The list kept going on and on, the page re-forming every time Arthur reached the end. Finally he looked away, refolded the envelope and shoved it in the back pocket of his jeans.
Reading the letter hadn't changed anything, except that his determination not to sign it was even stronger. He had to get to the House as fast as possible.
He was about to leave immediately when he remembered the telephone in the red velvet box. It was possible the Will might be able to scrounge up enough money to call him again, so he'd better get that.
Arthur walked up the stairs this time. He didn't think he'd have a full-on asthma attack – he would have already had it if he was going to – but he'd got a persistent wheeze instead and couldn't quite get enough breath.
The red velvet box was where he'd left it, but when Arthur went to put the lid back on, he saw that it was empty. The phone had disappeared. Lying on the bottomof the box was a very small piece of thick cardboard. Arthur picked it up. As he touched it, words appeared, scribed in the same sort of invisible hand that wrote in the Atlas.
This telephone has been disconnected. Please call Upper House 23489-8729-13783 for reconnection.
'How?' asked Arthur. He didn't expect 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 anymore.
Arthur groaned and pulled at his hair, just asMichaeli 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, forever 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 defeatingMister 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, throughMonday'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.
THREE
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 and basketball hoops over their garage doors.
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 jellylike 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 reformed 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.
SCOUCHER! RUN!
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 farther 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 flickered at the corner of his eye. Arthur spun around. The Scoucher was back in its small fluid shape, sneaking again. It was about thirty yards back, zipping from cover to cover, slinking forward whenever he couldn't see it.
Arthur wasn't even sure it was a Nithling. Perhaps it was something else, something made by Grim Tuesday that the Grotesques had set upon him. He needed to know more, but he didn't dare to stop and look at the Atlas while the thing was creeping up on him. He needed somewhere to hide, perhaps a house –
The moment he looked away, the Scoucher stormed out from behind a pile of paving stones next to an unfinished path. One reaching tentacle, even longer than the rest, brushed the back of Arthur's hand as he turned to flee. It wasn't much thicker than a shoelace, and he hardly felt its touch, but when he glanced down, blood was flowing freely.More blood than seemed possible from such a tiny scratch.
Arthur was halfway across a well-mown front lawn when someone called his name from the neighbouring house.
'Arthur?!'
He knew that voice. It came from Leaf, the girl who had helped him after his asthma attack, whose brother and family were among the first afflicted by the Sleepy Plague. He'd seen her briefly the day before, while travelling via the Improbable Stair. He had no idea where she actually lived, but here she was on the porch next door, staring at him in surprise. Or staring at the Scoucher –
'Look out!' she cried.
Arthur changed direction, narrowly avoiding a sweep of the Scoucher's tendrils. He jumped over a low brick wall, trampled through Leaf's parents' prize vegetable garden, leaped up the front steps of her house, and charged through the front door. Leaf slammed it shut after him. A second later it was hit by a sound like rain drumming on the roof – the impact of hundreds of tentacles upon the heavy door.
'Your hand's bleeding!' Leaf exclaimed as she slammed home a large bolt. 'I'll get a bandage –'
'No time!' gasped Arthur. A lot of blood had come from the simple scratch, but the flow was already slowing.
Arthur opened the Atlas, ignoring its sudden expansion. He added in a low wheeze, 'Have to . . . see how . . . fight . . .'
The drumming sound came again. Leaf gasped and jumped back as several tentacles ripped the draft excluder off the bottom of the door and slithered inside. She picked up an umbrella and struck at them, but the tentacles gripped the umbrella and cut it into pieces.More and more tentacles came through under the door. Then they started sawing backwards and forwards.
'It's cutting its way through!' screamed Leaf. She pushed over a plant in a heavy earthenware pot and rolled it against the door. The Scoucher's tentacles struck at the spilled earth for a second, then went back to their sawing. The door had a steel frame, but the tentacles cut through it quite easily.
Arthur concentrated on the Atlas.
What are a Scoucher's weaknesses?How can it be defeated?
An ink spot appeared on the page, but was not blotted up. Words came quickly, and once again were in English and the regular alphabet straightaway. The penmanship was not up to its usual standard.
Scouchers are a particularly unpleasant type of Nithling. They issue from the narrowest cracks and fractures, and are consequently short of substance. Typically they gain a greater and more defined physical presence in the Secondary Realms by consuming the blood or ichor of the local inhabitants. Scouchers in their earlier phases may take a variety of shapes but always have several limbs that end in very fine tentacles, which are lined with tiny but extremely sharp teeth. They use these tentacles to cut their victims, who usually fall unconscious. The Scoucher then laps up the free-flowing blood –
'Arthur! The door –'
'How can I defeat a Scoucher?' Arthur asked furiously.
Silver is anathema to Scouchers, as is ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium and platinum. Scoucher hunters typically use silver dust blown through –
'Silver! Have you got anything silver?' Arthur wheezed, clapping the Atlas shut.
At the same time Leaf grabbed his arm and dragged him across the room and into the kitchen. She slammed the kitchen door behind them and threw herself at the refrigerator, trying to slide it across. Arthur shoved the Atlas into his pocket and grabbed one corner of the fridge, rocking it out from the wall as the terrible sound of splintering wood suddenly stopped in the other room.
'It's inside!'
The fridge was barely set down before it rocked forward. Tentacles punched through the flimsy kitchen door and rasped across the steel sides of the fridge.
'Silver! Silver will kill it!' Arthur repeated. He opened the nearest drawer, but all he could see were chopsticks and wooden utensils. 'A silver fork will do!'
'We don't have anything metal!' Leaf cried out. 'My parents won't eat with metal.'
Several tentacles ripped the freezer door off and flung it on the ground. More tentacles swarmed in to grip the edges and the whole refrigerator shifted across the floor with the squeal of metal feet on tiles.
'Jewellery!' exclaimed Arthur as he looked around for something, anything silver. 'You must have some silver earrings!'
'No,' said Leaf, shaking her head wildly. Her earrings swung too, without any sort of metallic jangle. They were ceramic and wood.
Another squeal alerted Arthur a second before the refrigerator started to topple over. He jumped away an instant before it fell and followed Leaf as she raced through the door at the opposite end of the kitchen.
Arthur slammed the rear kitchen door shut behind him. But this one had no lock, and from the weight of it, could barely stop a determined fist, let alone otherworldly tentacles.