The Thief of Always

  “There has to be!”

  “I can’t find it!” Wendell said, his reply almost drowned out by the din of Carna’s shrieks.

  Harvey glanced back the way he’d come, more afraid not to know how close the creature was than to see it, however terrifying the sight. A veil of mist swirled in front of him, but he glimpsed Carna’s form as the beast descended. It was the most monstrous of the brood: its skin rotted and stretched over barbed and polished bone, its throat a nest of snaky tongues, its jaws set with hundreds of teeth.

  This is the end, Harvey thought. I’ve only been alive ten years and five months and I’m going to have my head bitten off.

  Then, from the corner of his eye, a strange sight. Mrs. Griffin’s arms, reaching into the mist, and dropping Blue-Cat to the ground.

  “He’s got a good sense of direction!” Harvey heard her say. “Follow him! Follow him!”

  He didn’t need a second invitation. Nor did Blue-Cat. Tail up, it padded off, and Harvey hauled on Wendell’s arm to drag him in pursuit. The cat was quick, but so was Harvey. He kept his eyes glued on that bright tail, even when the rush of wings behind him announced that Carna had entered the mist and was almost upon them.

  Two strides; three strides; four. And now the mist seemed to be thinning. He heard Wendell whooping for joy—“The street!” he yelled, “I see it!”—and the next moment Harvey saw it too, the sidewalks wet with rain and shining in the lamplight.

  Now he dared look back, and there was Carna, its jaws a yard from them.

  He let go of Wendell’s arm and pushed his friend toward the street, ducking as he did so. Carna’s lower jaw scraped his spine, but the beast was moving too fast to check itself, and instead of wheeling around to scoop up its quarry it flew on, out into the real world.

  Wendell was already there.; Harvey joined him a moment later.

  “We did it!” Wendell yelled. “We did it!”

  “So did Carna!” Harvey said, pointing up at the beast as it rose against the cloudy sky and turned to come back for them.

  “It wants to drive us back inside!” Harvey said.

  “I’m not going!” Wendell cried. “Never! I’m never going in there again!”

  Carna heard his defiance. Its blazing eyes fixed on him and it came down like a thunderbolt, its shriek echoing through the midnight streets.

  “Run!” Harvey said.

  But Carna’s stare had rooted Wendell to the spot. Harvey grabbed hold of him and was about to make a run for it when he heard the beast’s cry change. Triumph became doubt; doubt became pain; and suddenly Carna wasn’t swooping but falling, holes opening in its wings as though a horde of invisible moths was eating at their fabric.

  It labored to climb the air again, but its wounded wings refused their duty, and seconds later it struck the street so hard it bit off a dozen of its tongues, and scattered half a hundred teeth at the boys’ feet. The fall didn’t kill it, however. Though agonized by its wounds, it hauled itself up onto the spiky crutches of its wings and began to drag itself back toward the wall. Even now, in this wretched state, it was ferocious, and with snaps to right and left drove Harvey and Wendell out of its path.

  “It can’t survive out here…” Wendell realized aloud, “…it’s dying.”

  Harvey wished he had some weapon to keep the beast from returning to safety, but he had to be content with the sight of its defeat. If it had not wanted their flesh so badly, he thought, it wouldn’t have come after them at such speed, and brought this pain and humiliation upon itself. There was a lesson there, if he could only remember it. Evil, however powerful it seemed, could be undone by its own appetite.

  Then the creature was gone, a curtain of mist drawn over its retreat.

  There was only one sign remaining of the mysteries that lay on the other side of the wall: the face of Blue-Cat, gazing out at the world that he, like all the occupants of the Holiday House, could never explore. His azure gaze met Harvey’s for a moment; then he looked back toward his prison, as though he heard Mrs. Griffin’s summons, and with a sorrowful sigh turned and traipsed away.

  “Weird,” said Wendell, as he stared at the rainy streets. “It’s as though I never left”

  “Is it?” said Harvey. He wasn’t so sure. He felt different; marked by this adventure.

  “I wonder if we’ll even remember we came here in a week’s time?”

  “Oh, I’ll remember,” Harvey said. “I’ve got a few souvenirs.”

  He dug into his pocket in search of the figures from the ark. Even as he pulled them out he felt them crumbling, as the real world took its toll on them.

  “Illusions…” he murmured as they turned to dust and ran away between his fingers.

  “Who cares?” said Wendell. “It’s time to go home. And that’s no illusion.”

  XIV .Time Was

  It took the boys an hour to reach the center of town, and there—given that their houses lay in opposite directions—they parted company. They exchanged addresses before they did so, promising to contact each other in a day or two, so that they could each support the other’s account of the Holiday House. It would be difficult to make people believe all that had happened to them, but perhaps they’d have a better chance if two voices told the same tale.

  “I know what you did back there,” Wendell said just before they parted. “You saved my life.”

  “You would have done the same thing for me,” Harvey said.

  Wendell looked doubtful. “I might have wanted to,” he said, somewhat abashed, “but I’ve never been very brave.”

  “We escaped together,” Harvey said. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Wendell brightened at this. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess that’s right. Well…be seein’ ya.”

  And, with that, they went their separate ways.

  It was still several hours before daybreak, and the streets were virtually deserted, so for Harvey it was a long, lonely trudge home. He was tired, and a little saddened by his farewell to Wendell, but the thought of the welcome he’d get when he reached his own doorstep put a spring in his heels.

  Several times he wondered if he’d gone astray, because the streets he passed through were unfamiliar. One neighborhood was extremely fancy, the houses and the cars parked outside them slicker than anything he’d set eyes on. Another was virtually a wasteland, the houses half rubble, the streets strewn with garbage. But his sense of direction served him well. As the East began to pale, and the birds in the trees started their twitterings, he rounded the corner of his street. His weary legs broke into a joyful dash, and brought him to the step panting for breath and ready to fall into his parents’ arms.

  He knocked on the door. There was no sound from the house at first, which didn’t surprise him given the hour. He knocked again, and again. Finally a light was turned on and he heard somebody coming to the door.

  “Who is it?” said his father from behind the closed door. “Do you know what time it is?

  “It’s me,” said Harvey.

  Then came the sound of bolts being drawn aside, and the door was opened a crack.

  “Who’s me?” said the man peering out at him.

  He looked kindly enough, Harvey thought, but it wasn’t his father. This was a much older man, his hair almost white, his face thin. He had a badly trimmed mustache, and a furrow of a frown.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  Before Harvey could reply a woman’s voice said:

  “Come away from the door.”

  He couldn’t see the second speaker yet, but he caught a glimpse of the wallpaper in the hallway, and the pictures on the wall. To his relief he saw that this was not his house at all. He’d obviously made a simple mistake, and knocked on the wrong door.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, backing away. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  “Who are you looking for?” the man wanted to know, opening the door a little wider n
ow. “Are you one of the Smith kids?”

  He started to dig in the pocket of his dressing gown, and brought out a pair of spectacles.

  He can’t even see me properly, Harvey thought: poor old man.

  But before the spectacles reached the bridge of the man’s nose his wife appeared behind him, and Harvey’s legs almost folded up beneath him at the sight of her.

  She was old, this woman, her hair almost as colorless as her husband’s, and her face even more lined and sorrowful. But Harvey knew that face better than any on earth. It was the first face he’d ever loved. It was his mother.

  “Mom?” he murmured.

  The woman stopped and stared out through the open door at the boy standing on the step, her eyes filling up with tears. She could barely breathe the word she said next.

  “Harvey?”

  “Mom?…Mom, it is you, isn’t it?”

  By now the man had put on his spectacles, and peered through them with his eyes wide.

  “It’s not possible,” he said flatly. “This can’t be Harvey.”

  “It’s him,” said his wife. “It’s our Harvey. He’s come home.”

  The man shook his head. “After all these years?” he said. “He’d be a man by now. He’d be a grown man. This is just a boy.”

  “It’s him, I tell you.”

  “No!” the man replied, angry now. “It’s some prank. Somebody trying to break our hearts. As if they’re not broken enough.”

  He started to slam the door, but Harvey’s mom caught hold of it.

  “Look at him,” she said. “Look at his clothes. That’s what he was wearing the night he left us.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You think I don’t remember?”

  “It’s thirty-one years ago,” said Harvey’s father, still staring at the boy on the step. “This can’t…can’t be…” He faltered as slow recognition spread over his face. “Oh my Lord,” he said, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper, “…it is him, isn’t it?”

  “I told you,” his wife replied,

  “Are you some kind of ghost?” he asked Harvey.

  “Oh for goodness’ sake,” Harvey’s mom said. “He’s no ghost!” She slipped past her husband, and out onto the step. “I don’t know how it’s possible, and I don’t care,” she said, opening her arms to Harvey. “All I know is, our little boy’s come home to us.”

  Harvey couldn’t speak. There were too many tears in his throat, and in his nose and in his eyes. All he could do was stumble into his mother’s arms. It was wonderful to feel her hands stroke his hair and her fingers wipe his cheeks.

  “Oh Harvey, Harvey, Harvey,” she sobbed. “We thought we’d never see you again.” She kissed him over and over. “We thought you’d gone forever.”

  “How’s this possible?” his father still wanted to know.

  “I kept praying,” his mother said.

  Harvey had another answer, though he didn’t voice it. The moment he’d set eyes on his mother—so changed, so sorrowful—it was instantly clear what a terrible trick Hood’s House had played upon them all. For every day he’d spent there a year had gone by here in the real world. Every morning while he’d played in the spring warmth, months had passed. In the afternoon, while he’d lazed in the summer sun, the same. And those haunted twilights, which had seemed so brief, had been another span of months, as had the Christmas nights, full of snow and presents. They’d all slipped by so easily, and though he had only aged a month, his mom and dad had lived in sadness for thirty-one years, thinking that their little boy had gone forever.

  That had almost been the case. If he’d remained in the House of Illusions, distracted by its petty pleasures, a whole lifetime would have gone by here in the real world, and his soul would have become Hood’s property. He would have joined the fish circling in the lake; and circling; and circling. He shuddered at the thought.

  “You’re cold, sweetie,” his mother said. “Let’s get you inside.” He sniffed hard, and cleared his tears with the back of his hand. “I’m so tired,” he said.

  “I’ll make a bed for you straight away.”

  “No. I want to tell you what happened before I go to sleep,” Harvey replied. “It’s a long story. Thirty-one years long.”

  XV. New Nightmares

  It was a more difficult tale to tell than he expected it to be. Though some of the details were clear in his head—Rictus’s first appearance; the sinking of the ark; his and Wendell’s escape—there was much else he could not properly remember. It was as though the mist he’d strode through had seeped into his head, and had there drawn a veil over the House and much of what it contained.

  “I remember speaking to you on the phone two or three times,” he said.

  “You didn’t speak to us, honey,” his mom replied.

  “Then that was just another trick,” Harvey said. “I should have known.”

  “But who was playing all those tricks?” his father demanded. “If this House exists—I say if—then whoever owns it kidnapped you and somehow kept you from growing up. Maybe he froze you—”

  “No,” said Harvey. “It was warm there, except when the snow came down, of course.”

  “There has to be some sane explanation.”

  “There is,” said Harvey. “It was magic.”

  His father shook his head. “That’s a child’s answer,” he said. “And I’m not a child anymore.”

  “And I know what I know,” said Harvey firmly.

  “It isn’t very much, honey,” his mom said.

  “I wish I could remember more.”

  She put a comforting arm around his shoulder. “Never mind,” she said, “we’ll talk about it when you’ve had a rest.”

  “Could you find this House again?” his father asked him.

  “Yes,” Harvey replied, though his skin ran with chills at the thought of going back. “I think so”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

  “I don’t want him going back to that place,” his mother said.

  “We have to know it exists before we report it to the police. You understand that, don’t you, son?”

  Harvey nodded. “It sounds like something I made up, I know. But it’s not. I swear it’s not.”

  “Come on, sweetie,” his mother said. “I’m afraid your room’s changed a bit, but it’s still comfortable. I kept it just as you’d left it for years and years, hoping you’d find your way home. Then I realized if you ever did come back you’d be a grown man, and you wouldn’t want it decorated with rocket ships and parrots. So we had the decorators in. It’s completely different now.”

  “I don’t mind,” Harvey said. “It’s home, and that’s all I care about.”

  In the early afternoon, as he slept in his old room, it rained: a hard March rain that beat against the window and slapped on the sill. The sound woke him. He sat up in bed with the hairs at his nape pricking and knew that he’d been dreaming of Lulu. Poor, lost Lulu, dragging her misshapen body through the bushes, her flipper hand clutching the ark animals she’d dredged up from the mud.

  The thought of her unhappiness was unbearable. How could he ever hope to live in the world to which he’d returned, knowing that she remained Hood’s prisoner?

  “I’ll find you,” he murmured to himself. “I will, I swear…”

  Then he lay back on the cold pillow, and listened to the sound of rain until sleep crept over him.

  Exhausted by his travels and traumas, he didn’t wake again until the following morning. The rain had cleared. It was time to lay plans.

  “I bought a map of the whole of Millsap,” his father said, unfolding his purchase and spreading it over the kitchen table. “There’s our house.” He had already marked the place with a cross. “Now, do you remember any of the street names around Hood’s place?”

  Harvey shook his head. “I was too busy escaping,” he said.

  “Were there any particular buildings you saw?”

  “It was dark, and
rainy.”

  “So we just have to trust to luck.”

  “We’ll find it,” Harvey said. “Even if it takes all week.”

  It was easier said than done. More than three decades had passed since he’d first made his way through the town with Rictus, and countless things had changed. There were new plazas and new slums; new cars on the streets and new aircraft overhead. So many distractions, all keeping Harvey from the trail.

  “I don’t know which way is which,” he admitted, after they’d been searching for half a day. “Nothing’s the way I remember it.”

  “We’ll keep going,” his father said. “It’ll all come clear.”

  It didn’t. They spent the rest of the day wandering around, hoping that some Night would trigger a memory, but it was frustrating business. Every now and then, in some square or street, Harvey would say: “Maybe this is it,” and they’d head off in one direction or another, only to find that the trail grew cold a few blocks on.

  That evening, his father quizzed him again.

  “If you could only remember what the House looked like,” he said, “I could describe it to people.”

  “It was big, I remember that. And old. I’m sure it was very old.”

  “Could you draw it?”

  “I could try.”

  He did just that, and though he wasn’t much of an artist his hand seemed to remember more than his brain had, because after a half hour he had drawn the House in considerable detail. His father was pleased.

  “We’ll take this with us tomorrow,” he said. “Maybe somebody will recognize it.”

  But the second day was just as frustrating as the first. Nobody knew the House that Harvey had drawn, nor anything remotely, like it. By the end of the afternoon, Harvey’s father was getting short-tempered.

  “It’s useless!” he said. “I must have asked five hundred people and not one of them—not one—even vaguely recognized the place.”

  “It’s not surprising,” said Harvey. “I don’t think anyone who saw the House—besides me and Wendell—ever escaped before.”

  “We should just repeat all this to the police,” his mother said, “and let them deal with it.”