He started to laugh, which shocked her. What was there to laugh at?
"Sorry," he said. "I was just thinking that your hypnotism technique could do with a little work."
He pushed himself off the wall, grabbed an imaginary club and attacked a make-believe Jack. "Go to! Fucking! Sleep! Hmm, I'll have to present that to the next Psychiatric symposium. Though I think the use of the surgical two by four might be a tad controversial."
They both laughed. Louise felt invigorated. She'd had nothing to laugh at for . . . for as long as she could remember.
"You really think you can hypnotise Pendennis?" she asked.
"I not only think it, Ms. Callander, I believe it. And belief . . ."
He stopped, his eyes taking on a faraway look.
"What's the matter?" said Louise, swinging round to check both corridors. Had Jack appeared? Had something happened?
His face snapped back into a smile and he grabbed her shoulders. "Belief, Ms. Callander. Belief and imagination. Why didn't I think of that earlier?"
He let go of her and stepped back. "This whole place is imaginary, right?" he said, emphasising his words with a sweep of his arm.
She nodded, unsure where this outburst was leading. Didn't they already have a plan?
"Illusion," continued Nick. "A work of imagination where gargoyles can come to life and rooms fade and crumble."
"Ye-es?"
"So it's our turn to play. And, first, let's get out of these stupid gowns."
He screwed his eyes shut, concentrating. Louise watched, not sure what the hell was going to happen. He morphed in front of her. The hospital gown replaced by jeans, T-shirt and trainers.
"You try it," he urged. "Think clothes and force yourself to change."
She did. Anything to get rid of that ridiculous gown.
She opened her eyes. It had worked! She had her favourite sweater and her work trousers and . . . heavy boots.
"Are you cold?" he asked.
"No, I'm getting prepared." She lifted her right foot, concentrated, stared at the boot and . . .
Spikes shot out from the soles.
"You're going mountain climbing?" he asked, surprised.
"Not quite," she said, retracting the spikes. "It's a little insurance in case someone grabs me from behind again."
She flexed her feet in her boots. Perfect fit. And it was so good to be covered from head to toe again.
"What next?" she asked.
"A door, I think," said Nick. "Maybe we don't have to confront Pendennis, maybe we can tunnel our way out?"
He selected a piece of wall and started to trace the outline of a door with his fingers. A line appeared, as though drawn by a crayon. The line turned into a rectangle: five feet high and three feet broad. He stood back and admired his work.
"Some kind of mechanism to open it, I think. A button . . . about here." He pointed to a spot and a button sprang from beneath his index finger.
"Okay, Lou, now comes the moment of truth."
She held her breath. He leaned forward and pressed the button. A crack appeared in the wall, following the outline of the door. All along the line, the paint began to craze and peel off, the plaster too, tiny flakes of paint and plaster falling to the floor, forming into a long pile at the base of the skirting.
Then there was a shudder. The wall groaned . . . and opened. They'd built their first door.
Louise looked inside. There was a room: a musty, unlit, rubble-strewn room with no other door or window. They climbed inside. It looked like a building site. Cobweb-covered planks lay propped up against breeze block walls, the cement oozing out from every join. Empty pots of paint lay discarded on the floor next to misshapen buckets and stubbed out cigarettes. It could have been a store room or a cellar. It could have been anything long-abandoned and never meant for show.
"Where now?" asked Louise.
"We keep on going in a straight line until we find a way out."
It sounded so easy; picking their way through the rubble to the next wall, creating another door, watching it swing open. How big could Peter's Upper Heywood be?
The door opened on another of Upper Heywood's labyrinthine corridors. They climbed through and started work on the far wall.
"How about a circular door this time? Or star-shaped?" asked Nick.
"I think door-shaped will suffice," said Louise, glancing up and down the corridor. Peter and his friends couldn't be far.
They kept going, cutting door after door, going from internal chamber to corridor to internal chamber again. The place was a warren, everything looked so similar. Louise began marking each door, giving them numbers just to prove to herself they weren't going around in circles.
As Nick started on door number eleven, she looked back the way they'd come at the long line of open doors. They had to be making progress . . . but was the maze infinite? Would Peter's imagination be working ahead of them—extending his maze as fast as Nick could cut?
That's when she heard it. An empty paint can being kicked over about six doors back.
"What was that?" asked Nick, spinning around.
Louise couldn't make anything out. She narrowed her eyes, squinted into the distance. Was that movement back there or a trick of the light?
Then she saw it; scurrying across the rubble, jumping through the next door, closing on them fast.
Jack.
"Don't look at his face," said Nick, lunging forward to grab hold of the brick and plaster door and force it closed. "You work on opening the next door. I'll seal this one shut."
Louise carved the next opening, abandoning rectangles and going for the quicker circle. She pointed her finger, concentrated, and sliced the wall with a single sweep of her arm. The door flew open—there was no time for buttons. Behind her, Nick smoothed the crack surrounding the old door into non-existence.
Louise ran to the next wall, her right arm outstretched and carving two strides before she reached the wall. A smell hit her; something was burning. And that noise . . . what was it? She threw the door open then glanced back. A tight blue flame was shooting from Nick's fingers. He was welding the door shut.
On to the next wall, pausing to wait for Nick. They couldn't afford to get separated. All these corridors, Jack could circle round and come at them from any direction.
She had the next door open. Nick was crouching behind her working on the previous one, searing it shut, the paint curling and blackening beneath his fingers.
A bulge appeared in the crack a foot below Nick's hand. He wasn't fast enough. The crack between door and wall was widening, a tiny hand was forcing its way through.
Nick turned up the heat and brought the flames down on Jack's hand. Flesh-coloured paint cracked and crackled, tiny fingers blackened into sticks of charcoal.
The sailor screamed. Another blast of flame. Little fingers writhing, flaking off, falling to the floor. Could Nick weld Jack to the wall?
Something moved in the embers of Jack's hand. His fingers were regenerating, pushing out again, searching for something to twist and squeeze. Nick's hand spat flame but seemed to be having little effect now. Louise called to him from beyond the next door.
"Leave him. Come on!"
"You can't escape," said a new voice. Pendennis. He was in the corridor about ten yards away. Nick swung around to face him. Louise jumped back into the corridor. She'd cover Nick's back. Keep that little sailor shit behind the wall.
She filled her mind with flame, held it there, breathed deep, sucked in all the oxygen she could imagine and then breathed it all out in one intense jet directed at the sailor's writhing hand. Jack screamed, his fingers vaporized.
But he'd be back. Thirty seconds, a minute. She'd bought Nick time and she'd keep buying him time until he put that serial killing bastard to sleep.
"Hello, Peter," said Nick, adjusting the intensity of the flames spitting from his fingers. "How are you today? Feeling tired?"
Peter was leaning against the corridor wall, dressed in red and looking unconcerned. "Makes no difference what you do to me," he said. "The only way out's through this door and Peter's the only one who can open it."
As he spoke, a red door materialised in the wall behind him. A red door quartered with wooden panels, a gleaming brass letter box shining below a heavy door knocker. It could have been someone's front door—maybe Peter's front door. The shiny gloss paint dazzled in the reflected fluorescent light.
"Then you'd better open it, Peter," said Nick. "Before you fall asleep." He stifled a yawn. "It's so stuffy in here, don't you think?"
Nick was only a few yards away from Pendennis now. He stretched out his right hand, changing the colour of the flame from blue to yellow and let it dance and flicker on his palm.
"Look into the flame, Peter. Can you see the patterns inside?"
Peter pushed away from the wall. He did appear to be looking at the flame. Louise watched. Was it working? He seemed mesmerised by it, he took a step closer, leaned forward, staring at the little flame, his eyes no more than six inches away from Nick's hand.
Then Pendennis smiled, and started to blow.
The flame on Nick's palm roared and flared, sweeping back towards his face, engulfing him. It was as though Pendennis was breathing pure accelerant. The whole of Nick's body was enveloped by flame. He staggered backwards, arms flailing. And that smell. Like no smell Louise wanted to smell again. Burnt hair, charred flesh . . .
She had to act. She had to close her mind to the smells and sounds. It was all illusion. Nick would heal. His real body was elsewhere. She had to act now.
Using the flames as cover, she leaned into the wall behind Nick, thinking herself through it, thinking herself vapour, thinking the wall permeable, a mere membrane to stretch through. She solidified on the other side, then ran along the wall of the inside chamber, towards Pendennis and a few metres beyond. Another shift, vapour again, back through the wall, into the corridor, behind Pendennis and out of his line of sight.
She solidified, thinking herself taller, thinking herself larger, thinking herself stronger. She reached down, grabbed Peter by the hair with her left hand, tugged him backwards and struck him hard in the face with her right.
He crashed, sprawling to the ground.
"Open that door, Peter. Now!" she commanded.
He looked up at her through misted eyes, his nose bleeding. "You hit me?"
"And I'll do it again if you don't do what you're told."
He blinked. He looked surprised. He peered up at her. "Mum?"
Had she triggered a memory? He looked so small lying there by the foot of the door, and she towered above him.
"Of course it's me, Peter. Now stop playing around and open that door for your mother."
He shook his head, he looked terrified. "You don't want to go inside."
"Are you answering me back?" she said, bringing her hand back ready to strike.
"No!" he said, shuffling away from her in terror and wedging himself up against the base of the door. "It wasn't me, mum. Honest. The cat was dead when I found it. I didn't mean to do anything wrong."
"Then open the door, Peter, and let me see. I can't help you if you don't let me."
Louise glanced at the door. Did she need Pendennis? Could she open the door herself, drift through it like she'd done to the wall? Or was the door symbolic? A switch that existed in Peter's head?
And why wouldn't the little shit open it for his mother?
"I'm counting to three, Peter," she said. "You don't want to be here when I reach three. If that door's not open by three you won't be able to sit down for a week."
The door sprang open. She looked round for Nick. The flames had gone and he'd replaced his clothes . . . But his face and hair—they were singed and blackened. Did it hurt?
He ran towards her. "Come on!" he said. "Let's go."
She ducked down and squeezed through the door after him. There were steps beyond. A stone staircase heading down and curving to the left. They ran, pushing Upper Heywood and Peter behind them, the staircase spiralling deeper and darker. The only sound, that of their fleeing feet, and the deeper they went even that sound began to fade.
"Stop!" said Nick. He'd been too busy fleeing he hadn't paid attention to where they were going.
Now he was. And he didn't like what he could see. Or, more accurately, what he couldn't see.
"Where are we?" said Louise.
He didn't want to answer. An irrational fear that in doing so he might give flesh to a situation that as yet was only a possibility. It didn't have to be the void. They'd been in dark places before. But . . .
This time he could see the faint outline of a tiny cloud of starlike lights. It could be a distant nebula, but there were no other stars in the sky. It could be another dream world of Pendennis's, but . . . he couldn't feel his legs. He couldn't feel anything.
"We've separated," said Louise. "We've escaped!"
"Could you move slightly?" he asked. "I just want to see if that's you I can see."
The cloud moved. They had separated. But where the hell were they? Upper Heywood couldn't be far away—twenty, thirty metres at most. But with ten planes of movement to choose from twenty metres could soon become twenty miles. He had no idea which way was up, which way was back, or anything at all. He moved by focussing on an object and thinking himself there. But in the void there was nothing to latch onto. Nothing at all.
"Are we lost?" asked Louise.
"Possibly," he said, trying to think positively. There had to be something visible out there. Something they'd see if only they concentrated more.
"Can't we just retrace our steps?" asked Louise.
"You know which direction we came from?"
"That way?" said Louise without any degree of confidence.
If Nick had had eyebrows he'd have raised them. "Are you pointing by any chance? Only I can't quite see your fingers."
The cloud moved. "This way, flame boy."
An idea came to him. "Keep going in that direction, Lou. Slowly. And keep me in sight. Use me as an anchor in case you're wrong."