Neverwhere

. . . something whispered and shivered and changed . . .

. . . and the door collapsed into darkness.

The memory was fresh, only a few days old: Door moved through the House Without Doors calling "I'm home," and "Hello?" She slipped from the anteroom to the dining room, to the library, to the drawing room; no one answered. She moved to another room.

The swimming pool was an indoor Victorian structure, constructed of marble and of cast iron. Her father had found it when he was younger, abandoned and about to be demolished, and he had woven it into the fabric of the House Without Doors. Perhaps in the world outside, in London Above, the room had long been destroyed and forgotten. Door had no idea where any of the rooms of her house were, physically. Her grandfather had constructed the house, taking a room from here, a room from there, all. through London, discrete and doorless; her father had added to it.

She walked along the side of the old swimming pool, pleased to be home, puzzled by the absence of her family. And then she looked down.

There was someone floating in the water, trailing twin clouds of blood behind him, one from the throat, one from the groin. It was her brother, Arch. His eyes were open wide and sightless. She realized that her mouth was open. She could hear herself screaming.

"That hurt," said the marquis. He rubbed his forehead, hard, twisted his head around on his neck, as if he were trying to ease a sudden, painful crick.

"Memories," she explained. "They're imprinted in the walls."

He raised an eyebrow. "You could have warned me."

They were in a huge white room. Every wall was covered with pictures. Each picture was of a different room. The white room contained no doors: no openings of any kind. "Interesting decor," acknowledged the marquis.

"This is the entrance hall. We can go from here to any room in the House. They are all linked."

"Where are the other rooms located?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. Miles away, probably. They're scattered all over the Underside."

The marquis had managed to cover the whole room in a series of impatient strides. "Quite remarkable. An associative house, every room of which is located somewhere else. So imaginative. Your grandfather was a man of vision, Door."

"I never knew him." She swallowed, then continued, talking to herself as much as to him. "We should have been safe here. Nobody should have been able to hurt us. Only my family could move around it."

"Let's hope your father's journal gives us some clues," he said. "Where do we start looking?" Door shrugged. "You're certain he kept a journal?" he pressed.

She nodded. "He used to go into his study, and private the links until he'd finished dictating."

"We'll start in the study, then."

"But I looked there. I did. I looked there. When I was cleaning up the body . . . " And she began to cry, in low, raging sobs, that sounded like they were being tugged from inside her.

"There. There," said the marquis de Carabas, awkwardly, patting her shoulder. And he added, for good measure, "There." He did not comfort well.

Door's odd-colored eyes were filled with tears. "Can you . . . can you just give me a sec? I'll be fine." He nodded and walked to the far end of the room. When he looked back she was still standing there, on her own, silhouetted in the white entrance chamber filled with pictures of rooms, and she was hugging herself, and shuddering, and crying like a little girl.

Richard was still upset about the loss of his bag.

The Lord Rat-speaker remained unmoved. He stated baldly that the rat—Master Longtail—had said nothing at all about returning Richard's things. Just that he was to be taken to market. Then he told Anaesthesia that she was taking the Upworlder to the market, and that, yes, it was an order. And to stop snivelling, and to get a move on. He told Richard that if he, Lord Rat-speaker, ever saw him, Richard, again, then he, Richard, would be in a great deal of trouble. He reiterated that Richard did not know how lucky he was, and, ignoring Richard's requests that he return Richard's stuff—or at least the wallet—he led them to a door and locked it behind them.

Richard and Anaesthesia walked into the darkness side by side.

She carried an improvised lamp made of a candle, a can, some wire, and a wide-mouthed glass lemonade bottle. Richard was surprised at how quickly his eyes became used to the near darkness. They seemed to be walking through a succession of underground vaults and storage cellars. Sometimes he thought he could see movement in far corners of the vaults, but whether human, or rat, or something else altogether, it was always gone by the time they reached the place it had been. When he tried to talk to Anaesthesia about the movements, she hissed him to silence.

He felt a cold draught on his face. The rat-girl squatted without warning, put down her candle-lamp, and tugged and pulled hard at a metal grille set in the wall. It opened suddenly, sending her sprawling. She motioned Richard to come through. He crouched, edged through the hole in the wall; after about a foot, the floor stopped completely. "Excuse me," whispered Richard. "There's a hole here."

"It's not a big drop," she told him. "Go on."

She shut the grille behind her. She was now uncomfortably close to Richard. "Here," she said. She gave him the handle of her little lamp to hold, and she clambered down into the darkness. "There," she said. "That wasn't that bad, was it?" Her face was a few feet below Richard's dangling feet. "Here. Pass me the lamp."

He lowered it down to her. She had to jump to take it from him. "Now," she whispered. "Come on." He edged nervously forward, climbed over the edge, hung for a moment, then let go. He landed on his hands and feet in soft, wet mud. He wiped the mud off his hands onto his sweater. A few feet forward, and Anaesthesia was opening another door. They went through it, and she pulled it closed behind them. "We can talk now," she said. "Not loud. But we can. If you want to."

"Oh. Thanks," said Richard. He couldn't think of anything to say. "So. Um. You're a rat, are you?" he said.

She giggled, like a Japanese girl, covering her hand with her face as she laughed. Then she shook her head, and said, "I should be so lucky. I wish. No, I'm a rat-speaker. We talk to rats."

"What, just chat to them?"

"Oh no. We do stuff for them. I mean," and her tone of voice implied that this was something that might never have occurred to Richard unassisted, "there are some things rats can't do, you know. I mean, not having fingers, and thumbs, an' things. Hang on—" She pressed him against the wall, suddenly, and clamped a filthy hand over his mouth. Then she blew out the candle.

Nothing happened.

Then he heard distant voices. They waited, in the darkness and the cold. Richard shivered.

People walked past them, talking in low tones. When all sounds had died away, Anaesthesia took her hand from Richard's mouth, relit the candle, and they walked on. "Who were they?" asked Richard.

She shrugged. "It dun't matter," she said.

"Then what makes you think that they wouldn't have been pleased to see us?"

She looked at him rather sadly, like a mother trying to explain to an infant that, yes this flame was hot, too. All flames were hot. Trust her, please. "Come on," she said. "I know a shortcut. We can nip through London Above for a bit." They went up some stone steps, and the girl pushed open a door. They stepped through, and the door shut behind them.

Richard looked around, puzzled. They were standing on the Embankment, the miles-long walkway that the Victorians had built along the north shore of the Thames, covering the drainage system and the newly created District Line of the Underground, and replacing the stinking mudflats that had festered along the banks of the Thames for the previous five hundred years. It was still night—or perhaps it was night once more. He was unsure how long they had been walking through the underplaces and the dark.