"We do it!" Pablo hissed between his teeth, "climb on me, let rope take both weights."
"Jesus…" Elise grabbed a chair from the dining table to give her some extra height. She reached up so that she could wrap herself around Pablo's midriff and then kicked the chair away. The two of them dropped towards the floor, Pablo grunting as Elise landed on him.
"Stay still," he mumbled from beneath her. "You ballast."
"Not something I've been called before," she said, "and believe me, it's not often I can say that in my line of work."
Pablo began to slowly pull the rope, feeding it hand over hand. The dumb waiter rose the final foot or so and locked into position. The hatch burst open and Tom tumbled out, not wanting to trust his life to the small box a moment longer.
"Second floor," he moaned, holding his wounded leg, "haberdashery and heartache."
Pablo let go of the rope.
"You can get off me now," he told Elise.
"Oh, sure." She rolled off him and got to her feet. "Sorry."
"Is no problem for me, most fun I have in long time."
Using the back of one of the dining chairs, Tom pulled himself to his feet. "Way to go, El Toro, you strong like bull."
"And you fat like pig." Pablo smiled.
"Grab his legs, honey," Tom said to Elise, "and help me shove the little bastard back down to the kitchen."
Elise ignored him, walking over to a pair of drawn curtains at the far end of the room.
"Let's see where we are shall we?" she said, pulling them apart.
"Is nothing." Pablo said, looking over her shoulder, "just night."
"Like a Sunday night in New Jersey," Tom added. "Weird… can't see the ground."
"Or the stars," said Elise, "or
anything
."
"Yeah, well, let's keep moving." Tom limped around the table, towards a pair of double doors. He pulled them but they stayed resolutely shut. "You have got to be kidding me," he sighed.
"Try push," said Pablo, coming up behind Tom and shoving hard at the wood. The doors swung open and both he and Tom tumbled forward. Running flush with the doorway was a large wooden slide, bright blue and yellow. Tom and Pablo careered down it, coming to earth in a pit of white ping-pong balls.
"This house is so uncool," Tom said.
They were in a large playroom, every available space taken over by toys and games. One part of the floor was painted as if for Snakes and Ladders, another offered a climbing frame. There were rocking horses, lined up as if for their own Grand National; a merry-go-round painted with stars; a trampoline surrounded by fat beanbags. Everywhere you looked there were teddy bears, wooden soldiers, puppets dangling from their strings.
"Shall I just leave the two of you to play for a while?" Elise asked from the doorway.
"Hell no, come and join us, I'll give you first go on the rocking horse."
Not seeing much alternative, Elise dropped to her haunches and slid down after them.
"Why you have playroom right next to dining room?" Pablo asked. "It make no sense."
"I don't know if you've noticed, El Toro, but not much here does." Tom climbed out of the ball pit and looked around for the door. "Well," he said pointing towards an arched passage on the far side of the room, "I don't know about you but I'm not in the mood for playtime, let's keep moving."
Pablo and Elise climbed out after him and the three of them clambered their way over stuffed toys towards the exit.
"Is creepy," said Pablo. "I not like things that try so hard to be cheerful."
"There speaks someone with a bad childhood," Tom laughed.
"No… is just very… not real," Pablo replied. "It make me nervous."
He walked on to the floorboards painted with the Snakes and Ladders board and was immediately sent shooting up into the air as the two dimensional ladder beneath his feet erupted into three dimensions. "I tell you!" he shouted, grabbing on to the rungs to stop himself falling. "I tell you but you not listen!"
"Keep back!" Tom said to Elise, tugging her arm before she set foot on the playing board. The whole thing was now a cube, the ceiling parting to accommodate it. The squares had become transparent boxes with ladders poking through the various levels. The snakes blossomed too, writhing between their demarcated sections.
"What do we do?" Elise asked, trying, and failing, to see a way around the game.
Tom pointed towards an alcove in the wall that was now spotlit from above. In the alcove were three wooden dice, the size of a man's head. "I think we're expected to play."
"Play how?" Pablo shouted before he found himself being pulled back down the ladder he was on and yanked along the confined passage to the starting square. He tried to climb out but was unable to move. "I stuck" he said, "give me number box, thing."
"'I speaks good English,' he says," Tom muttered, walking over to the alcove and lifting out the three dice. "There is no way this can end well, kids, you do know that, don't you?" He fumbled one of the dice and it fell to the floor, rolling along until it stopped on a six. "I don't know though," said Tom, "my luck's clearly on fire right now." Suddenly he flew forward, the dropped dice following on behind him as an invisible force pulled him into the game. He shot past Pablo and stopped six boxes in on the lowest level. "When will I learn to keep my goddamned mouth shut?" he shouted, the dice winding him slightly as it collided with his stomach.
Elise walked towards the other two dice, jumping out of the way as one of them flew past her and straight into Pablo's hands. "Looks to me like we're not being given a choice," she said, picking up the remaining dice and walking towards the start of the game.
"Lady first!" said Pablo with a smile.
"Thanks a bunch." She squatted down and gave the dice a gentle roll. "Four," she said, flinching in anticipation. She was pulled inside the board, landing two boxes short of Tom.
"Hey, honey," he said, rubbing at his sore leg, "how's it hanging?"
"OK." Pablo rolled. "Only two!" He waited to be pulled along but nothing happened so he shuffled forward.
"Why the hell are we playing fair?" Tom said. "I'm damn sure this place won't. Screw the dice, let's just get ourselves out." He made to shuffle forward but, as one, all the snakes turned to face him, their flat tongues tasting the air, their glistening black eyes staring soullessly. The closest one to him hissed, tilting its head on one side and opening its mouth to expose fangs wet with venom.
"Careful, Tom," said Elise, "something tells me the rules are strictly enforced."
"Yeah… stay cool, snake eyes…" Tom sat back in his alloted box holding out his hands in surrender.
"Roll the dice," said Elise, "quickly."
"OK, OK." Tom rolled the dice down the passage in front of him. "Give me a five, baby," he muttered, eyeing the foot of ladder that the score would see him reach. It was a four. "OK, cool, four, I can groove with four." Cautiously, he walked forward on his hands and knees. "Just the four, OK? I'm sticking to the rules, man, let's be chilled with the whole fang thing…" He reached his box and sat down. The snakes turned back in the direction they were facing.
"That could have been nasty," said Elise.
"The game ain't over yet," Tom replied. "What do you think's going to happen when one of us lands on a snake square?"
"I do not like snakes," said Pablo.
"Can't say I'm too fond myself," muttered Elise, "especially when they're the size of subway trains." She rolled her dice "Five." She crawled along to one box behind Tom.
Pablo rolled six, ending up one behind Elise.
"One or a five, one or a five." Tom rolled a five and shuffled along to the fifteenth box where a ladder took him up to thirty-four. "Bite me," he muttered, sticking his middle finger up at a snake that coiled a couple of levels above him.
"Don't encourage them," Elise whispered, rolling a two and also climbing up a ladder, albeit only to box twenty-eight, a row beneath Tom.
"Hey," said Pablo, rolling his dice, "you two are leaving me behind." He also got a five, taking him to box fourteen.
"What can I say, El Toro?" Tom rolled a six. "It's all in the wrist. Oh…" The six placed him in box forty but he had to go straight past a snake's jaws to do so. "Shit…" he muttered, pressing his back against the wall of the cube, keeping as far away from the snake as possible. Its head followed him as he slid through box thirty-nine. He froze, transfixed by his own reflection in its expressionless eyes. It stretched its jaws wide, great pink and blue folds of tissue hanging down around its thick fangs. "Oh Jesus…" Tom said, "this is not cool."
"Keep moving," shouted Elise. "Don't antagonise it."
"I ain't antagonising the thing," Tom replied, "I'm experiencing an honest-to-God moment of assquaking terror." Slowly, he continued to move past, pulling himself into box forty. Desperate to be as far away from the serpent as possible, he began to inch into forty-one and – at terrible speed – the snake's head darted forward, snatching his foot in its mouth.
"Hey!" Pablo shouted, running into the next box and the next, "hey, snake thing!" The snake let go of Tom and looked down at Pablo, the rest of the snakes following suit as he threw his dice at the serpent closest to him and continued to run. "Get out of way, Tom!" Pablo shouted, "and you, Elise! I take one for team."
"Don't be stupid, you whacked-out Spaniard!" Tom shouted. "They'll kill you!"
"We not get out of game alive, I think," Pablo replied. "Better one than all. Now run!"
The snakes slithered free from their positions and began to descend. Elise was forced back against the wall as one pushed its way past her.
Pablo turned on his heels and began to run back towards the first square. Hoping that the invisible forces that had pulled them in didn't reappear, he dived for the entrance, sailing through and landing on a soft bed of teddy bears.
"No way are we leaving him," Tom said, limping towards the ladder and dropping down it, just behind the last of the snakes that were chasing Pablo out into the play room. "Get to the finish line!" he shouted back at Elise, "maybe there's some way of flattening the cube."
Elise hesitated, not wanting to turn her back on Tom and Pablo. Finally – her commonsense admitting that Tom's idea was for the best – she worked her way forward.
Pablo ran towards the merry-go-round, grabbing on to it and spinning out of the way of a snake's jaw as it shot towards him. Jumping off he bounced on the trampoline and launched himself across the room to the climbing frame. He wriggled inside it, judging correctly that the gaps between the bars were small enough to keep the snakes out. They curled around the frame, hissing and bashing their heads at the bars.
Tom stepped out of the cube. With a sigh he realised that Pablo was now safer than he was. He gritted his teeth against the pain in his leg and ran for the slide just as one of the snakes caught sight of the movement and turned towards him. "I got the cold-blood blues!" he shouted, skirting the ball pit and running up the slide, "with its dead-eye shimmy and the shine of its tongue, that lowdown bastard got me on the run, if I end up feeling its pointy teeth, don't send help, send a goddamn wreath!" He ran around the dining table as the snake's head appeared in the doorway. "I've got rhythm, fork-tongue!" he shouted, grabbing one of the candelabra from the table and shoving the flaming candles in the snake's eye as it darted towards him. "Skiddley bee-bop,
pow
!" The snake reared up, bashed its head against the wall and impaled itself on the antlers of a particularly dead stag. "Double whammy!" Tom laughed.
The snake thrashed, driving the antlers deeper into its head until they found their mark, whereupon it stiffened and crashed to the floor.
"Strike one!" Tom ran to the doorway but rather annoyingly found he couldn't get through it due to the huge dead serpent in the way. "Typical…" He peered over the top of its back "How are things in España?" he shouted.
"They are OK," Pablo shouted back. "They cannot bite me, this is good thing."
Suddenly all of the snakes lifted their heads as if having heard something. As one, they turned away from the climbing frame and returned to the game cube.
"What's bugged them?" Tom wondered.
Once inside, the cube glowed briefly and then collapsed leaving a rather startled Elise on the far side of the now two-dimensional game board.
"OK…" she said, "what did I do?"
"I'm not sure you did anything," Tom replied. "Something sure as hell spooked them though."
Slowly the lights in the walls began to fade.
"Er… Tom?" Elise said, "maybe you should come back in here now, OK?"
"I'd love to, honey, but I got myself one of those reptilian blockage issues, y'know?"
"It get darker," said Pablo.
"No shit, señor," Elise replied, "but that ain't what's really freaking me."
"What gives you the freak?"
"I'm not convinced I like the idea of hanging around to see what gives a giant snake the wimwams…"
The light continued to fade.
"Tom!" Elise shouted, "we've got to get out of here, you need to squeeze past."
"Easy for you to say," Tom replied, looking at the snake. "You'd better be dead, fork-tongue." He put his hands on its dry back, preparing to pull himself on top of it when a thought occurred to him. He dashed over to the table, blew out a few of the candles and, trying not to scald himself on the hot wax, shoved them in his jacket pocket.
"Come on, Tom!" Elise shouted,
"I'm coming, I'm coming…" He pulled himself on to the snake, grimacing at the feel of its muscle beneath his hands as he pulled himself along. He had to press his face into it, forcing his chin against its scales so that he could squeeze his head under the door jamb. "Oh God…" he mumbled, trying not to panic. The snake twitched. "Oh, screw you," he said, "the motherfucker's still alive!"