David Mitchell - Slade House

… and snaps it. The pond’s gone and we’re under a tree, so obviously it’s another stem of grass, a later snap. The Valium’s throbbing in my fingertips now, and the sunlight’s a harpist. Fallen leaves on the shaved lawn are shaped like tiny fans. “This tree’s a gingko tree,” says Jonah. “Whoever lived at Slade House half a century ago planted it.” I start arranging gingko leaves into a large Africa, about one foot from Cairo to Johannesburg. Jonah’s lying on his back now, either asleep or just with his eyes closed. He hasn’t asked me about football once, or said I’m gay for liking classical music. Maybe this is like having a friend. Time must’ve passed, because my Africa’s finished. I don’t know the time exactly because last Sunday I took my watch apart to improve it, and when I put it back together again some pieces were missing. Not quite like Humpty Dumpty. Mum cried when she saw the watch’s insides and shut herself in her room so I had to eat corn flakes for tea again. I don’t know why she got upset. The watch was old, dead old, made long before I was even born. The leaves I remove for Lake Victoria, I use for Madagascar.

“Wow,” says Jonah, leaning his head on an elbow.

Do you say, “Thanks” when someone says, “Wow”? I don’t know, so I play safe and ask, “Do you ever think you might be a different species of human, knitted out of raw DNA in a laboratory like in The Island of Doctor Moreau , and then turned loose to see if you can pass yourself off as normal or not?”

Gentle applause flutters down from an upstairs room.

“My sister and I are a different species,” says Jonah, “but the experiment part is redundant. We pass ourselves off as normal, or anything we want to be. Do you want to play fox and hounds?”

“We walked past a pub called The Fox and Hounds.”

“It’s been there since the 1930s. Smells like the 1930s, too, if you ever go in. My sister and I borrowed its name for a game. Want to play? It’s a race, basically.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll meet her later. Fox and hounds is a race. We start off at opposite corners of the house. We both shout, ‘Fox and hounds, one two three!’ and on the ‘three’ we start running, anti-clockwise, until one of us catches the other. The catcher is the hound and the one who’s caught is the fox. Simple. Up for it?”

If I say no to Jonah he might call me a wuss or a spazzo. “Okay. But shouldn’t it be called ‘fox and hound ’ if there’s only one hound?”

Jonah’s face goes through two or three expressions I can’t read. “Henceforth, Nathan, it’ll be known as ‘fox and houn d .’ ”

Slade House looms up. The red ivy’s redder than red ivy normally is. The ground floor windows are too high off the ground to see inside, and anyway they only reflect the sky and clouds. “You stay here,” Jonah tells me, at the front right corner. “I’ll go round the back. Once we start, run anti-clockwise — up this way.” Off Jonah trots down the side of the house, which is walled by a holly hedge. While I’m waiting, I notice someone moving in the window closest to me. I step closer, peering up. It’s a woman. Another guest at Lady Norah Grayer’s soirée, I suppose, or maybe a servant. She’s got one of those beehive hairstyles that ladies on Dad’s old LPs had; her forehead’s furrowed and her mouth’s slowly opening and closing like a goldfish. Like she’s repeating the same word over and over and over. I can’t hear what she’s saying because the window’s shut, so I tell her, “I can’t hear you.” I take a step forwards, but she vanishes and there’s only reflected sky. So I take a step back, and she’s there again. It’s like one of those pictures you get in cereal boxes where it looks like the image is moving when you tilt it slightly. The beehive woman could be saying, “No, No, No”; or “Go, Go, Go”; or it might be “Oh, Oh, Oh.” Before I work it out, I hear Jonah’s voice down the holly path, saying, “Ready, Nathan?”

I shout, “Ready!” and when I look back at the window, the beehive woman’s gone, and I can’t get her back wherever I stand or however I tilt my head. I take up my starting position at the corner.

“Fox and houn d !” calls Jonah and I call it too. “One, two—”

“Three!” I shout back and leg it down the holly path— slap slap slap go my shoes, and the echo’s whack whack whack . Jonah’s taller than me and maybe he’d beat me over a hundred meters, but I could still end up as the hound and not the fox because it’s stamina that counts over longer distances, and I’m at the end of the side path already, where I was expecting a view of Cranbury Avenue, but there’s just a long brick wall and fir trees and a narrow strip of lawn that goes by in a blur. I pound along and swing round on a drainpipe, sprint down another chilly side path sliced with blades of light coming through a high fence with brambles poking through, then I’m out front again where I smack a butterfly bush and butterflies blizzard up all orange and black and red and white and one goes in my mouth so I spit it out and I leap over the rockery and nearly trip up when I land but I don’t. Along I run past steps climbing to the front door, past the beehive woman’s window but she’s gone now and then around the corner and I’m pounding back down the echoey holly path, starting to get a stitch in my side but I’ll ignore it, and the holly’s scratching the back of my hand like it’s pushing in, and I wonder if Jonah’s gaining on me or I’m gaining on Jonah but not for long because I’m back at the back of Slade House, where the fir trees are thicker and bigger and the wall blurrier, and I keep running running running round the corner to where the brambles really are choking through the fence now, scratching my shins my neck and now I’m afraid I’ll be the fox not the hound, and round the front the sun’s gone in, or gone out, or gone away, and the flowers are withered and there’s not a single butterfly on the butterfly bush, just dead ones smeared into the path, powder-paint skid marks with one half-dead one, flapping a bit …

… I’ve stopped, because the far end of the garden, the wall with the small black door — it’s faded away. Not because of evening. It can’t even be four o’clock yet. Not because it’s misty, either. I look up — the sky’s still bluish, like it was before. It’s the garden itself. The garden’s fading away.

I turn round to tell Jonah to stop the game, something’s wrong, we need a grown-up. Any second now he’ll come hurtling round the far corner. The brambles sway like underwater tentacles. I glance back at the garden. There was a sundial but it’s gone now, and the damson trees too. Am I going blind? I want Dad to tell me it’s fine, I’m not going blind, but Dad’s in Rhodesia, so I want Mum. Where’s Jonah? What if this dissolving’s got him too? Now the lattice tunnel thing’s erased. What do you do when you’re visiting someone’s house and their garden starts vanishing? The blankness is moving closer like a storm-front. Then, at the far end of the brambly side path, Jonah appears, and I relax for a second because he’ll know what to do, but as I watch, the running-boy shape gets fuzzier and becomes a growling darkness with darker eyes, eyes that know me, and fangs that’ll finish what they started and it’s pounding after me in sickening slow motion, big as a cantering horse and I’d scream if I could but I can’t my chest’s full of molten panic it’s choking me choking it’s wolves it’s winter it’s bones it’s cartilage skin liver lungs it’s Hunger it’s Hunger it’s Hunger and Run! I run towards the steps of Slade House my feet slipping on the pebbles like in dreams but if I fall it’ll have me, and I’ve only got moments left and I stumble up the steps and grip the doorknob turn please turn it’s stuck no no no it’s scratched gold it’s stiff it’s ridged does it turn yes no yes no twist pull push pull turn twist I’m falling forwards onto a scratchy doormat on black and white tiles and my shriek’s like a shriek shrieked into a traffic cone all stifled and muted—