Horten's Incredible Illusions Page 15

  Now he did.

  He took a breath to steady his nerves. His fingers were clenched around the star, but he could feel them trembling.

  “How long will you be?” asked Clifford.

  “As long as it takes me to find the Kingleys and bring them back,” said Stuart. “It might be hours and hours.”

  “We’ll wait, don’t worry. And Stuart … ?”

  “Yes?”

  “Have you changed your mind? Would you like us to come along?”

  Stuart couldn’t trust himself to speak, in case another “yes” slipped out. His skin prickled with fear, and he desperately wanted company, but he knew that two extra people might make things even more complicated, just as they had in the Cabinet of Blood. So instead of speaking, he smiled, shook his head, and quickly and carefully fitted the last spoke of the magic star into the Book of Peril.

  And gasped.

  CHAPTER 36

  He was in his own kitchen.

  It was broad daylight.

  His mom was standing by the stove with her back to him, while through the window Stuart could see his father sitting in a deck chair on the lawn, staring into space, while an eager Charlie ran in tight circles around him. The Kingley triplets were in their own yard, standing in a row with their chins resting on the fence, and one of them spotted Stuart in the kitchen window and gave a frantic wave.

  “April!” shouted Stuart joyfully, amazed at how simple the rescue was going to be.

  He turned to wrench open the back door, and stopped short. Right next to the door was a tall shimmering black panel, and across it floated the words:

  He was inside the Book of Peril, he realized, and the shimmering black panel (with its central dent) was the way out, and when he pressed his face to its surface he could dimly see the interior of the shed, as if viewed through inky water. Clifford and Elaine were standing together, his arm around her shoulders, waiting for him. All Stuart had to do was go out into the yard, fetch Charlie and the triplets, and take them back through this dark doorway into the shed and it would all be over.

  He reached for the handle of the back door.

  “Stuart,” said his mother, “your nuggets and fries are ready.”

  Stuart’s hand froze.

  Slowly, slowly, he turned toward his mother. She was holding a plate out toward him. On it was a vast stack of chicken nuggets, a mound of french fries, and a lake of ketchup. Next to the lake was a very large pinch of salt.

  “More salt?” asked his mother.

  “No thanks,” said Stuart hoarsely.

  He took the plate and walked like a zombie to the table. Through the window he could see the triplets, still watching him but beginning to look impatient now.

  “Stuart!” called April. “Hurry up! We want to get out of here!”

  Still standing, he looked down at his plate again. A slick of grease was pooling around the fries.

  “Eat up. There’s tart with condensed milk for dessert,” said his mother, “and you still haven’t eaten that candy that your uncle sent you.”

  “Is there an apple or something?” asked Stuart.

  His mother shook her head. “I keep forgetting to buy fruit.”

  Stuart set down the plate.

  This woman in the kitchen looked like his mother, but she wasn’t. His mother never added salt to anything. His mother regarded chicken nuggets as a sort of slow-acting poison and dessert as an opportunity for eating fruit. His mother would rather run out of air than apples.

  He edged away from the table, wondering what he should do. Everything had seemed easy and obvious, but now he felt as if the ground was shuddering under him. He needed to put this right.

  “Soda pop with that?” asked the woman, going to the fridge.

  “Don’t rush,” Stuart muttered to himself. “Work it out. Think.“

  He looked around carefully. All looked normal: the window blind that drooped on one side, the calendar with views of Great Libraries of the World, the photograph of Stuart and his parents in the Lake District. And then he spotted something strange and new on the door that led to the living room: the letter A, half-visible, glimmering like a snail trail.

  “Just got to get something,” he said, and then he slipped over to the door and opened it.

  And found himself in the kitchen again, his mother at the stove.

  He caught his breath and whirled around.

  As before, the Book of Peril stood next to the back door. Through the kitchen window, he could see the triplets lined up against the fence, his father sitting in the deck chair, and Charlie sniffing along the edge of the lawn.

  “Lunch, Stuart,” said his mother. “Pea and mint soup.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m going into work this afternoon. Can you let Dad know his food’s ready?”

  “Okay.” He slipped out of the back door.

  “Stuart!” shouted April. “At last! Shall we climb over? Stuart? Stuart!”

  But Stuart didn’t answer. He was too busy staring, aghast, at his father, who had got out of the deck chair and was doing a series of push-ups on the grass.

  “Shall we climb over the fence?” repeated April impatiently.

  His father began to do the push-ups one-armed.

  “No,” said Stuart, struggling to think. It was somehow more frightening to feel lost in his own home than it was in a pathless desert or a giant maze. “Not this fence. Maybe the next one. I think—I think I have to choose the right life. And the right letter.”

  He ran back indoors.

  The letter B glimmered on the living-room door. Steeling himself for what might come next, he went through, and found himself in the kitchen again.

  This time his father was cooking, peering anxiously at a recipe book. The page had a photograph of an artichoke.

  “Where’s Mom?” asked Stuart.

  “Dunno,” said his dad. “I think she said she was going to get her nails done or something.”

  Stuart went straight over to the living-room door.

  The letter C.

  This time the kitchen was empty, apart from Charlie curled up in a basket, but it smelled wonderfully of roast dinner. The yard was empty too, and there was no one standing by the fence.

  “Hello?” called Stuart cautiously. “Anyone at home?”

  All was quiet. He waited for a moment or two, savoring the smell, and then took an apple from a bowl piled high with them. Above the fruit bowl, on the wall, was the photo of Stuart and his parents. He glanced at it, and dropped the apple. It fell with a dull thud and rolled across the kitchen floor.

  There stood Stuart’s father, his glasses spotted with rain, his mother, her hair blown into a thistle by the wind, and Stuart, his nose bright red from the cold. And next to Stuart stood someone else—a boy, grinning. A boy who was about an inch shorter than Stuart, but who was otherwise his double.

  In this world he had a brother.

  CHAPTER 37

  Stuart didn’t know how long he stood staring at the picture—only that he was jerked from his thoughts by a glassy crack. It came from the direction of the Book of Peril.

  He hurried over and saw with a chill that the rippling darkness was now marred by a whitish circle around the dent. The surface there had paled and thickened, and he could no longer see through it. And—most worryingly—just as he reached out to touch it, there was another crack! and the opacity spread further, like ice forming on a pond.

  His breathing quickened. What if the door stopped working? What would it mean? Might he be stuck for eternity in an empty kitchen?

  He gave the door a tentative push, and it moved slightly; he could dimly see Clifford and Elaine tense in anticipation. He still had a little time, then—enough to grab the triplets and dive back through the Book of Peril, and who cared if he got the letter clue completely wrong and never solved Great-Uncle Tony’s puzzle? Getting back to the real world with them was the only important thing.

  He hurried outside. There was s
till no sign of the triplets, so he shouted their names over the fence. The windows of their house looked blankly back at him. He jumped up and managed to glimpse their backyard; it was weedier than he remembered, and Mr. Kingley had obviously taken the barbecue indoors.

  He took a huge breath and yelled April’s name as loudly as he could, and to his relief he heard the Kingleys’ back door open. Footsteps approached.

  “Hello?” said a young man in a suit, frowning over the fence.

  “Where are the Kingleys?” demanded Stuart.

  “In Cornwall, I believe,” said the man. “They moved there a couple of months ago. Which is why I’m now showing Mr. and Mrs. Lee around this well-maintained three-bedroom property on a tree-lined street.” He flashed a smile at a severe-looking elderly couple who had followed him out to the yard. “They’re looking for a quiet retirement residence,” he added pointedly.

  Stuart didn’t wait to hear any more. He hurtled straight back into the kitchen, and through the living-room door.

  Letter D.

  And the triplets were there, sitting in front of him at the kitchen table.

  Knitting.

  “Oh, hello, Stuart,” said June, smiling warmly at him, the dog lolling asleep on her lap. “Lovely to see you—look what your mom’s been teaching us. April’s already made a doll’s bonnet.”

  “Isn’t it lovely?” asked April in a soppy voice, waving something pink at him.

  “We’ve got to go,” said Stuart brusquely, trying to ignore the awful weirdness of a world in which his mother could knit bonnets. “Come on.”

  “Not until I’ve learned how to make matching booties. Your mom’s just gone to find some more wool.”

  “We’ve got to go,” said Stuart, grabbing April’s hand. She pulled away and gave a scream.

  “What?” asked Stuart, confused. A length of pink wool was dangling from his fingers.

  “You’ve unraveled it!” wailed April. “That took me ages and ages, and now you’ve ruined it. I’m not going anywhere till it’s all knitted again.”

  “WE HAVEN’T GOT TIME FOR THAT!” shouted Stuart, so tense that he felt as if he might snap in half. He could see the crust of whiteness spreading across the dark panel of the door.

  April burst into tears. “He shouted at me,” she sobbed. “I’m going home.” She flounced past Stuart and out the back door.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” said May reproachfully, going after her. “You know how sensitive she is. It’ll take hours and hours to talk her into coming back…. Come on, June,” she added commandingly, and June scuttled after her, followed by Charlie.

  The back door slammed.

  Stuart heard himself give a despairing moan. He looked at the Book of Peril, saw the darkness being leached out of it, started to run after the triplets, and then changed his mind and plunged instead through the living-room door.

  Letter E.

  “Salutations,” said his father, sitting at the table with a pad of paper. “Your mother will be home from her quotidian microscopic investigations in approximately—”

  “Sorry, I’m in a hurry,” gabbled Stuart, running straight out into the yard. Which was somehow different, though he didn’t have time to work out how or why. He looked over the fence and saw the triplets sitting on their lawn, playing with Charlie, and he bellowed hoarsely to them, panic straining his voice.

  “Hurray!” shouted April, leaping to her feet. “I knew you would come,” and she hauled a garden chair across to the fence and was over it in seconds, Charlie in her arms, dragging her sisters after her.

  “Come on,” said Stuart. “Come on come on come on come on come on come on.”

  “Would your visitors care for interprandial ingestion of—”

  “No time, Dad,” said Stuart, hurling himself toward the Book of Peril. It looked like the top of an iced cake now, only a tiny section of the darkness visible around the edges. He gave it a shove and it buckled rather than opened, the top and the bottom curling in toward each other. He shoved again, and a crack opened on one side; he urged April and Charlie through, and then June, and then a wide-eyed May, and with one final look back at a kitchen that didn’t look quite the same as usual, Stuart leaped through himself.

  There was a noise like a giant lightbulb breaking, a whoosh of air, and he fell into darkness onto a pile of shouting bodies, Charlie yapping, dust everywhere, clouds of it, gritty and stinging.

  A flashlight flashed on, and then another.

  “That was quick,” said Clifford.

  “What?” asked Stuart, coughing, scooping up the dog before he could be stepped on.

  “Less than half a minute. The door sort of twitched after twelve seconds and then disintegrated at twenty-eight.”

  Stuart turned and looked at the gaping hole where the door had been. The dust hung in the air like icing sugar, and through it he could just see the socket where the final spoke of the magic star had fitted. It was empty now.

  “It might have been twenty-eight seconds for you, Stuart, but we were away for ages,” grumbled May, getting to her feet. “When we went back to unglue April from that path, everything got sort of fuzzy, and then we found ourselves in our house—but it wasn’t really our house at all, it was like a stage set. There was no upstairs, the front yard was just mist, and there was nothing on the TV except static. We were just waiting and waiting and waiting, and it was all because no one listened to me when I said it would be dangerous, and then it was, and no one listened to me when I said we’d get stuck there, and then we did! Is it the same day, even?”

  Stuart nodded.

  “Well, thank goodness for that!”

  “It was boring and weird and horrid,” added April quietly. “But I knew you’d come and get us. Thanks.”

  “Yes, thanks, Stuart,” said May, giving him a deeply embarrassing hug.

  “That’s all right,” he said gruffly, “and I couldn’t have done it without help.” He gestured to Clifford and Elaine.

  “We’d better get you all out of here,” said Elaine. “Before we get caught.”

  “And before our mom freaks out,” added April. She held out a hand to help up June, who was still sitting on the floor.

  “I’ve had the oddest dream,” she said.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” screeched May, “it was not a dream. When are you ever going to admit it?”

  April rolled her eyes at Stuart. “It’s been like this the whole time,” she whispered. “I’ve had to be incredibly tolerant and patient, and then when she …” She paused and frowned.

  “What?” asked Stuart.

  She looked at him, tilting her head. “You look different,” she said. “Apart from being covered in dust, I mean.”

  “What sort of different?”

  “Older.”

  “What?”

  “No, not older …” She paused, and her eyes widened. “Taller.”

  “What?“

  “Taller. A bit, anyway.”

  “Come on, everybody,” said Elaine firmly. “Out. And let’s be as quiet as cats.”

  Stuart, light-headed with shock, was scarcely aware of the tiptoed journey across the yard, the scurry over the ladder, the rushed farewells to Elaine and Clifford, the jog through the darkened town, with Charlie drooping tiredly in his arms.

  What April said couldn’t be true, could it? And yet … in the Book of Peril, when he had dashed outside for the last time, he had spotted the triplets in their yard. Which meant that he had been able to see over the fence. Without jumping. Without standing on a box. And maybe the kitchen in that world had looked different, not because of anything in it, but because he’d suddenly been viewing it from a different height. And maybe the wrong factor in that particular world hadn’t been his dad or his mom, or even the triplets—it had been him.

  “There’s Mom,” said April rather nervously, jerking Stuart out of his thoughts. They had reached Beech Road, and Mrs. Kingley was standing on the front doorstep, her arms fol
ded. She said nothing at all as they approached but simply pointed inside.

  “Bye,” mouthed April to Stuart. “See you tomorrow.”

  He watched them file silently into their house. The front door clicked shut, there was a brief pause … and then the sound of Mrs. Kingley shouting. Stuart scuttled off to his own front door, and bent his knees slightly before ringing the bell—just in case his father spotted anything different.

  But it was his mother who answered the door.

  “Surprise!” she said. “I was actually phoning from the airport, but I didn’t—” She stopped speaking and stared at him.

  “You’ve grown,” she said. “And you’ve found a dog.”

  “I know,” replied Stuart, his voice coming out a bit wobbly. “Surprise!”

  CHAPTER 38

  It was two days later, and Stuart was hanging around in the backyard, waiting for April to appear.

  Charlie was also in the yard. Apart from eating, the dog’s main occupation was following Stuart around, gazing up at him adoringly—so adoringly that even Stuart’s mother (who wasn’t particularly keen on pets) had agreed to keep him for the time being.

  “Until we can find the original owner,” she’d insisted, and Stuart had happily gone along with that condition. At the present moment Charlie was resting his head on Stuart’s right shoe and nibbling the shoelace.

  “Good dog,” said Stuart. The stump of Charlie’s tail wagged vigorously.

  Stuart looked at his watch. Since their return, April and her sisters had been confined to the house as a punishment for staying out late without permission, and April had communicated with Stuart by means of written messages held up to the window of her bedroom.

  MY MOM SAYS WE ARE NEVER ALLOWED OUT AGAIN UNTIL WE ARE 18.

  had been the first one, followed, a few hours later, by:

  SHE’S NOW REDUCED IT TO A WEEK, BUT WE HAVE TO WORK FOR OUR FREEDOM.

  Stuart had gone and gotten paper of his own, and had written the word:

  HOW?

  and held it up to her.

  UNNECESSARY HOMEWORK, HOUSEWORK, AND PIANO PRACTICE.