The Stranger's Shadow Page 31

  “I’m starting to regret my good deed already,” I groaned, trying to shield myself from the wet black tongue. “You used to be so small and quiet and good . . . Sit! And calm down!”

  I am, of course, an Origin, and on the Dark Side my words acquire the instantaneous power of a magic spell. For my dog, however, these words remained just a chaotic string of meaningless sounds. I had to put up with his friendly outpourings for a while.

  Finally Droopy removed his heavy paws from my chest—not because I’m such a great dog trainer but because he finally noticed the pie. He finished it off in one go, licked off all the extra crumbs from my Mantle of Death, and started sniffing around for more.

  “Your dog resembles you,” Lonli-Lokli said.

  “Huh? When did you ever see me greet you like that?” I said, picking up an overturned chair.

  “Magicians forbid,” he said, grinning. “Still, the resemblance is obvious. When you come into a room or into someone’s life, one finds it very difficult to continue with what one was doing before the intrusion. It is utterly impossible to pay attention to anything but you.”

  “Really?” I was nonplussed. I was trying to keep the piece of pie I had just cut for myself away from Droopy. “Wait, is that a compliment or a reproach?”

  “Neither one nor the other. A statement of fact, no more. But tell me, what are you planning to do now?”

  “Well, I’ll do what we came here for: bring all these poor rag dolls back to life. Naturally, I’ll have to sweat a bit. There are more than five dozen of them, but I’ll manage. I hope those guys will express their gratitude with more restraint than Droopy.”

  “That’s not what I meant. What happens next? How will you get all of us out of here?”

  “I’ll think of something,” I said flippantly, but then I felt a tremor of concern.

  I had to get sixty odd people out of the Inside-Out of the Dark Side—the nature of which I had only the dimmest notions at that point—and deliver them to safety, preferably to their homes. Shurf had almost melted on the way here, and I had managed to save his life only by some miracle. What if the others started to melt and disappear as soon as I had turned them back in to people? Even if that didn’t happen, who knew what else could happen on the way back?

  “That’s what I thought,” Shurf said, picking up on my gloomy train of thought.

  “But Droopy didn’t disappear,” I said finally. “That means the others will be fine, too. When I start to think too much, it doesn’t end well. It’s better that we act now and think later. Finish your tea, Shurf. I hope I can polish off the rest of this divine pie. Then we’ll go back into the house and do what we can. That’s the best idea I can come up with at this point.”

  “All right,” Lonli-Lokli said. “I am sorry, Max. I should not have importuned you with my questions. I have not yet gotten used to the idea that you are the one who decides everything here, and that I do not have to supervise you.”

  “Believe me, it’s even harder for me to get used to it,” I said. “I would gladly shift the responsibility onto your powerful shoulders—or someone else’s—but I’m afraid that’s not on the menu.”

  I finished my piece of strawberry pie, paying almost no attention to the taste. I didn’t really want it anymore. I had been wanting it for so long, though, that finishing it was a matter of principle.

  We went back into the great hall, where Doroth’s lifeless little body was still lying on the floor. I didn’t try to pick him up. I didn’t want to touch him.

  Then I got down to work. I made incisions in the cloth bodies and carefully inserted small pieces of Doroth’s still wiggling tail in them. Never in my life had I imagined I would have to save so many people in such an absurd manner.

  Lonli-Lokli would have made an excellent surgeon’s assistant. He orchestrated the procedure beautifully, passing me new dolls, then adroitly arranging off to the side the ones that had already been treated. When Droopy tried to get his wet nose in on the act, Shurf bellowed at him so loudly that the dog went to lie down in the far corner of the hall. He looked like he wanted to plead that he was physically incapable of disturbing me at my work, and the very thought of licking my face made him shudder.

  “Aha, we’ve found the way to keep you in check,” I said gloatingly. I looked over at Lonli-Lokli with admiration, hardly able to contain my untimely desire to ask for his autograph.

  After the first dozen dolls, I decided that I was already a fairly qualified specialist and felt around under my Mantle of Death, where I had placed the rag doll bodies of Xeilax, Kenlex, and Xelvi close to my chest for safekeeping. My hands were shaking. The girls were good acquaintances of mine—not girlfriends, certainly, but not unlike nieces, as I had called them in the dorky lecture about our familial relations that I’d subjected them to in the Sated Skeleton.

  “Do not fret, Max,” Lonli-Lokli said. “It all worked out with Droopy; it will work with the others, too. Do you feel you are more responsible for the girls?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Yet you are just as responsible for all the others, including me, while we are here. There is no difference.”

  “You’re right, of course,” I said as I made a small, careful cut in Lady Xeilax’s stomach. She had always seemed older to me than her sisters, so I decided to begin with her.

  Half an hour later, everything was over. The postoperative toys were lying on the leather divan, in the armchair, and right on the floor—there were too many of them to fit in any one place comfortably. Droopy’s feelings were so hurt that he had fallen asleep in the same far corner to which he had been exiled under the stern gaze of Sir Lonli-Lokli. Still, his strawberry-smeared snout looked perfectly contented.

  “Now we must leave them in peace for a while,” I said to Shurf, surveying the surreal panorama in the great hall. “Would you like some more tea? Or perhaps we can go up to the library.”

  This idea suggested itself to me spontaneously, taking me quite by surprise. Then I discovered that I had not been led astray. High under the eaves of the third floor of this house there really was a library; I had always known about it. Well, not all of me, but the part of my consciousness that felt right at home here.

  “To the library?” Shurf said. “A hole in the heavens above you, Max. What library? Do you really think . . .”

  “You are right again,” I said. “If we are indeed in the Inside-Out of the Dark Side, it could very well be that legendary library. Let’s check it out.”

  I strode up the creaking stairs, almost mechanically pressing the light switches along the way as I ascended. Unlike me, my hands knew just where they were. Opaque white spheres lighted our way upward with a dull glow. Under the lampshades burned ordinary electric lightbulbs.

  We made it up to the third floor, and from there continued up into the attic. The final staircase turned out to be ancient and rickety, and the wooden steps felt springy under my feet. The condition of the attic floor was just as precarious as that of the stairs. But I liked this. If the floorboards had not been so pliant and our progress so touch-and-go, our journey through the house might have seemed like a confused dream.

  “I can’t believe my eyes,” Lonli-Lokli said in a whisper, placing his hand on my shoulder. “This is a library.”

  “No, these are just bookshelves stacked with old books,” I said, also lowering my voice. “The real library is farther down. See the little white door over there in the corner?”

  “No,” he said with a sigh. “I do not see any door. The entrance to the library probably exists only for you. Will you go in?”

  “Sure. Since we’ve come this far . . . Will you wait for me? I’ll be quick.”

  “Yes, go ahead. I’ll look through the books out here in the meantime.”

  “I don’t doubt it will be time well spent.”

  I smiled at him and opened the shabby white door, as small as the door of an antique icebox. I had to crawl inside on all fours, so it was hard for me to come
to grips with the significance of the act. Besides, that’s sometimes for the best.

  A cozy half-light reigned in the place where I found myself. It was the sort of weak, dispersed light you find in the darkest corner of an enormous room on an overcast day before rain. I stood up and looked around. Everything looked just as I had always imagined the mysterious “upstairs library” would look when I was warming the red velvet chair with my backside on the first floor of this house. There were neither windows nor walls. There was not even a ceiling. If they existed, they were lost somewhere in the shimmering mist that was like the very fabric of this place—or its movable, constantly shifting frame. Besides the mist, there were only green carpet runners on the floor and books lined up in neat rows on the shelves—eternity in its most reassuring form.

  I took several steps forward. The distorted spatial perspectives of the library made my head spin. To be honest, I was afraid to move away from the door. I couldn’t allow myself the dubious luxury of getting stuck here forever. Someone still had to transport the five dozen people who were coming back to life on the first floor of this enigmatic building back to Echo.

  My disobedient legs carried me off to the left, and I crashed into the corner of a desk. The desk was very real, just as real as the future bruise that would soon bloom on my left thigh in all its multihued glory. Beating back my childish urge to curse, I stared at the polished surface of my tormenter. There was a sheet of thick blue paper, scribbled on all over with fairly small writing. Only the first line was spelled out in large letters: Dear Max.

  I grabbed the page and stared at it in almost superstitious horror. Can you imagine the state of a devout Catholic who discovers on the altar a letter with his name on it, signed by St. Peter? Such was my shock.

  For a few minutes I read and reread the greeting, which had struck me as so absurd that I couldn’t force myself to read further. But curiosity is a powerful force. Especially mine. So I gave myself a good hard kick and fell out of my trance with a thud.

  I am very glad that you found your way to the library.

  My eyes started wandering easily down the page.

  Now a few words of friendly advice of a practical nature. First, you should not stroll around through the library. I am not sure that you are ready for such an endeavor. Do not hurry. Everything in its own time. Second, do not try to find your unwritten book here. As far as I can tell, this idea had occurred to you. It will not work, in any case, but if it did . . . In short, you must abstain from this. You may keep taking my books by means of the Chink between Worlds. But don’t try walking out of here with one of them under your arm.

  “What does he think I am, a kleptomaniac?” I said aloud, somewhat miffed.

  A soft, eerie chuckle was the only response. It welled up quietly from nowhere, from everywhere, and it struck me as the most horrific sound effect imaginable. That brought me up short, and I continued reading.

  That, however, doesn’t hold for the books under the eaves, beyond the confines of the library. Those are bona fide books, written by all kinds of ordinary people. I really don’t know why they did it, to be honest. You can take those away by the armful. Personally, though, I doubt whether you’ll find anything interesting in them.

  Now, one last piece of advice—the piece most relevant to you. It is not at all necessary for you to leave here on the same path by which you came, following the tracks of Doroth. “Not at all necessary” usually means, coming from my mouth, “you ought not to,” and in the current situation it would not be an exaggeration to add “under any circumstances”—an expression I have no special liking for, to tell the truth, and try not to use at all.

  I hope you remember that in certain circumstances any door opened in darkness can become the Door between Worlds. You have already experienced this yourself. I do not think that just any door will work this time, as you will be traveling in a large group. The garden behind the house is surrounded by a wall, and there is an opening in it. Precisely what you need.

  Keep in mind that you’ll have to do without my advice in the future. Giving advice is not my policy, but today I had a duty to help you. After all, it was my whim—summoning to Echo a crazy mouse from the Red Xmiro Desert, with his witless servants in tow. This letter is a form of apology.

  After this followed some illegible scrawl. Lower still was a postscript, clearly dashed off in haste.

  P.S. Do not try to understand why this place feels familiar to you. Try to persuade yourself that you only dreamed it, like many other very convincing places. Do not hurry, Sir Max. It is not that crucial to understand absolutely everything. In fact, you should never hurry with anything—if you can help it, of course.

  I folded the piece of paper carefully, thought a bit, then decided that it would be better to burn it. I didn’t want to take it with me, and I was reluctant to leave it here. Deep in my heart, I was afraid that if the letter addressed to me stayed here on the desk, some “dear Max” or other who looked frighteningly like me would start coming here on a daily basis. He would put the letter back on the table and leave, making way for the next in a series of doppelgängers . . . The thought of it made me feel queasy.

  I burned the letter and carefully rubbed away the charred remains. I didn’t feel I could relax until I caught myself staring at my own palms, smeared with ashes.

  Let’s scram, buddy, I said to myself. I can’t stand looking at your face anymore, all stunned with wonder. Just try to get back home in one piece, okay?

  I was able to salvage the pathetic remains of myself and make it out of the library, thanks to the little white door that was still at my service.

  “That was fast,” Lonli-Lokli said, tearing himself away from the piles of books. “Everything is still quiet downstairs. By the way, there are real ghosts haunting this place. Two of them were here just now. I was ready for anything, but they did not pay any attention to me. They just went past me, then oozed through the wall and disappeared.”

  “I don’t think they disappeared,” I said with a smile. “I know for a fact that somewhere here there is another invisible door leading upstairs to the tower. The beings that inhabit the house are able to use the door, but you and I are not. I don’t know why. But I don’t think they are ghosts. I am almost sure that they are absolutely ordinary denizens of this place. Unlike you and me.”

  “I do not understand,” Shurf said, frowning.

  “I’m not sure I understand it myself, but I’m beginning to have some idea of what the Inside-Out of the Dark Side really is. It’s not a parallel World, not a neighboring Universe, but the potential to change once and for all your own nature, to become someone different, and then to go wherever your heart takes you. Or wherever you are whisked off to. That’s why the people who live here don’t even notice us. And that is probably why you almost disappeared when we crossed the boundary . . . I’m sorry, my friend, I can’t explain it more clearly. I guess I just don’t have the proper terminology yet.”

  “On the contrary, that was very clear indeed. Your version is not the worst distortion of the truth, which we will in any case never reach. Let us not distract ourselves with too much thinking. Look here at what I found. All the other books are in some language I don’t understand. Even the alphabets are unfamiliar. But this one looks like the books you fetched for me from the Chink between Worlds. It says here that it is ‘very scary.’”

  “Where does it say that?”

  He handed me a thick book in a smooth, dark-brown binding. It had no name or author on it—like books with their dust jackets removed. On the spine of the book was a broad strip of tape with thick letters in black magic marker: VERY SCARY BOOK. I opened it up and a burst out laughing: Stephen King. The Tommyknockers. That’s Shurf’s “luck” for you. There’s nothing more I can say.

  “Max, is it really so funny, or do you have a case of nerves?” my friend said, looking worried.

  “Both, most likely. At least it’s a real book, written by a real person. And
it’s yours, if you want it.”

  “Of course I do. Do you think I can take it?”

  “I’m absolutely sure. I found out in the library precisely what is permitted and what isn’t.”

  “Who told you, if I might ask?”

  “King Mynin,” I said. “He wrote me a letter and politely gave me to understand that it was not advisable for young whippersnappers like me to hang around in his library. At the same time he offered his apologies for the bad behavior of his former favorite Doroth and things like that. So grab your book. In the words of Mynin, you can take them by the armful. But you don’t need that many, do you?”

  “To be honest, I would not refuse them. Even though the alphabets are unfamiliar to me, and I cannot read them, just holding them in my hands is a pleasure. But I will content myself with just one.”

  Then he looked at my face searchingly, as though he had observed some visible change in me, or as though he was about to question me further. At that moment I heard a commotion downstairs. I grabbed my head and cursed myself. Where did I get off thinking that my enchanted patients would just lie there meekly on the floor until I decided to do something about them? I flew downstairs, three steps at a time. Lonli-Lokli followed behind at a measured pace; nevertheless, we both made it to the first floor at the same time.

  The spacious hall now looked like a hastily equipped field hospital in the epicenter of an earthquake, with Red Cross workers rushing about. Terrified adults, looking as helpless and confused as lost children, were scattered about on the floor, in armchairs, on the table and windowsills. My girls had managed to crowd onto the red chair all together. They were clinging to one another and to Droopy, who was howling in sympathy with them.

  “Everything is under control, people,” I said, trying to up the volume of my voice. “The worst is over. Now we will be going home, so there is no need to fear.”