an answer, but the message wrote itself out again on the card. Arthur threw it back in the box and went down the stairs again.
On the way back down, the question came up again in his head. Just one simple word that covered a lot of problems.
How?
How am I going to get into the House? It doesn’t exist in my world any more.
Arthur groaned and pulled at his hair, just as Michaeli came rushing back up the stairs.
“You think you’ve got problems?!” she snapped as she went past. “It looks like Dad is going to have to go back on tour, like, for ever, and I’m going to have to get a job. All you have to do is go to school!”
Arthur didn’t get a chance to reply before she was gone.
“Yeah, that’s all I have to worry about!” he shouted after her. He slowly continued down the stairs, thinking hard. The House had physically manifested itself before, taking over several city blocks. That manifestation had disappeared when Arthur came back after defeating Mister Monday. But maybe the House had returned with the Grotesques?
There was only one way to find out. After a quick look to check that no one – particularly a Grotesque or two – was watching, Arthur went out the back door and got on his bike.
Provided he wasn’t held up at a quarantine checkpoint, it would only take ten minutes to ride over to where the House had been. If it had reappeared, he would try to get in through Monday’s Postern or maybe even the Front Door, if he could find it.
If it wasn’t there, he would have to think of something else. Each minute gave the Grotesques more time to do something financially horrible to his family, or his neighbours, or…
Arthur pushed off hard and accelerated out the drive, pedalling furiously for a minute, until his wheezing warned him to ease off.
Behind him, the SOLD sign on his front lawn shivered and dug itself a little further in.
The House was gone. At least, its manifestation in Arthur’s world had not returned. Instead of a vast edifice of mixed-up architecture, there were only the usual suburban houses, with their lawns and garages.
Arthur rode his bike around several blocks, hoping some trace of the House remained. If there was just one of its strange outbuildings or even a stretch of the white marble wall that surrounded the House, he felt he could somehow get inside. But there was nothing; no sign at all that the House had ever been there.
He felt strange riding around, looking for something that wasn’t there, a feeling made stronger because the streets were deserted. Though the quarantine had been slightly relaxed inside the city, most people were sensibly staying at home with their doors and windows shut. Arthur was passed by only one car on the road, and that was an ambulance. Arthur looked the other way, in case it was the same ambulance he’d escaped from the day before. He was thankful it didn’t slow down or stop.
As he finished his circumnavigation of the last block, Arthur began to feel panicky. Time was slipping away. It was already 11.15. He only had forty-five minutes to find some way to enter the House, but he had no idea how he was going to do that.
The sight of several moss-covered garden steps reminded him of the Improbable Stair. That bizarre stairway went from everywhere and everywhen, through the House and the Secondary Realms. But the Stair was dangerous and there was a good chance of ending up somewhere he really didn’t want to be. It wasn’t worth trying the Stair unless he must. Even then, he probably wouldn’t be able to enter it without the Key.
There had to be another way. Perhaps if he could track down the Grotesques’ headquarters, he could find their doorway back to the House—
Something moved at the corner of his eye. Arthur twisted his head around, immediately alert. There was something in the movement he didn’t like. Something that gave him a slight electric tingle across the back of his neck and up behind his ears.
There it was again – something flitting across the garden of the house opposite. Moving from the letterbox to the tree, from the tree to the car in the driveway.
Arthur put one foot on the pedal, ready to move off, and watched. Nothing happened for a minute. Everything was quiet, save for the constant drone of the distant helicopters patrolling the perimeter of the city.
It moved again, and this time Arthur saw it dash from behind the car to a fire hydrant. Something about the size and shape of a rabbit, but one made of pale pink jelly-like flesh that changed and rippled as it moved.
Arthur got off his bike, laid it down and got out the Atlas, readying himself for its explosive opening. He didn’t like the look of this thing, which he guessed was some sort of Nithling. But at least it was timid, hiding and scuttling.
Arthur could still see a single paw poking out from behind the hydrant. A paw that slowly melted and re-formed through several shapes. Paw, claw, even a rudimentary hand. He concentrated his thoughts on that sight, gripping the green cloth binding of the Atlas tight.
What is the thing that hides behind the hydrant?
The Atlas burst open. Even though he was ready, Arthur took a step back and nearly fell over his bike.
This time, the invisible writer wrote quickly and in instant English, ink splattering all over the page.
Arthur looked up. The Scoucher was leaping towards him, no longer small and innocuous, but an eight-foot-tall, paper-thin human figure whose arms did not end in hands but split into hundreds of ribbon-thin tentacles that whipped out towards the boy. They sliced the air in front of Arthur’s face, though he was at least fifteen feet away.
There was no time to get on his bike. Arthur twisted away from the tentacles and threw himself into a sprint, the Atlas still open under his arm. It closed itself and shrank as he ran, but he didn’t try to put it in his pocket. He couldn’t pause even for a second or those tentacles would latch on. They might sting, or paralyse, or hold him tight so the Scoucher could do whatever it did—
These thoughts drove him to the end of the street. He hesitated for an instant, uncertain of which way to turn, till the Atlas twitched to his right and he instinctively followed its lead. It twitched again at the next corner and then again a minute later, directing him down a partly hidden laneway – all at high speed. A speed Arthur soon realised he couldn’t keep up. Whatever had happened to his lungs in the House had improved them, but he wasn’t cured. He was wheezing heavily and the tightness on his right side was spreading to the left. He’d run further and faster than he’d ever done before, but he couldn’t sustain his speed.
Arthur slowed a little as he exited the lane and looked over his shoulder. The Scoucher was nowhere to be seen. He slowed down a bit more, then stopped, panting and wheezing heavily. He looked around. He’d thought he was headed towards home, but in his panic he’d gone in a different direction. Now he wasn’t sure where he was, and he couldn’t think of any possible refuge.
Something
