by James Bow
“The people are here,” said the Sentinel.
“That’s nice,” croaked Peter. “Can we go now?”
“No.” The Sentinel suddenly clamped its hands around the scruffs of their necks. Peter and Rosemary cried out. Rosemary’s knees buckled and she scrabbled at the stone fingers, but the Sentinel held on tight. “You must complete your journey. You must meet the people.” He marched them across the plaza, their feet barely touching the flagstones, and mounted the stairs.
Peter struggled to move his legs fast enough to keep from bruising his shins. “Let go of me! Let go!”
“No, please,” gasped Rosemary. “Don’t take me in there!”
The marble doors swung open as they approached, flanked by chrome jaguars. The cold darkness swallowed them and the doors slammed shut behind them. The Sentinel dropped them onto a black floor inside a hall that reverberated with the heartbeat of the city.
Rubbing the back of his neck, Peter picked himself up. “We could have walked, you know,” he snapped. He looked for Rosemary and found her lying on the floor, limp as a rag doll.
She shook off his helping hand and picked herself up. Her eyes stayed fixed on the floor like someone condemned. “Don’t look, Peter,” she whispered. “Don’t look at the slabs.”
“Slabs?” He looked. Around them, blocks of marble hung from the ceiling, like double doors only thicker. Row upon row stretched out before them. Some swayed, as if something inside them stirred. “What are —”
“I’ll go!” Rosemary snapped, shrugging off the prodding hand of the Sentinel. She stepped forward down the aisle between the slabs. Peter followed. He could see the stones front on now. His eyes widened.
“Oh.”
Embedded in each slab was the representation of a person, arms folded across chest, mouth open in a last gasp, blank eyes staring. There were hundreds of slabs on either side of them and the aisle stretched into the distance, with at least a hundred slabs ahead of them. Each bore a representation of a person, their skin and clothes white like the marble, but each one as different as one living person is from another.
Peter swallowed. “This is it. These are the people, aren’t they? They’re tombstones! The Machine turned everybody into stone!”
The Sentinel nudged them onto a moving walkway that sped them past the slabs. “Some had concerns, but the Machine soon convinced all that its solution was the best. And how could it not? Here in the Hall of Stability, our civilization no longer fears death.”
Peter caught sight of a little girl in a pressed dress, holding a doll clasped to her chest. He turned away.
“Oh my God!”
“I’m sorry, Peter,” whispered Rosemary. “I should never have brought you here.”
“Don’t,” Peter snapped. He kept his eyes on the floor. “Don’t say that.”
They stumbled off the moving sidewalk and looked up. Cathedral doors of chrome stood at the centre of an obsidian wall. Flanking the doorway were the characters. Rosemary swallowed. “This is it.”
Peter clasped her hand and squeezed. “Yeah.”
Two of the characters, a butler with the red impression of a noose around his neck and a girl in her late teens wearing a leather jacket covered in badges, her skin blue from asphyxiation, turned and pushed open the doors. The mechanical beat intensified, catching at their hearts and their breathing. They entered. The characters filed in after them.
Waiting at the end of the hall was the Machine.
The Machine was a volcanic upwelling of chrome and stainless steel. There were no controls. A huge mechanical arm stretched up and was lost somewhere in the darkness, rising and falling with the regularity of an oil pump.
Peter leaned close. “Rosemary, the book, what happened to the kids?”
***
There was the sound of clanging metal, the hiss of steam. Her brother’s yells ended abruptly.
“Andrew! John!” Marjorie screamed. She struggled vainly against the metal cables wrapping around her body, pulling her to the Machine. “No!”
***
Rosemary flinched.
“Rosemary, what happened in the book?” asked Peter.
“They were turned to stone,” said Rosemary quietly. Peter went white. “All of them?”
“The Machine took Andrew and John,” said Rosemary. “Marjorie screamed ...”
“And then?”
“Yes, Rosemary,” said a girl’s clear voice. “And then?”
The girl with the horn-rimmed glasses stood at the top of a flight of stairs leading up to the Machine. She was dressed in a school uniform like Rosemary’s. A chrome jaguar nuzzled her as she scratched it behind its ears. In her other hand she held a tablet of paper.
Rosemary swallowed hard. “Marjorie. Marjorie Campbell.”
“Rosemary Watson,” said Marjorie. The sandpaper harshness of her voice was gone. Her words rang through the chamber, a clear soprano.
She smiled. “Welcome to the Machine.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
HERO MATERIAL
Marjorie began to clap, slowly and deliberately, as she came down the steps. “Bravo, Rosemary,” she said. “Bravo! That was an action-filled adventure such as I have rarely read. You are definite hero material, and Peter is an excellent sidekick.”
“Hey!” said Peter.
Marjorie smirked. “It’s a pity it will all end in tears.”
Rosemary faced Marjorie. “Where’s Theo?”
Marjorie shrugged. “Exactly where I left him, I should think, and perfectly preserved for the occasion.”
Rosemary’s eyes widened. “No! You didn’t —”
Marjorie climbed the stairs to the Machine and walked around beside it. Suspended to the left by cables was something draped with white cloth. Marjorie pulled the cloth away, revealing a slab with Theo embedded in it. His skin and his clothes were as white as the marble around him. His arms were folded across his chest. No life lit his eyes.
Rosemary staggered. Peter held her. “Let him go!” she yelled. “He didn’t do anything to you!”
Marjorie shrugged. “He was your brother. That was enough.”
“Enough for what?” Rosemary shook herself free of Peter’s grip. “What do you want from me?”
“I also had an older brother,” said Marjorie. Her gaze shifted towards Peter. “I also had a friend.”
Rosemary whirled around. “No!”
Metal claws swooped in and grabbed Peter’s ankles and wrists. He yelled as more wires wrapped around him and pulled him towards the Machine.
“Peter!” Rosemary rushed forward, but two characters caught her by the arms. She stamped her heel on a foot and jabbed her elbow into a stomach. They let go. She grabbed Peter and strained, digging in her heels, but she was no match for the Machine’s strength. Her feet slid on the polished floor.
Then someone grabbed her from behind, prying her arms loose. She screamed and struggled, but Peter slipped free. A thick arm in a wet wool sleeve wrapped over her throat. She choked. Peter was wrenched into the air and lowered onto a marble slab at the base of the Machine.
The slab rose on a hoist. Meeting it halfway from the ceiling was a metal press. The press and the hoist came together. There was the clang of machinery, the hiss of steam. Peter’s yells stopped.
Rosemary’s scream ended in a sob. She sagged into the character’s restraining arm. Behind her, Marjorie giggled. “Now you really are alone.” Her laughter echoed over the heartbeat of the Machine.
The character holding her, the tall man in the long, wet tweed coat and deerstalker hat, swung Rosemary around and threw her at Marjorie’s feet.
Marjorie smiled. “Your turn.”
Metal claws whipped down and grabbed Rosemary’s wrists and ankles, folding her arms across her chest. More wires wrapped around her, and more. Wires wrapped around her mouth, cutting off her screams. The bonds wrapped her tighter than Peter had been wrapped, until she was almost a metal mummy.
Then her right arm bu
rst through the wires as though they were made of paper.
Marjorie swore under her breath. Rosemary stared at her arm. The rest of her body was bound so tight, she couldn’t move, but the wires wrapping around her right arm couldn’t hold it. It had survived the grip of a huge metal grapple without a scratch, and it was still black from the Sea of Ink.
Rosemary grabbed at the wires around her mouth. They broke against her fingers, and she spat out strands of metal. She tore at her other bonds, and then punched Marjorie as the girl rushed her.
Marjorie went sliding back along the marble floor, clutching her chin. Rosemary pulled herself free of the last of the strands.
Marjorie sat up, flexing her jaw. “Cursed hero luck!” she muttered. “But I guess it wouldn’t be a climax without a battle.” She stood and presented her tablet like a sword. “I have the most powerful weapon in all of fiction: a pad of paper and a pencil. You have residue from the Sea of Ink as your shield, no weapon. How long do you think you can hold out, Rosemary?”
One by one, the characters folded from sight, leaving Rosemary alone with Marjorie. The two girls stared at each other. Behind them, the Machine beat away.
Then Marjorie opened her tablet and scribbled something. A laser pistol appeared on the paper. She grabbed it up and aimed.
Rosemary ran.
The laser beams kicked up sparks and smoke at Rosemary’s heels as she dashed for the cover of an alcove. Instinct made her drop and roll and a beam seared overhead. Then she was inside.
The alcove was a doorway, leading to a narrow hallway paralleling the Hall of the Machine.
Rosemary stumbled to her feet and ran.
A samurai emerged from the shadows, swinging at her with a kendo stick. Rosemary brought up her right arm to shield herself. The cane snapped in half, but Rosemary barely flinched. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the black mark shrink on her arm as the blow hit, like a pen draining away.
Rosemary punched. Her left hand had little effect on the leather armour, but her right knocked the samurai aside. She ran on.
“Go ahead, Rosemary, run.” Marjorie’s voice echoed through the marble halls. “Run away as you always do. Leave me here, again.”
At a junction, a scientist wearing a tattered white coat, his skin pockmarked from dozens of gigantic insect bites, held up a ray gun. Rosemary grabbed the corner and swung herself into the corridor. A jagged beam of electricity missed her by inches.
“But wait,” echoed Marjorie’s voice. “You can’t run away this time, can you? You’re trapped in this place, on the page.”
Rosemary tripped on a wire strung out along the hall and pulled tight by two frozen young children. They pounced on her, kicking and jumping on her back. She turned, shielding her face with her arms. The black ink seeped down her arm with every blow. She struggled back to her feet and kept running.
“That’s the problem with being the hero, Rosemary,” shouted Marjorie. “You might be able to escape this place, but you won’t. You wouldn’t dream of leaving Peter and Theo behind. My brother and friend, maybe, but not yours.”
Rosemary reached the end of the corridor and threw open the door. The Hall of Stability stretched out before her. It was a clear run from there to the outside.
The door clicked shut behind her, but Rosemary didn’t move. She stood there, breathing heavily. She leaned against the door and covered her face with her hands.
Marjorie’s voice was a distant echo. “I told you you couldn’t leave.”
Rosemary looked up. Through the gaps in her fingers, she could see the marble slabs, row upon row, swaying in the disturbed air.
She lowered her hands and took a deep breath. “You’re right,” she muttered. “I can’t leave. What sort of person would I be if I could?”
She turned around and opened the door she’d just stepped through. There she stopped dead.
The hallway was filled with characters.
They streamed out after her as she ran. She tried to cross the Hall of Stability to the main door that had taken them to the Hall of the Machine, but in the open they caught her. Yelling, she flailed blindly. But for every character Rosemary knocked aside, another stepped forward.
She struggled through them and ran.
The man in the deerstalker hat barred her way. She swung a punch, but gasped as she found her hand caught in his strong grip. Her right arm was now as pink as her left.
He pulled Rosemary forward, twisting her arm painfully behind her back. “You seem to have run out of ink, my dear!” The damp of his clothes seeped through to her back. He gave her arm another twist to make her squeak.
They carried her into the Hall of the Machine and tossed her back at Marjorie’s feet.
“You’re trapped here, Rosemary,” said Marjorie, vanishing her laser pistol back into the tablet. “The hero has no choice but to come back.”
Rosemary shot up onto her hands and knees. Her breathing quickened. Her eyes glistened. “The hero always wins!” And with a yell, she made a mad dash at Marjorie.
Marjorie caught her and twisted her arm behind her. They both faced the Machine. “Not always,” Marjorie whispered. “And never without sacrifice.”
Rosemary looked up. Suspended in mid-air opposite Theo was Peter.
Rosemary sank to her knees.
Marjorie stood behind her, tapping her pencil against her lips. “You know, now that we have you, I don’t know what to do with you. What should I do with you, Rosemary? Should we borrow a few pages from H.P. Lovecraft, perhaps? Or maybe Edgar Allen Poe? Or should I just leave you to the Machine?”
“Stop it!” Rosemary sobbed, whirling around. “Stop it, please! Let Peter and Theo go! Please! I didn’t do anything to you!”
The characters began to whisper.
Marjorie shook her head in disbelief. “Didn’t do anything to us?! You —” She sputtered, then took a deep breath. Her pencil snapped in half. “All of you! Show Rosemary why you’re here!”
The characters closed in.
Rosemary stumbled to her feet.
The man in the deerstalker hat strode out of the darkness, his clothes dripping. “You left me as I went over the falls.”
A scream echoed in Rosemary’s head, wailing and fading into the distance, until it was lost in the rumbling of the cataract. Rosemary turned away.
A Second World War fighter pilot stepped forward. “The plane fell apart around me. You weren’t there!”
Rosemary heard the roar of straining engines, the crackle of fire. She could see the ground rushing up at her face. She flinched and staggered.
Marjorie watched, her arms folded across her chest.
The insect-bitten scientist stared at her with haunted eyes. “You left me with them! THEM!”
Two men wearing hard hats with lanterns, their faces black with coal dust, stepped forward. “The air was running out,” said one.
“Who’s going to feed my family?” said the other.
Choking on bad air, Rosemary turned again and stopped dead. Lydia stepped forward, blood on her face. “The house had me. The Beast broke through the door. Where were you?”
Snarls. Screams. A surge of boiling darkness.
Rosemary turned again and faced a woman in a spacesuit, holding a smoking blaster. “The alien killed everyone on board my ship. I’m the only one left.”
They were closing in, surrounding her, leaving one escape route open, a doorway. Rosemary ran for it, brushing past Marjorie, rushed through.
Marjorie wrote something on her tablet of paper. She smiled.
In the corridor, Rosemary let out a horrible, prolonged scream. Then there was silence.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE THREE OUT OF THE FOUR
“It was the worst moment of my life.
And that’s when you stopped reading!”
— Marjorie Campbell
There was silence in the Hall of the Machine. One by one, the characters folded out of existence, leaving Marjorie alone. She
stood a moment, staring at the door through which Rosemary had run, then closed her tablet of paper, pocketed her pencil, and followed.
Rosemary was sprawled in mid-air, caught in a spider’s web with strands as thick as her fingers stretched between the black marble walls. New strands drifted over her shoulders like a shawl and tightened.
Marjorie sidled around the web, pushed her glasses further up on her nose, and glanced at her notes. “The spiders that made this web have been known to keep their victims alive for days, going so far as to forcefeed them.” She clicked her tongue. “The things kids read nowadays.”
“You can’t leave me here,” Rosemary croaked.
“Why not?” Marjorie snapped her tablet closed. “Wouldn’t it be justice?” She turned on her heel and began to walk away down the corridor.
Rosemary’s mind raced. If Marjorie left, it was all over. She had to make her stay! Had to!
“Marjorie!” Her voice echoed. “Wait!”
“Goodbye, Rosemary!” Marjorie’s footsteps faded into the distance.
Wait, thought Rosemary. Weren’t villains supposed to stay and gloat?
“Marjorie, please, just tell me why you’re doing this!”
The distant footsteps stopped. Rosemary’s heart thumped. She blew at a strand of web that fell across her cheek and tried to ignore the rustling sound coming from by her ear.
Marjorie hesitated, took a couple of steps, then the corridor echoed to her approach. Rosemary could only gaze at the black and white checkerboard floor until Marjorie stepped into her field of vision, her shoulders stiff.
Rosemary licked her lips and looked her in the eye. “Just spell it out for me. You know you want to.”
Marjorie’s jaw clenched. “You abandoned me.”
“What? Marjorie, no! I’d never —”
“When you stopped reading my book, you abandoned me!” Marjorie snapped. She turned away.
Rosemary strained against the web. “But I don’t understand —”
Marjorie rounded on her. “You left me at my worst moment! I’d lost everything to the Machine: my brother, my friend. And just when I was about to lose myself, you stoppped reading!”