First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2013
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Copyright © Ian Johnstone 2013
Ian Johnstone asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
978-0-00-749122-3
Printed and bound in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form, binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. All rights reserved.
For Emily, who shares my worlds
1
Gabblety Row
“Their voice is clear and true, yet it is not breathed, nor carried
upon the air. It echoes like thought inside the skull, speaking words
where none are spoken.”
GABBLETY ROW WAS QUITE the most peculiar and ramshackle building in town. Its undulating walls, higgledy-piggledy red tiles and winding iron drainpipes all showed an utter disregard for straight lines. The frontage of four shops with three floors above rose in an astonishing disarray of red brick and dark brown beams, leaning here and lurching there until it reached the garret rooms at its top. These chambers teetered outwards on a forest of wooden brackets, such that they loomed over the pavement below in a manner quaint to behold from a distance, but utterly terrifying to those walking beneath.
The long passage of time had added to the chaos, bending beams and bowing walls to form a miraculous collection of angles, bulges and crannies. In recent years the entire structure had slumped sideways and backwards away from the two main roads that crossed at its corner, as if the whole building was shrinking from the incessant noise and pollution of the traffic. And yet, while it seemed to cower from the twenty-first century, Gabblety Row clung to the slick, hard edges of modern life like a barnacle to a rock. Years came and went, but Gabblety Row remained.
The terrace also had a curious way of settling into the hearts of all of its residents. Sylas Tate, for instance, was often woken by loud, unearthly groans that seemed to issue from every wall, floor and ceiling, as if the tired old structure was easing its great weight one more inch into the earth for a few hours of rest, or perhaps heaving one more straight line into crookedness. Being a boy of extraordinary imagination, Sylas loved these weird sounds. A creak of the building’s old joints would transport him to a swaying bough in the highest reaches of an ancient tree; the groan of a beam would take him to a hammock in a storm-weary galleon; and the sharp crack of a splitting timber would have him at the sights of a musket, firing into the massing ranks of some terrifying and brutal foe. And these moments of escape, these tricks of imagination, were now the happiest moments of his young life.
It was not only the noises that Sylas loved about Gabblety Row. He adored the baffling passageways that ran the length of the terrace above the shops, darting left and right and up and down for no apparent reason, leading to some doors that he’d never seen open and others behind which lived his only friends in the world.
And perhaps, most of all, he loved his room.
Like any good sanctuary, it was extremely difficult to reach. The only way to it was a narrow staircase that led upwards from an undersized door on the third-floor passageway to a creaky trapdoor that opened in the furthest, darkest corner of the room. As the old building had heaved and slumped over the years, so the door and the passageway had become both low and narrow, such that they were now almost impossible for an adult to negotiate. This meant that, in his room, he could be sure to be absolutely alone: a situation that suited him well, for he was not the most sociable boy. He mixed with people perfectly well when it was necessary, at school or on the bus, but kept himself to himself when it was not. Sylas’s uncle sometimes said that his mother’s death had turned him into a moody and melancholy boy – “far too serious for a twelve-year-old” – but Sylas didn’t agree: as far as he was concerned, he simply knew his own mind and found it company enough. Whatever the truth, Sylas was used to filling his life with his own kind of cheer.
This was just what Sylas was doing at four o’clock on that peculiar Friday afternoon. He was lying in his room turning his favourite kite over and over in his hands, imagining it thousands of feet in the air, carving its beautiful path above the distant hills at the edge of town, gliding over caves and waterfalls, forgotten bowers and crevices, great hollowed-out oaks and lakes carpeted with lilies. He pictured it among the great birds that he sometimes saw from his window soaring above the town – eagles, owls, falcons, ospreys – playing with the wind and surveying all the beauty of the world.
Suddenly the grating voice of his uncle brought him crashing back to earth.
“Sylas!” came the voice through the old trapdoor. “Mail!”
Sylas sighed, drawing himself reluctantly out of his daydream. He lowered the kite carefully to the floor and pushed himself up from the mattress.
“Coming!” he shouted.
He took down his tatty old rucksack from the shelf, walked to the corner of his room and, as was his habit, kissed his fingers and touched the smooth, worn edge of a photo frame suspended above the trapdoor before heaving it open and descending into the darkness below. As it fell closed, the old picture rocked on its nail, briefly animating his mother’s faded face, her warm, smiling eyes still bright beneath the glass.
The short, dark stairwell led to a not-quite-straight oblong of light in which Sylas could see the silhouette of his uncle.
Tobias Tate was an exceptionally tall man – a fact that was only made more apparent by his thinness. His legs and arms were so long and slight that one might fear for their safety as he swung them up and down the narrow staircases and passageways of Gabblety Row. Even his face was long and narrow, and his hair stood up on end in a manner that suggested that just as gravity pulled him down, some other invisible force tugged at his upper extremities. And yet, perhaps in an attempt to fight this upward tendency, Tobias Tate had developed a graceless stoop – an arching of the shoulders and a thrusting forward of his head – which gave him an ugly, almost predatory appearance. When he entered a room, it was his sharp nose that appeared first, followed by the black plumes of his eyebrows and his furrowed brow, then his long, sinewy neck. A bookkeeper by trade and passion, he spent most of his days in his study poring over piles of papers and tapping on his many computers, all of which made his stoop more pronounced, his face more pallid and gaunt, and his character more unutterably miserable.
“Tardy!” he barked. “Tardy, Sylas, that’s what you are – and if you don’t know what it means, look it up, because on account of your tardiness I don’t have time to explain.”
The voice was dry and expressionless, but Sylas could tell from the unusual length of his uncle’s sentence that he was in an especially irritable mood. A large, thin white hand thrust a pile of letters into Sylas’s chest.
“Sorry, uncle, I’ll post them straight away,” he said, pushing them into his rucksack. He stepped around and over his uncle’s stray limbs and into the corridor beyond.
“Tardy! Look it up!” Tobias Tate shouted after him.
Sylas walked quickly down the meandering grey passageway. Someone less experienced in the curious ways of Gabblety Row might trip over an unexpected rise in the floor or bruise themselves against a bulge in the wall, but these corridors wer
e Sylas’s domain. Small of stature and deft of foot from his many errands, he moved with an assured ease past the many apartment doors on his left and right, until he turned on to the staircase. He took the stairs in twos – a feat of considerable skill given that each pair varied in height and angle – and soon bounded off the bottom step and through the large oak door.
It opened at the end of the terrace, directly opposite the Church of the Holy Trinity. The majestic spire soared above Gabblety Row as if trying to teach a lesson in uprightness, but that was perhaps the church’s last salute to the world: the main roof had fallen in and the grounds were now an overgrown jungle of trees, bushes, ivy and broken stone.
Sylas hesitated – he had not had a chance to lay flowers for his mother this week, and it was already Friday. He looked at his watch. There should be time after the post office.
Suddenly he was assailed by a blast of screeching, honking car horns, and the acrid smell of fumes as the lights on the corner changed to green. The two roads that met at the corner of Gabblety Row were the busiest in town, each four lanes across and jammed with steel and noise and agitated people. These were serious roads, roads that did not like to be interrupted, and they growled irritably at one another each time the traffic lights changed.
Sylas turned the corner and began the familiar walk along the frontage of shops: the sweet, doughy-smelling Buntague’s Bakery, the ominous undertaker’s Veeglum & Retch, and finally Sam Clump’s, the locksmith. Then something very odd caught his eye. It was a movement somewhere ahead of him, inside the dusty window of the final shop in the row, the one that had been empty for years.
He approached the filthy, arched panes that made up the shopfront. Each dirty section of glass had been set into carved wooden frames as crookedly as the rest of the row and bent the light in a unique way, making it almost impossible to see into the dark room beyond. All Sylas could make out was the usual darkness flecked with dust and cobwebs.
He shrugged and was about to turn away when something unfamiliar made him look up. To his surprise, he saw that there, nailed over the dilapidated nameplate that had always been blank, was a new shop sign. The lettering was like none he had ever seen, a dance of outlandish arcs and curves in reds and purples and blues.
He read out loud in wonderment: “The… Shop… of…” He blinked and frowned, “...Things.”
“Yes, indeed.”
Sylas jumped and looked about him, trying to find the owner of the voice. There was no one. The voice had sounded so clear and close, even over the drone of the traffic.
“Do come inside.”
A shiver ran down Sylas’s spine. It was inside his head.
The voice was accented and strange, like none he could remember. Surely, if he was imagining it, it would seem more familiar. He found himself stepping backwards towards the edge of the pavement.
“Careful!”
A horn screamed wildly and Sylas felt the wind of a passing car tearing at his clothes. He threw himself forward, gasping with fright, and steadied himself against a window frame. When he had gathered his wits, he found himself standing right next to the doorway.
“You have nothing to fear.”
He peered again through the dirty glass, but could see nothing but darkness. For some time he stayed rooted to the spot, glancing nervously from side to side. Finally his nerves got the better of him and he turned and started to walk away.
In a few steps he had reached the corner of Clump’s locksmith’s and he heard the sound of Sam Clump chatting cheerfully to a customer as he prodded a screwdriver into a misbehaving lock. Sylas paused and looked out at the busy road and the endless throng of faces peering over steering wheels, then across to the harsh lights of the supermarket, and finally he looked back at the mysterious dark window.
What harm could come to him so close to Sam and to all these people? Surely he had just imagined the voice – after all, he had imagined stranger things before.
He felt the sting of a raindrop against the side of his face and looked up to see the sky darkening. As the heavens rumbled, he drew himself up and walked briskly across the pavement to the Shop of Things.
The rain fell in sheets that moved like silvery curtains across the town. A warm wind caught the drops and hurled them this way and that, so that there was nowhere they did not reach. They swirled into bus shelters and blasted into doorways; they curled beneath umbrellas and danced between the leaves of trees. Soon the town had become a world of shabby greyness, its dull buildings framed by pendulous, smoky clouds above, and murky pools and rivulets below.
The stranger turned out of a lane on to the main road, gathering his loose-fitting coat about him and drawing down the hood so that his face could not be seen. He cursed as a gust threw up spray from a passing car and he quickly slid the black holdall off his shoulder, tucking it under his coat. Even with this awkward burden he moved quickly, pausing only once or twice to look at road signs and to wait for cars as they turned into side roads. He seemed agitated, casting his dark eyes left and right and sometimes muttering under his breath, but his strides were sure and powerful and he moved swiftly past other pedestrians.
As he neared the traffic lights, his attention was drawn to a strange, ramshackle building on the opposite corner of the junction. He put the holdall down and leaned against one of the traffic lights, peering out from under his hood at the peculiar arrangement of beams, drainpipes and brickwork that lay before him.
“And thus at this our journey’s end,” he said in a weathered voice, “is another, just beginning.”
Then he stepped out in the direction of Gabblety Row.
2
The Shop of Things
“When the sun sets, it merely sleeps, to rise another day; a path
that ends, ends not, but leads back from whence it came; and thus
at this our journey’s end is another, just beginning.”
THE DOOR CREAKED ON its old, dry hinges, but opened easily. Sylas heard the half-hearted ring of the rusty shop bell above his head as he stepped into the gloom.
He was immediately aware of the strong odour of decaying wood and damp walls, which hung heavily in the air and caught the back of his throat. The front of the shop was relatively clear, containing a few empty cabinets whose doors hung off their hinges and vast grey spiders’ webs that hung wall to ceiling like drapes. But within, all he could see were stacks of crates and parcels that ascended from floor to ceiling like weird postal sculptures, arranged in long lines stretching the full length of the shop. He glanced at one stack and saw that each parcel and crate carried a shipping label stamped with the city of origin: Beijing… Addis Ababa… Rio de Janeiro… Alexandria… Khartoum…
“Welcome.”
It was the same strange accent, the same deep, gentle voice, but this time it was not inside his head, it was in the room. Sylas became aware of a dull glow in the dark interior of the shop, at the end of one of the stacks.
“Thank you,” he blurted, his heart pounding.
“It is said that the greatest endeavours have modest beginnings,” said the voice, this time with some humour. “So I must ask you to use your imagination.”
Suddenly Sylas saw the sparse light in the shop shift slightly, and a shadow moved. His eyes darted from left to right trying to find the owner of the voice, but there were so many dark corners and strange objects that he was at a loss where to look. He was about to turn and retreat back to the door when the silhouette of a small stooped man appeared against the dusty light at the far end of one of the stacks.
As Sylas walked to the back of the shop, the figure paused and seemed to bow slightly before reaching for something from a shelf. A sudden flare of orange light made Sylas squint and look away, but when he turned back, he saw the room gradually coming to life. The dark figure was lighting a row of candles on what had once been the shop counter, but was now a broken expanse of rotten wood.
The man stepped forward and leaned on the counter, bringing hi
s face into the halo of light.
It was a fascinating face, quite unlike any Sylas had seen before. The pale skin was wrinkled around the mouth, eyes and the wide brow, showing him to be a man of great expression and animation. His bright, oriental eyes were calming and gentle, like nothing could surprise them, as if they had seen much of most things. His white beard was flecked with bluish-grey hairs around the edges, which lent him a distinguished but outlandish appearance, an effect that was only heightened by the way in which it drew to a point below his chin. He wore a grey, foreign-looking velvet cap upon his head, like a crumpled pot that had slumped to one side, and a dishevelled grey suit made of some coarse material that showed the myriad creases of too much wear. Even his shirt, which had apparently once been white, was now turning grey in sympathy with everything else. His tie, which was a rich dark green, provided the only colour.
His most distinctive feature was his warm, welcoming smile, for his eyes twinkled and his features creased into a pleasing, amiable expression of kindness. Sylas found himself smiling back – a broad, bold smile that brightened his spirits and dispelled his nerves.
The old man lit the last of seven candles and sighed, making the flames dance slightly.
“I believe in a certain amount of gloom,” he said, and with a wink he blew out the match. “What your eyes cannot see your imagination must discover. And your imagination is very important, young man.”
Sylas looked at him quizzically. “Important?”
“Yes, for a great many things… and you will put it to very good use in my shop,” said the shopkeeper. “Now, let us dispense with the formalities. They call me Mr Zhi.”
He stepped around the counter and held out his hand. It was covered in a beautifully embroidered velvet glove of the same dark green as his tie. Sylas only had a moment to look at it, but he saw that the stitching on the back of the hand glittered slightly in the candlelight.
The Bell Between Worlds Page 1