The World House (25 page)

  "No problem at all," Chester replied with a smile, "I was on my way to the kitchen to stock up on food – can't say I expected company."

  "Ah…" Tom shifted awkwardly, "we may have broken the dumb waiter if that was your ride."

  "It is because he is so fat," explained Pablo, pointing at the stick-thin Tom without a hint of sarcasm.

  "Well, that might complicate things in future," Chester admitted,."I guess we'll just have to hope there's another way in there."

  "How long have you been here?" asked Elise. "You're obviously an old hand at all this."

  "A couple of months," Chester replied. "I've been staying on the move, spending a lot of time in the cellars. Grim it may be but at least you can move around easily. There's elevators and passageways everywhere that lead up to the house."

  "Great, we love the house" said Tom, "especially the killer snakes and the cannibal in the kitchen… hey, you bump into him?"

  "Little feller? Moustache? Yeah… I met him." Chester held up the gun. "I dissuaded him from feeling too hungry around me."

  "We found a frying pan did the same trick," Tom admitted, "though the bastard stuck me a good one in the leg."

  "Noticed you were limping. Lucky escape, huh?"

  "Not as lucky as these two without bleeding thighs and shooting pains whenever they walk."

  "He's a baby about it," said Elise with a wink.

  "Always making with the moanings," Pablo added, "like a kind of girl."

  "Still," said Chester, grinning at Tom, "with such good friends it can't have been too bad?"

  "Walk in the park, feel free to shoot them at any time."

  Chester smiled, a thick veneer of charm that would hide anything. "Shall we get moving?" he suggested "I have, well… guess you could call it a camp, about an hour away, we could gather up my stuff and travel on together."

  "Sounds like a plan," said Elise. "Please tell me you know there's a way out of here…"

  "Oh, I'm sure there must be. If you can get in, you can get out, right?"

  "If you say so," Elise replied. "We haven't seen much of the place but it all seems designed to make your stay permanent."

  "This place is like one of those old commercial warehouses," said Tom, as they made their way through several brick arches and countless open areas. "You know, those dockland dives you see in old movies? The kind of place you expect smugglers to be working from until The Shadow turns up and shoots 'em all."

  "'Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?'" Chester quipped. "The cellars stretch on like you wouldn't believe. You could build a whole city down here if it wasn't for the wildlife."

  "Please tell me he didn't just say 'wildlife'?" Elise sighed, looking around nervously as they crossed the damp concrete of another chamber before entering a winding tunnel to the next section.

  "It minds its own business for the most part," said Chester reassuringly, "but you're never far from something unpleasant." He stopped walking and held his hand up for silence. "Listen."

  They stood still, the flickering fire from the sconces the only noise they could hear. Then – as either their ears became more sensitive or the creatures around them grew braver – they began to discern other sounds. The faint chattering of insects; the breathy sigh of something fat pulling itself along a wet concrete floor; a rustling of chitinous body parts and the patter of numerous pin-thin legs. Chester reached for one of the torches in the wall, sliding it carefully from its bracket and flinging it towards the darkness at the far end of the chamber. Lit briefly, a group of what appeared to be mammoth woodlice scurried across the brick wall, their white carapaces glittering as they retreated from the light.

  "Oh great," said Pablo, "is bugs."

  "Bugs, rats, worms, some kind of weird crab things…" Chester shrugged. "They're all down here with us."

  "Well, hey," said Tom, "if we can't get back to the kitchen there's always worm steaks."

  "I wouldn't like to try and catch one," Chester admitted. "Even with the gun, the things get riled when you move close – defending themselves, I guess. Some of the caterpillars have mouthes on them perfect for chewing a man's hand off."

  They carried on walking, the sound of running water growing louder as they passed through yet another tunnel.

  "There some kind of river down here?" Elise asked.

  "There's a whole network of them," Chester said, "sewerage canals, I guess, though they don't smell too bad. We'll be travelling on them in a minute."

  "You have a boat?" Pablo asked.

  "A little motorboat, yeah. I found it moored up when I first got down here, wouldn't be without it." No sooner had Chester spoken than they entered another section, the rushing canal mere feet away. The boat was tethered up, bobbing impatiently on the water.

  "All aboard," Chester said, untying the rope and beckoning the others to climb in. The boat rocked as Tom clambered in, trying not to put all his weight on his wounded leg. Elise steadied him before he fell overboard. "Thanks," he muttered. "A swim in this is about all I need to polish the day off."

  "You are not used to water," said Pablo, hopping in and sitting down at the front.

  "I'm used to it just fine, even drunk a glass or two in my time."

  "Now that I find hard to believe," Elise joked as Chester climbed aboard, flung the rope on to the deck and turned on the ignition.

  "It doesn't go that fast," he said, "but it sure beats walking."

  The boat chugged along the canal, dipping into a low tunnel that threw the throaty sound of the engine back at them. "We should pick up my stuff and then get straight on," suggested Chester. "Maybe find some food from somewhere. There's a jungle in the greenhouse, there must be something there worth eating."

  "Jungle in the greenhouse," Elise repeated, "cannibals in the kitchen, snakes and ladders in the nursery, God save us from the men's room."

  The boat re-emerged into open space, moving through a cavernous chamber with a single sack marked "almonds" in the centre of it.

  "Nut stocks getting low," Tom commented as they dipped back into a tunnel.

  The geography of the cellars was as skewed as everywhere else; the canal twisted in a manner that should have seen it bending back on itself and yet somehow it never crossed its own path. They passed through chambers of varying sizes, most empty, some home to scurrying insects, some containing boxes or sacks. One was set out like a bathroom: steel bath and stand-alone shower, toilet, bidet and sink, all unplumbed and wrapped in cobwebs.

  "You find anything of use down here?" Tom asked.

  "Sometimes," Chester replied, "but mostly it's just junk. I found a big crate of torches, for example, but no batteries to go in them. More cutlery than an army would know what to do with… a whole bunch of pink shirts about six sizes too big for me… weird stuff, no rhyme or reason to it."

  "That's this place all over, isn't it?" said Elise.

  "Oh no, the house has a purpose, I'm quite sure of that," Chester replied. "I refuse to believe there's not some underlying reason for every room or corridor. This isn't a natural occurrence, it's been built… though God knows how, the physics is screwy as hell… still, someone or something has made this place. Why? Got to be a reason."

  "Everywhere's designed to screw with you," said Tom, "like the Snakes and Ladders, it was a game… not a very groovy one but there to test the poor mooks who stumbled on to it."

  "Test or kill?" asked Chester. "I'd say they were more defences than games. Everything's out to kill you."

  "Is true," Pablo agreed, "is not good but is true."

  "You know how many people I've met here before you three?" Chester asked.

  "Including Chef Boyardee?" Tom replied, " I don't know… if we're here there must be plenty more."

  "Four people and I know for a fact that two of those are dead because I saw it happen – never trust the broom cupboards in this place. Still, as you say, there must be one hell of a lot of people who end up here – we did, right? So where are they all? Dead, that's where. I reckon most folk are toes up within a few hours of arriving here."

  "But why bring people here just to kill them?" Elise asked. "Maybe I'm just not enough of a psycho but that doesn't make sense to me."

  "I don't know," said Chester, "I guess it could just be sport, something to amuse whoever built the place. Either that or it's just a bad design."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning the box is designed to bring someone in particular here – someone specific – but it can't pick or choose so it just keeps grabbing until it has what it needs. Kind of like fishing for tuna with a net the size of Cleveland: you'll get your tuna but you'll get a hell of a lot of other stuff as well."

  "The scattershot method," said Elise.

  "Exactly. It's just a theory, of course, but it's logical, and however illogical this place may seem there's a point underneath it all somewhere. And if there's a point there's ultimately logic…"

  "You're kind of an analytical feller, ain't you?" said Tom with a grin.

  "I've thought about it a lot," Chester admitted. "I like to know what I'm dealing with in life. Besides, if all of this is being done for a reason there must be something to gain, and I'm a man that never gets tired of gain." He smiled unselfconsciously as the boat vanished into a tunnel. The roof was particularly low, only just allowing clearance for the boat and its passengers. The sides scuffed against the wall as they pushed their way through the darkness. After a moment, the sound of wood against brick increased as the tunnel narrowed even further. Tom, the tallest, had to duck as the roof began to knock his head.

  "Wrong turn, you think?" he said, stooping so that he didn't graze his scalp.

  "It's like this sometimes," Chester admitted, "the house gets all turned around and the routes change. We'll just have to work our way back." He cut the accelerator and applied reverse power, and after a few seconds the boat began to scuff the sides again.

  "Now how is that possible?" asked Elise. "You telling me the tunnel has narrowed since we've been through it?"

  "I told you, this sort of thing happens," said Chester. "The house likes to shuffle itself around. It rights itself in the end."

  "I hope so as we very stuck!" said Pablo.

  Chester killed the engine and the boat bobbed in the small middle section where, for now, it continued to fit. "Let's just hope this bit doesn't shrink," he said.

  "Oh, yeah," said Tom, still hunched, "because it's bound to be the one tiny section that stays wide enough for us to move in… this from Mr. Logic."

  As they were speaking the boat began to bounce off the edges. "It get less wide here too!" Pablo shouted.

  "What if it gets too narrow to fit us, let alone the boat?" Elise said. "We need to get out of here, swim back to the last open section."

  "I'm not abandoning the boat," Chester insisted.

  "Don't be stupid," she replied, "either it'll get crushed in here or it won't. There's nothing you're going to be able do about it one way or the other. There's sure as hell no point sitting around to watch it happen."

  "I am not stupid!" Chester shouted, his charm giving way to a childish anger now that he was losing control of the situation.

  "Keep it chilly, Chester," said Tom, "the lady's got a point."

  Chester controlled himself. "You're right," he admitted, "sorry I snapped."

  "Don't worry about it," Elise answered, "but I'm serious that we need to move." She reached out her hands. "The tunnel's about the same size as the boat now and shrinking all the time."

  "Oh, I hope this not smell," said Pablo, clambering off the stern of the boat and dropping into the water. "It fine," he said, splashing around, "bit cool but fine."

  Tom rolled in afterwards, hitting the water with a shocked roar. "'Bit cool', he says! It's colder than a well-digger's ass."

  Elise came next and finally Chester. They began to swim back the way they had come, the creaking of the compressed boat behind them filling the tunnel.

  "Maybe it'll be OK," said Elise, "and we can swim back to it?" There was a loud cracking noise as the wood and fibreglass split and the boat began to fold in on itself.

  "It not all right," said Pablo, swimming faster.

  The further they went, the narrower the tunnel became. Tom's fingertips began brushing the walls on either side, forcing him to change stroke.

  "We're not going to get clear," said Elise. All four of them were performing a thrashing doggy paddle; the tunnel was no wider than the breadth of their shoulders.

  "Keep moving!" Tom shouted, turning on his side as the tunnel narrowed further.

  It became harder and harder to move. All four of them were sideways on, squeezed tightly by the brick. Suddenly, the wall stopped moving. They floated there in relieved silence for a few seconds.

  "How lucky are we, eh?" said Tom. "An inch more and I'd be popped all over this damn place."

  "Another one of Chester's dead unfortunates."

  "Shush," Pablo hissed, "there is something in here with us."

  "Oh, fuck off…" Tom whined, "this is not even funny any more."

  They listened and, true enough, there was the sound of something moving through the water from the direction they had come.

  "Well, at least there's one thing we know about whatever it is," said Elise.

  "Which is?" Chester asked.

"Given the size of the tunnel it ain't huge."

  They continued pulling themselves towards the entrance. Over the sound of their own splashing they could hear whatever it was that pursued them: it sounded like a wet sound of applause, a rippled clapping.