The World House (4 page)

  "Where are we?" she asked Chester as the car pulled into a warehousing area for one of the factories.

  "My father's plant," he answered, rubbing his palms dry on the legs of his trousers.

  "What for?" Dolores asked, her words slurred. She peered through the window at the dark building outside. "All you big families blend into one, steelworks to chicken plants, I can never remember who's who. What do you guys do?'

  "Whatever we want," Chester replied, leaning past Penelope to slam Dolores' face into the window. The shove was hard enough to make her friend's nose pop, spitting a spray of blood on the glass.

 

For a moment, as the door handle turned smoothly on its bolt, Miles had an almost overwhelming urge to remove his hand and run. It was irrational, of course – at least that's what he told himself. He had just spooked himself before: taxidermy wasn't predatory and one simply couldn't get eaten by a rug. No.

  
(But why is the corridor so damned long?)

  He hadn't the first idea how to explain his circumstances but at least he was better off here than in the company of Fry and his impromptu surgeons.

  
(Don't be so sure of that, this place… bristles… there's
something so, so wrong with it.)

  Penelope was at his shoulder, forgetting for the moment that she didn't trust him. He could see from her face that she felt it too. Like excess ozone before a storm, there was an atmosphere that didn't sit right.

He opened the door…

  …to find a bedroom of moderate size, a little ostentatious but not life-threatening. There was a wood-framed bed with lace drapes, a solid-looking dresser whose mirror showed him his own nervous face, and a large set of French windows that must lead to a balcony (unless the architect liked to encourage guests to walk out into thin air).

  "Anticlimax," he muttered, stepping into the room.

  Penelope crossed to the wardrobe, hoping to find spare clothes. She opened the doors and sighed at the emptiness they revealed.

  Miles went straight to the window, wanting an idea of the outside geography. He stood in front of the dark glass, seeing nothing but his own reflection. "Too dark," he said, though Penelope wasn't listening; she was hunting through drawers. Miles took hold of the handle of the French windows and then snatched his hand back with a small yelp as a shock ran up his arm. "Static or something," he said, reaching for it again more tentatively. He touched the handle carefully but it was fine this time. He opened the door and stepped outside into complete darkness. No stars, no lights, nothing. Leaning over the stone balustrade he saw no sign of the ground. It was if the world stopped the minute you reached the house's edge.

 

The events in the back of the car wouldn't sit clearly in Penelope's mind. Chester had hit her, she knew that; she could feel the throbbing on the side of her head where his fist had smacked her in the temple. She suspected that she had passed out at that point, for certainly there was nothing between that and her next memory: the feeling of the door-panelling cold on her cheek and the sound of tearing fabric. At that point she couldn't say whether it was her clothes being torn or Dolores'. She could hear her friend moaning, a wet, bubbling sound, delirium and fear pushed through a broken mouth. She had a feeling that she had tried to reach for the door handle – either that or Chester had kicked her in the kidneys for fun. It was possible: it seemed clear that there was no behaviour too unconscionable for him. There was another gap in her memory at this point, a jump-cut to the sound of Chester grunting and a high-pitched giggling that she could only assume was the driver. She remembered the man's strange grin as he had closed the door and a terrible sense of stupidity grew in her, a certainty that she should have seen this coming, should have known something was wrong. But then horrible things like this just didn't happen to people like Penelope. It was this thought that followed her into unconsciousness but it offered no comfort. The next thing she knew, Chester was talking.

  "…about world-shaping," he was saying, "the willingness to make changes, both moral and physical. You can't build without breaking boundaries. The things I've seen…" There was a wistful quality to his voice, a gentility that one might expect in a discussion of a view or landscape painting, or perhaps a piece of gentle pastoral music. She turned her head to look at him but couldn't tell if the blood on his face was hers or Dolores'. She hoped it was the blood of her friend and the guilt that followed that thought stung almost as much as the bruise on the side of her head.

  Chester was still talking. "This is not it. This is not the limit. There are worlds on top of worlds, on top of worlds…" He was holding up a wooden box – a cigar box perhaps? "I just want to explore." He looked at her. "You'll help me, won't you, Penelope?" He punched her in the face, his expression the calmest she had ever seen it. Gone was the nervous socialite, the awkward would-be lover. She had found what made Chester comfortable, what made him utterly at ease in his own skin. She'd always known she could bring him out of his shell.

 

"There's no breeze." Penelope had appeared at the French windows and her voice made Miles jump. He had been thinking the same thing, that the air here didn't feel right. It was empty, breathable but tasteless.

  "There's nothing," he replied but even as he said it he knew it wasn't true. There
was
something out here, he could sense it if not see it. It was an animal instinct. There was no noise, no obvious clue to a presence, yet he knew it was there as surely as if he were staring at it.

  "Get back inside," Penelope said. Did she feel it too?

  Whatever it was, this thing in the dark, it began to push towards them.

  Miles was more scared now than he had been with Gordon Fry on his doorstep, though unable to say precisely why. It was as if the invisible force heading toward him were fear itself, and the closer it came, the more Miles was unable to move. Closer, closer, closer…

 

When Penelope woke again she was mortified to see she had been stripped. She drew herself as far away from Chester as the space in the car would allow, which was not far. Dolores was gone and it took a few moments of hearing the noises from the driver's compartment to guess where. Her friend was silent; the driver was not.

  "You're awake," Chester said, as gentle as a man greeting a wife from a night's sleep. He was playing with the box, turning it over in his hands, rubbing his fingers along the edges. "This is breathtaking," he said, though she couldn't be sure whether he was referring to the box or the general situation. The car was shaking from the exertions of the driver and Penelope knew she was fast approaching the point when it would be too late to save herself. She needed to fight now and live or die by her efforts. Chester sighed, staring at the box held out in front of him, perched on the tips of his fingers. "Don't worry," he said, "I won't abuse you." He inclined his head towards the driving cabin. "Not like that. Henryk has his tastes. I pander to them but they are not my own." Had she been feeling braver Penelope might well have asked him why, if that were the case, he had felt the need to remove her clothes. It was a pointless question; she knew hollow words when she heard them. "I want something altogether more spiritual from you," he continued, "though I can't pretend it won't hurt." He held the box towards her. "There is a box, and inside that box is a door, and beyond that door…" He smiled. "I'm getting ahead of myself. The problem is that the door is locked. I want you to help me unlock it."

  "With pleasure, Chester," Penelope said, punching him as hard as she could between his legs. If his tastes were so noble she wouldn't be damaging anything he intended to use. Chester bent forward, dropping the box. Penelope grabbed it, wrestled with the door handle and pushed the heavy black door open. She was aware that Henryk had paused in his ministrations; she could see his face through the glass partition. He wasn't grinning any more.

  She stepped out of the car. Chester's hand tugged a pinch of hair from her scalp as he snatched at her. Her feet complained at the grit of the road but if cut soles were the only injury ahead she'd consider herself lucky.

  She expected to hear the sound of pursuing feet but when the engine turned over she realised that chasing her on foot was the last thing they would do. She ran down a gap between a storage shed and a churning drainage gully. The water rushed past and she wondered if escape might be found by jumping in. The decision was taken from her. Tripping over a pipe that led from the shed into the gulley, she went head-first into the rushing water. For a moment the box seemed to twist in her hands, as if tugged free, then there was nothing, no water, no car,
nothing…

Then she woke up.

 

"Come on!" Penelope shouted, pulling Miles back through the doorway and sprawling on to his arse. She slammed the French windows shut and, though there was still nothing to see, she felt the door bow inward as if something had collided with it from the other side. She let go of the handle as a surge of static nipped at her palms, and backed away from the door, hoping that whatever was outside stayed there.

  "I don't know what was wrong with me," Miles said. "I just couldn't move."

  "Can you now?" Penelope asked.

  "Yes, I'm fine." Miles got to his feet.

  "Then let's get out of here."

 

 

 

Only flies could pretend to savour the Valencian midday heat. Everything else kept to the shade, dozing through siesta-time as the clock crept towards the threat of more work. Curtains of humidity draped themselves across the streets in such thick layers it was almost impossible to force yourself through them. It was a day that sapped effort, a day to be endured from the comfort of an armchair or the cool shade of a bar. Certainly it was not a day for running, but then Kesara, as always, had little choice.

  Kesara was good at running, having done a considerable amount of it during her twelve years. She had run when she left home – of course she had, her father was likely too drunk to chase her but only a fool would take the risk – and she had never really stopped. Travelling north along the coast she had run just because she could, betraying a childhood of captivity and oppression with lungfuls of sea air and the urge to see how fast your legs could carry you. Once she had reached Valencia, and sat at the port dangling her hot feet in the sea, she realised she would have to stop running eventually. The thought made her sad. Still, the port was busy enough for a young girl to hide and there was enough spillage from the crates to fill her belly. It would be foolish not to stay. On that first night she had dined on overripe Nispero, peeling the oval orange fruit, sucking their sweet flesh and then throwing the dark stones into the waves. She had slept on a mound of potent-smelling fish nets, her guts painfully loose from too much fruit. Despite her discomfort, it was the best night's sleep she had ever had. Now, a couple of months later, she still enjoyed bedding down wherever the mood took her and eating whatever fell her way. She was never happier than when watching the sea, every crashing wave a symbol of freedom.

  Today that freedom was at risk, and all because of the smell of chicken.

  The bird had sat on the kitchen sideboard, sweating translucent steam from the collar of its crisp golden jacket. The meeting house was used as a barracks for the Republican army. Kesara had seen the soldiers smoke cigarettes in its doorway, undressing the girls with their eyes as they walked by. Even if she had not seen them hanging around she would have guessed by the smell. It wafted from every window but the kitchen, where nothing lingered but the sweet smell of roasted meat — the stink of well-worn army boots and sheets so stiff they might snap in a firm grip. Men were smelly, Kesara knew that. Her father had worn his stench as a bear wears its fur, sitting in their small fishing cottage burying the waves of whisky sweat and unwashed clothes beneath endless mouthfuls of cigarette smoke. While he was at home on the water, he rarely allowed it to touch him in the name of hygiene.

  The chicken was being left to cool. Kesara had no idea where the cook had gone or when they might return but if she climbed through the window that meat could be hers. The risk of a beating was no risk at all. Her skin had received enough blows over the years to be almost immune.

  She reached for the sill, finding a couple of holes in the masonry for her toes, and forced herself up and through the part-open window. Once hanging inside, she let her momentum pull her down on to the cool kitchen-floor tiles. Advancing on the chicken she realised that it was too hot to pick up with her bare hands. She walked carefully towards the kitchen door and stuck her head into the small corridor beyond. She could hear lots of snoring coming from the dormitory, like pigs in prayer. A few feet from the kitchen was a large laundry trolley. She tiptoed over to it and yanked a yellowing pillowcase from the bundle inside. She could use it as a sack, drop the chicken inside and carry it over her shoulder.

  She stepped back into the kitchen and used a carving fork to hook the roasted bird into the pillowcase. That done, she dashed towards the window. The bang of a pair of double doors, from just along the corridor outside, sent her heartbeat into her throat. She dropped her legs over the sill and spun around to drop to the street below. Her feet hit the cobbles just as the face of the cook appeared at the window, bellowing a stream of obscenities at her from purple cheeks. A pair of soldiers appeared from the front of the building, flicked their cigarettes into the street and ran towards her.

  Kesara ran, the hot air parting for her as she darted through the winding side-streets, changing direction at random, hoping to lose her pursuers through confusion as well as speed. The hot chicken swung behind her, planting hot, greasy kisses on the small of her back as the fat leaked into the fabric of the pillowcase. As fast as she was, the soldiers kept pace with her. She didn't turn to look – that would slow her down – but the sound of their heavy boots loomed over her as surely as the smell of roasted poultry. She was lucky that the streets were nearly empty, and the soldiers' cries for someone to stop her found nobody with the energy or interest to carry them out. She had planned to aim for the docks but her attempts to disorientate her pursuers had been no less effective on herself. The streets around her were unfamiliar. She needed to change tack.