The Hidden World (20 page)

‘It floated!' she said.

‘What? What are you talking about?'

‘The cart! It floated!'

‘So what does that mean?'

‘We can reach the fishing-boats before the Stain gets there! We can float on the Stain and row our way to the shore!'

‘Those boats, they're not even real! They're painted!'

‘It doesn't matter! If the cart floated the boats will float!'

‘We should go back, it's our only chance.'

‘You saw the Stain take over your house, and all the fields around it. We can't go back.'

Martin turned to Renko, and then to David, and said, ‘What do you think?'

Jessica said, ‘I think we should vote on it. Who's for going back and who's for going forward? Put your hands up, all those who want to go forward.'

Phoebe immediately put her hand up; so did Joel. Margaret hesitated for a while, and then she did too. Martin followed, saying, ‘Why not? What have we got to lose?' Renko raised his hand, with Elica's.

In the end, David said, ‘All right. But if it all goes wrong, and we all get killed, don't blame me.'

They jogged across the paint-crusted water until they reached the fishing-boats. The boats smelled strongly of fish and tar, and there were oars and tackle and nets in them. The Pennington children climbed into the nearest boat, which was just big enough for the five of them, while Jessica, Renko and Elica climbed into the boat moored next to it. Unlike real boats, they didn't dip or sway, and they sat in them completely motionless, under a sky as black as squid-ink.

‘What do we now?' called Martin.

Jessica called back, ‘Wait until the Stain reaches us, and then pick up the oars and row!'

Joel began to sob even more loudly, and Phoebe put her arm around him to comfort him. Jessica thought: If I die now, at least I'll get to see Dad and Mom again. But please don't let me die now. And don't let little Joel die, or Phoebe, or Margaret or David or Martin. They've been waiting so long for somebody to save them.

Renko reached out and took hold of Jessica's hand. He didn't say anything but he had a look in his eye, a look which said, If we don't come out of this, if we're all killed, I want you to know how much I care about you. And she gave him a tight, frightened smile, and touched his cheek, prickly like a gooseberry with his first stubble, and she could have kissed him, but she didn't.

It was then that the Stain arrived, with a thunderous undertone and a deafening screech. It was like a huge viscid wave of black molasses, crammed with stinking garbage and half-decayed bodies. Jessica squeezed her eyes tight shut as the Stain poured underneath the fishing-boats, but she couldn't stop herself from opening them up again, and all she could see was frantically waving skeletons, and cats with no hair, and giraffes with their necks half eaten by sharks. Things rose out of the Stain that even the foulest mind on earth couldn't imagine: rotting babies impaled on fence posts, crows with no legs, men with their faces eaten away by acid and leprosy. They swirled and bobbed around the fishing-boats, and some of them were screaming, but others were terribly silent.

‘Oh God,' said Renko; and it was then that the Stain lifted up the first painted fishing-boat, with the Pennington children in it, so that it reared and rotated. Joel let out a high-pitched shriek of terror, but Phoebe held him tight, and David held Phoebe.

The next thing they knew, their own boat bucked up beneath them, and they had to cling on to the gunwales to stop themselves from being flung out into the Stain. They dipped and turned around 360 degrees, with all the monstrosities screaming at them from every side. A fleshless elephant came thundering out of the Stain right next to them, with filthy rags and seaweed dripping from its tusks, and let out an agonized cry that sounded like the death of all elephants everywhere.

‘Row!' screamed Jessica. ‘Row!'

Renko picked up the painted oars and maneuvered them into the rowlocks. His hair was sticking up and his face was white with fear, but he managed to thrust the oars into the Stain and pull, and pull again, and turn the fishing-boat around until they were heading toward the shore. A fork of lightning lit up the painted lake, so that they could see Martin and Margaret rowing for the shore too. Then they were deafened by bellowing thunder, and it began to rain, torrentially.

It seemed to take them forever to row to the shore, and sometimes it seemed as if the Stain were actually sucking them backward. They were too frightened to scream or cry any more, and they were devoting too much of their strength to rowing. The rain crashed down on them as if the heavens were determined to fill up their boats with water and sink them.

Jessica saw a headless sow float past, her piglets still desperately trying to feed from her. She saw scores of struggling cats whose tails had all been knotted together. She saw a woman, still alive but lying motionless in all of that filth, stunned into stary-eyed paralysis by the horror that was engulfing her.

Renko heaved at the oars again and again, pulling so hard that he was almost standing up. There was an appalling gurgling noise, and the boat's prow dipped beneath the surface. Jessica was convinced that they were going to go under, but Renko gave another heave, and they were suddenly washed toward the shore.

The boat turned around, and tipped, and Jessica heard the grating of soil underneath the keel.

‘We've made it!' Renko shouted. ‘Everybody out, as fast as you can!'

They clambered out of the boat, splashing knee-deep in oily black sludge. Lightning flashed again, and yet again, and Jessica could see that the Pennington children had reached the shore too, and that Martin was giving Joel a piggy-back away from the boat.

Gasping, they all hurried away from the painted lake and up the hill toward the garden where Mrs Crawford was waiting for them with Epiphany. They went through the hedges and Mrs Crawford was still there, kneeling on the grass with Epiphany's head in her lap.

‘That didn't take you long,' she said, in relief.

‘We've been hours,' said Jessica, kneeling down beside her.

‘Not at all … you've only been away for twenty minutes, if that.'

‘Did you try going back through the wallpaper? Are the phones working yet?'

‘I went once, but they're not working yet. Epiphany's still breathing, but her pulse is very weak. I don't think we can take her back until we're sure that we can call for an ambulance.'

‘But the Stain is coming … we only just managed to get away from it. And if you think we've only been away for twenty minutes, it could be here before we know it.'

‘Get these children through the wallpaper,' said Mrs Crawford. ‘I'll wait here with Epiphany for as long as I can.'

‘I can't leave you here,' said Jessica. ‘I can't leave Piff, either.'

‘If you take her back and you can't get an ambulance for her, she's going to die.'

‘I can't leave her! What am I going to do?'

It was then that the stone angel said, ‘You were told before, Jessica. You have to wash away the Stain.'

‘How can I wash it away? There's much too much of it!'

‘Where do you think this land came from? These trees, these hills?'

‘The pattern on my bedroom wallpaper. What does that have to do with it?'

‘So where do you think the Stain came from?'

Jessica stared at the angel, and suddenly she realized what it was trying to tell her. ‘The Stain came from my wallpaper too. There's a stain on my wallpaper, that's what caused it, and all I have to do is wash it off!'

‘Go, then,' said the angel, with a gentle smile. ‘Go as quick as you can, and you can still save your friend.'

Jessica stood up. As she did so, however, Renko laid a hand on her shoulder.

‘Look,' he said. ‘I think we're too late.'

Between the cemetery and the overgrown garden which led to the wallpaper, a thick black tide was already pouring across the grass, a tide that carried sickening carcasses, tangled ribcages and heaps of stinking, hairy slime.

‘It's the Stain,' Jessica told Mrs Crawford. ‘It's cut us off.'

‘W
hat can we do now?' asked Elica. ‘We can only pray.'

‘Can't we wade through it?' said Martin.

‘I'll go,' David volunteered. ‘It's only muck, isn't it? I put my hand down the toilet once, when I dropped my watch.'

‘The Stain will drag you down and drown you,' said the stone angel. ‘It is deeper and darker than the worst deed that any man can commit.'

‘Then what can we do?' asked Jessica.

‘We're all going to die,' said Phoebe. ‘I knew we would, as sure as clocks are clocks. Tickity-tock, tickity-tock!'

Mrs Crawford stood up and said, ‘I'll have a try. I've already had a very long life.'

‘No!' Jessica protested. ‘You heard what the angel said: you'll be dragged down and drowned, and all for nothing!'

‘There is one way,' said the stone angel. ‘Every statue has a gift – a gift that was given by whoever carved it. If a statue so wishes, it can move, just once, but
only
once. Many statues never use that gift; they prefer to stay still forever, happy in the knowledge that they could move if they wanted to. Some statues give their gift to people who need it more than they do. That's why disabled people touch the statues of saints, in the hope that they can walk again.'

‘I don't know what you're trying to say,' Jessica interrupted impatiently. ‘Look, the Stain's pouring into the garden!'

Joel started to cry again, and Margaret picked him up, but Jessica could see by the expression on her face that she was just as frightened as her baby brother. A crackling fork of lightning hit a nearby tree and set its branches alight, like a terrible candelabrum, and then the sky was split by a deafening rumble of thunder.

‘I have a gift which all angels have,' said the stone angel. ‘I can fly … just once, if I want to. Or else I can give that gift to somebody else. To you, Jessica, so that you can cross the Stain and reach your wallpaper again.'

‘What?' said Jessica, in disbelief.

‘Come here,' said the stone angel. ‘Stand in front of me, and let me fold my wings around you.'

‘I won't be able to fly,' said Jessica.

‘How many things have you seen here that you didn't think possible? Did you think that roses could talk to you, or that your wardrobe could try to eat you alive? Come here, child, there isn't much time.'

‘Go on, Jess,' Renko urged her. ‘What else are we going to do?'

Jessica felt a brief warm surge of happiness that Renko had given her a nickname. Jess. Hesitantly, Jessica walked up to the angel and stood in front of it. The Stain was pouring thickly into the cemetery now, between the gravestones, and there were screams and groans and sickly wallowing noises.

The angel smiled down at Jessica so blindly and sweetly that Jessica felt a lump in her throat. Then it folded its wide wings around her and embraced her, and even though its wings were carved from stone she felt as if they were real feathers, soft and gray, and that here in the angel's embrace she was as close to heaven as she would ever get while she was alive.

‘Now,' said the angel, and took its wings away. Jessica turned, and all of the others were looking at her expectantly.

‘I don't know what to do,' said Jessica, in desperation. ‘Do I flap my arms? What?'

‘My darling, you just fly,' said the angel.

Jessica slowly extended her arms, as wide as she could, and it was then that she felt the most extraordinary fizzing sensation passing through her, from her head to her toes. At the same time, she literally shone, like one of the Light People, and she could see her light illuminate the faces of all the Pennington children, and Renko, Elica and Mrs Crawford, as if they were witnessing a miracle.

Which, in a way, they were. Jessica rose silently from the grass, with her arms still outstretched, and glided over the cemetery gardens, over the Stain, a golden kite without a string. She flew toward the overgrown garden, and without stopping she flew straight toward the wallpaper pattern. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and when she opened them again she was standing in her bedroom.

Immediately, frantically, she started searching for the stain. It wasn't behind the curtains. It wasn't behind her dressing-table mirror. She dragged out the closet and shone her flashlight behind it, but it wasn't there, either.

‘Please, please, please,' she repeated. She knew that the others had only a few minutes left before they were all engulfed.

She pulled out her bed and looked behind the bedhead – and there, at last, she saw it: a wide brown stain in the shape of a pig's head, but she knew that it wasn't really a pig's head. It was Mrs Pennington's blood, from the evening fifty-two years ago when her husband had stabbed her to death and left her looking as if she had been daubed all over with red paint.

Jessica opened her bedroom door and ran downstairs. Grace was in the kitchen, polishing the range. ‘You children back already?' she said. ‘Where's Epiphany? Upstairs? You tell that girl to come down here and start her homework!'

Without saying a word, Jessica hurtled into the scullery, picked up a zinc pail and noisily filled it with hot water. ‘What you doing there, Jessica?' Grace wanted to know. ‘If there's anything needs cleaning up, I can do it!'

Jessica opened the cupboard under the sink and found a scrubbing brush and a pack of scouring-powder. She limped through the kitchen and back upstairs, leaving Grace standing by the range shaking her head. ‘You just tell Epiphany to come down and make a start on her math!'

Back in her bedroom, Jessica pushed her bed further away from the wall and sloshed half the hot water onto the wallpaper. Then she sprinkled scouring powder on the brush and began to scrub at the stain as hard as she could.