Then came the sound of bolts being drawn aside, and the door was opened a crack.
“Who’s me?” said the man peering out at him.
He looked kindly enough, Harvey thought, but it wasn’t his father. This was a much older man, his hair almost white, his face thin. He had a badly trimmed mustache, and a furrow of a frown.
“What do you want?” he said.
Before Harvey could reply a woman’s voice said:
“Come away from the door.”
He couldn’t see the second speaker yet, but he caught a glimpse of the wallpaper in the hallway, and the pictures on the wall. To his relief he saw that this was not his house at all. He’d obviously made a simple mistake, and knocked on the wrong door.
“I’m sorry,” he said, backing away. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“Who are you looking for?” the man wanted to know, opening the door a little wider now. “Are you one of the Smith kids?”
He started to dig in the pocket of his dressing gown, and brought out a pair of spectacles.
He can’t even see me properly, Harvey thought: poor old man.
But before the spectacles reached the bridge of the man’s nose his wife appeared behind him, and Harvey’s legs almost folded up beneath him at the sight of her.
She was old, this woman, her hair almost as colorless as her husband’s, and her face even more lined and sorrowful. But Harvey knew that face better than any on earth. It was the first face he’d ever loved. It was his mother.
“Mom?” he murmured.
The woman stopped and stared out through the open door at the boy standing on the step, her eyes filling up with tears. She could barely breathe the word she said next.
“Harvey?”
“Mom?…Mom, it is you, isn’t it?”
By now the man had put on his spectacles, and peered through them with his eyes wide.
“It’s not possible,” he said flatly. “This can’t be Harvey.”
“It’s him,” said his wife. “It’s our Harvey. He’s come home.”
The man shook his head. “After all these years?” he said. “He’d be a man by now. He’d be a grown man. This is just a boy.”
“It’s him, I tell you.”
“No!” the man replied, angry now. “It’s some prank. Somebody trying to break our hearts. As if they’re not broken enough.”
He started to slam the door, but Harvey’s mom caught hold of it.
“Look at him,” she said. “Look at his clothes. That’s what he was wearing the night he left us.”
“How do you know?”
“You think I don’t remember?”
“It’s thirty-one years ago,” said Harvey’s father, still staring at the boy on the step. “This can’t…can’t be…” He faltered as slow recognition spread over his face. “Oh my Lord,” he said, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper, “…it is him, isn’t it?”
“I told you,” his wife replied,
“Are you some kind of ghost?” he asked Harvey.
“Oh for goodness’ sake,” Harvey’s mom said. “He’s no ghost!” She slipped past her husband, and out onto the step. “I don’t know how it’s possible, and I don’t care,” she said, opening her arms to Harvey. “All I know is, our little boy’s come home to us.”
Harvey couldn’t speak. There were too many tears in his throat, and in his nose and in his eyes. All he could do was stumble into his mother’s arms. It was wonderful to feel her hands stroke his hair and her fingers wipe his cheeks.
“Oh Harvey, Harvey, Harvey,” she sobbed. “We thought we’d never see you again.” She kissed him over and over. “We thought you’d gone forever.”
“How’s this possible?” his father still wanted to know.
“I kept praying,” his mother said.
Harvey had another answer, though he didn’t voice it. The moment he’d set eyes on his mother—so changed, so sorrowful—it was instantly clear what a terrible trick Hood’s House had played upon them all. For every day he’d spent there a year had gone by here in the real world. Every morning while he’d played in the spring warmth, months had passed. In the afternoon, while he’d lazed in the summer sun, the same. And those haunted twilights, which had seemed so brief, had been another span of months, as had the Christmas nights, full of snow and presents. They’d all slipped by so easily, and though he had only aged a month, his mom and dad had lived in sadness for thirty-one years, thinking that their little boy had gone forever.
That had almost been the case. If he’d remained in the House of Illusions, distracted by its petty pleasures, a whole lifetime would have gone by here in the real world, and his soul would have become Hood’s property. He would have joined the fish circling in the lake; and circling; and circling. He shuddered at the thought.
“You’re cold, sweetie,” his mother said. “Let’s get you inside.” He sniffed hard, and cleared his tears with the back of his hand. “I’m so tired,” he said.
“I’ll make a bed for you straight away.”
“No. I want to tell you what happened before I go to sleep,” Harvey replied. “It’s a long story. Thirty-one years long.”
XV. New Nightmares
It was a more difficult tale to tell than he expected it to be. Though some of the details were clear in his head—Rictus’s first appearance; the sinking of the ark; his and Wendell’s escape—there was much else he could not properly remember. It was as though the mist he’d strode through had seeped into his head, and had there drawn a veil over the House and much of what it contained.
“I remember speaking to you on the phone two or three times,” he said.
“You didn’t speak to us, honey,” his mom replied.
“Then that was just another trick,” Harvey said. “I should have known.”
“But who was playing all those tricks?” his father demanded. “If this House exists—I say if—then whoever owns it kidnapped you and somehow kept you from growing up. Maybe he froze you—”
“No,” said Harvey. “It was warm there, except when the snow came down, of course.”
“There has to be some sane explanation.”
“There is,” said Harvey. “It was magic.”
His father shook his head. “That’s a child’s answer,” he said. “And I’m not a child anymore.”
“And I know what I know,” said Harvey firmly.
“It isn’t very much, honey,” his mom said.
“I wish I could remember more.”
She put a comforting arm around his shoulder. “Never mind,” she said, “we’ll talk about it when you’ve had a rest.”
“Could you find this House again?” his father asked him.
“Yes,” Harvey replied, though his skin ran with chills at the thought of going back. “I think so”
“Then that’s what we’ll do.”
“I don’t want him going back to that place,” his mother said.
“We have to know it exists before we report it to the police. You understand that, don’t you, son?”
