He was wearing a very old-fashioned dark suit and carried a bowler hat in his hand. He was using the crown of the hat to tap on the window.
"Let me in."
The voice was distorted through the glass, but it was low and husky and full of menace.
"Let me in."
"No," whispered Arthur, thoughts of every vampire film he had ever seen flashing through his head. This was no vampire, but it was asking to be let in, so maybe the same principle applied. It couldn't get in unless it was invited. Though in the films, they normally hypnotized someone to let them in ...
The bedroom door opened.
Arthur felt as if his heart had stopped cold in his chest. Someone had been hypnotized already! They would let the dog-faced thing in...
A long forked tongue flickered around the door, tasting the air. Arthur picked up the dictionary, which he'd left by the bed, and raised it above his head.
A scaly head followed the tongue, and a clawed foot. Arthur half-lowered the dictionary. It was the ceramic Komodo dragon from the balcony. No longer ceramic, or maybe it still was, but alive and moving swiftly.
Slowly, Arthur climbed back onto the bed and pressed himself against the wall, keeping the dictionary ready to throw. Whose side was the Komodo on?
"Let me in."
The big lizard hissed and ran forward, shockingly fast, to rear up in front of the window. It opened its mouth and brilliant white light shot out, powerful as a searchlight. The dog-faced man screamed and threw up his arms, his bowler hat flying through the air. Still screaming, he hurtled backwards, wings thrashing, and disappeared in a coiling puff of coal-black smoke.
The lizard shut its mouth with a snap, and the intense light disappeared with it. Then the reptile slowly stepped back from the window and ponderously trod to the end of Arthur's bed, where it stopped and settled into its usual stance. Its skin rippled as if every muscle was suddenly galvanized, then it was still. Totally ceramic once more.
Arthur dropped the dictionary, picked up his inhaler, and took several puffs. As he went over to shut his door, he was surprised to find that his legs were trembling and could barely support him. On the way back, he patted the Komodo dragon on the head and briefly considered putting his hand in to check that the Key and the Atlas were still there. But that seemed like something that could best wait for morning.
Back in bed, Arthur looked at the clock again as he pulled up the covers. Surely it was no accident that this had happened first thing on Monday.
It's going to be an interesting day, he thought. Deliberately he turned away from the window, so he wouldn't be tempted to look at it, and closed his eyes.
He left the light on.
Chapter Four
Arthur was not looking forward to school that Monday morning, to a much greater degree than usual. After the events of the early morning he had enjoyed only brief moments of sleep. He'd woken up every hour or so in incipient panic, his breathing ragged, only to find that his light was still on, the night was quiet, and there was no trouble. The Komodo dragon stayed immobile at the foot of his bed, and with sunshine filling the room it was hard to believe that the lizard had come alive and beaten back the horrid thing that had flown up to his window.
Arthur wished he could dismiss it as a nightmare, but he knew it had been all too real. The Key and the Atlas were proof of that. He thought about leaving them behind, inside the ceramic lizard, but after breakfast he took them out and put them in his school backpack. Then he checked the yard carefully through the window before running out to join his mother in her car.
In their previous town, Arthur had walked to school. Here, he would eventually ride his bike. But his parents insisted it was too soon for him to exert himself and his mother said she would drive him to school before going to the lab.
Normally Arthur would have made some show of independence, particularly in front of his brother Eric, who he looked up to. Eric was both a basketball and a track star. He'd had no trouble adapting to the new school. He was already on his way to being a stand-out player for the school's top basketball team. He had his own car, bought with the proceeds of a weekend job as a waiter, but it was assumed that he wouldn't take Arthur to school in it unless there was a real emergency. Being seen with his much younger brother was bad for his image. Despite saying this, he had intervened at various important stages in Arthur's life in their old city, putting bullies to flight in the mall or rescuing him after bicycle mishaps.
Arthur was glad to go with his mother that morning. He had a strong suspicion that the bowler-hatted dog-faced men ... or manlike creatures ... would be waiting at the school. He'd spent quite a few wakeful hours earlier worrying about how he could protect himself against them. It would be particularly difficult if adults couldn't see them, which seemed possible from what Ed had told him.
The trip to school was uneventful, though once again they passed the bizarre castle-like monstrosity that had replaced several suburban blocks. To test whether his mother could see the House, Arthur commented on its size, but just as with his dad, his mother could only see the normal buildings. Arthur could remember what the area used to look like, but try as he might, no matter how he squinted or suddenly turned his head to look, Arthur could only see the House.
When he looked directly at the House, he found that it was too cluttered, complex, and strange to reveal its many details. There were simply too many different styles of architecture, too many odd additions. Arthur got dizzy trying to follow individual pieces of the House and work out how they all fitted together. He would start on a tower and follow it up, only to be distracted by a covered walkway, or a lunette that thrust out of a nearby wall, or some other strange feature.
He also found it very difficult to look at exactly the same place twice. Either the House was constantly changing when he wasn't looking at it, or the car was going past too quickly and the complexity and density of all the various bits and pieces made it impossible for his eyes to regain their focus on any particular part.
After they passed the House, Arthur was put off guard a bit by the normality of the rest of the drive to school. It seemed just like any other morning, with the usual traffic and pedestrians and kids everywhere. There was no sign of anything strange as they drove up the street the school was on. Arthur felt relieved and comforted by just how boringly normal it seemed. The sun was shining; there were people everywhere. Surely nothing could happen now?
But as he stepped out of the car at the front entrance and his mother drove away, he saw five bowler-hatted, black-suited men suddenly rise like lifted string puppets between the cars in the teachers' parking lot, off to his right. They saw him too and began to move through the ranks of cars towards him. They walked in strange straight lines, changing direction in sudden right angles to avoid students and teachers who obviously couldn't see them.
More of the dog-faces appeared to the left. Arthur saw them issue out of the ground, as dark vapors that in a second solidified into dog-faced, bowler-hatted, black-suited men.
Dog-faces to the left. Dog-faces to the right. But there were none straight ahead. Arthur ran a few steps, his breath caught, and he knew he couldn't run and risk another asthma attack. He slowed down, his eyes darting across at the two groups of approaching dog-faces, his mind rapidly calculating their speed and direction.
If he walked quickly up the main promenade and the steps, he would still get inside before the dog-faced men caught up with him.