The Map of Chaos

  “My God . . . ,” whispered Murray. Then he turned to the butler and commanded: “Elmer, go back to the house and calm the servants.”

  “Calm them? Why, of course. At once, sir,” Elmer retorted, and he went off to carry out his master’s simple command.

  After he had gone, Murray and Doyle took a closer look at the miraculous reflections, but they soon realized that the phenomenon wasn’t confined only to the mirrors. Outside the circle, a few yards away, translucent trees had started sprouting from the lawn. They emitted a faint glow, as if the light were passing through them.

  “What the devil is going on, Arthur?” exclaimed Murray. “I ordered those trees to be cut down when I bought the house.”

  “Then in some other world you decided to leave them there,” Doyle mused, gazing in astonishment at the horizon, where two red moons were now hovering. “Good God . . . the infinite worlds in the universe seem to be closing in on one another, or even overlapping . . . Is this the end of the world that the old lady predicted?”

  “What old lady?” Murray asked.

  “What do you mean, ‘What old lady?’?” Doyle snapped. “The old lady who gave the book to Inspector Clayton, of course. Damn it, Gilliam, didn’t you hear a word I said? When Wells and I went to see Clayton, he told us that . . .”

  But Murray was no longer listening. One of the mirrors had caught his attention. The glass had misted up suddenly, turning into a bright, silvery haze that instantly evaporated to reveal the bedroom of a house, where a woman was frantically packing a suitcase while a man stared in horror out of the window. Murray moved closer to the mirror until his face was almost touching the glass.

  “I know those people,” he murmured, somewhat startled. “It is Mr. and Mrs. Harlow, Emma’s parents.”

  Doyle glanced over his shoulder at the image. Judging from the horrified expression of the man looking out of the window, the end of the world, or whatever the hell it was, was happening there, too. Their voices were distorted yet audible.

  “What is going on, dear?” the woman was saying as she grabbed more clothes out of the wardrobe.

  The man did not answer immediately, as if he was having difficulty interpreting what he was seeing.

  “I think . . . they are attacking New York,” he said at last, in a somber voice.

  “My God. But who?”

  “I don’t know, Catherine.” The man paused. “The buildings are . . . going hazy. And our garden . . . oh, God, it’s like someone is drawing another garden on top of it.”

  The woman looked at him, trying to understand what he was saying, and then she shouted, “Emma, if you’re done packing, come and give me a hand!”

  Doyle felt Murray shudder. At that moment, Emma entered the room.

  “Oh, my God . . . ,” Murray whispered.

  The girl began to help her mother squeeze all the clothes she was rescuing from the wardrobe into the suitcase, from time to time casting worried glances at her father, who remained transfixed by the scenes outside. She was dressed in black, her face still stricken with grief.

  “Do you think we need take all this with us, Mother? And where are we supposed to be going, anyway?” they heard her protest.

  “We’ll follow the Brittons down to the sewers,” her father replied without looking at her. “We’ll be safe down there.”

  Then Murray breathed in, cleared his throat, and called her name:

  “Emma!”

  And his voice must have reached her, for she instantly raised her head and turned very slowly toward the mirror in the room and opened her mouth in astonishment. Her parents also looked at the mirror, bemused. For a few seconds, none of them spoke or did anything. Then, very slowly, the girl began to approach the mirror. Murray watched her walk toward him with faltering steps, her face reflecting a tumult of emotions. When at last she reached the mirror, the two of them stared into each other’s eyes.

  “Monty . . . ,” she whispered in a muffled voice. “I knew you’d come back, I just knew it . . .”

  “Yes,” said Murray, unsure whether to laugh or cry. “I always do, you know that, although sometimes I arrive late.”

  “And now I can hear you!” said Emma with childlike glee.

  “Then hear this: I love you and I will never stop loving you.”

  She beamed with joy, choking back her tears as she placed her hands on the surface of the glass. Murray did the same, and the two lovers realized despairingly that they couldn’t touch each other this time either. They were close enough to embrace, and yet once more they were locked inside their separate prisons.

  “I am so sorry about what happened,” she said in voice choked with tears. “If only I hadn’t insisted on driving, like a spoilt child . . . you would still be alive.”

  Murray shook his head, unable to utter a word. Is that what Emma believed? That he was the spirit of a dead man with a penchant for appearing to her in mirrors? For an instant, he was tempted to tell her the truth, to explain that he was alive, even though he was a different Gilliam who had watched a different Emma die. But he thrust the idea aside. It would probably confuse her, and besides, there wasn’t time for lengthy explanations. If I hadn’t let you drive, he said to himself, smiling at her tenderly, it would have been you who died.

  “Where are you?” he heard Emma ask.

  Murray breathed a sigh.

  “Worlds away,” he replied. “But I promise I will come for you. I will find a way to get to your world.”

  “The whole world is nothing more than the precise length of each moment that separates us,” she whispered.

  At that moment, Emma’s father approached the mirror.

  “What’s going on, Montgomery? Can you help us?”

  But before Murray could speak, the image began to fade. The figures of Emma and her father slowly dissolved, and a different image began to invade the mirror. It looked as though someone had set fire to the throne room of a castle. Murray and Doyle watched two empty thrones on a dais go up in flames as Emma became more and more nebulous.

  “Emma!”

  “Come for me!” she cried before her figure disappeared completely.

  “I will, Emma! I promise!” cried Murray. “The word ‘impossible’ doesn’t exist in my vocabulary!”

  But his voice was scarcely audible above the raging fire in the castle. Murray cursed, clenching his fists, ready to strike the mirror that was mocking him now, showing him some stupid castle in flames. But Doyle placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “We must go, Gilliam.”

  “Go? Where?” replied Murray, bewildered.

  “Listen to me.” Doyle stood squarely in front of him and looked him in the eye. “If you want to see Emma again, you must trust me. We have to save the world! And I know where to find the key that will help us do so . . .”

  “The key? But what the devil are you—”

  Without letting him finish, Doyle grabbed hold of Murray’s arm and, dragging him from the mirror circle, ordered him to run to the house, breaking into a sprint himself. Murray snorted and followed after him. As they crossed the lawn, one by one the hundreds of mirrors Murray had installed there began to shatter as though bombarded by invisible projectiles, smashing to smithereens and filling the air with broken glass. Doyle and Murray shielded their heads with their arms just as a shower of splinters fell on them. When the din stopped, Doyle looked around for a way out that was free from mirrors, but Murray had covered every corner. They would have to chance it. He dragged Murray down a path bordered by hedges while the mirrors on either side continued to shatter at random.

  “Damn and blast . . . ,” Murray cursed, stumbling behind Doyle.

  Doyle tried to spur him on. “Come on, Gilliam, stop complaining. What are a few bits of broken glass compared to a burning house?”

  They managed to escape relatively unharmed from the death trap the gardens had suddenly become. Despite having used their arms for protection, their faces were covered in tiny cuts. Reaching th
e side of the house, now lined with broken mirrors, they saw the servants fleeing down the driveway and scattering into the gardens on either side, alarmed by the exploding mirrors and the bizarre images they had seen in them. Just then Elmer, who was clearly overwhelmed by events, emerged from the house and spoke to Doyle.

  “Mr. Doyle, sir, thank goodness I have found you! Your secretary called. Apparently the telephone was ringing for some time, but with all this racket going on no one took much notice of it. I offer you my sincerest apologies, sir, and furthermore . . .”

  “Cut out the excuses and get to the point, Elmer!” interrupted Doyle. “What did he want? Are all the mirrors at Undershaw shattering, too?”

  “Er, yes, sir . . . But he wanted you to know that, despite being anxious, your wife, children, and servants are safe and sound.”

  “Thank God . . . ,” Doyle sighed.

  “There is one other thing, sir,” said Elmer. “It seems the kettle in your study started whistling shortly after you left and hasn’t stopped since. Your secretary can’t seem to make it stop and has asked for permission to silence it with a hammer, sir.”

  “Curses!” Doyle exclaimed, visibly upset. “My kettle . . . Why does everything have to happen on the same day? Who the devil wrote this infernal script!”

  Far from taking that remark personally, dear reader, I shall continue telling my story. Murray looked at him in astonishment:

  “What the devil does a blasted kettle matter with all this going on!” he protested.

  Ignoring Murray, Doyle commanded: “Elmer, call Miss Leckie. Tell her not to leave the house and not to worry; I will get to the bottom of this!” Then he seized Murray’s arm once more and dragged him toward the drive. “Come on, my carriage is waiting outside! We might still be in time . . .”

  • • •

  MURRAY AND DOYLE PUFFED and panted as they ran down the driveway, proving that neither was any longer in the flush of youth. Here, too, the mirrors had shattered, strewing the fallen leaves with shards of glass. Naturally, the servants had all abandoned their posts, leaving a row of empty chairs, many of them upturned. But then, as they got halfway down the path, they saw an army of horsemen appear in the distance. The two men stopped dead in their tracks, transfixed for a few seconds as a troop of cavalry bristling with pennants galloped toward them. As the riders drew closer, they could make out the horses, their flanks protected with engraved barding, their heads in sinister helmets that gave them a grotesque appearance. The riders were strange humanoid creatures with long, angular faces, pointed ears, and white hair, also sheathed in shining armor with spiked shoulder plates. Most were brandishing swords and lances, and three or four of them carried pennants bearing strange symbols. When he finally managed to rouse himself from this mesmerizing sight, Doyle turned and fled back toward the house.

  “Run, for your life, Gilliam, or you’ll be trampled!”

  Doyle’s booming voice stirred Murray, and he sprinted after Doyle. He gritted his teeth as the horsemen’s fierce battle cries, the clank of armor, the horses’ snorts, and the din of hooves on the trodden earth drew closer. He instantly realized there was no escape: run as hard as they might, the house was too far away. In a few seconds they would be crushed. They would die a ridiculous death, trampled by a ferocious army that wouldn’t even notice as they galloped over them. He prepared to be knocked down by the first horse and then trampled pitilessly by the rest.

  “Forgive me, Emma,” he whispered as he felt the horses’ breath on the back of his neck.

  However, the expected collision did not happen. Astonished, he looked on as the first rider passed straight through him as if he were made of smoke. First the horse’s forelegs emerged from his stomach, turning him fleetingly into a centaur, then its body carrying the rider, and finally its hindquarters. He felt no pain, only a slight shiver. A second afterward, the same thing occurred with the next rider, and the next. Yet he kept running and, glancing sideways, saw that Doyle did, too. Only when the army had finished going through them did the two men come to a halt, both astonished that they hadn’t fallen under the hooves. Murray’s lips broke into an uneasy smile. To his astonishment, he was still alive. At his side, Doyle was looking at him, his face glowing with a similar expression of bemused relief.

  “I can’t believe they went straight through us!” Murray exclaimed. “They are like mirages!”

  Doyle nodded, still panting for breath, and they both watched the alien army ride into the distance, leaving a cloud of translucent dust in its wake.

  “But who were they?” asked Murray.

  “An army from another world, it would appear. A world that at this very moment seems to be superimposing itself on ours,” Doyle reflected. “But I fear this is only the beginning.”

  “The beginning?”

  Doyle nodded solemnly. “At Brook Manor we glimpsed another world through the mirror. It was close, but not close enough, since our voices couldn’t even reach it.”

  “But today I was able to speak to Emma . . .”

  “That means the parallel worlds are now brushing against one another. And if that continues, we can assume that those seemingly harmless transparencies . . . will end up becoming flesh and blood.”

  “Good God . . . ,” Murray whispered, terrified.

  “There’s no time to lose, Gilliam,” said Doyle, striding back toward the main gate. “We must get to the city center as quickly as possible. I fear the whole universe—everything we know and everything we imagine—is about to explode. And only Inspector Clayton can prevent it.”

  “Clayton?” Murray raised his eyebrows. “Why him?”

  “That is what I have been trying to tell you since I got here. The Map of Chaos contains the key to saving the world, and Clayton has it . . .” Then Doyle remembered the accursed kettle whistling in his study. “Or at least I hope he does.”

  36

  AT THAT VERY MOMENT, DOCTOR Ramsey, Mrs. Lansbury, and Executioner 2087V were emerging onto the street, which was filled with a throng of people seized with panic and running frantically from something. They did not need to look far to see what the crowd was fleeing from. In the distance, St. Paul’s Cathedral looked as if it had been buried under layers of gauze veils. Ramsey supposed that this meant that other cathedrals from other parallel Londons were superimposing themselves on it. Everything that had occupied that space over the centuries was occupying it once more at that very instant, creating the illusion that the cathedral was encased in a gleaming chrysalis and had become a building with manifold hazy contours. Among the myriad layers, the doctor thought he caught a glimpse of the medieval cathedral that had been consumed by flames in 1666 and even the tiny wooden church built in 604, which was reputed to have been the first in England. The effect seemed to be spreading to the adjacent buildings, which were slowly vanishing beneath a similar misty veil. Amid the panic-stricken crowd, Ramsey also made out a handful of translucent people and carriages, escaped from another world, who were now colliding with their doubles in this frenzied escape. Ramsey sighed. There was no time to lose.

  “We must head for Great George Street immediately,” he announced, looking at the Executioner, “to the headquarters of Scotland Yard.”

  “Well, I fear we shall have to use more conventional means of transport, Doctor. If we try to go there via another world, I doubt my cane will find the right coordinates to return us to this one, amid all these colliding universes.”

  “I see,” sighed Ramsey, “although finding a carriage for hire in London will be even more difficult, especially in these circumstances.”

  They decided to head for the river Thames, trusting they would come across some means of transport that would spare them having to make the long journey on foot. Ramsey had offered his arm to the old lady, and the two of them were walking close together while the Executioner led the way. Amid all that chaos, no one gave them a second glance. Presently, in the next street, which was oddly deserted, they spotted a coachman sit
ting atop his carriage, transfixed by a diaphanous figure limping toward him.

  “Hey, driver!” Ramsey cried when he saw the man.

  His voice made the driver tear his eyes away from the apparition, and he gazed at them blankly.

  “Could you take us to Great George Street?”

  The man nodded silently, without giving it a moment’s thought, as if he sensed that the only way to keep his sanity amid the surrounding chaos was to stick to his routine. The Executioner lowered his energy potential so as not to alarm the horses and climbed into the carriage with the old lady. However, Ramsey paused for a few seconds to observe more closely the blurred figure about to walk past them. The creature seemed to be made up of bits of dead body sewn together, and when it came alongside him, the doctor thought he glimpsed a flash of lightning in the terrifying darkness of its eyes. When he reached his hand toward its face, which was crisscrossed with seams, he saw it pass straight through the creature’s head and come out at the back of its neck. He stepped aside so that the figure would not walk through him and watched it continue on its way with a swinging gait.

  “Fascinating . . . ,” he whispered, examining the hand that had passed through the monster’s brain.

  He climbed aboard the carriage and told the coachman to drive on. The whip gave a resounding crack, and they soon found themselves bowling along by the river on the Victoria Embankment. Through the carriage windows, they saw rows of buildings covered in that translucent shell and streams of shimmering ghosts darting this way and that. On the Thames, at Cleopatra’s Needle, Ramsey contemplated what looked like a scene from the Battle of Lepanto, in which one of the Holy League’s frigates was under attack by a Turkish galleon. A group of onlookers gazed, transfixed, at an event they only knew from the Encyclopædia Britannica.

  When at last the carriage reached Great George Street, Ramsey felt as if they had journeyed through the mind of a madman. They climbed down and made their way to Scotland Yard, where similar scenes of chaos awaited them. Policemen were wandering around aimlessly, shouting contradictory orders at one another. Nobody paid any attention to the strange trio, and, after briefly assessing the situation, Ramsey was about to order the Executioner to accost one of the passing bobbies, when all of a sudden, a skinny, pasty-faced detective, striding purposefully toward them, bumped straight into the Executioner, who appeared not to notice the impact. The young man looked up at him uneasily, rubbing his sore chin.