The World House (16 page)

  "That's what you were saying just before Penelope came out," said Miles.

  "Indeed. My story continues to write itself."

  Penelope gave a startled shout and dropped the book.

  "What is it?" Miles asked, dashing over.

  "Oh, don't fuss," Penelope hissed, angry at herself for her display of panic. She picked the book back up. "It surprised me, that's all."

  "My dear, if it makes you feel any better I threw the thing several feet when I first saw its trick." Carruthers stepped over to her side. "Show Miles," he said. Penelope turned the book away from her and opened the pages in Miles' direction.

  "Bloody hell…" Miles whispered, staring at the words that were flowing across the page. "It writes while you're watching!" Even as he said it he saw his own speech replicated between gothic quotation marks and unfold across the yellowing paper.

  "And in that it is unlike any other book here," said Carruthers, "though I'll warrant that at least two other volumes are behaving in a similar manner as we speak. Do you not think, Mr. Caulfield?"

  "Caulfield…" Miles dashed towards the stacks, running his eyes along the spines.

  "Calder… Callett… Callisto…" He began to run along the shelf, stopping every few seconds to trace his progress. "Cattleman… Catyda…"

  "You may need to climb my boy, but mind your footing."

  Miles stopped at "Caulder" and began to backtrack, scaling the stack to his right.

  "Careful!" Penelope shouted as he began to rise by several rows.

  "It's all right," Miles called back, "the shelves are deep, it's like climbing a ladder. Caulfield! Dear God, there's so many of them…" He continued to climb, twenty or so shelves above the ground now. He passed the Stephens, the Roberts and the Olivers until he found the Ms. "There are far too many people called Michael Caulfield!" he shouted. "For that matter there's a fair few called Miles, something you wouldn't have guessed when I was at school." He steadied himself on his elbows and began to pull out a book at a time until he found a narrative he recognised. "Got it!" He clamped the book in his teeth and began to descend.

  Back on the ground he suddenly felt selfconscious, flicking through the pages and seeing so many pitiful moments from his recent history. He began to regret fetching the book and could only hope that Penelope wouldn't try and read it. The fact that this concerned him pulled him up short. Now was hardly the time to be trying to impress the ladies, was it? There were far more important matters at stake than getting his leg over. Mind you, she was incredibly attractive and, try as he might, he couldn't stop picturing her naked. He shook the thought away.

  "It's just the same!" he said, glancing at the last page and turning it around so the other two could see.

  "Oh, my dear chap," Carruthers blustered, reaching for the book.

  "No you don't!" Penelope knocked his hand away and began to read aloud: "
'There were far more impor
tant matters at stake than getting his leg over. Mind you,
she was incredibly attractive and, try as he might, he
couldn't stop picturing her naked'
?"

  Miles threw the book away in embarrassed shock. "I don't know what it's talking about," he said, growing deeply red in the face.

  "I bet." Penelope glowered at him.

  "Dinner's ready!" Carruthers shouted, clapping his hands together and turning Penelope away from Miles and towards the stove.

  "I think I've gone off the idea," Miles muttered.

 

They ate in silence, and, when done, Penelope was quick to excuse herself. She retired to the bed Carruthers had allocated her – though it was clear this was out of embarrassment rather than actual tiredness. Miles was relieved, whatever the reason. Carruthers brought out the cigars and suggested they walk while they smoked. Miles jumped at the idea.

  "That was so bloody embarrassing," he said once his cigar was lit.

  "Yes, it was rather," agreed Carruthers, moving a match-flame around the end of his cigar to ensure it lit evenly, "though, in hindsight…" he puffed a majestic ball of blue-grey smoke above his head like an angry thought-balloon "…damned funny as well!" He gave a booming chuckle and put his arm around Miles' shoulder.

  "Glad you think so." Miles muttered.

  "Oh
tish
, all will be fine by the morning. As you said, there are far more important matters at stake and Penelope is a splendid sort, she'll let you off the hook quick enough, mark my words."

  "Or stab me to death in my sleep." Miles inhaled deeply on his cigar. "I see what you mean about the cigars, by the way. We may as well be smoking a pair of carrots."

  "Aye, but if you close your eyes and imagine, you can just about recreate the taste."

  "I'll take your word for it. So, what comes next?"

  "Well, as I mentioned earlier, I am not a man who settles for imprisonment. I have festered here, truth be told, hopeful of finding more like myself."

  "And now you have."

  "Indeed, and while I might have dreamed of greater numbers, to delay further is just prevarication. We must set forth, my friend. Come the morning we shall strike this mockery of a camp and venture out into the unknown areas of the house. If one can enter one must be able to leave."

  "Possibly."

  "Definitely! We must not think in negative terms.

We must believe our real homes lie in wait for us, beyond this mockery of a dwelling. In truth, Miles, what else is there to do? I have spent my whole life wishing to be anywhere but home, exploring the farthest reaches of our planet in search of new experience and knowledge. Well, no more… I wish for my hearth and will not be denied it. Will you join me?"

  Miles puffed listlessly on his cigar, trying to find some pleasure in it. "Of course I will," he replied, "if only so that I can find something worth smoking!"

  Carruthers laughed and patted Miles on the back. "That's the spirit. They won't put us down easily, eh? Now, the lights are beginning to fade." Miles looked around them and saw that it was so, the pools of light from the gas lamps slowly receding as their flames drew in. "The nights are not safe, even here," Carruthers continued. " We would do well to be tucked up long before the last of the illumination is stolen away."

 
 
 

He holds the heart up and turns it over in his hands. It looks like nothing more than lunch and yet the humans cannot function without it. He gives it a curious lick but it has insufficient taste to merit the considerable chewing it would take to consume it.

  "What are you doing?" demands Jinzhong from the open flap of the renegade's tent.

  "I took one of the serving maids apart to see how she worked. In hindsight, I shouldn't have bothered. I am left with little but tidying up and the need to fetch my own drink."

  "My people are not toys for your amusement!" Jinzhong shouts, his hand hovering too close to the handle of his sword for his own good.

  "
Everything
is for my amusement," the renegade answers, "at least that had been my hope. It's all a bit boring these days. Time I moved on."

  He gets to his feet, drops the heart into the bowl of the dead woman's ribcage and licks his fingers clean.

  "You would do well to remember who is your chieftain," says Jinzhong, pulling his sword free and pointing it at the renegade.

  "You see, there we go," the renegade sighs. "Whenever I start to think I have some interest in your species you demonstrate your complete lack of intelligence. You know my capabilities – rely on them in fact – and yet it somehow occurs to you that I can be intimidated by a small length of sharpened metal." The renegade agitates the atoms in Jinzhong's sword until it is far too hot to hold, then takes the Khitan leader's face in his wet, red hands. "You are not my chieftain, Jinzhong," he says, "you are simply my ally and that is a position constantly open to negotiation." He digs his fingertips into Jinzhong's skin, infecting it with an amusing selection of plague bacteria. Instantly Jinzhong's body fizzes with disease, pustules rising and popping on his skin like the surface of a hot mud pool.

  The renegade steps out of the tent and stares at his adopted world. He needs a change of scenery: nothing a few hundred years and a shift of continents won't fix.

 
 
 

Inside the house – in fact at its very centre – there lies a small room. Unlike many parts of the house, there is nothing particularly terrifying or surreal about this room. It is realistically sized and comfortably decorated, from its compact bookshelves to its hard but attractively furnished bed. The room has a small en-suite bathroom, and this is, again, perfectly safe and respectable in both plumbing and fittings. No sea creatures roam the bathtub, mustard gas will not billow from the taps, the toilet does not bite. It is simply a bathroom and is intended to be used for all the purposes asked of such a thing.

  The room's resident has never used the bathroom, has never seen the need. Despite this, he appears as normal as his accommodation. He is a small man, balding, prone to cleaning the thick lenses of his spectacles on his woollen tanktop when deep in thought. He appears overweight, despite the fact that he never eats. One of those mole-like gentle men that one imagines having done nothing of conversational value in a bank for many years. You would guess he might be called Brian, or Lionel, or Gordon. Actually, if he has a name it has been forgotten, by him as well as everyone else. He has no need of a name; there is nobody else in this room to call him by it. There has never been anyone else; this room – in fact this entire house – was intended for him and for him alone.

  One thing that makes this room slightly abnormal is that there is no window. The only light is from a candle that sits, never-ending, in a cone of its own dripped wax on a table in the middle of the room. Sometimes he lights it. Like the bathroom he doesn't need it but he likes the flame. He sets a match to it and watches the shadows dance on the walls. The patterns can be quite diverting.

  When he wants contact outside his four walls it is the house he talks to. He is not supposed to be able to do this – his captors intended utter isolation for him – but over the years he has picked up many skills they would be uncomfortable with. The house is particularly talkative at night; it is then that the building really lets itself go. Under cover of darkness it stretches its bricks and mortar, flexes its ancient wood and begins to play.

  He smiles often in the darkness, sensing the cruelty that has crept into the building's psyche. It is a cruelty he can relate to. He closes his eyes and tunes in to the structure, feeling the invasive footsteps of those brought here as they fight to avoid the house's attentions. Sometimes he can even taste their thoughts, their fears and confusion.

  If nothing else it passes the time.

 

Pablo rose up through the wall. The creaking of the rope echoed in the small box as it worked its way around the pulleys above his head. He was not comfortable in enclosed spaces. He was used to wide skies and a strong breeze; this groaning coffin made his palms sweat and his breathing shallow. Eventually the box juddered to a halt, an external mechanism clicking into place in the narrow passage.

  "It has stop!" he shouted.

  "I noticed," came Tom's distant voice, "can you get out?"

  Pablo extended his arm, his fingers tapping on a wooden hatch. He gave it a push and the doorway clicked open on to a large dining room lit by rows of gothic candelabra.

  "Yes," he replied, "it is dinner room." He climbed out.

  "Close the hatch!" Tom shouted and Pablo did so, hearing the box begin to descend immediately. He looked around the room. It was gloomy and not somewhere he would ever want to eat a meal. Mounted animal heads lined the walls, forced to watch their fellow creatures consumed at the central table. There was a lion, a tiger, a bear, several deer, their savage-looking horns casting shadows in the candlelight like the branches of winter trees. Pablo had never understood people who hunted. His father fished to fill his belly and his wallet, not simply to boast. There was nothing difficult in taking another animal's life.

  Behind him the dumb waiter was making a return journey so he walked back over to the hatchway to wait. When the box clicked into place he opened the hatch and took Elise's hand to help her climb out.

  "OK?" shouted Tom.

  "Is fine!" Pablo replied, closing the hatch so that Tom could bring the dumb waiter back down. After a few moments the sound of the winch stopped and Tom shouted up again.

  "There must be a way to pull me up from where you are. Can you see it?"

  Pablo looked around and spotted a looped cord in the corner. "I think so."

  "OK." There was a roar of pain.

  "Are you all right?" Elise shouted.

  "Just enjoying my leg wound. I'm all aboard."

  Pablo began to pull on the cord and the dumb waiter rose.

  "You want me to help?" Elise asked.

  "It is easy," Pablo replied, "I am used to this kind of thing." Just as the dumb waiter was a few feet short of the hatch there was an almighty screech and Pablo was yanked off his feet as the pulley system was torn from its casing. Pablo shot towards the roof. Flipping over, he managed to wedge his boots against the ceiling, stopping the dumb waiter's descent. Elise grabbed him under his arms but she couldn't pull the weight of both him and Tom combined.

"What's happening?" Tom shouted.

"Too heavy!" Elise shouted.

  "Bullshit, baby!" Tom shouted, "I've eaten nothing but bar olives for six months, how the hell can it not take my weight?"