Mister Monday

The closed in, confused world he’d been experiencing started to open out again, like scenery unfolded on a stage. Instead of just the blue sky rimmed with darkness, he saw a couple of kids crouched near him. They were two of the walkers, the ones who refused to run. A girl and a boy, both defiantly not in school uniform or gym gear, wearing black jeans, T-shirts featuring bands Arthur didn’t know, and sunglasses. They were either super-hip and ultra-cool, or the exact opposite. Arthur was too new to the school and the whole town to know.

The girl had short dyed hair that was so blonde it was almost white. The boy had long, dyed-black hair. Despite this, they looked kind of the same. It took Arthur’s confused mind a second to work out that they had to be twins, or at least brother and sister. Maybe one had to repeat a grade.

“Ed, call 999,” instructed the girl. She was the one who had given Arthur the inhaler.

“The Octopus confiscated my phone,” replied the boy. Ed.

“OK, you run back to the gym,” said the girl. “I’ll go after Weightman.”

“What for?” asked Ed. “Shouldn’t you stay?”

“Nope, nothing we can do except get help,” said the girl. “Weightman’s got a phone. He’s probably already on his way back. You just lie here and keep breathing.”

The last words were directed at Arthur. He nodded feebly and waved his hand, telling them to go. Now that his brain was at least partially functioning again, he was terribly embarrassed. First day at a new school and he hadn’t even made it to lunch time. It would be even worse coming back. He would be seen as a total loser and, after a month of the new term, would have no chance of easily catching up or making any friends.

At least I’m alive, Arthur told himself. He had to be grateful for that. He still couldn’t get a proper breath, and he was incredibly weak, but he managed to prop himself up on one elbow and look around.

The two black-clad kids were showing that they could run when they wanted to. Arthur watched the girl sprint through the gaggle of walkers like a crow dive-bombing a flock of sparrows, and vanish into the tree line of the park. Looking the other way, Arthur saw Ed was about to disappear around the high, blank brick wall of the gym, which blocked the rest of the school from view.

Help would be coming soon. Arthur willed himself to be calm. He forced himself up to a sitting position and concentrated on taking slow breaths, as deep as he could manage. With a bit of luck he would stay conscious. The main thing was not to panic. He’d been here before, and he’d come through. He had the inhaler in his hand. He’d just stay quiet and still, keeping panic and fear securely locked away.

A flash of light suddenly distracted Arthur from his slow, counted breaths. It hit the corner of his eye and he swung around to see what it was. For a moment he thought he was blacking out again and was falling over and looking up at the sun. Then, through half-shut eyes, he realised that whatever the blinding light was, it was on the ground and very close.

In fact, it was moving, gliding across the grass towards him, the light losing its brilliance as it drew nearer. Arthur watched in stunned amazement as a dark outline became visible within the light. Then the light faded completely, to reveal a weirdly dressed man in a very strange sort of wheelchair being pushed across the grass by an equally odd-looking attendant.

The wheelchair was long and narrow, like a bath, and it was made of woven wicker. It had one small wheel at the front and two big ones at the back. All three wheels had metal rims, without rubber tyres, or any sort of tyre, so the wheelchair – or wheel-bath, or bath chair, or whatever it was – sank heavily into the grass.

The man lying back in the bath chair was thin and pale, his skin like tissue paper. He looked quite young, though, no more than twenty, and was very handsome, with even features and blue eyes, though these were hooded, as if he was very tired. He had an odd round hat with a tassel on his blond head and was wearing what looked to Arthur like some sort of kung fu robe, of red silk with blue dragons all over it. He had a tartan blanket over his legs, but his slippers stuck out the end. They were red silk too, and shimmered in the sun with a pattern that Arthur couldn’t quite focus on.

The man who was pushing the chair was even more out of place. Or out of time. He looked somewhat like a butler from an old movie, or Nestor from the Tintin comics, though he was nowhere near as neat. He had on an oversized black coat with ridiculously long tails that almost touched the ground, and his white shirt front was stiff and very solid, as if it was made of plastic. He had knitted half-gloves that were unravelling on his hands, and bits of loose wool hung over his fingers. Arthur noticed with distaste that his fingernails were very long and yellow, as were his teeth. He was much older than the man he pushed, his face lined and pitted with age, his white hair only growing on the back of his head, though it was very long. He had to be at least eighty, but he had no difficulty pushing the bath chair straight towards Arthur.

The two men were talking as they approached. They seemed entirely unaware of Arthur, or uninterested in him.

“I don’t know why I keep you upstairs, Sneezer,” said the man in the bath chair. “Or agree to your ridiculous plans.”

“Now, now, sir,” said the butler-type, who was obviously called Sneezer. Now that they were closer, Arthur noticed that his nose was rather red and had a patchwork of broken blood vessels shining under the skin. “It’s not a plan, but a precaution. We don’t want to be bothered by the Will, do we?”

“I s’pose not,” grumbled the young man. He yawned widely and closed his eyes. “You’re sure that we’ll find someone suitable here?”

“Sure as eggs is eggs,” replied Sneezer. “Surer even, eggs not always being what one might expect. I set the dials myself, to find someone suitably on the edge of infinity. You give him the Key, he dies, you get it back. Another ten thousand years without trouble, and the Will can’t quibble cos you did give up the Key to one in the line of heredity, as it were.”

“It’s very annoying,” said the young man, yawning again. “I’m quite exhausted with all this running around and answering those ridiculous inquiries from up top. How should I know how that bit of the Will got out? I’m not going to write a report, you know. I haven’t the energy. In fact, I really need a nap—”

“Not now, sir, not now,” said Sneezer urgently. He shaded his eyes with one dirty, half-gloved hand and looked around. Strangely, he still seemed unable to see Arthur, though he was right in front of him. “We’re almost there.”

“We are there,” said the young man coldly. He pointed at Arthur as if the boy had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. “Is that it?”

Sneezer left the bath chair and advanced on Arthur. His attempt at a smile revealed even more yellow teeth, some of them broken, but all too many of them sharp and doglike.

“Hello, my boy,” he said. “Let’s have a bow for Mister Monday.”

Arthur stared at him. It must be an unknown side effect, he thought. Oxygen deprivation. Hallucinations.

A moment later, he felt a hard bony hand grip his head and bob it forward several times, as Sneezer made him bow to the man in the bath chair. The shock and unpleasantness of the touch made Arthur cough and lose all his hard-won control over his breathing. Now he really was panicking and he couldn’t breathe at all.

“Bring him here,” instructed Mister Monday. With a languid sigh, he leaned over the side of the bath chair as Sneezer dragged Arthur effortlessly over, using only two fingers to pick the boy up by the back of his neck.

“You’re sure this one will die straight away?” Mister Monday asked, reaching out to lift Arthur’s chin and look at his face. Unlike Sneezer, Monday’s hands were clean and his nails trimmed. There was hardly any force in his grip, but Arthur found he couldn’t move at all, as if Mister Monday had pressed a nerve that paralysed his whole body.

Sneezer rummaged in his pocket with one hand, not letting go of Arthur’s neck. He pulled out half a dozen scrunched-up pieces of paper, which hung in the air as if he’d laid them on an invisible desk. He sorted through them quickly, smoothed one out and held it against Arthur’s cheek. The paper shone with a bright blue light and Arthur’s name appeared on it in letters of gold.

“It’s him, no doubt at all,” said Sneezer. He thrust the paper back in his pocket, and all the others went back in as if they were joined together on a thread. “Arthur Penhaligon. Due to drop off the twig any minute. You’d best give him the Key, sir.”

Mister Monday yawned again and let go of Arthur’s chin. Then he slowly reached inside the left sleeve of his silk robe and pulled out a slender metal spike. It looked very much like a thin-bladed knife without a handle. Arthur stared at it, his mind and sight already fuzzy again from lack of oxygen. Somewhere in his head, under that fuzziness, the panicked voice that had told him to use his inhaler was screaming again.

Run away! Run away! Run away!

Though the weird paralysis from Monday’s touch had gone, Sneezer’s grip did not lessen for a moment, and Arthur simply had no strength to break free.

“By the powers vested in me under the arrangements entered into in the blah, blah, blah,” muttered Mister Monday. He spoke too quickly for Arthur to make out what he was saying. He didn’t slow down until he reached the final few words. “And so let the Will be done.”

As he finished, Monday thrust out with the blade. At the same time, Sneezer let Arthur go and the boy fell back on the grass. Monday laughed wearily and dropped the blade into Arthur’s open hand. Instantly, Sneezer made Arthur wrap his fingers around it, pushing so hard that the metal bit into his skin. With the pain came another sudden shock. Arthur found that he could breathe. It was as if a catch had been turned at the top of his lungs, unlocking them to let air in.

“And the other,” said Sneezer urgently. “He has to have it all.”

Monday peered across at his servant and frowned. He also started to yawn, but quashed it, taking an angry swipe across his own face.

“You’re very keen for the Key to leave my possession, even if only for a few minutes,” said Monday. He’d been about to take something else out of his other sleeve, but now he hesitated. “And to give me boiled brandy and water. Too much boiled brandy and water. Perhaps, in my weariness, I have not given this matter quite the thought…”

“If the Will finds you, and you have not given the Key to a suitable Heir—”

“If the Will finds me,” mused Monday. “What of it? If the reports be true, only a few lines have escaped their durance. I wonder how much power they hold?”

“It would be safer not to put it to the test,” said Sneezer, wiping his nose on his sleeve. Anxiety obviously made his nose run.

“With the complete Key in his possession, the boy might live,” observed Monday. For the first time he sat up straight in his bath chair and the sleepy look was gone from his eyes. “Besides, Sneezer, it seems odd to me that you of all my servants should have come up with this plan.”

“How so, sir?” asked Sneezer. He tried to smile ingratiatingly, but the effect was repulsive.

“Because generally you’re an idiot!” shouted Monday in a rage. He flicked a finger and an unseen force struck Sneezer and Arthur, sending them tumbling roughly across the grass. “Whose game are you playing here, Sneezer? You’re in league with the Morrow Days, aren’t you? You and that Inspector, and the Will safe as ever? Do you expect to take over my office?”

“No,” said Sneezer. He slowly stood up and began to advance upon the bath chair. With each step, his voice changed, becoming louder and clearer, booming into the distance. Trumpets sounded as he trod, and Arthur saw letters of sharp black ink form upon his skin. The letters danced and joined into lines of type that rushed across Sneezer’s face like living, shining tattoos.

“Into the trust of my good Monday, I place the administration of the Lower House,” said both the type and the booming voice that came out of his mouth, but was not Sneezer’s. “Until—”

Arthur couldn’t believe the languid Monday could move so fast. He drew something from his sleeve, a glittering object which he pointed at Sneezer as he shouted deafening words that sounded like thunderclaps, the vibration of them smashing through the air and shaking the ground where Arthur lay.

There was a flash of light, a concussion that shook the earth and a stifled scream, though Arthur did not know who it came from, Sneezer or Mister Monday.

Arthur shut his eyes. When he opened them again, Monday, bath chair and Sneezer had disappeared, but there was still black type running in a thread through the air, moving too quickly for him to read the words. The letters twirled above Arthur into a spiral, a whirlwind of shiny letters. Something heavy materialised between the lines of type and fell down, striking him sharply on the head.

It was a book, a slim notebook, no bigger than Arthur’s hand. It was bound in green cloth. Arthur absently picked it up and slid it into his shirt pocket. He looked up and around again, but the lines of type were gone. They had slowed down just long enough for him to make out only four words: Heir,Monday and The Will.

Arthur could see Mister Weightman sprinting towards him now, a phone at his ear, and the school nurse running much more slowly from the direction of the gym, a resuscitation kit in her hand. Behind Weightman came the whole of Arthur’s gym class. Even the walkers were running.

Arthur looked at them and would have groaned if he could have forced any air out of his lungs. Not only was he going to die, it would be in front of everybody. They would all be interviewed on TV and say things that sounded sort of nice but really meant they thought he was a stupid loser.

Then he noticed that he could breathe. For a while there his brain had been tripping out from lack of oxygen, with visions and everything, but the inhaler had worked sufficiently well to get him over the worst. He could breathe a bit, and it was worth the pain in his hand—

Arthur looked at that hand. It was still clenched in a fist, with a trickle of blood running out below his little finger. He’d thought he was clutching his inhaler, but he wasn’t. He was holding a weird strip of metal, sharp-pointed on one end with a circular loop on the other. It was heavy and was made of silver with fancy gold inlay, all swirls and curlicues.

Arthur stared at it for a second before he realised what it was. It was the minute hand of some sort of antique clock. It was real and so was the notebook in his pocket. Mister Monday and Sneezer had been there. It wasn’t all an oxygen-deprivation dream.

Weightman and the nurse would be on him in a minute. Arthur looked around wildly, trying to think of somewhere he could hide the clock hand. It would be taken away from him for sure.

There was a patch of discoloured grass a few paces away. Arthur crawled over to it and plunged the minute hand into the earth, until only the hollow circle remained, hidden by some tufts of yellow grass.

As soon as he let the hand go, he felt his chest tighten. That catch had snapped shut again and there was no more air. Arthur rolled over, trying to put some distance between himself and the minute hand. He didn’t want anyone else to find it.

He’d come back to get it as soon as he could, he thought.

If he lived.

CHAPTER TWO

Arthur was still in the hospital twenty-four hours after the strange events of Monday morning. He had spent most of that time unconscious and still felt dazed and confused. Though he was breathing reasonably well again, the doctors wanted to keep him in for a few more days because of his history.

Fortunately Arthur’s mother was a very important medical researcher who worked for the government, so not only did the whole family have the best medical insurance, doctors all around the country knew Dr Emily Penhaligon and her work. Arthur always got good treatment and was kept in the hospital even when they made other sicker people leave. He usually felt bad about that later, but when he was actually in the hospital he was too ill to think about it.

Arthur’s father was a musician. He was a very good musician, but not always a very commercially minded one. He wrote brilliant songs and then forgot to do anything with them. He’d been the guitar player in a famous band called The Ratz thirty-five years ago, and sometimes people still recognised him. He’d been called Plague Rat then, but had long since gone back to his original name, Robert “Bob” Penhaligon. He still got a lot of money from his time in The Ratz since he’d written most of the songs, some of which were multiplatinum sellers. They still got played on some radio stations quite a lot and new bands used samples from them, particularly Bob’s guitar parts.

These days, Bob Penhaligon looked after the family and noodled away on one of his three pianos or one of his twelve guitars, while Emily Penhaligon spent more time than she wanted to in her laboratory doing things with DNA and computers that benefited the whole human race but took her away from her own family.

Arthur had six brothers and sisters. The eldest three, two boys and a girl, were from Bob’s liaisons with three different women when he was on tour with The Ratz. The fourth was from Emily’s first marriage. The next two were both Bob and Emily’s.

Then there was Arthur. He was adopted. His birth parents had both been doctors who worked with Emily. They’d died in the last really big influenza epidemic, the one that had finally been controlled by a new anti-flu drug they’d helped to discover – as part of Emily’s team. Arthur had only been a week old when they died. He’d lived through the flu, but he was probably an asthmatic because of it. Besides his parents he had no immediate family, so Emily and Bob had been successful in their application to adopt.

It didn’t worry Arthur that he was adopted. But every now and then he would leaf through the photo album that was almost all he had to remember his birth parents. The other thing was a short video from their wedding, which he found almost unbearable to watch. The influenza plague had killed them only eighteen months later, and even to Arthur they looked ridiculously young. He liked that as he got older he looked more like both his birth parents, in different ways. So they lived on in him.

Arthur had known he was adopted since he was little. Bob and Emily treated all the children the same way, and the children considered themselves all brothers and sisters. They never introduced one another as “half-brother” or “half-sister” and never explained the fact that there were twenty years between the eldest, Erazmuz (born in Bob’s rock music heyday), and the youngest, Arthur. They also didn’t explain the difference in looks, skin colour, or anything else. They were simply all part of the family, even if only the youngest three were still at home.

The four eldest were Erazmuz, who was a major in the army and had children of his own; Staria, a serious theatre actress; Eminor, a musician, who’d changed his name to Patrick; and Suzanne, who was at college. The three at home were Michaeli, who was at a local college; Eric, who was in his last year of high school; and Arthur.

Arthur’s father, Michaeli and Eric had already been to see him the night before, and his mother had popped in early in the morning to check that he was OK. Once she was sure of that, she lectured him about it being better to look like a total loser in everyone’s eyes than to be dead.

Arthur always knew when his mother was approaching because doctors and nurses would appear from all over the place, and by the time she arrived, Emily would be trailing eight or nine white-coated people behind her. Arthur was used to her being a Medical Legend, just as he was used to his father being a Former Musical Legend.

Since all of his family in town had already visited once, Arthur was surprised when two more people came to see him early on Tuesday afternoon. Children his own age. He didn’t recognise them for a second, since they weren’t wearing black. Then he realised who they were. Ed and the girl who had helped him use the inhaler. This time they were in regular school uniform, white shirts, grey trousers, blue ties.

“Hi,” said the girl from the door. “Can we come in?”

“Uh, sure,” mumbled Arthur. What could these two want?

“We didn’t meet properly yesterday,” said the girl. “I’m Leaf.”

“Leith?” asked Arthur. She’d pronounced it strangely.

“No, Leaf, as in from a tree,” said Leaf reluctantly. “Our parents changed their names to reflect their commitment to the environment.”

“Dad calls himself Tree,” said the boy. “I’m supposed to be Branch but I don’t use it. Call me Ed.”

“Right,” said Arthur. “Leaf and Ed. My dad used to be called Plague Rat.”

“No!” exclaimed Leaf and Ed. “You mean from The Ratz?”

“Yeah.” Arthur was surprised. Normally only old people knew the names of the individual members of The Ratz.

“We’re into music,” said Leaf, seeing his surprise. She looked down at her school uniform. “That’s why we were wearing real clothes yesterday. There was a lunch time appearance by Zeus Suit at the mall and we didn’t want to look stupid.”

“But we missed it anyway,” said Ed. “Because of you.”

“Uh, what do you mean?” asked Arthur warily. “I’m really grateful to you guys—”

“It’s OK,” said Leaf. “What Ed means is we missed Zeus Suit because we had something more important to do after we… I mean I… saw those two weird guys and the wheelchair thing.”

“Wheelchair thing? Weird guys?” Arthur repeated. He’d managed to convince himself that he’d flipped out and imagined everything, though he hadn’t wanted to put it to the test by checking his school shirt pocket for the notebook. The shirt was hanging up in the closet.

“Yeah, really weird,” said Leaf. “I saw them appear in a flash of light and they disappeared the same way, just before we got back to you. It was mighty strange, but nobody else blinked an eye. I reckon it’s because I’ve got second sight from our great-great-grandmother. She was an Irish witch.”

“She was Irish, anyway,” said Ed. “I didn’t see what Leaf said she saw. But we went back to have a look around later. We’d only been there five minutes when these guys came out of the park and started saying, ‘Go away. Go away’. They were plenty weird.”

“Kind of dog-faced, with jowly cheeks and mean-looking little eyes, like bloodhounds,” interrupted Leaf. “And they had really foul breath and all they could say was ‘Go away’.”

“Yeah, and they kept sniffing. I saw one of them get down on the ground and sniff it as we were walking away. There were lots of them – at least a dozen – wearing kind of… Charlie Chaplin suits and bowler hats. Weird and scary, so we took off and I reported them to the office for trespassing on the school grounds, and the Octopus came out to check. Only he couldn’t see them, though we still could, and I got a week’s detention for ‘wasting valuable time’.”

“I only got three days’ detention,” said Leaf.

“The Octopus?” asked Arthur weakly.

“Assistant Principal Doyle. ‘The Octopus’ because he likes to confiscate stuff.”

“So what’s going on, Arthur?” asked Leaf. “Who were those two guys?”

“I don’t know,” said Arthur, shaking his head in mystification. “I… I thought it was all a hallucination.”

“Maybe it was,” offered Ed. “Only both of you had it.”

Leaf punched him hard on the arm. Ed winced. Definitely brother and sister, thought Arthur.

“Of course, that doesn’t explain why the Octopus couldn’t see the guys with the bowler hats,” Ed added quickly, rubbing his arm. “Unless all three of us were affected by something like a gas or weird pollen.”