Alex, the Dog and the Unopenable Door

by Ross Montgomery

  One by one, the children hit the Forbidden Land. The effect was instantaneous. They sprang to their feet the second they landed, as if bouncing, and were suddenly sprinting as fast as they could back to the boundary, their eyes glazed.

  ‘Quick!’ Greg screamed, waving his clipboard at the horrified crowd. ‘Clear a path! Clear a path for them, now!’

  But there were too many people to clear a path. The packed crowd looked on in horror as the children hurtled towards them. Their feet barely even touched the grass. Greg turned back to the guards.

  ‘Move the crowds!’ he screamed. ‘Move them before we all get crushed!’

  ‘Look!’ a voice cried out suddenly. ‘Everyone, look!’

  There was a great flutter of confusion. All across the Cusp, people were pointing and shouting at the monitors. For a moment no one really knew what all the commotion was about. Then slowly, one by one, their eyes all caught the same unbelievable sight, and everyone gasped in shock at what was unfolding before them.

  Even from his raised position on the bandstand, Davidus Kyte was too short to make out what was going on.

  ‘Why have they all stopped talking?’ he roared, throwing down the microphone. ‘What’s going on?’

  The cameraman next to him didn’t reply. He was staring down at the monitor in his hands, speechless.

  ‘Give me that!’ snapped Kyte, snatching it out of his hands and shoving him straight off the bandstand. He glared down at the screen.

  It was an aerial shot of the Unfinished Pier, now lying in ruins across the grassland. Beside it, someone was picking himself up from among the piles of shattered wood and rivets. He got to his feet and fell stumbling onto the grass.

  He stayed where he was.

  Davidus’s mouth dropped.

  ‘I … I don’t believe it,’ he gasped.

  Across the base, Prisoner #205513 was straining against the bars of his cell.

  ‘Hey!’ he called over to the guards. ‘Can I at least make my phone call now? Please. I’m a headmaster.’

  The guards ignored him. They were all crowded around a TV in the corner of their office, their jaws dropped in silence. Prisoner #205513 craned his neck round to see what was on the TV.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he whined. ‘Why’s that person just sta––’

  On the television, a boy was standing stock still on the grass of the Forbidden Land, staring at the crowd in front of him.

  It was Alex.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Matthew gasped.

  Several miles away, at school, the newly elected Grand High Chieftain Wizard of Cloisters (formerly known as Laurence Davy) was holding court in the War Room (formerly known as the TV Room) on his plans for world domination with the Wolf-Tiger Fighter Jet Squadron (formerly known as the sixth-form prefects). The framed map from the Headmaster’s office was laid on the carpet in front of them, covered with tactically placed toy cars and beef-and-onion crisps.

  ‘We’ll take the town tonight,’ said the Grand High Chieftain Wizard, moving the model cars down the road with a hockey stick. ‘Once we’ve grown in numbers and resources, we can finally take the Cusp. And with their weaponry at our disposal, the New Age can begin.’

  ‘Hurrah!’ cried the other members of the Wolf-Tiger Fighter Jet Squadron.

  ‘Now I grow bored,’ sighed the Grand High Chieftain Wizard, flinging aside his hockey stick. ‘Bring me my fool.’

  Jeremy Butterworth was brought in and rubbed with butter, and they all started poking him with sticks which thankfully they already had to hand.

  ‘Dance, fool, dance!’ laughed the Grand High Chieftain Wizard.

  ‘Hey!’ cried one of the Wolf-Tiger Fighter Jets from the other side of the room. They all looked up. He was pointing at the TV that played silently in the corner.

  ‘Is that … Alex Jennings?’

  The council all turned to face the television. On the screen, Alex Jennings was slowly walking through the grass of the Forbidden Land.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said the Grand High Chieftain Wizard.

  Alex stared at the silent crowd in front of him.

  The crowd stared back.

  Very slowly, he walked across the grass towards them. He started sweeping it with his hands. It was as if he was looking for something.

  He stopped and bent down to part the grass. He had found what he was looking for. The cameras zoomed in.

  It was a pair of false teeth.

  Alex calmly put them in his pocket and started walking back towards the boundary.

  He stopped. There was something else in the grass at his feet. He bent down and picked it up.

  It was a hospital gown.

  Alex looked down at a badge pinned to the fabric.

  Alex J. Jennings

  Coma Ward

  Order of the Sword and Torch Rehabilitation Centre

  Dad, Alex mouthed silently.

  Alex stood looking at the gown for some time. He looked at the forest that stood on the distant horizon of the Forbidden Land.

  He looked back down at the hospital gown.

  He looked at his feet. He was clearly giving something a lot of thought.

  He turned back and looked at the crowd.

  The crowd stared back, dumbfounded.

  Alex paused and slowly turned back to face the forest.

  He started walking towards the centre of the Forbidden Land.

  Then he began to run.

  12

  The incidents following this strange moment ran exactly as follows.

  Everyone on the newly constructed bandstands stood up in surprise.

  All the bandstands collapsed.

  The youth orchestra hit the tarmac and sprinted uncontrollably towards the crowd, driven by the power of the Forbidden Land.

  Those unlucky spectators at the front, having nowhere to go or even to turn to, ducked to protect themselves.

  The charging children ran straight up their backs and onto the top of the crowd and then kept on running, using their helmets as stepping stones.

  The collective gasp of astonishment from the crowd was so great that it created a substantial drop in air pressure which was picked up by several local weather stations.

  In the darkness beneath the zeppelins, one of the many thousands of dogs took advantage of this sudden distraction to look around. It was a wire-haired terrier with a black patch over one eye.

  The dog delicately undid the collar round his neck, as one would remove a watch, and scampered over to the master switch on the wall that automatically released all the chains that attached each dog from the front of each zeppelin.

  He stood on his hind legs and, quickly pausing to clear his throat, pulled down the switch.

  Six thousand barking dogs poured from the warehouses, their chains dragging behind them.

  Meanwhile, a security guard aiming a flare gun to call for help was flattened by a charging bassoonist at the precise moment he pulled the trigger.

  His vision blinded, he aimed the explosive flare not towards the open sky, as is the custom, but towards the stockpile of celebratory fireworks instead.

  At this point, it became difficult to establish what happened next. In truth, lots of different things happened at once.

  Six thousand dogs suddenly charged into the back of the crowd.

  The pile of fireworks exploded, showering the base with dazzling colours and deafening explosions.

  In a bid to escape, many others imagined that they, too, could follow Alex and run across the boundary to freedom. They were of course gravely mistaken. This in fact managed to make the problem significantly worse, although at the time no one could have foreseen that. The second they stepped over the boundary they spun on their heels and charged back through the crowds, taking out security guards like bowling pins.

  Martha chased Trent Davis round the barracks three times before soundly beating him unconscious with her horn.

  Several security guards rather ill-advisedly tried
to stop the dogs by grabbing onto the chains and suddenly found themselves being dragged forward like they were water-skiing.

  Some people started stealing the news vans and driving them through the barbed-wire fences.

  Across the base a prison guard overcome by a peculiar mixture of emotions silently opened the door of Prisoner #205513’s cell and let him out, before walking into the cell himself, locking the door behind him and swallowing the key.

  The dogs that could make it through the crowds suddenly burst across the boundary and charged across the grassland, parting the grass beneath them with the furious pace of their legs and dragging the terrified spectators caught in their chains over the Forbidden Land, whereupon they immediately started trying to run back home like the others, and the line between the Cusp and the Forbidden Land slowly began to resemble an enormous tug-of-war between people and dogs.

  An elderly member of the Order looked up to see that her ceremonial helmet had somehow started levitating eighty feet into the air. No one else saw it happen, and for the rest of her life no one believed her when she said it did.

  Steph marched straight up to Greg, threw the clipboard out of his hands and kissed him passionately on the lips.

  A number of the older men, already drunk on champagne, threw off their hats and shirts and started attempting to box some of the larger dogs, with mixed results.

  A chandelier of smoking technicolour lights exploded across the base.

  All the milk in the fridges went off at exactly the same time.

  Several women fell pregnant, for no reason.

  Greg pulled away from his passionate embrace and looked along the concrete to where his clipboard had landed.

  The Rota was on fire.

  Part Three

  The Forbidden Land

  13

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yes, Alex?’

  ‘What was it like in the Forbidden Land?’

  Alex’s father picked a book from the shelf, a favourite one, and sat down on the edge of Alex’s bed. He crossed his arms and, after a moment’s thought, crossed his legs too.

  ‘Alex,’ he said, ‘answer me this. Has that ever worked before?’

  ‘Has what?’ said Alex innocently.

  His father gave him a look.

  ‘When you ask me to talk about the Forbidden Land.’

  Alex lay down and shoved his pillow in front of his face, which is usually what he did when he’d been found out doing something he shouldn’t have done.

  ‘Alex,’ said his father patiently, ‘what did I say to you when you asked me that question last week?’

  ‘I can’t remember,’ came Alex’s muffled voice.

  ‘I’m sure you can’t,’ said Alex’s father. ‘Well, I’m fairly certain I said something about it being a very long time ago, and that your mother and I have agreed that four years old is too young to hear those kinds of things.’

  ‘I’m already a week older,’ Alex pointed out.

  ‘Quite,’ said his father. He looked around the bedroom and quietly closed the door before sitting back down again. ‘Well, it’s no good, Alex. I can’t tell you about what happened to me.’

  ‘B––’ Alex began.

  ‘But I can’, his father shushed him, ‘tell you a story about another man who went into the Forbidden Land.’

  Alex grinned. Alex’s father looked at him very seriously.

  ‘But I don’t want you to think for a moment that this story is about what happened to me,’ he said, wagging his finger. ‘Certainly not! Understand?’

  Alex threw the pillow back and sat up eagerly. His father took a deep breath.

  ‘Where to begin?’ he said, scratching at the stubble on his chin. ‘Once upon a time, there was a man who journeyed into the Forbidden Land.’

  ‘What was he called?’ said Alex.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what he was called,’ said Alex’s father.

  Alex snorted. ‘How can it not matter what he was called?’

  ‘The name isn’t important to the story,’ said Alex’s dad irritably. ‘His name was … Malex. Malex M. Mennings. Satisfied?’

  ‘That’s a stupid name,’ said Alex.

  Alex’s father gave him a look that managed to tell his son not to ask any more questions.

  ‘Malex M. Mennings knew’, he continued, ‘that there was a forest in the Forbidden Land. Everyone did. You could see it from the boundary. He knew that he would have to pass through it if he was going to find the centre. So he set off on his sledge, and his dogs pulled all day long until the Cusp was far behind them and they finally reached the edge of the trees.’

  ‘Was it a scary forest?’ said Alex.

  ‘It was, Alex,’ said his father, nodding solemnly. ‘In truth, when Malex M. Mennings first set off on his adventure he had no idea just how big and how dark the forest really was – not until he was right next to it. The trees stretched up so high they blocked out the sun, and the ground inside was as dead as stone. It was so dark that you couldn’t see your own hand in front of your face. Scary enough?’

  ‘Scary,’ Alex agreed.

  ‘And remember, Alex,’ said Alex’s father, ‘back then no one had any idea what was inside the forest. No one had travelled far enough across the grassland to even reach it before. There could have been anything lurking in the trees. Malex M. Mennings thought that there might even be monsters inside that slept in the darkness.’ He sighed. ‘The truth was, even though Malex M. Mennings had done lots of brave things in his life, he was very frightened of going inside. But he went in anyway.’

  ‘But if it was so dark,’ said Alex, ‘then how did he know where to go?’

  Alex’s father smiled.

  ‘Good question, Alex,’ he said. ‘Well, it was easy. He just closed his eyes.’

  Alex snorted. ‘But then it’s even darker!’

  ‘Maybe so,’ said Alex’s father. ‘But he didn’t need to use his eyes any more, not when it was so dark already. How do dogs find their way in the dark, Alex?’

  ‘They use their noses,’ said Alex immediately.

  His father beamed. He always looked happiest when he talked about his dogs.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘They don’t need their eyes, and neither did he. And so he screwed his eyes shut, and once he did he noticed the wind on his skin – the wind that was always blowing in the forest. And so he followed it. He ordered his dogs to go on, and he made them pull against the wind until he finally found where it was coming from.’

  ‘So where was it coming from?’ said Alex. ‘Was there something in the forest?’

  Alex’s father shook his head. He suddenly looked very sad.

  ‘No,’ said Alex’s father. ‘There was nothing in the forest.’

  Alex looked irritated. ‘Well, that’s boring.’

  His father shrugged. ‘Maybe so. But if you think about it, Alex, there weren’t any monsters either. In fact, the only monsters were the ones Malex M. Mennings thought were there, in the darkness in his head. And because he wasn’t trying to see them any more he passed through the forest safely and came out the other side. And do you know what he found then, Alex?’

  ‘The centre of the Forbidden Land!’ Alex shouted triumphantly, leaping out from under the duvet.

  Alex’s father shushed him, glancing behind him at the closed door.

  ‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘He found something else.’

  ‘What?’ Alex whispered.

  Alex’s father smiled and pulled the duvet back over him.

  ‘That’, he said, ‘is a story for another time. Now, if you don’t mind I think it’s time for us both to go to bed.’

  Alex sat up. ‘But …!’

  ‘No more questions, Alex. I’ll tell you the rest next time.’

  ‘… But …!’

  ‘Good night, Alex,’ his father warned. ‘Sweet dreams.’

  Alex groaned, and lay back down. ‘Good night, Dad.’

  His father kissed him on the forehead,
and tucked his duvet under him, and turned out the light. He made to get up.

  ‘… Dad?’ Alex said.

  Alex’s father sighed. ‘Yes, Alex?’

  ‘Does Malex M. Mennings ever get to the centre?’ asked Alex. ‘Does he ever find what he’s looking for?’

  Alex’s father was silent. In the darkness it was impossible to tell what his face was doing.

  ‘Good night, Alex,’ he said quietly.

  He stood up from the bed and walked away. Alex could hear him step out the room and pause for a moment at the door. Alex knew that he was looking at him, and so he pretended to be asleep already, even though he wasn’t. His father stood for a while, looking at him. Then he closed the door and walked back downstairs.

  Alex lay awake and listened to the sounds of his father moving through the house. He had taken to staying up late recently, leaving Alex and his mother in bed. Alex had become used to listening to his footsteps. It was no surprise to him when he heard the front door click open and gently close. His father often went out for walks late at night now, long into the next morning.

  Lying in bed, Alex didn’t realise that his father would not come home that night, or that it would be the first time that he tried to cross back over the boundary. He lay awake until the house fell completely silent.

  ‘Who’s Malex M. Mennings?’ he whispered.

  Alex leaned on his knees in the grassland, heaving for breath. His heart was drumming. His face was red. His jumper was damp with sweat. He wrenched it over his head and wiped his face with it, before wrapping it carefully round his waist. Then, slowly, he looked up.

  A stone’s throw in front of him, the grassland finally stopped. In its place stood enormous trees, the height and width of skyscrapers, jutting from the ground and towering in either direction as far as he could see. There was a wall of absolute darkness inside. A smile crept across his face.

  ‘The forest,’ he muttered. ‘Just like he said.’

  All around him, dogs were charging from the grassland and into the woods. It was as if they were being drawn towards something far in the distance, something that was calling for them beyond the trees. They were immediately swallowed up by the darkness inside, the sound of their paws thundering across the leafblown ground for a moment before fading into silence. Alex stood, staring into the pitch black.