David Mitchell - Slade House

I hear only the clock’s rusty, oiled heart.

I knock again, but louder. Nothing …

… but the rhythmic grunt of cogs.

Turn the doorknob, then. Open the door. Just an inch. Peer in.

This room’s igloo-shaped, lit by a bedside lamp, windowless, carpetless and contains a large four-poster bed and not a lot else. The bed’s maroon drapes are drawn. The mechanical grinding noise has stopped, but I call out softly, “Todd?” in case he’s in the bed. “Todd? It’s Sal.”

No reply, but if Todd ate a hash brownie — or actually a “No Hash Brownie”—he might be asleep. Snoring softly, maybe, in that bed, like Goldilocks.

I’ll just peep through the drape. That can’t hurt.

Anyway, I’m unrecognisable in my Miss Piggy mask.

So I shuffle over the grainy floorboards and lift a flap of the velvet. Just an inch … “Miss Piggy!” booms a man — Axel? — sweat-glazed in the blood-dim cocoon, and I only half block a shriek. The bed’s taken up by a grotesque frame of naked limbs, chests, breasts, groins, shoulders, toes, buttocks, goitres and scrotums; an undrawable bone cage, a flesh loom, a game of Twister with several Siamese bodies, pulled apart and smooshed together; up here’s Angelica’s head with her matted indigo hair and a tongue-stud showing; down there’s Axel’s head; in the core, I see their pneumatic sexes, swollen huge and crimson-raw like a Francis Bacon porn-mare; the stink of bad fish is nauseous, and the Axel head grins at me through the slit in the drape, through my Miss Piggy eyehole, and he speaks, but his words are jolted out of him in Angelica’s voice: “Is — Oink — Oink — hun — gry — for — a—ba — con — sand — wich?” and the Angelica head, melded onto a flabby thigh with wrists where its ears should be grunts back, “Don’t — be — mean — Sal — ly — hates — it — when — we — call — her — that.”

I skitter back across the floor to the panelled door and slam it behind me, quivering with disgust, with doubt, with … The grandfather clock is calm and collected. Far, far below, the black and white tiled hallway is quiet. Up above, the pale door’s waiting. It’s a bad acid trip. I’ve heard about them. Piers my first non-boyfriend had one once, and it sounded like this. Axel and Angelica were having sex, but I saw it through kaleidoscopic drug-tinted spectacles. I need to get Todd, so he can keep an eye on me. I walk up the stairs, past two portraits: one of a young rockabilly type with Brylcreemed hair and half-open shirt; the next, a woman with eyeliner like Cleopatra and a beehive Martha and the Vandellas hairdo. The next portrait, however, stops me dead. It’s of a boy in school uniform, and I’ve seen him once already tonight … I get out Axel’s A4 sheet from my jacket, and compare them. It’s Nathan Bishop. My feet take me up to the next portrait, which shows Mr. Dressing Gown from earlier. Now Axel’s case study is in front of me, I can name him: Gordon Edmonds. Who I spoke to, on the cold sofa, a little while ago. Or who I dreamed I spoke to. I don”t know which. I don’t even know if I’m that shocked to find Sally Timms staring out of the final picture, standing in her Zizzi Hikaru jacket with Freya’s Maori pendant round her neck. The same image as they used on TV. Except my eyes are now two freakish blanks, and she’s frowning, as if I can’t understand why I can’t see any more, and as I watch, one of her index fingers rises to tap the inside face of the canvas … I half-huff-half-shriek-half-slip-half-fall onto the ledge at the very top of the stairs, and my hand steadies me by shooting up and grasping the shiny doorknob on the pale door …

… which swings open and suddenly Todd’s there looking at me, bloodless and thunderstruck. I say, “Todd?” and he jumps back and I realize it’s my mask so I yank it off and say his name and Todd says, “Sal, Sal, thank Christ I found you,” and now we’re hugging. Todd’s bony and skinny but his muscles are iron though he’s cold like he’s just walked in from a frosty night. Behind him is the sloping ceiling of a dark attic. Todd uncouples himself from our hug and shuts the pale door. “Something bad’s happening in this house, Sal. We need to get out.”

We’re both whispering. “Yes, I know, someone’s spiked our drinks. I’m seeing … impossible things. Like”—where do I begin? — “Todd, the TV said I’ve been missing for five days . Missing! I can’t be. And look—” I point at my eyeless portrait which has stopped moving now. “It’s me, that picture’s me, wearing this”—I hold up the real necklace for Todd to see—“which I only got today. It’s insane.”

Todd swallows. “I’m afraid it’s worse than an acid trip, Sal.”

I see he’s serious. I fumble at what it means. “What, then?”

“We joined ParaSoc for paranormal experiences. We’ve found them. And they’re not benign. They’ll try to stop us getting out.”

My skin goes icy and burnt. “Who’ll try to stop us?”

Todd glances behind us at the pale door. “Our hosts. The twins. I … put them to sleep, but they’ll wake up soon. Angry and hungry.”

“Twins? What twins? What do they want?”

Todd says it low and level: “To consume your soul.”

I wait for him to tell me he’s joking. I wait. I wait.

Todd’s holding my elbows. “Slade House is their life-support machine, Sal, but it’s powered by souls, and not just any old souls. It’s like blood groups: the type they need is very rare, and your soul is that very rare type. We have to get you out. Now. We’ll go down the stairs, out via the kitchen, across the garden and once we’re in Slade Alley, I think we’ll be safe. Safer, anyway.”

I feel Todd’s breath on my forehead. “I saw some big gates onto Cranbury Avenue, and another black iron door, in the hall.”

Todd shakes his head. “That’s wallpaper, to fool you. The one way out is the one way in: the Aperture.”

“What about Fern, Lance, Axel, Angelica?”

A muscle in Todd’s cheek twitches. “They’re beyond my help.”

“What do you mean? What’ll happen to them?”

Todd hesitates. “You’re the fruit; they’re the pith, stone and skin. They’ve been discarded.”

“But …” I point down the stairs — are there more stairs now? — to the square landing, but the door into the igloo room has gone. “I–I saw Axel and Angelica … down there. Sort of.”

“You saw fleshy 3D Polaroids of Axel and Angelica which wouldn’t stand much scrutiny, close up. Listen.” Todd grips my hand. “Carefully. On our way out, speak to nobody; respond to nobody; meet nobody’s eye. Accept nothing, eat nothing, drink nothing. This version of Slade House is a shadow play, evoked into being. If you engage with it, the twins sense you; they’ll wake; they’ll extract your soul. Understand?”

Kind of. Yes. No. “Who are you?”

“I’m a … a kind of bodyguard. Look, I’ll explain back at my parents’ house. We have to go, Sal, or we’ll never get out. Remember: vow of silence, eyes down, don’t let go of my hand. I’ll cloak us as best I can. Put that mask back on, too. It may sow a little extra confusion.”

Todd holds my hot hand in his cold one, and I focus on my feet to avoid looking at portraits. Time passes, steps fly under our feet, and we arrive at the grandfather clock. Its krunk-kronk s are all tempos all at once. The panelled door to the igloo room hasn’t reappeared. “There was a door here,” I whisper. “Did I dream it?” Todd murmurs, “Rats in a maze of moveable walls ask themselves the same.” Halfway down the lower flight of stairs, students start appearing in the hallway, chatting, arguing, smoking, flirting. The volume rises with every step. “So you found him,” smiles the Tin Man girl, pressing a black drink against her silver cheek. “I’m Urvashi. What’s your name?” Todd squeezes my hand to warn me against answering. It’s like the Don’t Say Yes or No Game Dad used to play with me and Freya on car journeys, but here you mustn’t be tricked into saying anything at all. Urvashi the Tin Man’s in my face: “Oy, Miss Piggy! Answer, or you’ll be Miss Piggy for the rest of forever! Hey!” But Todd pulls me on, and Urvashi’s lost in a blur of faces, masks, bodies, and soon we’re back in the kitchen. “Caught by the Fuzz” by Supergrass is pumping out of a stereo. Todd leads me around the edge and it’s going well until we pass within inches of Todd Cosgrove and Sally Timms, huddled in a corner by an oven with a noisy fan. I stop. Fake Todd’s drinking Indian beer from a bottle and Fake Me’s drinking shit red wine from a plastic cup. Fake Todd’s saying, “Your sister’s older than you, I’m guessing,” and Fake Sally nods. “Was it a fifty-fifty guess, or can you really tell?” I hear Todd — Real Todd — inside my ear canal telling me, Keep going, Sal, they’re flypaper. He propels me on, his arm round my waist, past a table of bottles, cans, a punchbowl and two Wedgwood cake-stands full of brownies. We go under an archway into a utility room with a dozen people between us and the door, including a dug-up corpse, an unraveling mummy, a tube of Colgate toothpaste with a red bucket for a cap and Lance Arnott who blocks my way, looking like a lost soul in an old painting of hell: “There’s something evil in here!” It’s not him, says Todd in my inner ear, but Lance is gripping my lapels: it is him, I smell his yeasty BO. “Please, Sal, I know I was an arsehole, but please don’t leave me! Please!”