The World House (34 page)

  "This is getting me nowhere." He closed his eyes, tried to push her from his thoughts.

  "And that's the problem: you're offered the route to escape and you don't take it, you run back into your heavy, repressed cage to rot."

  He ignored her, trying to reclaim the feeling he had experienced when last here. He tried to imagine what it felt like to have a boat floating inside you, a foreign object, a splinter you wanted to expel. After a few moments he felt the intrusion in his solar plexus, shifting and rolling as he tried to dislodge it with his tides. He held fast to that feeling, imagining his splayed fingers were part of the water, part of this house. He stroked the cool tiles that surrounded them. He tickled the bathroom shore with his toes, reached out and touched the wooden bench, pushed his big toe into the pile of Sophie's clothes. He moved his hands, running them along the wall on his right, sending them through the open expanse of water on the left. He felt fish dart between them and grabbed hold of that sensation, that feeling of the things invading his being. He stretched his hand, tapped the wall behind his head – oh, so many miles away – and the wall on his left, further still. He tried to differentiate between it all, the swimming of fish, the bobbing of the boat, the feel of the walls. He acknowledged those sensations and then blanked them out, seeing what was left. Something was buzzing in his ear, like a persistent wasp at a summer picnic, dancing just inside his awareness. That buzzing, that tingle of the other lying just on the edge of awareness, that was the door, and he now realised he had been hunting in the wrong direction. He reached for it, felt the coil of metal chain between his fingers, the soft edge of rubber. He reached for it and yanked it free.

  "Alan! Can you hear me?" The crew pulled him out of the water with such vigour it was like being born; yanked from somewhere warm and safe and brought out into the bright, white cold of the real world.

  "How long?" Alan gasped, spitting some water from his mouth and trying not to imagine it as a finger or toe of their nighttime attackers.

  "A minute," Hawkins said. "I wouldn't risk any longer."

  "Felt so long…" Alan suddenly remembered what he had done. "We need to take shelter!" he shouted, "and hope the anchors hold."

  The boat was beginning to rock violently, the sea whipping up a storm around them.

  "What did you do?" Hawkins asked, helping him out of the net.

  Alan smiled. "What else do you want to do when you want to get out of the bath? I pulled the plug out!"

 
 
 

The creature had a firm hold on Chester. As Tom and Pablo tried to tug him free, its arm stretched like the limb of a gooey children's toy, distending and becoming translucent in the torchlight. The skin, bone and muscle spread out to little more than a flat sheet. Chester had begun to panic, mindless of the weapon in his hand as the creature unhinged its wide mouth and took both the gun and his forearm into its throat.

  "Shoot it!" Elise shouted, cutting through Chester's blank panic. He did so, and the bullet punched a gelatinous hole between the creature's shoulders. More in confusion than in pain, it let go of him, spitting out his arm and reaching behind itself to explore the wound with rubbery digits.

  The creatures surrounded them, rolling their pipetongues around thin lips, wanting to suck on a warm morsel or two. They reached out glutinous hands and fingers, tugging at the humans' clothes and hair, trying to grab the piece of meat they wished to lay claim to.

  A noise began to build from the tunnel: the rush of water being forced along the narrow passage. It grew louder and louder. The creatures glanced around, distracted from the hunger in their bellies. A curtain of warm, foul-smelling air pushed before the wave like the early warning of a tube train. When the water emerged, it did so with enough force to send all of them flying backwards. They were thrown on to solid ground as the water fanned out to fill the space. Tom fought for breath as he was sent spinning across the flagstones, and desperately tried to keep hold of Elise.

  "Keep moving!" Pablo shouted. He was the first to his feet. Chester scuffled behind him, his leather soles slipping on the wet stone as they ran across the chamber and towards a far tunnel. Tom and Elise followed, hoping that the size of the chamber would buy them enough time to get clear. There seemed no end to the flood as it bounced off the ceiling, dislodging the rubbery creatures that still clung to the brickwork. Like the spout of a giant pressure hose, it was relentless as it forced itself through the narrow opening. The water had a life of its own, whipping into shapes as it sought to grab and absorb every living thing within reach. This was no ordinary water, this was water haunted by the many travellers absorbed into its waves. Human figures formed on the crest of the flood, shimmering surfers riding into the darkness of the drainage pipes.

  Tom, Elise, Pablo and Chester ran through a tunnel that led off from the main chamber. The water gurgled around their feet, nipping at their toes as they tried to keep some distance ahead.

  "It just keeps coming!" Chester shouted, "we need to gain higher ground."

  "You're the cat who knows the tunnels," Tom replied. "Give us a dose of your wisdom – how do we get up a level?"

  Chester was still too close to panic for clear thought, spinning around in the tunnel as he tried to remember the closest routes leading up to the house. "I know!" he shouted, like an enthused child who's just come up with a new game for the day. "There's a–"

  The water exploded around him, elevating him several feet off the ground inside its translucent fist. The end of his sentence burst from his mouth in a series of air bubbles as he thrashed to pull himself free. Pablo jumped up, shoving his hands through the surface of the water, and grabbed hold of Chester's ankle. Elise did the same with the other leg. They dangled from his feet, tugging him down with all their weight. Tom grabbed hold of Elise's waist and pulled. That was all the extra weight that was needed and Chester dropped, the bubble bursting and showering them with water as they fell to the ground.

  Chester lost all control, thrashing around, trying to rub the water from his face and hair. "Fucking thing, fucking thing," he repeated, panic rioting through him.

  "It's all right!" Elise shouted, grabbing hold of him, forcing him to stand still and look her in the eyes. "No harm done, we're still here, let's keep it that way, OK?"

  "Saved my life," Chester muttered. "If you three hadn't have been here I would be dead, no question…"

  "It's all cool, Chester," said Tom, patting him on the shoulder.

  "Is like ice cream," Pablo agreed "but we need keep running before it melt!"

  "Taught the cat everything he knows," said Tom with a grin. "Where were you about to suggest we ran to before being so rudely interrupted?"

  Chester snapped out of it. "An elevator!" he shouted, "It's small but we should fit!" He ran through the tunnel, the others keeping pace behind him, all the time aware that the water was deepening. "I've never used it," Chester shouted over his shoulder, "but anywhere's better than here." He ran up a short ramp that led to the cabin of an oldfashioned cage elevator, just big enough to accommodate them.

  "Press the button! Press the button!" Chester shouted, squeezed into the far corner of the cabin. Pablo stabbed the button that would begin their ascent and then gripped the mesh sides so that he could secure the gate behind him. The elevator groaned under the weight, climbing jerkily as it struggled under the load.

  "There's too many of us!" Chester shouted, watching the water surge below them.

  "We'll be fine," said Elise as the elevator continued to climb. "It's slow but it's managing."

  "Fucking thing will probably snap halfway up!" Chester shouted, spraying Tom's cheek with spittle as he grew more and more red-faced. "No way is it going to make it."

  "Chill out, Chester baby," Tom replied, "we're on our way, everything's copacetic."

  "I am not dying in this stupid fucking elevator!" Chester screamed, grabbing hold of the bars of the cabin behind him, hoisting up his legs and kicking out.

  "What the fuck?" Tom was winded by the sole of Chester's left shoe, while his right shoved hard enough against Elise to make her fall backwards with a cry. It was Pablo – only just managing to hang in there as it was – who took the brunt of the pressure, forced back against the gate, the metal cutting into his fingers as he grabbed the sides in order to steady himself.

  "You will kill all of us, stupid America!" he shouted, giving a terrified yelp as the catch on the gate snapped behind him and the elevator stopped. The gate swung back, leaving him holding on to the sides of the cabin, his toes pedalling at the floor's edge, trying to get a grip. Chester kept kicking, forcing the other three back towards the opening of the elevator. "Please!" Pablo shouted. The metal was cutting into his hands enough to make them bleed.

  "Mother fucker!" Tom wheezed, still partially winded but trying to grab Chester to keep him still. The elevator cabin shook violently as the young man kept kicking. It just couldn't take it. No longer able to hold on, his hands sliced raw by the bars, Pablo toppled backwards, flipping in the air and hitting the edge of the ramp before slipping beneath the water's surface.

  There was silence in the elevator cabin, the three of them hanging above the rising water, Tom and Elise not quite able to believe what had just happened.

  "What have you done?" Elise whispered, turning on Chester. "You stupid fuck… you killed him!" Tom stared at the water below, hoping perhaps to see Pablo reappear. He did not.

  "What are you going to do?" Chester asked, his voice again like that of a child, a naughty young boy who has been caught in a terrible act.

  "I don't know about Tom," Elise replied through clenched teeth, "but I have
every fucking intention of
throwing you out there after him!
" She roared at him, hand raised to smack him as hard as she could across the face. Chester pulled the gun from his pocket and shot her squarely in the forehead. Tom screamed as blood splashed across his cheek, hot as a passionate kiss. He grabbed Elise as she fell backwards, her eyes rolling in her head, like a doll shaken by a child. Chester pointed the gun at Tom and pulled the trigger, but the hammer clicked down on to an empty chamber. And again. And again. He was out of ammunition. So he shoved them, the weight of Elise pushing Tom back out of the elevator, the look on Tom's face one of utter disbelief as to how everything could have gone to shit so quickly. They fell, Elise wrapped in Tom's arms. Chester didn't watch them fall; he didn't care. He simply – calmly – pulled the metal gate closed and forced the catch into its socket so it didn't trip the motor again. The elevator jerked back into life.

  "They saved my life, they saved my life, they saved my life," Chester repeated, over and over, as he rode the elevator to its destination. "They saved my life, they saved my life, they saved my life."

  The elevator clicked into place and Chester yanked the gate open. The bent metal refused to fold back properly, but he made just enough space to squeeze past and clambered into the carpet-lined corridor of the house. "They saved my life, they saved my life, they saved my life."

  The gas lamps in the corridor were dimming with the night. Chester stumbled into darkness as he followed the curve of the corridor, running his hand along the dado rail for guidance. The paintings and sculptures that lined the walls began to flicker in the twilight of the lamps. In a mediaeval hunting scene, the painted torches the huntsmen carried began to move with real light and warmth. The huntsmen gathered at the edge of the frame to watch Chester stumble past. "They saved my life, they saved my life, they saved my life."

  A bust of Medusa writhed, lit by a lantern hanging in a portrait above her. The mouths of the asps nipped at Chester as he passed. "They saved my life, they saved my life, they saved my life."

  A stabbing sensation in his head forced a cry of pain from him and his legs crumpled. "They saved my life, they saved my life, they saved my life." The pain returned, savage and unbearable, as if something were being rammed directly between his eyes (like a bullet perhaps? "They saved my life, they saved my life, they saved my life"). He tried to crawl, a string of spittle dangling from his mouth like a silver necklace, glittering in the light of the artistic fires that burned around him. Several busts of Roman Caesars watched with lofty disdain as he crawled past, batting not a marble eyelid at the screams of agony he issued, the pain returning time and again as – unknown to him – a book of his life met the eager mouths of hungry worms in the house library. Mouthful by mouthful they ate away his past, the pain as debilitating as if it were his meat they fed on, not just his history.

  He passed out, lying face down on the corridor carpet. Around him the pictures cavorted: the mediaeval hunstsmen left their dense forest to dally in the bushes of the water nymphs that hung close by; a Tudor gentleman took a bite of Venetian red from the neck of his wife; his neighbour, a miller by trade, showed his disgust by squatting beneath the silently revolving blades of his mill and defecating a curl of raw umber; Whistler's Mother gazed lasciviously at Rembrandt's Bathesheba at Her Bath, parting her ridiculously long legs to frig beneath her Puritan's skirt as the voluptuous Queen was sponged and cleansed by her servants; Picasso's Boy with a Pipe sucked on his opium as Matisse's Bathers turned on the little turtle between them, wrenching off its legs like drumsticks and chewing on its scaled flesh.

  Chester was blind to it all, his brain having shut down in response to its injury. When morning came and the artworks returned to the two-dimensional safety of their own frames, Chester lay utterly still, his eyes open but empty. The hours passed. The corridor was silent but for the faint hiss of the gas lamps. Around mid-morning a young woman awoke in one of the rooms off the corridor, snatched from her Greek island to reappear in this most terrible house. Her visit was not a lengthy one, for she was plucked from an open window by the talons of a massive house-martin with chicks to feed. Her screams reached the corridor but Chester was unable to hear them. Lunchtime came and went. Chester's breath became laboured with the dust from the carpet, wheezing as the afternoon rolled on. By the time night came again he sounded like a leaking footpump. The noise was enough to bring the workers from Breugel's Corn Harvest down to investigate, poking at him with their hayforks and kicking at his exposed teeth.