Slade House

  Someone touches my back and I jerk back inside, into the corridor in Slade House, to the music, to the party, startled twice over to find the Wicked Witch of the West peering down. “Hey, Sally Timms. You okay down there? You lost something?”

  “Hi”—I search for her name—“Kate.”

  “Are you feeling all right? Did you lose something?”

  “No, no, I was just wondering where this door led to.”

  The witch looks a bit puzzled. “What door?”

  “This door.” And I show Kate Childs—the blank wall. The doorless blank wall. I touch it. Solid. I get up, wondering how I bluff this, trying to buy time. My thoughts revolve. Yes, I’m hallucinating; yes, I ate or drank something with drugs in it; no, I can’t handle telling Kate that someone’s drugged me. “Look, I’m sloping off home.”

  “But the night’s still so young, Sally Timms.”

  “Sorry, it’s this head cold. My period’s started.”

  Kate removes her knobbly Wicked Witch mask to show an anxious sisterly face framed by Barbie-blond hair. “Let me summon you a cab, then. It’s a genuine magic power I was born with. Click of the fingers.” She starts patting herself down like at airport security. “I just happen to have an extremely handy state-of-the-art cellphone in one of these…witchy pockets.”

  A taxi would be nice, but I’ve only got £2. “I’ll walk.”

  She looks dubious. “Is that such a great idea, if you’re ill?”

  “Positive, thanks. The fresh air’ll do me good.”

  The unmasked witch isn’t sure. “Why don’t you ask Todd Cosgrove to get you home safe and sound? One of the last gentlemen in England, is Todd.”

  I didn’t know Kate knew Todd. “Actually, I was just looking for him.”

  “He’s looking for you too, Sally. Up in the games room.”

  Tonight feels like a board game co-designed by M. C. Escher on a bender and Stephen King in a fever. “Which way’s the games room?”

  “The quickest way’s back through the TV room, down the hall, up the stairs and keep climbing. You can’t go wrong.”

  · · ·

  Everyone’s glued to the screen the way people are when something major’s happened. I ask a half-turned werewolf what’s happened. “Some girl’s been abducted, like.” The werewolf’s a Northerner. He doesn’t look at me. “A student, a girl, from our uni.”

  “Jesus. Abducted?”

  “Aye, that’s what they’re saying.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Polly, or Sarah, or…” The werewolf’s drunk. “Annie? She’s only been missing five days, but a personal item was found, so now the police are afraid it’s, like…a real kidnapping. Or worse.”

  “What kind of personal item?”

  “A mirror,” mumbles the werewolf. “A makeup mirror. Hang on, look…” The TV shows our student union building, where a female reporter’s holding a big pink microphone: “Thank you, Bob, and here on the city campus tonight the mood can best be described as grim and sober. Earlier today the police issued an appeal for any information on the whereabouts of Sally Timms, an eighteen-year-old student last seen in the vicinity of Westwood Road on Saturday night…” The reporter’s words all gloop together. Missing? Five days? Since Saturday? It’s still Saturday! I’ve only been in Slade House for an hour. It must be another Sally Timms. But a photo of my face fills the screen and it’s me, it’s me, and the Sally Timms on the screen is wearing exactly, exactly, what I’m wearing now: my Zizzi Hikaru jacket and Freya’s Maori jade necklace that arrived today. That I signed for at the porter’s lodge only twelve hours ago. Who took that photo of me? When? How? The reporter thrusts her big pink microphone at Lance, Lance Arnott, who, apparently, is dancing in this building right now—while also speaking to a TV reporter two miles away, saying, “Yeah, yeah, I saw her just before she disappeared, at the party, and—” Lance’s cod-fish lips keep moving but my hearing kind of cuts out. I should be switching on the lights and shouting, “NO NO NO, people, look, there’s been some stupid mistake—I’m Sally Timms, I’m here, it’s okay!” but I’m afraid of the fuss, the shame, of being a spectacle, of being a news story, and I just can’t. Meanwhile Lance Arnott’s making a doubtful face: “ ’Fraid so, yeah. She had serious trouble adjusting to college life. Bit of a tragic figure: vulnerable, not very streetwise, know what I’m saying? There were rumors of drug use, dodgy boyfriends, that kind of stuff.” Now I’m angry, as well as frightened and confused as hell. How dare Lance say all that about me on live TV? For not fancying him, I’m a tragic, vulnerable druggie? The reporter turns back to the camera. “A clear picture is emerging of the missing student as an unhappy girl; a loner, with weight issues; a girl who had trouble adjusting to real life after private schools in Singapore and Great Malvern. Following the discovery of her compact mirror in, uh,” the reporter shuffles her notes, “Slade Alley earlier today, the friends and relatives of Sally Timms, while still hoping for the best, must, as the hours go by, be fearing the worst. This is Jessica Killingley, reporting live for South Today; and back to you in the studio, Bob.”

  God knows what Freya, Mum and Dad must be thinking.

  Actually, I know what they’re thinking: they’re thinking I’ve been murdered. They urgently need to know I’m fine, the police need to call off the search, but I can’t just announce it here. I pull back from the werewolf and bang into a sideboard. My hand touches something rubbery: a Miss Piggy mask. Thanks to Isolde Delahunty et al. I’ve got bad associations with pigs, but if I don’t put it on, any second now someone’ll see me, point and shriek, so I just loop its cord round my head and cover my face. Cool. A bit of breathing space. What was the reporter saying about my compact mirror? I used it in the kitchen after Todd left. Didn’t I? I check in my handbag…

  …Gone. Normally I’d retrace my steps and hunt it down, but I want to get out of Slade House even more than I want Freya’s gift back. She’ll understand. She’ll have to. Todd’ll know what to do. Todd’s unflappable. We’ll slip away and sort out what needs to be sorted. Him and me.

  · · ·

  At the foot of the stairs, a possibly Indian girl in an all-silver Tin Man costume says, “Did you hear about Sally Timms, the missing girl?”

  “Yes, I did.” I try to get by but she’s blocking my path.

  “Did you know Sally Timms well?” asks the Tin Man girl.

  “Not very,” I answer, and slip by, up the stairs. The banister glides under my fingertips and the hubbub of the hallway fades away, like I’m climbing into a fog of silence. The carpet on the stairs is cream like margarine, the walls are paneled and hung with portraits, and up ahead is a small square landing, guarded by a grandfather clock. A pale carpet and an antique clock is asking for trouble in a student house, Erasmus scholars or not. The first picture shows a freckled girl; she’s really lifelike. The next picture’s of an old soldier with a waxed mustache, the sort who’d say, “Roger wilco, chocks away.” I’m short of breath but I can’t have been climbing that long. I need to join a gym. Finally, I’ve reached the grandfather clock. Its face has no hands, only the words TIME IS, TIME WAS, TIME IS NOT. Highly metaphysical; deeply useless. To my left’s a door, paneled, to match the walls. To my right, more stairs climb past more portraits to a pale door. Which is the games room? I knock on the paneled door.

  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 unrecognizable 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, goiters 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 pornmare; the stink of bad fish is nauseating, 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 in Axel’s voice, “Don’t—be—mean—Sal—ly—hates—it—when—we—call—her—that.”

  I skitter back across the floor to the paneled door and slam it behind me, quivering with disgust, with horror, 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 nonboyfriend 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 urgently 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 that 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 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 anymore, 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 again 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 really 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 turns icy and burnt. I’m afraid to ask: “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 it’ll be too late. 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-kronks are all tempos all at once. The paneled 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 movable walls ask themselves the same thing.” 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,” says the Tin Man girl with a smile, 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 punch bowl 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!”

  “Okay, okay,” I whisper, “we’ll take you with us.”

  Instantly, Lance’s face dribbles off, revealing something bonier, hungrier and toothier beneath. I try to scream but my throat’s locked. Todd steps between us and traces signs onto the air—I half see the living black lines he inscribes before they vanish—and then the thing who wore the Lance Arnott disguise flickers off and on and off…and is gone.

  I gasp, “What the f—”

  I unplugged the modem, Todd tells me—telepathically, I notice a moment later, and instantly accept. But the twins are waking. The kitchen’s silent.

  My heart’s drumming and a vein in my neck’s twitching in time. Some of the partygoers are turning our way, sensing that we don’t belong. Act normally, says Todd’s voice, don’t show fear, and he leads me to the back door. Locked. Not showing fear’s one thing, but I feel it. It’s slithering around my body, just under my skin. Todd makes a threading motion with his fingers and the door opens. He bundles us through. I’ll lock them in behind us, Todd tells me, and turns to trace a symbol at the door. It’s dark out. Down the garden, I make out the Slade Alley wall behind the shrubbery, just. Fern Penhaligon appears, looking delighted. “Sal, you left this on the sofa—catch!” She tosses me my Tiffany compact, the gift from Freya, and I catch it—

  · · ·

  Dark fireworks zigzagged over marbled skies; the zigzags plucked at harpsichord wires and I floated on the Dead Sea, and could’ve stayed there forever, but a wave of pain lifted me up, high as spires, then hurled me down hard onto the pebbles at the foot of Slade House. Todd’s scared face appears up close. “Sal! Can you hear me? Sal!” My skin pops like bubble wrap and I grunt a yes. “The orison’s imploding—can you walk?” Before I can answer, Todd hauls me upright and my legs are heavy and bendy and I step on something snappable—my Tiffany mirror—and we stagger across the upper lawn. We reach a wisteria trellis where a creeping shock wave catches us and bowls us over a cropped lawn covered with tiny fan-shaped leaves. I want to lie there forever, but Todd drags me up again, and Slade House by night’s shimmering fat and thin, reflected or refracted. Then figures come strolling through the shimmer. Rows and clusters of figures, ambling like they know they don’t have to hurry. Their bodies are blurs but there’s Axel’s face; there’s Angelica; everyone in my Chaucer seminar; my teachers from Great Malvern; Isolde Delahunty and her Barbies; Mum, Dad, Freya. Todd pulls me. “Run, Sal!” And we try, God we try, but it’s like running through water; rose thorns scratch my eyes; a bucking path trips us; damson trees claw us; and a shrubbery billows up and its roots try to hook our ankles, but here’s the small black iron door. Stupidly, I look back, like you never should in stories. The figures flicker nearer. There’s Piers, who said his night with Oink’d been like shagging a dead blubber whale on a beach, only smellier.