David Mitchell - Slade House

“Unbelievable!” Norah Grayer’s face flickers into fury as the candle’s flame untwists and twists. Maybe I’ve been here minutes, maybe days. Time needs time to be measurable. “How dare you?”

“Sister,” Jonah Grayer swivels his jaw as if it fits poorly. “What on Earth—”

Me, I’m still paralyzed from the eyeballs down.

“You told our entire life-story to this wretched reporter!”

“Fred Pink had to share some of his findings, or the Oink’s sister would’ve decided he was wasting her time, and gone. Why the hysteria?”

“Don’t ‘hysteria’ me!” Spittle flies over the candle. “For even na ming the Shaded Way, the Sayyid would nullify you. On the spot and with just cause!”

“Oh, I’d like to see the Sayyid try , peace be upon him. What are you afraid of? Our story’s a banquet of marvels, and it’s exactly never that the chance comes along to share it with a discreet listener. Because she is discreet. Shall we ask her how discreet she is? Let’s. It’ll put your mind at rest.” He turns to me. “Miss Timms: do you intend to publish Fred Pink’s backstory, as you heard it told on this memorable evening?”

I can’t shake — or nod — my head by so much as a millimeter.

“We can take that as a ‘No,’ Sister dear. Just chill.”

“ ‘Chill’? So acting like a teenager is no longer enough? Our guest was damn nearly a no-show; she rejected the first Banjax and—”

“No no no no no. No, Norah. You’re doing it again — scaring yourself with all manner of ‘What ifs’ instead of examining the facts and outcome with a calm mind.”

What facts? I am desperate to ask. What outcome?

“Fred Pink told you all the answers, Honey Pie,” Jonah turns his mocking face my way, “but I’ll spell it out for you, since your sister evidently inherited the brains as well as the fat. On your way to meet me — me, in a random old man’s body I commandeered as Mr. Pink — you decided it was a waste of time, after all. Having considered this, and all eventualities, I had you followed. So at a sheltered bend in the park near the bandstand, one of my Blackwatermen sprayed an ingenious compound in your face. You lost consciousness on the spot, poor thing. Thanks to fastidious planning”—he glances at his sister—“a St. John’s ambulance was only a minute away. These worthy volunteers had you safe, sound, strapped in a wheelchair and rendered to our Aperture within five short minutes. My men even hid your face under a hood, to protect you from the spots of rain. And from prying eyes. You were rendered into our orison, which my sister had swiftly redesigned into a perfect copy of The Fox and Hounds — your original destination — and brought to the orison’s heart, the Lacuna. Given the difficulties of redacting memories from an Engifted mind, I played safe and wiped out the whole day, which is why you can’t remember leaving London. When you awoke, I treated you to the greatest scoop of your life. There.” Jonah runs his tongue along his upper teeth. “Wasn’t that satisfying? I feel like a detective laying out the facts in the final scene of a whodunit. Yes, yes Sister,” Jonah turns once more to his sister, who still looks furious, “our guest turned up her nose at the tomato juice, but we Banjaxed her good and proper with the cashew nuts. And yes, I went off script a smidgeon during my turn as Fred Pink, and told her more than I’d meant to; but she’ll be dead in two minutes, and dead journalists don’t file copy.”

Dead? He did say ‘Dead’? They’re going to kill me?

“I’m afraid so,” says Jonah. “You should have believed Fred Pink.”

“You were a fool and braggart, Brother.” Norah’s voice is hard with anger, but I’m only half hearing: “ Never discuss la Voie Ombragée with anyone. Nor Ely, Swaffham, Cantillon, nor Aït Arif. Ever. Whatever the circumstances. Ever. Do you understand?”

“I’ll mend my ways, Sister dear.” Jonah gives a mock-contrite sigh.

Norah’s disgusted. “One day your flippancy will kill you.”

“If you say so, Sister.”

“And on that day I will save myself if I can, and abandon you if I must.”

Jonah’s about to reply — perhaps with a smarmy retort — but changes his mind and the subject. “I am famished, you are famished, our Operandi is famished and supper is plucked, trussed, seasoned and ready—” he turns his whole body to face me and whispers “—bewitched, bothered and bewildered. You’re not breathing, Honey Pie. Have you really not noticed?”

I want this to be a sadistic lie but it’s true — I’m not breathing. So this is it. I don’t die in crossfire, or in a car crash, or at sea, but here, inside this … nightmare that can’t be real, but which, nonetheless, is. The twins begin to ply the air with their fingers like harpists, slowly at first, then faster. Now they seem to draw on the air, like high-speed calligraphers. Their lips move too, but I don’t know if I’m hearing them or the buzzing echoes of my oxygen-starved brain closing down. Above the candle, a thing congeals into being. It’s the size of a misshapen head, but faceless. It glows, red, bright to dark, bright to dark, and stringy roots emerge from it, fixing it in the dark air. Longer roots snake their way towards me. I try to squirm my head back or shut my eyes but I can’t. I’d scream if I could, a loud, hard, horror-film scream, but I can’t. The roots twist into my mouth, nose and ears, and then I feel a spear-tip of pain where my Cyclop’s eye would be. Something is being extracted through the same spot: it hovers there, before my eyes, a translucent shimmering globe, smaller than a pool-ball, but cloudy with a countless stars. It’s my true me. It’s my soul. The Grayer Twins lean in.

They purse their lips; and inhale, sharply.

My soul distends like a blob of dough being pulled apart.

It’s mine, it’s me, but it’s hopeless, it’s hopeless, it’s hope—

Suddenly, inches away, a figure fills the narrow gap between the Grayers, blocking my view. She’s a she, in a designer jacket. Her plump midriff blocks what little light there is from the candle and the heart-brain-thing above it. Norah Grayer falls back to my right, shock twisting her face. Jonah can’t move away, even if he wanted to: one of the intruder’s small hands — she has peacock-blue fingernails — grips his neck, while the other hand, swift as a small bird’s wing, plunges a thick, six-inch needle into one side of his windpipe — and clean out of the other, like a cocktail stick piercing a very large olive. Blood seeps from both punctures, treacle black on stone gray in this dimness. Jonah’s eyes bulge in disbelief, his head and jaw slump and his two puncture wounds froth as he tries to make a noise. His attacker releases him, but the weapon — a hairpin, if I’m not wrong — stays jammed in place. As his head tilts, I have a view of a silver fox’s head with gemstone eyes at the top of the hairpin. Shouted fragments reach me from Norah, a few feet and light years away— Get out! Damn ghost! GET OUT! The intruder is fading away now — I see the candle-flame through her body. My stretched soul has reformed itself into a globe and is now fading away too. My body is dead but my soul is saved. My rescuer’s pendant swings through my soul, lit deep-sea green by the last of the starry atoms. Eternity, jade, it’s Maori, I chose it, I wrapped it, I sent it once to someone I love.

Bombadil’s iPhone vibrates over his heart. With his cold fingers, I fish out the device from the large skiing jacket I had him buy near our anonymous hotel earlier when I saw the ominous state of the sky. Sleet peppers the screen. The message is from the Blackwaterman: