The Nowhere Emporium

by Ross Mackenzie

  The man grabbed him by the wrist and rushed him over to his desk. “Have a seat,” he said, pushing Daniel into a wooden chair, sitting himself on his desk. He pressed the palms of his hands together. “What do you remember?” he said. “Tell me exactly.”

  “I … I remember everything: the books and the mirrors and the clocks … meeting you … the silver magpies—”

  The man held up a finger to quiet Daniel. His eyes were darting about the place.

  “How is this possible?” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” said Daniel in confusion. “Have I missed something? How is what possible?”

  The man leapt to his feet.

  “Which children’s home are you from?” he asked.

  “St Catherine’s,” said Daniel. “It’s only a few streets away.”

  The man nodded. “Have you ever noticed strange things happening around you? Lights flickering, mirrors smashing, that sort of thing?”

  “No! Why?”

  “No reason,” said the man with a casual wave of his hand. Then he grabbed Daniel and pulled him from the chair, ushering him towards the door. “Listen, Daniel Holmes … we’re closed, as the sign on the door so clearly states. So I think you should be toddling off home.”

  “But…”

  And with that Daniel was pushed out into the street, completely stunned by what had just happened. On the other side of the glass, the owner stared at him for a moment, and when Daniel blinked he was gone.

  Daniel began to trudge back down the street, hands in pockets, aiming kicks at the occasional stone. If he had looked around at the correct moment, he might have noticed the door of the Nowhere Emporium opening a fraction, and an ashen hand tossing two silver birds into the air. He might also have noticed that these birds flew from rooftop to rooftop, perching on stone angels, watching his every step as he made his way back to St Catherine’s.

  CHAPTER 3

  AMBUSHED

  The thing about Spud Harper was that he never let anything go. Any time he had a grudge, no matter how small, he’d carry it around for as long as it took to get even. As. Long. As. It. Took. Daniel knew this. Everyone did. He might have escaped Spud once, ducking into the Nowhere Emporium, but he’d been looking over his shoulder ever since.

  Daniel didn’t leave St Catherine’s at all over the next few days. Every time he was alone in a corridor, or turning a corner in the playground, he expected Spud to jump out at him. It didn’t happen. Not that way.

  Monday went by. Nothing.

  Then Tuesday.

  Wednesday was the same.

  And the longer it dragged on the more it seemed certain that Spud’s revenge would be truly horrible when it arrived.

  Thursday.

  The last Thursday of every month at St Catherine’s was fire drill day. It happened right after lunch; you could set your watch by it. When Daniel’s class sat down at their desks after the break, their teacher Mr Pimm did not even bother telling them to open their textbooks. Sure enough, a few minutes later, the air was split by the shrill of the alarm, and the class filed out, merging in the main corridor with several other classes.

  Daniel’s stomach sank to somewhere around his knees as he felt someone huge appear at his side. Smitty, the biggest boy in Spud’s gang, smiled down at him.

  “Don’t say a word, wee man, or I’ll knock you out.”

  He grabbed Daniel by the arms while the teachers were focused on getting the kids outside, and bundled him across the corridor to the gym hall.

  Spud was waiting in the centre of the hall. Smitty dragged Daniel towards him and held him in front of Spud, who stuck his freckled face right in Daniel’s.

  “Thought I forgot about you, pal?” he said. “Thought I was gonnae let you off with what you did?”

  Daniel said nothing. He stared at Spud, hatred burning in his veins.

  “Here’s what’s gonnae happen,” said Spud. “You’re gonnae steal back all the stuff it took me so long to get from the other kids. And if you don’t, I’m gonnae smack you once for every single thing you cost me. That’s a lot of punches, Daniel.”

  Daniel stared around the gym hall. The door back to the corridor was blocked by another of Spud’s gang playing lookout. No escape that way. But the back door, the one behind the stage…

  Daniel brought his foot down as hard as he could on top of Smitty’s. He heard the big guy howl in pain, felt the grip of his huge arms soften. Daniel managed to squirm away, taking off towards the back of the hall.

  “Hey! Get back here!”

  Daniel ran up the stairs to the stage. He ducked through the curtain, the sound of Spud’s trainers on the boards just behind him, down another set of steps and out to a narrow corridor.

  “Not this time, Danny boy!” yelled Spud. “You’re gettin’ it!”

  Daniel ploughed on, his feet barely touching the floor as he ran to the end of the corridor and burst through a fire exit to the car park at the back of St Catherine’s. Then he was away through the gate to the streets beyond, pushing past office workers who were out making the most of the Glasgow sunshine during their lunch breaks.

  Daniel glanced over his shoulder, kicked into another gear, and tore through a pedestrian courtyard between two office buildings, firing out the other side like a bullet.

  “Daniel!” Spud shouted. “Stop. You’re gonnae get—”

  The tail of Spud’s sentence was cut off by the blast of a car horn, and Daniel realised, in one of those strange instances when time seems to slow down, that he’d run out onto a road.

  He heard the screech of tyres, saw the car coming towards him head on, caught the driver’s horrified gaze behind the windscreen. He knew it was too late to stop, knew he was not fast enough to keep going. There was no doubt in his mind that he was going to die in the street.

  A flash of silver in the corner of his eye.

  Someone pressed the play button on the world. Everything screamed back to life. Before the car could hit him, something else did, knocking him sideways. He landed heavily and stared up through blurred eyes at the cloudless sky.

  He was aware of someone standing over him, a person in a grey suit. Whoever it was, they were talking to him, but the voice was very far away.

  The only thing Daniel wanted to do was go to sleep.

  The world around him was lost to blackness.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE MONSTER

  Edinburgh, December 1878

  The knock on the door of Castlefoot Home for Lost Boys came at precisely five minutes to midnight.

  At first, the call went unanswered. The man at the door waited patiently, flicking gathering crystals of falling snow from his shoulders. After a while, he took up his silver-topped cane and rapped hard on the door three times.

  A minute or so passed before flustered footsteps could be heard from within, and the sound of jangling keys and heavy locks.

  The door swung open.

  The man inside was wearing a nightgown. He was stout and fat-necked, a neatly trimmed beard the only evidence of where the chin ended and the neck began.

  “Can I help you?” he asked, frowning over a pair of spectacles.

  The visitor nodded. “I believe so. Are you the master of the orphanage?”

  “I am,” said the master. “And who may you be?”

  The man at the door, who had been standing a step below the master, stepped up, so that they were standing on level ground. He was much taller than the average man – over six feet in height, with powerful shoulders and a square-set jaw. His neatly cropped silver hair and goatee seemed to sparkle in the warm glow of the lamps. His eyes were cold, icy blue.

  “I am here about the boy,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

  After a moment of hesitation, the master’s eyes widened.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, please come in. Get out of the snow. Warm yourself.”

  The tall man nodded once, stepped into the Home for Lost Boys. It might have been warmer out
in the snow.

  “Can I offer you a drink, mister…”

  “Sharpe. Vindictus Sharpe. No drink, thank you. Best see the boy as soon as possible.”

  “If you don’t mind my saying, Mr Sharpe,” said the master, “you may have picked a more reasonable hour to visit.”

  “The asylum does not wish to draw attention to the boy,” the tall man replied. “Such cases attract stigma. Unless, of course, you wish the child’s … condition to become common knowledge?”

  The master shook his head. “No, no, this will do fine!”

  “Very well,” said Vindictus Sharpe. “This boy … he has been here since birth?”

  The master nodded. “More or less.”

  “And have these … incidents … happened regularly?”

  Again the master gave a nod. His face had transformed at the mere mention of the boy, taken on a haunted, hollow sort of look.

  “Do you think you can do something about it?” he asked, clasping his hands.

  Sharpe raised an eyebrow. “May I speak with him?” he said.

  The master picked up a lamp and led Vindictus Sharpe through the entrance hall to a caretaker’s office, where he picked a large key from a hook on the wall. After this they walked a passageway adorned with the grand portraits of previous masters and beneficiaries of the home.

  “Watch your step,” said the master as they began to descend a dark, twisting staircase. The stairs opened out to another corridor, this one lit by a solitary gas lamp. The place smelled of damp and dirt, and faintly of disinfectant.

  “You keep him down here?” said Sharpe.

  The master, who was a pace or two ahead, turned, and his face was a white mask of shame. “We’ve no choice,” he said. Then, almost as a way of apology, he added, “He is very well fed. And we let him out into the open air once a week. There are many children in this city who have it much worse.”

  Sharpe did not answer.

  They reached a door at the end of the corridor. The master took the rusted key and placed it in the keyhole. It was stiff, and it took him a few attempts to open the lock. He reached for the doorknob, but Sharpe’s gloved hand blocked him.

  “I think I will take it from here,” he said.

  The master stared for a moment. “Alone? Are you sure?”

  “You are welcome to wait here,” said Sharpe. “But, if I am to evaluate the boy, then yes, I must speak with him privately.”

  In spite of the cold, the master wiped a bead of sweat from the end of his nose.

  “Very well,” he said. “If it is necessary, I suppose. But I will be here by the door should you need me.”

  Vindictus Sharpe’s mouth twitched. It may have been a smile, but he had turned towards the door before the master could properly tell. He reached for the handle and slowly opened the door.

  The room beyond was small and square. The only items of furniture were a small bed made from cast iron and a simple wooden bookcase, packed with volumes of various size and thickness.

  At the foot of the bed sat a boy. He was perhaps ten years old, scrawny almost to the point of being skeletal, with a mop of ragged wild hair. At first glance, Sharpe thought him unremarkable, save for his eyes, which were the angry grey of a thundery ocean sky.

  Sharpe closed the door in the master’s peering face. His gaze returned to the child.

  “Are you here to take me away?” said the boy.

  Sharpe brushed a smudge from the silver handle of his cane. “That depends,” he said, and he indicated the bookcase. “You like to read?”

  The boy nodded. “I love it. The words let me go somewhere else in my head, away from here.”

  Vindictus Sharpe scanned the contents of the bookcase. There were some children’s stories there, among them Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Treasure Island. But there were also books that were not for children.

  “You have read all of these?” he asked, tapping the complete works of Shakespeare with his cane.

  The boy nodded.

  The tall man bowed his head. “Impressive. Tell me: are you aware that the master is scared of you?”

  The grey of the boy’s eyes seemed to deepen and intensify. “Everyone’s scared of me. And they should be.”

  “And why might that be?” asked Sharpe.

  The boy fixed him with a cold stare. “Because,” he said, “I can do things that they can’t. I can do things that nobody can.” He nodded towards the door. “They call me a monster.”

  Vindictus Sharpe’s face remained as blank as the walls.

  “Show me,” he said.

  The boy’s gaze travelled to the bookcase. At once it began to tremble. Several books tumbled to the floor. And then one of the books, bound in green leather, shot away from the shelves as though it had been thrown. But this book did not hit the floor. Its pages opened and began to flap, and the book circled over Sharpe’s head like an awkward bird.

  After thirty seconds or so, the book thudded to the bare stone floor.

  Sharpe’s face remained calm, but the boy could see that something in his eyes had changed.

  “Everything all right in there?” came the master’s voice from out in the hallway. Neither the boy nor the tall man answered.

  “Why aren’t you scared of me?” asked the boy.

  Sharpe said nothing. For the first time, the boy was aware of how strikingly blue his eyes were.

  Without warning, every remaining book on the shelves soared into the air, and began to circle and swoop around the room, never colliding, though there were many of them.

  The boy’s mouth fell open. He watched and watched, until Sharpe glanced towards the bookcase, and in seconds the books were back, each in exactly the spot it had previously occupied.

  Vindictus Sharpe flattened out a crease on one of his leather gloves. His blue eyes met the grey eyes of the boy.

  “I am not afraid of you,” he said, “because I am a monster too.”

  ***

  A doctor from the city asylum arrived at the orphanage early next morning. He had been called upon to evaluate one of the boys – a child who had been involved in unexplained and, occasionally, violent incidents. When the master led him down the narrow stairs to the dark corridor and opened the door, he was at a loss to explain where the boy might have gone, or why several of the books were missing from the bookcase.

  The doors to the building were locked immediately, and every inch of the place searched. But there was no trace of the child. He had simply vanished.

  The master had no recollection of ever having answered the door the previous night. He possessed no memory of Vindictus Sharpe in his impeccable suit, or how he had led him to the boy in the basement. He certainly could not remember how he himself had helped to pack the child’s belongings and seen them safely out.

  That night, and every night thereafter, the master would dream of a man and a boy walking together through the falling snow. Though he ran, he could never quite catch them up.

  CHAPTER 5

  THROUGH THE DOORS

  Daniel’s eyes cracked open a fraction. He screwed up his face at the sunlight flooding the room. He sat up, and rubbed his eyes with a knuckle. The blurred edges of his mind began to focus.

  He lay in a small, comfortable bed in a cosy room with an arched wooden roof. At the opposite end of the room were two doors, one of which was open. Through the open door, Daniel could hear the sound of birdsong and the babbling whisper of running water. He shuffled to the edge of the bed, swung his legs from beneath the thick duvet. His bare feet sank into a deep carpet.

  Memories came bursting back: of running through Glasgow, Spud chasing close behind; of the horror as the car came towards him; of hitting the hard ground.

  Daniel climbed from the bed and stumbled towards a small mirror that hung between the doors. He gazed at his reflection, expecting to see cuts and bruises, but there were no marks on him, no sign that he had been hurt at all. A great fear began to build in his chest. His lungs tigh
tened. His head spun. What if … what if he had been hit by a car?

  Am I dead?

  He did not have time to contemplate this question, because a flicker of movement drew his attention to the window, and he realised that a girl was staring at him through the glass.

  He stumbled backwards as she moved to the door. She stood in the doorway, brushing long wild curls from her grey eyes. She looked him up and down, arms crossed.

  “Enjoy your snooze, did you?” she said. “Nice and comfy?” She looked around the room and shook her head. “Unbelievable. This is nicer than my room!”

  “Who’re you?” said Daniel. “Where am I? Am I … dead?”

  The girl screwed up her face, took another step into the room.

  “Dead? What are you going on about? Why would you be dead?”

  Daniel blinked. “But … but I was standing right in the middle of a busy road! A car was going to hit me…”

  The girl tapped her foot on the floor. “He must have saved you. I wonder why. What’s your name?”

  “Daniel,” said Daniel. “Who are you talking about? Who must have saved me?”

  But the girl was already opening the blue door, the one that had been closed.

  “This is all very strange,” she said. “No one new ever shows up here.” She narrowed her eyes. “Nobody real anyway. Stay put. I’m going to find out exactly what’s going on.”

  And she slipped off through the blue door before Daniel could ask her name, or why she was so interested in him, or what she’d meant about nobody real ever showing up.

  Daniel patted himself on the chest. He felt real. He certainly didn’t feel dead. Then again, how would he know what being dead felt like? He stared at the door through which the girl had left, and tried the handle. The door was locked. So he went to the second door, the open one. A hilltop view lay before him, patchwork fields and a forest beyond, under a crystal blue sky. The air was warm and sweet as honey.

  Daniel stepped down some narrow wooden stairs into a meadow of waist-high grass. He realised he’d been in a wooden caravan – the sort of wagon he imagined travelling folk might use, or circus performers in olden times. The wagon was painted a deep, shimmering blue, decorated with golden flourishes. Something struck him then: if this was all real, how could that girl possibly have left through a door inside the wagon?