The World House (39 page)

  "This is a customer service announcement: the 10.15 to 1934 is delayed due to a breakdown in causality affecting all routes to to the 1930s. Passengers are advised to take the 10.34 to 1929 and make their own arrangements from there."

  The announcement board was a never-ending flutter of signage, times and destinations altering almost at random as it tried to keep track of the traffic to and from the infinite line of platforms. An aged ghost of a man stood vacantly behind his bucket of wilting blooms, perpetually working his way along a stick-thin roll-up cigarette. The newspaper seller, unfazed by the presence of a 1937 Morgan Tourer amongst the day's news, hollered headlines from history as his placard switched from one event to another: "Elvis Presley found dead, full story inside!", "Archduke Ferdinand assassinated, fears of war loom!", "Fog in channel, Continent isolated!" A pair of prostitutes eyed each other's fishnets for ladders and touched up their make-up in the reflective surface of a bakery window while the guards looked on and wondered if they might get a staff discount. The queues at the ticket office grew longer and longer, Japanese students shunting their suitcases in front of them like reluctant children as they read their travel guides and plotted the day's photo opportunities.

  In the middle of it all, the prisoner stretched his borrowed skin and savoured the feeling of freedom. Nearly there, he thought to himself, nearly there.

 

Whitstable had been thrashing around in a wardrobe when the change came, convinced he had heard the sound of a child's voice within. There was nothing to be found but spare bedlinen and mothballs but he took his anger out on them anyway, only stopping as he felt the house shift as if hit by an earthquake. The wardrobe doors banged shut behind him and sent him face first into a pile of woollen blankets. Before he had time to slash holes in them with the piece of broken mirror, the wardrobe altered around him, light flooding the confined space. When he regained his vision it was to find himself revolving on the plastic stool inside a photo-booth. The flashing camera took four shots of his angry forehead as he tried to get his balance. He peeled aside the bright orange curtain and then immediately dropped it back into place while he thought about what he had seen. The station – bar its surrealistic touches – was all too familiar from the days when he had commuted for work, but that didn't make its sudden presence right next to him any less alarming.

  He took another look, saw the translucent passengers as they hurried past his booth, took in the impossibly large announcement board and the oldfashioned car parked on the opposite side of the concourse. Then his eyes fell on something familiar, something that made him realise today would be a good day indeed.

  "Fucking
kill
you!" he chuckled.

 

"I always was good at emergency stops," said Miles. "All of my test examiners said so."

  "We need to get over there!" insisted Ashe, pushing against Miles' seat to hurry him along.

  Miles and Carruthers got out of the car and lifted forward their seats to release the other two. Ashe immediately began running, knowing there were only moments left.

  Around him the destruction had far from ceased. The station, so fresh and new, was corrupting already. Metal supports creaked over his head. The plate-glass window of a creperie shattered and poured itself on to the trembling floor tiles. "Faster, faster, faster!" he shouted, angry at himself for getting so damned old.

  "Fucking
kill
you!" Whitstable screamed, tearing out of the photo booth on the opposite arm of the concourse, his makeshift knife held high above his head as he sprinted towards Sophie, eager to plunge its sharp point into her stupid face. He delighted in the sound of breaking glass and grinding metal; to him it was a round of applause, an appreciative cheer as he charged towards the stupid little bitch. "Fucking
kill
you!"

  Sophie was still sitting cross-legged on the floor, her eyes closed and her thoughts elsewhere. If she was at all aware of the changes occurring around them she gave no sign, gently humming as she continued to talk to the house. Whitstable was only feet away, Alan still vacant and unable to move, Chester slumped at his feet.

  The prisoner had no intention of helping; he was happy simply to watch, one final little game before he took his leave.

  Ashe ignored the stab of pain in his ribs, a stitch threatening to slow him down even as Whitstable was only feet away. He remembered the future so clearly: the parting of skin, the arc of arterial blood, the end of anything worth a shit. He had to do this, had to. He realised he was roaring at them, as he forced his legs to move faster and faster.

  Whitstable grabbed Sophie's hair, yanking her head back to expose her throat, and was slashing down with the glass as two shots rang out. The first hit him in the shoulder, making him drop the knife. The second removed a couple of inches from the right-hand side of his head. A red spray of bone and meat painted itself across a bank of ATMs behind him. He dropped to the ground and thrashed like a beached fish, arms and legs slapping the ground as his brain misfired. One more shot made him lie still. Sophie lay whimpering on the floor.

  Ashe stared at his handiwork for a moment, aware that he should feel some emotion at having shot a man. He felt nothing. Perhaps this wasn't his first time…

  "Excellent shot, sir!" said the prisoner. "And with that, the final round of our game is done."

 

 

 

The prisoner reached into his pocket, pulled out the wooden box and threw it to Ashe. Ashe caught it and, almost as an afterthought, emptied the rest of the bullets into the prisoner's chest. "Yes…" said the prisoner, glancing down at the holes in his tank top, "that was a bit pointless, wasn't it?"

  "Can't blame a guy for trying."

  "I suppose not."

  "Well, as long as it's out of your system now I'll give you your orders."

  "I knew it!" said Penelope as the rest of them caught up, "he's working for him."

  "I certainly am not," Ashe replied, looking at the prisoner. "What the hell makes you think I'll follow any orders from you?'

  "From what you said earlier I rather think he can make us do whatever he wishes," said Carruthers.

  "Well," said Miles, stepping protectively in front of Penelope, "we'll see about that."

  The prisoner shrugged. "Your man has a point, though in the spirit of fairness I should say that my abilities are somewhat limited at the moment. Give me a little time and a proper reality to sink my teeth into and… well, I imagine I could whip up an apocalypse in no time, but right now…"

  "Bastard!" Tom appeared from behind them, pushed past Ashe and dived on to the unconscious Chester. He put his hands around his throat and began to squeeze.

  "I'd stop him if I were you," said the prisoner to Ashe, "unless you fancy winking out of existence in a few seconds' time – something that would be catastrophic for all of you, I hasten to add."

  Ashe grabbed Tom and, with Miles' help, they pulled him off the unresponsive Chester.

  "Motherfucker killed Elise and Pablo!" Tom shouted. "
Motherfucker!"

  The prisoner smiled. "Young love," he sighed and, with a wink, sent Tom to sleep in Miles' arms.

  "Right," the prisoner said, looking around, "anyone else? Any last-minute rescues or attempts at revenge? No? Excellent, I have a train to catch." He turned back to Ashe. "All of you are now utterly tied into this chronology," he said, "so I advise you to hear me out before attempting any more pointless acts of heroism."

  In the far corner of the concourse there was a rumbling noise followed by a shower of glass as a section of the roof fell in.

  "Hmm," said the prisoner, "the house really is suffering, isn't it?" He turned back to his audience. "No matter, I'm sure you'll manage to stabilise things."

  "We'll manage?" asked Penelope.

  "Yes, my dear, it's up to you now to get everything back on track. Any reality can take a few paradoxes as a tap on the chin, but this one needs stabilising as fast as you can before the whole lot comes crumbling down. And as much as that may seem an attractive proposition, I should make clear that if this place goes it'll take the human race with it. The connection runs both ways, you see. This place feeds off them and they in turn are connected to it. You know how the events in the library extended into 'the real world' – just look at poor Alan here, his head's screwed more than a dockyard hooker when the Navy's home."

  "Nice," said Miles.

  "One tries." The prisoner pointed at Ashe. "You will agree that if it were not for your timely intervention then Sophie would be dead?"

  "Yeah," said Ashe, looking at the body of Whitstable, "I guess that's true."

  "Then you need to take that box and make sure it gets to the right people. Without the help of young Tom and the sadly departed Pablo and Elise, you would have died in the cellars of this house. You need to ensure their past selves receive the box and use it, otherwise you will cease to exist. Alongside you will go Sophie and…" he looked at Miles, Penelope and Carruthers "…correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't there some bit of ghastliness with a polar bear?"

  "Yes," said Carruthers, "Ashe shot it, otherwise it would have most certainly killed one, maybe all of us."

  "But without Ashe we would never have been there in the first place," said Miles. "He was the one who found the doorway through to that room."

  "Causality, eh?" said the prisoner. "It's a bitch."

  "Forgive me for speaking on everyone's behalf here," said Carruthers, "but what effect in real terms would our deaths actually cause? Don't get me wrong, I'm rather fond of my continued existence, but even I'm not so frightful an egomaniac as to think the survival of everything depends on it."

  "But it does!" the prisoner beamed. "So feel proud. There are countless people who have appeared here…" he turned to Ashe, a point suddenly occurring to him "…and mark that you return the box somewhere suitably useful in order for them to always have done so – but you were the key players," he continued to the rest of them, "all of you. You interacted with Alan here and throughly embedded yourselves into the chain of events that leads us to this point. Now you just need to travel these lines… " – he gestured over his shoulder at the platforms – "and ensure that everything occurs as it should.

  "If you don't, this place will breathe its last and the rest of your species with it. And none of us want that. Not even me. If humanity is to be wiped out then I wish to get my hands dirty doing so. And that said…" He pulled a mackintosh and trilby out of the air, put them on and tipped his hat at a suitably jolly angle. "I must catch my train."

  He flipped Chester up on to his shoulder as if the man weighed nothing more than a small holdall and marched towards one of the platforms.

  "Don't worry about this one," he called behind him, "I'll get him to his destination for you. Never let it be said I don't do my bit." And with that he vanished from sight, a hail of crumbling plaster raining down in his wake as a section of the platform wall gave way.

  "We can't just let him go, surely?" asked Miles.

  "Darling," said Penelope, "if you have the superhuman abilities it would take to stop him then feel free to give chase, otherwise I can't see we have much choice."

  "She's right," said Ashe. "We're all bound into this now, and he's left us with our hands full." He looked up at the cracking roof. "So let's get to work."

 
 
 

 
 
 

Guy Adams trained and worked as an actor for twelve years before becoming a full-time writer. If nothing else this proves he has no concept of a sensible career. He mugged someone on
Emmerdale,
performed a dance routine as Hitler, and spent eighteen months touring his own comedy material around clubs and theatres.

  He is the author of the best-selling
Rules of Modern
Policing: 1973 Edition
, a spoof police manual "written by" DCI Gene Hunt of
Life On Mars
. Guy has also written a two-volume series companion to the show; a Torchwood novel,
The House That Jack Built
; and
The
Case Notes of Sherlock Holmes
, a fictional facsimile of a scrapbook kept by Doctor John Watson. He is the current chair of the British Fantasy Society.

 

 

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Open the box

 

An Angry Robot paperback original 2010 1

 

Copyright © Guy Adams 2010

 

Guy Adams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

 

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

 

ISBN: 978 0 85766 037 4 

EBook ISBN: 978 0 85766 038 1

 

Set in Meridien by Argh! Nottingham

 

Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD.

 

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