The House That Jack Built

EIGHTEEN

'Hello, my dear,' said Alexander as the girl opened the door. 'My name is Alexander Martin, and you would be furthering the safety of the universe were you to let my friend and me use your facilities.'

The girl, about sixteen or seventeen, leaned out of the doorway and scratched at her mop of curly hair.

'Your friend would be the tit getting jiggy in the shrubbery, would he?'

Alexander swallowed with embarrassment. 'That's him.'

'Piss off.'

She was closing the door as Alexander hit her full in the face with the spray he'd used on Joe. 'Dear lord,' he sighed. 'I'm not sure I can stand both of you acting like mental outpatients, but I suppose I have little choice. What's your name, my dear?'

'Hannah Ogilvy.'

'Splendid. Well, Miss Ogilvy, are you by any chance alone in the house this evening?'

'Yeah.'

Alexander visibly slumped with relief. 'Right then. Joe!' 'Yes, boss?' Joe appeared behind his chair waving at Hannah like a five-year-old who's just been introduced to a big purple dinosaur.

Alexander looked at him for a moment and then wheeled himself into the house. 'Never mind, Joe, change of plan. Stay out here.'

'Cool!' Joe spun off into the rain, dancing and singing.

Rob suddenly felt a moment of clarity. He had been sitting very still, occasionally chewing on the head of the croquet mallet but otherwise not moving. Then it was as if something had turned on in his head. He knew it was time to step outside the cupboard and get on with the suggestions the house had put to him.

He heard the heavy boots of the American pound up the stairs above his head. Once they had passed, he reached out in the dark and opened the catch of the door, stepping into the hallway and stretching his arms, letting the muscles pop back into place after being hunched for so long.

The prissy one in the suit — the one they should have shoved back in their airing cupboard and forgotten all about — was shouting on the other side of the door. Rob grinned at the humour of it all. He loved a bit of slapstick, a bit of rough and tumble. As the door opened, he showed his happy teeth to the invader of his house. 'Hello!' he said. 'Sorry, but the house made me do this.'

He swung the mallet, but the man got his arm up in time to stop it doing any major damage. Rob was sad. It just wasn't so funny if the punchline wasn't the sound of the young man's forehead splitting open. The invader threw his weight against the door, shoving it closed. Rob roared with anger.

'Stop spoiling the joke!' he screamed. 'Stop spoiling the joke!' He hammered against the door with the mallet, sweat flicking off his vein-lined forehead with exertion until he stopped abruptly, reached into his pocket, pulled out a key and locked the door. 'Ha Ha,' he said in a flat voice. 'Two keys.' He leaned close to the wood. 'I'm going to do something bad now. Bye.'

On the third floor, Jack's body was fizzing in response to the air around him. When you had travelled in time enough to begin developing a somewhat loose attitude towards the here and now, you became sensitive to changes in the temporal fabric around you, as if the skin itself were more aware of the flow of seconds and minutes. It felt the same as when a television was left turned on in a room, its screen blank — that charge in the air, the flow of particles across the glass that radiated out and made the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

As Jack walked towards the corner of the room, he became aware of the charge increasing in the air around him. Suddenly the room changed and he found himself looking on it in better times, the wallpaper and paintwork crisp and new, no cobwebs or dust. He stopped moving and tried to feel the static in the air, holding out his hands and tickling the chronons with his fingertips. Sensing a surge to his left, he aimed for it and found himself back in the present day.

He moved onto the landing, the tingling getting stronger all the time. Things were close to falling apart, time and space becoming no more than a jumble around him. By the stairs, he felt a wave of chronons and, sticking out his arm, watched the hand disappear as it left this point of space-time and entered somewhere else. Leaning forward, he stuck his head through where he estimated the hole to be. He found himself looking down on Rob and Julia as they slept in the main bedroom, Rob snoring while Julia — eyes slowly widening in fear — looked up at Jack's face and recognised it for what it was.

Jack pulled himself back onto the landing and moved into the other room.

'Jesus!' Ianto shouted as he came face to face with Rob in the doorway. Gwen jumped up from her seat, the sound of panic in Ianto's voice more than enough to get her moving. Ianto got his arm up in time to stop Rob doing any damage, darting back and shoving the door closed while Rob was unbalanced.

'Tell Julia I've found her husband,' said Ianto, pressing hard against the door to keep it closed as Rob pounded on it from the other side.

'Stop spoiling the joke! Stop spoiling the joke!' Rob screamed.

Gwen was looking around for something to use as a weapon, even as they heard the lock click and Rob's whispered threat.

'Oh no…' she said, flicking the monitor switch and watching as Rob walked away from the door and towards the lounge where his wife lay sleeping. 'We need to get that door open before he harms her!'

'Right!' shouted Alexander, surrounded by a mess of cannibalised electronics. 'Now we might be getting somewhere.'

Hannah was silent, staring at the abandoned shell of the microwave, the television and her mobile phone. In contrast with Joe's euphoria, the drug seemed to have made her maudlin, and Alexander was quite perplexed by it. Human beings did have such remarkably chaotic biology.

'Now then,' he said, looking forlornly at her, 'do try and look interested. I hate not having an audience when I do something clever. What we have here,' he held up the ugly combination of his PDA and the household items he'd scavenged, 'is not unlike the gadget that young Ianto had for tracking chronon signatures…' He stopped himself, realising the pointlessness of what he was doing. 'You have no idea who I'm talking about. Doesn't matter. With any luck, it will help me find a point of access to that very strange house next door.'

Hannah sighed and kicked a piece of the microwave across the floor. 'Whatever,' she said.

'I think, on reflection, I prefer the dancing buffoon outside,' Alexander said, dumping the apparatus in his lap and heading back towards the front door.

Jack was in the middle of the street. To his left was the half-built shell of a house, to his right there was little but rubble and open earth. Looking directly ahead, he saw the open foundations that would soon become Jackson Leaves, moonlight falling on cement sacks and timber, piles of brick and grit.

'You'll grow up to be trouble,' Jack said, stepping backwards and reappearing by the window in the upstairs room.

There was the sound of frantic hammering from downstairs, and he dashed towards the door, jerking to a halt as the air around him suddenly changed, thickening, coalescing into liquid. His legs came out from under him and he fell backwards. Looking up, floating in the murky water that had overlaid itself on the structure of the room, he found himself staring into Alison's terrified eyes, her hair flailing around her screaming face as hands pressed down from above. Jack reached for her, desperate to help, and his hands brushed on another's fingertips, but something had him by the ankles and he began to sink.

Looking down, he could make out the shape of the river weeds swaying in what little moonlight made it this far beneath the surface of the water. If he could just untangle his feet… He looked up as he tugged at the weeds, watching Alison's panicked movements begin to slow, arms cutting through the water more and more dreamily before the scream on her face sagged into an open-mouthed expression of absence. It seemed to him that he saw the life fade from her eyes. They went from shining green glass to dull as earth. Miles's hands let go and vanished into the air, even as what was left of Alison headed towards Jack, seemingly for an embrace. As she sank, so did he, dropping onto the threadbare carpet of the third-floor room, his clothes as heavy from the river water as his heart was with guilt.

Neither Gwen nor Ianto saw Jack as he disappeared then reappeared in the room above. They were far too occupied in trying to force the lock on the dining room door, fighting not to be distracted by the sight of Rob entering the lounge on the monitor screen beside them.

Rob stood by the arm of the sofa, cradling the mallet in his arms as one would an infant. He looked down at his wife, stroked her forehead with the back of his hand and smiled as she began to come round. Her eyes were glazed with the drug in her system, and when she looked up at him it was first with confusion then with a rather sleepy smile.

'There you are,' she said dreamily.

'You can see me?' he asked.

'Yes,' she said, though her eyelids were drooping.

'I wish I could,' he said, his eyes dampening. 'I was beginning to think I was completely lost.'

Julia was falling asleep.

'Please don't,' Rob said, touching her face again.

'Hello?' she said. 'Tired…'

'Yes,' Rob nodded. 'They poisoned you.' He rubbed away the beginnings of tears. 'We're both poisoned.'

'He talked about drugging us,' Julia murmured. 'Remember? Threatened it… to make us do what he wanted.'

'All poison makes you do what it wants,' Rob replied. 'This house is the same.'

'Need sleep.'

'I know you do… I hope the drug does make you do whatever someone says. If it does… well, that makes this easier.'

'What do you mean?' asked Julia.

'I love you, Julia, OK? Forgive me for what I'm about to do.'

Julia smiled. 'I do.'

Rob sobbed and raised the mallet above his head before bringing it down with all his strength.

As Jack sat up, a stone broke through the glass of the window, bouncing off the wall and rolling into the corner of the room. He didn't notice, getting to his feet in a daze and stepping onto the landing. There were three doors now, rather than two. He stared at the new door, fixed in what could only be an external wall.

Another stone burst through the window next door.

Jack reached out to the brass knob of the impossible door, opened it and stepped out of Jackson Leaves altogether.