Lost in a Good Book

mid-twenties seated in a large armchair, bound and gagged. He looked at me imploringly and mumbled something behind the gag as he struggled with his bonds. As I removed the gag the young man burst forth in speech as though his life depended upon it.

‘ ‘Tis some visitor,’ he spoke urgently and rapidly, ‘tapping at my chamber door—only this and nothing more!’

And so saying, he disappeared from view into the room next door.

‘Damn you, Sebastian!’ said a chillingly familiar voice from the adjoining room. ‘I would pin you to your chair if this poetical coffin had seen so fit as to furnish me with hammer and nails!’

But the speaker stopped abruptly as he entered the room and saw me. Jack Schitt was in a wretched condition. His previously neat crew cut had been replaced by straggly hair and his thin features were now covered with a scruffy beard; his eyes were wide and haunted and hung with dark circles from lack of sleep. His sharp suit was rumpled and torn, his diamond tiepin lacking in lustre. His arrogant and confident manner had given way to a lonely desperation, and as his eyes met mine I saw tears spring up and his lips tremble. It was, to a committed Schitt-hater like myself, a joyous spectacle.

‘Thursday!’ he croaked in a strangled cry. ‘Take me back! Don’t let me stay one more second in this vile place! The endless clock staking midnight, the tap-tap-tapping, the raven—oh my good God, the raven!’

He fell to his knees and sobbed as the young man bounded happily back into the room and started to tidy up as he muttered:

‘ ‘Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door!’

‘I’d be more than happy to leave you here, Mr Schitt, but I’ve cut a deal. C’mon, we’re going home.’

I grasped the Goliath agent by the lapel and started to read the description of the vault back at Goliath R&D. I felt a tug on my body and another rush of wind, the tapping increased and I just had time to hear the student say: ‘Sir or madam truly, your forgiveness I implore…’ when we found ourselves back in the Goliath lab at Aldermaston. I was pleased with this, as I hadn’t thought it would be that easy, but all my feelings of self-satisfaction vanished when, instead of being arrested, Jack was hugged warmly by his half- brother.

‘Jack!’ said Schitt-Hawse happily. ‘Welcome back!’

‘Thank you, Brik—how’s Mum?’

‘The trouble with you, Miss Next,’ said Schitt-Hawse, ‘is that you are far too trusting. Did you really think for one moment that we were going to give up on such an important man as Jack?’

‘You promised!’ I said somewhat uselessly.

‘Goliath doesn’t keep promises,’ replied Schitt-Hawse. ‘The profit margin is too low.’

‘Lavoisier!’ I yelled. ‘You promised!’

Lavoisier walked from the room without looking back.

‘Thank you, Monsieur!’ shouted Schitt-Hawse after him. ‘The wedding picture was a touch of genius!’

I leaped forward to grab Schitt-Hawse but was pinned down by Chalk and Cheese. I struggled long, hard— and hopelessly. My shoulders sagged and I stared at the ground. How could I have been so stupid as to think they would keep to their part of the deal? Delusive hope, so often the partner of strong love, had blinded me. Landen had been right. I should have walked away.

‘I want to wring her ghost upon the floor,’ said Jack Schitt, staring in my direction, ‘to still this beating of my heart. Mr Cheese, your weapon.’

‘No, Jack,’ said Schitt-Hawse. ‘Miss Next and her unique attributes could open up a large and highly profitable market to exploit.’

Schitt rounded on his half-brother.

‘Do you have any idea of the fantastic terrors I’ve just been through? Tapping… I mean trapping me in The Raven is something Next is not going to live to regret. No, Brik, the book slut will surcease my sorrow!’

Schitt-Hawse held Jack by the shoulders and shook him.

‘Snap out of that Raven talk, Jack. You’re home now. Listen: the book slut is potentially worth billions.’

Schitt stopped and gathered his thoughts.

‘Of course,’ he murmured finally, ‘a vast untapped resource of consumers. How much useless rubbish do you think we can offload on those ignorant masses in nineteenth-century literature?’

‘Indeed,’ replied Schitt-Hawse, ‘and our unreprocessed waste—finally an effective disposal location. Untold riches await the Corporation. And listen—if it doesn’t work out, then you can kill her.’

‘When do we start?’ asked Schitt, who seemed to be growing stronger by the second.

‘It depends,’ said Schitt-Hawse, looking at me, ‘on Miss Next.’

‘I would sooner die than be a party to your foul plans,’ I said angrily.

‘Oh!’ said Schitt-Hawse. ‘Hadn’t you heard? As far as the outside world is concerned you’re dead already! Did you think you could see all that was going on here and live to tell the tale?’

I tried to think of some way to escape but there was nothing to hand—no weapon, no book, nothing.

‘I really haven’t decided,’ continued Schitt-Hawse in a patronising tone, ‘whether you fell down a lift shaft or blundered into some machinery. Do you have any preferences?’

And he laughed a short and very cruel laugh. I said nothing. There didn’t seem to be anything I could say.

‘I’m afraid, my girl,’ said Schitt-Hawse as they started to file out through the vault door, taking my travel book with them, ‘that you are a guest of the Corporation for the rest of your natural life. But it won’t all be bad. We will be willing to reactualise your husband. You won’t actually meet him again, of course, but he will be alive—so long as you co-operate, and you will, you know.’

I glared at the two Schitts.

‘I will never help you, as long as I have breath in my lungs.’

Schitt-Hawse’s eyelid twitched.

‘Oh, you’ll help us, Next—if not for Landen then for your child. Yes, we know about that. We’ll leave you for now. And you needn’t bother looking for any books in here to pull your vanishing trick—we made quite sure there were none!’

He smiled again and stepped out of the vault. The door slammed shut with a reverberating boom that shook me to the core. I sat down on one of the chairs, put my head in my hands and cried tears of frustration, anger and loss.

29. Rescued

‘…Miss Havisham’s extraction of Thursday from the Goliath vault is the stuff that legends are built on. The thing was, not only had no one ever done it before, no one had even thought of doing it before. It put them both on the map and earned Havisham her eighth cover on the Jurisfiction trade paper, Movable Type, and Thursday her first. It cemented the bond between them. In the annals of Jurisfiction there were notable partnerships such as Beowulf & Sneed, Falstaff & Tiggywinkle, Voltaire & Flark. That night Havisham & Next emerged as one of the greatest pairings Jurisfiction would ever see…’

UA OF W CAT. Jurisfiction Journals

The first thing I noticed about being locked in a vault twelve floors below ground at the Goliath R&D lab was not the isolation, but the silence. There was no hum of air-conditioning, no odd