Guy Adams - The House That Jack Built - The House That Jack Built

Jack pulled himself back onto the landing and moved into the other room.

'Jesus!' Ianto shouted as he came face to face with Rob in the doorway. Gwen jumped up from her seat, the sound of panic in Ianto's voice more than enough to get her moving. Ianto got his arm up in time to stop Rob doing any damage, darting back and shoving the door closed while Rob was unbalanced.

'Tell Julia I've found her husband,' said Ianto, pressing hard against the door to keep it closed as Rob pounded on it from the other side.

'Stop spoiling the joke! Stop spoiling the joke!' Rob screamed.

Gwen was looking around for something to use as a weapon, even as they heard the lock click and Rob's whispered threat.

'Oh no…' she said, flicking the monitor switch and watching as Rob walked away from the door and towards the lounge where his wife lay sleeping. 'We need to get that door open before he harms her!'

'Right!' shouted Alexander, surrounded by a mess of cannibalised electronics. 'Now we might be getting somewhere.'

Hannah was silent, staring at the abandoned shell of the microwave, the television and her mobile phone. In contrast with Joe's euphoria, the drug seemed to have made her maudlin, and Alexander was quite perplexed by it. Human beings did have such remarkably chaotic biology.

'Now then,' he said, looking forlornly at her, 'do try and look interested. I hate not having an audience when I do something clever. What we have here,' he held up the ugly combination of his PDA and the household items he'd scavenged, 'is not unlike the gadget that young Ianto had for tracking chronon signatures…' He stopped himself, realising the pointlessness of what he was doing. 'You have no idea who I'm talking about. Doesn't matter. With any luck, it will help me find a point of access to that very strange house next door.'

Hannah sighed and kicked a piece of the microwave across the floor. 'Whatever,' she said.

'I think, on reflection, I prefer the dancing buffoon outside,' Alexander said, dumping the apparatus in his lap and heading back towards the front door.

Jack was in the middle of the street. To his left was the half-built shell of a house, to his right there was little but rubble and open earth. Looking directly ahead, he saw the open foundations that would soon become Jackson Leaves, moonlight falling on cement sacks and timber, piles of brick and grit.

'You'll grow up to be trouble,' Jack said, stepping backwards and reappearing by the window in the upstairs room.

There was the sound of frantic hammering from downstairs, and he dashed towards the door, jerking to a halt as the air around him suddenly changed, thickening, coalescing into liquid. His legs came out from under him and he fell backwards. Looking up, floating in the murky water that had overlaid itself on the structure of the room, he found himself staring into Alison's terrified eyes, her hair flailing around her screaming face as hands pressed down from above. Jack reached for her, desperate to help, and his hands brushed on another's fingertips, but something had him by the ankles and he began to sink.

Looking down, he could make out the shape of the river weeds swaying in what little moonlight made it this far beneath the surface of the water. If he could just untangle his feet… He looked up as he tugged at the weeds, watching Alison's panicked movements begin to slow, arms cutting through the water more and more dreamily before the scream on her face sagged into an open-mouthed expression of absence. It seemed to him that he saw the life fade from her eyes. They went from shining green glass to dull as earth. Miles's hands let go and vanished into the air, even as what was left of Alison headed towards Jack, seemingly for an embrace. As she sank, so did he, dropping onto the threadbare carpet of the third-floor room, his clothes as heavy from the river water as his heart was with guilt.

Neither Gwen nor Ianto saw Jack as he disappeared then reappeared in the room above. They were far too occupied in trying to force the lock on the dining room door, fighting not to be distracted by the sight of Rob entering the lounge on the monitor screen beside them.

Rob stood by the arm of the sofa, cradling the mallet in his arms as one would an infant. He looked down at his wife, stroked her forehead with the back of his hand and smiled as she began to come round. Her eyes were glazed with the drug in her system, and when she looked up at him it was first with confusion then with a rather sleepy smile.

'There you are,' she said dreamily.

'You can see me?' he asked.

'Yes,' she said, though her eyelids were drooping.

'I wish I could,' he said, his eyes dampening. 'I was beginning to think I was completely lost.'

Julia was falling asleep.

'Please don't,' Rob said, touching her face again.

'Hello?' she said. 'Tired…'

'Yes,' Rob nodded. 'They poisoned you.' He rubbed away the beginnings of tears. 'We're both poisoned.'

'He talked about drugging us,' Julia murmured. 'Remember? Threatened it… to make us do what he wanted.'

'All poison makes you do what it wants,' Rob replied. 'This house is the same.'

'Need sleep.'

'I know you do… I hope the drug does make you do whatever someone says. If it does… well, that makes this easier.'

'What do you mean?' asked Julia.

'I love you, Julia, OK? Forgive me for what I'm about to do.'

Julia smiled. 'I do.'

Rob sobbed and raised the mallet above his head before bringing it down with all his strength.

As Jack sat up, a stone broke through the glass of the window, bouncing off the wall and rolling into the corner of the room. He didn't notice, getting to his feet in a daze and stepping onto the landing. There were three doors now, rather than two. He stared at the new door, fixed in what could only be an external wall.

Another stone burst through the window next door.

Jack reached out to the brass knob of the impossible door, opened it and stepped out of Jackson Leaves altogether.

As Jack stepped through the door, a bell rang above his head, its chime mixed with the sharp hiss of a milk steamer, but it wasn't quite loud enough to drown out the sound of Gene Vincent on the radio. He closed the door behind him, and looked out through the dirty glass that had replaced the wood. Outside was the slow, weekday drudgery of work traffic, lorries and vans, moving things from one place to another.

'Morning, my lovely,' said the woman behind the counter. 'What will it be?'

Jack walked carefully between the tables. A group of spotty-looking mods eyed him from the corner. One of them, working hard at looking more than his meagre years, peered from behind the turned-up collar of his Fred Perry shirt and started tapping his fingers on the formica in an attempt to intimidate. It did nothing of the sort; as a man who had once helped Keith Moon get a Cadillac into a hotel swimming pool, Jack would need a little more sign of the young man's credentials before he felt even vaguely daunted.

The woman behind the counter wore her dark roots with the same confidence as the stains on her waitressing uniform. Stitched into her faded Gingham breast was the word 'Durdles', though whether that was her name or the café's he couldn't guess. She looked at him through glasses whose bright red rims brought no cheer to her tired eyes.

'Well?' she asked again, patience as thin as her happy veneer.

'Coffee,' Jack said. 'Sweet and milky.'

'I'm not your mother. Sugar's on the counter.'

So it was, though the spoon was chained down in case he had the hots for their cutlery.

She wrestled with the machine as if it was going out of its way not to produce. It roared and hissed like feral cats in a slowed-down piece of film, vapour ejecting from the pipes with the industrial vigour of a power station. She vanquished it eventually, wringing a mug of frothy coffee from out of its guts.