people knew what he did unofficially.
He hadnât been sleeping well. All he knew was that he woke often in the darkest part of the night, that pocket of time where he felt exposed and vulnerable, as if somehow, while heâd been asleep, the world had changed on him and left him behind. He didnât quite remember what it was that woke him, only that he had been dreaming of the past again, of graceful pillar trees and spotted sunlight and a laugh that reminded him how cruel and awful life was. He had these periods, sometimes, and nothing would do except to wait through it, patiently, until the dreams faded back into his head and left him alone. It was just a phase and it would pass, as always.
And then, one night,
she
was there.
The girl who looked like a ghost.
She had been watching him, that much he knew; that way that you just
knew
in dreams. Sheâd been skirting around the edges of him, watching his dreams unfold, and god knew what sheâd seen. Sheâd squatted in corners, her thin arms draped over her grey legs, watching.
Finally, in a dream one night, she had started to talk to him.
She knew things.
She knew things no one could possibly know about him.
That was the first reason he believed her.
The second reason he believed her was when she took him to the Castle.
She led him like a child, taking him by the hand and pulling him through, stepping from here to there. And then he saw it.
It was a place, she had assured him. Maybe not a place in the sense that he thought of places, but real enough. Just real in a different way.
It was a huge, echoing stone building, that shifted when you tried to look at it, really look. It was filled with rooms. Thousands of rooms, millions of rooms, rooms within rooms, twisting, turning, choking or wide as a boulevard, rooms that led you to black places, tiny cramped places where the things no one ever wanted to find or remember or think about were hidden.
Rooms that led you to a banquet hall with blood on the flagstone floor and dishes of greased chicken and rotting fruit on the tables. Upturned glasses of wine dripping onto the cloth.
Rooms made of infinity mirrors that showed you yourself, endlessly repeated, again and again and overlapping and stretching all the way for ever until your mind cracked with trying to understand it.
Rooms draped in velvet, with that desk in the corner that you remembered hiding under as a child, that desk with the hidden drawers that could only be opened with a tiny key, that desk that seemed to contain secret worlds. Rooms heâd never seen before, fairytale places and strange. But there were also all the rooms heâd ever been into in his life; bedrooms and dining rooms and parlours and gambling rooms and bathrooms and half-remembered rooms and rooms where bad things had happened that heâd managed to forget and ones in which nothing much had happened at all.
This was the Castle.
It showed you the past, and the now, and the what might be. It showed them all together in the same place until it was hard to know when you were. It showed you other worlds, other times, other and other, until you started to lose all sense of yourself in time and place, and years could pass out there while you stood in a room, frozen and alone.
All this Frith knew, when the Ghost Girl led him to the Castle. She didnât have to explain any of it. He knew. And he also knew, not one tiny piece of him doubting, that there was something loose in it.
Something awful.
Something to end all worlds.
The only thing that could stop this thing, the Ghost Girl told him, was the Talented.
He needed to help her. He needed to find every Talented he could, recruit them, make them loyal. He needed to make an army of people who could fight this, before It came and it was all too late.
He said yes.
Frith was the first Castle agent to be recruited. But when he got a message calling him to a meeting in Life, and his avatar walked into that
He hadnât been sleeping well. All he knew was that he woke often in the darkest part of the night, that pocket of time where he felt exposed and vulnerable, as if somehow, while heâd been asleep, the world had changed on him and left him behind. He didnât quite remember what it was that woke him, only that he had been dreaming of the past again, of graceful pillar trees and spotted sunlight and a laugh that reminded him how cruel and awful life was. He had these periods, sometimes, and nothing would do except to wait through it, patiently, until the dreams faded back into his head and left him alone. It was just a phase and it would pass, as always.
And then, one night,
she
was there.
The girl who looked like a ghost.
She had been watching him, that much he knew; that way that you just
knew
in dreams. Sheâd been skirting around the edges of him, watching his dreams unfold, and god knew what sheâd seen. Sheâd squatted in corners, her thin arms draped over her grey legs, watching.
Finally, in a dream one night, she had started to talk to him.
She knew things.
She knew things no one could possibly know about him.
That was the first reason he believed her.
The second reason he believed her was when she took him to the Castle.
She led him like a child, taking him by the hand and pulling him through, stepping from here to there. And then he saw it.
It was a place, she had assured him. Maybe not a place in the sense that he thought of places, but real enough. Just real in a different way.
It was a huge, echoing stone building, that shifted when you tried to look at it, really look. It was filled with rooms. Thousands of rooms, millions of rooms, rooms within rooms, twisting, turning, choking or wide as a boulevard, rooms that led you to black places, tiny cramped places where the things no one ever wanted to find or remember or think about were hidden.
Rooms that led you to a banquet hall with blood on the flagstone floor and dishes of greased chicken and rotting fruit on the tables. Upturned glasses of wine dripping onto the cloth.
Rooms made of infinity mirrors that showed you yourself, endlessly repeated, again and again and overlapping and stretching all the way for ever until your mind cracked with trying to understand it.
Rooms draped in velvet, with that desk in the corner that you remembered hiding under as a child, that desk with the hidden drawers that could only be opened with a tiny key, that desk that seemed to contain secret worlds. Rooms heâd never seen before, fairytale places and strange. But there were also all the rooms heâd ever been into in his life; bedrooms and dining rooms and parlours and gambling rooms and bathrooms and half-remembered rooms and rooms where bad things had happened that heâd managed to forget and ones in which nothing much had happened at all.
This was the Castle.
It showed you the past, and the now, and the what might be. It showed them all together in the same place until it was hard to know when you were. It showed you other worlds, other times, other and other, until you started to lose all sense of yourself in time and place, and years could pass out there while you stood in a room, frozen and alone.
All this Frith knew, when the Ghost Girl led him to the Castle. She didnât have to explain any of it. He knew. And he also knew, not one tiny piece of him doubting, that there was something loose in it.
Something awful.
Something to end all worlds.
The only thing that could stop this thing, the Ghost Girl told him, was the Talented.
He needed to help her. He needed to find every Talented he could, recruit them, make them loyal. He needed to make an army of people who could fight this, before It came and it was all too late.
He said yes.
Frith was the first Castle agent to be recruited. But when he got a message calling him to a meeting in Life, and his avatar walked into that
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