“Just you dare, Reggie Bowler, an’ I’ll piddle on yer ’ead. Now ’ush up an’ behave. I think I’ve found it.”
Making pulling motions in the dark above her as if hauling something to one side, the Dead Dead Gang’s intrepid leader was uncovering a ragged patch of violet-blue which hung there in an overcast sky that was otherwise completely colourless. Having thus located the gang’s route up through the shouts and sirens of the night into Mansoul, Phyllis next went about directing their ascent. She told the crew’s three smallest members to climb up the ladder formed by their companions, with Bill going first, then Michael, and then Marjorie. When this was done they helped her up and through the sky-hole so that she in turn could help up John and Reggie. After they’d replaced the waterlogged and filthy carpet-remnant that had been used to conceal the aperture, the ghost-gang stood beside it for a moment, taking stock of their ominous new surroundings. Michael was a bit put out, as these did not suggest the special treat he’d been expecting. Probably, he thought, the others were just dragging things out so it would be more of a surprise.
The space that the gang stood in, cavernous and indigo, was nonetheless still recognisable as the same ghost-structure they’d climbed through just before the angle-fight, although in a much worse state of repair. At least one of the phantom floors had fallen in completely, due to what seemed to be water-damage from above. Sodden and broken beams stuck out from halfway up one tall and badly distressed wall like snapped ribs and the bluish light was everywhere, scabbing to purple where the shadows pooled.
Michael remembered that in 1959 this building had been all in black and white, with no apparent hue at all until you went up to Mansoul by that short flight of useless, narrow stairs on the top floor. It looked as if the world Upstairs was leaking colour, amongst other things. Michael couldn’t remember all this water being here before, streaming like silver down the derelict and towering walls, or gathering in hollows like carpeted rock pools down amidst the rubble of the floor. It also seemed as if the quality of sound found in Mansoul had percolated down into the usually-muffled phantom realm along with all the wetness and the moody coloured light. Each plip, drip, splash and glassy tinkling reverberated eerily about the echoing, damp-scented ruin, which resembled nothing more than some enormous warehouse after an insurance fire.
Damp-scented? Michael realised that along with sound and colour filtering down from above, his sense of smell had started to improve to something more like the rich, overwhelming faculty that it had been Upstairs, where there were entire stories in the way that something smelled. He was beginning, for example, to detect the stink of Phyllis’s fur wrap, along with the perfumes of mould, decay and — what was it, that other thing? He sniffed the air experimentally, confirming his suspicions. It was smoke, the faintest whiff of it, and Michael couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
He stood with his five phantom friends, who all seemed genuinely hushed by the thick atmosphere of desolation that had fallen on them — along with the cobalt light and the cascades of water — from above. While he suspected they were only putting on an act to conceal the surprise they had in store for him, Michael was feeling a bit put out by his going-away party so far and sincerely hoped that it would pick up later. He gazed up into the dripping blue gloom overhead and listened to the ringing leaky-tap noises, the gush and spatter, burbling liquid trills that almost had the sound of whispered conversation.
“Ooh, Gawd. Ooh, Gawd, Doug, I think ’e’s gone. Whatever shall we do?”
“Just you ’ang on, Doreen. ’Ang on, gel. It’s just up over the Mounts. We’ll be there in another minute …”
Still with no one really saying very much, Michael had joined his ghostly playmates as they’d started their ascent of the partly-collapsed building’s interior. This proved a lot more difficult than when they’d come this way before. For one thing, the dilapidated staircase they’d used then looked to be long since gone, requiring the six children to climb up the crumbling walls like spiders, but with half as many legs. Brave John went first, pointing out foot and handholds, indentations in the sodden plaster, for the benefit of the five spectral youngsters who were following him.
For another thing, besides there being vestiges of Mansoul’s sound and smell and colour down here in the normally sense-stifling ghost-seam, traces of the upper world’s increased feelings of weight and gravity were also evident. If they’d have fallen from the sheer face of the wall, they’d probably still have descended slowly enough not to seriously hurt themselves, but flying through the air or bouncing up like lunar beach balls obviously wasn’t going to work. All of them felt too heavy and too solid, meaning that they had no other choice but to climb slowly and laboriously up the high wall in a cautious human chain. They still had a few after-pictures peeling from them, but as they went higher these grew flimsier and fainter, and then winked out of existence altogether.
Part of the top storey had not yet collapsed completely, with some areas of floorboards and a few supporting beams remaining, though these sagged and looked precarious. After what seemed to Michael like at least an hour of climbing, the Dead Dead Gang at last reached these creaking islands of comparative security. The temporarily-dead toddler wriggled on his tummy up over the soggy planks that were the platform’s edge, with Phyllis pushing from behind and big John pulling from in front. It felt nice, being able to stand up — if only on the sturdier, beam-reinforced parts of the floor — and have a short rest after all that scrambling.
While they all recovered, Phyllis generously passed around some of the dwarf variety of Puck’s Hats that they’d found at the asylums, where the little fairies were only a half-inch tall. Michael discovered that when eaten in closer proximity to Mansoul, where your senses all woke up, these tasted and smelled even better than they had down in the ghost-seam. Sweet juice glistening on his chin, he’d sat against a doorframe that was only half there with his slipper-clad feet hanging past the rotted flooring’s edges, kicking back and forth above the sapphire-tinted abyss.
He thought about where they’d been, the things they’d seen and heard. They’d gone for tea and cakes at Mr. Doddridge’s, and then they’d walked along that funny bridge-thing out to the asylums. The asylums were where they kept people who’d gone cornery, and because people like that were all mixed-up in their heads then the asylums had got all confused and muddled up together too. It had been a peculiar place, with all the firework-sprays of coloured light and then the other Bill and Reggie from the future turning up and stealing most of the mad-apples. What had struck him as the oddest thing, though, was the way that Phyllis, John and Marjorie had acted when they’d happened on that pair of living ladies who were sitting on the bench. These had both looked completely normal and were just having a talk, the way that grown-ups did sometimes. Michael had not been really listening to them, but he thought the taller and more fragile-looking one had said that her dog used to get in bed with her. This sounded like the sort of thing that a pet dog would more than likely do, and on reflection it was probably the reason why his mum had never let him have one, but he couldn’t see why that had made Phyllis and John look so upset. Perhaps they had both come from tidier and more fastidious homes than his.
It had been after they’d returned from the asylums, though, when they’d come up into this funny-feeling century which he’d disliked so much the last time they were here, that things had started to turn a bit horrible. When they’d jumped from the Ultraduct down to Chalk Lane in nothing-six or wherever they were, it had just been beginning to get dark, which Michael always found a bit unsettling. When he’d still been alive, if he’d had dreams where it was night-time in the dream, they’d always turn out to be nightmares. For a long while he’d thought that this was the definition of a nightmare: they were dreams where the strange things that happened all took place by night. So when the darkness had begun to settle while the ghost-gang mucked about down in that big lagoon-place, he’d been feeling a bit nervous from the start.