"Freaky," said Miles.
"And beyond my ability to comprehend, I confess," said Carruthers. "How can the human mind perpetuate something so solid?"
"The beings that built it are capable of bending reality," said Ashe. "To them it's all just clay, to play with as they like."
"And the guy they imprisoned?" asked Miles.
"Is one of them, yes."
"A creature that can create matter purely from thought, with the power to control or destroy us all on a whim?" asked Carruthers.
"That's about the size of it," admitted Ashe.
"I don't know about the three of you," said Carruthers, "but where I come from the only person we credit with those abilities is called God."
• • •
Tom was alone, Elise having danced away the hours while he slept. Night had fallen and with it the creatures of the tunnels had roamed, the insects and worms exploring his unconscious body and finding the seawater that still invaded his clothes not to their taste. They knew what the water was capable of, had seen the bodies emerging from it in the areas where it was not too diluted. They did not risk angering it here. Tom had woken for an hour or so the next day, still feverish and incapable of much beyond tears and prayers. When finally he lost consciousness again it was a blessing, both for him and for anything that roamed these cellars with sensitive hearing, his screams having carried some distance.
On the next day he woke again, still dazed and weak but with the fever broken and his thoughts once more his own. The nighttime creatures were gone, leaving little sign of their roaming (a few bitemarks in the tails of his jacket from one of the braver cockroaches, all beneath his notice). He shifted on his ledge, his arms and legs numb from the lack of movement. He stretched them, rubbing his thighs and calves to get a little life back into them. Once he felt he could move without falling flat on his face he inched off the ledge and lowered himself down into the water. It went up to his waist but was shallow enough to walk in. He began to make his way back along the tunnel.
Whitstable was enjoying himself. He had run along the corridors for some while, exploring the rooms (hoping to find something… anything… to stab with either his sharpened stake or his new toy, the piece of mirror). He found nobody, but amused himself with some wanton destruction anyway, tearing up wallpaper, engraving his name in the soft wood of an occasional table, taking a relaxing shit in a large vase of pampas grass. Sometimes he thought someone was talking to him, suggesting directions, fuelling the anger he felt towards the man and his kid. For a while he had assumed it to be Stefania; certainly he was used to her issuing commands and goading him. It didn't take long for him to recognise his mistake. For a start the voice, if he listened really intently, was male. Secondly, Stefania would never have taken care of him as this man did. When the lamps in the walls grew dim the voice had suggested where Whitsable could hide, directing him to the shadows beneath a large four-poster bed where he lay and listened to the booming feet of whatever roamed this wing of the house at night. It had been safe and comfortable and he had enjoyed his best night of sleep for months. He gave the voice thanks when he awoke, offering a bloody sacrifice of his ear lobe, sliced off by the mirror and left on the pillow like a mint in a five-star hotel. It made sense to him and he was sure that the gift would be appreciated as he continued through the corridors.
Proof – not that he had the self-doubt to need any – came a few hours later when he stumbled upon a young man, newly arrived in the house, paralysed and terrified, in an en-suite bathtub. Whitstable was overjoyed at the glories on offer, painting his thanks on the walls of the bathroom once he had finished rearranging the young man's organs to his pleasure. His new master was a fine master indeed and for Whitstable it was a joy to serve.
"I've just thought," said Miles. "If you've been and come back you must know the way out of here."
The passage had lost its stone trappings, reverting to a corridor not unlike the one in which Miles and Penelope had first explored the house. It seemed to them – and Carruthers endorsed it, having seen altogether more of the building – that this maze of corridors was the default appearance of the house. A network of seemingly innocuous walkways that led the unwary to a sticky end. Ashe had a baffling simple navigational method, turning right whenever the choice presented itself. It was as if they were constantly winding inwards to the heart of the building.
"The exit I used will be no use to us if we succeed," Ashe said. "The prisoner made it himself, with Sophie's help."
"Oh great," Miles replied, "and you didn't think to mention it?"
"I don't want to tell you any more than I have to," admitted Ashe. "You've got to understand that my telling you what I know could alter how you react, and that wouldn't be good."
"Why not?" asked Penelope, convinced her suspicions were about to be borne out. "Sounds like an excuse to me."
"I'm using what I know of the future to think of a way to change it. If you three don't do exactly what I remember you doing then that's no use."
"Well, I don't like it," moaned Miles, "you're asking for one hell of a lot of trust."
"Yes," admitted Ashe, "I am. But we're nearly there so you won't have to worry about it for long."
They turned the corner and Ashe rebounded against a barrier directly in front of them. "Something there," he muttered, holding his nose as it trickled blood.
Carruthers walked forward, holding out his hands. "Feels like glass," he said, running his palms against what appeared to be no more than thin air.
"Didn't see this coming then?" said Miles, knocking against it with his knuckles.
Suddenly the corridor in front of them rushed forward as if they were flying along it at speed.
"What now?" moaned Penelope, steadying herself against the wall as the sight of the corridor flying past robbed her of her balance. The house darkened. Turning to look over their shoulders, they saw the carpet and walls shift to re-form into a village square at night. There was a pond, a thatched pub, a winding road leading away into the darkness.
"No!" shouted Ashe, "the paintings! There were paintings lining the wall. We're there! Look!" He pointed beyond the glass and, as the corridor in front of them solidified, they saw the end of the corridor. There was a large door with a young man – whom Penelope recognised all too easily – slumped against it. In front of him was an older man and a girl. The man was reaching out to the handle of the door, unable to hear the shouts of his older counterpart, trapped as he was behind the glass of a rural watercolour hanging on the corridor wall.
"Quick!" came a voice Alan didn't recognise, distracting him from the sight of his younger self. "Let me out!" The voice was coming from behind the door Chester was leaning against. A man's voice, panicked, as if his very life was in the balance.
In this place, thought Alan, it most probably was. He reached for the handle.
"No," said Sophie "it is not good."
"Someone's in trouble, sweetheart," said Alan. "We can't ignore them."
He opened the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The prisoner sat down at his table and stroked the wood. For a moment he felt what it was to bend in the breeze, a skirt of leaves flapping around him. He felt worms and grubs burrow in his limbs before the whine of buzz-saws cut them away. Heady with the scent of sap, he rubbed his palms together to fashion six flat pieces of wood. He slotted them together, forming a box.
The
box.
He pinched the base of his brass candlestick, making molten metal that he fashioned into hinges. Holding the box open, he breathed inside, a wisp of his essence curling into the compartment. He closed the lid, trapping the tiny piece of him.
He placed the completed box on the table. As an afterthought, he picked it back up and burned a series of characters into the wood. This was something of a joke, the ancient and indecipherable Khitan script spelling "Bringer of Tricks". The first name he had been given, a signature on this work of art.
"Quick!" he shouted, aware that Alan had joined his younger self outside the door of his prison. "Let me out!"
He picked up the box and walked towards the door, sighing as, for the first time in centuries, the wood swung open. He felt a surge of renewed energy enter him alongside the air from the corridor outside. He breathed it deep.
The prisoner stepped into the corridor. "Thank you!" he said, smiling at Alan, "you have no idea how relieved I am that you came along."
"No problem," Alan replied, "have you just arrived here?"
"Oh no," the prisoner replied, "I've been here some time."
He sat cross-legged on the carpet and beckoned Sophie closer. She didn't move, Alan placing a protective hand on her shoulder. "I mean no harm," the prisoner said, offering a smile that dripped gentility. "But Sophie can get us all home if only she can be taught how." He looked at her. "You'd like to go home, wouldn't you, Sophie?" he asked. "To a place that is Right, to a place you can understand, to a place that makes sense?" She gave a slight nod. "Then sit with me," the prisoner replied, "and I will show you how you can understand everything."
"How do you know her name?" Alan interrupted, holding Sophie's shoulder more tightly.
"Oh, Alan," said the prisoner with a smile, "there's not much I don't know. Now shush, you're interrupting…" The prisoner slipped into Alan's mind, switching off a few brain functions. Alan stumbled back against the wall of the corridor and slowly dropped to the carpet.
The prisoner looked back at Sophie, reaching out to her with his mind, stroking her, reassuring her, silencing her confusion with a soft hum that only she could hear. One…two…
"Three," she said, sitting down in front of him.
"That's the way," he said, "that is good. Close your eyes for me, Sophie, and let us talk to a mutual acquaintance."
Sophie does not know what to think. Perhaps she should be Very Careful of this thing that has come out of the room. Certainly it is Very Strange. It is not a man and she is surprised Alan is not able to see this. It looks like a man in the same way a photograph of one does. But there is something underneath, something that is
not
a man. Sophie is scared of this thing, she thinks of the faces of the tribe in the jungle, the hungry looks they had given her. She thinks this thing is just as hungry.
She sits down with it. Too scared to do anything else. When it tells her to close her eyes she closes them. At least now she does not have to look at it, this is good.
"Listen to me," it says. She will try, she does not always manage to listen to everything people say but she thinks she'll manage now. She is too scared that she will miss something important. Something like "I am going to eat you now, Sophie" or "If you don't tidy your room now I will kill you, Sophie". She will listen very hard, so that she doesn't get in trouble.
"This house is not like a normal house," the voice is saying, and this is a silly thing, of course the house is not like other houses, she doesn't need someone to tell her that, she is not stupid. It is not even a bit like other houses. It looks like a house in the same way a photograph of one does. "It talks, Sophie, it wants you to understand it. Will you try?"
Sophie nods, though she has actually missed what the creature said, despite promising herself she wouldn't do so.
"Good." It takes gentle hold of her fingertips and as much as she doesn't like the physical contact there is another intrusion that displeases her more: she can feel it touching her thoughts. The Inside Sophie that does all the thinking and feeling and understanding is being touched and nothing should ever be able to do that,
nothing.
She is about to shout out her displeasure when the Inside Sophie is grabbed, smothered and folded into a small parcel from which it cannot escape. Sophie is now empty.
Tom had been wading for hours and could no longer feel his legs. When he saw the foot of the elevator shaft an extra spurt of energy carried him on, eager to be out of the water. He was not in the least prepared for the sight of Elise, whose body had washed up on the farthest edge of the platform. He had hoped she would have been carried far away, never to be seen again. He didn't want to remember her as this bloated thing, eyes robbed by insects in the night.
This was not her. This was what she left behind.
Still, he couldn't bear to have it lying there. He rolled the body into the water, sobbing as he did so, trying not to notice the way the skin slid on the bone as it caught on the concrete. He couldn't bear this. Couldn't bear it at all.
He ran to the elevator, determined to be away from there, but the call button had no intention of working, and the cage was stuck at the top of the shaft. There was no easy way for this to be done but do it he must. He began to climb.
"There must be a way out," said Miles, "if you remember being there…"
"I just don't know any more," Ashe said, "I'm sure this is already different." He rapped his knuckles on the glass. "Stupid of me. If time can be altered then how naïve did I have to be to think that I was the only one that could do it? The bastard wanted me out of the way and he's done a damned good job of it." He closed his eyes, concentrating. "If I try and remember what happened now… it's mixed up, all different…I don't meet myself… Shit!" He kicked at the glass. "I really fucked this up."
"I say!" called Carruthers who had wandered off without the others noticing, strolling around the village to see what he could find. They turned to look and he was pointing at the nose of a vintage car that was emerging from behind the pub. "Anyone know how to drive one of these stupid things?"