by Steve Harris
That’s about what you’d expect on your way to a haunted house to meet your fate, she told herself. I expect the thunder and lightning will start as soon as I go down the track and can see the house waiting for me at the bottom. Maybe I went to sleep and woke up in a low-budget film …
She made the tight turn at the end of the road and paused at the top of the steep track, her already hammering heart whacking up its work-rate a few more beats-per-minute. She now thought she knew how novice parachutists felt the first time they stared out of the open hatch of an aeroplane. Once the threshold was crossed there was no turning back.
Except that parachutists expect to be still in one piece after they reach the ground, she told herself. This is like jumping out without a parachute and hoping that you’ll get down safely by flapping your arms.
She found first gear and rolled slowly towards the track.
From about half-way down she could see the huge American saloon blocking the track ahead of her. It stood there on the track with the driver’s door wide open as though someone had left it in a hurry. Probably, S’n’J surmised, something to do with the fact that the car looked as if someone had doused it in petrol and put a lit match to it.
It wasn’t just burned, it was totally annihilated.
As she drew closer to it, S’n’J realized that the piles of black ash that lay beside the car’s wheels had once been its tyres. The vehicle’s paintwork no longer existed. There was no glass in any of the windows, but she could see a pool of what might have been melted plastic lying on the boot lid.
It burned hot enough to melt the glass, S’n’J told herself, and before she could cut off the thought, her mind added, and you know who was driving it, don’t you?
S’n’J felt tears well up in her eyes. James. He had come here last night, exactly like a paperback hero. He’d broken his promise to her, not knowing how dangerous it was.
And this is what happened, she told herself, rolling to a halt behind the car.
She turned off the Sierra’s engine, picked up her rolling-pin and got out, willing herself to believe that James had escaped unharmed.
Ahead of her, the house looked hunched and tense, as if it was a wild animal waiting to pounce the moment she went in through the entrance where the front gate should have been.
Here I am walking towards my death, or eternal damnation, S’n’J thought, fingering the bottle of tap-water in her jacket pocket, and what am I carrying? A rolling-pin, a bottle of water, and a picture bible, that’s what. I would have been carrying a tiny Swiss Army knife with a two-inch blade too, if I’d been able to find it. This is exactly the kind of thing that people in horror stories do. Why do they never phone the police? That’s what you should do.
But in her case, it was too late. The police would find nothing untoward going on at Black Rock. There was another fiction convention that would come into play if she called the police: Squad cars arrive, lights flashing. Police look suspiciously at burned-out hulk of American Car. Policeman #1 turns to partner and says, ‘That car wasn’t just burned, Dick, the bastard has been cremated!’ The police walk down to the house and hammer on the door. A charming and handsome man answers their knocking, invites them in and speaks to them in soothing tones. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I saw the car after it caught fire. I thought I saw someone behind it, hurrying back up the track. I went up to it, but couldn’t get close because of the tremendous heat. I went back indoors and called you guys. I thought I’d better let you deal with it.’
We have no record of that call,’ Policeman #1 says. Policeman #2 gets on the horn to base. Call has indeed been placed, but for some strange reason, not acted on. ‘Sorry to have bothered you,’ Policeman #1 says. They leave, frowning. Something is wrong but they have no evidence.
‘And meanwhile something like this happens,’ S’n’J muttered. Girl goes to haunted house because that’s the only place her missing friends could be. Pan up track from crouched house to frightened girl. She is holding a rolling-pin. In her pockets are other useless items. Cue music of the ‘Going to her death’ variety.
She was acting like someone from a lousy book simply because there was no other alternative. If she’d stayed home cowering behind her door, Peter would simply delete a few paragraphs from his magical word-processor and rewrite. When you had control of reality it didn’t matter what people did: you could still get them.
S’n’J walked slowly towards Black Rock, wishing for Diamond Ambrose Anstey, who was not in position on his trailer pointing down at her, nor in the road in front of her. Diamond would help her. Diamond was trapped, just as she would end up being. He was a ghost dog, she knew that now. He was a spirit entrapped by Black Rock in exactly the same way she was. Peter Perfect had probably spotted him and written him into the story. After all, when you suddenly became a new god, you didn’t just rush in and start changing the world, did you? You started small - with something like a dog - and worked your way up.
Diamond wasn’t a demon dog at all, but a poor trapped soul. And he’d known that S’n’J was getting into trouble. He’d tried to warn her off, in the only way he could.
Maybe, if only he would turn up, he could still help her somehow.
But Diamond was nowhere to be seen.
That doesn’t fit in with what you wrote, S’n’J thought. According to the book, he should be howling like a banshee by now. And I should already be more Snowdrop than Sarah-jane.
‘He’s rewriting,’ she whispered to herself as she stared down at the house. ‘He’s up there in his work-room at this very moment, deleting lines and replacing them with fresh ones. He has to catch reality and alter it and that’s what he’s doing now. In real life things don’t work out exactly as they do in the book, so he has to alter the book to suit. And he’s got to a complex part now. The part when fantasy wrests control from reality. Permanently as far as I’m concerned.’
Unbidden, S’n’J’s mind lit up with a fantasy of its own. In it she was in the originator’s work-room staring at the screen of his word-processor. It was no ordinary IBM compatible: it was a terminal that connected directly to the force that shaped reality. He’d hacked into reality’s program and was altering it. She knew this as she stood there in front of it, watching words scroll up the screen. The words of her story. And Peter Perfect’s and Janie’s and Martin’s and James’s. The words of Black Rock. She also knew that there was a very simple way of breaking that link and destroying the fiction that had been woven around her and her friends - and probably destroying Peter Perfect too. All she had to do was smash the computer with the rolling-pin that was currently clutched in her right hand. Just put it through the screen, then attack the plastic case in which the computer’s guts resided.
The only question she had was whether doing this would short-circuit all reality too. If this thing really was connected to God or whatever drove the universe and everything i
n it, its removal by force might send out shock-waves. It might be the end of everything, she told herself solemnly. Not just me and Peter Perfect and my friends, but everything that ever existed. All life. All history. All possible futures. Then she decided that if it was, it wasn’t her fault, and swung the rolling-pin at the screen.
S’n’J grimaced as the fantasy itself exploded in her head. If she could get to his work-room, she would give it a go. As battle-plans went, it rated about o.ooooi on a scale of nought to ten, but at least it gave her something which might, if she could make herself believe in it, be construed as hope.
‘Smash the bastard,’ she whispered. ‘That’s what I’ll do!’
Ahead of her Black Rock lit up.
Or rather, transformed itself.
Suddenly it was the brightest thing on the landscape. It looked artificial, as if it had been re-painted in brighter colours than normal. Or as if there was a row of spotlights in front of it, shining on it. The windows bore the sparkling traceries of the frost she’d seen before through her car’s rear-view mirror, and the window on the right-hand side - the bedroom in which Snowy slept - was black and empty. The ebony front door reflected almost no light and looked as if it had opened on to the darkest night ever witnessed. Its shining door knob glinted like a single gold tooth in an empty mouth.
Around the rock on which the house stood, the sea looked dull and flat and lifeless. The greenery which edged the property looked as if it had been coloured with thousand-year-old paint. The only thing which looked real and vibrant and alive was the house itself.
Above it, the sky was dark and restless. An invisible hand stirred the clouds into restless towering shapes like huge battle-cruisers.
S’n’J paused for a moment, staring open-mouthed at the transformation. The thing that horrified her most was that there was a large part of her which rejoiced at the change she was witnessing. This part - her wide-eyed little girl - was watching a miracle taking place and badly wanted to be a part of it.
That’s why he wants you! she scolded herself. Because there’s a part of you that wants to live in a magical world! But the feeling of joy didn’t go away. If it can be as good as this … the little girl thought, what’s wrong? If it can he this brilliant, this magical, why don’t we just accept it, go down there and go inside. It’ll be wonderful!
And looking at the house, S’n’J could see what this part of her meant. There was Black Rock, a mere hair’s breadth away from twinkling like a star. Set against the backdrop of the mundane real world, it looked very inviting indeed.
If she had just been able to forget that behind its front door lay eternal damnation, she might have skipped all the way down there like a little schoolgirl looking forward to a half-day holiday.
Black Rock was magical. It was beautiful.
And it had no right to exist.
If there’s a way of getting rid of it, I’ll find it! S’n’J told herself.
But Mr Winter was in there. The man of her dreams. Her ideal. Her Mister Right. Things could be perfect! the little girl said, and showed her a fleeting image of just how perfect the love-making - on that sheepskin rug in front of the open fire - was going to be.
S’n’J thrust the image away and replaced it with one of her own: the image of her and James last night, consuming one another’s bodies with a passion so intense it had made them both scream. But standing here in front of the house, the image of her and James was the thing that seemed unreal. The other picture seemed very real indeed.
She shook her head. Way out at sea, a huge wave was forming, piling itself up into a foaming wedge.
You can’t frighten me with that old tricky S’n’J thought. I’ve seen it all before!
She glanced back at the house - upon the roof of which no mysterious writer was balanced - and told herself that no matter how much she ached to be a part of it, she was here to destroy it and she mustn’t forget that. She feared that she was changing into Snowy after all, and reminded herself that this was what the writer wanted her to think. It wasn’t going to be that easy for him to accomplish or it would have happened already.
She looked back at the sea, which was now flat again, and congratulated herself. She seemed to have achieved at least some progress. Perhaps there was a chance for her after all.
The whole sky was now looking disturbed though, and the angry area of cloud above the house was performing some kind of trick where vapour streamed off from the bottom of it towards the top and piled up there, forming a tall, ugly shape. It looked rather like it might be a thundercloud.
But it won’t strike you, even if it is, she assured herself. He isn’t going to hurt you. He wants you to be his Snowdrop.
She moved slowly towards the house, trying not to look up at the strange shapes that swirled in the sky. To her left King Arthur’s Castle stood on its ‘figure eight’ shaped pair of rocks. A mist was rising from the sea at their foot and tendrils were flowing up towards the Castle. S’n’J looked at it once, saw the slender line of mist that ran directly from the Castle’s rocks across the bay to the rock on which the house stood, and told herself that Janie was right. The site of the Castle -and of Black Rock - had been chosen because the place had some kind of power. Arthur’s knights probably hadn’t made fair beginning of a nobler time at all. Or if they had used the power in a positive way, whoever had placed Black Rock here since had corrupted that power.
She resolved not to look over there again. She didn’t want to know what was happening over at the Castle; her imagination could quite happily conjure up pictures of dead knights coming back to life and marching on Tintagel with blazing banners. They would be unstoppable and they would show no mercy.
She gazed down at the ground as she walked because she could no longer bear to look at the beautiful icy thing the house had become, either. It was too wrong. And a part of her was too impressed with it.
But after she’d taken two more steps, S’n’J noticed something wonderful. Spring had come.
She knew this because in the places where she had trodden, vegetation had sprung up in the shape of her shoes. For a moment she thought she was imagining it, then she turned and looked back at the way she’d come. She had left tracks. Each of her steps was outlined with tiny blades of grass and filled in with purple flowers.
Frowning - and fighting off the part of her that wanted to be delighted and charmed - S’n’J peered at the last two footsteps she had taken. The flowers there weren’t just tiny, they were minute. Each had four flat petals and a little black centre part that looked furry. None of the flowers had a diameter of more than four millimetres. There had to be thousands of them in each footprint. S’n’J knelt down and sniffed at the nearest one. It smelled vaguely like honeysuckle and hit her olfactory nerves in much the same way as a bottle of smelling-salts. One inhalation was enough to make her feel as if her brain had expanded inside her head.
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��n’J inspected the soles of her shoes, which were unchanged. Experimentally, she placed one foot on the ground ahead of her, then withdrew it. The flowers were already there when she took it away. She put the foot back into the print, expecting it to sink into the earth. Nothing happened at all. The flowers weren’t even crushed.
What does it mean? the little girl part of her asked enthusiastically.
S’n’J snapped her mind down on the voice of the little girl and put the question out of her mind. What it meant was that Peter Perfect was trying to bring out that willing part of her and make it take over. If she could keep it at bay, she had a chance. If she let herself be seduced by this magic, she was sunk.
Don’t you remember? the little girl asked plaintively. At Tintagel Castle, where Arthur’s knights made fair beginning of a nobler time? Don’t you remember what happened then? When we went there? Don’t you remember the magic he showed us?
S’n’J shook her head. The last time she’d gone there she’d just seen a ruin of a well-placed castle.
You’re just shutting it out because you’re frightened! the little girl complained. You could remember if you wanted to!
But S’n’J didn’t want to, because there was a memory there. A deeply buried one which threatened to surface soon. She frantically piled things on top of the place in her head where the memory seemed to be located, because she didn’t believe it was one of hers. It was his, a made-up, false one.
Looking at the track ahead of her, and never up at the building itself, S’n’J went towards the enchanted house.
She was aware that she’d passed through the entrance to Black Rock’s grounds when the light changed. It became brighter. Much brighter. At her feet, the shingle shone like jewels, each stone glinting and winking.