The tentacle advanced on them less like a disembodied limb or even a snake than like a centipede that ended, or began, with a fist that was a face, as they’d backed up next to the dead body. Not by choice. At least, not Jonathan’s choice.
“Squishy” proceeded to offer up a cheerful thrashing, begun by launching itself at them—literally punching them with its face. Seemingly everywhere at once, blackening eyes and reddening foreheads at will. Boxing ears.
Always bleating out “I am Squishy! I am Squishy!”
Then it leapt onto Rack with murderous intent, Rack flinging it against the far wall, only to have it immediately get back up and jump on him again, squealing cheerful platitudes and inanities like “Is this fun? Is this fun? This is fun!”
As it righted itself from a well-aimed kick from Rack’s only good leg now and again attacked—in unorthodox fashion by attaching itself to Jonathan’s face, blocked only by his flinging up his arms in an X in desperation—Squishy then adjusted tactics to try to flow through and strangle him.
At that moment, Mamoud pulled it off and then Rack brought out the sword and cut it in two.
“I believe it is dead now,” Mamoud said, looking at the stunned, slow-writhing pieces.
“And I believe you’re wrong,” Rack said.
But Jonathan hardly heard either of them. Something had been nagging at him, panicking him now that danger had momentarily passed them by.
“Where’s Alice?” he asked.
It was so astoundingly obvious now. A horrifying realization.
“Not here, not since the death piggies, I think,” Rack said. “Could they have gotten her?”
“Where’s Alice?” said the twin Squishies. “Not here, not since the death piggies. Could they have gotten her.”
“You, shut up,” Jonathan said. “I’ve had just about enough of you.”
“You, shut up. I’ve had just about enough of you,” mimicked the Squishies.
“Please please be quiet,” Rack pleaded.
“Please please be quiet,” the Squishies pleaded.
“No use talking,” Mamoud said.
“No use talking,” the Squishies sang.
With intensity and verve, the Squishies redoubled their attack, and they were reduced to a bloodthirsty and instinctual stamping and stomping of the Squishies and maiming and hurting the Squishies by all available means. Because it was like trying to stamp out a stubborn brush fire. Almost impossible.
The pieces of the pieces were crawling up their legs, echoing Rack’s shriek of “Die! Die!” when Jonathan remembered his knife.
“Step back, away from the pieces,” he shouted.
“Which pieces?!” Rack shouted back.
“All of them!”
And when they had, which took some doing, he tossed the smiling pocketknife into the midst of the pieces.
It gave a squeal of delight like a child about to have a nice time at the circus and then in gleeful and terrifying fashion extended all its blades, and in a whirring as intense as a hummingbird’s but deadlier it sliced the pieces into tinier pieces and then tinier pieces still.
Until all the fight had gone out of the Squishies and they reflexively, almost in a philosophical way, moved in slow-motion micro-piles.
The smiling knife retracted its blades, scuttled across the room to hop up happy on Jonathan’s knee where he slumped against the wall.
Jonathan pocketed the knife. He was bone-weary. They all were. Battered and bruised. Perhaps a little in shock at how badly it had all gone, ever since the funicular. Even before that.
Three. Down to three, without Danny and without Alice. They’d lost and failed not one but two members of their expedition.
And it was not over yet. Not by half. Perhaps the unrelenting nature of the assault was the most unnerving part. Never a chance to catch their breath.
For that renewed banging wasn’t a ringing echo in their ears. It was the sound of the monster still battering at the door. It was the sound of there being no Alice in the shadows. It was the sound of now truly seeing the face of the half-mummified body in the corner, impaled on a yodeler’s horn, and recognizing it. A sharp shock dulled only by fatigue.
Yet it was what lay behind that massive figure that got Jonathan’s attention.
“There’s another door!” Hope rising that surely would be crushed by whatever came next.
The outline of the door had been hidden by the propped-up corpse.
A small door, but a door nonetheless. My kingdom for a door. Three cheers for a door. He felt giddy, radiant, in the glow of that discovery.
“Up,” Jonathan said. “Up. Otherwise, it’ll be all for nothing.”
Like a bunch of stumbling drunks, they all three rose, holding on to one another. Wordlessly, they shoved the body to the side, Jonathan trying not to look at it too close. It was inexplicable, for the man to be there. Dead. Had Rack noticed?
Kneeling, Mamoud tried the knob. It jiggled. “There’s no lock.” Such relief in his voice.
Then they were dragging themselves through into that even-cooler darkness, closing yet another door between them and the monster. One with a lock they could just turn into place. Pitch-black beyond.
After, they had slammed the second door shut behind and stood there panting, Rack hopping on his one foot.
“Can you walk?” Jonathan asked.
“I’m walking, aren’t I?” Rack snapped.
Mamoud had taken out a small cylinder and broke it in two, releasing a low-powered light. More Republic science, almost the same as magic.
Facing them was the sheer mountain wall, no corridor, no next room, no next door.
Etched into that space, seven feet up, were words.
WELCOME TO THE ALPINE MEADOWS RESEARCH INSTITUTE
“Is that some kind of joke?” Rack asked. “After all of that … just this?”
“It appears so,” Mamoud said. “But I doubt that monster can get through two doors. It will tire. We can survive this.”
“If it’s not magical,” Jonathan said. “I think it’s probably magical. And tireless.”
Rack looked stricken. “That’s it, mate. We’re toast. Let’s just hope Danny got out.”
“And Alice,” Jonathan added.
But among all the other surprises, one more had surfaced, and Jonathan started to laugh. He couldn’t help himself. It was all too, too much.
“She’s picked my pocket. Alice picked my damned pocket.” Hand over his chest. “She’s taken the Wobble and done a runner.”
Mamoud’s head shot up sharp from where he knelt. Yet the look on his face didn’t express concern. Perhaps it seemed like the least of their problems.
A helpless look from Rack in the shadows.
Should’ve seemed catastrophic. Now, under the circumstances, it seemed small, almost petty.
Like mother, like son, Jonathan thought. He would die in a version of the Alps, too, forever separated by the wall between worlds. Without ever solving the mysteries before him. Of the mansion. Of the Order.
Of how and why Sir Waddel Ponder, headmaster of Poxforth, lay dead in the next room, with a musical instrument piercing his heart. A man Jonathan had seen alive not two weeks ago. On Earth.
Of the scrawled words on the way station wall he had not pointed out to the others: “Sarah, I’m sorry.” Words to a dead woman or …? Stimply had meant to warn him from thinking that way—and failed. He’d tried to warn himself, in a way, by banishing thoughts of her since they’d come to the Alps. But now could think of nothing else.
How, like the headmaster, her body must be curled up somewhere, lifeless, still holding on to her secrets in a way he could not articulate.
Better if he had not seen that. Better, even, if her body had been there, beside the headmaster, than not to know. A selfish, terrible thought.
Came a voice in his head, a voice he’d known was there, for over a week now. Ever since Spain.
Don’t give up hope. You can’t give up hope. I won’t let you.
But who was talking to him? Who had taken up residence inside his head?
As if in response there came a loud click, and the floor opened up beneath them.
They all three fell through darkness for a very long time.