The Woman Who Died a Lot: A Thursday Next Novel (37 page)

“Why destroy them?” asked Landen.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Perhaps to give another copy greater value, a little like the plot of
Goldfinger.
But given the risk involved, it hardly seems worth it. Besides, Jack Schitt is a highlevel operative with a top One Hundred Laddernumber—why would he waste his time on a lost work of Homer’s?”

“And why
didn’t
he want the defenestrator’s copy when he’d found that it had already been cataloged?”

There was no good answer to this either. But at that moment, Tuesday walked in, and the matter was quickly dropped in lieu of something that I
think
was more pressing but still didn’t know what it was.

“Okay,” said Landen, “we’re all here, and it’s almost eight o’clock. What’s this all about, hon?”

“I can’t remember.”

Landen raised an eyebrow. “Aornis?”

I said nothing and, after handing the cordless drill to Friday, told him to secure the three doors that led into the kitchen.

“Through the doorframe?” he asked, since the doors were all Regency period doors and had architraves.

“Do it now.”

So he did, and the screws bit deep, splintering the wood and looking shockingly untidy. I could only hope that we weren’t due a visit by English Heritage’s militant wing anytime soon.

“What now?”

I told them all to sit down and explained to Tuesday that Jenny didn’t exist—never had, in fact, that she was just a mindworm created by Aornis Hades in order to mess with our heads.

“That’s crazy,” said Tuesday. “She came into my lab to say hello to Gavin not half an hour ago.”

“No, you only
remember
seeing her. Like all the other memories you have of her.”

“So I didn’t rescue her when she got into trouble swimming on that holiday on Rùm?”

“None of it happened. Jenny is an implanted memory. A mindworm.”

Tuesday thought for a moment. “Okay, let’s just say that’s real. I can see that. But now that I know she’s a mindworm, I can deal with it.”

“You can’t, because you’ll
forget
that you have a mindworm. That’s part of the mindworm. In many ways it’s a burden on us, not you. Here,” I said, “write it on the back of your hand.”

I passed across a pen, and she wrote “Jenny is a mindworm” on the back of her hand.

I passed a sheet of paper to Friday. “You’re taking minutes. A rough idea of what’s happened, with the time. All pertinent points listed.”

“Okay,” he said. “So where does screwing the doors closed come into this?”

“I don’t know. But something doesn’t add up, which began with the obvious question I asked myself: Why Tuesday? Wouldn’t the mindworm be
more
effective on me or Landen? I then got to thinking that maybe it once was— which would explain why I have a tattoo on the back of my hand and no one else does.”

I showed them the tattoo.

“I had this done two weeks ago, and the only plausible explanation is that I was then the one with the mindworm. And if Aornis is still in Swindon, then it’s entirely possible she might be living under our very noses. In the house, perhaps.”

They were all silent and looked at one another.

“You have evidence for that?” asked Friday.

“None—but there is quite often stuff left out, fridges left open, doors closed when they should be opened, and the booze levels fall a bit quicker than they should. It’s the obvious place to hide. Where better than in plain sight?”

“But what can we do about it?” asked Tuesday. “I mean, if she’s in the house and can change our memories retrospectively, who’s to say we will even remember this?”

“There’s been a development,” I said. “For the past few days, I’ve been meaning to go into Image Ink and find out why I had this tattoo put on my hand. I forgot every time.”

“Senior moments,” opined Landen.

“Maybe not,” I said. “What if I
did
go in all those times and every time I did, I was met by an exasperated tattooist who told me the same thing all week? And how annoyed do you think I would be once I knew I’d know nothing about it after leaving the tattooist’s?”

“I’d imagine you’d be pretty annoyed.”

“Me, too. So annoyed, in fact, that I’d try to do something about it. In fact, I probably
have
been doing something about it all week. I woke up with a black eye and skinned knuckles on Tuesday.”

“One of my motorbikes had mud all over the wheels this morning,” said Friday, who was still writing the minutes furiously. “Someone was chasing me all over the estate on it on Wednesday night. The thing is, no one knows how to start that bike but me.”

“Then
you
were the one riding it. Chasing Aornis, I presume. You may even have caught her. But then she got to you. You forget you captured her, and she slinks away.”

“I had a bruise above my eye and skinned knuckles when I woke up this morning,” said Landen.

“I think we’ve all been battling Aornis all week—but just have no memory of it.
We may even have had meetings like this.
All attempts to capture her have failed. We may even have made the same mistakes again and again, because without any recall we can never learn.”

“Okay,” said Tuesday, “that sounds totally whacked, but yes, I sometimes get the feeling I’m being watched, and the clothes in my cupboard get moved and smell of Organza when I don’t use scent. The thing is, how do we capture someone like that?”

“Back at Image Ink, I probably asked myself the same question. I may even have been making preparations. I found this an hour ago.”

I held up my hand and peeled off the Band-Aid. There, in small letters was tattooed:

Secure family in kitchen for 7:00
P
.
M
.

“You had that written?”

“I think so. I have no idea what’s going to happen, but what I do know is this: What is happening right now is not a memory. The only reliable course of action is one that we take instantly. We have to act compulsively, and without mercy.”

“Can we be sure that Aornis isn’t in here now?” asked Tuesday. “I mean, what if she’s making us forget her almost the same instant that we see her?”

There was no simple answer to this, and we all looked around nervously. Landen even opened the broom cupboard.

“If that is the case,” he added unhelpfully, “anything we said at the beginning of this conversation might not actually be what we said at all.”

“The minutes reflect pretty much my memory of what’s happened,” said Friday, scanning the handwritten sheet carefully.

“We’re safe in here,” I said. “At least for the time being.”

Tuesday picked up the cordless drill and stood.

“What are you doing?”

“Letting Jenny in.”

We exchanged glances.

“There is no Jenny, Tuesday.”

“Bullshit. She’s been crying outside the door to be let in for the past ten minutes, and you’ve been telling her to piss off for as long.”

“Is she talking now?”

“No.”

“How long since she stopped?”

“Ten seconds. What’s the problem?”

“Look at your hand, Tuesday.”

She did, and there was “Jenny is a mindworm” written in her own handwriting.

“Now look at the minutes Friday has been jotting down.”

She did, and there was nothing about Jenny listed at all. She sat back in her chair, thoroughly confused.

I beckoned everyone closer and lowered my voice.

“The reason you can’t hear her now is that she’s only in your memory. Jenny’s not outside—Aornis is.”

“But what this tells us,” said Landen, “is that her power through a closed door is limited to the person with the mindworm. If she could get to us all at once, we would have opened the door by now, Friday’s minutes would have been destroyed and all of this forgotten.”

“Right,” said Friday, “and ten seconds must be about the limit of her manipulative horizon.”

We heard the boards creak outside, and we exchanged nervous glances.

“Aornis?” I called out, my voice sounding less confident than I might have wished. “We know what you’re up to.”

“You have no idea what I’m up to,” came a familiar voice from just outside the door. It was Aornis. “You’ve figured me out sixteen times already in the two years I’ve been living here, but I always win. Whoever controls the past controls the present, Thursday. Screwed the doors shut, eh? Good move. The last time you locked the doors, but the keys are all missing now, aren’t they?”

“We’ll defeat you,” I called out.

“From inside a locked room? No. I’ll get to you all eventually. Pretty soon you’ll all start remembering the holiday on Rùm, the one where Tuesday rescued Jenny from drowning. The only reason you’ve noticed my presence this time is that I’ve been moving the worm around before cementing it permanently in all of you. After that, my power over the whole family will be complete, and we can enter a new, joyous era of me as your unpaying guest and you all as my compliant servants.”

“Not this time, Aornis,” I said.

“I’m getting memories of Jenny,” said Landen, “small and giggly and on that holiday.”

“Me, too,” said Friday, logging the occurrence on the sheet of paper in front of him. I, too, was getting them, now—not just holiday memories but old ones, of a painful birth. It seemed real, though I knew it wasn’t—but it would doubtless become so.

“I’m getting the birth now,” said Landen. “You?”

I nodded, and a phone started ringing. It wasn’t our phone, it was a cell phone somewhere, and I glanced at the clock—it was eight o’clock precisely.

“Not mine,” said Friday, patting his pockets.

“Yours,” said Landen, and I searched through the pockets of my jacket where it was hanging on the back of the door. I found nothing, but the ringing was
definitely
from there, so I searched the jacket until I found it—a vibrating lump sewn into the lining.

I slit the lining open, and a phone dropped out. I quickly pressed the answer button and put the instrument to my ear.

“Hello, Thursday,” came a voice I didn’t recognize. “Do you know who is speaking right now?”

“Not a clue.”

“She’s more powerful than I imagined,” said the voice. “We’ve spoken six times in the past week. I’m the Cleaning Lady. Does that ring a bell?”

“No.”

“Listen carefully. I’m outside the main gates. You have to let me in and then keep Aornis occupied in any way you can. She can delete on a ten-second horizon, so you cannot let her out of your sight for that long or she’ll be gone for good. Even if you’ve forgotten the plans we made earlier, you will still be able to access those erased memories by acting on impulse. Let your instincts take over.”

She then gave me some hurried instructions, told me not to fail, wished us good luck, and the phone clicked dead. I turned to look at everyone as the memories of Jenny learning to walk came creeping back.

“Was that the Cleaning Lady?” came Aornis’ voice from outside in the hall. I ignored her and beckoned Friday and Tuesday closer.

“I need you two to open the security gates,” I whispered, “so remind each other within a ten-second time frame. This is all you have to do, and if you feel the urge to do something random on instinct, then go with it— they’ll be forgotten recalls. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Landen, you’re to cause disorder in Aornis’ mind. Mnemonomorphs are highly attuned to recall, so I want you to just lose yourself in your memories. It’s only when we’re forming new memories that she has a pathway in. On constant recall you’ll be nothing but a distracting buzz in her head, and she can’t get to you. Do that from here.”

“I’m getting Jenny’s eighth birthday,” he said.

“We booked her a magician.”

“Who turned up drunk.”

“It seems so real.”

“It might as well be.”

“Where’s your pistol?” I asked.

“I don’t remember.”

“Blast,” I muttered, for Aornis was already putting a few safeguards in place. I handed Friday the cordless drill.

“Fed up with this. Let’s deal with Aornis for good.”

Friday, Tuesday and I positioned ourselves at the door. I turned back to look at Landen, who had his head in his hands and was thinking hard, deep in his own thoughts. I listened at the door for a moment, and when I couldn’t hear anything, I signaled to Friday, who unscrewed the door. As soon as it was open, they both dashed out.

“Open the security gate no matter what,” said Friday, “and repeat this order.”

“Open the security gate no matter what,” repeated Tuesday, “and repeat this order.”

“Open the gate no matter what,” continued Friday as they ran down the corridor, “and repeat this order.”

I trod quietly into the hall, then into the living room. There was no sign of life—nothing. I could feel the memories of Jenny coming back, and already a sense of confusion was rising on the edge of my conscious mind, the sort of feeling you get when waking from a deep slumber and you’re not sure where you are—mixed with having a word on the tip of one’s tongue and that odd empty feeling when you walk into a room not knowing what you’re doing there.

I walked to the fireplace simply because I thought I should, and I touched the cold marble. I picked up a vase and turned it upside down. A note fluttered out. My fingers might have been trembling slightly as I unfolded it. I already knew who it was from.

“I’ve been in New Zealand for the past six months,” the note read, “so no, I’m not in the house. Everything that has just happened to you—the Cleaning Lady, the sealing of the kitchen—it’s all merely memories, a time-released gift from me to make you realize the futility of even considering you can rid your mind of me. I’ll let you savor this frustration for the next half minute, and then it will fade. The joy of all this is that I can screw with you and your family as many times as I want and you’ll just never get it.”

It was signed “Aornis.”

“Hello, Mum,” said Tuesday as she walked in. “What are you doing?”

“Did you open the security gates?”