Garth Nix - Mister Monday

It looked totally out of place, dropped into the middle of what was otherwise a modern suburb.

There was a reason for that, Arthur knew.

That huge, crazy-looking house had not been there when he left for school last Monday.

“What is that?” he asked, pointing. “What?” asked Bob. He slowed down and peered through the windshield.

“That place! It’s huge and it… it wasn’t there before!”

“Where?” Bob scanned the houses he saw. “They all look pretty much the same to me. Sizewise, that is. That’s why we went a bit further out. I mean if you’re going to have a garden, you’ve got to have a real garden, right? Oh, you mean the one with the Jeep out front. I think they painted the garage door. That’s why it looks different.”

Arthur nodded dumbly. It was clear that his father couldn’t see the enormous, castle-like building that they were driving towards. Bob could only see the houses that used to be there.

Or maybe they are still there , Arthur thought, and I’m seeing into another dimension or something . He would have thought he was going insane, but he had the Atlas and the Key, and his conversation with Ed and Leaf to fall back on.

As they went past, Arthur noticed that the house (or House, as he felt it should be called) had a wall around it. A slick, marble-faced wall about ten feet high, that looked smooth and very difficult to climb. There was no visible gate, at least on the side they drove along.

Arthur’s own new home was only another mile or so, on the far side of the next hill. It was in a transition area between the suburbs and the country. The Penhaligons had a very big block, most of which was a fairly out-of-control garden. Bob said he loved gardening, but what he really loved was thinking and planning things to do with the garden, not actually doing them. He and Emily had bought the land and established the garden several years before, but had only decided to build a house and move quite recently.

Their house was brand-new, notionally finished a few months before. There were still plumbers and electricians coming back every few weeks to fine-tune various bits and pieces. It had been designed by a famous architect and was on four levels, cut into the hill. The bottom level was the biggest, with garage, workshop, Bob’s studio and Emily’s home office. The next level was all living spaces and kitchen. The next was bedrooms and bathrooms: Bob and Emily’s and two guest rooms. The top level was the smallest and had bedrooms for Michaeli, Eric and Arthur, and one bathroom that they either fought over or were locked out of and had to go downstairs.

No one was home when Arthur and his father returned. A screen on the refrigerator door in the kitchen had the latest posts and e-mails from the various members of the family. Emily was held up at the lab, Michaeli was simply “out” and would be back “later”, and Eric was playing in a basketball game.

“Do you want to go out for dinner? Just the two of us?” asked Bob. He was humming again, a sure sign of imminent song composition. It was a sacrifice for him to offer to go out when it was obvious he was itching to get at a keyboard or a guitar.

“No thanks, Dad,” said Arthur. He really wanted to be alone so he could check out the Key and the Atlas. “I’ll grab a snack later, if that’s OK. I might just check out my room. Make sure the others didn’t trash it while I was gone.”

They both knew that was just Arthur being kind and letting Bob go and work on his song. But that was also OK with both of them.

“I’ll be in the studio, then,” said Bob. “Buzz me if you need anything. You’ve got your inhaler?”

Arthur nodded.

“We might get a pizza later,” Bob called out as he headed down the stairs. “Don’t tell Mum.”

Arthur went up to his own room, taking the stairs slowly. He was breathing fine, but was weak after five days of lying around in the hospital. Even a few flights of stairs was hard work.

After locking the door in case his older siblings returned, Arthur put the Atlas and the Key on the bed. Then, without knowing why, he turned off the light.

Moonlight shone through the open window, but it was quite dark. It would have been darker, but both the Key and the Atlas glowed with a strange blue light that shimmered like water. Arthur picked them up, the Key in his left hand and the Atlas in his right.

Without any effort on his part, the Atlas flipped open. Arthur was so surprised he dropped it back on the bed. It stayed open, and Arthur watched in amazement as it grew, becoming longer and wider, until it was about the same size as his pillow.

The open pages were blank for a moment, then lines began to appear, as if an invisible artist was hard at work. The lines were strong and sure, appearing faster and faster as Arthur stared. It only took a few seconds before he realised he was looking at a picture of the House he had seen. A picture so well drawn that it was almost like a photograph.

Next to the picture a handwritten note appeared:

The House: An Exterior Aspect as Manifested in Many Secondary Realms .

Then another few words appeared, written much smaller. Arthur craned forward as the writing appeared, with an arrow that pointed to an inked-in square on the outer wall.

“Monday Postern,” Arthur read aloud. “What’s a postern?”

There was a dictionary on the bookshelf above his desk. Arthur pulled it out, while keeping an eye on the Atlas in case it did something else interesting.

It did. Arthur had to put the Key down to get the dictionary out, as it was too jammed in with other books. As soon as he dropped the Key on the desk, the Atlas slammed shut, scaring the life out of him. In less than a second, it had also shrunk back to its pocket notebook size.

So you need to have the Key to open the Atlas , thought Arthur. He left the Key where it was and looked up postern in the dictionary.

postern n . 1.a back door or gate. 2.any lesser or private entrance.

So there was Monday’s gate in the otherwise seamless wall. Arthur put the dictionary back and thought about it. The picture of the House and the indication of an entrance was clearly an invitation of sorts. Someone… or something… wanted him to go into the House. But could he trust the Atlas? Arthur was pretty certain that Mister Monday and Sneezer were enemies, or – at the very least – not friends. He wasn’t sure about the whirling type, the words in the air that had taken over Sneezer and then given him the Atlas. He supposed those words had given him the Key too, or at least had tricked Mister Monday into doing it. But what was their… its purpose?

There was only one way to find out. He would take a look at the House as soon as he could, either tomorrow or on Sunday, and try to get in through Monday’s Postern. Depending on what he saw there, he’d tell Ed and Leaf and get their help. They would probably be able to see the place, he thought. After all, they’d seen the dog-faced searchers when the assistant principal couldn’t.

In the meantime, he would hide the Key and the Atlas in the best hiding spot he knew. In the belly of the life-size ceramic Komodo dragon that sat on the rooftop balcony just above his bedroom. The dragon – a huge lizard really – was hollow, but its mouth wasn’t open enough for anyone with hands larger than Arthur’s to reach inside.

No sooner was this mission accomplished than his mother came home, immediately transforming the place from a quiet retreat into a family home. After checking on Arthur, she insisted that Bob emerge from his studio so the three of them could have dinner together. Emily was happy and relaxed, because Arthur was OK and because for the first time in ages she was not working frantically to develop a vaccine or cure for some new influenza strain. Winter was coming, but it looked to be a reasonably quiet one from the point of view of sickness.