Grim Tuesday

Chapter Two

As Arthur ran down the stairs, he heard the music stop from the studio and then the front door slam. Bob must have seen the Grotesques as well. Arthur tried to shout a warning but didn't have enough breath for more than a wheezy whisper.

"No, Dad! Don't go outside!"

Arthur jumped the last five steps and almost fell. Recovering his balance, he raced across and flung the door open, just in time to see his father striding across the front lawn towards the two Grotesques. He looked angrier than Arthur had ever seen him.

"What do you think you're doing?" shouted Bob.

"Dad! Get back!" cried Arthur, but his father didn't hear him or was too angry to listen.

Tethera and Methera turned to face Bob. Their mouths opened wide, far too wide for mere speech.

"Hah!" breathed the Grotesques. Two dense streams of gray fog stormed out of their open mouths, forming a thick cloud that completely enveloped Bob. When it cleared a few seconds later, Arthur's dad was still standing, but he wasn't shouting anymore. He scratched his head, then turned and wandered back past Arthur, his eyes dull and glazed.

"What did you do to him?" shouted Arthur. He wished he still had the First Key, in its sword form. He would stab both the Grotesques through without thinking about it. But he didn't, and innate caution made him stay near the front door, in case they breathed out the fog again.

Tethera and Methera gave him the slightest of bows, not much more than a one inch inclination.

"Greetings, Arthur, Lord Monday, Master of the Lower House," said Tethera. His voice was surprisingly melodious and smooth. "You need not fear for your father. That was merely the Gray Breath, the fog of forgetting, and will soon pass. We do not use the Dark Breath, the death-fog? unless we must."

"Unless we must," repeated Methera softly.

They both smiled as they spoke, but Arthur recognized the threat.

"Go back to the House," he said, trying to invest as much authority in his voice as he could. It was a bit difficult because he still couldn't draw a full breath and wheezed on the last word. "The Original Law forbids you to be here. Go back!"

Some of the power of the First Key lingered in his voice. The two Grotesques stepped back and the calm on their faces was replaced with snarls as they fought against his words.

"Go back!" repeated Arthur, raising his hands.

The Grotesques retreated again, then rallied and stopped. Clearly Arthur did not have the authority or the remnant power to force them to go, though he had unsettled them. Both wiped their suddenly sweating foreheads with dirty white handkerchiefs plucked out of the air.

"We obey Grim Tuesday," said Tethera. "Only the Grim. He has sent us here to claim what is his. But it need not go badly for you and yours, Arthur. Just sign this paper, and we will be gone."

"Sign and we'll be gone," repeated Methera in his hoarse whisper.

Tethera reached into his jacket and pulled out a long, thin, gleaming white envelope. It drifted across to Arthur, as if carried by an invisible servant. The boy took it carefully. At the same time, Methera held out a quill pen and an ink bottle, and the Grotesques stepped forward.

Arthur stepped back, holding the envelope.

"I need to read this first."

The Grotesques stepped forward again.

"You don't need to bother," wheedled Tethera. "It's very straightforward. A simple deed handing over the Lower House and the First Key. If you sign it, Grim Tuesday will not pursue the debt against your folk. You will be able to live here, in this Secondary Realm, as happily as you did before."

"As happily as you did before," echoed Methera, with a knowing smirk.

"I still need to read it," said Arthur. He stood his ground, though the Grotesques sidled up still closer. They had a very distinct smell, a lot like fresh rain on a hot, tarred road. Not exactly unpleasant, but sharp and a little metallic.

"Best to sign," said Tethera, his voice suddenly full of menace, though he continued to smile.

"Sign," hissed Methera.

"No!" shouted Arthur. He pushed Tethera with his right hand, the one that had most often held the First Key. As his palm touched the Grotesque's chest it was outlined with electric blue light. Tethera stumbled back, grabbing at Methera to keep his balance. Both Grotesques staggered away, almost to the road. There they straightened up and tried to assume poses of dignity. Tethera reached into the front pocket of his apron and drew out a large, egg-shaped watch that chimed as he opened the lid and inspected the face.

"You may have till noon before we commence our full repossession," Tethera shouted. "But we shall not cease our preparations, and delay will not be to your advantage!"

They got into their car, slammed the doors, and drove off, without any engine noise whatsoever. Arthur watched as the car proceeded about twenty yards up the street, then suddenly vanished in a prismatic effect like the sudden, brief rainbow after a sun-shower.

Arthur glanced down at the gleaming white envelope. Despite its crisp look, it felt slightly slimy to his touch. How could he sign away the First Key and the Mastery of the Lower House? They had been so hard to win in the first place. But he also couldn't let his family suffer?

His family. Arthur raced back in to check on Bob. There was no reason for Tethera to lie, but the Grotesques' breath had looked extremely poisonous.

Bob was back in his studio. Arthur could hear him talking to someone, which was a good sign. The padded soundproof door was partly open, so Arthur poked his head around. Bob was sitting at one of his pianos, holding the phone with one hand and agitatedly tapping a single bass note with the other. He looked fine, but as Arthur listened, he quickly realized that while the Gray Breath had worn off, the Grotesques had, as they'd threatened, continued their "preparations."

"How can the band suddenly owe the record company twelve million dollars after twenty years?" Bob was asking the person on the phone. "They've always robbed us to start with. We've sold more than thirty million records, for heaven's sake! It's just not possible -"

Arthur ducked back out. The Grotesques had given him an hour and a half before full repossession - whatever that was. But even these beginning attacks were very bad news for the family. They'd be living on the street, forced to get handouts?

He had to stop them. If only he had more time to think?

More time to think.

That was the answer, Arthur thought. He could get more time by going into the House. He could spend a week there perhaps, and still come back to his own world only minutes after he left. He could ask the Will and Noon (who used to be Dusk) what to do. And Suzy?

His thoughts were interrupted as Michaeli came charging down the stairs, holding the printout of an e-mail, her face stuck in a frown that had to come from more than lack of sleep.

"Problem?" Arthur asked hesitantly.

"They've canceled my course," said Michaeli in a bewildered voice. "I just got an e-mail saying the whole faculty is being closed down and our building is being sold to pay the university's debts! An e-mail! I thought it must be a hoax, but I called my professor and the front office and they both said it's true! They could have written me a letter! Dad!"

She ran into the studio. Arthur looked down at the envelope in his hand, hesitated for a moment, then slit it open along the seam. There was no separate letter inside - the writing was on the inside of the envelope. Arthur folded it out and quickly scanned the flowing copperplate, which was done in a hideous bile-green ink.

As he'd half-expected, the contract was all one way and not in his favor. In a long-winded way, like all documents from the House, it said that he, Arthur, would relinquish the First Key and the Mastery of the Lower House to Grim Tuesday in recognition of the debts owed to Grim Tuesday for the provision of the goods listed in Annex A. There was nothing about leaving Arthur's family alone after that, or anything else.

There didn't seem to be an Annex A either, but when Arthur finished reading what was on the opened-out envelope, it shimmered and a new page formed. Headed Annex A, it listed everything that the former Mister Monday or his minions had bought and not paid for, including:

Nine Gross (1,296) Standard Pattern Metal Commissionaires 1 Doz.

Bespoke Metal Sentinels, part-payment rec'd, 1/8 still owing plus interest

Six Great Gross (10,368) One-Quart Silver Teapots 2 Plentitudes (497,664)

Second-Best Steel Nibs 6 Gross (864)

Elevator Door Rollers Two Great Gross (3,456)

Elevator Meaning Bars, Bronze 1 Lac (100,000)

Elevator Propellant, Confined Safety Bottle 129Miles Motional Wire,

Telephone Metaconnection 1 Statue,

Mister Monday, Gilt Bronze, Exquisite 77 Statues,

Mister Monday, Bronze, Ordinary 10 Quintal (1000-weigt),

Bronze Metal Fish, Fireproof, semi-animate 1 LongDoz. (13)

Umbrella Stands, Petrified Apatosaurus foot

The list kept going on and on, the page re-forming every time Arthur reached the end. Finally he looked away, refolded the envelope, and shoved it in the back pocket of his jeans

Reading the letter hadn't changed anything, except that his determination not to sign it was even stronger. He had to get to the House as fast as possible.

He was about to leave immediately when he remembered the telephone in the red velvet box. It was possible the Will might be able to scrounge up enough money to call him again, so he'd better get that.

Arthur walked up the stairs this time. He didn't think he'd have a full-on asthma attack - he would have already had it if he was going to - but he'd gotten a persistent wheeze instead and couldn't quite get enough breath.

The red velvet box was where he'd left it, but when Arthur went to put the lid back on, he saw that it was empty. The phone had disappeared. Lying on the bottom of the box was a very small piece of thick cardboard. Arthur picked it up. As he touched it, words appeared, scribed in the same sort of invisible hand that wrote in the Atlas.

This telephone has been disconnected. Please call Upper House 23489-8729- 13783 for reconnection.

"How?" asked Arthur, He didn't expect an answer, but the message wrote itself out again on the card. Arthur threw it back in the box and went down the stairs again.

On the way back down, the question came up again in his head. Just one simple word that covered a lot of problems.

How?

How am I going to get into the House? It doesn't exist in my world anymore.

Arthur groaned and pulled at his hair, just as Michaeli came rushing back up the stairs.

"You think you've got problems?!" she snapped as she went past. "It looks like Dad is going to have to go back on tour, like, forever and I'm going to have to get a job. All you have to do is go to school!"

Arthur didn't get a chance to reply before she was gone.

"Yeah, that's all I have to worry about!" he shouted after her. He slowly continued down the stairs, thinking hard. The House had physically manifested itself before, taking over several city blocks. That manifestation had disappeared when Arthur came back after defeating Mister Monday. But maybe the House had returned with the Grotesques?

There was only one way to find out. After a quick look to check that no one - particularly a Grotesque or two - was watching, Arthur went out the back door and got on his bike.

Provided he wasn't held up at a quarantine checkpoint, it would only take ten minutes to ride over to where the House had been. If it had reappeared, he would try to get in, through Monday's Postern or maybe even the Front Door, if he could find it.

If it wasn't there, he would have to think of something else. Each minute gave the Grotesques more time to do something financially horrible to his family, or his neighbors, or?

Arthur pushed off hard and accelerated out the drive, pedaling furiously for a minute, until his wheezing warned him to ease off.

Behind him, the sold sign on his front lawn shivered and dug itself a little further in.