The most vivid was of a small plump woman in old-fashioned costume. She’d been wounded somehow, and slumped before Katie, bleeding, in the streets of New York. But then the woman had vanished. They’d all vanished. Like just now with the girl in the bed. Katie couldn’t be certain whether any of this was real. Even when she’d written about these visions in her diary, she’d questioned them. Maybe she had an overactive imagination. Or she could be going that little bit insane. Katie read and re-read what she’d written, finally hurling the diary across the room in frustration, trying to knock the truth out of it. Still, she didn’t know.
There was one more clue, a big one: the walking stick. It had arrived in a package one day, addressed in elaborate script to Katie Berger-Jones-Burg. The doorman had said some kind of punk Goth had dropped it off. It was a fantastical object: black ebony with an elaborate silver head. Both the wooden base and the metal top were carved with strange letters and symbols. ‘Kind of like something a magician uses,’ their housekeeper Dolores had suggested. ‘Maybe flowers will pop out of the end.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Katie replied, turning the walking stick over in her hands. ‘I’ve always hated magicians, especially at birthday parties. What kind of grown-up spends their life trying to fool a six-year-old? It’s pathetic and bogus. But there’s nothing bogus about this walking stick. It’s the real deal.’
Dolores sniffed, ‘Real, schmeal. And you don’t know where it came from or why it’s here. I’d just put it in the back of the closet and forget all about it.’
That was part of the problem. The walking stick had arrived for a purpose, and that purpose was not to forget. It had even come with a card. ‘Aide-memoire,’ the card said – ‘to help her remember.’ ‘Irony,’ Katie said to herself. ‘This is a really great example of irony.’ At the Neuman Hubris Progressive School they were doing Writers and the Martyrdom of Same Gender Preference – Oscar Wilde, Noël Coward, Truman Capote. Her teacher, ‘call me Ted’, kept pointing out the writers’ use of irony as a weapon to ward off persecution. ‘Irony and the walking stick,’ Katie thought. ‘I’d write an essay on it, but “call me Ted” would think I was bonkers.’ She picked up the card and read it again.
‘Aide-memoire’ – to help her remember . . . she could remember nothing.
The Walking Stick
She must have fallen asleep on the sofa and slept heavily, despite the night’s terrors. It was well past ten when she woke up, the light streaming through the city-stained windows of Apartment 11C. The front door banged, and Dolores stumped in, laundry basket on her hip. ‘Well, someone has the life of Riley,’ Dolores said, dumping the laundry on the sofa, all over Katie’s feet. ‘Someone can sleep where they want, and as long as they want. While some others, well, they had to get up at five this morning to get from the Bronx to Manhattan.’
Katie extracted her feet from the laundry. ‘I bet Mimi’s still asleep,’ she said, sitting up.
‘Course she is,’ Dolores answered, beginning to sort Katie’s socks and shirts from Mimi’s more exotic garments. ‘Looks to me like she’ll be in bed for a week. That Mimi, she’s having a crisis.’
Katie lay back down. Mimi in crisis was always a nightmare. ‘What’s happened this time?’ she asked.
Dolores picked up a red thong between thumb and forefinger; shaking her head she dropped it into the pile of Mimi’s scanty things. ‘Mimi’s agent, he just tried to book her on tour. In Mil-wau-kee, Wisconsin.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Didn’t you hear me, child? Do you think Mimi’s going to haul her bony butt off to Milwaukee?’
‘Well, yeah,’ Katie said. ‘I mean I know, she’s played Madison Square Garden, and 20,000 pre-teens screamed their heads off. But that’s over. Youth ’n Asia hasn’t exactly been in the charts lately.’
Dolores balled up Katie’s white cotton socks. ‘Youth ’n Asia’ she sniffed. ‘Now that’s the problem. They never did have no Asia in them, and now they’ve got no youth. Mimi’s just too old to go dancing around half naked on stage. She can’t let go, and she can’t go to Milwaukee. So she’s gonna go to bed, and stay there.’
Katie knew what this meant: trays of mood-enhancing foods demanded and then pushed aside; heart-to-heart chats with Katie at two in the morning; and Mimi’s special zombie drift through the apartment after yet more pills. She’d once shown up at Katie’s school, in her bathrobe, to confess that her maternal aura was tinged in grey. But then, Neuman Hubris was the type of school used to that type of mother. They’d escorted Mimi home, and then signed Katie up for extensive counselling. Katie had thought this unfair. Mimi loved psychoanalysis, cognitive therapy and behavioural reviews – anything so that she could talk even more about herself. Katie loathed counselling and dreaded the sessions. She had nothing to say.
Dolores was still talking about Mimi, in a kind of droning sing-song, a litany of complaint. But Katie had left Mimi and her crisis behind. She’d remembered her own crisis last night – the girl in the bed. ‘Can you help?’ She’d seen the girl and the message so clearly. What had that been about? Was it a bad dream or a real vision? Last night she’d been so sure that it was real, like all that other stuff hovering just outside the reach of her mind. Now she wasn’t so sure.
Katie was usually an appreciative audience for Mimi-talk, but Dolores noticed she wasn’t listening at all. ‘Katie,’ she said, ‘you are a hundred miles off. Girls your age, they just dream and dream all day. What you need is a firm hand, and you’re not gonna get it from Sleeping Beauty in there. Really, it’s time you got up.’
Katie did get up – shot up in fact. She stood bolt upright, staring out the window. But it wasn’t the spires of St Thomas More’s she was looking at, or the black silhouette of Mt Sinai hospital. It wasn’t the view from her apartment window at all. Just beyond her, on the windowsill, stood a man. He was very tall, a black top hat accentuating his height and a long cloak whipped around him. He shaded his eyes with one hand, strange glittering green eyes, and peered through the window. As he pressed his face closer, she noticed its unnerving whiteness – he was practically transparent. All the time he was tapping on the window with a black and silver walking stick. He tapped and tapped, yet there was no sound. Katie lived on the 11th floor. How was he able to do this? He wasn’t even holding on.
‘Don’t jump!’ Katie cried, running towards the window. ‘Hang on! I’ll call the doorman, and the police. Why can you never open a window in this apartment?’
‘They’re sealed shut,’ Dolores answered, looking puzzled, ‘except for the terrace. What are you doing, child?’ Katie yanked the doors of the terrace open. Running to the edge, she scanned the side of the building. No one was there. She ran back in and checked the windows. Nothing. Girding herself, she ran back outside and looked down. Had he jumped? Her eyes moved over every inch of the terrace. All she could see was Mimi’s Buddhist shrine and some ‘medicinal herbs’ in pots. Katie listened to the taxis honking far below and felt the icy chill of February in New York. She shivered. No one was there.
‘Change of plan,’ Dolores said, leading Katie back inside. ‘I don’t think you should get up after all. I think you’re heading right back to bed.’
‘But Dolores,’ Katie said, ‘he was here.’
‘I know, honey,’ Dolores said gently, ‘nothing a warm glass of milk and some rest won’t fix.’
‘But the man, he’ll fall,’ Katie protested.
‘I’ll call the doorman downstairs, sweetie,’ Dolores said soothingly. ‘I’ll make sure he doesn’t fall.’ Putting her arm around Katie’s shoulders, she steered her into her pink bedroom.
At the foot of her bed, Katie stopped. ‘Dolores,’ she said, ‘can you just pull down the duvet, and turn over the pillows.’
Dolores was looking more worried by the minute. She turned the pillows and smoothed the bed. ‘There you go, baby,’ she said. ‘All nice and comfy now. You just slip in and get some rest.’ Katie got on her hands an
d knees and peered under the bed. There were piles of books underneath, and a couple of childhood treasures, but there was no girl with long red hair. Just to be certain, she got up and looked in the closet. All she saw was her school uniform, some unfortunate ‘teen’ clothes Mimi had picked out for her, and in the back, tangled up with her baseball bat and an old battered kite, was the walking stick.
‘It’s the walking stick,’ she said to herself, climbing into bed. ‘He had a walking stick. Just like mine.’
‘There now, honey,’ Dolores said, giving her an uncharacteristic kiss on the forehead. ‘You just forget about the man and the walking stick. Just close your eyes. I’m gonna get you that milk. You just yell out if you feel scared or sick.’
The walking stick – that was the key to remembering. If Katie could crack the secret of the stick, if she could read the symbols carved into it, then she’d understand everything.
She’d been trying to figure out the walking stick for ages. First stop had been the internet, for hours, late into the night. She’d even spent a clutch of Saturdays at the New York Public Library poring over book after book. But she learned nothing. Tap, tap, tap – the stick bounced against her brain, but it couldn’t get in.
The most frightening and frustrating part was that someone did understand, and they weren’t going to help. Quite the opposite. Upstairs in Apartment 23C lived Professor Diuman, the world’s leading expert on Parallel Being and the Temporal Psyche of History, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Ancient and Extinct Languages at Columbia University. More important than that, he was one of Mimi’s exes. They’d dated for a couple of months, when Mimi was going through a kind of ‘find a guy like Arthur Miller’ stage. It hadn’t worked out, of course. Professor Diuman might be brainy, but he was also ugly, and Mimi didn’t do ugly. She’d decided to climb Mount Everest and ran off with a hunky mountaineer.
Professor Diuman had always been nice to Katie. In the first place, he knew she existed, which was more than she could say for some of Mimi’s boyfriends. He asked her what she thought about things, what she was doing. Not in a creepy way – more as a comrade in arms. When Mimi dumped him, Katie and the professor had stayed on good terms. He always said hello in the elevator, and bought Girl Scout cookies from her each fall. He liked the Thin Mints. Sometimes he even lent her books, though Katie found them kind of weird.
In New York city apartment buildings, people do not knock on their neighbours’ doors, except to complain about noises or smells or a particularly unattractive Christmas wreath. But Katie had knocked on Professor Diuman’s door. Anyone who knew as much as he did about language was sure to recognize the symbols on the walking stick. Katie had been so certain it would be OK. He’d give her a glass of milk, and some of the Thin Mints she’d sold him the year before. And then he’d tell her all about her mystery gift.
Except that wasn’t how it happened. Professor Diuman was there when she knocked. Smiling and nodding in his slightly timid way, he’d led her into the living room. He sported a long grey ponytail – grown, Katie suspected, to compensate for the lack of hair on the top of his head. His wispy goatee, divided into three neat braids, was not an attractive addition.
‘What brings you up here?’ he asked Katie. ‘Have you locked yourself out? Is something wrong with Mimi?’ His small oval spectacles reflected the things about him – the books on the shelves, the curious objects on the coffee table.
‘It’s this,’ Katie said, holding out the walking stick. ‘I really need to know more about it, especially the symbols. I thought you might know . . .’
If the walking stick had grown fangs and attacked Professor Diuman, the change in the room could not have been greater. Diuman pulled away, his spectacles growing dark. She could have sworn the braids on his chin bristled and twitched.
‘Where did you get that?’ he asked, not at all in his usual absent-minded friendly way.
‘It was a gift,’ Katie said. ‘At least I think it was.’
‘From whom?’
‘From I don’t know. It was left downstairs for me, with the doorman.’
‘When?’
‘I can’t remember.’ Katie was getting confused.
Diuman took the walking stick from her, turning it in his hands, his eyes flicking from the carved symbols to Katie, his glasses growing darker, his manner more agitated. She could tell he knew what the symbols meant. But she couldn’t work out why he was acting so strange.
‘The doorman gave this to you?’ Professor Diuman ran his fingers over the symbols. ‘Are you certain it was meant for you? I really do think there’s been a mistake. This was clearly meant for me.’
None of this was clear to Katie. She only knew that Diuman was acting very strangely. His braided beard was undulating, and the room had taken on a funny smell – like when you plug in the Christmas tree and the wires fuse – a kind of burnt, electric smell. A dangerous smell. The best thing would be to leave – right away.
Leaning forward, she snatched the walking stick, and held it behind her back.
‘The walking stick is mine,’ she said. ‘My name was on the card. Thanks for looking at it, but I really have to be going now.’
She felt shaky, but tried to act natural, walking towards the door. For a moment she thought Professor Diuman would let her go, but he sidled in front of her, blocking her exit, his arms stretched across the door frame. He’d put his ‘friendly face’ back on, but Katie could see he was as tense as a cobra, ready to strike.
‘I am sorry, my dear,’ he said. ‘I just got rather excited about that artefact of yours. I can take it to Columbia University this afternoon. I’ll show it to some of my colleagues. It might be worth quite a lot. I can authenticate it, and sell it for you; make a bit of money for a girl your age. You’d like some pocket money, wouldn’t you?’ He reached out for the walking stick, but she kept it behind her back.
‘It’s mine,’ she repeated. Diuman flushed red, the sparse hair on his head standing up with static electricity. Katie saw herself reflected in his glasses and she looked scared.
‘If I were you,’ he said in a tight, shaking voice, ‘I’d be more reasonable. Now do be a good girl.’
Katie ducked under his arm and twisted the door knob. It wasn’t locked. She’d make a run for it; down the corridor. Professor Diuman followed, and would have caught her, but the elevator opened and Mrs Klapznik stepped out. ‘Diuman!’ she barked. ‘I want to talk to you about those noises coming from your apartment.’ She looked from the Professor to Katie. ‘Is something wrong here?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want trouble in the building.’
‘No, no, Mrs Klapznik,’ Professor Diuman said. ‘I’m saying goodbye to Mimi’s daughter. You know, Mimi in 11C.’
‘As if I wouldn’t know Mimi!’ harrumphed Mrs Klapznik. ‘Now there’s noise for you – parties and paparazzi and who knows what else goes on in that apartment. But my problem is with 23C, with you, Professor Diuman.’
Katie had never been as glad to see anyone as she was to see Mrs Klapznik. Diving into the elevator, she jabbed 11, and then the Close button, several times.
Professor Diuman hadn’t come after her. The doorman said Diuman had left, quite suddenly, on some kind of trip. But Katie knew one day soon he’d be back, up there, just twelve floors above, plotting to get the walking stick. She’d hidden it in the back of her closet. Stupid stick; but nothing could be that dangerous without a purpose. She just wasn’t smart enough to figure it out.
Deep in the Looking Glass
Katie spent the rest of the day in – or under – her bed. She figured the closer she stayed to it, the less chance there was she’d find someone else in it. Mimi stayed in bed too, occasionally wailing for herbal tea. At about six she sent Dolores out for a large tub of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream.
‘If Mimi’s asking for ice cream, she’s hit rock bottom,’ Katie said to Dolores. ‘Ice cream is a pre-suicidal move. Should I go in and see her?’
Dolores shrug
ged into her brown and orange plaid coat and pulled her woolly hat down over her ears. ‘I told her a little fib: that you’re at your daddy’s all day, an’ you’re not back ’til late tonight,’ she said. ‘Best she don’t even know you’re here. I know she’s carrying on, but you’re the one who needs the rest. Don’t worry about Mimi; I’ll buy her a bumper box of chocolate doughnuts to go with her ice cream. Before you know it, that woman’ll be in hog heaven.’
‘You don’t think she’ll harm herself?’ Katie asked. ‘You know how hysterical she gets after she eats.’
‘I’ll keep an eye on her,’ Dolores said. ‘And tonight I’ll make her that special soup she likes – just ginger and nettles and hot water. She can drink it all day tomorrow. That’ll cheer her up.’
Reassured, Katie crept back under her bed, pulling the walking stick behind her. It was a tall Victorian-style bed and she kept anything that really mattered underneath it. A blanket knitted by her grandmother, her diary, a Swiss army knife – a present from her long-gone father. Also the essentials – a box of Oreos, tissues, a flashlight. And then there were the books: an eclectic mix of fiction, biography, poetry and letters – though her obsession at the moment was medical pamphlets. She was fascinated by disease, and if she’d thought more highly of herself, she might have wanted to become a doctor.
She ran her index finger over the spines of her books: His Dark Materials, Swahili Made Easy, My Life as a Dog, 13 Women Astronauts, Dispatches from the Crimea, Tourniquets and Their Uses . . . In the corner was a pile of books on ancient languages. There were a couple Professor Diuman had loaned her in the past. ‘Well, he’s never getting these books back,’ Katie thought. ‘Last time I saw him, he looked like he might eat me alive . . .’
She pulled one of Diuman’s books from the pile. It was very old, with crumbling pages and a strange burnt musky smell. It was in Latin, and Katie’s Latin was bad. She could only remember semper ubi sub ubi: always wear underwear. Tempus Fugit, Libertati Viam Facere the title-page read. She knew this had nothing to do with underwear, but something to do with time flying and freedom. She turned the pages, staring idly at the words. Random letters were illuminated with drawings. The word ‘Tempus’ thrust itself forward, the ‘T’ engraved with snakes and patterns. Her eyes seemed to re-focus and she could pick out symbols amongst the patterns – symbols a lot like those on the walking stick.
The Queen at War Page 2