back to the suffering head waiter. ‘Look, Bil ,’ he said, taking him by the shoulder. ‘This
isn’t food. No one expects it to be food. If people wanted food they’d stay at home, isn’t
that so? They come here for ambience. For the experience. This isn’t cookery, Bil .
This is cuisine. See? And they’re coming back for more.
‘Yeah, but old boots . . .
‘Dwarfs eats rats,’ said the manager. ‘And trol s eat rocks. There’s folks in
Howondaland that eat insects and folks on the Counterweight Continent eat soup
made out of bird spit. At least the boots have been on a cow.
‘And mud?’ said the head waiter, gloomily
‘Isn’t there an old proverb that says a man must eat a bushel of dirt before he dies?
‘Yes, but not al at once.
‘Bil ?’ said the manager, kindly, picking up a spatula
‘Yes, boss?
‘Get those damn boots off right now, wil you?
When Chickenwire reached the bottom of the tower he was trembling, and not just
from the effort. He headed straight for the door until Medium Dave grabbed him
‘Let me out! It’s after me!
‘Look at his face,’ said Catseye. ‘Looks like he’s seen a ghost!
‘Yeah, wel , it ain’t a ghost,’ muttered Chickenwire. ‘It’s worse’n a ghost-
Medium Dave slapped him across the face
‘Pul yourself together! Look around! Nothing’s chasing you! Anyway, it’s not as
though we couldn’t put up a fight, right?
Terror had had time to drain away a little. Chickenwire looked back up the stairs.
There was nothing there
‘Good,’ said Medium Dave, watching his face. ‘Now… What happened?
Chickenwire looked at his feet
‘I thought it was the wardrobe,’ he muttered. ‘Go on, laugh…
They didn’t laugh
‘What wardrobe?’ said Catseye
‘Oh, when I was a kid…’ Chickenwire waved his arms vaguely. ‘We had this big ole
wardrobe, if you must know. Oak. It had this… this..
on the door there was this… sort of… face.’ He looked at their faces, which were
equal y wooden. ‘I mean, not an actual face, there was… al this… decoration round the
keyhole, sort of flowers and leaves and stuff, but if you looked at it in the… right way…
it was a face and they put it in my room ‘cos it was so big and in the night… in the
night… in the night-
They were grown men or at least had lived for several decades, which in some
societies is considered the same thing. But you had to stare at a man so creased up
with dread
‘Yes?’ said Catseye hoarsely
‘…it whispered things,’ said Chickenwire, in a quiet little voice, like a vole in a
dungeon
They looked at one another
‘What things?’ said Medium Dave
‘I don’t know! I always had my head under the pil ow! Anyway, it’s just something
from when I was a kid, al right? Our dad got rid of it in the finish. Burned it. And I
watched.
They mental y shook themselves, as people do when their minds emerge back into
the light
‘It’s like me and the dark,’ said Catseye
‘Oh, don’t you start,’ said Medium Dave. ‘Anyway, you ain’t afraid of the dark. You’re
famed for it. I been working with you in al kinds of cel ars and stuff. I mean, that’s how
you got your name. Catseye. Sees like a cat.
‘Yeah, wel … you try an’ make up for it, don’t you?’ said Catseye. “Cos when you’re
grown you know it’s just shadows and stuff
Besides, it ain’t like the dark we used to have in the cel ar.
‘Oh, they had a special kind of a dark when you was a lad, did they?’ said Medium
Dave. ‘Not like the kind of dark you get these days, eh?
Sarcasm didn’t work
‘No,’ said Catseye, simply. ‘It wasn’t. In our cel ar, it wasn’t.
‘Our mam used to wal op us if we went down to the cel ar,’ said Medium Dave. ‘She
had her stil down there.
‘Yeah?’ said Catseye, from somewhere far off. ‘Wel , our dad used to wal op us if we
tried to get out. Now shut up talking about it.
They reached the bottom of the stairs
There was an absence of anybody. And any body
‘He couldn’t have survived that, could he?’ said Medium Dave
‘I saw him as he went past,’ said Catseye. ‘Necks aren’t supposed to bend that way-
He squinted upwards
‘Who’s that moving up there?
‘How are their necks moving?’ quavered Chickenwire
‘Split up!’ said Medium Dave. ‘And this time al take a stairway. Then they can’t come
back down!
‘Who’re they? Why’re they here?
‘Why’re we here?’ said Peachy. He started, and looked behind him
‘Taking our money? After us putting up with him?
‘Yeah…’ said Peachy distantly, trailing after the others. ‘Er… did you hear that noise
just then?
‘What noise?
‘A sort of clipping, snipping… ?
‘No.
‘No.
‘No. You must have imagined it.
Peachy nodded miserably
As he walked up the stairs, little shadows raced through the stone and fol owed his
feet
Susan darted off the stairs and dragged the oh god along a corridor lined with white
doors
‘I think they saw us,’ she said. ‘And if they’re tooth fairies there’s been a real y stupid
equal opportunities policy…
She pushed open a door
There were no windows to the room, but it was lit perfectly wel by the wal s
themselves. Down the middle of the room was something like a display case, its lid
gaping open. Bits of card littered the floor
She reached down and picked one up and read: ‘Thomas Ague, aged 4 and nearly
three quarters, 9 Castle View, Sto Lat’. The writing was in a meticulous rounded script
She crossed the passage to another room, where there was the same scene of
devastation
‘So now we know where the teeth were,’ sh
said. ‘They must’ve taken them out of everywhere and carried them downstairs.
‘What for?
She sighed. ‘It’s such old magic it isn’t even magic any more,’ she said. ‘If you’ve got
a piece of someone’s hair, or a nail clipping, or a tooth you can control them.
The oh god tried to focus
‘That heap’s control ing mil ions of children?
‘Yes. Adults too, by now.
‘And you… you could make them think things and do things?
She nodded. ‘Yes.
‘You could get them to open Dad’s wal et and post the contents to some address?
‘Wel , I hadn’t thought of that, but yes, I suppose you could…
‘Or go downstairs and smash al the bottles in the drinks cabinet and promise never
to take a drink when they grow up?’ said the oh god hopeful y
‘What are you talking about?
‘It’s al right for you. You don’t wake up every morning and see your whole life flush
before your eyes
Medium Dave and Catseye ran down the passage and stopped where it forked
‘You go that way, I’l –
‘Why don’t we stick together?’ said Catseye
‘What’s got into everyone? I saw you bite th
throats out of a coupla guard dogs when we did that job in Quirm! Want me to hold
your hand? You check the doors down there, I’l check them along here.
He walked off
Catseye peered down the other passage
There weren’t many doors down there. It wasn’t very long. And, as Teatime had said,
there was nothing dangerous here that they hadn’t brought with them
He heard voices coming from a doorway and sagged with relief
He could deal with humans
As he approached, a sound made him look round
Shadows were racing down the passage behind him. They cascaded down the wal s
and flowed over the ceiling
Where shadows met they became darker. And darker
And rose. And leapt
‘What was that?’ said Susan
‘Sounded like the start of a scream,’ said Bilious
Susan threw open the door
There was no one outside
There was movement, though. She saw a patch of darkness in the corner of a wal
shrink and fade, and another shadow slid around the bend of the corridor
And there was a pair of boots in the centre of the corridor
She hadn’t remembered any boots there before
She sniffed. The air tasted of rats, and damp, and mould
‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said
‘How’re we going to find this Violet in al these rooms?
‘I don’t know. I should be able to… sense her, but I can’t.’ Susan peered around the
end of the corridor. She could hear men shouting, some way off
They slipped out on to the stairs again and managed another flight. There were more
rooms here, and in each one a cabinet that had been broken open
Shadows moved in the corners. The effect was as though some invisible light source
was gently shifting
‘This reminds me a lot of your… um… of your grandfather’s place,’ said the oh god