Restoration (47 page)

  When it grabbed Dutch's ankle there had been a ripple of disgust through the crowd that had echoed the policeman's cry. That ripple intensified as the barely-human body began to pull itself up Dutch, hand over crispy hand. It left sticky, yellow handprints in the man's uniform trousers as it reached higher, grabbing at his shirt.

  "Jesus," Dutch moaned, reaching out to help and trying not to upchuck over the damn thing, "someone give me a little help here, what you say?"

  The reporters said nothing, but Miles pushed his way past them and jogged over towards the policeman. The last thing he wanted was for the creature to be aware of him but he couldn't watch the poor Lieutenant struggle on his own.

  "Oh," the creature said, noticing him even as it continued to pull itself up the policeman's body, "if it isn't my favourite dealer in antiques and pithy remarks. How are you enjoying Florida, Miles? Be careful on the roads, the drivers here are nuts." It chuckled and a piece of its cheek fell off and landed on the tarmac with sound of an egg dropping from its carton and exploding on a sideboard. This was more than Dutch could stand and he fought to tear the thing off him, Miles tried to help, screwing up his face as his fingers dug into the black tar of the prisoner's back. Carruthers was at his side, grabbing the thing's hands and trying to tug them off the policeman's clothes.

  "Get off me!" the thing roared and both Miles and Carruthers fell back, pushed away mentally rather than physically. Lieutenant Dutch Wallace's eyes rolled up inside his head and he ceased trying to defend himself, allowing the prisoner to pull itself up onto his back. It poked its sticky head over his shoulder, strands of meat pulling between the policeman's cheek and its own as it looked from side to side, surveying the horrified crowd with creamy eyes.

  "Right," it said, "best foot forward." No more than a puppet, Dutch began to stride towards the building site.

 

 

"Who was he?" said Ashe, stepping over to Mario's body. He looked over his shoulder at the pigeon. "Who was he?"

  "Nobody important," the bird replied, "we need to get out of here, one last stop remember?"

  Ashe looked down at Mario, the dying Italian grinned. "Every dog has his day."

  Ashe looked to Tom. He was splayed across the floor, legs and arms twisted. The only consolation Ashe could think of was that he must have died instantly. As he thought about that for a second he decided that was no fucking consolation at all. All of this made him so sick he could barely think.

  "Build not break," the pigeon said, turning its head on its side. A door appeared in the middle of the room, it clicked open and Ashe could smell the ocean on the other side.

  "Come on!" the pigeon shouted. "Get both of them dumped before the younger Tom sees them."

  Ashe had forgotten all about Tom's younger self, passed out from drink next door. Before he would lift a finger though he wanted the House to understand one thing.

  "Everyone's important," he said, "absolutely everybody."

  "Whatever," the pigeon replied, "now come on!"

 

 

As the prisoner rode Dutch's back into the Home Town construction site, most of the reporters finally gave up on their story.

  "Fuck it," said Joey Spencer, summing up the feeling of most of them. He dropped his camera from his shoulder, the tape with the road accident now followed by footage of the dirt at his feet. He got into his truck and noticed his hated anchor, Tyler Mercer running towards him in the rear-view mirror. He briefly considered driving off without her but decided that would only make assholes out of them both and reached over to pop open the passenger door.

  "Quickly," he shouted, though if he'd been asked to explain why they needed to get out of there so fast words would have failed him. It was an instinctual thing, something terrible was about to happen, he knew it for a fact, and if this van could get him out of here before it did then he would be a happy man. She climbed in, looked at him, and without saying a word, he gunned the engine and pulled out onto the highway, narrowly missing Miles and Carruthers as he did so.

  Miles had got to his feet first and dragged Carruthers out of the way as the van swerved past them. "What's it doing?" he asked. "What the hell's in there that it wants?"

  "I've no idea," Carruthers admitted. "But any chance we have of stopping it is slowly slipping away."

  "Stopping it?" Miles almost laughed. "It's just lived through a car crash that would have pulverised a rhino, what the hell are we supposed to do to stop it?"

  "No idea about that either," Carruthers admitted, "but it's hurt, we can see that, and if it can be hurt it can be killed."

  "Really? Not sure I follow the logic of that if I'm honest."

  Carruthers shrugged. "Me neither but it makes me feel a bit better so I intend to stick with it."

  They walked back towards the building site, the reporters running either side of them, getting into their vans and cars. There was a look on their faces, a vacant switch towards self-preservation. None of them were talking, they just wanted to be far away. Miles didn't blame them, walking towards the site was like pushing against something strong but invisible. His subconscious begging him to pay attention, to do as he was told and run, as fast and as far away as he could manage.

  "Can you feel that?" he asked Carruthers. "It's hard to walk. Like my body wants to do anything but this…"

  Carruthers nodded, his face twitching and teeth clenched.

  Ahead of them, Dutch had stopped moving, the creature on his back reaching towards the sky with one blackened hand. Above their heads the air began to distort, light refracting and space folding as the creature pushed out, forcing its cremated fingers into a gap in reality that only it could see. The sky split, a solid bisection of the world above them, as if a bread knife had been passed through the air and parted it. Beyond was darkness, a void between their reality and whatever other existence the prisoner was aiming for. Then they began to see shapes in that void, nothing they could fix on, just a sense of movement. Something moving just out of the corner of their eyes.

  The prisoner seemed delighted to see those moving shapes, to him –
it
– they were reassuringly familiar.

  There was noise, a squealing feedback, a needle forced against its groove. A wet scream of rubber against rubber. That alone was almost more than they could stand, their hands pressed to their ears in a pointless attempt to drown it out.

  Things moved around them, nothing they could see. It was like swimming at night and feeling the brush of dark shapes against you.

  This is pointless, Miles thought, this is not something we can fight, this is beyond
anything
we're designed to deal with.

  Then there was a flood of light, as dark as egg yolk, pumping up from the prisoner and into the darkness above. This was it, this was going home.

 

 

Ashe walked through the rain, firing his gun at the window of the bar and trying not to remember Tom's dead face as he saw the man's younger self scrabble for safety beneath the booth table.

  He stared at Elise instead, saw her as Tom had. As a beautiful and special woman.

  He had barely been able to talk to her at the strip joint where she worked. Just handed her the box and left.

  "Nearly there," the pigeon had said as Ashe walked down the street to stand across the way from Terry's bar and wait.

  "I never stood a chance at changing all this did I?" Ashe asked.

  "No," the pigeon replied, hovering under an awning to keep dry. "There was only ever one way to deal with him, like it or not."

  Beyond the cracked glass Tom and Elise vanished and Ashe sagged. Almost done.

  He went inside to retrieve the box. When he returned to the sidewalk, Sophie was waiting for him.

  The street shook. "It's happening now," she said, "feel it?"

  He nodded. She took his hand. "It's for the best."

  Her face twitched and for a moment she flickered like a badly tuned TV station.

  "What is it?" asked Ashe.

  "Renegade progressing faster than anticipated," she replied, her voice that of the Grumpy Controller rather than her own. "Need diversion."

  A door appeared in the centre of the sidewalk, Sophie turned to him. "Go home, there's nothing left for you to do. I miss you."

  She vanished and, after a moment, Ashe stepped through the door.

 

 

"This'll do," said the Grumpy Controller, reappearing on the library screens. "We can't wait any more. Set her down."

  Alan laid Sophie gently on the wood of the bookcase and took a step back.

  "What are they going to do to her?" asked Hawkins, behind him.

  "It's more a case of what she's going to do to them," Alan replied, "this is all Sophie. They're not forcing her."

  "Alright then," said Penelope, "what's
she
going to do?"

  "Restore the House," Alan said, "bigger and more powerful than it was before."

  "And that's a good idea?" asked Ryan.

  "It's the only option we have left," Alan replied, "and whatever Ashe may have hoped otherwise I think it was always going to happen."

  "Build not break!" Sophie shouted, arching her back against the bookcase.

  "House now contemporaneous," announced the Grumpy Controller.

  "Oh yeah," said Barnabas, "one of those
contempranyusess
is it?"

  "The House exists outside time," explained Alan, "but for this to work that has to change. Think of two ships pulling alongside one another. Lashing themselves together so that one can steer the other."

  "The House is steering?" asked Maggie. "I can't say that makes me feel comfortable."

  "You should see the driver of the other boat," Alan replied.

  Sophie thrashed against the bookcase again. "Too quick, too quick!" she shouted.

  "Renegade progressing faster than anticipated," said the Grumpy Controller and the image on the screens changed from his face to the view of that field in Florida.

  "Is that Miles?" Penelope asked, craning her neck to peer at the screen. "I think it is."

  They could see both Miles and Carruthers, little more than silhouettes against the building orange light.

 

 

The orange light, so thick it positively dripped from the prisoner's hands, began to glow even brighter. Miles and Carruthers huddled together facing away from the prisoner. The earth around them rippled, the solidity of everything so close to the intrusion slipping as this reality, this world, began to lose cohesion. Looking towards the highway, Miles saw that it was whipping around, winking out of existence then returning but with the translucent look of a mirage rather than a solid thing of concrete. The buildings followed suit, stretching and fattening alternately, a world slipping in and out of focus.

  "Miles?" Carruthers' voice was faint, as barely there as everything else. "I think we've bitten off a little more than we can chew."

  "You think?" Miles replied, surprised to feel his face twisting into a smile.

  From the mess of shifting reality around them, a figure appeared, coalescing out of the liquid of dirt and air and walking towards them. It was Sophie.

  "I need your help," she said, coming to stand directly in front of them.

  "Oh well," said Miles, "you know us, always pleased to be of service."

  "I need you to slow it down," she said, "we can stop it if you buy us just a little time."

  "And how are we supposed to do that?" Carruthers asked. "Forgive me but we seem somewhat at a disadvantage."

  "I am doing my best to create a small bubble of protection around you," she replied. "You were inside me for long enough that I can do that, keep you one step outside this world."

  "Inside you?" asked Miles. "I'm sure I don't remember anything like that…"

  "It's the House," Carruthers interrupted, "not Sophie, am I right?"

  "There's no difference anymore," she replied, "we're all the House, build not break."

  "What can we do?" Miles asked.

  "Just distract it," she replied, "any way you can, a few seconds will be all I need."

  "And the chances of us surviving that?" asked Carruthers.

  "None, sorry. But if you don't none of us will survive anyway."

  "When you put it like that…" Carruthers didn't finish. He had nothing more to say.

  "If we can distract it," Miles asked, "will everyone else…?"

  "I can save them," she replied, "probably. If there's anything you want to say, they're watching…"

  "Watching?"

  "In the House. They can see you."

  Miles thought about that for a moment. "I don't want them to," he replied. "Stop them from seeing, then we'll try."

 

 

In the library the screens went blank.

  "No!" Penelope shouted. "Bring them back, I can't…"

  Alan took hold of her, tentatively at first then stronger once it became clear she wouldn't fight him. "He doesn't want you to see this," he said, "I'm sorry…"

  Ryan had stooped down next to Sophie, taking her hand and doing his best to whisper constructive thoughts. It wasn't helping her much but at least it made him feel useful.

  "I can hear the changes," Jonah whispered, "corridors unfolding, rooms cracking open… can you hear any of this?"