There it was again - something flitting across the garden of the house opposite. Moving from the letterbox to the tree, from the tree to the car in the driveway.
Arthur put one foot on the pedal, ready to move off, and watched. Nothing happened for a minute. Everything was quiet, save for the constant drone of the distant helicopters patrolling the perimeter of the city.
It moved again, and this time Arthur saw it dash from behind the car to a fire hydrant. Something about the size and shape of a rabbit, but one made of pale pink jellylike flesh that changed and rippled as it moved.
Arthur got off his bike, laid it down, and got out the Atlas, readying himself for its explosive opening. He didn't like the look of this thing, which he guessed was some sort of Nithling. But at least it was timid, hiding and scuttling.
Arthur could still see a single paw poking out from behind the hydrant. A paw that slowly melted and reformed through several shapes. Paw, claw, even a rudimentary hand. He concentrated his thoughts on that sight, gripping the green cloth binding of the Atlas tight.
What is the thing that hides behind the hydrant?
The Atlas burst open. Even though he was ready, Arthur took a step back and nearly fell over his bike.
This time, the invisible writer wrote quickly and in instant English, ink splattering all over the page.
Arthur looked up. The Scoucher was leaping towards him, no longer small and innocuous, but an eight-foot-tall, paper-thin human figure whose arms did not end in hands but split into hundreds of ribbon-thin tentacles that whipped out towards the boy. They sliced the air in front of Arthur's face, though he was at least fifteen feet away.
There was no time to get on his bike. Arthur twisted away from the tentacles and threw himself into a sprint, the Atlas still open under his arm. It closed itself and shrank as he ran, but he didn't try to put it in his pocket. He couldn't pause even for a second or those tentacles would latch on. They might sting, or paralyze, or hold him tight so the Scoucher could do whatever it did -
These thoughts drove him to the end of the street. He hesitated for an instant, uncertain of which way to turn, till the Atlas twitched to his right and he instinctively followed its lead. It twitched again at the next corner and then again a minute later, directing him down a partly hidden laneway - all at high speed. A speed Arthur soon realized he couldn't keep up. Whatever had happened to his lungs in the House had improved them, but he wasn't cured. He was wheezing heavily and the tightness on his right side was spreading to the left. He'd run farther and faster than he'd ever done before, but he couldn't sustain his speed.
Arthur slowed a little as he exited the lane and looked over his shoulder. The Scoucher was nowhere to be seen. He slowed down a bit more, then stopped, panting and wheezing heavily. He looked around. He'd thought he was headed towards home, but in his panic he'd gone in a different direction. Now he wasn't sure where he was, and he couldn't think of any possible refuge.
Something flickered at the corner of his eye. Arthur spun around. The Scoucher was back in its small fluid shape, sneaking again. It was about thirty yards back, zipping from cover to cover, slinking forward whenever he couldn't see it.
Arthur wasn't even sure it was a Nithling. Perhaps it was something else, something made by Grim Tuesday that the Grotesques had set upon him. He needed to know more, but he didn't dare to stop and look at the Atlas while the thing was creeping up on him. He needed somewhere to hide, perhaps a house -
The moment he looked away, the Scoucher stormed out from behind a pile of paving stones next to an unfinished path. One reaching tentacle, even longer than the rest, brushed the back of Arthur's hand as he turned to flee. It wasn't much thicker than a shoelace, and he hardly felt its touch, but when he glanced down, blood was flowing freely. More blood than seemed possible from such a tiny scratch.
Arthur was halfway across a well-mown front lawn when someone called his name from the neighboring house.
"Arthur?!"
He knew that voice. It came from Leaf, the girl who had helped him after his asthma attack, whose brother and family were among the first afflicted by the Sleepy Plague. He'd seen her briefly the day before, while traveling via the Improbable Stair. He had no idea where she actually lived, but here she was on the porch next door, staring at him in surprise. Or staring at the Scoucher -
"Look out!" she cried.
Arthur changed direction, narrowly avoiding a sweep of the Scoucher's tendrils. He jumped over a low brick wall, trampled through Leaf's parents' prize vegetable garden, leaped up the front steps of her house, and charged through the front door. Leaf slammed it shut after him. A second later it was hit by a sound like rain drumming on the roof - the impact of hundreds of tentacles upon the heavy door.
"Your hand's bleeding!" Leaf exclaimed as she slammed home a large bolt. "I'll get a bandage -"
"No time!" gasped Arthur. A lot of blood had come from the simple scratch, but the flow was already slowing.
Arthur opened the Atlas, ignoring its sudden expansion. He added in a low wheeze, "Have to? see how? fight?"
The drumming sound came again. Leaf gasped and jumped back as several tentacles ripped the draft excluder off the bottom of the door and slithered inside. She picked up an umbrella and struck at them, but the tentacles gripped the umbrella and cut it into pieces. More and more tentacles came through under the door. Then they started sawing backwards and forwards.
"It's cutting its way through!" screamed Leaf. She pushed over a plant in a heavy earthenware pot and rolled it against the door. The Scoucher's tentacles struck at the spilled earth for a second, then went back to their sawing. The door had a steel frame, but the tentacles cut through it quite easily.
Arthur concentrated on the Atlas.
What are a Scoucher's weaknesses? How can it be defeated?
An ink spot appeared on the page, but was not blotted up. Words came quickly, and once again were in English and the regular alphabet straightaway. The penmanship was not up to its usual standard.
Scouchers are a particularly unpleasant type of Nithling. They issue from the narrowest cracks and fractures, and are consequently short of substance. Typically they gain a greater and more defined physical presence in the Secondary Realms by consuming the blood or ichor of the local inhabitants. Scouchers in their earlier phases may take a variety of shapes but always have several limbs that end in very fine tentacles, which are lined with tiny but extremely sharp teeth. They use these tentacles to cut their victims, who usually fall unconscious. The Scoucher then laps up the free-flowing blood -
"Arthur! The door -"
"How can I defeat a Scoucher?" Arthur asked furiously.
Silver is anathema to Scouchers, as is ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum. Scoucher hunters typically use silver dust blown through -
"Silver! Have you got anything silver?" Arthur wheezed, clapping the Atlas shut.
At the same time Leaf grabbed his arm and dragged him across the room and into the kitchen. She slammed the kitchen door behind them and threw herself at the refrigerator, trying to slide it across. Arthur shoved the Atlas into his pocket and grabbed one corner of the fridge, rocking it out from the wall as the terrible sound of splintering wood suddenly stopped in the other room.
"It's inside!"
The fridge was barely set down before it rocked forward. Tentacles punched through the flimsy kitchen door and rasped across the steel sides of the fridge.
"Silver! Silver will kill it!" Arthur repeated. He opened the nearest drawer, but all he could see were chopsticks and wooden utensils. "A silver fork will do!"
"We don't have anything metal!" Leaf cried out. "My parents won't eat with metal."