lovely one.”
“I want to be called Reginald,” said Dorothy—er, Reginald. “Inside, I feel like a Reginald.”
Professor Stefan frowned.
“But why Reginald?” he said. “Nobody is called ‘Reginald’ these days. It would be like me announcing that I wanted to be called Elsie, or Boadicea.”?47
“I like the name Reginald,” said Dorothy, or Reginald. “It was my mother’s name.”
Even Brian stopped shaking for long enough to look bewildered, then went back to trembling again.
“Right,” said Professor Hilbert. “I’m glad we cleared that one up.”
Any further discussion of the matter was postponed by the appearance of a Viking on the road. He wore a metal helmet, but was otherwise entirely naked. This might have been more disturbing had he not been little more than leathery skin and yellowed bone. In his right hand he held a rusty sword, and a shield hung from his left arm.
“You know, you really don’t see that very often,” said Professor Hilbert.
Even though he was a physicist, he had a scientist’s general fascination with anything new and unusual in the world, and a naked undead Viking counted as unusual in any world. Issues of personal safety took second place to things that were just plain interesting.
“How splendid!” said Professor Stefan. “Slow down, Hilbert, so we can take a good look at him.”
Professor Hilbert slowed the car to a crawl, and rolled down his window.
“Hello!” he said to the Viking.
“You look a bit lost,” said Professor Stefan.
The Viking glared at them. Darkness seethed and roiled in its eyes.
“Garrrgghhhh,” it said. “Urrurh.”
“Ah, yes, of course,” said Professor Hilbert. “How true, how true.”
He looked at Professor Stefan and shrugged. Professor Stefan rolled his eyes.
“Where. Are. You. From?” said Professor Hilbert. He spoke very slowly and very loudly, which is how English people who don’t speak foreign languages try to communicate with those who do.
“Harruraruh,” said the Viking.
“Where is that?” said Professor Stefan. “Could he show us on a map?”
“Map?” said Professor Hilbert to the Viking.
He drew squiggles in the air, in the faint hope that the Viking might make the connection. Instead the Viking simply waved his sword and said, “Rarh!”
“I don’t think we’re going to get much out of him, I’m afraid,” said Professor Hilbert. “His English leaves a lot to be desired.”
“What a shame,” said Professor Stefan. “You’d think the chap might have brought a phrase book with him so he could communicate a little better. You know, ‘Hello, I come from Norway.’ ‘Where is Buckingham Palace?’ That kind of thing. Hardly seems worth making the trip if you can’t speak the language. Never mind.”
He waved at the Viking.
“Bye, now!” he said. “Thanks for visiting.”
“Warrghhh,” said the Viking.
“Ha ha!” said Professor Stefan. “Absolutely, yes.”
He puffed out his cheeks as Professor Hilbert prepared to drive off.
“No idea what the chap was saying.”
He gave the Viking a final wave, just in time to witness a Saxon with one leg dragging brokenly behind him hit the Viking repeatedly on the top of the head with an ax.
“And they wonder why tourists don’t come here very often,” said Professor Hilbert.
“It’s the battlefield,” said Maria.
“What?”
“We’re close to the site of the Battle of Biddlecombe. Hilary Mould designed and built the visitor center there. It’s one of the points on the pentagram. I’ll bet there’s supernatural activity at the old asylum, too, and the crematorium, and the prison. Which makes me more certain than ever that the center of the activity is here.”
She tapped her finger on the map, right on the location of Wreckit & Sons.
A small troop of Christmas elves crossed their path, forcing Professor Hilbert to brake suddenly.
“You don’t want to try talking to them as well, do you?” said Maria.
“Don’t be silly,” said Professor Stefan. “They’re elves.”
“Of course,” said Maria. “Duh.”
The elves paid them no notice. They were too busy running from something. Seconds later, one of the groundskeepers appeared. He was carrying a heavy rake, but was still making good progress. He caught up with the elves just as they reached the other side of the road, and began beating them to splinters.
“The sign said,” he screamed, “?‘KEEP OFF THE GRASS.’ What part of keeping off the grass did you—
When the elves were no more, the groundskeeper looked up to see five people watching him. He tipped his hat at them.
“Evening,” he said.
“Evening,” replied Professor Hilbert.
The groundskeeper indicated with a thumb the stack of firewood and splinters that had once been elves.
“Elves,” he said. “They trampled on the grass.”
“So we gathered.”
“And the flower beds,” added the groundskeeper. His tone suggested that, while some might feel reducing elves to kindling for trespassing on the grass was a bit of an overreaction, no sane person could take issue with pummeling them for stepping on the flower beds.
He wiped his sweating brow.
“I quite enjoyed that,” he said. “I think I’ll go and look for some more of them.”
And off he went, whistling what sounded like “Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho.”
It struck Professor Hilbert that, if the groundskeeper was anything to go by, the citizens of Biddlecombe were taking the evening’s events in their stride. This view was confirmed when they came across the Biddlecombe Ladies’ Football Team standing by half a dozen large and very bruised Christmas-tree fairies who had been tied to tree trunks with stout rope in order to prevent them from doing any further harm.
Professor Hilbert stopped the car.
“What are you doing?” said Professor Stefan.
“Look!” said Professor Hilbert, pointing to the west.
There was a faint shimmer to the air. Beyond it Maria could see more trees and, some way in the distance, the spire of the church in the nearest village, Rathford, but it was as though a mist had descended upon the landscape, blurring the image. It struck Maria that they shouldn’t even have been able to see Rathford. It was nighttime, and yet the spire of the Church of St. Roger the Inflammable was plainly visible, although there was a touch of shiny gray to it, like an old photographic negative.
Professor Hilbert stepped from the car and walked toward the location of the shimmering. The others followed, even Brian, although he was not so much curious as frightened to be left alone. As they drew closer, they saw that the ground came to a kind of end at the fence surrounding August Derleth Park. Beyond the boundary it was less actual firm ground than the memory of it, and its level didn’t quite match the grass on their side of the fence. Worse, the other ground was transparent, and beneath it Maria could see a terrible blackness spotted with the odd lonely star. It felt to her as though Biddlecombe had somehow been set adrift in the Multiverse while still bringing with it the memory of the planet of which it had once been a part. The dividing line was the shimmering, like the heat haze that rises from the ground on sunny summer days, except this one brought with it no warmth.
Reginald/Dorothy reached out to touch it, and only Professor Hilbert’s sudden grip on his/her wrist prevented him/her from doing so.48
“I wouldn’t,” he said.
