Slade House (11 page)

“Yes, actually. Have you seen Todd?”

“I've seen how besotted he is with
you
.”

I so,
so
badly want to hear this that I join her, just for a moment. The leather sofa's cold. I sink deep into it. It makes that dry squelchy noise like new snow or polystyrene that someone needs to invent a proper adjective for. “Do you think so?”

“Big-time, Sal. It wasn't for paranormal experiences that Todd showed up tonight. When are you guys going to hook up? Tonight?”

I act cool, but I'm happier than I've been for…ever, actually. “That depends. These things have their own pace.”

“Bollocks, girl.” Fern's cigarette hisses in her glass. “You set the pace. Todd's a keeper. Lovely guy, really. Reminds me of my brother.”

Fern's never mentioned a brother—not that we've talked much. “Is your brother a student, or an actor, or…?”

“He's not anything these days. He's dead.”

“Oh God! I'm famous for my big mouth, Fern, I—”

“It's okay. It's fine. It happened, um…five Christmases ago. It's history.” Fern stares at the body of her cigarette bobbing in her drink.

I try to fix my blunder. “Was it an accident? Or illness?”

“Suicide. Jonny drove his car over the edge of a cliff.”

“Bloody hell. I'm sorry. Why did he…I mean, no, forget it, it's not—”

“He didn't leave a note, but the cliff was a field away from the road to Trevadoe—our ancestral pile near Truro—so we know it wasn't an accident.” Fern acts a smile. “He chose Daddy's vintage Aston Martin as his sarcophagus, too. The act
was
the suicide note, you might say.”

“I didn't mean to probe, Fern, I'm sorry, I'm an idiot, I—”

“Stop apologizing! Jonny was the idiot. Well, that's not fair, Daddy had died two years before, Mummy had gone to pieces, so Jonny was juggling the legal mess, the death duties, a degree at Cambridge of course,
and
battling depression—unknown to us…His ideas about poker debts and honor, though, they really
were
idiotic—utterly, utterly idiotic. We could've just sold off an acre or two.” We watch the misted-up night through the misted-up window. “That's why I joined ParaSoc, if I'm honest,” says Fern. “If I could just see a ghost, just once—a Roman centurion or a headless horseman or, or Nathan and Rita Bishop, I'm not fussy…Just one ghost, so I
know
that death's not game over, but a door. A door with Jonny on the other side. Christ, Sally, I'd give
any
thing to know he didn't just…
stop,
that stupid afternoon. Anything. Seriously. Like”—Fern clicks her fingers—“that.”

I unpeel my face off a big cold leather sofa in a dark alcove. “Safe from Harm” is still on, so I can't have slept long. Fern's gone, but sitting a foot away is a guy dressed in a furry brown dressing gown and not a lot else, judging by his hairy legs and hairy chest. Right. He's not eyeing me up. Actually he's just staring at the blank wall—I thought there was a bay window there, but obviously not. The dressing-gown man's not that old, but he's going bald. He has sleepless owlish eyes and an almost-monobrow. Do I know him? Don't see how. It's strange that Fern would just vanish like that, straight after spilling her guts about her brother, but that's actresses for you. Maybe she was pissed off that I nodded off. I ought to find her and put it right. Poor Fern. Her poor brother. People are masks, with masks under those masks, and masks under those, and down you go. Todd must be back in the kitchen by now, but the sofa won't let me get up. “Excuse me,” I ask Mr. Dressing Gown, “but do you know the way to the kitchen?”

Mr. Dressing Gown acts like I'm not even there.

I tell him, “Thanks, that's really helpful.”

His frown deepens, then, in slow motion, he opens his mouth. Is it supposed to be funny? His voice is dry as dust and he leaves big gaps between his words: “Am…I…still…in…the…house?”

Jesus, he's stoned out of his Easter egg. “Well, it's not Trafalgar Square, I can promise you that.”

More seconds pass. He's still talking to the blank wall. It's bloody weird. “They…took…a…way…my…name.”

I humor him: “I'm sure you'll find it again in the morning.”

The man looks towards me, but not at me, as if he can't quite place where my words are coming from.
“They…don't…e…ven…let…you…die…pro…per…ly.”

So far, so loony tunes. “Whatever you've been smoking, I'd steer clear of it in future. Seriously.”

He cocks his shaved head and squints, as if hearing words shouted from a long way off. “Are…you…the…next…”

I actually giggle; I can't help it. “What, the next Messiah?”

The sofa vibrates to the giant bass in “Safe from Harm.”

“Get a big strong black coffee,” I tell Mr. Dressing Gown.

The man flinches, as if the words were pebbles hitting his face. Now I feel bad about laughing at him. He screws up his red eyes like he's trying to remember something. “Guest,” he says, and blinks about him, Alzheimer's-ishly.

I wait for more, but there isn't any. “Am I the next guest? Is that what you're asking? The next guest?”

When the man speaks again he does this utterly incredible ventriloquist's trick where he mouths his words a second or two before you hear them.
“I…found…a…wea…pon…in…the…cracks.”

His sound-delay trick's amazing, but his mention of weapons triggers a warning light. “O
kay,
thing is, I don't need a weapon, so—” but from out of his dressing-gown pocket the sad, half-naked stoner produces a short silver spike, about six inches long. First I recoil in case it's a threat, but actually he's offering it to me, like a gift. The nonspiky end's decorated with a fox's head, silver, small but chunky, with jeweled eyes. “It's lovely,” I'm saying, twizzling it. “It looks antique. Is it some kind of a, a geisha's hairpin or something?”

I'm alone on the leather sofa. Nobody's in the corridor. Nobody's anywhere. Mr. Dressing Gown's long gone, I sense, but I'm still holding his fox hairpin. God, I zoned out again. This isn't a good habit. “Safe from Harm” has turned into the Orb's “Little Fluffy Clouds.” There was a blank wall here, I thought, but actually there's a small black iron door, exactly like the one in Slade Alley, only this one's already ajar. I go to it, crouch down, push it open and peer out, just my head. It's an alley. It looks very like Slade Alley, but it can't be because it can't be. My knees are still on the carpet, in Slade House. It's dark, with very high walls and no people. It's as quiet as the tomb. As they say. There's no “Little Fluffy Clouds” out here; it's as if my head's passed through a soundproof membrane. About fifty meters away to my left, the alley turns right under a flickery streetlamp. To my right, about the same distance away, there's another lamp, another corner. It can't be Slade Alley. I'm in a corridor in the house, fifty, eighty, a hundred meters away—I'm no good with distances. So…drugs? Drugs. If one frickhead put hash into no-hash brownies, another frickhead-to-the-power-of-ten could have sprinkled something trippier in the punch bowl. It happens. Two students Freya knew in Sydney went to Indonesia, ate some kind of stew with magic mushrooms in it, and thought they could swim home to Bondi Beach. One of them was rescued, but the body of the other was never found. What do you actually do if you find an impossible alleyway on an acid trip? Go down it? Could do. See if it takes me back to Westwood Road. But what about Todd, waiting for me, right now, in the kitchen, wondering where I am. No. I'd rather get back. Or…

Or…

What if Slade House is the hallucination, and this door's my way back? Not a rabbit hole into Wonderland but the rabbit hole home? What if—

Someone touches my back and I jerk back inside, into the corridor in Slade House, to the music, to the party, startled twice over to find the Wicked Witch of the West peering down. “Hey, Sally Timms. You okay down there? You lost something?”

“Hi”—I search for her name—“Kate.”

“Are you feeling all right? Did you lose something?”

“No, no, I was just wondering where this door led to.”

The witch looks a bit puzzled. “What door?”

“This door.” And I show Kate Childs—the blank wall. The doorless blank wall. I touch it. Solid. I get up, wondering how I bluff this, trying to buy time. My thoughts revolve. Yes, I'm hallucinating; yes, I ate or drank something with drugs in it; no, I can't handle telling Kate that someone's drugged me. “Look, I'm sloping off home.”

“But the night's still so young, Sally Timms.”

“Sorry, it's this head cold. My period's started.”

Kate removes her knobbly Wicked Witch mask to show an anxious sisterly face framed by Barbie-blond hair. “Let me summon you a cab, then. It's a genuine magic power I was born with. Click of the fingers.” She starts patting herself down like at airport security. “I just happen to have an extremely handy state-of-the-art cellphone in one of these…witchy pockets.”

A taxi would be nice, but I've only got £2. “I'll walk.”

She looks dubious. “Is that such a great idea, if you're ill?”

“Positive, thanks. The fresh air'll do me good.”

The unmasked witch isn't sure. “Why don't you ask Todd Cosgrove to get you home safe and sound? One of the last gentlemen in England, is Todd.”

I didn't know Kate knew Todd. “Actually, I was just looking for him.”

“He's looking for you too, Sally. Up in the games room.”

Tonight feels like a board game co-designed by M. C. Escher on a bender and Stephen King in a fever. “Which way's the games room?”

“The quickest way's back through the TV room, down the hall, up the stairs and keep climbing. You can't go wrong.”

Everyone's glued to the screen the way people are when something major's happened. I ask a half-turned werewolf what's happened. “Some girl's been abducted, like.” The werewolf's a Northerner. He doesn't look at me. “A student, a girl, from our uni.”

“Jesus. Abducted?”

“Aye, that's what they're saying.”

“What's her name?”

“Polly, or Sarah, or…” The werewolf's drunk. “Annie? She's only been missing five days, but a personal item was found, so now the police are afraid it's, like…a real kidnapping. Or worse.”

“What kind of personal item?”

“A mirror,” mumbles the werewolf. “A makeup mirror. Hang on, look…” The TV shows our student union building, where a female reporter's holding a big pink microphone: “Thank you, Bob, and here on the city campus tonight the mood can best be described as grim and sober. Earlier today the police issued an appeal for any information on the whereabouts of Sally Timms, an eighteen-year-old student last seen in the vicinity of Westwood Road on Saturday night…” The reporter's words all gloop together. Missing? Five days? Since Saturday? It's
still
Saturday! I've only been in Slade House for an hour. It must be another Sally Timms. But a photo of my face fills the screen and it's me, it's me, and the Sally Timms on the screen is wearing exactly,
exactly,
what I'm wearing now: my Zizzi Hikaru jacket and Freya's Maori jade necklace that arrived today. That I signed for at the porter's lodge only twelve hours ago. Who took that photo of me? When? How? The reporter thrusts her big pink microphone at Lance,
Lance
Arnott,
who, apparently, is dancing in this building right now—while also speaking to a TV reporter two miles away, saying, “Yeah, yeah, I saw her just before she disappeared, at the party, and—” Lance's cod-fish lips keep moving but my hearing kind of cuts out. I should be switching on the lights and shouting, “NO NO NO, people, look, there's been some stupid mistake—
I'm
Sally Timms, I'm here, it's okay!” but I'm afraid of the fuss, the shame, of being a spectacle, of being a news story, and I just can't. Meanwhile Lance Arnott's making a doubtful face: “ 'Fraid so, yeah. She had
serious
trouble adjusting to college life. Bit of a tragic figure: vulnerable, not very streetwise, know what I'm saying? There were rumors of drug use, dodgy boyfriends, that kind of stuff.” Now I'm angry, as well as frightened and confused as hell. How
dare
Lance say all that about me on live TV? For not fancying him, I'm a tragic, vulnerable druggie? The reporter turns back to the camera. “A clear picture is emerging of the missing student as an unhappy girl; a loner, with weight issues; a girl who had trouble adjusting to real life after private schools in Singapore and Great Malvern. Following the discovery of her compact mirror in, uh,” the reporter shuffles her notes, “Slade Alley earlier today, the friends and relatives of Sally Timms, while still hoping for the best, must, as the hours go by, be fearing the worst. This is Jessica Killingley, reporting live for
South Today;
and back to you in the studio, Bob.”

God knows what Freya, Mum and Dad must be thinking.

Actually, I
know
what they're thinking: they're thinking I've been murdered. They urgently need to know I'm fine, the police need to call off the search, but I can't just announce it here. I pull back from the werewolf and bang into a sideboard. My hand touches something rubbery: a Miss Piggy mask. Thanks to Isolde Delahunty et al. I've got bad associations with pigs, but if I don't put it on, any second now someone'll see me, point and shriek, so I just loop its cord round my head and cover my face. Cool. A bit of breathing space. What was the reporter saying about my compact mirror? I used it in the kitchen after Todd left. Didn't I? I check in my handbag…