ink.
As he’d half expected, the contract was all one way and not in his favour. In a long-winded way, like all documents from the House, it said that he, Arthur, would relinquish the First Key and the Mastery of the Lower House to Grim Tuesday in recognition of the debts owed to Grim Tuesday for the provision of the goods listed in Annex A. There was nothing about leaving Arthur’s family alone after that, or anything else.
There didn’t seem to be an Annex A either, but when Arthur finished reading what was on the opened-out envelope, it shimmered and a new page formed. Headed Annex A, it listed everything that the former Mister Monday or his minions had bought and not paid for, including:
Nine Gross (1,296) Standard Pattern Metal Commissionaires
1 Doz. Bespoke Metal Sentinels, part-payment rec’d, 1/8 still owing plus interest
Six Great Gross (10,368) One-Quart Silver Teapots
2 Plentitudes (497,664) Second-Best Steel Nibs
6 Gross (864) Elevator Door Rollers Two Great Gross (3,456) Elevator Leaning Bars, Bronze
1 Lac (100,000) Elevator Propellant, Confined Safety Bottle
129 Miles Notional Wire, Telephone Metaconnection
1 Statue, Mister Monday, Gilt Bronze, Exquisite
77 Statues, Mister Monday, Bronze, Ordinary
10 Quintal (1000-weight), Bronze Metal Fish, Fireproof, semi-animate
1 Long Doz. (13) Umbrella Stands, Petrified Apatosaurus Foot
The list kept going on and on, the page reforming every time Arthur reached the end. Finally he looked away, refolded the envelope and shoved it in the back pocket of his jeans.
Reading the letter hadn’t changed anything, except that his determination not to sign it was even stronger. He had to get to the House as fast as possible.
He was about to leave immediately when he remembered the telephone in the red velvet box. It was possible the Will might be able to scrounge up enough money to call him again, so he’d better get that.
Arthur walked up the stairs this time. He didn’t think he’d have a full-on asthma attack – he would have already had it if he was going to – but he’d started a persistent wheeze instead and couldn’t quite get enough breath.
The red velvet box was where he’d left it, but when Arthur went to put the lid back on, he saw that it was empty. The phone had disappeared. Lying on the bottom of the box was a very small piece of thick cardboard. Arthur picked it up. As he touched it, words appeared, scribed in the same sort of invisible hand that wrote in the Atlas.
This telephone has been disconnected. Please call Upper House 23489-8729-13783 for reconnection.
“How?” asked Arthur. He didn’t expect an answer, but the message wrote itself out again on the card. Arthur threw it back in the box and went down the stairs again.
On the way back down, the question came up again in his head. Just one simple word that covered a lot of problems.
How?
How am I going to get into the House? It doesn’t exist in my world any more.
Arthur groaned and pulled at his hair, just as Michaeli came rushing back up the stairs.
“You think you’ve got problems?!” she snapped as she went past. “It looks like Dad is going to have to go back on tour, like, for ever, and I’m going to have to get a job. All you have to do is go to school!”
Arthur didn’t get a chance to reply before she was gone.
“Yeah, that’s all I have to worry about!” he shouted after her. He slowly continued down the stairs, thinking hard. The House had physically manifested itself before, taking over several city blocks. That manifestation had disappeared when Arthur came back after defeating Mister Monday. But maybe the House had returned with the Grotesques?
There was only one way to find out. After a quick look to check that no one – particularly a Grotesque or two – was watching, Arthur went out the back door and got on his bike.
Provided he wasn’t held up at a quarantine checkpoint, it would only take ten minutes to ride over to where the House had been. If it had reappeared, he would try to get in through Monday’s Postern or maybe even the Front Door, if he could find it.
If it wasn’t there, he would have to think of something else. Each minute gave the Grotesques more time to do something financially horrible to his family, or his neighbours, or…
Arthur pushed off hard and accelerated out the drive, pedalling furiously for a minute, until his wheezing warned him to ease off.
Behind him, the SOLD sign on his front lawn shivered and dug itself a little further in.
The House was gone. At least, its manifestation in Arthur’s world had not returned. Instead of a vast edifice of mixed-up architecture, there were only the usual suburban houses, with their lawns and garages.
Arthur rode his bike around several blocks, hoping some trace of the House remained. If there was just one of its strange outbuildings or even a stretch of the white marble wall that surrounded the House, he felt he could somehow get inside. But there was nothing; no sign at all that the House had ever been there.
He felt strange riding around, looking for something that wasn’t there, a feeling made stronger because the streets were deserted. Though the quarantine had been slightly relaxed inside the city, most people were sensibly staying at home with their doors and windows shut. Arthur was passed by only one car on the road, and that was an ambulance. Arthur looked the other way, in case it was the same ambulance he’d escaped from the day before. He was thankful it didn’t slow down or stop.
As he finished his circumnavigation of the last block, Arthur began to feel panicky. Time was slipping away. It was already 11.15. He only had forty-five minutes to find some way to enter the House, but he had no idea how he was going to do that.
The sight of several moss-covered garden steps reminded him of the Improbable Stair. That bizarre stairway went from everywhere and everywhen, through the House and the Secondary Realms. But the Stair was dangerous and there was a good chance of ending up somewhere he really didn’t want to be. It wasn’t worth trying the Stair unless he must. Even then, he probably wouldn’t be able to enter it without the Key.
There had to be another way. Perhaps if he could track down the Grotesques’ headquarters, he could find their doorway back to the House—
Something moved at the corner of his eye. Arthur twisted his head around, immediately alert. There was something in the movement he didn’t like. Something that gave him a slight electric tingle across the back of his neck and up behind his ears.
There it was again – something flitting across the garden of the house opposite. Moving from the letterbox to the tree, from the tree to the car in the driveway.
Arthur put one foot on the pedal, ready to move off, and watched. Nothing happened for a minute. Everything was quiet, save for the constant drone of the distant helicopters patrolling the perimeter of the city.
It moved again, and this time Arthur saw it dash from behind the car to a fire hydrant. Something about the size and shape of a rabbit, but one made of pale pink jelly-like flesh that changed and rippled as it moved.
Arthur got off his bike, laid it down and got out the Atlas, readying himself for its explosive opening. He didn’t like the look of this