I BURNED the book. I set fire to it in the fireplace of Maulding’s library, laying it flat upon the wood and coals once I was certain that the blaze had reached the required intensity. The book sizzled and hissed and popped, more like meat roasting than paper burning. At one point it emitted a loud, whistling sound almost like a scream, but it ceased as the binding blackened. It stank as it was destroyed. It smelled like decayed flesh finally consigned to the crematorium.
I don’t know how long I sat there, using a poker to move the book and stir the fire, but eventually nothing was left of it but the smell. I dozed for a time and dreamed of the book as it might once have been, with detailed maps of worlds unlike this one, its territories marked with the images of beasts and demons, its intricate cartography the work of the Not-God. But those pages were empty, because all they had once contained had been fed into this world like sand falling through an hourglass. Now there was nothing left, and the process of transformation had begun. Where Lionel Maulding was, I could not say. Perhaps, like Maggs, he had begun to die the moment he opened the book, and its ideas had gestated in his head before erupting and, finally, consuming him.
But another narrative occurred to me, too, of course, even if I retreated from it just as assuredly as I desired to turn my back on the possibility of one world’s infecting and corrupting another: the book had never existed. It was a fraud perpetrated by the Dunwidges with the collusion of Maggs, and that unfortunate’s death had been carefully staged in order to maintain the pretense and ensure his silence. I, too, had colluded in it. I had played my role. I had allowed myself to be manipulated.
But what of those burrowing creatures, or the exploded thing in the hallway of this very house? What of the deformed children that had followed me through the streets, or the gray wraith at the study window? What of days—weeks—lost, according to Fawnsley? What of—
Everything?
For there was a third narrative, was there not?
IT WAS late afternoon. Mrs. Gissing had not appeared, nor Willox. I left the Maulding house, my possessions in my overnight bag, and walked to the station. The train to London was due. I would return there. I would go to Quayle. Whatever answer he gave me, I would accept. If a cell and a noose waited at the end of it, that could be no worse than this.
Nobody was at the ticket office when I reached it, and I detected some sounds of confusion from the platform. I followed the noise and found the stationmaster remonstrating with prospective passengers, his assistants beside him, all of them looking troubled.
“What’s happening here?” I asked of no one in particular.
“The train from London didn’t arrive this morning,” said a portly woman. “The train to London came and went, right enough, but nothing from the city.”
She indicated the stationmaster.
“Old Ron here is as ignorant as the rest of us, but I have to get to London. My daughter’s about to have her first child, and I swore to her that I’d be with her to help her through it.”
I was bigger and taller than the rest of those gathered, and eased my way through the crowd until I was face-to-face with the stationmaster. He was nearing the end of his time: gray-haired, overweight, and with a handlebar mustache that increased his resemblance to an old walrus.
“Explain,” I said to him, and something in my tone silenced those around me and brooked no opposition from the old man.
“It’s like I’ve been telling these people, sir: we’ve had no trains come through since this morning, and all the lines are down. I can’t get through to anyone to find out what’s going on. I sent one of the lads down to Norwich on his bicycle to see if he could find out anything, but he hasn’t come back yet. I can tell you no more.”
I stood on the platform and looked to the southwest. It might have been a trick of the light, but it seemed that the sky was darker down there, and tinged with red, even though it was not yet sunset. It resembled a great conflagration seen from a distance. I glanced at the station clock and watched the minute hand move.
“The clock,” I said.
“What about it?” said the stationmaster.
I continued to stare at the clock face. It was coming up to noon but, instead of inching closer to twelve, the minute hand had just slipped down a notch toward eleven.
“It’s running backward,” I said.
I LEFT them and returned to Bromdun Hall. I have closed the shutters and barricaded the doors. I have food here, and water. The sky is darkening, and it will not be light again. There are noises coming from upstairs and from the grounds. I have closed the door to Lionel Maulding’s secret study. From behind it, I can hear the splintering of reality, like ice cracking on a frozen lake.
It is the coming of the Not-God.
I have three bullets.
I will wait.