LUCY HAD TO SHOVE hard to get the door to open, dislodging what looked to be many years of dirt and rotting foliage that had settled around the base of the entrance. Sam ran up to help, and after a couple of coordinated heaves, they both managed to squeeze through inside.
The initial excitement of entering a new world was slowly subsiding, giving way to deeper feelings of unease, what Lucy would describe as dread.
There was an undeniable atmosphere of foreboding that seemed to permeate everything: woven through the brickwork, staining the tattered drapes, hanging insidiously in the musty air, soaking slowly into their hair and their clothes. Lucy could now understand Sam’s choice of the word ‘putrid’.
The desire to investigate the newly discovered world was just about managing to overpower Lucy’s impulse to run. She looked back to check Sam was still with her, then took hold of his hand.
They wandered across the hall, the flecks of the marble only just visible through heavy layers of dirt.
‘Is this real?’ Lucy asked out loud.
‘Yes,’ Sam whispered. ‘I’m seeing it too.’
Elongated strands of cobweb bunting criss-crossed the ceiling, a gossamer net spanning the droplets of the chandelier, wafting strangely with a languid grace in the moving air as the two visitors passed beneath.
Sam halted… Lucy turned to look at him, prompted by the tug on her hand. He was staring dead ahead, his grip tightening, squeezing Lucy’s fingers hard together.
‘What is it?’ she asked, concerned, turning her face to follow the direction of his gaze…
He seemed to be staring at the library doors – they were open.
Lucy levered her fingers free of his vice-like grip, and wandered tentatively towards the room.
Light spilled from the opening, a slow morphing flicker of tangerine reflecting off the panelled door. She edged around the frame, and stepped into the room.
A cold shudder stroked its icy fingers along her spine. She was confronted with a room entirely lined with black candles, many hundreds in number, sitting atop decades-deep tides of wax.
Hanging strands of nero candle grease dropped from every row of shelving like pinguid stalactites, thousands of rods imprisoning the books that lay behind them, each pillar of wax stretching long, dripping into stygian puddles that coated the floor.
She turned her attention from the shelving, and saw in horror – sitting defiantly in full view in the centre of the room – another stone altar, streaked deep red with ribbons of dried blood.
Sam joined Lucy in the doorway. ‘Oh Jesus,’ he said, drinking in the image of the bloodstained stone, tinted red by the dancing flames of a thousand candles.
‘It’s the same as the one that’s at Hobswyke,’ Lucy said.
‘I know, I saw it,’ he explained, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder, ‘but no one’s made an attempt to hide this one.’
‘I know, but why is it here?’
Sam stepped cautiously further inside the room, drawn forwards by the insatiability of his morbid fascination. Lucy followed…
A loud, hollow, mechanical clank rang out, causing them both to stiffen like granite! ‘What was that?’ Lucy hissed, stepping closer to Sam.
‘I-I don’t know,’ he replied, spinning like a top, ‘but it seemed to come from in here.’
They froze to statues, and listened, but nothing. The corners of Sam’s mouth buckled, shaking his head at Lucy. ‘God knows.’
Lucy released Sam’s arm, and crept towards the altar, drawn there by fascination, her whole map galvanised with a look of disgust… She could see what looked to be coagulated blood coating a bone-handled knife lying upon the slab, still fresh enough to be crimson.
She backed away from the horror of the find, hand clutched across her stomach…
Her foot caught something that rang out, she looked down to see what it was.
Piles of animal collars scattered the base of the stone, some with tags, some without. Lucy stirred them with her toe. Many of the tags seemed to have names: Bonzo, Pippa, Mittens, Petra. Most of the tags were spattered with deep crimson specks…
Lucy shied from the altar, biting at the side of her hand in horror. ‘What the fuck is this place, Sam?!’ she cried, flexing her throat in an attempt to quell a sudden impulse to vomit. ‘How can any of this be?’
Sam had no answers. ‘I don’t know.’
She scanned the rest of the room for some other muse to distract her mind.
Her face slowly uncrumpled, her gaze locking with astonishment towards the opposite end of the library.
She was focused on a cluster of candles sitting atop one of the shelves ahead of her… She squinted, peering at the flames… ‘Sam?’ she whispered, but he didn’t respond.
She leaned her spiked interest further in, studying each lick of flame lifting from every candle. They all seemed to be curling gradually in slow motion, creeping gracefully towards the ceiling – the gentle tumble of each flame mesmerising in its lethargic elegance.
Clank! The metallic sound rang out again, jerking Lucy from her trance.
She spun towards the sound, and could see Sam on the opposite side of the library, staring into the innards of an imposing long-cased clock that presided over the room.
He was staring into the cabinet, something arresting his attention. Lucy wandered across to see what so fascinated him.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Look. Just watch,’ he whispered, nodding towards the pendulum.
She watched, but saw nothing, the clock didn’t seem to be working. She looked towards him and shook her head.
‘No, look again,’ he snapped, ‘just keep watching. There…’
She looked again, hanging utterly still – then she saw it. The pendulum was swinging slowly behind the dust-coated glass panel, creeping through its arc in a motion only just perceptible to a studying eye.
They both stood, watching, mystified, as it slowed towards the end of its swing…
Clank! – rang out from the clock again, their hearts missing yet another beat. ‘Shit!’ Lucy stabbed, darting a furious glare towards the clock’s internals.
The pendulum arm halted, hovering motionless, then gradually, started a creeping arc back in the opposite direction.
Sam turned his eyes up at the clock face, then down at his watch. He extended his hand towards Lucy. ‘Look,’ he whispered, ‘the second hand.’
She grabbed his wrist, holding it still if front of her face… She watched as the second hand crept past each number, once again, almost too slowly to be perceptible.
‘Time seems to be running slower here, but – I don’t understand how?’ he explained, confused by what he was seeing.
Lucy pointed to a nearby candle flame. Sam stepped in closer and studied the creeping flicker…
He looked about the library, then leaned forwards to grab a book from the shelf. He stepped back and held it out in front of him, then let it go…
It hung motionless in the air, as if to test their trust in their own observations. Then slowly, it started to drift towards the ground. The pair of them watched, in utter astonishment, the tome slowly sink to the floor…
Sam began wafting his arm around rapidly in front of his face. ‘Time apparently, runs slower here, I think?’ he explained. ‘But it doesn’t seem to affect the way we can move within it? I don’t understand how that can be? It doesn’t really make sense… But, we’re doing it?’
He looked to Lucy. ‘Am I getting older at the moment? Or – or not?’
She shook her head, and shrugged. ‘I-I don’t know.’
Soft pads of fast running footsteps rushed past the doorway behind them. Lucy flinched. ‘What was that!?’ she hissed, shying from the sound.
Sam grasped her hand. ‘I-I-I don’t know,’ he stuttered.
They edged towards the opening, leaning their faces out in the direction the sound passed…
Lucy faltered, inhaling a sharp lungful of air. She could see two faces peering at them through the balustrades at the base of the staircase.
‘Look!’ Lucy whispered, nodding towards the stairs.
Sam finally saw them. ‘They’re children.’
He took a cautious step forwards. ‘Hello,’ he called, in the friendliest voice he could muster.
One of the children rose quickly from behind the railings, it was a girl. She shuffled towards them, stooping, shaking her head frantically at the sound of his voice. ‘Shhhhhh… !’ she hissed, through teeth clenched hard together, face tight with what looked to be blind panic.
She darted her eyes about the room, then beckoned them to follow.
The other child was still cowering behind the rungs, Lucy could see it was a young boy – he looked terrified.
Both children had long, matted hair that looked never to have been touched by scissors, soap nor brush, their clothes stained deep-grey with filth. They shared eyes of a pale orange hue, fixed with a look of utmost concern. To Lucy, their features and age look so similar, that she divined that they may possibly be twins.
The young girl was still edging forwards, inviting them to follow.
Lucy looked across at Sam. He shrugged, then nodded.
They walk out into the marbled hall towards the girl. She turned to collect the boy, taking his hand. She guided the group towards the farthest side of the room, continually ushering Sam and Lucy to stick close by…
Sam could see a panel that had been removed beneath one of the side tables, revealing what looked to be a tunnel behind the wall. He nudged Lucy and lifted his chin towards it. ‘Look,’ he said.
The girl continued darting frantic eyes about the space, until they neared the table. ‘What’s she looking for?’ whispered Lucy.
‘I don’t know, but whatever it is, they seem afraid of it.’
The girl kept a keen lookout as the boy disappeared through the hole into the wall space, before she too followed suit.
She reappeared, face peering out from the hole like a frightened rabbit, wafting her hand toward the puzzled visitors, urging them to follow. They complied.
Sam followed Lucy through and past the ushering child. The girl reached out, lifting the wooden panel across the opening, and with a tug, wedged it in place.
Sam smiled at their huddled faces, under-lit by a single, slow-dancing candle that the girl held in her willowy hands. ‘…Erm? So, what are your—’
‘Shhhhh!’ the young girl gestured with her finger, shaking her head again with frantic energy, cutting off his question.
The children pushed past, peering up with suspicion into puzzled faces as they crossed, then scurried off down a passage.
Lucy and Sam exchanged shrugs, then followed…
They had to scramble to keep up with their new discovery, the adeptness the children displayed at traversing the tunnels making it obvious they’d done so many times before. There was such an air of second nature to the way they both clambered through, and over every obstacle, it became painfully apparent – this was ‘home’.
The passageways snaked for what felt like forever. Narrow, cramped; changing from brickwork, to wood, to timber laths oozing with crumbling plaster, criss-crossed with rungs of exposed pipework regularly cutting across their path, making them have to work to keep up.
The copper tubes felt damp to the touch, heavily oxidised, staining their clothes and fingers green as they manoeuvred though them.
Sam could see Lucy struggling ahead of him, her slender physique not cut out for this particular form of athletics.
He gently pushed past so he could help lead the way, and assist her over the more challenging obstacles. She happily allowed him.
Sam studied the children as he worked to keep up. They were both wearing what looked to be old fashioned nightgowns, hand-me-downs from a long-gone era.
He also noticed, as he observed the children climb and dart throughout the tunnels and passageways, their gowns floating ethereally behind them, flowing gracefully in the wake of their every movement, giving them all the appearance of being underwater.
Sam remembered the creeping clock mechanism, the slow lick of the flames, the grace of the falling book – it all seemed so utterly dreamlike.
He found himself wishing it was a dream, at least he could wake from that. It put him in mind of a saying his father often used: ‘Be careful of the things you wish for, nightmares are dreams too.’
They continued the chase, climbing a long series of crooked rungs and water pipes lined up inside the cavity like a ladder.
Lucy felt thankful she’d had the foresight to wear jeans, and not her usual choice of a cute, summer dress.
They passed by many junctions, different tunnels branching off that seemed to lead to other parts of the house. Sam wondered if similar tunnels existed in Hobswyke, assuming they must.
Eventually, they stepped through a hole into a small room. The children were huddled together in a corner.
The girl held out her arms, caging the boy behind an iron-clad stare of mistrust.
The visitors scanned the space, the whole floor blanketed with scavenged objects: bedclothes, silverware, books, cushions, trinkets. Random junk gathered over time to feed an interest in a world they shared with something yet unseen…
The ceiling of the room was heavily lofted and porous, providing little insulation from the strange world outside. It felt cold.
Sam ran through his mind the directions they’d traversed, and the turns they’d made, making considerations for the ‘mirrored’ aspect of this world…
‘We must beeee…? In the ceiling space of the east wing I think?’ he concluded. ‘Somewhere above the servants quarters?’
‘Yes, I think you’re right,’ Lucy agreed.
She stooped a little to try and make her height less intimidating, and started to approach the children. They both responded with a mistrusting glare.
‘Please, don’t be afraid, we’re not to going to hurt you,’ Lucy said softly, smiling her kindest smile. ‘What are your names?’
The children looked at each other – they seemed confused.
‘Your names?’ she asked again. ‘Do you have names?’
The children just looked blankly back at her.
‘I’m not sure they can talk?’ Sam interjected.
‘Mm, we can talk,’ the young girl said, quietly, startling Lucy who was now squatting down before her.
‘Oh, okay. Well, my name, is Lucy, and this, is Sam,’ she explained, gesturing behind her. ‘So, do you have names? You must be called something.’
The girl eventually nodded. ‘Um… My name, is “Girl”, and he’s called “Boy”.’
Lucy frowned, unable to help huffing a solitary laugh. ‘You can’t be called Boy, or Girl… Don’t you have proper names?’
The young girl just looked blankly again, and shook her head.
‘Oh. Well, I tell you what. Why don’t we call youuuu? Jack, and Jill. How’s that?’
The young girl allowed herself an insipid smile. ‘Jill. That’s a pretty name.’
‘A pretty name, for a very pretty girl,’ Lucy added, ‘and you, you look just like a “Jack” to me. Doesn’t he, Sam?’
Sam watch as Lucy interacted with the strange children, he could see how easily she’d take to parenting one day. ‘Yes. You look just like a “Jack”,’ he agreed.
Lucy watched them silently for a time, gathering all of the questions that came to her mind. ‘Do you live in here?’ she asked, her face addressing the tiny space.
They both nodded in unison.
‘And, Jill, who is it you keep looking around for? Is there someone else here, someone you’re afraid of? Are you scared of something? Or someone?’
Jill nodded.
‘Who?’ Sam coaxed. ‘Who is it you’re afraid of?’
Jill turned a glance back at Jack, then edged nervously towards Lucy, looking about the room… She leaned cautiously towards her. Lucy presented an ear. ‘We’re afraid, of Him,’ she whispered, her voice trembling with fear.
She looked about the room again, and leaned back into Lucy’s ear. ‘N– The-The Master. We’re afraid of The Maste,.’ she whispered, barely audible even in the stillness of the loft space.
‘What does “he” do?’ Lucy mewed, her face racked with genuine concern. The girl just shook her head, lips pressed tightly together.
‘Why don’t you leave?’ Sam asked, slightly naively. ‘Why don’t you both just get away from here, go somewhere else?’
Jill’s brows furrowed at the question, turning to look at Jack… Nothing discernible seemed to pass between them, just the telepathy of knowing each other so wholly.
Jack nodded to Jill in response to her apparent silence, and they both made for another hole in the opposite corner of the room.
Jill beckoned them to follow again. They complied, curious to discover more of their world.
The new passage was much shorter, they all climbed down more rungs of timber and pipework, eventually exiting out through a hole into a coal store off the side of the house.
Jill was leaning out, splaying her hand back towards the group. Sam presumed to check the coast was clear of ‘Him’.
Her fingers snapped shut. ‘Come on!’ she ordered, running across the gravel towards a bank of overgrown hedgerows. They all followed…
Jill turned worried eyes up towards the windows of the house as she crossed. Sam looked too, but could see nothing.
They all darted into undergrowth, and made their way along well-trodden paths that meandered beneath tunnels of contorted branches, hanging heavy with thick, brown foliage.
Eventually, they emerged out into a clearing. The sky looked darker than it did before. Overgrown grass lay flat to the ground, collapsed under the weight of its own unchecked growth, they continued following the children as they trotted on ahead.
The going under foot was spongy, feeling like they’re walking on cushions. ‘Where is she taking us?’ asked Sam.
‘I have no idea,’ said Lucy, looking towards the heavens as they traversed the wide-open clearing.
A deep, grey vista, heavily set with swirls of low, brooding cloud hung ominously above their upturned gazes. A slowly rotating vortex of oppression and foreboding blanketing the skies crowning this peculiar world.
They finally neared the boundary of the grounds. Jill seemed to be heading them towards the metal railings that surrounded the estate, but unlike Hobswyke, these were overgrown with rambling hedgerows.
Lucy pirouetted around, trying to get her bearings, finding the mirrored world confusing to navigate – spatial awareness never being one of her strong suits.
They all finally reached the boundary. Lucy and Sam peered with astonishment above their heads. The swirling sky was bowed, looking flat and two-dimensional, curving down to meet the ornate tops of the tall, iron fencing buried deep behind the overgrowth. A spiralling dome of mist and fog capping the children’s world, almost like the angry sky had been folded over them, trapping them there. They could almost reach up and touch its billowing surface, and if they had a ladder, they could.
Jill extended her arms into the twigs and started to part the branches, clearing a passage to the railings.
The flexed limbs seemed to remain where they’d been forced, like they were devoid of spring. But gradually, they began creeping back towards their original position.
Jill pointed through the opening she’d made. ‘Look,’ she said, lifting a finger towards the perimeter fencing, urging the visitors to pass through to investigate.
Lucy and Sam carefully threaded themselves towards the ironwork, Jill continuing to flex the slow returning branches clear of their efforts.
They arrived at the railings, and presented their faces to the bars to see what was there…
Sinking mist fell like dry ice from the edge of the concave sky above their heads, occasionally clearing long enough to allow them to see what lay beyond the bars.
Sam found himself peering out into something he had on many occasions tried in vain to imagine. ‘Nothing’. Pure and unmistakable ‘nothing’. Not a vacuum, nor the emptiness of space – nothing, a total and complete absence of anything.
In the past, as one who took more than a passing interest in the sciences – touching on the theories of quantum physics – he had stood in places devoid of the pollution of man-made light, and peered long and hard into the eternity of space crowning his wonderment, trying in vain to comprehend a finite state that would in effect be an absence of all matter and energy.
But to clear a mind so completely of all things, to allow oneself to comprehend, or even imagine ‘nothing’ is a feat of impossibility for any, and all creatures.
Yet now, at this very moment, he stood staring out into the unimaginable – a no-thing, beyond just sheer blackness. Gazing out at a complete absence of all matter, concepts, ideas or time. Watching something that didn’t exist to be watched.
Tentatively, he extended an arm through the bars out into the void… He couldn’t feel his hand, nothing there existing to stimulate his skin. No warmth, no cold, no touch, or breath of wind. Nothing!
‘Oh Jesus!’ Lucy whimpered, tears bursting off the edges of her lids, rolling down an expressionless face overwhelmed by feelings of emptiness that witnessing the absence of all things had left her with.
‘Come away!’ said Sam, pulling her back from the bars. ‘Come on.’
He escorted her back to the clearing. They stood for a time in their own spaces, attempting to deal with a feeling of ultimate sadness that filled their souls, trying to reason with yet another experience too impossible to truly comprehend. ‘Come along. Come on, let’s walk,’ Sam insisted, Lucy agreed, allowing herself to be led away.
Jack watched the visitors set off, bewildered by their reactions, never having had an opportunity to learn enough of life to know any better.
A view out into nothing would have had little meaning to one who’d never been given chance to see much of anything.
Jill took hold of his hand and they followed – having to break into a trot to catch up.
Lucy stopped suddenly, and turned to Jill. ‘Where are your parents?’ she asked with a frown. Jill shrugged at the question.
‘Where’s your mother?’ asked Sam. ‘Or-Or your father? Don’t you know where your father is?’ He quickly turned to Lucy, who had never known her own father, his identity remaining, to this day, a mystery. ‘Sorry!’ he mouthed for the insensitivity of his question.
She blinked a smile towards him. ‘Don’t worry,’ she responded in hushed tones, ‘it’s okay.’
She’d spent years making peace with the fact. The existence of Sam’s own father in her life making it a much easier battle to have won.
‘What’s a “mother”?’ asked Jack.
It’s the first time they’ve heard him speak. Hearing how gentle and timid his voice was, softened Lucy like butter.
She walked across to him, and dropped to her knees. ‘Erm… A mother, is… is someone who looks after you. Someone who raised you. Someone who cares for you, and cares about you. Keeps you safe, gives you love when you need it, and teaches you about life.’
Jack looked into her face, with no flicker of recognition behind his eyes at anything she’d described.
Jack knew nothing of what it was to have a ‘mother’, but by Lucy’s words alone, he could imagine that he would’ve liked to.
Sam could see by their reactions that they were both parentless. ‘Lucy,’ he called, quietly shaking his head when she looked over. She nodded in agreement.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered to Jack, wrapping her arms around him… He stiffened in the embrace, shocked at receiving an act of tenderness from a total stranger. The only care he’d ever received in his life before, was from Jill. He had to fight for it to not overwhelm him.
‘Where did you come from?’ asked Jill, from somewhere outside of their embrace.
Lucy leaned back, and looked to Sam to share in the responsibility of producing an answer.
Sam made his best attempt. ‘Erm. Well. We come from another place. A place on the other side from here.’ He jostled his thoughts. ‘Above here – no, below?’ he stuttered. ‘It’s just another place, a different place.’
‘But how did you get here?’ Jill added, darting a glance towards ‘The Nothing’ beyond the boundary.
Lucy rolled widened eyes at Sam. Sam shrugged. They’d both done a lifetimes worth of shrugging in the past two days, answers and knowledge becoming somewhat of a luxury in such strange times.
Lucy made her attempt. ‘Hm – Well… You see, we came up through the pool, the one by the side of the steps, the steps at the front of the house,’ Lucy explained, baulking at how insane it must sound.
‘Oh… Okay,’ Jill responded.
Sam pulled a face towards the girl, realising just how warped the children’s lives must be to not react to such a bizarre explanation. He couldn’t even begin to imagine the things they must have seen in their limited little lives.
‘What do you eat? What is food around here?’ asked Lucy.
Jack looked at Jill. She nodded, and he turned, and ran off to a different part of the grounds.
He reappeared a minute later proudly brandishing an apple. ‘These hang from the trees, and there are other things, different things, hanging off different plants.’
Sam looked around the grounds, surprised that anything could grow in such a dank, miserable world.
He took the apple from Jack who was offering it to him enthusiastically, examining it with suspicion, then took a reluctant bite… Instantly, he spat it out again, to the confusion of the children looking on.
‘What’s it like?’ asked Lucy. ‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘It’s horrible,’ he complained, rubbing the taste off his tongue on his T-shirt, ‘really bitter. Disgusting.’
He offered it to Lucy to try. She screwed her face up. ‘Erm. No thanks,’ she said, pushing his hand away.
Jack crept forwards, and snatched the apple back. He ran away and began tucking into it with all the apparent relish of someone eating a slice of the finest cake. Sam watched him, bemused.
Lucy became distracted by something in the distance. She stood to her feet, and walked away from the group, towards whatever it was that had arrested her attention.
Lucy, once again, was feeling the same sensation of being in a bubble, seemingly observing a world detached from her own.
The sensation felt akin to a description a school friend once gave her of a phenomenon called ‘astral projection’, an event where a person’s inner self leaves their terrestrial being, and wanders free of the constraints of its physical host. She imagined it must feel very much the same as this.
Peering out from within her veil of isolation, she looked on at the gatehouse, her home, looming ahead of her. It was a perfect, mirror image of the one on the other side, and in all but just a few details, it looked exactly the same.
She could see tortured brambles growing where roses should be. Darkness beyond the glass instead of the light of a home, lived in and loved.
The domed swirls of the rapidly darkening, oppressive sky kissed the tops of chimney stacks that rose majestically from a roof, thickly blanketed with lichen and moss.
Seeing her home, empty, cold and neglected, saddened her heart. Sat crumbling as a result of an alternative history, a history where it never became the nucleus of a loving family’s everyday comings and goings. A place where people ate, slept and shared tales of their lives.
She circled the perimeter, examining the paradoxical replica, exact in every detail except the ones that truly mattered.
The others walk up to join her. ‘Try the door,’ Sam suggested.
She nodded in agreement, climbing the steps and wiping the handles clear of a coating of dirt. She tried the handle, but it was locked.
She turned her attention to the children. ‘In the other place – where me and Sam are from – this, is the house where I live,’ she explained, their faces alive with genuine interest. ‘You see, this world, and our world, are both kind of the same, well – at least they look the same, but they’re also very different.’
‘Different, how?’ asked Jack.
She tried hard to think of the most diplomatic answer she could present. ‘I guess, they’re different in the way they feel, and the way they make you feel. Our world feels, I don’t know, kinder? Happier? If you understand?’
‘I think so,’ Jill responded – but not really knowing enough of happiness to truly comprehend her words.
Lucy frowned, then drew her hand from the pocket of her jeans. She opened her fingers, revealing her house keys.
She looked across at Sam, turning her hand to show him… His face brightened and he nodded encouragement.
She stepped up to the door and slid the key into the rusted lock, and tried to turn it, but it didn’t move. Her shoulders sagged.
‘Lucy,’ Sam called, ‘the other way.’ He whirled his finger towards her. ‘You have to turn the key the other way. Everything’s opposed, remember?’
She tried turning the key in the other direction, it baulked, then broke free its bonds of inactivity, and began to turn… There was a sharp clack, and Lucy swung the door open…