by Guy Adams
There was a frantic hammering from the direction of the coffee machine as Miles tried to make it bleed hot beverages.
"What's happening?" Alan shouted, snapping awake. He thrashed around in panic and sent a couple of chairs careering across the floor. "Sophie?"
Ashe was straight to his feet. "She's okay," he insisted, grabbing Alan and trying to restrain him. "You're safe, calm down."
"Not altogether sure I agree with anything he's said to him so far," Carruthers whispered to Penelope.
"Where is she?" Alan shouted. He jumped to his feet and over to where Ashe had laid Sophie across a sofa. "What happened?" Alan asked, checking Sophie's pulse and pupils. He held his face close to hers. "'Build not break?'" he repeated, "What's that mean honey?"
"She's connected to the house," Ashe explained, "she's part of the place now, her thoughts are helping to keep it together."
"And that's a good thing?" Alan asked looking around. "Who are you all? Last thing I remember…"
"You heard a voice on the other side of a door, asking for help," said Ashe, "you opened it. The man who stepped out was more than he seemed. He's to blame for the current situation."
"Him and that bastard Chester," said Tom, having also woken up. "Let's not forget that little shit."
There was an awkward silence at that, broken by Miles as he shuffled over with a tray of coffees. "Oh," he said, "don't tell me I have to wrestle another two mugs out of the bloody thing."
For a while there was nothing but chaos. Contrary opinions, heated voices, fear and distrust. This can have surprised nobody, however frustrating. Everyone sat at the table, now that the chaos had been put on hold temporarily, had a head full and ready to boil over.
Tom – by nature a man given to going with the flow, most especially if it was Vermouth that was flowing – was the hardest to quell. It's hard to think reasonably when the cold, dead face of a woman you loved is hovering in your mind's eye like the after-shadow of a lightbulb. Tom could think of nothing else.
No. That wasn't altogether true. He could think how it would feel to neck a scotch on the rocks, or a Martini so cold it coated the glass in condensation. He could think about that pretty fucking well. Tom didn't like to drink, he needed to drink. He had crossed the fine line between hobby and addiction long ago and that was a line that was only easily crossed in one direction.
Penelope was also suffering. Though she would never admit as much. The sight of Alan and Ashe together was enough to break her resilience. She accepted they may not share the attitudes (or perhaps perversions would be a better word) of their younger counterpart but that didn't shake the fear and disgust she felt when looking at them. Carruthers had made a point of pulling her and Miles to one side as soon as he was able, insisting that no good would come from making the relation between Chester and the other two clear to Tom (or Alan for that matter, after all they could only assume he was in the dark as to his identity). She had agreed to this, things could only be worsened by Tom exacting revenge. Though, if she was honest, the idea was attractive to her. When she looked at Alan she was struck by the smell of leather upholstery and the taste of blood in her mouth. It was an association that would take some time to fade.
Penelope was wrong to assume Alan hadn't recognised Chester as his younger self. After all, memory loss or no, he knew his own face well enough. Back in the "real" world – a place that seemed absurdly distant given that he had only been gone from it a handful of days – he had been convinced that the block on his memory hid a past that was unconscionable to the man he had become. Given the accusations Tom had made it would seem his instincts had been right. As to what he should do about it… well, that was a different matter entirely. If there was one thing that could save him from Chester – and however hard his subconscious preached otherwise Chester would always be a separate person – it was Sophie. He looked at her while the others argued about their plans. It was clear to him that she was beyond his reach, muttering the same phrase over and over again. "Build not break". But he would reach her, somehow...
Ashe knew this devotion of course, after all it was what had brought him back to the House in the first place, determined to rescue Sophie from the position his younger self had inadvertently placed her in. He had been too late for that, circumstances – or perhaps the unbeatable forces of cause and effect – had insisted she play her part as she always had. He had his own part to play now and if these damned fools would stop their bickering maybe he could get on with it.
In the end it was Carruthers who managed to bring order. "This is getting us nowhere," he announced, and with that everyone had to agree. "We need to work together, make our plans and then act on them. All of this…" he struggled to think of a polite word, "…bickering should be beyond us."
"Agreed," said Ashe, thankful that at least one of the others seemed as driven toward action as himself.
"Let's try and gather what we know," said Carruthers, "I'm sure I'm not the only one still baffled by our circumstances."
"It's certainly beyond me," agreed Penelope.
"It's beyond any sane mind, my dear," Carruthers assured her, "which is why our first step must be to lay it all out and try to gain perspective on the situation."
Everyone else was quiet now, happy to give Carruthers the floor. For all their anger or impatience not one of them truly understood what had become of them.
"Very well," Carruthers continued, "let us first deal with the House."
"You can hear the capital a mile off," said Miles. "No ordinary house this…"
"Indeed not," agreed Carruthers, "from what I understand from Ashe and that hateful fellow who just abandoned us here, this building exists through the power of thought."
"It's imagination that fuels it," clarified Ashe, "though it's a mistake to think that makes it any less real."
"A mistake none of us could make given the threats to our safety we have all endured," agreed Carruthers. "It exists outside of what we know of reality – which I begin to suspect is very little – an almost infinite labyrinth of dangers that has grown strong through its attachment to our world."
"It started as a small prison," said Ashe, "supposedly unreachable, existing in a pocket reality of its own. It was built by…" here he struggled to think of a word to describe the architects of the House.
"Aliens?" suggested Miles, always happy to lean toward the fantastical.
"I don't know that they come from outer space," Ashe replied, then shook his head, "I don't know where they come from…"
"And, for now," Carruthers chipped in, "we will have to accept that it doesn't matter. Whoever they are their abilities are far beyond our own, able to fashion a solid reality from nothing more tangible than thought."
"This is bullshit," Tom whined, "Twilight Zone stuff."
"It's fact," countered Ashe, "however hard to swallow."
"Indeed," agreed Carruthers. "As I've said countless times: there is no limit to what mankind does not understand, but when faced with inarguable evidence he can do little but accept it."
"'When you've eliminated the impossible'," said Miles, "'whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth'." The others stared at him. "Sherlock Holmes," he admitted.
"That's the first reference from you I'm actually familiar with," admitted Carruthers with a brief smile. "So," he continued. "Through its link to mankind – using the focal point of the library – the prison fed off our worst nightmares, taking every imagined scenario and letting it flourish here."
"Meanwhile," said Ashe, "the prisoner was making plans of his own."
"We need to give him a name," suggested Miles, "we can't just keep calling him 'the prisoner'."
"Does it really matter?" asked Carruthers, determined not to let the conversation become too distracted.
"Just makes things easier," said Miles, "give him a name and he becomes more real, not so much of an abstract."
"Well…" Carruthers scratched at his moustache, "what do you sug
gest?"
Miles foundered, having not really thought the situation through.
"It's hardly a priority," said Ashe, fixing the young man with an angry stare.
"Just a thought."
"Well, never mind for now," said Carruthers, glad they could move on. "The prisoner – whatever he might be called – constructed a box that would act as a gateway from our world to this. A box that we all discovered and then travelled through."
"At a point when our lives were in danger," Alan clarified – the box was, after all, something he had dedicated years of research to. "Danger acts as a trigger, otherwise anyone that touched it would have ended up here. It's passed through many hands in its time."
"Agreed," said Ashe, placing the box on the table, "it acts as a filter, a way of limiting how many people made the journey here."
"We know that others have arrived here of course," said Carruthers. "I've seen a handful of other people during my time here."
"There are lots of others," agreed Alan, thinking of the tribe he had encountered in the greenhouse, not to mention the crew of the Intrepid. "Most just don't survive for long."
"Just the really lucky ones like us," said Penelope, not without a degree of sarcasm.
"We are the important ones," said Ashe, "we're the few who are all connected to the events that led to his escape."
"As arrogant as that sounds it is certainly true," Carruthers agreed, "no doubt many other poor souls have stories to tell about their time here but it's we who unwittingly let him out."
"Speak for yourself," said Tom. "I had nothing to do with it."
Carruthers floundered at this, still not willing to explain that Tom had played his part, keeping Chester alive so that one day – as Alan Arthur – he would be the man to open the door. "Well, yes," he said in the end, "I'll agree your involvement was somewhat tangential."
"Up until now," suggested Ashe, only too happy to move the subject on. "Who knows how important a part you'll play in what's to come?"
"Indeed," said Carruthers, "we are facing a blank slate, let us hope we have the strength to make something worthwhile of that."
"So…" said Miles, "where do we go from here?"
"We could just leave," said Penelope, knowing that it wasn't that simple but feeling it had to be said.
"We could," said Ashe, "though to what is the question."
"According to the prisoner," said Carruthers, "this House is permanently linked to our world, tethered to every mind on the planet."
"And if the House falls so do we," added Miles.
"Not that the future looks all that bright with the prisoner wandering around anyway," reminded Penelope.
"And that's the other point," insisted Carruthers, "we are faced with two potentially catastrophic outcomes. In order to avoid them we have to both preserve the House and also recapture the prisoner."
"Jesus…" Tom muttered, "listen to yourself, as if we stand the least chance."
"We have to hope that we do," Carruthers replied, "we know that his powers are limited for now, his incarceration saw to that."
"But he'll be getting stronger all the time," warned Ashe.
"So we need to move quickly," Carruthers agreed, "we know where he's going and, thanks to the rather daunting method of transport we've been left with we can follow him."
"Oh," said Tom, "that's alright then. For a moment I thought you were out of your minds."
"The death of your friends lies at his door," said Carruthers, aware he was manipulating the man and not liking himself much for it, "just as much as it does anyone else. Chester was manipulated by him the minute he arrived here, their death was a part of the prisoner's plan. I would have thought you would relish the opportunity to see him pay for that."
"That's unfair," said Penelope, only too aware of what Carruthers was doing.
"No," Tom answered, that sick feeling that wracked him whenever he pictured Elise with a bullet hole in her head fading for a moment. "He has a point. And he took Chester with him."
"This isn't just about revenge," Penelope insisted, sickened by the direction the conversation had taken.
"No," agreed Carruthers, "it's far more important than that. But if it takes something personal for Tom to see that…"
Tom stared at him. "Don't mistake common sense for apathy, man," he said, "I know the consequences of what we're looking at here."
"Of course you do," said Carruthers, "as do we all. So… we need to split up and start facing those consequences. Ashe has to take the box and ensure that we all receive it so that the timeline of the House can be assured."
"And I'll do that on my own."
There was a momentary outcry at that. "Don't be so bloody pigheaded!" Miles insisted, "This is far too important for you to go playing Clint Eastwood."
Ashe looked to Tom, ignoring the arguing. "How did you get the box?"
Tom stared at him, seeing a momentary flash of an old man in a fedora raising a gun at he and Elise through rainstreaked glass. It had been such a brief glimpse – and his attention had been on the gun in Ashe's hand, not his face. Now the penny dropped. "It was you!" He shot to his feet, making to grab at Ashe. "You gave Elise the damn thing, if it weren't for you she would never have even been here."
Alan, sat between the two of them, jumped to his feet to hold Tom back, Miles grabbing him from behind.
"That's the point," said Ashe, "like it or not that's what I have to do."
"He's right Tom," said Penelope, hoping that, of all of them, she might be able to get through to him, "we have to make sure that we keep history on track."
"That's the last goddamned thing we want!" Tom shouted, though he stopped fighting against Alan and Miles. "If he does nothing then Elise would be safe. Pablo too…"
"No," Carruthers insisted, "if only that were true. They would still be lost, alongside everyone else on the planet."
"You think I relish the idea?" asked Ashe, "Every bit of me is sickened by the thought… but the consequences of doing nothing are even worse."
"Shit." Tom dropped his head into his hands, "This is so fucked up."
"Damn right," agreed Ashe. "Be thankful you're not the poor bastard who'll have to go through with it."
Tom waved Ashe away, he knew the man was right but that didn't mean he wanted to discuss it.
"The point still stands," said Carruthers, "you shouldn't go alone."
"I know what I'm doing," said Ashe, "or at least I will do once I get everyone's story as to how they came into contact with the box. On my own I'll be quicker, besides…" he turned to Tom again, "was I on my own when you saw me." Tom nodded. "There you go," said Ashe. "I'm sticking to what we know should happen. Besides, you'll need all the manpower you can get if you're going after the prisoner, that's where the numbers will be needed and don't think otherwise."
On this, Carruthers had to conceded Ashe's point. "Very well," he said eventually. "But it's not just the prisoner, someone will have to stay here too."
"Why?" asked Miles. "What good will that do?"
"May I remind you of the poor state of our young friend?" said Carruthers pointing towards Sophie. "Do you really think she could leave?"
"I'm staying with her," said Alan. "I'm not leaving her side for a minute."
"That's commendable," said Carruthers, "but I thought perhaps Penelope…"
"I could see this coming," she said, "let's make sure the silly little girl doesn't get in the way. She'd better look after the child, that's what women are for after all."
"Dear Lord!" cried Carruthers, his anger surprising everyone, "Does everything have to be about emancipation? I thought you were the ideal choice because I trusted you, and if you think staying here, with all the House's dangers is the gentle option then may I remind you of what we've been through for the last few days?"
"I just…" Penelope was utterly taken aback, she had never seen Carruthers lose his temper. "I thought…"
"With all due respect you thought wrong.
We need someone to stay here and safeguard the most important member of our group. I wanted that person to be someone who had proved time and again that they were extremely capable of facing almost anything life chose to throw at them."
"I'll do it!" said Penelope, still flustered. "I'm sorry."
Carruthers took a deep breath and winked at Miles. "Thank you my dear, do forgive my outburst."
Cunning old sod, Miles thought, but said nothing.
"I'm still staying," said Alan, "whether I'm trustworthy enough for you or not."
Carruthers kept the charm flowing: "Please don't think I have any lack of faith in you," he insisted. "In truth it needs two people to do the job, it would hardly be fair to leave one person to safeguard Sophie on their own, not when we know what this horrid building can throw at one."