Cuckoo Song

Chapter 11. THE ARCHITECT

As Triss approached the mysterious doorway, the sounds of joyful uproar in the auditorium seemed to dull. The roar of voices became foggy, the piano music muted to a tinny chiming like distant cowbells. Beyond the doorway lay a narrow corridor running from left to right, carpeted in a drab earthy grey, and with patterned wallpaper of the same colour on the walls.

Triss gingerly leaned in to peer. To the left, the corridor led to a set of stairs leading downward. To the right it ended at a distant white-painted door, before which stood Pen. As Triss watched, Pen knocked. A moment or two later, the door was opened, and the younger girl vanished within.

The carpet crunched strangely under Triss’s feet as she advanced down the corridor, soft but prickly, delicate but fibrous. The wallpaper looked a lot like velvet with some of its pile shaved to create patterns. When she put out her hand to touch it, however, she found her fingertips stroking feathers. As she brushed the wall, a tiny tremor seemed to flutter through the pattern, as though the wall was a living thing and had stirred its plumage.

Pen had left the white door slightly open, so Triss settled herself by the jamb so that she could peer in through the crack. She found herself looking into a small, dim room partially obscured by the figure of Pen, who was still hovering just beyond the threshold. The lighting in the room was bleached and palpitating, like that in the auditorium she had just left.

‘Miss Penelope Crescent.’ Somebody was striding forward to shake Pen by the hand, somebody male and very tall. His voice was educated, confident and designed to carry. At the same time there was an edginess in his tone, as if he was being distracted by thoughts of something very exciting. He stepped backwards again, fully into Triss’s line of sight, and she saw him clearly.

Her first reaction was shock. The stranger was not just handsome, he was movie star handsome. His short, carefully combed hair gleamed like honey, and he had a small, fair, Douglas Fairbanks moustache that curled up at the ends. He did not wear a proper daytime suit with jacket and vest of the sort her father always donned on weekdays. Instead he was dressed in the latest fanatically casual fashion among those her parents called ‘the sporty set’. He wore a V-necked sweater over his crisp white shirt, the comfortable, loose trousers known as ‘Oxford bags’, and two-toned, tan-and-white ‘spectator’ shoes. Over these hung a sleekly tailored grey-brown overcoat, and Triss could only assume that he had just arrived from some much more glamorous engagement.

‘Always a pleasure. Please.’ He took another step back and spread his arm in a broad, welcoming gesture. As he did so, Triss thought she caught a gleam under his shirt cuff, a hint of metal on his wrist. Pen accepted the tacit invitation, passing him to move further into the room.

Triss swallowed, then pushed both her luck and the door an inch or two more, so that the crack widened and she gained a better view.

It was easy to make out the source of the fitful lighting. To the right, the whole of one wide wall was a seething, quivering mass of silver-and-grey action. It was a movie, there was no doubt about that, but there was no projector in sight, no blanched beam of light from across the room slanting down to strike the wall. Triss watched the great moving picture in bewilderment as some mute heroine, bristling with ringlety virtue, shook her head rapidly and shunned the gifts of a Lothario with seal-sleek hair. Only when a title card flashed up on the screen with the words back-to-front did Triss realize that she must be looking at the back of the auditorium’s screen.

Triss had heard that some cheap fleapits whose screens were nothing but hung sheets sometimes put a few audience seats behind the sheet, charging half price to those who saw the film back to front. But the surface on which this film flickered looked like a wall, not a sheet. And if it were thin enough for the light to pierce, why could she no longer hear the piano music or the murmur of the audience?

The rest of the room was extraordinary for its ordinariness. Aside from its walls, which were lined with the same feathery paper as the corridor, it seemed to be a perfectly normal parlour, complete with floral-pattered chairs, a grandmother clock, a cloth-covered table sporting a tea set and a wireless. Triss could not imagine why such a room would be lurking behind a cinema screen, however, and the light made everything look restless. Shadows jumped and beat like wings.

Pen settled herself a little awkwardly on one large gilt-edged armchair facing towards the reverse screen. Her feet did not touch the ground, and she had pulled her sleeves down over her knuckles, a sure sign that she was on edge.

‘A good choice. The best seat in the house.’ The stranger with the movie-star moustache moved over to stand beside her chair, gazing at the back-to front film. ‘But then, the clearest way to see things always is from the hidden side. Creep up on the world from behind, catch it unawares, and then you see it for what it really is—’

‘Mr Architect,’ Pen interrupted in a small, determined voice, ‘I wanted to talk to you.’

Mr Architect? Triss stared at the stranger with renewed interest. Her father had spoken as if somebody he knew through his work might have been responsible for her fall into the Grimmer. As a civil engineer, her father worked with a lot of architects. Could this man be one of them?

As Triss stared at the Architect, she experienced a growing sense of discomfort. He was handsome, she could see that, but when she thought about it, it was difficult to say how he was handsome. His charm was like a sunbeam right in the eyes, smudging out all detail. When she did squint hard with her mind, she found herself glimpsing bits and pieces through the glare that were not really like Douglas Fairbanks after all. His eyes were very pale, she realized, a light shade of a colour that she could not remember from one moment to the next. His teeth were too white, almost blue-white. His chin was narrow, and there was a kink at the corner of his smile that made her think of a treacherous raised nail on a stair carpet.

‘So I understood from our telephone call.’ The Architect surveyed Pen for a long moment. ‘You asked for an appointment… and here we are.’

Triss’s mind flashed back to Pen’s furtive departure from their father’s study. She did use the telephone! She used it to call this man! But… why didn’t the operator have any record of it? And why was she calling him anyway?

‘They say that a picture is worth a thousand words,’ continued the Architect, ‘and your face, Miss Crescent, is a picture. By now I would expect it to have a thousand happy words to say, but it seems not.’

‘Of course I’m not happy!’ snapped Pen, finding her confidence in her ever-to-hand satchel of rage.

‘No.’ He regarded her with his pale eyes. ‘I suppose you are the sort who will never be happy, but who will make the world far more interesting in your attempts to become so. Ah well. Never mind.’

Pen blinked, and Triss could almost feel the Architect’s clever words simply flowing past her, like elegant brook eddies around a small and determined rock.

‘I’m not happy,’ Pen went on doggedly, ‘and you know why. You tricked me!’

‘Tricked.’ It was not a question, nor an expression of outrage. The Architect let the word fall flatly, rather as he might have dropped an unidentified oddment on the table to examine it. He paused for a few seconds, raising his eyebrows in contemplation, then shook his head. ‘I am not sure what you mean by that.’

‘Yes, you are!’ Pen scowled, and her heels kicked hard at the leg of the regal chair. ‘We made a deal! And I did everything you asked! I got you the diary pages and the brush and all the other things! I even got Triss to come to the Grimmer! You said if I did all of that, you’d take her away!’

Hiding behind the door, Triss had to cover her mouth with both hands to stop a cry of outrage escaping her.

The anger was so overwhelming that it seemed to be something outside her, like a vast animal watching over her shoulder, breathing on her neck and making her skin hot.

‘Well?’ The Architect looked about as concerned as a cat on a summer wall.

‘I thought you’d take her, and that would be the end of it! I just wanted her gone. I never asked for… for that!’ Pen made a wild, rather unfocused gesture, as though waving towards a thought present only to her mind’s eye.

‘I always keep my bargains.’ The tall man smiled. ‘She will be gone. In mere days.’

Triss swallowed, anger yielding once again to fear. She was still in danger then.

‘Days?’ exploded Pen. ‘Days of that? This isn’t what I wanted, and you know it! It’s horrible! I hate it!’

‘I’m not responsible for giving you what you wanted, just what you asked for.’ The man shrugged non-committally. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but it seemed to Triss that the fibres of his coat shrugged too, a ripple running down through it from his collar to the bottom hem. It struck her that the coat was the same colour as the peculiar carpet and wallpaper.

‘You can’t treat me like this!’ Pen clenched her nails into her palms, face like a crumpled dishcloth. ‘You have to get rid of that thing and put things right, or I’ll… I’ll tell!’

The Architect, who had been turning away with a smile on his face, stopped moving altogether. So did the dust motes waltzing in the flickering light. So did the pendulum of the clock. Even the figures on the silver screen behind Pen stopped mid-soiree, gripping their champagne glasses as they turned to stare at her, huddling together as if expecting a storm or explosion.

‘Tell?’ His voice was very, very soft. He turned to face Pen, and in doing so appeared to grow a few inches. His coat bristled and brindled, like the fur of an angry cat, and it seemed to Triss that a light shone in his pale eyes, as if they were reflecting a wild sky that nobody else could see. ‘TELL?’ He did not simply shout the word, he screamed it at the top of his lungs, with the terrible force of a thwarted infant. ‘But that would be breaking our bargain!’

Somehow it was not funny. The very childishness made it strange and terrifying. Seeing an adult give in to temper without shame was like seeing a chain falling from the collar of a large and dangerous dog.

Pen hunched into a ball in her chair, knees to her chest, both hands raised in defensive fists before her face.

‘I don’t care!’ she shrieked. ‘I’ll tell them what happened to Triss! I’ll tell them where you are! I’ll tell them about all your friends, and the bird-things, and the telephones!’

There was a long, long second during which a hundred winter winds drew in a silent breath and the Architect was not handsome at all. Then the dust motes eased back into their luminous meanderings, the pendulum resumed its broken swing and the film characters went back to gliding around and ignoring the parlour.

‘Ah, never a dull moment in your company, Miss Crescent.’ He lowered his shoulders and straightened his back, then smiled down under his blond lashes at his toffee-and-milk-coloured shoes. ‘Well, never let it be said that I left somebody unsatisfied with their bargain. I take such things seriously. Very seriously. Since you are so insistent, it seems I will have to talk to some people, change some arrangements. Will you excuse me?’

Pen nodded, slowly lowering her fists, watching the Architect all the time over her jutted chin. He moved towards a door near the far corner of the room, then hesitated, apparently in two minds about whether to say something.

‘My dear,’ he began at last, ‘I… must ask you not to touch anything while I am gone. The items in this room, simple as they are, are important to me.’

As the Architect disappeared through the other door, Triss saw the younger girl look at the room around her with a new and fierce curiosity.

Does he know who he just said that to?

Pen listened for a few seconds, then wriggled out of her chair and started walking around the room, scrutinising the wireless and ducking to all fours to look at the underside of the table. Thus it was only Triss who noticed when the figures on the flickering screen first abandoned their duties and edged forward to peer out at Pen.

There were six of them, three men and three women. The scene was a countryside picnic, so all the characters were dressed in outdoor clothes and overcoats. The background was silvery hills and rippling, blossom-filled trees.

One of the women raised a fist and knocked, as if she was banging against her side of an invisible barrier. She called something short, and a title card flashed up. It was of course back to front, but it stayed up long enough for Triss to squint and read it backwards.

HEY!!

Several more of the figures began to beat on their side of the screen, calling out with increased urgency, all eyes on Pen. The title cards followed, with ever larger lettering.

HEY! HEY, YOU! OVER HERE!

The title cards lingered for longer and longer, plunging the room into relative darkness each time, so that at last Pen looked up at the screen in annoyance, and did a double take.

YES, YOU! YOU’RE IN DANGER!

Pen leaned forward, mouth moving as she worked out what the words said, and then she straightened, eyebrows rising and mouth pursing into a small pout of doubt.

HE LIED TO YOU

HE HAS GONE TO GET THE GRIPPERS

‘Grippers? What are the Grippers?’ Pen asked aloud. The film figures gave furtive glances towards the door through which the Architect had left, and flapped their hands in ‘quiet, quiet’ motions. Pen took a step towards the door behind which Triss was hiding, but the silver coterie all jerked with alarm and flailed their arms in warning.

NO, NOT THAT WAY!

THEY’RE WAITING FOR YOU!

Pen halted, irresolute. Triss, who had tensed at the prospect of Pen rushing out of the door and straight into her, now glanced apprehensively down the corridor. No mysterious ‘Grippers’ could be seen advancing on her position, however.

Back in the film scene, one of the men ran back to his car, which was parked almost out of shot. He pulled open the door, then looked back at Pen expectantly. The other film-folk remained close to the screen, all beckoning furiously.

THIS WAY! QUICK! INTO THE CAR!

YOU CAN ESCAPE WITH US!

Pen hesitated, her face a battleground of different emotions. Then she tightened her jaw and scampered forward until she was a pace from the flickering image. She stretched out one uncertain hand and patted at the wall.

Instantly the figures made a lunge for her, colourless hands tightening on her arm, her shoulders, her clothes. Their faces slid into identical smiles of triumph. No title card flashed up this time, but it was not hard to make out the words they were mouthing.

GOT YOU

Pen screamed. Where the colourless flickering hands touched her, Triss could see Pen’s own skin and clothes start to mottle and spot, as if a gleaming, silver lichen were spreading across her. Pen was yanked off her feet and pulled through the frame into the country scene to lie on the grey grass. She made a desperate lunge back towards the parlour, but only managed to catch at the edge of the image ‘frame’ with one hand. The grinning picnickers hauled on her clothes and limbs, and Triss could see Pen’s grip on the edge of her world starting to weaken.

Pen was now almost entirely consumed by grey, except for that one tenacious hand, and even there the flesh was dulling and losing its colour. Her screams were silent, and her cheeks were shiny with tears.

It serves her right. It serves her right, the little horror. She brought it all on herself.

Oh… Pen, you little pig. I hate you. I hate you.

Triss broke cover and sprinted into the room. She lunged forward towards the screen just as Pen lost her grip, and managed to seize the younger girl’s wrist in both hands. Triss could feel a pins-and-needles sensation creeping over her fingers, and looking down found that speckles were spreading across them like drops of mercury. The gloating look of the picnickers changed to confusion and rage as Triss yanked at Pen’s arm with all the strength in her body and dragged her sister, still silvery and silent, halfway out of the flickering picture.

There were a few seconds of desperate tug of war. Glowing fingers prised at Triss’s grip on Pen’s arm, pulling one of her hands free. Desperate, Triss lashed out, and felt her fingers tear something. One of the men reeled away, clutching his face. The others stared at Triss with new fear, and she grabbed her moment. The heave took all her strength, and she felt her shoulders creak under the strain. A moment later Pen was lying on the parlour floor beside her, still colourless and voiceless, but alive.