The Nowhere Emporium

by Ross Mackenzie

  And then Daniel heard a voice, filling his head to bursting.

  “Leave,” it said in a whisper that ran right through him. “Leave us.”

  Slowly, the hands released Daniel, and he wriggled and squirmed, feeling less crushing pressure, fewer cold grips. Another hand grabbed his own, this one warm, and he was heaved forwards.

  He landed on the cold Emporium floor on his hands and knees, gasping, clutching his throat.

  “The book! Do you still have the book?” Sharpe stood over him, his eyes bulging.

  Daniel felt for his pocket. His shaking fingers touched upon the book. He nodded.

  Sharpe spun away towards the open door, where hundreds of hands reached and clawed and grasped at the air. He grabbed the door, tried to pull it shut, but the hands refused, fought against him. Sharpe did not give up. He opened his mouth and yelled, a guttural scream from the depths of his belly. He pulled so hard that angry veins appeared on his neck and his forehead. Slowly, the door began to close, until the latch clicked, and Sharpe collapsed against the wood, holding it shut with all of his weight and strength.

  “Get rid of it!” he yelled at Daniel.

  The words shook Daniel from his daze. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the book and found the right page. Tearing it from the book, he ran to the nearest flickering lamp, and held the paper to the flame, where it turned to glowing ash and scattered.

  The cracked black bricks around the door closed in, swivelling and shifting into place, multiplying until the doorway was blocked, the door gone. Sharpe leaned against the wall, panting.

  “What did you do?” he said.

  “Only what you asked me to,” said Daniel. He stared at the book in his shaking hands, and at the place on the wall where the door had been. He tried to figure out what had gone wrong. Last time he’d written in the book without permission, Mr Silver had explained that there was a reason things had gone out of control: in trying to bring back his parents from the dead, Daniel had crossed an impossible and dangerous line. This time he’d attempted no such thing, only a simple doorway leading to Mr Silver.

  “Maybe he doesn’t want us to find him,” he said, and his eyes widened as the idea struck him properly.

  Sharpe gave him a quizzical look. “What are you talking about?”

  “I heard a voice in that room. ‘Leave us,’ it said. I think what just happened was a warning from Mr Silver. A message. He was telling us not to come looking for him.”

  Sharpe straightened up, and dusted off his suit.

  “I’m growing tired of these games,” he said, and his voice was cold and sharp. Then he brushed past Daniel and walked away, his cane clicking on the floor.

  As Daniel watched Sharpe go, something troubled him: he’d almost been eaten by a door, yet all Sharpe seemed to be worried about was whether the Book of Wonders was safe. In fact, every time Sharpe saw the book his eyes would shine and a strange look would creep over his face.

  Daniel stowed the book back in his pocket, let his hand rest on it. Perhaps he was imagining things. Sharpe had saved his life twice now, after all. The stress of the crumbling Emporium and of Mr Silver’s disappearance might be taking its toll. He hoped so.

  All the same, Ellie had been right. Sharpe was Daniel’s responsibility.

  From now on he’d watch his every move.

  CHAPTER 23

  CREATION

  Edinburgh, June 1896

  A pair of well-worn grey shoes stepped from the train carriage onto the platform of Edinburgh’s Waverley Station. Lucien Silver had come home.

  His handsome face was now a little more lived-in. The hair was a tangle of wild waves, the chin dotted with dark stubble.

  He stayed for a few days in a modest hotel near the centre of the city. He walked the wide streets, occasionally stumbling upon a building or a point of view that would spark hazy memories of rare trips outside the walls of Castlefoot Home for Lost Boys.

  On his third day, Lucien discovered an empty building in one of Edinburgh’s narrow backstreets. He asked around, learning that the shop belonged to an elderly baker who had retired and left it empty.

  On the morning of Lucien’s fourth day back in Edinburgh, word of something remarkable began to spread. The old baker’s shop was gone. It had been replaced (overnight, it seemed) with a grand building made of sparkling black stone. An Emporium of some sort, though nobody was exactly sure what it might sell.

  Some described the place as a living dream. Some said that the young man who ran the shop must be a genius, an illusionist with no equal, for inside the shop they had seen Wonders beyond belief, or science, or reason.

  Word of mouth is a magic of its own. Many that lived in the city, or nearby, became bewitched, returning again and again, sometimes every day. When journalists and writers picked up on the story, a new wave of patrons descended on Edinburgh, eager to see the work of the remarkable young man they’d read about. They came from Glasgow and Newcastle, Liverpool and London and beyond. None were disappointed.

  And nobody ever suspected that the magic was real.

  Lucien lined his pockets with more money than he ever imagined. He barely slept. His days were spent running the Emporium, his nights imagining new Wonders to capture the imagination of the public.

  With every stroke of the pen he would remember Vindictus Sharpe’s cold words in the graveyard, words that fuelled his every move: “You will never be better than me. I rescued you from the gutter, and that is where I expect you to return…”

  Lucien had no intention of ever returning to the gutter. He wished beyond anything that one day Sharpe would walk through the doors. Then he would laugh in his face, and Sharpe would be forced to admit the cleverness of Lucien’s magic.

  In the meantime, the Nowhere Emporium was open for business.

  Yes indeed.

  And business was booming.

  CHAPTER 24

  RESCUE

  The Emporium’s decay was speeding up. The cracks in the walls grew, and chunks of stone began to break away. The once shining black brick seemed dull and lifeless. Lamps had flickered out, and could not be relit. Doors began to lock without explanation. A strange illness was beginning to strike the staff; they became weak and fevered.

  Daniel felt it too; his connection with the shop was fading. There were frightening moments when he found himself lost and confused, only for his knowledge to return.

  Several times, Sharpe left the Emporium at night, complaining that he needed to eat – though Daniel had never seen anything pass his lips except whisky. When Sharpe was gone, Daniel sometimes found himself hoping that he wouldn’t come back. The uneasy feeling in his gut was getting stronger, and the more time he spent with the magician, the more positively Daniel felt he was hiding something.

  One night, when Sharpe was out, Daniel checked in on his friends.

  Caleb was revelling in his role as organiser. Every day he’d been sending out groups of vendors and performers to the increasingly dangerous far reaches of the Emporium. There were phantom sightings and false alarms, but no Mr Silver.

  And no Ellie.

  “We’ve discovered a long-lost part of the Emporium,” Caleb told Daniel. “A secret tunnel! It’ll take days to properly search it, and Ellie has gone with the expedition.”

  “They won’t find him,” said Daniel, and he told Caleb about his attempt to write in the book, and the door that almost ate him.

  “So you think Silver is alive?” said Caleb. “That’s great news!”

  “Maybe,” said Daniel, “but why doesn’t he want anyone to find him? What’s he doing? What’s he so scared of?”

  “We should call off the search parties,” said Caleb.

  “Agreed,” said Daniel, and the thought that Ellie would finally be coming back cheered him. He missed her. He missed how she made him happy and angry and want to tear his hair out all at the same time. And he had been terrified that something would happen to her, that she’d be caught in one of the
crumbling Wonders as it self-destructed. He hoped she’d be able to help him work out what was going on. And just having her around would make him less nervous about spending time with Sharpe.

  ***

  Daniel heard the screams for help on a Monday morning.

  He followed the noise, up and around, and found a corridor half caved-in, blocked by fallen chunks of roof and wall.

  The muffled ring of shattering glass spilled from a warped, twisted door near the blockage.

  The screams grew louder, more desperate.

  Daniel ran to the door and tried to open it, but it was bent and jammed. He kicked at the handle, again and again, until at last the door burst open, revealing a palace made entirely of glass. It was beautiful. It was delicate and shimmering. And it was falling apart. Everywhere the glass was marked by crawling, inching cracks. The sound of glass popping and shattering was all around. As Daniel followed the screams, long shards fell inches from him, exploding on the floor in countless sparkling fragments. He pressed onward, dodging and weaving, until he ducked under a doorway, entering a grand dining room.

  His heart almost stopped. Anja was lying over a glass table. Her eyes were shut. A pool of black liquid, like ink, had formed around her and was dripping from the table to the floor. Stuck deep in her shoulder was a glass blade as long as Daniel’s arm.

  “Anja! Anja, I’m here! It’s Daniel. Can you hear me?”

  She didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge him in any way. Daniel struggled to drape her over his shoulder. Then he began to pull her away, her limp feet dragging on the floor as the dining room crashed down around them. Out into the main hall, and he gathered pace. But white-hot pain flashed in his foot, and he dropped to the ground, Anja landing awkwardly on top of him. Daniel knew his foot was bleeding; he could feel the hot blood pouring from the wound. He also knew if he didn’t get Anja out they’d both be stuck many times over with razor-sharp glass. As the shattering roar became unbearable, he struggled up and dragged Anja through the door, jamming it shut behind.

  “Help! Somebody help!”

  “Daniel!”

  Vindictus Sharpe sped towards them, blue eyes almost glowing in the dim light.

  “Mr Sharpe! You’ve got to help her! Oh, she can’t die. Please don’t let her die!”

  Sharpe brushed Daniel aside, crouched low over Anja. He felt her throat.

  “She’s alive.”

  Daniel slumped to the floor in relief. Sharpe pulled the glass shard from Anja’s shoulder and a jet of black spurted high into the air. Then Sharpe’s eyes closed and he muttered under his breath, his fingers tracing the outline of the deep gash. The pouring liquid slowed. Then it stopped. Torn skin began to knit together until nothing remained but the thinnest of scars.

  Sharpe turned his attention to Daniel.

  “This will hurt. Close your eyes.”

  ***

  Daniel sat by the fire sipping hot tea to steady his nerves as he waited for Sharpe to return. When the big man swept through the curtain from the labyrinth of corridors, Daniel leapt up.

  “What happened? Will Anja be OK?”

  Sharpe removed his coat, hung it near the door, and took a silver flask from the pocket, swallowing a mouthful of the liquid inside.

  “She should recover. But even then, there’s every chance she’ll catch the sickness that’s spreading through the staff. Without Lucien they are rotting away, just like the Emporium. It’s not blood inside them. It’s ink.”

  Daniel pushed his palm against the cool glass of the window. Hot tears gathered in his eyes. Why was it that everything he loved, or cared about, or depended on went away in the end? What was wrong with him?

  Sharp said, “I don’t believe there’s much time left.” His big hands were pressed together, like he was praying. “We need to find Lucien. Now.”

  Daniel shook his head. “I’ve been thinking. Mr Silver has always done what’s best for this place. Why would he stop now? If I’m right, and he doesn’t want to be found, then there must be a reason. I trust him.”

  “Do you trust him enough to die here if you’re wrong?” said Sharpe. “Look … Lucien is ill. You said so yourself. He might not be thinking clearly. He might have gone mad for all we know. If we don’t find him, I promise you, everything in this shop, including your friends, will be gone. And you’re going to have to start thinking about life outside the Emporium again.”

  Daniel stared desperately.

  “I don’t want to leave.”

  “Then help me!”

  “How?”

  Sharpe let out a deep sigh.

  “I know Lucien better than anyone. I know how his mind works. Perhaps if I were to study the Book of Wonders, I might find something that you have missed. The tiniest clue can make all the difference.”

  Daniel reached for his pocket. He brought the book out and stared at the battered cover. He was tired, and frightened, and confused. Could Sharpe be right? Was it possible Mr Silver was losing his mind?

  “It is your decision,” said Sharpe. “If you do not wish me to have the book, I understand.” He pointed to the gold watch on his wrist. “But time is running out. And consider this: how would you feel if the Emporium slipped away and you knew that you had not done everything in your power to save it? To save your friends?”

  Daniel’s hand trembled as he clutched the book. Sharpe was right: how could he ignore any chance, no matter how small, of saving his home and the people who had filled his life with magic?

  He held out the Book of Wonders.

  Sharpe stared at it. He licked his lips, reached out hungry fingers. Just like that, the Book of Wonders was gone, nestling in Sharpe’s hands.

  “How can I help?” Daniel asked.

  Sharpe tore his eyes from the book.

  “Mmm? Oh … I insist on doing this alone, boy. I won’t achieve much with you staring over my shoulder. Besides, you’ve been through quite an ordeal today. It’s best if you rest.”

  As Sharpe spoke, Daniel’s eyelids grew heavy, and tiredness weighed upon his shoulders. “You’ll tell me if you find anything?” he managed to say through a yawn as he slumped into a dusty old armchair near the window.

  Sharpe flashed those white teeth.

  “If I find what I am looking for, boy, you will know about it. Believe me.”

  And with that he turned and swept away through the curtain.

  Daniel watched after him. Somewhere in the back of his head, something was screaming out at him. But he did not care any more. Tiredness wrapped around him, suffocating the world, and he curled up in the deep chair and closed his eyes.

  CHAPTER 25

  THE NOTHINGNESS

  Daniel woke with a start. Several of the clocks on the walls displayed the date as well as the time, and they told him that he’d slept through an entire day. It was strange how tiredness had crept over him just as he’d given the book to Sharpe…

  Daniel’s hand touched the empty pocket. He thought of the book. Usually, when he wished to find anything in the Emporium – an object or a place – he would simply hold a picture of it in his mind and he would know in an instant where it could be located. But now, when he pictured the Book of Wonders, he could see nothing. There was a blind spot in his vision, like static interference, and it was not being caused by the weakening Emporium. The only explanation was that Sharpe was blocking him, purposely keeping him at arm’s length. And why would he do that? What did he have to hide?

  Sharpe had made everything seem so hopeless, made Daniel think handing over the Book of Wonders was the only option left. But now his head was clear, Daniel was starting to realise the enormity of his mistake.

  In half a beat he was through the curtain, and right away it was obvious that something had changed. Looking at the decaying great hall of stairways was like visiting some ancient ruin, or the site of a disaster. The stairs were worn and broken. Many of the flickering torches had died, casting the corridors in cold shadow and gloom. The air was tinged wi
th the taste of smoke, and thick dust, and of something sour and metallic. In the day Daniel had been asleep, the Emporium’s disease had progressed rapidly.

  A terrible thought knocked the wind from him: the Nowhere Hotel! Would it still be standing? Were his friends OK?

  Sprinting through the dark, Daniel found his path blocked time and again by the debris of collapsed corridors. A Wonder called the Shipwreck had burst open, flooding several passages with waist-deep water, full of colourful fish.

  The door to the Nowhere Hotel was, like many of the other Wonders, cracked and warped. As soon as Daniel saw it he knew something bad had happened inside. The revolving door deposited him in the lobby, which had been so vibrant and grand the last time he visited. Now it was silent. Lights flickered on and off, and columns of black marble were crumbling. There were fissures in the floor and places where the ceiling had collapsed.

  “Hello?” said Daniel, flinching at the sound of his own voice. There was no answer. He did not want to go any further. He was scared, both of the lonely gloom and of what might have happened to his friends. But his friends were exactly the reason he had to go on. Ellie lived in this place and it was impossible for her to escape. What if she was trapped somewhere? What if she was hurt? But where? Which room was hers? Where should he begin his search?

  “Caleb’s room!” he said to himself. “What number was it? What number, what number, what number … 108! It was 108!”

  He ran to the elevator, punched the button. Nothing happened. “Of course it isn’t working,” said Daniel to the Emporium. “Why make things easy for me?” He kicked the wall, and a chunk of black marble broke off and thudded to his feet.

  The stairs were narrow and steep, all bare concrete and flickering strip lights, and as Daniel climbed floor after floor the Nowhere Hotel creaked and groaned around him. He knew it could all fall apart at any moment, knew that this Wonder could disappear from existence as easily as any of the others. But he pushed through the fear.