The Story so Far

Goddard Johnson, newly single and dissatisfied with his job, is introduced to the enigmatic George. For reasons unknown to anyone but himself, George welcomes Goddard into his fellowship and shows him the Wide: the other half of the world, the hidden, magical half of the world, that only certain people are able to see.

2. The Reading Room

We descended the hill from the gorge. George had just shown me the Wide - the hidden half of the world that I would now be able to access - and my hands shook with the wonder, the terrible magnificence of it. My feet slipped on the wet grass and our descent was slowed.

I looked up and the landscape before me contracted and expanded as my concentration - my grip on the Wide - waxed and waned. I concentrated on where I placed my feet to distract myself from the beating, flickering countryside.

George must have noticed my fear. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'Everything between here and the van is in the Narrow. You can stop trying to see it.'

I continued to watch my path all the same.

'You'll have to concentrate, at first, to see the Wide,' he continued. 'It will come naturally soon enough, and eventually, you'll have to make an effort to not see it.' We stopped walking. We had reached George's van; the decal on the side of the van -- the trigger -- faced me, a twisting complex of blue, green and white. That trigger had changed my life, and part of me suspected that I would never erase its image from my mind.

The effort of maintaining my grip on the Wide seemed beyond me. 'How long will that take?' I asked.

George leaned against the van door, arms folded. 'It depends. Some of the guys got it in weeks, others took a year or more. Those that took longer have generally found it harder to see only the Narrow.' He saw my look of shock and added; 'But everyone gets there in the end.'

I said nothing for a minute. Looked around myself. Now that I had stopped thinking about the Wide, the surrounding area had solidified. The hills stayed in place, the trees remained motionless, the borders and edges of what I could see remained sacred.

'Who are you people, anyway?' I asked.

'Concerned citizens,' said George. 'There was a . . . shortfall. The rulers of the Wide don't care about the Narrow. The rulers of the Narrow don't know about the Wide. Basically, we got together to police the boundaries between the Wide and the Narrow . . .'

'But?' I asked, guessing there was more to it than that.

'There's something coming. The weathervanes are spinning and the livestock sleep uneasy. We're trying to prepare for it.'

'What is it?' A sudden chill had caressed my arms; I tried to tell myself it was because the Sun had gone behind a cloud.

George didn't answer. His smile faded. He looked at his watch. 'We'd better get going.'

#

I usually avoided the town centre on Saturday afternoons, but my unscheduled drive with George had disrupted my plans. It was early evening by the time I made it back, and the streets were thronged with the worst of what the town had to offer. There were more early-evening drinkers present than late afternoon shoppers; scantily-clad young women screeching and angry looking men jesting. I avoided eye contact where possible, increased the pace of my walk.

I think now that I saw it happening ahead of time; I am not sure, maybe something about the man's manner alerted me that something was amiss. He wore a long-sleeved checked shirt and worn black trousers, bright white trainers and red baseball cap. He converged with the old woman at speed, barely less than a run.

She had been exitting the foyer of the Natwest bank, where the cash machines were; a big woman with a collosal coat that swept aside the dog ends and discarded flyers. She had just returned her purse to her handbag when the man snatched it.

I don't know what inspired me to act. Maybe I judged him small enough that I could handle him if it turned physical. Maybe it was because no one else reacted to it. Maybe some unknown force was pushing me to do something more noble than I normally would have. I ran after him.

He was fleeter of foot than he looked, unhindered by his unlaced trainers. He took off down the high street in the direction of the town hall, and then turned left onto the road that headed towards the post office. I followed him around the corner just in time to see him vanish, not 20 yards further down the road from me.

I stared around me for a minute, unable to connect the man's disappearance with what I had learned that day. Eventually it dawned on me. There was no one else on this side street; the man must have deemed it safe to enter the Wide while there were no witnesses.

It was the first time I had tried to access the Wide without George's assistance. He had told me, Just concentrate. It will come eventually. He had sent me away, telling me to practice, to explore, to think about the offer he had made. I thought about the Wide, thought hard.

At first nothing happened, and I despaired, unsure of myself. Had I truly been shown the potential of this other world only to fail? Would I always rely on George, or one of the others, to show me the way? I glanced around me, sure that my paralysis and my agony would have drawn the stares of the other shoppers, but none of them spared me a second glance.

I looked back to where the thief had disappeared, willed myself to see what was really there. Slowly, painfully slowly, the world opened up. There was a jagged line of asphalt where the Narrow ended; its partner edge sped away from me, coming to a stop about 200 yards away. Between the road surface was cobbled; black and grey pebbles shined in the evening light. Old wooden buildings filled the gaps created on either sides; balconies and dark alleyways, signs written in languages I didn't speak but recognised nonetheless.

The thief had stopped about five yards into the Wide. He pawed through the bags, dropping items that weren't of interest to him to the cobbles; tissues, keys, a compact mirror. He was unaware of me as I approached him, and I hoped I might catch him unawares, but as I stepped from the Narrow he looked up, staring me in the eyes.

'Shit,' he said, and fled.

I pursued him down dark alleways between buildings. I splashed through puddles that steamed, and passed dogs with unfamiliar patterns in their fur. I climbed wooden stairways and down corridors made of glass. Though my quarry outpaced me, I never worried that I would lose him. I knew, instinctively, that he was heading towards a dead end, but didn't spare a thought about how I would get him to return to the Narrow. I didn't even know that I could, but it was the furthest thing from my mind.

I could hear him curse around a corner up ahead and knew that he had run out of road. I found him in a small courtyard between buildings, desparately shaking a locked wooden door with his free hand.

I tried to think of something clever to say, something intimidating, as I crossed the courtyard. Nothing came to mind so I just grabbed the old lady's bag. He spun to face me as he felt me try to take it from his grasp. His look was feral as he hissed at me, and hit me in the chest with an open palm, knocking the wind from me.

I staggered backwards, falling, desparately trying to keep my grip on the bag. I succeeded, but lost my grip on the Wide, and tumbled into the Narrow.

#

I found myself down by the railway line, my head a short distance from the track. I counted my blessings that I hadn't fallen slightly further over; I could have reappeared in front of an oncoming train. The line, thankfully, was quiet, but I could have paid a huge price for my heroics. The old lady's bag was, for the time being, forgotten. My hands began to shake and I sat helplessly in the gravel.

I didn't recognise this part of track. To my left (where I assumed north lay), the track was lined with thick bushes, heavily thorned, that I could not see through. To my right, an impenetrable wrought iron security fence separated me from the back of a housing estate. I hoped that it was the one nearest the town centre and that I hadn't travelled any further during my pursuit.

Eventually, I was able to stand again, and I tried to find the Wide. I tried for long minutes, but it escaped me. Wherever I had been when I lost my grip, I couldn't get back there from here. I had the bag, but the thief had eluded me. It was probably a good thing.

I followed the track eastwards, looking for somewhere to cross the security fence, and hoping that I wouldn't have to walk all the way to the station.

#

I went straight home. It was a long walk back to my car, and then an unsettling drive back to my village. I couldn't stop thinking about the tracks, and I jumped at every car that overtook me in the dark. My hands shook as I unlocked my front door.

Instinctively, I climbed the stairs to my reading room. I couldn't tell you why I foresook the lounge, or my bedroom, and headed instead for my old sanctuary. It was a regression that would have troubled me had I had a spare thought to put to it.

I opened the door at the top of the curving stairs that led into the cottage's attic for the first time in over a year. I'd left the sash window blinds open, and orange streetlight glinted off the rows of books against the adjacent wall. The armchair glowed a dull orange, the scratched leather catching the light like fire. I flicked the lightswitch. The light flared once, revealing the side table, the small portable CD player, the Turkish rug, and then died.

It took me a few minutes to find the spare bulb, and then change it with shaking hands in the orange light from the village green below. When I had done so, I sat in my armchair, dragging the side table in front of me and dropping the old lady's bag on top of it.

I didn't know what I should do with the bag now that I had it. The obvious course was to hand it in to the police, but I had a curious urge to return it to the woman in person. Supressing the odd feeling of guilt that rose in me, I looked inside the bag. Unfortunately there was nothing inside that revealed to me who the old lady was or where she lived. I would have to hand it to the police.

I closed the bag and leaned back in my chair. That pursuit had almost cost me my life, and that was a sobering thought. Could I have known where I was going to end up? Was I always going to have to leave the Wide the same way that I came in?

My mind tortured itself thinking of the places I could reappear that would put my life in danger. The fast lane of the motorway . . . In the midst of some industrial machinery . . . Above a river or a lake. I wasn't the strongest of swimmers; I could drown before I even realised where I was.

Could I control where I came out? I would have to ask George. He had offered to help me through this transition, whatever my decision was. And that was another thing I needed to consider, but at another time. Right now, my imagation had reawakened and it wasn't about to be distracted by thoughts of George and his motley crew.

. . . A Ministry of Defence firing range.

. . . A burning building.

I considered getting myself a drink to steady my nerves, then realised that I didn't need to be appearing before the police stinking of brandy. I closed my eyes and waited for my whirlwind imagination to tire itself out.

. . . A natural cave, with exits to small for me to squeeze through.

. . . The crocodile enclosure at the zoo. Or the Lions.

. . . In front of a woodsman's chainsaw . . .

It took a while.

#

I returned the bag to the police station later that evening. I told the desk sergeant that I had found it on the road leading to the post office. I smiled my best smile and got out before he could ask too many questions.

#

George had told me what he wanted from me in the drive back from the gorge.

'I want you to join us,' he had said. Most of his attention was fixed on the road ahead; he was driving through the Wide, following a route that was half the distance than the one we had followed out there.

'We need a man who can find things, a salesman, and Kelly tells me that you have a good heart.'

'You've spoken to her about me?' It had surprised me. I always found it strange that people would talk about me in my absence. I didn't think I was interesting enough to warrant discussion.

'Of course,' he said, as if it was obvious. 'She tells me you'll try to do the right thing.'

I guess she knows me better than I know myself, in some instances.

'I won't lie to you. We don't know what's coming, but we're afraid. It could be dangerous.'

I didn't reply. There was nothing I could say.

#

I called George the next day. I had his mobile number on the post-it note that Kelly had given me the month before. I entered his number into my phone and saved it.

'I'm in,' I told him.

#

When I was a teenager, the reading room was my sanctuary. It was where I headed when things got too hectic and I needed to think. It was where I hid from the world. My parents, when they were still alive, knew never too disturb me there. They gave me that space, and honoured it.

In recent years, I had used it less and less. My entire life became like my reading room, my retreat. There was less need for a single sanctuary, when I was hiding all the time.

Now though . . .

I finished talking to George. He had invited me to join him and a few of the others for dinner during the week. Wants me to get a chance to meet the rest of the team, I thought. I placed my phone on the coffee-table in the lounge, and climbed the stairs to the reading room in the attic.

I stood in the middle of the room for a while, just breathing. Took in the smells of chair leather and coffee, the utter silence.

Eventually, I went to the window. Reached for the blinds, and then stopped. I had to know.

My cottage overlooks the village green. I'm on one of the long sides, between the pub -- The Hawthorn -- and the now-closed local post office. The green itself is about the size of a football pitch. In one of the far corners is St. Mary's Church, in the other the village shop. My second storey view is unreturned; I can see everyone in the heart of the village, but no one ever looks back. I like that.

Looking down on this view now, I opened myself to the Wide. The green got no wider, but it doubled in length. The church and the shop moved apart as if one of them had suddenly upset the other. Strange trees sprouted among the village green, towering impossibly where I had played football unimpeded as a child. They were foreign, with trunks as black as midnight, and pine-needle leaves as grey as tarnished steel. Alien birds flitted between the branches. More distant, balconies appeared on the church tower, ancient and crumbling.

But my room remain unchanged. I glanced around me, desparately trying to see something different, some alteration, but there was nothing. The reading room was entirely in the Narrow.

I sighed, releasing a breath I hadn't known I had been holding. I sat in my chair and closed my eyes.

Outside my window, strange birds twittered in new trees.

Commentary

So this is the second House of Cards story. We get to know Goddard a little better, and we are shown a little more about what the Wide is and how it works. Hopefully, I haven't given too much away, but I guess that I can always come back and edit if future reads prove it to be a little too condescending.

I wrote this in one sitting, and I think it shows, as the pace is fairly good, even if the scene changes are a little bit hectic. Beside a few misplaced words, this is largely unedited, so if you do happen to spot something stupid please let me know.

I hope you enjoyed reading it.

Draw

Plot = TEN OF HEARTS = Introduction (draw 1) {Black suit = person; red suit = place}
JACK OF DIAMONDS = Red suit = Place
FIVE OF DIAMONDS = Red suit = A place in the Narrow
JACK OF SPADES = A room, currently undefined

Revisions

No revisions have been made to this story.

#