The party continued around us. A small band was playing music, and a dozen or so people were dancing. The noise level rose, and the drinks were flowing thick and fast. A couple of people jumped fully clothed into the pool, and their laughing friends hauled them out, but none of them had any idea of what was to come.
I became aware that the sun was setting and the scene was growing dimmer, but the film crew continued partying as if there was no tomorrow. All the talk was about films, and I became more of a spectator. People seemed to have completely forgotten my presence, apart from the waiter, who regularly brought me pints of Guinness. The beer tasted perfect, but I doubt that it was real. I was stone-cold sober.
I couldn't find Aunty and tagged on to various groups, standing on the fringes, listening to the same things repeatedly, time after time. I knew that people get garrulous and repetitive under the effects of alcohol, but this was more than that, and I felt a little uneasy.
Swifty walked by, and I tapped him on the shoulder, wanting to talk about the filming of 'The Cave, but when Swifty turned, his face was completely blank, with his eyes fixed open and lifeless. This was not some drug-induced stupor; it was more like he had vacated his body. He continued his way, bouncing off obstacles like a driverless car, slowing down, and losing momentum before I lost sight of him in the crowd.
"This is it, Toto; we're not in Kansas anymore."
The old joke was oddly appropriate, but there was nothing comical about this situation. Something dangerous was lurking behind this pretence of a party.
Ed Masterson was holding court at a table of attentive listeners, but he was speaking gibberish —a language with American inflexions of speech. I could make no sense of it.
Masterson caught sight of me and waved me over. He seemed rejuvenated by my presence.
"You too, Perry," he said, pumping my hand. You are a star boy, a real star. You can name your own price after this one."
A word-for-word repetition of his original greeting.
The light had fallen now, and in twilight that blurred the edges of this world, Masterson's face glowed an unearthly red. He was smiling at me drunkenly, but there was a wistfulness in his manner that had replaced his earlier bravado.
The other people sitting with him stared back with vacant smiles. A couple of girls were sitting on men's laps with cocktail glasses in hand, and there were more drinks scattered about the table, but nobody was drinking.
All the waiters had disappeared, and there was an awful air of finality hanging in the air. One of the girls, more aware, was softly weeping and pressing her partner's hand to her face. He smiled at her vacantly and slumped back into his seat, unknowing and untouched.
The mayflies are coming to the end of their day by the pool, but only she knows that the sun is setting.
I saw the sadness in the eyes of this special girl. She became aware of my gaze and looked up. Our eyes locked, and her conscious presence burst into my mind like a distress signal. She smiled, knowing that I had seen her for who she was, and I desperately wanted to comfort her and tell her everything was going to be fine, but it would have been a lie. Nothing could save her now.
I stretched out my hand as she reached for mine, and a long-dormant ember of hope flickered in her eyes, not of rescue but of recognition. The acknowledgement of her existence was something this unknown woman would treasure as she prepared for the inevitability of her dissolution.
My action had given her comfort, and, smiling gently, she turned back to her companion, putting her arm protectively around his shoulders as he stared fixedly into the distance.
Masterson was still with it and functioning to some extent. He grabbed my arm.
"Remember that, Perry? Nearly caught us out there," he laughed.
Masterson must be running on a limited pre-programmed vocabulary, and only the most recent dialogues remain in his memory bank.
I decided to test my theory.
Looking into Masterson's face, I said, quizzically,
"Greensman?"
"Yeah, sorry. The Greensman is a specialised set dresser responsible for the artistic arrangement and landscape design of plant material. Sometimes real, sometimes artificial, and usually a combination of both, depending on the scope of the work, he had plenty to do there. I put great emphasis on a completely authentic set, Perry. And never accept anything less than the real thing. The greensman should report to the art director, but in this case, I had him report directly to the production designer. Yours truly.
"O.K. Kid?"
"O.K., Ed," I said softly, and I set out to look for Aunty.
I walked away from the pool and towards the hill. I had reached the outer fringes of the artificial light emitted from the pool area when I saw the crumpled body of Trish Taylor on the ground. She must have been trying to escape, but beyond her designated area of existence, her life support systems would have ceased to function.
What made her understand what was happening? Did she somehow work it out on her own, or had someone told her?
No, that couldn't be it. She wouldn't have listened, like the prisoners in the cave, but somehow, she knew; she just knew. The mist in my mind cleared a little. Whoever these beings were and whoever made them, they deserved better than this. There was nothing more I could do, and I headed up the hill, looking for Aunty, and found her sitting at the top of the steps with a cup of tea in her hand.
She gestured with her cup and said, "This is the best tea I have ever tasted. The trouble is it doesn't exist."
"Doesn't exist?"
Suddenly, I felt a strange sensation, the sort of dreamy state that comes over you just before you wake up.
"I'd kill for a real cup of tea," she said with a smile.
I sat down beside her.
"What's going on here?"
"The enemy is smarter than you think, Peregrine. This was a clever plot to prevent you from continuing with your quest by destabilising your sense of reality and making you believe that you were the subject of a gigantic hoax. All the people you have encountered since the day you walked into the emporium were actors, and that includes me and the two boys."
"Not Montana?"
"That was also part of the plan. The finale here today was meant to be when Ernest, Albert, and I 'confessed' that we were actors and the emporium and everything that came after was fake. At that point, they expected you to abandon the quest for the silver key and have a complete breakdown.
"Unfortunately for them, Albert and I, courtesy of our powers, uncovered the plot. The three actors who were meant to pass themselves off as the Menchens brothers and Aunty Gladys became unfortunately indisposed. We knew people who were extremely glad to assist in moving the actors to another place where they could cause no trouble, but our friends did not harm them. We then 'came as ourselves,' as it were."
"The people by the pool?"
"Androids mostly, but they could not find enough to fill the scene, and existents on the brink of achieving full sentience were impressed into service."
'The girl at the table?"
"Yes."
"Trish Turner?"
"Yes. And there were others. Those people you saw jumping in the swimming pool were not doing it for laughs. They were trying to drown themselves."
"Aunty, is this ever going to end? "Am I ever going back?"
"Back where?" she said.
"Home"
"Where is that, do you think?"
Aunty was looking at me, and I could see the sadness in her eyes.
"You know, 'home,' I said, feeling confused, Earth Minor.'
"You belong with us now."
We both stood up as dense, grey clouds obscured the sun, and thunder reverberated through the sky. It sounded like a continuous barrage of heavy artillery. In the film, people fell to the ground with their hands clasped against their ears, trying to block out the infernal noise and shock waves that pierced their bodies and minds. The bombardment was interminable, and bolts of forked lightning breached the weakened defences of the firmament until the roof of the world splintered open.
"They are taking down The Set," said Aunty softly.
The steps below us began to collapse.
"Come on!" shouted Aunty, grabbing me by the arm.
The pool now began to spin, rapidly gaining momentum until it became a shrieking whirl of energy that sucked the remaining bodies of the crew into oblivion.
The gravitational field intensified in strength, and I was falling into what would soon be an irreversible descent when Aunty managed to drag me back to safety through the same door that had given us entry into this world. The door vanished behind me, and I collapsed face down on the floor of the changing room in a dead faint, with the white tiles cooling against my burning face.
I awoke to the sound of running water and saw that the changing room was flooding. The bathroom fixtures in the luxurious health club had taken on a life of their own. Jets of water were shooting vertically upward from the bath taps, and the flexible hoses in the showers were writhing through the air like an army of snakes, the shower heads spitting out a stream of boiling venom. The water in the hot tub rose too high and cascaded over the sides, creating mountains of soapy froth on the tiled floors. The white bath towels billowed into the air, flapping their heavily seamed sides like wings and skimming above the water's surface like albatrosses crossing an ocean. It was utter chaos, and I remembered the spell gone wrong in The Sorcerer's Apprentice; nothing could stop the rising flood of water.
The door that had once led to the pool area threatened to burst open, and there came the sound of tremendous explosions as the dimension began to collapse.
By now, I was floating with my head just above the surface and felt utterly abandoned.
The water was extremely hot, and I feared it would boil me alive if the final nuclear blast did not vaporise me first. It couldn't just end like this. Not after all my efforts, and what about The Green Door? If it remained open, hostile armies would overrun the free world. That was the most important thing, of course, and I thought of Earnest, Albert, and Aunty, but mostly I thought about Montana. It seemed ridiculous; we had hardly even spoken. but…
I began to lose consciousness. It wasn't an unpleasant experience; quite the opposite, all my cares drifted away, and I felt myself sinking into the water. It would be so easy to surrender to sleep, but I knew that if I did, I would die, and all those people who were depending on me would die too. Then I heard a voice in my head. Montana must have come again to help me escape, as she did in the cave.
"Hold on, Peregrine; hold on; help is on its way."
I tried to answer, but my mouth filled with hot water, and I screamed silently as I floundered beneath the surface.
"Just let your body go limp, Peregrine; I have you."
Two hands grasped me under the shoulders, and we shot through the surface like a missile. The acceleration made it hard to breathe, and I lost consciousness.