‘It’s going to be cold outside, Joel. Don’t worry. Jessica’s going to take care of you.’
Renko came to the nursery door. ‘It’s almost dark outside. I hope we know what we’re doing.’
‘We didn’t have any choice, did we? We know that Dr Leeming can cure them. We couldn’t just leave them here.’
‘But the Stain – I’ve been out on the verandah. I can hear noises already coming from the east, and they don’t sound good.’
‘What kind of noises?’
Renko shrugged. ‘Crushing, and crying. I don’t know. It sounds like somebody mincing up live babies.’
‘Renko, in case anything horrible happens, I just want you to know how glad I am that you came with us.’
Renko, embarrassed, scruffed one hand through his hair. ‘Of course I came. I like you.’
‘You do?’
‘Is that such a surprise?’
‘But—’
‘But what? You hurt your ankle in a car crash? You draw fairies and elves all the time, and you dress like somebody’s granny? Do you think that’s going to put me off?’
Jessica finished buttoning Joel’s corduroy suit. ‘No,’ she said, without looking up. ‘Now that I know you, I don’t suppose it is.’
They found Margaret in another small room at the back of the house. Margaret was twelve, and just like Martin she was a haunting image of her mother – thin, with long, dark, braided hair and dreamy brown eyes. She had tried to make her mirrored room prettier by winding strips of lace and dried flowers around the railings of her iron bed, and hanging fishing-nets at the window in place of curtains, all decorated with ribbons, bows and silver-paper stars.
She sat up at once when David shook her shoulder. ‘What is it? What’s happened? Is it the Stain?’
‘We have to leave,’ said Jessica. ‘Get dressed as quickly as you can. It won’t be long before the Stain takes over everything.’
‘Where are we going to go?’ she asked hoarsely.
‘Back to the real world,’ Renko told her. ‘You don’t have to stay here any longer.’
She stood up. She was wearing a white ankle-length nightdress with puffy sleeves and a smocked bodice. Jessica noticed that she was wearing a thin gold chain around her neck, from which a sapphire ring was dangling.
‘That ring – is that your grandmother’s?’
Margaret clasped is tightly in her hand and nodded. ‘My mother gave it to me. She said that one day I would be able to give it back to my grandmother. But I don’t see how I ever can.’
Jessica looked quickly at Renko. Time was passing faster and faster, and this wasn’t the moment to tell Margaret that her grandmother had been torn to shreds by shadow cats.
Within ten minutes all of the Pennington children were dressed in tweed coats, woolly hats and gloves and had assembled in the mirrored hallway. It looked as if there were a hundred of them, rather than eight.
‘I guess you’re all going to miss living here,’ Jessica said to Martin.
He nodded. ‘It was kind of a comfort, you know, always being able to see yourself, and what you were doing; and your brothers and sisters, too. It was kind of like living in a movie of your own life. But at least we never felt alone. See?’ he said, raising his arm, and twenty other Martins raised their arms to him in greeting. ‘We always had our own reflections.’
‘Is that why your parents built this place?’
‘I guess so, partly. But mostly because it’s difficult to find, difficult for any pattern creatures to see – you know, like wooden wolves or cloud dogs or shadow cats.’ He paused, and then he said, ‘They did their best to look after us, didn’t they, my dad and mom?’
Jessica said, ‘Yes, they did. You’re going to find it very different, when you get back. Things have changed a whole lot since your parents first took you through the wall.’
‘We’ll cope, don’t you worry. We’ve managed to take care of ourselves for over fifty-two years, haven’t we?’
Renko opened the front door. ‘Look, it’s real dark now. We’d better hustle.’
They hurried down the steps and out across the garden of crushed-up glass. Low black clouds had rolled in from the east, so that the sky was almost completely covered except for a few stray stars on the western horizon. The temperature had fallen, too, so that their breath smoked as they made their way through the gate and started to climb back up the hill toward the forest of carpets.
Jessica paused for a moment to listen. Renko was right: underneath the fluffing of the wind, she could hear a low grinding sound, like some huge machine whose purpose could only be guessed at; and in counterpoint to the grinding, an occasional high-pitched scream. As yet the sound was too far away for her to be able to tell if they were human screams, or if they were simply the screeching of cogs and gears. But there was no question that it was growing steadily louder, and so whatever was causing it was coming closer.
‘That’s the Stain,’ Martin told her.
‘How do you know?’
‘The Light People always told us that when the Stain leaked out it would sound like a factory for swallowing up the whole world.’
They continued their climb up the hill. The five Pennington children all held hands, with Joel and Phoebe in the middle, so that they formed a chain, like the Von Trapp children in The Sound of Music. Jessica found it unexpectedly touching and sad. Respecting their family closeness, she and Renko and Elica followed a little way behind.
‘How are we finding our way back through the trees?’ asked Elica, out of breath.
David heard her, and turned his head. ‘Just follow me, I know the forest like the back of my hand.’
Martin turned around too. ‘Not only that, he has a long cord which runs all the way through the forest from one side to the other.’
When they reached the crest of the hill they looked back at the house of mirrors where the Pennington children had lived for so many years. It was almost invisible in the encroaching darkness, only the faintest of gleams.
‘It seems like only yesterday that Daddy and Mommy brought us here,’ said Phoebe, in a wistful voice.
‘In a way, it was,’ Jessica told her.
‘What did you eat?’ asked Elica. ‘How did you live?’
‘We were ill … we never had any appetite.’
‘In fifty-two years?’ said Renko.
‘Time’s different here,’ Jessica reminded him.
As they looked down at the house of mirrors, they heard the grinding of the Stain grow distinctly louder. Below them, from the east, a blackness was spreading across the grasslands, a blackness even darker than the clouds above. It advanced like a tide of volcanic lava, except that it didn’t glow at all, and they could smell its coldness on the wind, and a terrible stench of rotting flesh.
The Stain reached the garden wall and poured thickly over it. Even from here, on top of the hill, they could hear glass breaking. Within less than a minute, the house of mirrors had been completely demolished, its mansard roof collapsing inward, its shining walls shattered, and what was left of it was carried along in the awful flow of putrescence.
Jessica had never physically felt evil before, not like this. The relentless sliding of the Stain across the countryside made her mouth go dry, and she seriously began to think that they might not be able to escape it.
‘Here’s David’s trusty cord,’ said Martin. It was a length of green brocade, exactly the same pattern as the brocade that ran around the edges of Grannie’s best furniture, and it had been knotted at intervals to form a guideline that would show them the way through the forest.
‘Come on,’ said David, taking hold of the cord. ‘Quick as you can but don’t let go. You can get lost in these trees before you know it.’
‘He’s speaking from experience,’ put in Martin. ‘He got lost so many times, and every time we had to call the Light People to rescue him.’
‘I could easily have found my way out on my own,’ David protested.
‘Of course you could,’ said Margaret. ‘That’s why you gave Martin your best penknife, because you were so grateful to him for finding you.’
‘That was a present, that’s all.’
‘Tickity-tock, tickity-tock,’ warned Phoebe.
It seemed to take them hours to make their way through the forest, and Jessica was beginning to panic. The tree-curtains were dusty and oppressive, and there seemed to be more and more of them, all swaying and swinging around her so that she could hardly breathe.
At last, however, they burst out of the trees and into the chilly night air. In front of them lay the painted lake, but it was now so dark that they couldn’t see the opposite shore. They stopped when they reached the water’s edge and listened again, and this time the grinding noise of the Stain was very distinct. There was no question about it, too: the screams weren’t the sound of gear-wheels clashing together, they were humans and animals.
‘Where’s it coming from?’ asked Renko.
‘Over there, I think,’ said Martin, pointing toward the north-east. ‘If we cross the lake to that side there, where the fishing-boats are tied up, we should be all right.’
Joel sneezed and said, ‘I’m cold, Phoebe. I want to go back to bed.’
Jessica knelt down beside him. ‘You can’t go back to bed, darling, I’m sorry. Your house is all gone.’
‘Where?’
‘It’s gone to house heaven, where all the good houses go. I expect angels will live in it now.’
‘I want it to come back.’
‘I know. But we all have to be brave, and keep on walking as fast as we can.’
They crossed the waters of the painted lake like Polish refugees crossing the frozen Vistula, and even if the water had been real, it was now so cold that it probably would have been solid ice. All five of the Pennington children started to cough, especially Margaret, and this reminded Jessica how sick they were, and how close to death, no matter what happened to them.
All the time the noise of the Stain grew louder and nearer, and they could hear now that it wasn’t only grinding and screaming, but a deep ripping sound, as if the very fabric of the world were being torn up; and a brassy discordant trumpeting; and a squealing like a thousand knives on a thousand dinner plates.
Phoebe clamped her hands over her ears, and Joel began to sob in fright. All eight of them were now running as fast as they could, with Renko gripping Jessica’s arm to stop her from tripping.
They were not much more than halfway across when Renko swore, and stopped.
‘What is it?’ asked Jessica, and the others stopped too.
‘Look,’ said Renko. All across one corner of the painted lake, crawling toward them over its surface, was a writhing black mass. It was impossible to see exactly what it consisted of, but every now and then Jessica could see hideous shapes emerging from it and then sinking back down again, and for an instant she thought she saw arms waving, and then something that looked like a skeletal bull.
‘We’re not going to make it, are we?’ said Martin.
‘We have to make it,’ said Jessica.
‘But it’s going to cut us off before we can reach the shore.’
Already the Stain had reached the horse and cart that stood axle-deep in the painted water. Without stopping, it picked them up and carried them off, dipping and swirling, as if they had fallen into a slow-motion flood. The painted horse was stiffly carried away, making no more protest than a carousel horse, but Jessica could hear the tortured screams of other animals inside the ever-advancing torrent, and a woman pleading for her life, and a man screaming in agony.
‘It floated!’ she said.
‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘The cart! It floated!’
‘So what does that mean?’
‘We can reach the fishing-boats before the Stain gets there! We can float on the Stain and row our way to the shore!’
‘Those boats, they’re not even real! They’re painted!’
‘It doesn’t matter! If the cart floated the boats will float!’
‘We should go back, it’s our only chance.’
‘You saw the Stain take over your house, and all the fields around it. We can’t go back.’
Martin turned to Renko, and then to David, and said, ‘What do you think?’
Jessica said, ‘I think we should vote on it. Who’s for going back and who’s for going forward? Put your hands up, all those who want to go forward.’
Phoebe immediately put her hand up; so did Joel. Margaret hesitated for a while, and then she did too. Martin followed, saying, ‘Why not? What have we got to lose?’ Renko raised his hand, with Elica’s.
In the end, David said, ‘All right. But if it all goes wrong, and we all get killed, don’t blame me.’
They jogged across the paint-crusted water until they reached the fishing-boats. The boats smelled strongly of fish and tar, and there were oars and tackle and nets in them. The Pennington children climbed into the nearest boat, which was just big enough for the five of them, while Jessica, Renko and Elica climbed into the boat moored next to it. Unlike real boats, they didn’t dip or sway, and they sat in them completely motionless, under a sky as black as squid-ink.
‘What do we now?’ called Martin.
Jessica called back, ‘Wait until the Stain reaches us, and then pick up the oars and row!’
Joel began to sob even more loudly, and Phoebe put her arm around him to comfort him. Jessica thought: If I die now, at least I’ll get to see Dad and Mom again. But please don’t let me die now. And don’t let little Joel die, or Phoebe, or Margaret or David or Martin. They’ve been waiting so long for somebody to save them.
Renko reached out and took hold of Jessica’s hand. He didn’t say anything but he had a look in his eye, a look which said, If we don’t come out of this, if we’re all killed, I want you to know how much I care about you. And she gave him a tight, frightened smile, and touched his cheek, prickly like a gooseberry with his first stubble, and she could have kissed him, but she didn’t.
It was then that the Stain arrived, with a thunderous undertone and a deafening screech. It was like a huge viscid wave of black molasses, crammed with stinking garbage and half-decayed bodies. Jessica squeezed her eyes tight shut as the Stain poured underneath the fishing-boats, but she couldn’t stop herself from opening them up again, and all she could see was frantically waving skeletons, and cats with no hair, and giraffes with their necks half eaten by sharks. Things rose out of the Stain that even the foulest mind on earth couldn’t imagine: rotting babies impaled on fence posts, crows with no legs, men with their faces eaten away by acid and leprosy. They swirled and bobbed around the fishing-boats, and some of them were screaming, but others were terribly silent.
‘Oh God,’ said Renko; and it was then that the Stain lifted up the first painted fishing-boat, with the Pennington children in it, so that it reared and rotated. Joel let out a high-pitched shriek of terror, but Phoebe held him tight, and David held Phoebe.
The next thing they knew, their own boat bucked up beneath them, and they had to cling on to the gunwales to stop themselves from being flung out into the Stain. They dipped and turned around 360 degrees, with all the monstrosities screaming at them from every side. A fleshless elephant came thundering out of the Stain right next to them, with filthy rags and seaweed dripping from its tusks, and let out an agonized cry that sounded like the death of all elephants everywhere.
‘Row!’ screamed Jessica. ‘Row!’
Renko picked up the painted oars and maneuvered them into the rowlocks. His hair was sticking up and his face was white with fear, but he managed to thrust the oars into the Stain and pull, and pull again, and turn the fishing-boat around until they were heading toward the shore. A fork of lightning lit up the painted lake, so that they could see Martin and Margaret rowing for the shore too. Then they were deafened by bellowing thunder, and it began to rain, torrentially.
It seemed t
o take them forever to row to the shore, and sometimes it seemed as if the Stain were actually sucking them backward. They were too frightened to scream or cry any more, and they were devoting too much of their strength to rowing. The rain crashed down on them as if the heavens were determined to fill up their boats with water and sink them.
Jessica saw a headless sow float past, her piglets still desperately trying to feed from her. She saw scores of struggling cats whose tails had all been knotted together. She saw a woman, still alive but lying motionless in all of that filth, stunned into stary-eyed paralysis by the horror that was engulfing her.
Renko heaved at the oars again and again, pulling so hard that he was almost standing up. There was an appalling gurgling noise, and the boat’s prow dipped beneath the surface. Jessica was convinced that they were going to go under, but Renko gave another heave, and they were suddenly washed toward the shore.
The boat turned around, and tipped, and Jessica heard the grating of soil underneath the keel.
‘We’ve made it!’ Renko shouted. ‘Everybody out, as fast as you can!’
They clambered out of the boat, splashing knee-deep in oily black sludge. Lightning flashed again, and yet again, and Jessica could see that the Pennington children had reached the shore too, and that Martin was giving Joel a piggy-back away from the boat.
Gasping, they all hurried away from the painted lake and up the hill toward the garden where Mrs Crawford was waiting for them with Epiphany. They went through the hedges and Mrs Crawford was still there, kneeling on the grass with Epiphany’s head in her lap.
‘That didn’t take you long,’ she said, in relief.
‘We’ve been hours,’ said Jessica, kneeling down beside her.
‘Not at all … you’ve only been away for twenty minutes, if that.’
‘Did you try going back through the wallpaper? Are the phones working yet?’
‘I went once, but they’re not working yet. Epiphany’s still breathing, but her pulse is very weak. I don’t think we can take her back until we’re sure that we can call for an ambulance.’
The Hidden World Page 15