"Do you want to go out for dinner? Just the two of us?" asked Bob. He was humming again, a sure sign of imminent song composition. It was a sacrifice for him to offer to go out when it was obvious he was itching to get at a keyboard or a guitar.
"No thanks, Dad," said Arthur. He really wanted to be alone so he could check out the Key and the Atlas.
"I'll grab a snack later, if that's okay. I might just check out my room. Make sure the others didn't trash it while I was gone."
They both knew that was just Arthur being kind and letting Bob go and work on his song. But that was also okay with both of them.
"I'll be in the studio, then," said Bob. "Buzz me if you need anything. You've got your inhaler?"
Arthur nodded.
"We might get a pizza later," Bob called out as he headed down the stairs. "Don't tell Mom."
Arthur went up to his own room, taking the stairs slowly. He was breathing fine, but was weak after five days of lying around in the hospital. Even a few flights of stairs was hard work.
After locking the door in case his older siblings returned, Arthur put the Atlas and the Key on the bed. Then, without knowing why, he turned off the light.
Moonlight shone through the open window, but it was quite dark. It would have been darker, but both the Key and the Atlas glowed with a strange blue light that shimmered like water. Arthur picked them up, the Key in his left hand, and the Atlas in his right.
Without any effort on his part, the Atlas flipped open. Arthur was so surprised he dropped it back on the bed. It stayed open, and Arthur watched in amazement as it grew, becoming longer and wider, until it was about the same size as his pillow.
The open pages were blank for a moment, then lines began to appear, as if an invisible artist was hard at work. The lines were strong and sure, appearing faster and faster as Arthur stared. It only took a few seconds before he realized he was looking at a picture of the House he had seen. A picture so well realized that it was almost like a photograph.
Next to the picture a handwritten note appeared:
The House: An Exterior Aspect as Manifested in Many Secondary Realms.
Then another few words appeared, written much smaller. Arthur craned forward as the writing appeared, with an arrow that pointed to an inked-in square on the outer wall.
"'Monday Postern,'" Arthur read aloud. "What's a postern?"
There was a dictionary on the bookshelf above his desk. Arthur pulled it out, while keeping an eye on the Atlas in case it did something else interesting.
It did. Arthur had to put the Key down to get the dictionary out, as it was too jammed in with other books. As soon as he dropped the Key on the desk, the Atlas slammed shut, scaring the life out of him. In less than a second, it had also shrunk back to its pocket notebook size.
So you need to have the Key to open the Atlas, thought Arthur. He left the Key where it was and looked up postern in the dictionary.
Postern n.1.a back door or gate 2. any lesser or private entrance.
So there was Monday's gate in the otherwise seamless wall. Arthur put the dictionary back and thought about it. The picture of the House and the indication of an entrance was clearly an invitation of sorts. Someone... or something... wanted him to go into the House. But could he trust the Atlas? Arthur was pretty certain that Mister Monday and Sneezer were enemies, or ... at the very least ... not friends. He wasn't sure about the whirling type, the words in the air that had taken over Sneezer and then given him the Atlas. He supposed those words had given him the Key too, or at least had tricked Mister Monday into doing it. But what was their... its purpose?
There was only one way to find out. He would take a look at the House as soon as he could, either tomorrow or on Sunday, and try to get in through Monday's Postern. Depending on what he saw there, he'd tell Ed and Leaf and get their help. They would probably be able to see the place, he thought. After all, they'd seen the dog-faced searchers when the assistant principal couldn't.
In the meantime, he would hide the Key and the Atlas in the best hiding spot he knew. In the belly of the life-size ceramic Komodo dragon that sat on the rooftop balcony just above his bedroom. The dragon ... a huge lizard really ... was hollow, but its mouth wasn't open enough for anyone with hands larger than Arthur's to reach inside.
No sooner was this mission accomplished than his mother came home, immediately transforming the place from a quiet retreat into a family home. After checking on Arthur, she insisted that Bob emerge from his studio so the three of them could have dinner together. Emily was happy and relaxed, because Arthur was okay and because for the first time in ages she was not working frantically to develop a vaccine or cure for some new influenza strain. Winter was coming, but it looked to be a reasonably quiet one from the point of view of sickness.
Arthur's plan to go look at the House failed its first test when he was not allowed out of his own house.
"You have to take it easy," his mother instructed him. "Reading, television, or the PC, that's it. At least for the next few days. We'll take another look at the situation next week."
Arthur frowned, but he knew better than to argue. It was going to drive him crazy thinking about the House just waiting there, but he knew he had no choice. If he sneaked out now, he would be grounded for a month. Or a whole year.
"I know it's hard not doing anything active," Emily said as she gave him a hug. "But it's only for a while. Give yourself a chance to get stronger. I think a day at school will be tough enough for you on Monday."
Forbidden to do anything useful, the weekend dragged for Arthur. His two elder siblings were busy with their usual mysterious activities, Bob was still composing, and Emily was called back to work to check out some strange admissions at the local hospitals. She was regularly called whenever there was a rise in patients exhibiting unusual symptoms. Arthur always felt tremendous relief when she came home and said it wasn't serious.
Losing his birth parents as he had, Arthur was acutely aware of the potential tragedy in every report of a new flu strain or potential virus outbreak.
By Sunday morning, Arthur couldn't resist the temptation to get the Atlas and the Key back out of the Komodo dragon. Once again he held the Key and the Atlas open to the same double-page spread with the picture of the House. Though there were no details and no other writing besides the note about Monday's Postern, Arthur spent hours looking at it, trying to work out how it was all put together and what it must look like inside.
Finally it was Sunday night. Arthur restored the Key and the Atlas to the lizard's innards and went to bed early, in the hope that sleep would come and make the time go quickly. But of course it didn't. Arthur tossed and turned and couldn't fall asleep. He read most of a book and then simply lay there, thinking.
When he did fall asleep, it wasn't for long. Something made him wake up. He didn't know what it was for a second. He turned his head and saw the digital clock, red in the darkness. 12:01.
One minute after midnight, on Monday morning.
There was a noise at his window. A scratching noise, like a tree branch scraping. But there was no tree in the garden tall enough or close enough to reach Arthur's bedroom window.
Arthur sat up and snapped on the light, his heart suddenly pounding. His breathing began to get more difficult, his breaths shorter.
Control, thought Arthur desperately. Calm. Breathe slowly.
Look at the window.
He looked and jumped back, falling down behind his bed. There was a winged man hanging in the air a few feet from the window and easily fifty feet above the ground. An ugly, squat man with a jowled face like a bloodhound. A dog-faced man. Even his rapidly beating wings, though feathery, looked ugly and unkempt, dirty gray in the light that spilled out from Arthur's room.