The Hidden World (17 page)

‘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 quickly,' 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?'

T
he 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.'

There was another splintering noise, and then another. Then Jessica heard panting – high and harsh and hungry – and she knew at once what was following them.

‘It's a wooden wolf!' she gasped.

Renko looked quickly around them. ‘I don't see anything. Come on, we're falling behind.'

The sound of crackling wood was coming closer and closer, and the trees on either side of them began to jostle and sway, as if something heavy were barging its way through them.

‘It's a wooden wolf, Renko, I promise you.'

‘
Vorbesti de lup si lupul la usã
,' panted Elica. ‘When you speak of the wolf, the wolf's tail will appear.'

‘Do you have a proverb for “She who is lost in a forest full of carpets should save her breath and run like fun”?'

The light was so far ahead of them now that Jessica glimpsed it only infrequently, like distant lightning. The forest grew darker and darker and the crackling sound of the wooden wolf was so loud that she felt as if it were right behind her, with its two mouths open and its hundreds of splintery teeth exposed. Even Renko turned around, and then dragged her through the trees even faster.

Suddenly the tree trunks parted with a thunderous rumble and a huge jagged shadow came bursting out at them. Out of the corner of her eye, Jessica saw a broken shape pounce on top of Elica and throw her to the ground. Elica cried out, ‘Aaaahhh!' and tried to twist herself away, but the wooden wolf had taken hold of her dress and was wrenching her sideways so that it could take a bite at her throat.