Slade House (19 page)

Marinus can only point, weakly, towards the house.

“Uh-huh. A big house. Large as life. As real as we are.”

Our guest turns to the aperture, hidden by camellias.

“Don't worry. It's stable. We won't get locked in.”

The Cautious Shrink crouches and peers back out into Slade Alley. My phone is ready to call the Blackwatermen, but Marinus soon comes back, takes off her beret and puts her beret back on, just to buy a little time, I think. “I found an old postcard in Fred Pink's notes,” she says in a faltering voice. “Of Slade House. That”—she looks at the old rectory—“that's it. But…I
checked
the council archives, Ordnance Survey, Google Street View. Slade House isn't here. And even if it were, there's no space for it to fit between Westwood Road and Cranbury Avenue. It's not here. It can't be. But it's here.”

“It's a conundrum, I agree, unless Fred Pink was,” I whisper, “y'know, Doc…
right
. As in, not bug-fuck crazy after all.”

A pigeon is heard but not seen in the damson trees.

Marinus looks at me to see if I heard it too.

I can't help but have Bombadil smile. “A pigeon.”

Marinus bites her thumb and examines the bite mark.

“It's not a dream,” I tell her. “You're insulting the orison.”

Marinus plucks a camellia leaf, bites that and examines it.

She lobs a stone at the sundial. It smacks it, stonily.

Marinus presses her hand on the dewy grass. It leaves a print. “Holy hell.” She looks at me. “It's all real, isn't it?”

“In its local, enclosed, pocket, bubble, orison way. Yes.”

The Mighty Shrink stands up again, puts her hands together as if in prayer, covers her nose and mouth for a few seconds, then shoves her hands into her flying jacket. “My patients at Dawkins, in Toronto, in Vancouver…my abductee-fantasists…were they all…in fact—
right
? For, for, for experiencing
this,
did I, did I—did I sign off on restraint orders and dose them to the gills with antipsychotic drugs?”

We're at a delicate stage. I need to coax Marinus up to the house without her either sensing a trap, or being crushed by remorse, or being spooked into running for the exit. “Look, real orisons are rare. Less than a single percent of your patients are authentic astronauts. The others, no—they needed the drugs, they needed your help. Climb down off that cross, Doc. It's not for you.”

“One percent is still…too many.” Marinus bites her lower lip and shakes her head. “So much for ‘First, do no harm.' ”

“Orisons aren't covered at medical college. Sure, you'll never get this printed in peer-review journals, like, but if you want to help your patients, look around. Explore. Observe. You're a flexible thinker. That's why I chose you.”

Marinus lets my words sink in. She takes a few steps over the lawn, looking up at the blank wet white sky. “Fred Pink—who until two minutes ago, I—I thought was delusional—Fred Pink thought Slade House was dangerous. Is it?”

I have Bombadil unzip his ski jacket. “I don't think so, no.”

“But we—Christ, I can't believe I'm saying this—we just stepped from our reality into another. Didn't we?”

I feign mild disappointment at Marinus's timidity. “We're astronauts; and yeah, it's a riskier hobby than collecting Lego figurines. Now as it happens, I suspect Slade House is a deserted orison running on autopilot and nobody's set foot here for a very long time. But if you'd feel safer going back to your consultancy at Dawkins, dosing up future Fred Pinks on Izunolethe and antidepressants and whatever and visiting them in padded cells, knowing that
you
were the first and last clinical psychiatrist to chicken out of exploring a real live orison, then who could blame you? Have a safe drive home, Doc.” I walk off towards the sundial.

“Bombadil.” Marinus's footsteps hurry after me. “Wait!”

Her professional conscience is a collar. I hold the leash.

Droplets of mist cling to the lavender. Lavender, I remember, was one of the happier scents of Jonah's and my childhood on the Swaffham estate in Norfolk, where the Chetwynd-Pitts' tenant farmers grew several acres of the flowers for the London perfumeries. I pause while Marinus pinches and sniffs. “Smells like the real thing,” she says, “but why's everything turning black-and-white? The camellias were red and pink but this lavender's gray. Those roses are monochrome.”

I know exactly why: after eighteen years without fresh voltage, our operandi is now too drained to sustain color reliably. “Decay,” I answer with a half-truth. “I'm more sure than ever the Grayer twins have gone for good. The fog's another sign. We can relax a little, Doc. We're visiting a ruin.”

Looking reassured, Marinus unwinds her keffiyeh. “Human beings created this place? Every pebble, every twig, every droplet of mist, every blade of grass? Every atom?” She shakes her head. “It's like a…divine act.”

“I'd lay off the particle physics, Doc, if I were you. But yeah, it's people and not gods, if that's what you're getting at. If it helps, think of orisons as set designs for a theater. Careful, a bramble's got you.”

Marinus unpicks it from the hem of her coat. “Ouch. The thorns are real, too. How many of these places have you visited?”

I draw on Bombadil's genuine experiences. “This is number three. First was on the island of Iona, in the Scottish Hebrides. Quite a well-known orison, that one. Relatively, anyway, like. It was awesome. It's an apse in the abbey that's not there unless you know where and when to slip through a certain archway. The time disparity was
chronic,
mind. When I got back after only a day away, two whole years'd passed and Mum'd got remarried to a divorced Microsoft rep.”

“That's”—the Mighty Shrink searches for words—“incredible.”

“I frickin' know it's incredible!
Microsoft!
My second orison was more hardcore. Its aperture was in a high school for the arts in Santa Fe. Yoyo, an astronaut from Cedar Rapids, tracked it down. It was in a cleaning cupboard.”

Marinus asks, “What makes a ‘hardcore' orison different from the one on Iona, or this one?”

“Unhappy endings. Yoyo never came out.”

Marinus stops. “He
died
in there?”

“Well, no, he chose to stay inside—and he's still there, as far as I know—but its creator
was
in residence and he had a bad-ass Jehovah complex. Named his little world Milk and Honey. When I wanted to leave he accused me of apostasy and tried to, uh, kill me. 'Nother story, all that. But all
this
”—I have Bombadil gesture about us—“peace and quiet is a world away from that. Look, wild strawberries.” The strawberries are the banjax that Jonah and I agreed to feed our guest. If I can get Marinus to eat one now, it'll save having to create a suborison inside the house. I pick a couple of the fatter fruits and pop one into my mouth. “
Juicy.
Try one.”

Marinus's hand begins to rise, but drops down. “Maybe not.”

Damn it. Damn her. I have Bombadil grin. “Scared?”

The Mighty Shrink looks cagey. “Mildly superstitious. In all the tales, the myths, the rule is, if you eat or drink anything—pomegranate seeds, faerie wine, whatever—the place has a hold on you.”

Inwardly, I curse. “ ‘Myths,' Doc? Are myths science?”

“When I'm in doubt—as I am now—I ask myself, ‘What would Carl Jung do?'—and act accordingly. Call it a gut instinct.”

If I push the banjax too hard, she'll grow suspicious. Jonah will just have to muster the voltage for a suborison. “Suit yourself,” I say, and eat the other strawberry. If Marinus weren't so engifted, I could have just suasioned her to eat it; but then if she weren't so engifted, her soul would be useless to us and she wouldn't be here. “Awesome. You don't know what you're missing.”

The wisteria's twisted boughs are dripping with blooms, never mind that it's October in the world outside. But when Marinus reaches up to touch the flowers, her hand passes clean through. The only vivid colors left in the orison now are the dyes in the clothes we came in with. Clothes. I'm nagged by the thought that I've missed something…What about? Clothes—possessions—what? It was a similarly nagging thought that had tried to warn me before Sally Timms attacked Jonah nine years ago, but I didn't listen closely enough. If Jonah weren't having trouble maintaining the orison I'd telegram him to pause it so I could stop and figure out what's bothering me. As we emerge onto the upper lawn, a black-and-white peacock darting across our path just fades into the air, leaving a dying trail of
Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
Luckily Marinus was distracted by the ginkgo tree looming up far too quickly for our cautious amble. “This is as far as I came yesterday,” I say, and stop; thousands of fallen leaves fall upwards from the gray lawn, all at once, and attach themselves to the tree. Marinus is enchanted by the sight, but I feel a queasiness in Bombadil's stomach: this is serious malprojection, not whimsy. Jonah's losing control of the orison. “It's like a dream in here,” says Marinus.

My brother telegrams me:
Get her inside, it's collapsing.

Easier said than done. “Let's look inside,” I tell our guest.

“In
there
? The house itself? Are you sure that's wise?”

“Yeah,” I have Bombadil say. “Why ever not?”

An anxious silence is followed by a worried “Why?”

I appeal to a force that is stronger than our guest's cowardice. “Look, Doc, I didn't want to raise any false hopes before, but there's a chance of finding Fred Pink alive in there.” I look at the upper windows.

“Alive? After nine years? Are you sure?”

Are you inside yet, sister?
telegrams Jonah.
Hurry!

“There are no certainties when it comes to orisons, Doc,” I reply. “But time ran differently in the Iona orison, and Milk and Honey was habitable, so I think it's possible. Don't we owe it to Fred Pink to give the place the once-over at least? It's the clues he left you that brought us here today, after all.”

The Guilty Shrink takes the bait. “Then yes. If there's even a chance of finding him alive, let's go.” Marinus strides over the last lawn towards Slade House, but when she looks back at me she looks past me and her eyes go wide: “Bombadil!”

I turn around and see the end of the garden is erasing itself.

“What
is
it?” asks Marinus. “How do we get out?”

A curved wall of nothing is uncreating the garden as the orison collapses in on itself. I thought that by finding a guest as voltaically rich as Marinus and bringing her here, my brother, our lacuna and the operandi were as good as saved. I see now that I may be too late. “Only fog, Doc. No need to get panicky.”

“Fog? But surely…I mean look at how quickly it's—”

“Orison fog looks like that. Saw it in Iona, too.” I mustn't let Marinus run out into the wall of nonexistence like a headless chicken. I stride on, calmly. “Trust me, Doc. Come on. Hey—would I be this laid-back if there was anything to worry about?”

The steps up to Slade House are mossy and stained, the once-proud door is peeling and rotten and the knocker is chewed by rust and time. I open the door and hustle Marinus inside. Only thirty paces away, the ginkgo tree is devoured by the shrinking orison. I close the door behind us and telegram Jonah,
We're in
. We hear a noise like dragged furniture and my ears pop as the orison molds itself to the outside of the house. When I look out again through the mullioned window in the door, nothingness stares back. Blankness is a horror. “What was that noise?” whispers Marinus.

“Thunder. The weather in here's been neglected for so long, it's all scrambled up. Fog, storms. Blazing sunshine'll be next up.”

“Oh,” says the Mighty Shrink, uncertainly. Autumn leaves are strewn over the chessboard tiles in the hallway. Our old Czech housekeeper would be appalled by this version of the Slade House she kept so spick-and-span in Jonah's and my corporeal days. The coving is festooned with spiderwebs, the doors are hanging off their hinges, and the paneling up the stairs is wormy and flaking. “What now?” asks the Mighty Shrink. “Should we search the ground floor, or—”

This time the thunder wallops the walls. They shudder.

Marinus touches her ears. “God, did you feel that?”

Brother,
I telegram,
we're inside—what's wrong?

A dying operandi is what's wrong!
Jonah sounds frantic.
The house is buckling. Get the guest to the lacuna. Now.

“It's the atmospherics,” I reassure Marinus. “Quite normal.”

Call downstairs,
I instruct Jonah.

Pregnant pause, then:
What are you talking about?

Pretend you're Fred Pink, trapped, and call downstairs
.

Another pause. Jonah asks,
What did he sound like?

You played him last Open Day! English, gruff
.

“Are you sure it's normal, Bombadil?” Marinus is afraid.

“There was a barometer in Milk and Honey,” I ad-lib, “that—”

We hear something. Marinus holds up a finger and looks up the stairs, whispering, “I heard someone. Did you?” I look vague and we listen. Nothing. Mile-thick nothing. Marinus begins to lower her finger, and then we hear Fred Pink's elderly, shaky voice: “Hello? Is anyone there? Hello?”

The Fearless Shrink calls out: “Mr. Pink? Is that you?”

“Yes—yes! I—I—I—I've had a little fall. Upstairs. Please…”

“We'll be right with you!” Without a glance, Marinus is gone, climbing two steps at a time. For the first time since the aperture, I feel properly in control. I have Bombadil follow in Marinus's wake, relieved by how the multilingual psychiatrist with a PhD—first class—from Columbus State University is so easily codded by my brother crying wolf. The carpet is threadbare, the dust has formed a light crust, and when we reach the little landing, the grandfather clock is silent and its face is too scabby to read. Similarly, the portraits of our early guests are leprous with mold, and Marinus, befuddled by the strangest hour of her life, flies past them without a first glance, let alone a second. The Shrink in Shining Armor sees the pale door at the top of the stairs and launches herself up again, stepping over the desiccated body of an owl. As I pass Sally Timms's portrait, I slap her, a gesture as petty as it is pointless. She caused this trouble, or her “ghost” did. By spiking my brother's throat at the vital second, she stopped us feeding the operandi with her sister Freya's soul, and reduced us to psychovoltaic pauperdom. Which ends today! I collide with Marinus's back, just a few steps short of the pale door, next to Freya Timms's grime-encrusted portrait, and I hiss, “Why've you stopped, Doc?”