Arthur shuddered, bent his head and climbed through the hatch. He was only just inside when the Grotesque shouted something, another word that made Arthur’s teeth and bones ache, and slammed shut the hatch behind him, cutting off all the light.
In the brief moment before the door closed, Arthur saw that the chimney was at least thirty feet in diameter, with well-worn steps that circled around and down. In the total darkness, Arthur descended by feel, careful not to commit his weight to a step until he was sure it was there. Not for the first time, he wished he still had the First Key, for the light it shed and many other reasons.
Finally he reached the bottom. It was slightly flooded, water coming up to Arthur’s ankles. The river was close by here. He was probably below its level, Arthur thought uneasily. It didn’t help to think of the river suddenly breaking in, not here in the absolute darkness.
But there had to be a way out, a way into the House. Didn’t there? Arthur began to think that he had been lured into a trap. Maybe this was just a chimney and he’d been led into it like a complete fool.
Maybe the Grotesque is going to let more water in. Is it already rising?
Arthur began to edge around the walls, feeling with his feet and hands. He was starting to panic, and the cold water was not helping his breathing. He could feel his right lung seizing up, the left labouring hard to make up for its companion’s failings.
His hand touched something sticking out from the wall. Something round, about the size of an apple. Something smooth and soft. Wooden, not brick.
A door handle.
Arthur sighed in relief, and turned it.
The door opened inwards. Arthur stumbled in, tripping over the lintel. His stomach somersaulted as he continued to fall.
Straight down!
Just like the last time he’d entered the House, Arthur was falling slowly – as slow as a plastic bag caught on a summer breeze – through darkness.
But this time he didn’t have the Key to get him out of this strange in-between place that was neither his own world nor the House. He might fall for ever and never arrive anywhere…
Arthur gritted his teeth and tried to think of something positive. He had held the First Key. He was the Master of the Lower House, even if he’d handed his powers over to a Steward. He felt sure there was some remnant magic in his hands, which had once wielded the Key.
There has to be some residual power.
Arthur thrust out his right hand and imagined the Key still in his fist. A shining Key.
“Take me to the Front Door!” he shouted, the words strangely dull and flat. There was no echo in this weird space, no resonance of any kind.
Nothing happened for a few seconds. Then Arthur saw a very pale glow form around his knuckles. It was so dark it took him a little while to work out what it was. The light comforted him and he tried to concentrate on it, willing it to grow stronger. At the same time, under his breath, he kept repeating his instruction.
“Take me to the Front Door. Take me to the Front Door…”
His wrist clicked as his hand moved away, tugged by an unseen force. He felt the direction of his fall change from straight down into a shallower dive.
“Take me to the Front Door. Take me to the Front Door. Take me to…”
Far off, a tiny light caught Arthur’s eye. It was too far away to be more than a luminous blob, but Arthur felt sure he was headed towards it, that it would grow and grow until it became a huge rectangular shape of blinding light.
It had to be the Front Door of the House.
To Arthur’s considerable relief, the light did grow and it did look exactly like the Front Door. Only this time he was approaching very slowly, so he had enough time to prepare himself for the shock of falling through to the other side – to the green lawn of Doorstop Hill, in the Atrium of the Lower House.
Once he was there, he figured it would be relatively easy to get to Monday’s Dayroom. Arthur wondered if it was called Arthur’s Dayroom now, or The Will’s Dayroom, or something else completely different. In any case, he would find the Will and Suzy there, and together they would work out what to do about Grim Tuesday and his minions.
Arthur was still thinking about that as he drifted gently towards the Door, when he was unexpectedly thrust forward by a tremendous force. Completely unprepared for what felt like a giant whack in the back, he tumbled end over end and crashed headfirst into the bright rectangle of light.
For an instant Arthur felt like he was being turned inside out, everything twisted in impossible and painful directions. Then he bounced on his feet on the other side and crashed down on to his hands and knees. Jarring pain in both told him he had not landed on soft grass. It was also completely dark, without even the soft glow of the distant ceiling of the Atrium, and certainly no elevator shafts illuminating the scene. Even worse, there was smoke everywhere – thick, cloying smoke that instantly made Arthur’s lungs tighten and constrict.
Before he could begin to feel around or even cough, someone grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him up and back. Arthur swallowed his cough and instinctively screamed, a scream that was cut off as some kind of fluid enveloped him. He started to choke, thinking that he was in water, but a solid clap on the back stopped that and he realised that whatever the fluid was, it wasn’t water and it wasn’t getting into his throat and nose. A moment later he was out of it and could feel air again. He had passed through some kind of membrane or fluid barrier.
Wherever he was, everything looked extremely blurry and there was too much colour, like he was standing with his nose pressed to a stained-glass window where the colours kept mixing up.
“Relax and blink a lot,” instructed whoever was gripping his shoulders – a calm, deep male voice that sounded vaguely familiar. It only took Arthur a second to remember whose it was.
The Lieutenant Keeper of the Front Door.
Arthur blinked madly and tried to relax. As he blinked, the colours settled down and the blurriness eased, at least when he was looking straight ahead. It was still very blurry to either side.
“Are we inside some sort of multicoloured glass ball?” Arthur asked after a moment. They certainly were inside something spherical and there was light shining into it, light that kept shifting around and was diffracted into many different colours.
“We are in a temporary bubble inside the Door itself,” explained the Lieutenant Keeper. He let go of Arthur, stepped in front of him and saluted. As before, he was wearing a blue uniform coat with one gold epaulette. “One that lessens the effect of the Door on mortal minds. Now, we only have a brief respite before you must go through to the Far Reaches—”
“The Far Reaches?” exclaimed Arthur in alarm. “But I wanted to go to the Atrium of the Lower House.”
“The Front Door opens on many parts of the House, but the door you entered in the Secondary Realms leads only to the Far Reaches and the Grim’s railway station.”
“I can’t go there!”
“You must go there,” declared the Lieutenant Keeper. “You have already gone there. I snatched you back, but I cannot keep you inside the Door for any great length of time. You must go where you are going. That is the Law of the Door.”
“But…” Arthur struggled to think. “OK, if I have to go to the Far Reaches, can you send a message from me to the Will or Suzy in the Lower House?”
“That part of the Will is called Dame Primus now,”