The Thief of Always

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Speaking in a near-whisper for fear he’d startle her, Harvey said:

‘It looks cold.’

She glanced up at him, her face full of confusion, and then – without a word of reply – turned and bounded away through the bushes.

‘Wait!’ Harvey called, hurrying towards the lake.

Lulu had already disappeared however, leaving the thicket shaking. He might have gone in pursuit of her, except that the sound of bubbles breaking in the lake took his gaze to the waters, and there, moving just below the coating of scum, he saw the fish. They were almost as large as he was, their grey scales stained and encrusted, their bulbous eyes turned up towards the surface like the eyes of prisoners in a watery pit.

They were watching him, he was certain of that, and their scrutiny made him shudder. Were they hungry, he wondered, and praying to their fishy gods that he’d slip on the stones and tumble in? Or were they wishing he’d come with a rod and a line, so that they could be hauled out of the depths and put out of their misery?

What a life, he thought. No sun to warm them; no flowers to sniff at or games to play. Just the deep, dark waters to circle in; and circle, and circle, and circle.

It made him dizzy just watching, and he feared that if he lingered much longer he’d lose his balance and join them. Gasping with relief he turned his back on the sight, and returned into the sunlight as fast as the barbs would allow.

Wendell was still sitting underneath the tree. He had two bottles of ice-cold lemonade in the grass beside him, and lobbed one to Harvey as he approached.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘You were right,’ Harvey replied.

‘Nobody in their right mind ever goes there.’

‘I saw Lulu.’

‘What did I tell you?’ Wendell crowed. ‘Nobody in their right mind.’

‘And those fish—’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Wendell said, pulling a face. ‘Ugly boogers, aren’t they?’

‘Why would Mr Hood have fish like that? I mean, everything else is so beautiful. The lawns, the House, the orchard …’

‘Who cares?’ said Wendell.

‘I do,’ said Harvey. ‘I want to know everything there is to know about this place.’

‘Why?’

‘So I can tell my Mum and Dad about it when I go home.’

‘Home?’ said Wendell. ‘Who needs it? We’ve got everything we need here.’

‘I’d still like to know how all this works. Is there some kind of machine making the seasons change?’

Wendell pointed up through the branches at the sun. ‘Does that look mechanical to you?’ he said. ‘Don’t be a dope, Harvey. This is all real. It’s magic, but it’s real.’

‘You think so?’

‘It’s too hot to think,’ Wendell replied. ‘Now sit down and shut up.’ He tossed a few comics in Harvey’s direction. ‘Look through these. Find yourself a monster for tonight.’

‘What’s happening tonight?’

‘Hallowe’en of course,’ Wendell said. ‘It happens every night.’

Harvey plunked himself down beside Wendell, opened his bottle of lemonade and began to leaf through the comics, thinking as he leafed and sipped that maybe Wendell was right, and it was too hot to think. However this miraculous place worked, it seemed real enough. The sun was hot, the lemonade was cold, the sky was blue, the grass was green. What more did he need to know?

Somewhere in the middle of these musings he must have dozed off, because he woke with a start to find that the sun was no longer dappling the ground around him, and Wendell was no longer reading at his side.

He reached for his lemonade, but the bottle had fallen over, and the sweet scent had attracted hundreds of ants. They were crawling over it and into it, many drowning for their greed.

As he got to his feet the first real breeze he’d felt since noon blew, and a leaf, its edges sere, spiralled down to land at his feet.

‘Autumn …’ he murmured to himself.

Until this moment, standing beneath the creaking boughs watching the wind shake down the leaves, autumn had always seemed to him the saddest of seasons. It meant that summer was over, and the nights would be growing long and cold. But now, as the drizzle of leaves became a deluge, and the patter of acorns and chestnuts a drumming, he laughed to see and hear its coming. By the time he was out from under the trees he had leaves in his hair, and down his back, and was kicking them up with every racing step.

As he reached the porch, the first clouds he’d seen all afternoon crept over the sun, and their shadow made the House, which had wavered in the heat of the afternoon like a mirage, suddenly loom, dark and solid.

‘You’re real,’ he said, as he stood panting on the porch. ‘You are, aren’t you?’

He started to laugh at the foolishness of talking to a House, but the smile went from his face as a voice, so soft he was barely certain he heard it, said:

‘What do you think, child?’

He looked for the speaker, but there was nobody at the threshold, nor out on the porch, nor on the steps behind him.

‘Who said that?’ he demanded.

There was no answer, which he was glad of. It hadn’t been a voice at all, he told himself. It had been a creak of the boards underfoot, or the rustling of dry leaves in the grass. But he stepped into the House with his heart beating a little faster, reminding himself as he went that questions weren’t welcome here.

What did it matter, anyway, he thought, whether this was a real place or a dream? It felt real, and that was all that mattered.

Satisfied with this, he raced through the House into the kitchen where Mrs Griffin was weighing the table down with treats.

VI (#ulink_25b62479-cab4-58ed-81b5-79332a9fb678)

Seen and Unseen (#ulink_25b62479-cab4-58ed-81b5-79332a9fb678)

‘WELL?’ SAID Wendell as they ate, ‘what are you going to be tonight?’

‘I don’t know,’ Harvey said. ‘What are you going to be?’

‘A hangman,’ he said, with a spaghetti grin. ‘I’ve been learning how to tie nooses. Now all I’ve got to do is find someone to hang.’ He eyed Mrs Griffin. ‘It’s quick,’ he said. ‘You just drop ’em and – snap! – their necks break!’

‘That’s horrible!’ Mrs Griffin said. ‘Why do boys always love talking about ghosts and murders and hangings?’

‘Because it’s exciting,’ Wendell said.

‘You’re monsters,’ she replied, with a hint of a smile. ‘That’s what you are. Monsters.’

‘Harvey is,’ Wendell said. ‘I’ve seen him filing down his teeth.’

‘Is it a full moon?’ Harvey said, smearing ketchup around his mouth and putting on a twitch. ‘I hope so, I need blood … fresh blood.’

‘Good,’ said Wendell. ‘You can be a vampire. I’ll hang ’em and you can suck their blood.’

‘Horrible,’ Mrs Griffin said again. ‘Just horrible.’

Perhaps the House had heard Harvey wishing for a full moon, because when he and Wendell traipsed upstairs and looked out of the landing window, there – hanging between the bare branches of the trees – was a moon as wide and as white as a dead man’s smile.

‘Look at it!’ Harvey said. ‘I can see every crater. It’s perfect.’

‘Oh that’s just the start,’ Wendell promised, and led Harvey to a large, musty room which had been filled with clothes of every description. Some were hung on hooks and coat-hangers. Some were in baskets, like actors’ costumes. Still more were heaped at the far end of the room on the dusty floor. And, half-hidden until Wendell cleared the way, was a sight that made Harvey gasp: a wall covered from floor to ceiling with masks.

‘Where did they all come from?’ Harvey said as he gaped at this spectacle.

‘Mr Hood collects them,’ Wendell explained. ‘And the clothes are just stuff that kids who visited here left behind.’

Harvey wasn’t interested in the clothes, it was the masks that mesmerized him. They were like snowflakes: no two alike. Some were made of wood and of plastic; some of straw and cloth and papier-mâché. Some were as bright as parrots, others as pale as parchment. Some were so grotesque he was certain they’d been carved by crazy people; others so perfect they looked like the death-masks of angels. There were masks of clowns and foxes, masks like skulls decorated with real teeth, and one with carved flames instead of hair.

‘Take your pick,’ said Wendell. ‘There’s bound to be a vampire somewhere. Whatever I come in here wanting to find, I find it sooner or later.’

Harvey decided to leave the pleasure of choosing a mask until last, and concentrated instead on digging up something suitably bat-like to wear. As he worked through the piles of clothes he found himself wondering about the children who’d left them here. Though he’d always hated history lessons, he knew some of the jackets and shoes and shirts and belts had been out of fashion for many, many years. Where were their owners now? Dead, he presumed, or so old it made no difference.

The thought of these garments belonging to dead folk brought a little shudder to his spine, which was only right. This was Hallowe’en, after all, and what was Hallowe’en without a few chills?

After a few minutes of searching he found a long black coat with a collar he could turn up, which Wendell pronounced very vampiric. Well-satisfied with his choice, he went back to the wall of faces, and his eyes almost immediately alighted upon a mask he hadn’t previously seen, with the pallor and deep sockets of a soul just risen from the tomb. He took it down and put it on. It fitted perfectly.

‘What do I look like?’ Harvey asked, turning to face Wendell, who had found an executioner’s mask which fitted him just as well.

‘Ugly as sin.’

‘Good.’

THERE WAS A flickering family of pumpkin-heads lined up on the porch when they stepped outside, and the misty air smelt of wood-smoke.

‘Where do we go trick-or-treating?’ Harvey wanted to know. ‘Out in the street?’

‘No,’ said Wendell, ‘it’s not Hallowe’en out in the real world, remember? We’re going to go round the back of the House.’