The Hidden World Read online

  Mrs Crawford looked startled, but Jessica said, ‘It’s all right. All the flowers talk here.’ Then she turned back to the iris. ‘We’ve brought her here because it’s snowing back in our world, and we can’t get help.’

  ‘Then you must take her to the proper place,’ replied the iris. ‘A place where she will be watched over, and cared for.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Follow us, and we will show you.’

  The irises began to walk off in slow procession, singing as they went, a song that sounded almost like a hymn. Jessica said, ‘I suppose we’d better follow them,’ and so they picked up Epiphany yet again and carried her through the garden, between rows of dark green bushes that smelled strongly of eucalyptus. Each bush was dotted with different flowers from Grannie’s summer dresses, pink, white, yellow and scarlet.

  It wasn’t long before they arrived in a neatly trimmed garden surrounded by hedges. Actually it looked more like a private cemetery than a garden, because there were granite markers and stone crosses, and benches where people could sit and contemplate. In the very center of the garden stood the angel that had presided over the memorial to the Pennington children – or another angel that was very much like her. The irises led them toward her, and then said, ‘You can lay your friend down here.’

  Jessica shaded her eyes against the sunshine and looked up at the angel standing on her plinth. She had such a sad, beautiful face, and long robes, and feathered wings that almost touched the ground. Jessica was about to turn away when the angel opened her eyelids and smiled at her. It gave Jessica such a shock that she felt as if centipedes were scuttling down the back of her neck.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ said the angel. Even though her eyes were open, her eyeballs were as gray as the stone from which she was carved, so that she looked as if she were blind.

  ‘I’m – I’m not afraid,’ said Jessica.

  ‘I will take care of your friend, I promise you, until you can find help.’

  Elica crossed herself, and even Renko was shaken.

  ‘I must warn you, though, that the Stain will soon appear and darken this world forever, and so you must be quick.’

  ‘Don’t you know how to stop it?’

  ‘There is no way to stop the greatest evil that man can ever commit.’

  ‘I have to find the Pennington children, too. I’ve found out how to cure them. I can take them out of here before it’s too late.’

  ‘There may not be time,’ said the angel.

  ‘But I can’t leave them here, can I, if the Stain’s going to take them?’

  ‘You have no choice, my darling, if you wish to leave this world alive.’

  Over the Lake

  Jessica looked up. Already she could see that the sun had passed its zenith, and that the pillowcase-clouds were beginning to thicken. A chilly breeze blew through the garden, and there was a feeling that night was approaching much faster than it should have done.

  ‘I promised,’ she said. ‘They’re waiting for me to come back and save them.’

  ‘Then you will have to travel as far and as fast as you can,’ said the angel. ‘The Stain is already starting to leak out from the east, and you won’t be able to go by the most direct route. If it cuts you off, you will never be able to get back here before the Final Darkness and you, too, will be swallowed up.’

  ‘I can try,’ said Jessica. ‘I have to try.’

  ‘We come with you,’ Elica asserted. ‘We say, ha, Stain! Who cares about you? We spit on you!’

  ‘You might as well spit into the widest and blackest of oceans,’ said the angel. She had such a tired, regretful voice, she sounded as if she were going to cry. ‘The Stain is what happens when evil goes unrepented and unpunished.’

  ‘What evil?’ asked Mrs Crawford. ‘What could possibly have happened here in this house to create something like the Stain?’

  ‘Only the flowers on the wallpaper know what happened,’ said the angel. ‘Only the bronze eyes of the great god Pan and the stone eyes of seraphim.’

  ‘So you know? What did happen?’

  ‘After the Pennington children were carried here, their father and mother did everything they possibly could to make them well again. However, they could never find a medicine that cured them. When year after year went by, and there was still no cure, Martha Pennington began to think that it would be better to give them something to help them to die. She couldn’t bear to think of them being ill forever and ever, and she was terrified about what would happen when she and her husband grew old and passed away. Their children would be castaways, never ageing but eternally ill, in a world inside a wallpaper pattern.

  ‘Her husband disagreed with her furiously. He said that they should never give up hope. But one night, while he was asleep, Martha Pennington passed through the wallpaper and gave each of her children an overdose of a very strong sedative, telling them that it was a miracle cure.

  ‘They had already fallen into a deep coma when her husband woke up and discovered where she had gone and what she had done. He believed that she had killed all five of their children, and he pursued her, past the river, up the hill and back through the overgrown garden. She just managed to get back through the wallpaper, but her husband caught up with her.

  ‘Who witnessed what happened next? Only the shining brass face of the clock on the mantelpiece. Only the roses, irises and blessed thistles. Only the wooden wolves in the closet doors and the shadow cats in the darkest of corners. Only the robes.

  ‘George Pennington caught his wife and stabbed her so many times that she was smothered in red from head to foot. Smothered, as if she had been rolling in red paint.

  ‘To hide her body, he carried her back through the wallpaper and buried her here. There – beyond the hedges and up the hill, where that black tree stands.’

  The black tree was actually made of the wrought-iron curlicues from the gate in Grandpa Willy’s garden. It looked bleak and weird, and the sky behind it was the color of bruised plums.

  ‘What happened to the children?’ asked Mrs Crawford.

  ‘They were in such a deep sleep that George Pennington was convinced they were dead. He made wax impressions out of each of their faces so that he would always be able to remember what they looked like. They didn’t stir, even then. After that he went back through the wallpaper and never came back.’

  ‘Does anybody know what he did then?’

  ‘He took to drinking. In the end he sold the house to your great-grandfather and then – who knows where he went? I am not a recording angel, but I would say that he probably died years ago.’

  ‘So the Stain—’

  ‘The Stain is the evil deed that George Pennington committed, and for which he was never sorry. It has grown into a thing that has a terrible life of its own, and it has grown blacker and blacker over the years, very slowly but very surely, and now it is rising up from under the ground and it will overwhelm everything. All of this pattern, all of this world, all of these hills and seas and gardens. There will be nothing here but darkness and emptiness.’

  ‘What’s the quickest way for us to get to the Pennington children?’ asked Renko.

  The angel lifted one stone wing, and pointed to the west. ‘Go as far as the painted lake, then go north through the forest. On the other side of the forest is a house of mirrors where the children live.’

  ‘A house of mirrors? You mean, like a funhouse?’

  The angel shook her head. ‘You will see when you find it. Bless you, and have a safe journey, and go as fast as your feet can take you.’

  Mrs Crawford said, ‘I’m afraid I’m too old for this kind of thing, Jessica. But I’ll stay here and take care of Piff, and I’ll go back through the wallpaper every now and then to see if the phone lines are back up.’

  Jessica took hold of her hand and gave her a kiss on the cheek. ‘Thank you. You don’t know what a help you’ve been. We could never have done this without you.’

  ‘Go qu
ickly,’ Mrs Crawford urged her. ‘You don’t want that evil Stain catching up with you.’

  They left the cemetery-garden and started to walk up a steep, craggy hill. The crags were pieces of crazy paving from Grandpa Willy’s garden, and the thick olive-green grass from which they protruded were the fringes from Grannie’s green velvet couch.

  The wind whipped their hair. Up above them the sky was slowly changing to a thin, diluted blue, and in the far distance a flock of teaspoons glittered in the fading sunlight. Ahead of them Jessica could see a low range of hills, and off to their right, toward the east, she could still see the curly black tree where the Stain was going to leak out. Behind the tree, the clouds were even darker, and she was sure that she could make out a blackness on top of the hill, as if waste oil were welling through the heather.

  There was something else too. Occasionally she caught a scorched, sweetish smell on the wind, like burning garbage, only worse.

  ‘Do you smell that?’ she asked Renko as she hobbled over the rocks.

  Renko sniffed and said, ‘Yeah. Reminds me of the last time my old man tried to barbecue pork chops. My mom said he should apply for a job at the crematorium.’

  ‘Are you all right, Jessica?’ Elica asked her. ‘Your foot does not hurt?’

  ‘Some, but I’ll make it. I should have brought my stick.’

  They passed a bush that was made out of decorative mahogany banister rails. Renko managed to crack one of the railings off, and gave it to her. ‘There. One stick.’

  The railing was a little too long and a little too heavy, but at least it allowed her to take some of the weight off her ankle. She hopped over the crags like Long John Silver.

  ‘All you need now is an eye-patch and a parrot on your shoulder,’ grinned Renko.

  When they reached the crest of the crags they saw a lake below them, shining in the afternoon sun. Jessica recognized it immediately: it was Lake Waramaug, from an oil painting which hung over the fireplace. Grannie and Grandpa Willy had bought it along with the house. They descended the long slope toward the shoreline, and Jessica could see the cluster of small fishing-boats beside the pier and the wagon standing axle-deep in the water on the lake’s far side.

  The strange thing was, though, that it didn’t feel chilly, like a real lake; and it didn’t even smell like a real lake. There were seven or eight bafflehead ducks in the water, but they weren’t moving. Elica ran toward them, clapping her hands, but they remained exactly where they were, not swimming, not quacking, not trying to fly away.

  Jessica limped nearer to the shoreline. She peered closely at the ducks, and then she knelt down and touched the water itself. ‘It’s not wet,’ she said. ‘It’s painted. This is nothing but a painting.’

  Renko touched it too. Then he leaned over and stroked one of the ducks. ‘How about that? Even the ducks are painted. But they sure look real, don’t they?’

  ‘We’d better keep going,’ said Jessica. ‘Where did the angel say we had to go next?’

  ‘Through the forest. That must be it, on the other side of the lake.’

  ‘It’s going to take us an hour to walk around.’

  ‘Why should it? This isn’t water, it’s oil paint, and what’s more, it’s dry oil paint.’

  ‘Sure.’ Renko held out both hands, one to Jessica and the other to Elica. ‘If we can see teaspoons flying south for the winter, I don’t exactly think that the usual laws of physics apply here, do you?’

  He took one step out onto the water. It made a faint crackling sound, but that was all. ‘See? It supports my weight. Come on, what are you afraid of?’

  Elica put out one pointed toe like a ballet dancer. Then she too stepped onto the water. She took another step, and then another, and did a little pirouette. ‘It is fine! It is quite fine! Jessica, you must come, also!’

  Jessica prodded the water with her banister rail. It felt perfectly solid, except for the slightest ‘give’, like canvas. She swung her good foot out, and then her lame foot, and soon she was following Renko and Elica past the motionless, shiny-feathered ducks, past the fishing-boats, past the pier and the mooring-posts and the jagged black rocks along the shoreline, out across the surface of the lake itself. Jessica looked down and saw that the water had been painted in so many different blues and greens, and even purples, and every now and then they would have to step over a thick crusting of white paint which represented foam.

  ‘I just wonder,’ she said, as they came near to reaching the center of the lake, ‘do you think that if Grannie and Grandpa Willy went into the dining-room now, and looked at this painting, they could see us walking across it?’

  ‘Don’t start getting all deep on me now,’ said Renko. He checked his wristwatch. ‘It’s way past five o’clock already and we haven’t even found the house yet.’

  It took them another ten minutes to walk to the farther shore. The forest came almost down to the water’s edge, and the trees were very tall, so tall that Jessica had to crane her neck back to see the tops of them. They were dark, too, with trunks that looked as if they were deeply folded and bark that was mottled with maroons and browns and rich purples. It was only when they came nearer that Jessica could see that they were not really trees at all but velvet curtains, and that the rumpled foliage high above their heads which blotted out the afternoon sunshine was pelmets and swags.

  As they entered the gloom of the forest, the trees actually swayed like curtains, and they had only gone a short distance before they found that they were enveloped in almost total darkness. The air was stuffy, like Grannie’s living-room, and Jessica began to feel a rising sense of claustrophobia.

  ‘How do we get through here?’ asked Elica, pushing against the nearest tree. ‘It is so dark and we do not know which way.’

  ‘I forgot to bring my flashlight,’ said Jessica. ‘Maybe we’d better go back to the lake and try to find a way around the forest, instead of through it.’

  ‘But you saw the size of it,’ put in Renko. ‘It could take us hours and hours.’

  They were still deciding what to do when Jessica glimpsed a thin bright light shining between the trees. It vanished, and there was darkness again, but then it reappeared, a dazzling vertical ray, like the sun coming through her bedroom curtains in the morning.

  ‘Wait,’ she told Renko and Elica. ‘It’s the Light People. Look – they’ve come to help us.’

  The light grew brighter and brighter until they had to shield their eyes with their hands. One of the Light People appeared between the trees, a brilliant filament with wings of wriggling incandescence.

  ‘Where are you going?’ it asked them, hovering and dancing around them. ‘The Stain is leaking out already, you have to go back.’

  ‘We’re going to save the Pennington children. We’re on our way there now.’

  ‘There won’t be time,’ said the light-fairy, in its plink-plankety music-box voice. ‘The Stain will be here in less than an hour; and less than an hour after that, the whole of this pattern will be nothing but darkness and miasma.’

  ‘You have asthma?’ asked Renko, bewildered.

  ‘No … “miasma” means a poisonous atmosphere that rises from anything rotting and causes evil and disease. There won’t be anything left here but a swampy wasteland, completely without beauty, completely without light.’

  ‘But what about the Pennington children … their parents left them here so that they would stay alive, and if I can get them out of here, I know a way to make them better!’

  The light-fairy dimmed dull orange for a moment, like a flashlight that is starting to lose its charge. ‘There is nothing you can do. There isn’t time. Besides, this forest is very dangerous.’

  ‘Cu le frica de orice nor nici o calatone nu face,’ said Elica. ‘If you are afraid of leaves you shouldn’t go into the woods.’

  ‘You don’t have to be concerned about leaves in this forest,’ retorted the light-fairy. ‘But you do have to watch for wooden wolves and shadow cats and
all kinds of other ugly patterns and shapes.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Renko. ‘We promised the Pennington kids that we were going to save them and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.’

  The light-fairy didn’t answer at first, but dipped and flickered like a giant firefly. At last it said, ‘You’d better follow me then. As quickly as you possibly can.’

  Immediately it floated off between the tall, swaying trees, so that shafts of brilliant light fanned out in all directions. Renko put his hand on Jessica’s shoulder and said, ‘We could always go back, you know.’

  ‘After what you just said?’

  ‘Supposing that light dude is right, and there really isn’t enough time?’

  Jessica said, ‘When my parents were killed, I nearly died too, but the doctors managed to save me. Then I fell downstairs and hit my head because you and Sue-Anne were bullying me, and that was when I first heard the children’s voices. I think I was saved for a reason, and I think I hit my head for a reason, and that was to save Phoebe and all her brothers and sisters. Even if you don’t want to go any further, Renko, I have to. I won’t think you’re chicken or anything like that.’

  Renko gave her a smile. ‘Let’s go, shall we?’

  Splinters

  The light moved off through the trees so quickly that even Renko and Elica had difficulty in keeping up with it. It didn’t go straight either, but kept jinking, zigzagging and feinting, as if it were a football player.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Renko asked Jessica, taking her arm to help her along.

  Jessica’s ankle was throbbing and her left calf muscle kept going into painful spasms of cramp, but she was determined that she wasn’t going to stop, and she certainly wasn’t going to turn back.

  They hadn’t been pushing their way through the trees for more than five minutes before Jessica heard a soft, quick splintering noise off to their left.

  ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That kind of a crackle. There it is again!’

  ‘I don’t hear anything. Come on, hurry, we’re going to lose that light dude if we don’t walk any faster.’