Mister Monday. Гарт НиксЧитать онлайн книгу.
and you couldn’t get rid of them even if you wanted to…
“Stay still,” commanded the nurse. “It’s not like you to flinch, Arthur.”
Arthur went home on Friday afternoon, with the Key and the Atlas securely wrapped up in a shirt inside a plastic bag. For some reason Ed and Leaf never returned to the hospital. Arthur had thought of trying to call them, but since he didn’t know their last name, that had proved impossible. He’d even asked Nurse Thomas if she knew who they were. But she didn’t, and the hospital had got busier and busier through the week. Arthur figured that he’d see them Monday at school.
His father picked him up and drove him home, humming a tune under his breath as they cruised through the streets. Arthur looked out idly, but his thoughts, as they had been the whole week, were on the Key, the Atlas and Mister Monday.
They were almost home when Arthur saw something that snapped him straight out of his reverie. They were coming down the second-to-last hill before their street when he saw it. Down in the valley ahead, occupying a whole block, was an enormous, ancient-looking house. A huge building made of stone, odd-shaped bricks of different sizes, and ancient timbers of many kinds and colours. It looked as if it had been extended and added to without thought or care, using many different styles of architecture. It had arches, aqueducts and apses; bartizans, belfries and buttresses; chimneys, crenellations and cupolas; galleries and gargoyles; pillars and portcullises; terraces and turrets.
It looked totally out of place, dropped into the middle of what was otherwise a modern suburb.
There was a reason for that, Arthur knew.
That huge, crazy-looking house had not been there when he left for school last Monday.
“What is that?” he asked, pointing. “What?” asked Bob. He slowed down and peered through the windshield.
“That place! It’s huge and it… it wasn’t there before!”
“Where?” Bob scanned the houses he saw. “They all look pretty much the same to me. Sizewise, that is. That’s why we went a bit further out. I mean if you’re going to have a garden, you’ve got to have a real garden, right? Oh, you mean the one with the Jeep out front. I think they painted the garage door. That’s why it looks different.”
Arthur nodded dumbly. It was clear that his father couldn’t see the enormous, castle-like building that they were driving towards. Bob could only see the houses that used to be there.
Or maybe they are still there, Arthur thought, and I’m seeing into another dimension or something. He would have thought he was going insane, but he had the Atlas and the Key, and his conversation with Ed and Leaf to fall back on.
As they went past, Arthur noticed that the house (or House, as he felt it should be called) had a wall around it. A slick, marble-faced wall about ten feet high, that looked smooth and very difficult to climb. There was no visible gate, at least on the side they drove along.
Arthur’s own new home was only another mile or so, on the far side of the next hill. It was in a transition area between the suburbs and the country. The Penhaligons had a very big block, most of which was a fairly out-of-control garden. Bob said he loved gardening, but what he really loved was thinking and planning things to do with the garden, not actually doing them. He and Emily had bought the land and established the garden several years before, but had only decided to build a house and move quite recently.
Their house was brand-new, notionally finished a few months before. There were still plumbers and electricians coming back every few weeks to fine-tune various bits and pieces. It had been designed by a famous architect and was on four levels, cut into the hill. The bottom level was the biggest, with garage, workshop, Bob’s studio and Emily’s home office. The next level was all living spaces and kitchen. The next was bedrooms and bathrooms: Bob and Emily’s and two guest rooms. The top level was the smallest and had bedrooms for Michaeli, Eric and Arthur, and one bathroom that they either fought over or were locked out of and had to go downstairs.
No one was home when Arthur and his father returned. A screen on the refrigerator door in the kitchen had the latest posts and e-mails from the various members of the family. Emily was held up at the lab, Michaeli was simply “out” and would be back “later”, and Eric was playing in a basketball game.
“Do you want to go out for dinner? Just the two of us?” asked Bob. He was humming again, a sure sign of imminent song composition. It was a sacrifice for him to offer to go out when it was obvious he was itching to get at a keyboard or a guitar.
“No thanks, Dad,” said Arthur. He really wanted to be alone so he could check out the Key and the Atlas. “I’ll grab a snack later, if that’s OK. I might just check out my room. Make sure the others didn’t trash it while I was gone.”
They both knew that was just Arthur being kind and letting Bob go and work on his song. But that was also OK with both of them.
“I’ll be in the studio, then,” said Bob. “Buzz me if you need anything. You’ve got your inhaler?”
Arthur nodded.
“We might get a pizza later,” Bob called out as he headed down the stairs. “Don’t tell Mum.”
Arthur went up to his own room, taking the stairs slowly. He was breathing fine, but was weak after five days of lying around in the hospital. Even a few flights of stairs was hard work.
After locking the door in case his older siblings returned, Arthur put the Atlas and the Key on the bed. Then, without knowing why, he turned off the light.
Moonlight shone through the open window, but it was quite dark. It would have been darker, but both the Key and the Atlas glowed with a strange blue light that shimmered like water. Arthur picked them up, the Key in his left hand and the Atlas in his right.
Without any effort on his part, the Atlas flipped open. Arthur was so surprised he dropped it back on the bed. It stayed open, and Arthur watched in amazement as it grew, becoming longer and wider, until it was about the same size as his pillow.
The open pages were blank for a moment, then lines began to appear, as if an invisible artist was hard at work. The lines were strong and sure, appearing faster and faster as Arthur stared. It only took a few seconds before he realised he was looking at a picture of the House he had seen. A picture so well drawn that it was almost like a photograph.
Next to the picture a handwritten note appeared:
The House: An Exterior Aspect as Manifested in Many Secondary Realms.
Then another few words appeared, written much smaller. Arthur craned forward as the writing appeared, with an arrow that pointed to an inked-in square on the outer wall.
“Monday Postern,” Arthur read aloud. “What’s a postern?”
There was a dictionary on the bookshelf above his desk. Arthur pulled it out, while keeping an eye on the Atlas in case it did something else interesting.
It did. Arthur had to put the Key down to get the dictionary out, as it was too jammed in with other books. As soon as he dropped the Key on the desk, the Atlas slammed shut, scaring the life out of him. In less than a second, it had also shrunk back to its pocket notebook size.
So you need to have the Key to open the Atlas, thought Arthur. He left the Key where it was and looked up postern in the dictionary.
postern n. 1. a back door or gate. 2. any lesser or private entrance.
So there was Monday’s gate in the otherwise seamless wall. Arthur put the dictionary back and thought about it. The picture of the House and the indication of an entrance was clearly an invitation of sorts. Someone… or something… wanted him to go into the House. But could he trust the Atlas?