Mister Monday. Гарт Никс

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 garden 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 children 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 pupils 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 vapours 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.

      He did walk quickly, ducking around loitering groups of students. For the first time, he was grateful nobody knew him at this school, so no one said, “Wait up, Arthur!” or tried to stop him to talk, which would have happened for sure at his old school.

      He made it to the steps. The dog-faces were gaining on him, were only ten or fifteen yards behind, and the steps ahead were crowded, mainly with older students. Arthur couldn’t push through them, so he had to zig and zag and weave his way through, calling out, “Sorry!” and “Excuse me!” as he went.

      He was almost at the main doors and what he hoped would be safety beyond when someone grabbed his backpack and brought him to an abrupt halt.

      For an instant, Arthur thought the dog-faces had caught him. Then he heard words that reassured him, despite the threatening tone.

      “You knock the man, you pay the price!”

      The boy who held Arthur’s bag was much bigger, but not really mean-looking. It was hard to look ultra-tough in a school uniform. He even had his tie done up properly. Arthur picked him instantly as a would-be tough guy, not the real thing.

      “I’m going to throw up!” he said, holding his hand over his mouth and blowing out his cheeks.

      The not-so-tough guy let go of Arthur so quickly that they both staggered apart. Because Arthur was expecting it, he recovered first. He jumped up the next three steps at one go, only a few yards ahead of a swarm of bowler-hatted dog-faces. They were everywhere, like a flock of ravens descending on a piece of meat. Pupils and teachers got out of their way without realising why they were doing so, many of them looking puzzled as they suddenly stopped or stepped sideways or jumped aside, as if they didn’t know what they were doing.

      For a second, Arthur thought he wouldn’t make it. The dog-faces were at his heels and he could hear them panting and snorting. He could even smell their breath, just as Leaf had said. It stank of rotten meat, worse than an alley full of rubbish at the back of a restaurant. The smell and the sound of their slathering lent him extra speed. He lunged up the last few steps, collided with the swing doors, and fell through.

      He was up again in an instant, ready to run, his breath already shortening, lungs tightening. Fear gripped him, fear that the dog-faces would come through the doors and that he would have an asthma attack and be powerless to resist them.

      But the dog-faces didn’t come through the school’s main entrance. Instead they clustered at the doors, pressing their flat faces against the glass panels. They really did look like a cross between bloodhounds and men, Arthur saw, with their little piggy eyes, pushed-in faces, droopy cheeks and lolling tongues that smeared the windows. Kind of like Winston Churchill on a very bad day. Strangely, they had all taken their bowler hats off and were holding them in the crook of their left arms. It didn’t help the look of them, for their hair was uniformly short and brown. Like dog hair.

      “Let us in, Arthur,” rasped one, and then another started and there was a horrible cacophony as the words all got mixed up. “Us, In, Let, Arthur, Arthur, Us, Let, Let, Arthur, In, In—”

      Arthur blocked his ears and walked away, straight down the central corridor. He concentrated on his breathing, steadying it into a safe rhythm. Slowly, the baying calls from outside receded.

      At the end of the corridor, Arthur turned around.

      The dog-faces were gone, and once again pupils and staff were pouring through the doors, laughing and talking. The sun was still shining behind them. Everything looked normal.

      “What’s with your ears?” asked someone, not unkindly.

      Arthur blushed and pulled his fingers out of his ears.

      The dog-faces obviously couldn’t get him here. Now he could focus on surviving the usual problems of school, at least till the end of the day. And he could try to find Ed and Leaf. He wanted to tell them what had happened, to see if they could still see the dog-faces. Maybe they could help him work out what to