Mister Monday

When he looked directly at the House, he found that it was too cluttered, complex and strange to reveal its many details. There were simply too many different styles of architecture, too many odd additions. Arthur got dizzy trying to follow individual pieces of the House and work out how they all fitted together. He would start on a tower and follow it up, only to be distracted by a covered walkway, or a lunette that thrust out of a nearby wall, or some other strange feature.

He also found it very difficult to look at exactly the same place twice. Either the House was constantly changing when he wasn’t looking at it, or the car was going past too quickly and the complexity and density of all the various bits and pieces made it impossible for his eyes to regain their focus on any particular part.

After they passed the House, Arthur was put off guard a bit by the normality of the rest of the drive to school. It seemed just like any other morning, with the usual traffic and pedestrians and children everywhere. There was no sign of anything strange as they drove up the street the school was on. Arthur felt relieved and comforted by just how boringly normal it seemed. The sun was shining; there were people everywhere. Surely nothing could happen now?

But as he stepped out of the car at the front entrance and his mother drove away, he saw five bowler-hatted, black-suited men suddenly rise like lifted string puppets between the cars in the teachers’ parking lot, off to his right. They saw him too and began to move through the ranks of cars towards him. They walked in strange straight lines, changing direction in sudden right angles to avoid pupils and teachers who obviously couldn’t see them.

More of the dog-faces appeared to the left. Arthur saw them issue out of the ground, as dark vapours that in a second solidified into dog-faced, bowler-hatted, black-suited men.

Dog-faces to the left. Dog-faces to the right. But there were none straight ahead. Arthur ran a few steps, his breath caught, and he knew he couldn’t run and risk another asthma attack. He slowed down, his eyes darting across at the two groups of approaching dog-faces, his mind rapidly calculating their speed and direction.

If he walked quickly up the main promenade and the steps, he would still get inside before the dog-faced men caught up with him.

He did walk quickly, ducking around loitering groups of students. For the first time, he was grateful nobody knew him at this school, so no one said, “Wait up, Arthur!” or tried to stop him to talk, which would have happened for sure at his old school.

He made it to the steps. The dog-faces were gaining on him, were only ten or fifteen yards behind, and the steps ahead were crowded, mainly with older students. Arthur couldn’t push through them, so he had to zig and zag and weave his way through, calling out, “Sorry!” and “Excuse me!” as he went.

He was almost at the main doors and what he hoped would be safety beyond when someone grabbed his backpack and brought him to an abrupt halt.

For an instant, Arthur thought the dog-faces had caught him. Then he heard words that reassured him, despite the threatening tone.

“You knock the man, you pay the price!”

The boy who held Arthur’s bag was much bigger, but not really mean-looking. It was hard to look ultra-tough in a school uniform. He even had his tie done up properly. Arthur picked him instantly as a would-be tough guy, not the real thing.

“I’m going to throw up!” he said, holding his hand over his mouth and blowing out his cheeks.

The not-so-tough guy let go of Arthur so quickly that they both staggered apart. Because Arthur was expecting it, he recovered first. He jumped up the next three steps at one go, only a few yards ahead of a swarm of bowler-hatted dog-faces. They were everywhere, like a flock of ravens descending on a piece of meat. Pupils and teachers got out of their way without realising why they were doing so, many of them looking puzzled as they suddenly stopped or stepped sideways or jumped aside, as if they didn’t know what they were doing.

For a second, Arthur thought he wouldn’t make it. The dog-faces were at his heels and he could hear them panting and snorting. He could even smell their breath, just as Leaf had said. It stank of rotten meat, worse than an alley full of rubbish at the back of a restaurant. The smell and the sound of their slathering lent him extra speed. He lunged up the last few steps, collided with the swing doors, and fell through.

He was up again in an instant, ready to run, his breath already shortening, lungs tightening. Fear gripped him, fear that the dog-faces would come through the doors and that he would have an asthma attack and be powerless to resist them.

But the dog-faces didn’t come through the school’s main entrance. Instead they clustered at the doors, pressing their flat faces against the glass panels. They really did look like a cross between bloodhounds and men, Arthur saw, with their little piggy eyes, pushed-in faces, droopy cheeks and lolling tongues that smeared the windows. Kind of like Winston Churchill on a very bad day. Strangely, they had all taken their bowler hats off and were holding them in the crook of their left arms. It didn’t help the look of them, for their hair was uniformly short and brown. Like dog hair.

“Let us in, Arthur,” rasped one, and then another started and there was a horrible cacophony as the words all got mixed up. “Us, In, Let, Arthur, Arthur, Us, Let, Let, Arthur, In, In—”

Arthur blocked his ears and walked away, straight down the central corridor. He concentrated on his breathing, steadying it into a safe rhythm. Slowly, the baying calls from outside receded.

At the end of the corridor, Arthur turned around.

The dog-faces were gone, and once again pupils and staff were pouring through the doors, laughing and talking. The sun was still shining behind them. Everything looked normal.

“What’s with your ears?” asked someone, not unkindly.

Arthur blushed and pulled his fingers out of his ears.

The dog-faces obviously couldn’t get him here. Now he could focus on surviving the usual problems of school, at least till the end of the day. And he could try to find Ed and Leaf. He wanted to tell them what had happened, to see if they could still see the dog-faces. Maybe they could help him work out what to do about it all.

Arthur had expected to see them at the gym in preparation for the cross-country run. He had a note excusing him, but he still had to go and give it to Mister Weightman. First he had to suffer through a whole morning of maths, science and English, all of which he was good at when he wanted to be, but couldn’t focus on today. Then when he went to the gym, making sure to go through the school rather than across the quadrangle, he was surprised to find that the class was only two-thirds the size of the previous week. At least fifteen children were missing, including Ed and Leaf.

Mister Weightman was not pleased to see Arthur. He took the note, read it and handed it back without a word, turning his head away. Arthur stood there, wondering what he was supposed to do if he didn’t go on the run.

“Anyone else got a note?” Weightman called out. “Has some class been held back? Where is everybody?”

“Off sick,” mumbled a kid.

“All of them?” asked Weightman. “It’s not even winter! If this is some sort of prank, there will be serious repercussions.”

“No, sir, they really are ill,” said one of the serious athletes. “A lot of people have got it. Some sort of cold.”

“OK, I believe you, Rick,” said Weightman.

Arthur looked at Rick. He was clearly a clean-cut athletic star. He looked like he could have stepped out of a television advert for toothpaste or running shoes. No wonder Weightman believed him.

Still, it was strange for so many pupils to be off sick at this time of year. Particularly since biannual flu vaccinations had become compulsory five years ago. It was only two months since everyone should have had the shots, which usually offered total protection against serious viruses.

Arthur felt a small familiar fear grow inside him. The fear that had been with him as long as he could remember: that another virus outbreak would take away everyone he loved.

“All right, let’s get started with some warm-up exercises,” Weightman called out. He finally looked at Arthur and summoned him over with a crook of his finger.

“You, Penhaligon, can go and play tiddlywinks or whatever. Just don’t cause any trouble.”

Arthur nodded, not trusting himself to speak. It was bad enough when other kids made fun of him, but at least there was a chance he could get back at them, or make a joke out of it or something. It was much harder to do that with a teacher.

He turned away and started walking out of the gym. Halfway to the door, he heard someone run up behind him and then there was a touch on his arm. He flinched and half crouched, suddenly afraid the dog-faces had got in. But it was only a girl, someone he didn’t know. A girl with bright pink hair.

“You’re Arthur Penhaligon?” she asked over the laughs and giggles from the rest of the class, who’d seen him flinch.

“Yes.”

“Leaf sent me an e-mail to give to you,” she said, handing him a folded piece of paper. Arthur took it, ignoring the catcalls from the boys behind her.

“Ignore those mutants,” the girl said in a loud voice. She smiled and ran back to join her particular clique of tall, bored-looking girls.

Arthur put the paper in his pocket and left the gym, his face burning. He wasn’t sure what made him more embarrassed: getting told to go and play tiddlywinks by Weightman or getting a note from a girl in full view of everyone else.

He took refuge in the library. After explaining to the librarian that he was excused from gym and showing her his note, he took a good look around, then decided to sit at one of the desks on the second floor, next to a window that overlooked the front of the school and the street.

The first thing he did was build some walls on the desk out of large reference books, to make a private cubbyhole. Unless someone came up and looked over his shoulder, nobody would be able to see what he was reading.

Then he took the Key and the Atlas from his bag and laid them down with Leaf’s note on the desk. As he did so, he caught the flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked out the window and, as he had more than half expected, there were the dog-faces. Sliding out from between parked cars and trees. Slinking forward to gaze up at his window. They knew exactly where he was.

Arthur had hoped he would feel more secure if he could actually see them. That he would feel braver for having exposed himself at the window. But he didn’t. He shivered as they congregated into a mob, all of them staring wordlessly up at him. So far, none had shown wings like the one that had flown to his window the night before. But perhaps that was only a matter of time.

Forcing himself to look away, he imagined that he was a white mouse tearing its gaze away from a hooded cobra. That having done so, he would be able to escape.

He felt a very strong desire to flee into the deeper parts of the library, to hide between the stacks of comforting books. But that wouldn’t help, he knew. At least here he knew where the dog-faces were. What they were was another question, one of the many Arthur was making into a mental list.

Arthur unfolded the print out of Leaf’s e-mail and read:

To: pinkhead55tepidmail.com

From: raprepteam20biohaz.gov

Hi Allie

This is me, Leaf. can you pass this message on to arthur penhaligon? boy who flaked on the run last Monday? kind of thin + pale, about ed’s height hair like gary krag v. important he gets this. gotta run. thanx

Leaf

hi art

sorry we didn’t c u at hospital. ed got sick tues. nite, and then mum + dad did + aunt mango (not real name). i’m not sick, tho our house is quarantined. many doctors cops all over our place, in biohazard suitz, v. scary pigface. They think new flu and shots DON’T WORK. no one really, really sick yet but when I go near ed or the others I smell the same revolto smell that the DOG_FACED GUYS had like they’re connected, you know but the doctors can’t smell it they’re in suits and neither can ed or parents, tho so much snot coming out that;s no surprise. docs have machine that smells 4 them, and it says e’thing OK when obviously not. no one believes me.

i think the virus from dog-faces I REALLY HOPE you can see them you have to work it out I’M DEPENDING ON YOU.

feds cut off net and phone I think afraid of big panic. this from one of the docs palmtops which I STOLE and they’ll figure it out real soon.

im afraid

CHAPTER FIVE

Arthur stared at the last words for a few seconds: im afraid.

He shivered, folded the print-out and put it back in his pocket. He felt his breathing catch again and concentrated on a steady, slow rhythm. Breathe in slowly, hold it, breathe out slowly. But all the time his mind was racing. This was even worse than he thought.

All the fears he had managed to keep under control were threatening to break free and send him into total panic. The old fear of a new outbreak. And a new fear, of the dog-faces and Mister Monday, and even of the Key itself.

Breathe, thought Arthur. Think it through.

Why had he been given the Key… and the Atlas? Who… or what… were Mister Monday and the dog-faces? Were they really connected to this sudden outbreak of drug-resistant influenza? Was it an outbreak? Maybe only Ed and Leaf’s family was affected…

Arthur looked out the window at the dog-faces again and accidentally touched the Key and the Atlas on the desk. As he did so, he felt a sharp electric shock and the Atlas flipped open with a bang, making him jump like a startled cat. As it had done before, the Atlas grew in size till it filled nearly all the desk space in between his rampart of books.

This time, the Atlas didn’t display a drawing of the House. Instead it rapidly sketched one of the dog-faces, though without the bowler hat, dirty shirt and black, old-fashioned suit. This one was wearing something like a sack, but there was no mistaking the face.

Words appeared next to the picture, written by some unseen hand. The words were in a strange alphabet that Arthur didn’t recognise, let alone have a chance of reading, but as the boy watched he saw that the earlier letters were changing into the normal alphabet and the words were rearranging themselves into English, though the type was still weird and old-fashioned. Every now and then a blot of ink would appear partway through a word, to be hastily wiped away. Then words stopped appearing, and Arthur started to read what was there.

The House was built from Nothing, and its foundations rest upon Nothing. Yet as Nothing is for ever and the House is but eternal, these foundations slowly sink into the Nothing from which the House was wrought, and Nothing so impinges upon the House. In the very deepest cellars, sinks and oubliettes of the House, it is possible to draw upon Nothing and shape it with one’s thought, should such thought be strong enough. Forbidden in custom, if not in law, it is too often essayed by those who should know better, though it is not the high treason of treating with the Nithlings, those self-willed things that occasionally emerge from Nothing, with scant regard for Time or reason.

A typical shaping of Nothing is the Fetcher, as illustrated. A Fetcher is a creature of very low degree, usually fashioned for a particular purpose. Though it is contrary to the Original Law, these creatures are now often employed in menial tasks beyond the House itself, in the Secondary Realms, for they are extremely durable and are less inimical to mortal life than most creatures of Nothing (or indeed those of higher orders from within the House). However, they are constrained by certain strictures, such as an inability to cross thresholds uninvited, and may be easily dispelled by salt or numerous other petty magics.

Perhaps one in a million Fetchers may find or be granted enlightenment beyond its station, and so gain employment in the House. For the most part, when their task is done, they are returned to the primordial Nothing from whence they came.

Fetchers should never be issued with wings or weapons, and must at all times be given clear direction.

Arthur thought again of that hideous face at the window, pressed against the glass, its wings fluttering furiously behind it. Somebody had ignored the advice about not giving Fetchers wings. Arthur would not be surprised if the ones waiting outside had weapons as well, though he didn’t want to think about what kind of weapons they might be given.

Arthur tried to turn the page of the Atlas to see if there was any more information, but the page wouldn’t turn. There were lots of other pages in the book, but they might as well have all been glued into a single mass. Arthur couldn’t even get his fingernail between the leaves of paper.

He gave up and looked out the window again and was surprised to see that the Fetchers had moved in the short space of time he’d been looking at the Atlas. They had formed into a ring on the road and were all looking up. A couple of cars had stopped because of them, but it was obvious the drivers couldn’t really see what was in their way. Arthur could distantly hear one of them shouting, the angry words faint through the double glazing, “Get that heap of junk outta here! I haven’t got all day!”

The Fetchers gazed up at the sky. Arthur looked too but didn’t see anything. Part of him didn’t want to see, because the fear was rising in him.

Don’t look, part of his mind said. If you don’t see trouble, it doesn’t exist.

But it does, thought Arthur, fighting down the fear. Keep breathing slowly. You have to confront your fears. Deal with them.

He kept looking, until an intense white light flashed just above the ring. Arthur shut his eyes and shielded his face. When he looked again, black spots danced everywhere in his vision and it took a few seconds for them to clear.

The empty space in the middle of the ring was no longer empty. A man had appeared there. Or not really a man, since he had huge feathery wings spreading from his shoulders. Arthur kept blinking, trying to focus. The wings were sort of white, but dappled with something dark and unpleasant-looking. Then they folded up behind the apparition’s back and in an instant were gone, leaving only a very handsome, tall man of about thirty. He was dressed in a white shirt with chin-scraping collar points, a red necktie, a gold waistcoat under a bottle-green coat, and tan pantaloons over glossy brown boots – an ensemble that had not been in fashion for more than a hundred and fifty years.

“Oh, my!” exclaimed someone from behind Arthur. “The very spit of how I’ve always imagined Mister Darcy. He must be an actor! I wonder why he’s dressed up like that.”

It was the librarian. Mrs Banber. She’d crept up on Arthur while he wasn’t paying attention.

“And who are those strange men in the black suits?” continued Mrs Banber. “Those faces can’t be real! Are they making a film?”

“You can see the dog-faces?!” exclaimed Arthur. “I mean the Fetchers?”

“Yes…” replied the librarian absently, still staring out the window. “Though now that you mention it, I must be overdue for an eye checkup. My contact lenses don’t seem to be quite right. Those people are rather blurry.”

She turned around and for the first time looked properly at Arthur and his battlements of books.

“Though I can see you all right, young man! What are you doing with all those books? And what is that?”

She pointed at the Atlas.

“Nothing!” exclaimed Arthur. He slammed the Atlas shut and let go of the Key, which was a mistake. The Atlas shrank immediately into its pocketbook size.

“How did it do that?” asked Mrs Banber.

“I can’t explain,” said Arthur rapidly. He didn’t have time for this! The handsome man was walking towards the library, with the Fetchers following. He looked a bit like Mister Monday, though much more energetic, and Arthur wasn’t at all sure that the same strictures that kept the Fetchers from crossing thresholds would apply to him.

“Have you got any salt?” he asked urgently.

“What?” replied Mrs Banber. She was looking out the window again and smoothing her hair. Her eyes had gone unfocused and dreamy. “He’s coming into the library!”

Arthur grabbed the Atlas and the Key and stuffed them into his backpack. They glowed as he put them away, shedding a soft yellow light that momentarily fell on Mrs Banber’s face.

“Don’t tell him I’m here!” he said urgently. “You mustn’t tell him I’m here.”

Either the fear in his voice or that brief light from the Atlas and the Key recaptured Mrs Banber’s attention. She suddenly looked less dreamy.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t like it,” she snapped. “No one is coming into my library without permission! Go and hide behind the zoology books, Arthur. I’ll deal with this person!”

Arthur needed no invitation. He hurried away from the window, into the maze of library shelves, walking as fast as he dared. He could feel his lungs tightening, losing their flexibility. Stress and fear were already feeding his asthma.

He stopped behind the zoology shelves and crouched down so that he could see through two rows of shelves to the front door, where Mrs Banber stood guard at the front desk. She had a scanner in her hand and was angrily checking in books, the scanner beeping every few seconds as its infrared eye picked up a bar code.

Arthur tried to breathe slowly. Perhaps the handsome man couldn’t come in. If he was waiting out the front, Arthur could escape through the staff entrance he’d seen at the back.

A shadow fell across the door. Arthur’s breath stopped halfway in. For an instant he thought he couldn’t breathe, but it was only a moment of panic. As he got the rest of his breath, the handsome man stopped in front of the door.

He reached out with one white-gloved hand and pushed the door open. For a hopeful moment Arthur thought he couldn’t cross that threshold. Then the man stepped into the library. As he passed the door, the antitheft scanners gave a plaintive beep and the green lights on top went out.

Mrs Banber was out from behind her desk in a flash.

“This is a school library,” she said frostily. “Visitors must report to the front office first.”

“My name is Noon,” said the man. His voice was deep and musical, and he sounded like a famous British actor. Any famous British actor. “I am Private Secretary and Cupbearer to Mister Monday. I am looking for a boy. Ar-tor.”

He had a silver tongue, Arthur saw. Literally silver, shining in his mouth. His words were smooth and shining too. Arthur felt like coming out and saying, “Here I am.”

Mrs Banber obviously felt the same way. Arthur could see her trembling and her hand rose, almost as if it was going to point to where he was hiding. But somehow she forced it back down.

“I… I don’t care,” said Mrs Banber. She seemed smaller and her voice was suddenly weak. “You have… you have to report…”

“Really?” asked Noon. “You can’t allow a few words…”

“No, no,” whispered Mrs Banber.

“A pity,” said Noon. His voice grew colder, authoritarian and threatening. He smiled, but the smile was cruel and did not extend beyond his thin lips. He ran one gloved finger along the top of a display stand and held it up in front of Mrs Banber’s face. The tip of the glove was stained with grey dust.

The librarian stared at the finger as if it were her eye doctor’s flashlight.

“Spring cleaning must be done,” said Noon. He blew on the dust and a little cloud of it fell on Mrs Banber’s face. She blinked once, sneezed twice and fell to the ground.

Arthur stared, horrified, as Noon carefully stepped over the librarian’s body and stalked past the front desk. For a second he thought Mrs Banber was dead, till he saw her trying to get up again.