By the police officer’s standards, the Key would not be a metalwork project he needed to keep, but a long, thin, and weird-looking knife. It would be taken away from him for sure, and then . . .
Arthur would have an asthma attack. He had his inhaler, but after his running, fighting, and smoke inhalation, he didn’t think it would do any good at all.
He suddenly realised the Key was the only thing keeping him alive.
‘Hey, kid! Hurry up!’ shouted the policeman.
Eight
THE POLICEMAN’S VOICE was more menacing through his mask, made deeper and buzzy and much less human. The last student had gone on the bus, and now the sergeant’s full attention was on Arthur.
That shout made up Arthur’s mind, and a plan suddenly popped into his head. Without further thought, he put it into action.
‘I’m . . .’ said Arthur. ‘I’m . . .’
He pushed the Key deep into his pocket, the point ripping through the bottom so the metal slid through and touched his leg. Then he let go.
The effect was instantaneous. Though he still had some contact with the Key, his breathing immediately changed. It was as if someone had winded him, reducing the capacity of his lungs by fifty per cent with a single blow.
‘Asthmatic!’ wheezed Arthur, collapsing to the ground ten paces from the sergeant. Despite the protection of his biosuit and Arthur’s explanation, the sergeant’s first reaction was to jump back onto the steps of the bus, as if he were seeing the new virus in immediate action.
Arthur fumbled in his other pocket for his inhaler and brought it to his mouth. He also rolled over so that more of the Key touched his leg. About half of it was through his pocket, the metal cool upon his skin, bringing ease to his lungs. He hoped that the circle on the end of the Key would prevent it from falling out of his trouser leg if he stood up.
‘Medic!’ shouted the policeman. As he shouted, he undid the strap on his holster and his hand went to the butt of his pistol. ‘Medic!’
‘Asthma!’ wheezed Arthur again. He took a couple of puffs, then held the inhaler up so the policeman could see it. Arthur hadn’t counted on the man being so afraid of the virus that he might shoot.
The paramedic who’d checked Arthur out a minute before was already running over, as was another paramedic, several policemen, and a pair of soldiers. It looked like Arthur’s sudden collapse was the invitation to action they’d all been waiting for. He hoped the soldiers weren’t as jumpy as the policeman. They both had some sort of hi-tech submachine gun.
The paramedic was the first to reach him. He held the inhaler up and helped Arthur take some puffs, at the same time flipping his bag open and checking through it for something. Though Arthur couldn’t see his face through the mask, it was clear he was cross.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were an asthmatic?’ he asked. ‘It’s okay, Sergeant. He’s got asthma, not the Sleepy Plague. Besides, shooting patients would just spread bits of infectious material around, so I wouldn’t recommend it.’
‘S . . . s . . . sorry,’ gasped Arthur.
‘Okay, just relax,’ replied the paramedic. He turned to his partner. ‘We’d better take him. Grab the roller, will you?’
Within a minute, the two paramedics had injected Arthur with something that helped him breathe much more easily, though it made him sleepy and he had to fight against that. Then they bundled him onto a stretcher, ran it across the street, and slid him, stretcher and all, into an ambulance.
In three minutes, they were on their way, overtaking the buses as they headed for the designated quarantine hospital. Arthur was counting on it being East Area Hospital, because that was the closest to the school. It was also close to the House, and if he was right they would pass that weird building on the way, though on the other side and several blocks over from the road he took going home.
Arthur was also counting on the promised intervention by ‘Will,’ who he supposed was the same person or entity as ‘The Will’ that Mister Monday and Sneezer had talked about, who he presumed was also the giver of the Atlas. He figured that if he could get close to the House, it would do something to help him get inside.
Unfortunately he couldn’t see out from inside the ambulance. He was loosely strapped to the stretcher so he couldn’t sit up, and there were no windows anyway, except for the one in the hatch at the back.
‘Where are we going?’ Arthur asked.
‘East Area,’ said the paramedic who was sitting next to him. ‘Don’t talk. Save your breath.’
Arthur smiled. At least that part of the plan was working. Now he just had to wait five minutes or so, when they would be driving along Parks Way, which would border the House. Then something would happen, he felt sure.
They drove on, without the siren. As the minutes passed – or what felt like minutes – Arthur began to get anxious. What if he was wrong? It seemed like they must already be past Parks Way, just about to turn into the hospital. He must have been wrong about the Will helping out. Or maybe it had tried and failed. Perhaps Mister Monday’s minions were trying some scheme of their own to regain the Key . . .
Then there was a sudden noise on the roof of the ambulance and it slowed dramatically.
‘What in the world!’ exclaimed the driver. Except that through his mask it came out as, ‘Werrin der wold!’
The other paramedic climbed past Arthur to stare out through the front to the windshield. Arthur took the opportunity to draw the Key from his pocket. As he gripped it firmly, all traces of his asthma vanished.
The ambulance came to a complete stop, the drumming sound of rain now a constant roar on the roof, as if they were parked next to the ocean and the waves were crashing very close.
‘Local cloudburst!’ shouted Arthur’s paramedic to the driver. He kept leaning through to the front, only his waist and legs still in the back part of the ambulance. ‘We’ll just wait it out. The boy’s doing fine.’
Arthur took a deep breath and touched the Key to the strap at his side.
‘Release! Undo! Unlatch!’ he whispered. He hoped that would work.
The strap fell away, the click swallowed up by the sound of the beating rain. Arthur quickly whispered the words again and touched the other strap. Then he sat up, and repeated the process with the strap over his legs.
Then he threw himself forward, pulled the hatch handle, pushed the door open, and half-jumped, half-fell out into the heaviest rain he had ever experienced. Rain that actually hurt, the drops as big as his fist, so big that when they broke over his face he thought he might drown.
It was so heavy that Arthur couldn’t see a thing. Blindly, he waded around the back of the ambulance and struck out in what he hoped was the right direction. The road was already knee-deep in rushing water, the drains totally overwhelmed by the downpour.
Arthur clutched the key and pushed on, his chin tucked in to his chest to try to keep the rain out of his eyes, nose, and mouth. Water rushed past him, roaring and gurgling. He dimly heard a shout from the ambulance.
Then, all of a sudden, the rain stopped. Arthur lifted his head and looked around, only to see that the rain had not stopped everywhere. He’d walked out of it. Only a few steps behind him, it was coming down as hard as ever. But the rain was only falling on the road, and the dark cloud above wasn’t much bigger than the ambulance.
It was hard to see into this weird, incredibly localised cloudburst, but Arthur saw a blurry shape leap from the back of the ambulance. The paramedic had come after him!
Arthur tensed to run, but the paramedic didn’t get very far. The rain intensified even more, so that it was no longer individual drops but more like a solid ocean wave being dumped horizontally from the sky. The paramedic was bowled over and swept away, bobbing like a cork as he was washed down the road. Fortunately, thought Arthur, he couldn’t drown in his biosuit, with its independent supply of oxygen.
A moment later the ambulance slid sideways, accompanied by the great groan of rubber letting go, and it
followed the paramedic down the road, much more slowly. Arthur watched ambulance and man wash down the street in the strangest flash flood that anybody had ever seen. It wouldn’t take them far, but far enough for Arthur to get away. Already the rain was lessening and the cloud was shrinking.
Arthur turned away from the road. As he had hoped and half-expected, he saw the cool marble of the wall and looming up above it, the crazy architecture of the House.
Though he had lost the Atlas, Arthur still remembered the map/drawing of the House. He’d stared at it long enough, and he knew exactly where he should find the spot on the map that had been marked as Monday’s Postern. Once he was through that, he needed only to walk across to the point that was marked FRONT DOOR in one of the hall-like buildings that occupied the central mass of the House. Through the Front Door and then . . .
Then what? Arthur had no idea. But he knew he could not turn back. He had to find a cure or at least find out more about the disease the paramedic had called the Sleepy Plague. And he had to find out why he had been given the Key and the Atlas.
All the answers lay inside the House, so it was to the House he would go. Arthur walked right up to the wall, touched the cool stone surface, and – keeping one hand brushing the stone – started to walk along the wall southward towards where he thought Monday’s Postern should be.
Arthur reached the southwestern corner of the House’s border in ten minutes. He found that while he touched the wall, he couldn’t see or hear any traffic on Parks Way, or see any people in the houses or yards across the street. It was as if the street and the houses were a painted backdrop, waiting for the cast to come on that evening.
But if he moved away from the wall and stopped trailing his finger along it, then he could see cars passing by and people going into their homes. He could hear dogs barking and children crying and, most of all, distant sirens and the constant clatter of helicopters. It was clear that the quarantine had been extended past the school.
Mostly Arthur kept touching the wall. He figured that if he couldn’t see or hear other people, they wouldn’t be able to see or hear him.
Monday’s Postern was along the south wall, only a few hundred yards from the western corner. Just before he got to where he thought it would be, Arthur walked away from the wall. But when he looked for a door or a gate or some means of entry, there was nothing. Just the cold marble, smooth and shining.
Arthur frowned and walked closer. He still couldn’t see anything. So he raised the Key and touched it to the wall.
This had an immediate effect. The marble where he touched the Key glowed brightly and the dark veins in the stone began to throb and move as if they were living, fluid conduits. Ten or twelve paces away, the dark shape of an open, shadowed doorway appeared.
Arthur didn’t like the look of it, but he moved closer, keeping the Key touching the wall. As he moved, the marble quieted where he’d left and quickened where he touched.
The doorway was so black Arthur couldn’t work out whether it was open or shut. Somehow it absorbed the light, so it was like looking into the deepest shadow. That shadow could be just an image upon the wall, or it could be a deep, dark entrance to somewhere else.
Arthur felt himself shiver as he moved closer to the postern. A convulsive shiver that he was unable to stop. But he had to pass through that doorway to get to the House proper and to the Front Door.
The first step was to see whether it was open or not.
Hesitantly, Arthur reached out with the Key. He met no resistance, the silver-and-gold clock hand still shining as it sank into the darkness, though its light did not illuminate the doorway.
There was a faintly electric sensation around his hand and wrist, but it didn’t hurt. Arthur leaned forward and extended his arm so that it disappeared up to the elbow in the inky doorway. It still didn’t hurt, and he couldn’t feel anything on the other side. There was no resistance, no hard object for the Key to strike.
Arthur pulled out his hand and inspected it. Both the Key and his arm looked exactly the same as they had before he reached into the doorway. His skin hadn’t been transformed or injured or affected in any way that he could see or feel.
Still Arthur hesitated. Not being able to see what was beyond the open doorway scared him. He’d also lost his backpack and the salt, his weapon against the Fetchers. It was probably still in the ambulance.
But he had the Key and he couldn’t help feeling excited as well as afraid. The House and all its mysteries – and answers – lay behind this wall. As far as he knew, Monday’s Postern was the only way in.
He had to go through.
Arthur took a very deep breath, something that he wasn’t often able to do. He enjoyed the feel of his lungs expanding to their maximum capacity. Then, holding the Key in front of himself like a sword fighter about to duel, he stepped completely into the doorway.
Nine
ARTHUR STEPPED THROUGH the doorway, but not onto solid ground. Not onto any ground. He screamed as he realised he was falling through space, and Monday’s Postern was not behind him but above him, a doorway of bright light where all else around was darkness. A doorway that was receding every second as he fell away from it.
Arthur’s scream faded as he noticed that he wasn’t falling all that fast. It was more like sinking in water, though he didn’t feel wet and he had no trouble breathing. He tried kicking to see if it slowed his fall. It was hard to tell, since the distant doorway was his only point of reference, but it did seem as if it wasn’t receding quite as fast.
Arthur kicked again and tried a couple of strokes with his free hand. That also appeared to work. He was contemplating putting the Key in his belt and trying some full-on swimming when the Key suddenly jerked in his hand. It jerked again a second later, much harder, like a fisherman’s strike setting a hook in a fish. Then the Key absolutely rocketed forward, almost ripping itself out of Arthur’s grasp. If he hadn’t tightened his grip he would have lost it, to fall once more.
He held the Key as tightly as he could and got his other hand onto it as well, the muscles in his forearms taut from the effort. The Key kept accelerating like a tiny rocket, fortunately without the flaming exhaust, dragging Arthur through the inky blackness.
He still couldn’t see anything. Without the sensation of air rushing past, or anything to look at, it was very hard to tell how fast he was travelling. But Arthur somehow felt that the Key was still accelerating, going faster and faster and dragging him along with it. After a while – Arthur could not guess how long – the end of the Key began to glow with a red heat and sparks began to shower from it. Arthur flinched and tried to turn his face away, but the sparks flew out at an oblique angle, as if there was some sort of shield around him, and the end of the Key he held remained cool.
A long time passed. Arthur tried to look at his watch, but it had slipped around his wrist and he didn’t dare let go of the Key to move it back. He tried counting seconds and then minutes, but kept forgetting what number he was up to.
Eventually he gave up. At least an hour had passed, he was sure of that. His fingers were very cramped and sore, and his shoulders hurt. But not as much as they should have. Once again he could feel the power of the Key lessening pain and stiffness, in the same way that it helped him to breathe.
Eventually he even became bored and started to look around, peering into the darkness in the hope of seeing something. Anything. But apart from the glow of the Key and the sparks, there was no light. Occasionally, as a spark faded in the distance, Arthur thought he saw just the hint of shapes moving parallel with him, but when he stared even harder he couldn’t see a thing.
Then, just as he was starting to be afraid again, thinking that he might never get anywhere, the Key suddenly changed direction. Arthur yelped as his body swung around to follow his outstretched arms and his legs jackknifed wildly.
He could see something ahead now. A pinprick of light that became a dot and then a distinct rectangle. It got closer and closer an
d closer with alarming rapidity and Arthur saw it was another illuminated doorway – one much, much bigger than Monday’s Postern. They were going to smack into it at a very high speed, at least a hundred miles an hour and he would be smashed into a pulp –
Arthur closed his eyes as they hit . . . and fell over something, going no faster than if he’d tripped walking around his bedroom with his nose glued to a book.
Arthur opened his eyes, flailed his arms, and smacked into the ground. He lay there for a second, feeling a tremendous surge of relief as he felt honest-to-goodness solid matter under his hands. He still held the Key, no longer glowing, and the absence of significant pain suggested no bones were broken or other damage done.
But where was he? He became aware that he was lying on grass – he could see and feel that. Slowly Arthur got to his feet and looked around. The first thing he noticed was that the light was strange. Dim and cool and orange-pink, like sunset when the sun hung low and orange. But there was no sun in sight.
Arthur stood on a bare, high hill of close-mown grass that looked down upon a sea of white . . . no, not a sea. A fog bank had settled to the limits of the horizon. And there were buildings in the fog, dim shapes that he couldn’t quite make out. Spires pierced the grey-white mist, and towers, but none was close enough for him to see any identifying features.
Arthur looked up next, expecting to see the sky. But he didn’t and he instinctively crouched at what he saw instead.
There was no sky. There was a ceiling in its place, a vast domed ceiling of dull silver that stretched for miles in every direction. Its epicentre was about six hundred feet directly above the hill where he stood. Swirls of purple and orange moved across the silver surface of the dome, providing what little light there was.
‘Pretty, ain’t it?’ said a voice behind Arthur. A man’s voice, deep and slow. Not threatening, just the sort of remark anyone at a lookout might make to another visitor.