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So you need to have the Key to open the Atlas, thought Arthur. He left the Key where it was and looked up postern in the dictionary.
postern n. 1. a back door or gate. 2. any lesser or private entrance.
So there was Monday’s gate in the otherwise seamless wall. Arthur put the dictionary back and thought about it. The picture of the House and the indication of an entrance was clearly an invitation of sorts. Someone… or something… wanted him to go into the House. But could he trust the Atlas? Arthur was pretty certain that Mister Monday and Sneezer were enemies, or – at the very least – not friends. He wasn’t sure about the whirling type, the words in the air that had taken over Sneezer and then given him the Atlas. He supposed those words had given him the Key too, or at least had tricked Mister Monday into doing it. But what was their… its purpose?
There was only one way to find out. He would take a look at the House as soon as he could, either tomorrow or on Sunday, and try to get in through Monday’s Postern. Depending on what he saw there, he’d tell Ed and Leaf and get their help. They would probably be able to see the place, he thought. After all, they’d seen the dog-faced searchers when the assistant principal couldn’t.
In the meantime, he would hide the Key and the Atlas in the best hiding spot he knew. In the belly of the life-size ceramic Komodo dragon that sat on the rooftop balcony just above his bedroom. The dragon – a huge lizard really – was hollow, but its mouth wasn’t open enough for anyone with hands larger than Arthur’s to reach inside.
No sooner was this mission accomplished than his mother came home, immediately transforming the place from a quiet retreat into a family home. After checking on Arthur, she insisted that Bob emerge from his studio so the three of them could have dinner together. Emily was happy and relaxed, because Arthur was OK and because for the first time in ages she was not working frantically to develop a vaccine or cure for some new influenza strain. Winter was coming, but it looked to be a reasonably quiet one from the point of view of sickness.
Arthur’s plan to go look at the House failed its first test when he was not allowed out of his own house.
“You have to take it easy,” his mother instructed him. “Reading, television or the PC, that’s it. At least for the next few days. We’ll take another look at the situation next week.”
Arthur frowned, but he knew better than to argue. It was going to drive him crazy thinking about the House just waiting there, but he knew he had no choice. If he sneaked out now, he would be grounded for a month. Or a whole year.
“I know it’s hard not doing anything active,” Emily said as she gave him a hug. “But it’s only for a while. Give yourself a chance to get stronger. I think a day at school will be tough enough for you on Monday.”
Forbidden to do anything useful, the weekend dragged for Arthur. His two elder siblings were busy with their usual mysterious activities, Bob was still composing, and Emily was called back to work to check out some strange admissions at the local hospitals. She was regularly called whenever there was a rise in patients exhibiting unusual symptoms. Arthur always felt tremendous relief when she came home and said it wasn’t serious. Losing his birth parents as he had, Arthur was acutely aware of the potential tragedy in every report of a new flu strain or potential virus outbreak.
By Sunday morning, Arthur couldn’t resist the temptation to get the Atlas and the Key back out of the Komodo dragon. Once again he held the Key and the Atlas open to the same double-page spread with the picture of the House. Though there were no details and no other writing besides the note about Monday’s Postern, Arthur spent hours looking at it, trying to work out how it was all put together and what it must look like inside.
Finally it was Sunday night. Arthur restored the Key and the Atlas to the lizard’s innards and went to bed early, in the hope that sleep would come and make the time go quickly. But of course it didn’t. Arthur tossed and turned and couldn’t fall asleep. He read most of a book and then simply lay there, thinking.
When he did fall asleep, it wasn’t for long. Something made him wake up. He didn’t know what it was for a second. He turned his head and saw the digital clock, red in the darkness. 12:01.
One minute after midnight, on Monday morning.
There was a noise at his window. A scratching noise, like a tree branch scraping. But there was no tree in the garden tall enough or close enough to reach Arthur’s bedroom window.
Arthur sat up and snapped on the light, his heart suddenly pounding. His breathing began to get more difficult, his breaths shorter.
Control, thought Arthur desperately. Calm. Breathe slowly.
Look at the window.
He looked and jumped back, falling down behind his bed. There was a winged man hanging in the air a few feet from the window and easily fifty feet above the ground. An ugly, squat man with a jowled face like a bloodhound. A dog-faced man. Even his rapidly beating wings, though feathery, looked ugly and unkempt, dirty grey in the light that spilled out from Arthur’s room.
He was wearing a very old-fashioned dark suit and carried a bowler hat in his hand. He was using the crown of the hat to tap on the window.
“Let me in.”
The voice was distorted through the glass, but it was low and husky and full of menace.
“Let me in.”
“No,” whispered Arthur, thoughts of every vampire film he had ever seen flashing through his head. This was no vampire, but it was asking to be let in, so maybe the same principle applied. It couldn’t get in unless it was invited. Though in the films, they normally hypnotised someone to let them in—
The bedroom door opened.
Arthur felt as if his heart had stopped cold in his chest. Someone had been hypnotised already! They would let the dog-faced thing in…
A long forked tongue flickered around the door, tasting the air. Arthur picked up the dictionary, which he’d left by the bed, and raised it above his head.
A scaly head followed the tongue, and a clawed foot. Arthur half lowered the dictionary. It was the ceramic Komodo dragon from the balcony. No longer ceramic, or maybe it still was, but alive and moving swiftly.
Slowly, Arthur climbed back on to the bed and pressed himself against the wall, keeping the dictionary ready to throw. Whose side was the Komodo on?
“Let me in.”
The big lizard hissed and ran forward, shockingly fast, to rear up in front of the window. It opened its mouth and brilliant white light shot out, powerful as a searchlight. The dog-faced man screamed and threw up his arms, his bowler hat flying through the air. Still screaming, he hurtled backwards, wings thrashing, and disappeared in a coiling puff of coal-black smoke.
The lizard shut its mouth with a snap and the intense light disappeared with it. Then the reptile slowly stepped back from the window and ponderously trod to the end of Arthur’s bed, where it stopped and settled into its usual stance. Its skin rippled as if every muscle was suddenly galvanised, then it was still. Totally ceramic once more.
Arthur dropped the dictionary, picked up his inhaler and took several puffs. As he went over to shut his door, he was surprised to find that his legs were trembling and could barely support him. On the way back, he patted the Komodo dragon on the head and briefly considered putting his hand in to check that the Key and the Atlas were still there. But that seemed like something that could best wait for morning.
Back in bed, Arthur looked at the clock again as he pulled up the covers. Surely it was no accident that this had happened first thing on Monday.
It’s going to be an interesting day, he thought. Deliberately he turned away from the window, so he wouldn’t be tempted to look at it, and closed his eyes.
He left the light on.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ue56d0d18-6d4d-51e9-8e9e-ecd766c1a5f5)
Arthur was not looking forward to school that Monday morning, to a much greater degree than usual. After the events of the early morning he had enjoyed only brief moments of sleep. He’d woken up every hour or so in incipient panic, his breathing ragged, only to find that his light was still on, the night was quiet and there was no trouble. The Komodo dragon stayed immobile at the foot of his bed, and with sunshine filling the room it was hard to believe that the lizard had come alive and beaten back the horrid thing that had flown up to his window.
Arthur wished he could dismiss it as a nightmare, but he knew it had been all too real. The Key and the Atlas were proof of that. He thought about leaving them behind, inside the ceramic lizard, but after breakfast he took them out and put them in his school backpack. Then he checked the garden carefully through the window before running out to join his mother in her car.
In their previous town, Arthur had walked to school. Here, he would eventually ride his bike. But his parents insisted it was too soon for him to exert himself and his mother said she would drive him to school before going to the lab.
Normally Arthur would have made some show of independence, particularly in front of his brother Eric, who he looked up to. Eric was both a basketball and a track star. He’d had no trouble adapting to the new school. He was already on his way to being a stand-out player for the school’s top basketball team. He had his own car, bought with the proceeds of a weekend job as a waiter, but it was assumed that he wouldn’t take Arthur to school in it unless there was a real emergency. Being seen with his much younger brother was bad for his image. Despite saying this, he had intervened at various important stages in Arthur’s life in their old city, putting bullies to flight in the mall or rescuing him after bicycle mishaps.
Arthur was glad to go with his mother that morning. He had a strong suspicion that the bowler-hatted dog-faced men – or manlike creatures – would be waiting at the school. He’d spent quite a few wakeful hours earlier worrying about how he could protect himself against them. It would be particularly difficult if adults couldn’t see them, which seemed possible from what Ed had told him.
The trip to school was uneventful, though once again they passed the bizarre castle-like monstrosity that had replaced several suburban blocks. To test whether his mother could see the House, Arthur commented on its size, but just as with his dad, his mother could only see the normal buildings. Arthur could remember what the area used to look like, but try as he might, no matter how he squinted or suddenly turned his head to look, Arthur could only see the House.
When he looked directly at the House, he found that it was too cluttered, complex and strange to reveal its many details. There were simply too many different styles of architecture, too many odd additions. Arthur got dizzy trying to follow individual pieces of the House and work out how they all fitted together. He would start on a tower and follow it up, only to be distracted by a covered walkway, or a lunette that thrust out of a nearby wall, or some other strange feature.
He also found it very difficult to look at exactly the same place twice. Either the House was constantly changing when he wasn’t looking at it, or the car was going past too quickly and the complexity and density of all the various bits and pieces made it impossible for his eyes to regain their focus on any particular part.
After they passed the House, Arthur was put off guard a bit by the normality of the rest of the drive to school. It seemed just like any other morning, with the usual traffic and pedestrians and children everywhere. There was no sign of anything strange as they drove up the street the school was on. Arthur felt relieved and comforted by just how boringly normal it seemed. The sun was shining; there were people everywhere. Surely nothing could happen now?
But as he stepped out of the car at the front entrance and his mother drove away, he saw five bowler-hatted, black-suited men suddenly rise like lifted string puppets between the cars in the teachers’ parking lot, off to his right. They saw him too and began to move through the ranks of cars towards him. They walked in strange straight lines, changing direction in sudden right angles to avoid pupils and teachers who obviously couldn’t see them.
More of the dog-faces appeared to the left. Arthur saw them issue out of the ground, as dark vapours that in a second solidified into dog-faced, bowler-hatted, black-suited men.
Dog-faces to the left. Dog-faces to the right. But there were none straight ahead. Arthur ran a few steps, his breath caught, and he knew he couldn’t run and risk another asthma attack. He slowed down, his eyes darting across at the two groups of approaching dog-faces, his mind rapidly calculating their speed and direction.
If he walked quickly up the main promenade and the steps, he would still get inside before the dog-faced men caught up with him.
He did walk quickly, ducking around loitering groups of students. For the first time, he was grateful nobody knew him at this school, so no one said, “Wait up, Arthur!” or tried to stop him to talk, which would have happened for sure at his old school.
He made it to the steps. The dog-faces were gaining on him, were only ten or fifteen yards behind, and the steps ahead were crowded, mainly with older students. Arthur couldn’t push through them, so he had to zig and zag and weave his way through, calling out, “Sorry!” and “Excuse me!” as he went.
He was almost at the main doors and what he hoped would be safety beyond when someone grabbed his backpack and brought him to an abrupt halt.
For an instant, Arthur thought the dog-faces had caught him. Then he heard words that reassured him, despite the threatening tone.
“You knock the man, you pay the price!”
The boy who held Arthur’s bag was much bigger, but not really mean-looking. It was hard to look ultra-tough in a school uniform. He even had his tie done up properly. Arthur picked him instantly as a would-be tough guy, not the real thing.
“I’m going to throw up!” he said, holding his hand over his mouth and blowing out his cheeks.
The not-so-tough guy let go of Arthur so quickly that they both staggered apart. Because Arthur was expecting it, he recovered first. He jumped up the next three steps at one go, only a few yards ahead of a swarm of bowler-hatted dog-faces. They were everywhere, like a flock of ravens descending on a piece of meat. Pupils and teachers got out of their way without realising why they were doing so, many of them looking puzzled as they suddenly stopped or stepped sideways or jumped aside, as if they didn’t know what they were doing.
For a second, Arthur thought he wouldn’t make it. The dog-faces were at his heels and he could hear them panting and snorting. He could even smell their breath, just as Leaf had said. It stank of rotten meat, worse than an alley full of rubbish at the back of a restaurant. The smell and the sound of their slathering lent him extra speed. He lunged up the last few steps, collided with the swing doors, and fell through.
He was up again in an instant, ready to run, his breath already shortening, lungs tightening. Fear gripped him, fear that the dog-faces would come through the doors and that he would have an asthma attack and be powerless to resist them.
But the dog-faces didn’t come through the school’s main entrance. Instead they clustered at the doors, pressing their flat faces against the glass panels. They really did look like a cross between bloodhounds and men, Arthur saw, with their little piggy eyes, pushed-in faces, droopy cheeks and lolling tongues that smeared the windows. Kind of like Winston Churchill on a very bad day. Strangely, they had all taken their bowler hats off and were holding them in the crook of their left arms. It didn’t help the look of them, for their hair was uniformly short and brown. Like dog hair.
“Let us in, Arthur,” rasped one, and then another started and there was a horrible cacophony as the words all got mixed up. “Us, In, Let, Arthur, Arthur, Us, Let, Let, Arthur, In, In—”
Arthur blocked his ears and walked away, straight down the central corridor. He concentrated on his breathing, steadying it into a safe rhythm. Slowly, the baying calls from outside receded.
At the end of the corridor, Arthur turned around.
The dog-faces were gone, and once again pupils and staff were pouring through the doors, laughing and talking. The sun was still shining behind them. Everything looked normal.
“What’s with your ears?” asked someone, not unkindly.
Arthur blushed and pulled his fingers out of his ears.
The dog-faces obviously couldn’t get him here. Now he could focus on surviving the usual problems of school, at least till the end of the day. And he could try to find Ed and Leaf. He wanted to tell them what had happened, to see if they could still see the dog-faces. Maybe they could help him work out what to do about it all.
Arthur had expected to see them at the gym in preparation for the cross-country run. He had a note excusing him, but he still had to go and give it to Mister Weightman. First he had to suffer through a whole morning of maths, science and English, all of which he was good at when he wanted to be, but couldn’t focus on today. Then when he went to the gym, making sure to go through the school rather than across the quadrangle, he was surprised to find that the class was only two-thirds the size of the previous week. At least fifteen children were missing, including Ed and Leaf.
Mister Weightman was not pleased to see Arthur. He took the note, read it and handed it back without a word, turning his head away. Arthur stood there, wondering what he was supposed to do if he didn’t go on the run.
“Anyone else got a note?” Weightman called out. “Has some class been held back? Where is everybody?”
“Off sick,” mumbled a kid.
“All of them?” asked Weightman. “It’s not even winter! If this is some sort of prank, there will be serious repercussions.”
“No, sir, they really are ill,” said one of the serious athletes. “A lot of people have got it. Some sort of cold.”
“OK, I believe you, Rick,” said Weightman.
Arthur looked at Rick. He was clearly a clean-cut athletic star. He looked like he could have stepped out of a television advert for toothpaste or running shoes. No wonder Weightman believed him.
Still, it was strange for so many pupils to be off sick at this time of year. Particularly since biannual flu vaccinations had become compulsory five years ago. It was only two months since everyone should have had the shots, which usually offered total protection against serious viruses.
Arthur felt a small familiar fear grow inside him. The fear that had been with him as long as he could remember: that another virus outbreak would take away everyone he loved.
“All right, let’s get started with some warm-up exercises,” Weightman called out. He finally looked at Arthur and summoned him over with a crook of his finger.
“You, Penhaligon, can go and play tiddlywinks or whatever. Just don’t cause any trouble.”
Arthur nodded, not trusting himself to speak. It was bad enough when other kids made fun of him, but at least there was a chance he could get back at them, or make a joke out of it or something. It was much harder to do that with a teacher.
He turned away and started walking out of the gym. Halfway to the door, he heard someone run up behind him and then there was a touch on his arm. He flinched and half crouched, suddenly afraid the dog-faces had got in. But it was only a girl, someone he didn’t know. A girl with bright pink hair.
“You’re Arthur Penhaligon?” she asked over the laughs and giggles from the rest of the class, who’d seen him flinch.
“Yes.”
“Leaf sent me an e-mail to give to you,” she said, handing him a folded piece of paper. Arthur took it, ignoring the catcalls from the boys behind her.
“Ignore those mutants,” the girl said in a loud voice. She smiled and ran back to join her particular clique of tall, bored-looking girls.
Arthur put the paper in his pocket and left the gym, his face burning. He wasn’t sure what made him more embarrassed: getting told to go and play tiddlywinks by Weightman or getting a note from a girl in full view of everyone else.
He took refuge in the library. After explaining to the librarian that he was excused from gym and showing her his note, he took a good look around, then decided to sit at one of the desks on the second floor, next to a window that overlooked the front of the school and the street.
The first thing he did was build some walls on the desk out of large reference books, to make a private cubbyhole. Unless someone came up and looked over his shoulder, nobody would be able to see what he was reading.
Then he took the Key and the Atlas from his bag and laid them down with Leaf’s note on the desk. As he did so, he caught the flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked out the window and, as he had more than half expected, there were the dog-faces. Sliding out from between parked cars and trees. Slinking forward to gaze up at his window. They knew exactly where he was.
Arthur had hoped he would feel more secure if he could actually see them. That he would feel braver for having exposed himself at the window. But he didn’t. He shivered as they congregated into a mob, all of them staring wordlessly up at him. So far, none had shown wings like the one that had flown to his window the night before. But perhaps that was only a matter of time.
Forcing himself to look away, he imagined that he was a white mouse tearing its gaze away from a hooded cobra. That having done so, he would be able to escape.
He felt a very strong desire to flee into the deeper parts of the library, to hide between the stacks of comforting books. But that wouldn’t help, he knew. At least here he knew where the dog-faces were. What they were was another question, one of the many Arthur was making into a mental list.
Arthur unfolded the print out of Leaf’s e-mail and read:
To: pinkhead55tepidmail.com (http://pinkhead55tepidmail.com)
From: raprepteam20biohaz.gov (http://raprepteam20biohaz.gov)
Hi Allie
This is me, Leaf. can you pass this message on to arthur penhaligon? boy who flaked on the run last Monday? kind of thin + pale, about ed’s height hair like gary krag v. important he gets this. gotta run. thanx
Leaf
