The Hidden World (14 page)

‘Look – this was where Mrs Crawford went,' said Jessica, slowly walking toward it. ‘The desert, the mountains. This is just the way she described it.'

‘Are you all right?' asked Renko. ‘Your arms are bleeding.'

Jessica looked down and saw that she had three or four long scratches on her upper arms, and several criss-cross scratches on her hands. Her wrists were bruised too, and she had broken three fingernails.

Elica had a red bruise on the side of her cheek and a pattern of bruises around her ankles, but otherwise she seemed to be unhurt. ‘One day I fall into holly bush and this is not worse.'

Renko took hold of Jessica's hand. ‘Are you sure you're going to be OK?'

‘Yes … but I don't think we ought to go back the same way. Maybe we can try going through the desert.'

‘So where does the desert lead?'

‘To Mrs Crawford's old bedroom, I guess.'

‘You guess? Supposing it doesn't?'

‘If it doesn't, we'll have to go back the way we came, to my bedroom.'

‘We'd better wait until it gets light. I don't fancy being torn to pieces by half of Ames's nightwear department.'

They stepped through the gate and into the desert. It was very hot here, and breathlessly silent. High above their heads, a flock of clothes hangers circled, as lazy as vultures.

‘Which way do we go?' asked Renko.

‘I don't know,' said Jessica. ‘We should look for a door – a door just standing on its own.'

They shaded their eyes with their hands and scanned the horizon. The gate was still open, and they could still see the zigzag path and the heaps of robes lying on the hill. But there was no sign of a door anywhere.

‘We should walk,' said Elica. ‘Maybe we find somebody help us.'

‘What, like a talking cactus?'

‘It doesn't matter what, if it can show us a way.'

‘Elica, it's real hot here, and there's nothing to drink. I don't feel like ending up as a heap of bones in a desert behind somebody's bedroom wallpaper.'

‘What can we do? We have to try. My father always say, every journey take you somewhere.'

‘What is he, your father, some kind of genius?'

They were still arguing about what to do when Jessica said, ‘Ssh!' and then, ‘Listen!' They stopped talking and listened, and very faintly they could hear the sound of a flute playing. It was the same melancholy music that Jessica had heard before, the sort of music that brings tears to your eyes although you don't know why.

‘I think it's coming from over there,' said Renko, pointing to a collection of diamond-shaped rocks.

‘Well, let's go take a look,' said Jessica. ‘If there's music, somebody must be playing it.'

‘Another genius. You guys are really beginning to make me feel very, very dim.'

They walked across the desert toward the rocks, their track-shoes crunching on the salty white surface. At first they couldn't see anybody, but as they skirted around the rocks they saw a frail white-haired woman in a rusty-colored robe, sitting cross-legged on the ground and playing a small bright silver flute. She stopped playing when she saw them, looked up, and smiled.

‘So good to see you,' she said. ‘I haven't seen anybody in years and years.'

She was quite a handsome woman, although her eyes were dull and her cheeks were sunken, like somebody who has been ill for a very long time.

‘We're looking for the door,' said Jessica. ‘We're wondering if you could show us the way.'

‘Of course. It isn't difficult and it isn't far. Depending on your point of view, of course, and your personal circumstances.'

‘Are you the lady that Mrs Crawford told me about?' Jessica asked her.

‘Mrs Crawford? I don't know anybody by that name.'

‘Oh, that's right. Her name wouldn't have been Crawford then. She was only a girl. Edwina.'

‘Little Edwina! Yes, I remember little Edwina. She came to see me when she was very sick. I never found out what happened to her, because she never came back.'

‘She got better. She's living in a house on the road to Allen's Corners. She says you gave her a ring.'

‘I did, yes. My engagement ring. She was supposed to give it to my daughter Martha, as a sign that I was here, and that I was still alive.'

‘I think she did. But I don't think your daughter believed her.'

‘I see. Well, that's very sad. Sad for her and sad for me. Do you know if she's still alive?'

‘I don't. My grandpa said that she disappeared, after all the children died.'

The old lady pressed her hand against her mouth. ‘The children died? Oh no. Oh, that's terrible. I loved them so much. How did they die, do you know?'

‘It was Rocky Mountain spotted fever. I'm sorry.'

‘Oh, that distresses me so much.'

Renko said, ‘I hate to interrupt, but what are those black things way over there?'

The old woman lifted her head to look; and then she stood up and looked again. ‘We'll have to think about making a move. Those are shadow cats.'

‘Shadow cats?'

‘Cats made out of all the shadows you can see from the corner of your eye, and all the shadows on your bedroom ceiling. They're very quick – so quick that you can barely see them. But they're very vicious, too. They'll have your eyes out before you know it.'

‘Maybe we'd better get trucking then,' said Renko.

The old woman put her flute in her pocket and lifted her hood to cover her head. ‘This way,' she said. ‘Walk as fast as you can and don't look back. There's nothing that riles a shadow cat more than being looked at.'

Together they began to walk as quickly as they could across the desert, toward a straggle of bushes with diamond-shaped leaves. Far to their left, Jessica could see the diamond-shaped mountains that Mrs Crawford had described. The heat haze on the horizon made them look as if they were floating on a bright silvery lake.

‘So you're Mrs Pennington's mother?' she said, hobbling to keep up.

‘That's right. Maude Fellowes. My husband Albert bought the house in 1919, and it was so big that when Martha married George Pennington in 1923 we invited them to live with us. All of Martha and George's children were born there, and they all loved it. It was a very happy house, believe me. You should have seen it at Christmas, with the tallest tree you can imagine, all shining with candles!'

Jessica was beginning to limp badly. She looked back over her shoulder to make sure that the shadow cats weren't catching up with them. ‘Don't!' warned Mrs Fellowes. ‘They're very touchy, those varmints! They only have to think that you're staring at them …!'

Renko came up to Jessica and took hold of her hand to help her along. ‘How long have you been here?' he asked Mrs Fellowes. ‘I mean, like, here in this desert?'

‘An elephant's age and the blink of an eye, both. That's the way things are here. Sometimes it seems as if I came through the wallpaper just yesterday afternoon, and other times it feels as if I've been here since the beginning of time.'

‘How did you get here?' asked Jessica.

‘Yes,' said Elica. ‘And why you not go back?'

‘I was sick,' said Mrs Fellowes. ‘More than just sick, I had a stomach tumor and I was dying. My poor husband was distraught, because there was nothing he could do to save me. I stayed in the small upstairs bedroom with my nurse in the room next to me, so that at least poor Albert could get some rest.

‘Then one night I woke up about two or three o'clock in the morning and the room was filled with light, and all the diamonds on the wallpaper were singing, like a heavenly choir. I swear I thought I was dead.

‘I walked toward the wall and it was just as if welcoming hands were drawing me in. And that's when I found myself here.

‘There was a young girl here when I first arrived. Her name was Renata, and she was the daughter of the previous owners. Pretty girl she was, very pale skin and coppery hair. She said that she had caught consumption, and she was dying like I was, but the wallpaper had taken her in. She hadn't got better, but she hadn't gotten any worse, and she was waiting for the time when consumption could be cured, so that she could go back. She asked me if anyone had found a way to cure it yet, and I had to say no, they hadn't.'

‘They have now,' said Jessica. ‘I had a vaccination against it when I was eleven.'

‘If only I knew where Renata went … I haven't seen her in years. Or is it weeks? Or is it just a few days? I find it very hard to remember.'

A door had appeared up ahead of them, a simple bedroom door of plain scrubbed deal with a shiny brass handle. Just as Mrs Crawford had described it, it stood in the middle of the desert with nothing around it, a bedroom door without a bedroom.

‘Of course I have to ask you,' said Mrs Fellowes: ‘if they've found a cure for consumption, dare I know if they've found a cure for cancer?'

‘There are plenty of treatments for cancer,' said Jessica.

‘My doctor said that mine was too far gone to be treatable.'

‘But when was that? Way back before World War Two. They have all kinds of new treatments now.'

‘I couldn't stand any more treatments. Here, at least I don't feel any pain.'

‘Why don't you come back with us and we'll take you to the doctor, so that you can have a check-up?'

Mrs Fellowes shook her head. ‘Why don't you come back and find me when they discover a cure?'

They were only fifty feet away from the door now, and their pace was starting to slow. Jessica said, ‘How can I leave you here, all alone? They may never find a cure.'

Mrs Fellowes reached out and held both of Jessica's hands. Her eyes were dull but she managed a smile. ‘There are many dangers here, but there is happiness and peace of a kind which you can only imagine.'

‘Aren't you lonely?'

‘Yes, I am. But I have my flute, and the days roll by like a wheel.'

‘Come back with us,' Jessica pleaded. ‘I'm sure that Dr Leeming could make you better.'

Again Mrs Fellowes shook her head. ‘Albert is dead, my grandchildren are all dead. I suppose Martha is dead too.'

‘She disappeared, that's what my grandpa said.'

‘Poor Martha. She adored those children. She worshipped every hair on their heads.'

They had almost reached the door. But as they did so Jessica glimpsed something out of the corner of her eye, something black and very quick. The next thing she knew, three shadowy creatures had sprung between them and the door, and were crouched there, their claws spread, their teeth bared, their eyes as yellow as pus.

‘Shadow cats,' said Mrs Fellowes. ‘Stay still, try not to look at them directly.'

Jessica found it almost impossible to look at them directly, even if she tried. They were big, almost as big as pumas, but their outline was smudged and somehow she couldn't focus on them. When she turned her head, she caught sight of one of them out of the very corner of her eye, but then it was gone. Mrs Fellowes was right: they were the restless shadows on the bedroom ceiling on a stormy night. They were the shadows of rooks flying across a wintry lawn. They were black as smoke and sinister as cellars.

‘Stay as still as statues,' Mrs Fellowes cautioned them. ‘I'm going to draw them away from the door … when I do, I want all three of you to open it up and run inside and close it behind you, quick.'

‘But what's going to happen to you?'

‘You never mind me. I've met shadow cats plenty of times before.'

‘But you said they'd tear your eyes out.'

‘Just you do as I tell you. You want to get back, don't you? This is the only way.'

Without warning, one of the shadow cats ran around behind Jessica and clawed at her back. ‘Aah!' she cried out. She felt as if she had been lashed with barbed wire. She turned around, but the shadow cat had flickered away. It suddenly jumped up at Elica, snagging her plaits and scratching her ear.

‘Here, you cowardly creatures!' Mrs Fellowes shouted out, waving her arms. ‘Here, you black-hearted beasts!'

‘No!' said Jessica. ‘You can't!'

‘I can and I am,' Mrs Fellowes retorted, fixing Jessica with a defiant stare. ‘Who cares what happens to me? What have I got to look forward to? More treatment? More pain? More long years in the desert?'

A shadow cat came running up to her long and low, its belly close to the ground. It was just like the shadow of a real cat, running beside a garden wall, distorted by every bump and ripple in the brick.

‘Look out!' shouted Renko hoarsely; and it was then that Mrs Fellowes turned to face it directly.

M
rs Fellowes' stare stopped the shadow cat in its tracks. It lowered its head even further, arched its back and raised a tail that looked like a twist of black smoke. Mrs Fellowes held her ground, never taking her eyes off it.

‘Go on,' she told Jessica. ‘Now's your chance. Through the door, quick as you can, and close it behind you.'

Renko said, ‘There's no way.'

But Mrs Fellowes shrilled out, ‘Now! Do it now! Before it's too late!'

At that instant the shadow cat pounced on her. It ripped her hood off and attacked her face. Jessica saw its claws pierce her eye-sockets and drag both of her eyes out onto her cheeks, two bloody ping-pong balls. Another shadow cat leaped onto her back, and three more went for her legs and arms. She fell to the ground, not screaming, not even crying out, while the dark flickering shapes clawed and bit at her flesh. Blood flew everywhere, as if it were being sprayed by a garden sprinkler.

Jessica stood watching this horror with her mouth open, but suddenly she felt Renko seizing her hand and pulling her toward the door. Elica had opened it, and beyond the door was an empty, brightly lit room. The last that Jessica saw of Mrs Fellowes was one bloody arm waving at her like a rag doll.