by Jule Owen
Contents
New Releases
Title Page
BOOK ONE
From the Sky
Dragons in the Bedroom
The Naming of Things
The Pianist
Psychopomp
Mr Lestrange
Eva Aslanova's Virtual World
O'Malley Escapes
Drowned London
Robot Building
The First Space War
The Beebot
Books That Write Themselves
Chips
Letting Go the Dragons
The Beekeeper
O'Malley Again
Four Days
Dragomirov
Mathew Erlang is Dead
Borodin the Cat
The Silent Prayer
Evgeny the Spy
The Night Rescue
Friends Under the Mountain
The Empty Cell
Kindness
The Door
Reality
Bad Head
The Dream Scenario
BOOK TWO
The Best and Brightest Scientists
Haunted by Dreams
Broken Glass
Hoshi Mori Comes Home Early
Cold War and Missile Crisis
Mathew Erlang's World Falls Apart
Green Fairy
Dragonfly
The Lake
Bob and Mike
Security
The Dishonest War
Letters to Himself
Revisit
Breakfast with the Government Agent
A Friend of Mr Lestrange
Kilfeather's Arm
The Castle
Director Hathaway
Mathew Erlang the Elder
The Patchwork Army
Galetea
Escape Plan
August Lestrange Explains
Something in the Way
In the Cadmus Tower
The Echo of a Memory of a Dream
The Invasion Map
Bad News from Dr. Bob
The Accountants in Silverwood
Inside Silverwood
The Lab
Two Erlangs
Misfire
Nonstarter
BOOK THREE
The End
Time to go
Northward
Roadblock
Panic Room
The Boy
Eyeball
Jackdaw
The Sleeping Town
Clara Pays a Visit
The Truth About Mr Lestrange
A Visit to the unPresence
To the Hills
Ghosts in the machine
On the Road Again
Elgol
Hack
Ghost of Things Yet to Come
Frozen Sunshowers
Swift
Christmas Day in Elgol
The Walls of Silverwood
Yellow Flowers
Cabin in the Woods
The Contract
Haunted By Herself
The Allowed List
Home Coming
Epilogue
Thanks!
Find out what happens next
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Author
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The House Next Door
Trilogy
by
Jule Owen
Book One
The Boy Who Fell from the Sky
1 Falling
DAY EIGHT: Wednesday, 15 June 2472, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Siberia, Russia
At first he spins. The sky and the trees below spin too, and his stomach lurches. Then he is parallel to the horizon, arms and legs spread-eagled like a skydiver. The air pushes at his limbs. He extends and flexes his fingers, lifts his head and looks across the treetops at the breath-taking scale of the forest, the unbroken canopy of green stretching into the misty horizon and cloud-covered mountains in the distance. The assault on his senses and instincts is overwhelming. Beauty, joy, exhilaration, and terror all at once. The ground is pulling him towards it at an alarming rate.
I’m going to die, he thinks. Then, This isn’t real. This is not real.
As the trees rush towards him, as he nears the ground, he passes close to the side of a rocky cliff face, pounding white water throttling down, and he is like a stone in the waterfall. The spray soaks him to the skin. Fighting fear, he dares glance below. There is a lake where the falling water gathers: a blue pool, pale at the edges, shading to sapphire in the centre.
I hope it’s deep, he thinks as he breaks the surface, feet first.
He plunges until the water finally catches hold of him like firm hands, and he is slowed, for moments on end, still and hanging, suspended in chains of bubbles escaping to the surface. It is dark and cold. Visibility is limited to a few feet ahead. Staring into the darkness, he half-expects a monster of the deep to snatch him in its jaws or tentacles. Without even realising it, he is clawing his way towards the air, his arms reaching around and down, the pressure of the water helping him, forcing him towards the world. Light refracts on the surface, glistening and dancing.
Breaking through to his own element, he takes great gulps of air, his chest shuddering painfully, his arms thrashing. His head goes under and he swallows water; he emerges coughing and choking and thrashes some more, plunging under, panicking, until some strange, calm voice in his head tells him to stop, to be still, to lie back in the water, to trust, to get control of his breath.
Then he is suspended on the top of the sapphire pool, arms and legs outstretched like he is skydiving in reverse now, floating, waiting for his heart and the blood pulsing in his ears to quieten. The sky is a cloudless blue above him. There is a curtain of green in the corners of his eyes.
The sun is hot and already burning, but the water has chilled him, and he enjoys the sensation of his skin and his bones thawing. The water laps his ears with the wet, round, unknowable sounds of the lake. Bobbing in and out of the sounds of the forest, there’s a wall of noise, of birdsong and the calls of strange animals, and he tunes in to the clamour and distinguishes whistles, clicks, buzzings, individual songs, and angry cries.
Turning his head, scanning, he spies a bank of smooth rock and swims towards it. The water is much shallower at the edges, and he is able to stand and wade onto dry land. He sits on one of the rocks and takes off his boots, drains them of water, and sets them and his socks aside to dry, flattening the sodden wool against the hot stone.
He gazes at the waterfall and the empty air above it.
There is no door. Nothing.
He has literally fallen to this place from the sky.
This must be a game, or a virtual reality world. Admittedly, it would be the most sophisticated one ever invented. It is so real. He taps the rocks with his knuckles – it hurts. It genuinely hurts. The sensation of falling, of hitting the water, of swimming, of almost drowning – well, it was remarkable. His throat is still sore from choking.
Still, this is the most obvious explanation: He has logged into Mr Lestrange’s Darkroom, which happens to be playing the most remarkable virtual world ever made.
Now all he has to do is to find a way to leave.
There is no possibility of going back the way he has come. But there is no rush. It is a lovely spot, with the sunlight pouring in, the rocks hot under his skin, the sound of the birds, and the roar of the waterfall. Lying back, he closes his e
yes and dozes off.
And wakes with a start.
Something disturbing – life-threatening, even – has pulled him from his dreams. But when he sits and looks around, nothing has changed except the position of the sun in the sky, which is now much farther to the east and casting longer shadows. It is still hot, and the air still sings with birds and insects.
Discomfort registers in his brain. His arms and feet are red: burnt. Stupid, he thinks. And he wonders again at the advanced nature of this world, making him believe he is sunburnt. Virtual world or not, his skin hurts like hell, his head is sore, and he is parched. The water in the lake, he supposes, is fresh. Wading a little into the shallows, he bends and takes a couple of tentative sips, cupping the water to his mouth with his palms. It tastes good, and he gulps more.
He ponders what he should do next. Where to start to search for the door? Remembering his view of the canopy of the forest – it stretches forever. The door might be anywhere. Or maybe Mr Lestrange will come home from wherever he has gone to and pull the plug on the game, take the skullcap off his head. That’s the most likely scenario. In which case, he should make the most of this enormous playground.
If this is a VR world, he thinks, then there should be a map. He calls his Lenz to try the Nexus and sees a list of available networks. They are all in a strange alphabet. He tries one and is prompted for a password, and a warning message flashes. He closes it and tries the Blackweb. It is not there. He doesn’t understand.
I’m really on my own.
Wading back to the shore, he sits to pull on his boots. They are dry outside but still damp on the inside. There’s no choice but to put them on. His feet are swollen from the sunburn, and it hurts to pull his socks and boots onto his feet. Cursing, he ties his laces.
All around the perimeter of the lake is an unbroken wall of creeping, thriving green, with no obvious way through the jungle. He needs something to beat a path in front of him. He finds a long pole, wide enough to be substantial but thin enough to grip, breaks some smaller branches off and tests the weight of it in his hand. It’s good.
The lake empties into a small river, which he decides to follow. It’s bound to lead to people, to the coast or something else.
It’s easier going than he imagined, although he has to veer away from the stream to walk around trees and bushes. His feet chafe in his wet boots. The pain from the sunburn on his feet and arms is persistent. It’s humid.
He stops to drink again from the stream. The water pooling in his hand has bits floating in it. He swills his hand and tries again, this time scooping closer to the top where it runs faster. It tastes fine. If this was real, if he was in Elgol, hiking into the wild mountains surrounding the community, he would never be so bold, but he needs to drink. His clothes are soaked with his own sweat.
His ears are assaulted by the sounds of life all around him, but he sees only an occasional flicker of movement of birds in the trees above. Flies swarm about his face, attracted by the salt on his skin, and beyond the path he is beating for himself he is aware of small life, insects cutting leaves, crawling amongst the humus of the forest floor, gathering dying and decaying things for their food. He tries to block them from his mind.
The light is dimming, and he starts to reflect on what he will do at night for warmth and light. Although he certainly doesn’t need the heat, a fire would give him light and keep animals away.
The filtered greenish sunlight in the forest suddenly curdles yellow, electricity charges the air and there is a crack of lightning and then thunder, rumbling under the ground towards him. Another round of the same and a large raindrop breaks on his nose, then another on his hand, his arm, his neck, his head.
He’s experienced a lot of rainstorms in London, but this rain comes in drops so large they hurt. As the storm gains momentum, it is like whole buckets of water are being thrown over him.
Water rolls off the green, shiny leaves all around him onto the ground in rivulets and streams.
Drenched anyway by his own sweat, the rain cools him and plasters sodden cotton to his skin. Carrying on, he tries to ignore it, but drops pound on his head – it’s hard on his scalp, like a persistent finger prodding him.
Eventually, he stops and searches around for somewhere to shelter. He gets under a plant with large, long leaves, but the rain comes through as the branches bow with the force of the water. He grabs a leaf and twists and yanks to snap it off – then breaks off another and another and props them against the trunk of a tree, managing to build a makeshift shelter, like a half-tepee. He just fits inside if he crouches into a ball, his knees drawn to his chin. It is not totally dry, but at least it keeps the pounding off his skull. Then he sits and waits, staring at his boots, worrying about his feet and grateful for the opportunity to rest. When he’s still, they don’t hurt as much.
In his peripheral vision, he catches something moving on a leaf, near his face. Something slow. The hair on the back of his neck stands. Without moving his head, he turns his eyes.
There is a spider, the size of his hand, walking across a leaf hanging beside him. It stops. It is waiting, watching, smelling, or whatever deadly jungle spiders do. He doesn’t dare move. He doesn’t dare breathe. Then, as silently as it arrived, it moves off into the undergrowth. He lets go of the breath he was holding.
The rain eases, then stops, and he crawls from his shelter. It’s getting dark. The forest is dripping.
Even if I knew how, he thinks, I’ll never make a fire in this dampness.
Less exuberantly, he starts to walk again, thinking it’s best to keep moving. The stream becomes a river.
Then he hears the noise from his dream. He remembers it now: a primal, horrifying sound, a deep, guttural growl. Angry. No – beyond angry – amoral. . . . More than anything it sounds hungry.
Stopping dead in his tracks, he surveys around. Nothing. But he knows now for sure, something in the forest is watching him. He strains to detect movement, the crack of a twig, the sound of branches or leaves brushing against a body. His ears pulse with the sound of his treacherous heart, louder than the birds and the insects. Sweat drips off his nose as he stares into the forest. Leaves bob as rainwater drips from higher branches.
It’s getting dark, and he doesn’t want to be walking in the forest when this growling creature might come at him from anywhere.
He is standing beside a tall tree. Long, thick, sinuous vines hang from its branches. He grabs one and uses it to pull himself up, his feet walking up the side of the trunk, wincing with pain. The vine rope slips in his hand, the muscles in his shoulders and arms burn, his arms aren’t strong enough.
Why didn’t he spend more time playing in the holovision gym?
He loses his grip and falls. Trying again, he finds footholds between branches and in knotholes, grits his teeth, and wraps the vine partially around his arm to gain leverage. After a few falls, he climbs the tree, swearing all the way. Twenty feet up, there’s a gap between the branches big enough for him to fit in if he scrunches into a ball.
He’s breathing heavily; the dripping forest pelts him with drops of rain still running off leaves and branches. At first he ignores it. He rests his head on his hands, his knees drawn up to his chest, and closes his eyes. The drips are less frequent but they are large and hard. Every time he starts to feel himself drifting off to sleep, one breaks on his head or his face. After a long hour, he is wide awake staring at the sodden wood of the tree. He doesn’t want to have to climb down from the tree again.
I’ll never sleep like this. I have to find a way to cover myself.
Grabbing the vines, he lowers himself from the tree and collects the same kind of leaves he used earlier to shelter himself from the rain.
He finds some long strips of supple bark to tie the leaves into a bundle and climbs again, slightly more adept this time. Once he arrives and secures his seat by wedging a leg to push his body back against the trunk, he hauls his parcel after him and unties it. He lays half of t
he long leaves in the fork of the trunk that is acting as his bed. The rest he wedges between branches above him, making a rough kind of roof.
It's pitch dark now, and he tries to get comfortable. All around, plants and animals slither and move. He listens for a long time, his eyes open, staring into the creeping blackness.
What is this place? It can’t be real, can it?
The same question churns over and over in his mind. It muddles and twists and blurs.
Finally, miraculously, he falls asleep.
2 Dragons in the Bedroom
DAY ONE: Monday, 22 November 2055, London, England
Mathew Erlang is sitting in his bedroom watching his two dragons fighting.
They roll around one another in mid-air, tumbling over and over, their tails intertwined, writhing like snakes. The larger dragon breaks away, flies until she is almost touching the ceiling, pulls back her long neck and breathes an impressive stream of fire. Her mate is blasted with golden light, but the fire deflects off his body to an old book on the floor. Mathew half expects the paper pages to catch fire.
The dragons are two feet long, nose to tail tip, steel blue shading to black. He had stolen the design mostly from a picture by a thirteenth-century Chinese artist called Chen Rong. They are holograms, made using Gencode, a programming language he’s learning for his virtual robotics course.
The male is now on the floor, examining the book pages, picking at them with his claws, puzzled because the paper doesn’t move. The creature has no idea that it isn’t real and that nothing it does has any effect on this world.