After they passed the House, Arthur was put off guard a bit by the normality of the rest of the drive to school. It seemed just like any other morning, with the usual traffic and pedestrians and kids everywhere. There was no sign of anything strange as they drove up the street the school was on. Arthur felt relieved and comforted by just how boringly normal it seemed. The sun was shining; there were people everywhere. Surely nothing could happen now?
But as he stepped out of the car at the front entrance and his mother drove away, he saw five bowler-hatted, black-suited men suddenly rise like lifted string puppets between the cars in the teachers’ parking lot, off to his right. They saw him too and began to move through the ranks of cars towards him. They walked in strange straight lines, changing direction in sudden right angles to avoid students and teachers who obviously couldn’t see them.
More of the dog-faces appeared to the left. Arthur saw them issue out of the ground, as dark vapours that in a second solidified into dog-faced, bowler-hatted, black-suited men.
Dog-faces to the left. Dog-faces to the right. But there were none straight ahead. Arthur ran a few steps, his breath caught, and he knew he couldn’t run and risk another asthma attack. He slowed down, his eyes darting across at the two groups of approaching dog-faces, his mind rapidly calculating their speed and direction.
If he walked quickly up the main promenade and the steps, he would still get inside before the dog-faced men caught up with him.
He did walk quickly, ducking around loitering groups of students. For the first time, he was grateful nobody knew him at this school, so no one said, ‘Wait up, Arthur!’ or tried to stop him to talk, which would have happened for sure at his old school.
He made it to the steps. The dog-faces were gaining on him, were only ten or fifteen yards behind, and the steps ahead were crowded, mainly with older students. Arthur couldn’t push through them, so he had to zig and zag and weave his way through, calling out, ‘Sorry!’ and ‘Excuse me!’ as he went.
He was almost at the main doors and what he hoped would be safety beyond when someone grabbed his backpack and brought him to an abrupt halt.
For an instant, Arthur thought the dog-faces had got him. Then he heard words that reassured him, despite the threatening tone.
‘You knock the man, you pay the price!’
The boy who held Arthur’s bag was much bigger, but not really mean-looking. It was hard to look ultra-tough in a school uniform. He even had his tie done up properly. Arthur picked him instantly as a would-be tough guy, not the real thing.
‘I’m going to throw!’ he said, holding his hand over his mouth and blowing out his cheeks.
The not-so-tough guy let go of Arthur so quickly that they both staggered apart. Because Arthur was expecting it, he recovered first. He jumped up the next three steps at one go, only a few yards ahead of a swarm of bowler-hatted dog-faces. They were everywhere, like a flock of ravens descending on a piece of meat. Students and teachers got out of their way without realising why they were doing so, many of them looking puzzled as they suddenly stopped or stepped sideways or jumped aside, as if they didn’t know what they were doing.
For a second, Arthur thought he wouldn’t make it. The dog-faces were at his heels and he could hear them panting and snorting. He could even smell their breath, just as Leaf had said. It stank of rotten meat, worse than an alley full of garbage at the back of a restaurant. The smell and the sound of their slathering lent him extra speed. He lunged up the last few steps, collided with the swing doors, and fell through.
He was up again in an instant, ready to run, his breath already shortening, lungs tightening. Fear gripped him, fear that the dog-faces would come through the doors and that he would have an asthma attack and be powerless to resist them.
But the dog-faces didn’t come through the school’s main entrance. Instead they clustered at the doors, pressing their flat faces against the glass panels. They really did look like a cross between bloodhounds and men, Arthur saw, with their little piggy eyes, pushed-in faces, droopy cheeks, and lolling tongues that smeared the windows. Kind of like Winston Churchill on a very bad day. Strangely, they had all taken their bowler hats off and were holding them in the crook of their left arms. It didn’t help the look of them, for their hair was uniformly short and brown. Like dog hair.
‘Let us in, Arthur,’ rasped one, and then another started and there was a horrible cacophony as the words all got mixed up. ‘Us, In, Let, Arthur, Arthur, Us, Let, Let, Arthur, In, In –’
Arthur blocked his ears and walked away, straight down the central corridor. He concentrated on his breathing, steadying it into a safe rhythm. Slowly, the baying calls from outside receded.
At the end of the corridor, Arthur turned around.
The dog-faces were gone and once again students and staff were pouring through the doors, laughing and talking. The sun was still shining behind them. Everything looked normal.
‘What’s with your ears?’ asked someone, not unkindly.
Arthur blushed and pulled his fingers out of his ears.
The dog-faces obviously couldn’t get him here. Now he could focus on surviving the usual problems of school, at least till the end of the day. And he could try to find Ed and Leaf. He wanted to tell them what had happened, to see if they could still see the dog-faces. Maybe they could help him work out what to do about it all.
Arthur had expected to see them at the gym in preparation for the cross-country run. He had a note excusing him, but he still had to go and give it to Mister Weightman. First he had to suffer through a whole morning of math, science, and English, all of which he was good at when he wanted to be, but couldn’t focus on today. Then when he went to the gym, making sure to go through the school rather than across the quadrangle, he was surprised to find that the class was only two-thirds the size of the previous week. At least fifteen kids were missing, including Ed and Leaf.
Mister Weightman was not pleased to see Arthur. He took the note, read it, and handed it back without a word, turning his head away. Arthur stood there, wondering what he was supposed to do if he didn’t go on the run.
‘Anyone else got a note?’ Weightman called out. ‘Has some class been held back? Where is everybody?’
‘Sick,’ mumbled a kid.
‘All of them?’ asked Weightman. ‘It’s not even winter! If this is some sort of prank, there will be serious repercussions.’
‘No, sir, they really are sick,’ said one of the serious athletes. ‘A lot of people have got it. Some sort of cold.’
‘Okay, I believe you, Rick,’ said Weightman.
Arthur looked at Rick. He was clearly a clean-cut athletic star. He looked like he could have stepped out of a television spot for toothpaste or running shoes. No wonder Weightman believed him.
Still, it was strange for so many students to be out sick at this time of year. Particularly since biannual flu vaccinations had become compulsory five years ago. It was only two months since everyone should have had the shots, which usually offered total protection against serious viruses.
Arthur felt a small familiar fear grow inside him. The fear that had been with him as long as he could remember: that another virus outbreak would take away everyone he loved.
‘All right, let’s get started with some warm-up exercises,’ Weightman called out. He finally looked at Arthur and summoned him over with a crook of his finger.
‘You, Penhaligon, can go and play tiddledywinks or whatever. Just don’t cause any trouble.’
Arthur nodded, not trusting himself to speak. It was bad enough when other kids made fun of him, but at least there was a chance he could get back at them, or make a joke out of it or something. It was much harder to do that with a teacher.
He turned away and started walking out of the gym. Halfway to the door, he heard someone run up behind him and then there was a touch on his arm. He flinched and half-crouched, suddenly afraid the dog-faces had got in. But it was only a girl, someone he didn’t know. A girl with bright pink hair.
‘You’re Arthur Penhaligon?’ she asked over the laughs and giggles from the rest of the class, who’d seen him flinch.
‘Yes.’
‘Leaf sent me an email to give to you,’ she said, handing him a folded piece of paper. Arthur took it, ignoring the catcalls from the boys behind her.
‘Ignore those mutants,’ the girl said in a loud voice. She smiled and ran back to join her particular clique of tall, bored-looking girls.
Arthur put the paper in his pocket and left the gym, his face burning. He wasn’t sure what made him more embarrassed: getting told to go and play tiddledywinks by Weightman or getting a note from a girl in full view of everyone else.
He took refuge in the library. After explaining to the librarian that he was excused from gym and showing her his note, he took a good look around, then decided to sit at one of the desks on the second floor, next to a window that overlooked the front of the school and the street.
The first thing he did was build some walls on the desk out of large reference books, to make a private cubby. Unless someone came up and looked over his shoulder, nobody would be able to see what he was reading.
Then he took the Key and the Atlas from his bag and laid them down with Leaf’s note on the desk. As he did so, he caught the flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked out the window, and, as he had more than half-expected, there were the dog-faces. Sliding out from between parked cars and trees. Slinking forward to gaze up at his window. They knew exactly where he was.
Arthur had hoped he would feel more secure if he could actually see them. That he would feel braver for having exposed himself at the window. But he didn’t. He shivered as they congregated into a mob, all of them staring wordlessly up at him. So far, none had shown wings like the one that had flown to his window the night before. But perhaps that was only a matter of time.
Forcing himself to look away, he imagined that he was a white mouse, tearing its gaze away from a hooded cobra. That having done so, he would be able to escape.
He felt a very strong desire to flee into the deeper parts of the library, to hide between the stacks of comforting books. But that wouldn’t help, he knew. At least here he knew where the dog-faces were. What they were was another question, one of the many Arthur was making into a mental list.
Arthur unfolded the printout of Leaf’s email and read:
To: pinkhead55tepidmail.com
From: raprepteam20biohaz.gov
Hi Allie
This is me, Leaf. can you pass this message on to arthur penhaligon? boy who flaked on the run last Monday? kind of thin + pale, about ed’s height hair like gary krag v. important he gets this. gotta run. thanx
Leaf
hi art
sorry we didn’t c u at hospital. ed got sick tues. nite, and then mum + dad did + aunt mango (not real name). i’m not sick, tho our house is quarantine. many doctors cops all over our place, in biohazard suitz, v. scary pigface. They think new flu and shots DON’T WORK. no one really, really sick yet but when I go near ed or the others I smell the same revolto smell that the DOG_FACED GUYS had like they’re connected, you know but the doctors can’t smell it they’re in suits and neither can ed or parents, tho so much snot coming out that;s no surprise. docs have machine that smells 4 them, and it says e’thing okay when obviously not. no one believes me.
i think the virus from dog-faces I REALLY HOPE you can see them you have to work it out I’M DEPENDING ON YOU.
feds cut off net and phone I think afraid of big panic. this from one of the docs palmtops which I STOLE and they’ll figure it out real soon.
im afraid
Five
ARTHUR STARED AT the last words for a few seconds: im afraid.
He shivered, folded the printout, and put it back in his pocket. He felt his breathing catch again and concentrated on a steady, slow rhythm. Breathe in slowly, hold it, breathe out slowly. But all the time his mind was racing. This was even worse than he thought.
All the fears he had managed to keep under control were threatening to break free and send him into total panic. The old fear of a new outbreak. And a new fear, of the dog-faces and Mister Monday, and even of the Key itself.
Breathe, thought Arthur. Think it through.
Why had he been given the Key . . . and the Atlas? Who . . . or what . . . were Mister Monday and the dogfaces? Were they really connected to this sudden outbreak of drug-resistant influenza? Was it an outbreak? Maybe only Ed and Leaf’s family was affected . . .
Arthur looked out the window at the dog-faces again and accidentally touched the Key and the Atlas on the desk. As he did so, he felt a sharp electric shock, and the Atlas flipped open with a bang, making him jump like a startled cat. As it had done before, the Atlas grew in size till it filled nearly all the desk space in between his rampart of books.
This time, the Atlas didn’t display a drawing of the House. Instead it rapidly sketched one of the dog-faces, though without the bowler hat, dirty shirt, and black, old-fashioned suit. This one was wearing something like a sack, but there was no mistaking the face.
Words appeared next to the picture, written by some unseen hand. The words were in a strange alphabet that Arthur didn’t recognise, let alone have a chance of reading, but as the boy watched he saw that the earlier letters were changing into the normal alphabet and the words were rearranging themselves into English, though the type was still weird and old-fashioned. Every now and then a blot of ink would appear partway through a word, to be hastily wiped away. Then words stopped appearing, and Arthur started to read what was there.
The House was built from Nothing, and its foundations rest upon Nothing. Yet as Nothing is forever and the House is but eternal, these foundations slowly sink into the Nothing from which the House was wrought, and Nothing so impinges upon the House. In the very deepest cellars, sinks, and oubliettes of the House, it is possible to draw upon Nothing and shape it with one’s thought, should such thought be strong enough. Forbidden in custom, if not in law, it is too often essayed by those who should know better, though it is not the high treason of treating with the Nithlings, those self-willed things that occasionally emerge from Nothing, with scant regard for Time or reason.