inhaler, and took several puffs. As he went over to shut his door, he was surprised to find that his legs were trembling and could barely support him. On the way back, he patted the Komodo dragon on the head and briefly considered putting his hand in to check that the Key and the Atlas were still there. But that seemed like something that could best wait for morning.
Back in bed, Arthur looked at the clock again as he pulled up the covers. Surely it was no accident that this had happened first thing on Monday.
It’s going to be an interesting day, he thought. Deliberately he turned away from the window, so he wouldn’t be tempted to look at it, and closed his eyes.
He left the light on.
Four
ARTHUR WAS NOT looking forward to school that Monday morning, to a much greater degree than usual. After the events of the early morning he had enjoyed only brief moments of sleep. He’d woken up every hour or so in incipient panic, his breathing ragged, only to find that his light was still on, the night was quiet, and there was no trouble. The Komodo dragon stayed immobile at the foot of his bed, and with sunshine filling the room it was hard to believe that the lizard had come alive and beaten back the horrid thing that had flown up to his window.
Arthur wished he could dismiss it as a nightmare, but he knew it had been all too real. The Key and the Atlas were proof of that. He thought about leaving them behind, inside the ceramic lizard, but after breakfast he took them out and put them in his sc
hool backpack. Then he checked the yard carefully through the window before running out to join his mother in her car.
In their previous town, Arthur had walked to school. Here, he would eventually ride his bike. But his parents insisted it was too soon for him to exert himself and his mother said she would drive him to school before going to the lab.
Normally Arthur would have made some show of independence, particularly in front of his brother Eric, who he looked up to. Eric was both a basketball and a track star. He’d had no trouble adapting to the new school. He was already on his way to being a stand-out player for the school’s top basketball team. He had his own car, bought with the proceeds of a weekend job as a waiter, but it was assumed that he wouldn’t take Arthur to school in it unless there was a real emergency. Being seen with his much younger brother was bad for his image. Despite saying this, he had intervened at various important stages in Arthur’s life in their old city, putting bullies to flight in the mall or rescuing him after bicycle mishaps.
Arthur was glad to go with his mother that morning. He had a strong suspicion that the bowler-hatted dog-faced men – or manlike creatures – would be waiting at the school. He’d spent quite a few wakeful hours earlier worrying about how he could protect himself against them. It would be particularly difficult if adults couldn’t see them, which seemed possible from what Ed had told him.
The trip to school was uneventful, though once again they passed the bizarre castle-like monstrosity that had replaced several suburban blocks. To test whether his mother could see the House, Arthur commented on its size, but just as with his dad, his mother could only see the normal buildings. Arthur could remember what the area used to look like, but try as he might, no matter how he squinted or suddenly turned his head to look, Arthur could only see the House.
When he looked directly at the House, he found that it was too cluttered, complex, and strange to reveal its many details. There were simply too many different styles of architecture, too many odd additions. Arthur got dizzy trying to follow individual pieces of the House and work out how they all fitted together. He would start on a tower and follow it up, only to be distracted by a covered walkway, or a lunette that thrust out of a nearby wall, or some other strange feature.
