Grim Tuesday

  But he had to do something!

  Arthur shut the Atlas and hurriedly stuffed the shrunken book back in his pocket. Then he took off down the stairs at top speed.

  They were not going to demolish his home and build a shopping mall!

  Two

  AS ARTHUR RAN down the stairs, he heard the music stop from the studio and then the front door slam. Bob must have seen the Grotesques as well. Arthur tried to shout a warning but didn’t have enough breath for more than a wheezy whisper.

  ‘No, Dad! Don’t go outside!’

  Arthur jumped the last five steps and almost fell. Recovering his balance, he raced across and flung the door open, just in time to see his father striding across the front lawn towards the two Grotesques. He looked angrier than Arthur had ever seen him.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ shouted Bob.

  ‘Dad! Get back!’ cried Arthur, but his father didn’t hear him or was too angry to listen.

  Tethera and Methera turned to face Bob. Their mouths opened wide, far too wide for mere speech.

  ‘Hah!’ breathed the Grotesques. Two dense streams of grey fog stormed out of their open mouths, forming a thick cloud that completely enveloped Bob. When it cleared a few seconds later, Arthur’s dad was still standing, but he wasn’t shouting anymore. He scratched his head, then turned and wandered back past Arthur, his eyes dull and glazed.

  ‘What did you do to him?’ shouted Arthur. He wished he still had the First Key, in its sword form. He would stab both the Grotesques through without thinking about it. But he didn’t, and innate caution made him stay near the front door, in case they breathed out the fog again.

  Tethera and Methera gave him the slightest of bows, not much more than a one-inch inclination.

  ‘Greetings, Arthur, LordMonday,Master of the Lower House,’ said Tethera. His voice was surprisingly melodious and smooth. ‘You need not fear for your father. That was merely the Grey Breath, the fog of forgetting, and will soon pass. We do not use the Dark Breath, the death-fog . . . unless we must.’

  ‘Unless we must,’ repeated Methera softly.

  They both smiled as they spoke, but Arthur recognised the threat.

  ‘Go back to the House,’ he said, trying to invest as much authority in his voice as he could. It was a bit difficult because he still couldn’t draw a full breath and wheezed on the last word. ‘The Original Law forbids you to be here. Go back!’

  Some of the power of the First Key lingered in his voice. The two Grotesques stepped back and the calm on their faces was replaced with snarls as they fought against his words.

  ‘Go back!’ repeated Arthur, raising his hands.

  The Grotesques retreated again, then rallied and stopped. Clearly Arthur did not have the authority or the remnant power to force them to go, though he had unsettled them. Both wiped their suddenly sweating foreheads with dirty white handkerchiefs plucked out of the air.

  ‘We obey Grim Tuesday,’ said Tethera. ‘Only the Grim. He has sent us here to claim what is his. But it need not go badly for you and yours, Arthur. Just sign this paper, and we will be gone.’

  ‘Sign and we’ll be gone,’ repeated Methera in his hoarse whisper.

  Tethera reached into his jacket and pulled out a long, thin, gleaming white envelope. It drifted across to Arthur, as if carried by an invisible servant. The boy took it carefully. At the same time, Methera held out a quill pen and an ink bottle, and the Grotesques stepped forward.

  Arthur stepped back, holding the envelope.

  ‘I need to read this first.’

  The Grotesques stepped forward again.

  ‘You don’t need to bother,’ wheedled Tethera. ‘It’s very straightforward. A simple deed handing over the Lower House and the First Key. If you sign it, Grim Tuesday will not pursue the debt against your folk. You will be able to live here, in this Secondary Realm, as happily as you did before.’

  ‘As happily as you did before,’ echoed Methera, with a knowing smirk.

  ‘I still need to read it,’ said Arthur. He stood his ground, though the Grotesques sidled up still closer. They had a very distinct smell, a lot like fresh rain on a hot, tarred road. Not exactly unpleasant, but sharp and a little metallic.

  ‘Best to sign,’ said Tethera, his voice suddenly full of menace, though he continued to smile.

  ‘Sign,’ hissed Methera.

  ‘No!’ shouted Arthur. He pushed Tethera with his right hand, the one that had most often held the First Key. As his palm touched the Grotesque’s chest it was outlined with electric blue light. Tethera stumbled back, grabbing atMethera to keep his balance. Both Grotesques staggered away, almost to the road. There they straightened up and tried to assume poses of dignity. Tethera reached into the front pocket of his apron and drew out a large, egg-shaped watch that chimed as he opened the lid and inspected the face.

  ‘You may have till noon before we commence our full repossession,’ Tethera shouted. ‘But we shall not cease our preparations, and delay will not be to your advantage!’

  They got into their car, slammed the doors, and drove off, without any engine noise whatsoever. Arthur watched as the car proceeded about twenty yards up the street, then suddenly vanished in a prismatic effect like the sudden, brief rainbow after a sun-shower.

  Arthur glanced down at the gleaming white envelope. Despite its crisp look, it felt slightly slimy to his touch. How could he sign away the First Key and the Mastery of the Lower House? They had been so hard to win in the first place. But he also couldn’t let his family suffer . . .

  His family. Arthur raced back in to check on Bob. There was no reason for Tethera to lie, but the Grotesques’ breath had looked extremely poisonous.

  Bob was back in his studio. Arthur could hear him talking to someone, which was a good sign. The padded soundproof door was partly open, so Arthur poked his head around. Bob was sitting at one of his pianos, holding the phone with one hand and agitatedly tapping a single bass note with the other. He looked fine, but as Arthur listened, he quickly realised that while the Grey Breath had worn off, the Grotesques had, as they’d threatened, continued their ‘preparations’.

  ‘How can the band suddenly owe the record company twelve million dollars after twenty years?’ Bob was asking the person on the phone. ‘They’ve always robbed us to start with.We’ve sold more than thirty million records, for heaven’s sake! It’s just not possible –’

  Arthur ducked back out. The Grotesques had given him an hour and a half before full repossession - whatever that was. But even these beginning attacks were very bad news for the family. They’d be living on the street, forced to get handouts . . .

  He had to stop them. If only he had more time to think . . .

  More time to think.

  That was the answer, Arthur thought. He could get more time by going into the House. He could spend a week there perhaps, and still come back to his own world only minutes after he’d left. He could ask the Will and Noon (who used to be Dusk) what to do. And Suzy . . .

  His thoughts were interrupted as Michaeli came charging down the stairs, holding the printout of an email, her face stuck in a frown that had to come from more than lack of sleep.

  ‘Problem?’ Arthur asked hesitantly.

  ‘They’ve cancelled my course,’ said Michaeli in a bewildered voice. ‘I just got an email saying the whole faculty is being closed down and our building is being sold to pay the university’s debts! An email! I thought it must be a hoax, but I called my professor and the front office and they both said it’s true! They could have written me a letter! Dad!’

  She ran into the studio. Arthur looked down at the envelope in his hand, hesitated for a moment, then slit it open along the seam. There was no separate letter inside – the writing was on the inside of the envelope. Arthur folded it out and quickly scanned the flowing copperplate, which was done in a hideous bile-green ink.

  As he’d half-expected, the contract was all one way and not in his favour. In a long-wind
ed way, like all documents from the House, it said that he, Arthur, would relinquish the First Key and the Mastery of the Lower House to Grim Tuesday in recognition of the debts owed to Grim Tuesday for the provision of the goods listed in Annex A. There was nothing about leaving Arthur’s family alone after that, or anything else.

  There didn’t seem to be an Annex A either, but when Arthur finished reading what was on the opened-out envelope, it shimmered and a new page formed. Headed AnnexA, it listed everything that the formerMisterMonday or his minions had bought and not paid for, including:

  Nine Gross (1,296) Standard PatternMetal Commissionaires 1 Doz. Bespoke Metal Sentinels, part-payment rec’d, 1/8 still owing plus interest Six Great Gross (10,368) One-Quart Silver Teapots 2 Plentitudes (497,664) Second-Best Steel Nibs 6 Gross (864) Elevator Door Rollers Two Great Gross (3,456) Elevator Leaning Bars, Bronze 1 Lac (100,000) Elevator Propellant, Confined Safety Bottle 129 Miles Notional Wire, Telephone Metaconnection 1 Statue, Mister Monday, Gilt Bronze, Exquisite 77 Statues, Mister Monday, Bronze, Ordinary 10 Quintal (1000-weight), Bronze Metal Fish, Fireproof, semi-animate 1 Long Doz. (13) Umbrella Stands, Petrified Apatosaurus Foot

  The list kept going on and on, the page re-forming every time Arthur reached the end. Finally he looked away, refolded the envelope and shoved it in the back pocket of his jeans.

  Reading the letter hadn’t changed anything, except that his determination not to sign it was even stronger. He had to get to the House as fast as possible.

  He was about to leave immediately when he remembered the telephone in the red velvet box. It was possible the Will might be able to scrounge up enough money to call him again, so he’d better get that.

  Arthur walked up the stairs this time. He didn’t think he’d have a full-on asthma attack – he would have already had it if he was going to – but he’d got a persistent wheeze instead and couldn’t quite get enough breath.

  The red velvet box was where he’d left it, but when Arthur went to put the lid back on, he saw that it was empty. The phone had disappeared. Lying on the bottomof the box was a very small piece of thick cardboard. Arthur picked it up. As he touched it, words appeared, scribed in the same sort of invisible hand that wrote in the Atlas.

  This telephone has been disconnected. Please call Upper House 23489-8729-13783 for reconnection.

  ‘How?’ asked Arthur. He didn’t expect an answer, but the message wrote itself out again on the card. Arthur threw it back in the box and went down the stairs again.

  On the way back down, the question came up again in his head. Just one simple word that covered a lot of problems.

  How?

  How am I going to get into the House? It doesn’t exist in my world anymore.

  Arthur groaned and pulled at his hair, just asMichaeli came rushing back up the stairs.

  ‘You think you’ve got problems?!’ she snapped as she went past. ‘It looks like Dad is going to have to go back on tour, like, forever and I’m going to have to get a job. All you have to do is go to school!’

  Arthur didn’t get a chance to reply before she was gone.

  ‘Yeah, that’s all I have to worry about!’ he shouted after her. He slowly continued down the stairs, thinking hard. The House had physically manifested itself before, taking over several city blocks. That manifestation had disappeared when Arthur came back after defeatingMister Monday. But maybe the House had returned with the Grotesques?

  There was only one way to find out. After a quick look to check that no one – particularly a Grotesque or two – was watching, Arthur went out the back door and got on his bike.

  Provided he wasn’t held up at a quarantine checkpoint, it would only take ten minutes to ride over to where the House had been. If it had reappeared, he would try to get in, throughMonday’s Postern or maybe even the Front Door, if he could find it.

  If it wasn’t there, he would have to think of something else. Each minute gave the Grotesques more time to do something financially horrible to his family, or his neighbours, or . . .

  Arthur pushed off hard and accelerated out the drive, pedalling furiously for a minute, until his wheezing warned him to ease off.

  Behind him, the SOLD sign on his front lawn shivered and dug itself a little further in.

  THREE

  THE HOUSE WAS GONE . At least, its manifestation in Arthur’s world had not returned. Instead of a vast edifice of mixed-up architecture, there were only the usual suburban houses, with their lawns and garages and basketball hoops over their garage doors.

  Arthur rode his bike around several blocks, hoping some trace of the House remained. If there was just one of its strange outbuildings or even a stretch of the white marble wall that surrounded the House, he felt he could somehow get inside. But there was nothing, no sign at all that the House had ever been there.

  He felt strange riding around, looking for something that wasn’t there, a feeling made stronger because the streets were deserted. Though the quarantine had been slightly relaxed inside the city, most people were sensibly staying at home with their doors and windows shut. Arthur was passed by only one car on the road, and that was an ambulance. Arthur looked the other way, in case it was the same ambulance he’d escaped from the day before. He was thankful it didn’t slow down or stop.

  As he finished his circumnavigation of the last block, Arthur began to feel panicky. Time was slipping away. It was already 11:15. He only had forty-five minutes to find some way to enter the House, but he had no idea how he was going to do that.

  The sight of several moss-covered garden steps reminded him of the Improbable Stair. That bizarre stairway went from everywhere and everywhen, through the House and the Secondary Realms. But the Stair was dangerous and there was a good chance of ending up somewhere he really didn’t want to be. It wasn’t worth trying the Stair unless he must. Even then, he probably wouldn’t be able to enter it without the Key.

  There had to be another way. Perhaps if he could track down the Grotesques’ headquarters, he could find their doorway back to the House –

  Something moved at the corner of his eye. Arthur twisted his head around, immediately alert. There was something in the movement he didn’t like. Something that gave him a slight electric tingle across the back of his neck and up behind his ears.

  There it was again – something flitting across the garden of the house opposite. Moving from the letterbox to the tree, from the tree to the car in the driveway.

  Arthur put one foot on the pedal, ready to move off, and watched. Nothing happened for a minute. Everything was quiet, save for the constant drone of the distant helicopters patrolling the perimeter of the city.

  It moved again, and this time Arthur saw it dash from behind the car to a fire hydrant. Something about the size and shape of a rabbit, but one made of pale pink jellylike flesh that changed and rippled as it moved.

  Arthur got off his bike, laid it down, and got out the Atlas, readying himself for its explosive opening. He didn’t like the look of this thing, which he guessed was some sort of Nithling. But at least it was timid, hiding and scuttling.

  Arthur could still see a single paw poking out from behind the hydrant. A paw that slowly melted and reformed through several shapes. Paw, claw, even a rudimentary hand. He concentrated his thoughts on that sight, gripping the green cloth binding of the Atlas tight.

  What is the thing that hides behind the hydrant?

  The Atlas burst open. Even though he was ready, Arthur took a step back and nearly fell over his bike.

  This time, the invisible writer wrote quickly and in instant English, ink splattering all over the page.

  SCOUCHER! RUN!

  Arthur looked up. The Scoucher was leaping towards him, no longer small and innocuous, but an eight-foot-tall, paper-thin human figure whose arms did not end in hands but split into hundreds of ribbon-thin tentacles that whipped out towards the boy. They sliced the air in front of Arthur’s face, though he was at least fifteen feet away.

  The
re was no time to get on his bike. Arthur twisted away from the tentacles and threw himself into a sprint, the Atlas still open under his arm. It closed itself and shrank as he ran, but he didn’t try to put it in his pocket. He couldn’t pause even for a second or those tentacles would latch on. They might sting, or paralyse, or hold him tight so the Scoucher could do whatever it did –

  These thoughts drove him to the end of the street. He hesitated for an instant, uncertain of which way to turn, till the Atlas twitched to his right and he instinctively followed its lead. It twitched again at the next corner and then again a minute later, directing him down a partly hidden laneway – all at high speed. A speed Arthur soon realised he couldn’t keep up. Whatever had happened to his lungs in the House had improved them, but he wasn’t cured. He was wheezing heavily and the tightness on his right side was spreading to the left. He’d run farther and faster than he’d ever done before, but he couldn’t sustain his speed.

  Arthur slowed a little as he exited the lane and looked over his shoulder. The Scoucher was nowhere to be seen. He slowed down a bit more then stopped, panting and wheezing heavily. He looked around. He’d thought he was headed towards home, but in his panic he’d gone in a different direction. Now he wasn’t sure where he was, and he couldn’t think of any possible refuge.

  Something flickered at the corner of his eye. Arthur spun around. The Scoucher was back in its small fluid shape, sneaking again. It was about thirty yards back, zipping from cover to cover, slinking forward whenever he couldn’t see it.

  Arthur wasn’t even sure it was a Nithling. Perhaps it was something else, something made by Grim Tuesday that the Grotesques had set upon him. He needed to know more, but he didn’t dare to stop and look at the Atlas while the thing was creeping up on him. He needed somewhere to hide, perhaps a house –