The World House (12 page)

  "You make them sound like virgins." The renegade smiles. He is by no means certain there are any virgins left in the Khitan tribes. He has seen to a good number of them himself. Women are like horses, he has found: good for riding.

  "When it comes to battle they are," says Wanrong, "they can fight off wolves from their farms, maybe even deter the odd band of outlaws, but stand up to the Chinese? This will prove…
interesting
."

  "Well," replies the renegade, "as always, I'll see what I can do."

  Jinzhong chuckles. "Yingzhou will remember the day it was visited by the Bringer of Tricks!"

  
Indeed it will,
thinks the renegade, trying to decide what he might do on the battlefield. Perhaps he will turn the ground to swamp so it sucks the Chinese away? Or maybe animate the trees to tear them apart? As soon the ideas are visualised he is bored by them. It is sad how quickly such theatrics pall.

  Later, having infected the Chinese with a lethargy close to his own, he wades through their soporific army, hacking and slicing until there is no opposition left. Blood-soaked and apathetic, he sits down on a rock and considers where to go next. Six months of being the personal deity to the Khitans is no employment for one of his abilities.

  He needs to think bigger.

 
 
 

"Who's hungry then?" the man repeated, stepping out of the cupboard. There was no more than five foot of him and a good portion of that was the hat: white and puffy, the sort of thing you only saw on cartoon chefs. The little man walked over to the stove and stroked its wrought-iron curves with tenderness. "A light meal, perhaps a stew… or something more refined?" He turned to Tom and smiled, his face pink from the heat of the stove, his little moustache furred up like a rat in a stormdrain.

  "Look…" Tom finally managed to find his tongue. "My friend's not well, she… Well, we don't know what happened but she can't move and…"

  "Oh, nonsense," the little man insisted, "she'll be right as rain in a few minutes. It always affects newcomers that way – it hammers the nervous system travelling here." He fixed Tom with a curious stare. "In fact I'm surprised you're not suffering from the same thing." He stepped closer to Tom and sniffed deeply. "Ah… alcohol! How interesting! It must make for a smoother journey."

  "That's my creed, brother," Tom muttered. "So…" he took hold of Elise's hand "…she's going to be cool?"

  "Absolutely," replied the little chef. "Which is why we must get to work quickly." He pulled a knife from a drawer and firmly inserted the tip into Tom's thigh. "It's such a bugger to prep them when they keep thrashing about, after all."

  Tom fell to the floor with a shocked yell that took a frying pan to the brow to silence. Elise cried out too, but the little man slapped his hand on her mouth like a lid on a screeching kettle.

  "Shush now," he said, leering over her. He smiled, showing off large yellow teeth, chipped from gnawing the edges of bones. "It's distracting." He tugged a long paisley handkerchief from his pocket and began forcing it into Elise's mouth with fingers that smelt of old meat and body cavities.

  He whipped off his leather belt and wrapped it around her face, tightening it around her jaw to keep the handkerchief in place. "Feel free to chew on that while I cut and slice and peel." The butchery that lay ahead was exciting the man. He was getting breathless and needed to steady himself for a few seconds by holding on to the marble top of the preparation table. "Sorry," he whispered, "I'd hate you to think you were in the hands of anything less than a dedicated professional, it's just been so long." He straightened up and began tugging her blouse from the waist of her jeans, smacking and squeezing her exposed belly. "By all means, if you have any particular preference for a dish, a rump cut or braised thigh perhaps, then do let me know, otherwise I'll just follow my gut."

  He ground his thumb into the meat of her hip and licked at the ragged fur of his moustache, tasting its salt as seasoning for his imagination. He picked up a large knife, pulled a grey stone from his pocket, spat on it and began to sharpen the blade. "I'm tempted to open an artery," he commented, "make some pudding. When pickings are as slim as they are in this kitchen you want to make sure you make the most of every opportunity. I apologise but I simply haven't the patience to force-feed you, though I'm sure I could make art from your liver if only my stomach wasn't so eager to be filled… some corn and a pipe… pump you up like a ballon until you were a masterwork of rupture and distention. Ah! My mouth waters at the very thought. But there is no need to dine on dreams, is there, my dear? When some of your most succulent portions can be searing within minutes." He leaned in as if to kiss her and licked her face with enthusiasm. "My belly aches for you sweet calf." He walked out of Elise's field of vision and she could hear the rattle of pans and bowls. She desperately fought to move her arms and legs but her hands flicked on dead wrists and her toes wriggled pointlessly in the toes of her sneakers.

  The man returned with a large basin and propped her head up against the brim. "Just a pint or so," he said. "You can never keep it fresh and I wouldn't dream of wasting precious blood-sausage on flies."

  Elise looked up at the ceiling and tried to prepare herself for the knife. It didn't come. Directly above her, a young man appeared, bursting from the ceiling like someone erupting from water. He fell directly on her would-be butcher, who crumpled beneath him with a high-pitched wail.

  The young man was first to his feet, backing away as the screeching chef ran at him with his knife. Looking around, the boy grabbed the frying pan with which the chef had hit Tom. He swung it once to knock the blade from the man's hand and then again, bringing it down with a resounding clang on the man's forehead. The chef stared at him, a rather flatulent look on his face. A trickle of blood appeared at his hairline and crept down his forehead like the yolk from a perfectly boiled egg. The blood continued to run, flowing in a thin stream across his cheek and down towards his moustache. The little chef licked at it, smiled with approval and fell flat on his face.

  The boy continued to back away, scared and confused. He looked at Elise, then up at the ceiling, unable to process what had just happened. Tom groaned, as consciousness forced its way rather rudely into his aching head. He sat up, pressing his hand to his bruised temple, before remembering the knife-wound in his thigh and giving another pained cry. The boy, still disorientated and afraid, raised the frying pan towards Tom.

  Elise moaned against her gag, trying to sit up, trying to warn Tom, but there was no need.

  "Stay cool, kid!" he said, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender, "we're all cats here."

  "English?" the boy asked, slightly lowering the frying pan.

  "American," Tom replied, "but don't hold that against us. The name's Tom and that there is my good friend Elise. Didn't catch that son of a bitch's name," he gestured towards the prostrate chef, "but can't say I'll lose any sleep over the fact."

  "I am Pablo," the boy replied, "Spanish but I speak good English – better than you, I think, for I know what a cat is and there is none here that I can see."

 

"So," Carruthers' voice rang out along the corridor as he marched back in the direction Miles and Penelope had come from, "you found yourselves washed up on this foul land, no memory of how you came to be here – except, I warrant, the suspicion that a box lies at the root of the mystery – and, after an interminable time of immobility, you began to explore your new home. Did you travel together or was your meeting the same stroke of good fortune that brought you into my company?"

  "We came separately," Miles replied, quickly so that he might fit the words into the brief pause Carruthers took for breath.

  "I suspected as much. Whatever carriage lies within that box, it seems only to afford a single berth. A further detail: at the moment in which you

left our world, might your lives have been in peril?"

"Yes, I suppose so." Miles replied

  "That adds some fuel to a thought of mine. I wondered why the box didn't open the minute I lay my hands on it. Obviously there was some extra factor that unlocked it. I had wondered if that might be mortal danger. I was being shot at at the time, you see…"

  "I was being beaten up," Miles continued, "by a right vicious little bastard–"

  "I say, old chap," Carruthers interjected, "ladies present."

  "I had been stripped in preparation for being raped and murdered." Penelope said, "so I can assure you the word 'bastard' has long since lost its ability to bring a rouge to my cheeks."

  Carruthers stopped dead in his tracks and turned toward Penelope with a sincere look of remorse. "Oh, my dear lady," he said, "I have been most terribly insensitive… I cannot hope that you would ever forgive me. My time here has robbed me of a good many of my social graces and I confess I gave no thought as to the possible reasons for your…" He gestured towards the curtain wrapped around her. "I just…"

  "
Assumed
. Yes, I know, you're forgiven. And please don't start fussing, I'm made of sterner stuff than that. I am alive, relatively untouched and, correct me if I'm wrong, but we really do have more pressing concerns at the moment."

  Carruthers bowed towards her, a smile of the utmost admiration on his face. "I am in awe of you, madam. Your bravery shames us all." He gestured for them to continue walking.

  "So," Miles said, after a moment, "where are we?"

  "I have been here for several months and yet I fear I am no closer to solving that particular mystery. It looks like a house, certainly, but that is merely the surface. These walls obey no natural laws I am aware of and the dangers here are limitless. I cannot explain, I cannot comprehend. But my eyes have seen countless impossibilities before: Alaskan nights afire with colour, lizards the size of hounds, leviathans in the ocean, fish flying through the air… and if there's one thing it has taught me it is that there is no such thing as the impossible, merely the unexperienced. Yes, our learning demands that we dismiss this place as utterly impossible, and yet we are here, so what is one constructively to do except get on with it?"

  "I can see your point," Penelope conceded. "Like Alice I have found that my ability to believe the impossible expands by the minute."

  "Exactly, my dear! One simply has to survive and hope! I have held on to a solitary mission since my arrival here and I will follow that mission until either I succeed or it kills me."

  "And what is your mission exactly?" Miles asked.

  "Why, what else, dear boy?" Carruthers laughed, throwing his hands into the air. "I intend to find my way home!"

  "I'd settle for a way out of this corridor," Miles replied, with a smile brought on by the man's good humour.

  "Aha!" Carruthers pointed towards one of the doors. "That I can do." He grinned widely. "Though naturally it is
extremely
dangerous."

  "Naturally," Penelope sighed.

 

"You're lucky," said Elise as she finished binding the wound in Tom's leg, "there doesn't appear to be any serious damage."

  "Yeah, cool," said Tom, "'lucky'… just the word I was thinking of."

  "I know a man on my father's boat who lost his foot," Pablo said.

  "Careless of him," Tom muttered.

  "He get it caught in engine piston, it badly twisted, like mincing meat. He bind his shin with belt and cut off foot. Still worked the rest of the trip."

  "OK!" Tom shouted. "I get the message, I am a baby for complaining about the little bit of stabbing my leg has received. From now on I shall shut up, sit back and enjoy the pain."

  Elise kissed him on the forehead. "Nobody's saying you're a baby."

  "Sure feels like it."

  "Well, they're not."

  "Promise?"

  "Promise, now stop going on about it, you big baby."

  "Ha ha."

  "I am thinking," said Pablo, changing the subject, "that this man who shot you is the same who I see."

  "I think you're right," said Elise, "though it doesn't help make sense of it."

  They had swapped stories while Elise had come around and looked to Tom's wounds. Not that there was that much to tell, all three being as much in the dark as each other about the hows and whys of it all.

  "Well," said Tom as he got slowly to his feet, "at least we know that wherever
here
is, there's more to it than just a groovy old kitchen and a kinky cannibal."

  "I guess," Elise agreed, "though it doesn't help us figure a way out."

  Pablo grabbed a poker from beside the stove, climbed on to the preparation table and tapped at the ceiling, now resolutely solid. "It is not a way back through here," he said, jumping back down.

  "Even if it was I can't see we'd be much better off," said Elise. "From the way you described it I'd say we were safer here."

  "I think I know how to get out," Tom replied, "though I can't say the idea appeals much." He limped over to the hatch in the far wall and opened it.

  "A dumb waiter?" Elise asked.

  "I know someone like this," Pablo added, "he is too stupid to keep his job, he make wrong the people's orders."

  "'Dumb' as in silent, El Toro," Tom explained. "It's how the food was sent to the dining room upstairs in these oldfashioned kitchens: you put the stuff in here, yank on the rope and winch it up to the next floor."

  "I not like the sound of being lifted like soup through the walls."

  "You and me both, Jack."

  "My name is Pablo."

  "He talks weird, Pablo," Elise explained. "You'll get used to him. Will it take our weight?"