In the midst of my massive confusion I feel it would help if Rufus accepted at least some blame. 'If you believe he's so bad for the world, why didn't you stop everyone watching his film tonight?'
'I tried, if you remember. If I'd made more of a scene they'd have wanted to know why.' He grins with some emotion as he adds 'Anyway, what for? You've made him bigger than his films. You're the authority on what he does to people. Nobody living has seen as much of him as you.'
He's blaming me again, and I sense jealousy as well. I don't know what may come of forcing him to admit to it, but I'm opening my mouth to try when words spill out almost faster than I think them. 'Mark has.'
'How can he have, Simon?' Rufus sounds as if he's attempting to calm a mental patient. 'I shouldn't think that's possible,' he says.
'He keeps watching a film of Tubby on stage. He watches it over and over.'
'Well, never mind. Soon it won't matter.'
'Won't matter?' I say through a grin that makes my jaws throb.
'No, because he'll be everywhere, or what's used him for a mask will. You've seen to that.'
His smile is no longer bothering to look apologetic. It's rising in triumph, although its inversion flickers over it. 'You have, you clown,' I yell and shove myself away from the desk. As if only my grip has been holding an image stable, the room instantly turns as black as the inside of my skull.
For altogether too long I can't tell if the room is absolutely dark – if it's flickering faintly or just my vision is. Has the sky gone out too? I'm straining to make out any detail of the room when I hear an object slither swiftly downwards to land on the carpet. It sounds flabby and plump. I stumble away from it, and at once I'm unable to judge where I am. I can hear it crawling across the floor with a noise like the dragging of a balloon full or less than full of liquid. I have to turn my back on it to locate the window, which is so dim that I might be peering at a patch of wall. When the faint rectangle stirs with a feeble pulse of light no more protracted than a heartbeat I swing around to glare at the room.
I can see very little. I'm not even sure that the dwarfish shape crouching a few feet away is the computer. All the electricity must have failed, since the computer shut down when the light did. I don't know whether the object on the floor has crawled out of the room or is biding its time close to me. I'm just able to distinguish Rufus between me and the door, but his presence isn't reassuring. It isn't just that he's standing utterly still; the silhouette of his head seems oddly lacking. 'Rufus?' I say louder than I intend.
I don't care for his response, if that's what it is. A whitish crescent seems to glimmer above his chin, but it's scarcely paler than the rest of the dim surface within the outline of his head. I edge past the desk and sidle well clear of him as I flee into the corridor.
Although it's even darker out here, I pull the door shut. Whatever was in the office besides Rufus, I hope it's trapped. I've no idea where Colin has gone, but it's Mark I have to go to, and Natalie as well. I can barely see my way; the passage looks unstable with dimness or with my nervous vision, while the doors are indistinguishable from the walls. I only just avoid colliding with the wall at the bend. I risk putting on speed towards the lift – I still feel too close to the office and its unwelcome contents – until my right foot kicks the skirting-board. I've blundered into another turn in the corridor.
There's only one between the lift and the office, and it's behind me. Have I wandered beyond the lift in the dark? I twist around to find an object looming very close to me. Surely it's just a wall, but that's disconcerting enough. Can I orient myself by the numbers on the doors? I shuffle away from the corner in the direction I was already taking and run my hand over the wall, which feels furry and chill. The fur must be the texture of the wallpaper, not mould, but I have to force myself to keep touching it. Then my fingertips encounter the smooth surface of a door, and at once I'm afraid it will jerk open, though I can't put a name to anything I dread it may release. When it doesn't budge I grope in search of the number. My fingers trace a six and another followed by more, or are they zeros? In either case there are too many; I seem to feel them multiply as if they're hatching from the door. I snatch my hand away and stagger backwards in the dark.
I expect to bump into another wall, but I'm left swaying in the midst of blackness. The lack of any sense of where I am leaves me unable to breathe. The dark and my skull are throbbing by the time I notice a point of light far down the corridor. It reminds me of a spyhole, which must be why I feel watched. What else can I do except head for the light? I lurch out of my paralysis and flounder along the corridor.
The light is more distant than seems remotely reasonable. I've no idea how far I trudge while it continues to stay unapproachable. Is it receding, luring me further into the dark? I no longer have any sense of the corridor; I could be striving to cross a lightless void. As if in response to my imagination, the source of the light begins to expand, which must mean I'm making headway. It isn't a spyhole, I see now. It's a window.
I'm supposing that it looks out onto the night when I realise that it must belong to a room, because silhouettes are peering through it. They would be nightmarishly tall if they were outside the building. Even if they're on the far side of a door I'm not sure that I want to see their faces. Perhaps my apprehension is fending off the sight, trying to preserve the illusion that they're too distant to identify. All at once, with a transition that seems to omit a considerable stretch of the corridor, I'm too close to deny what I'm seeing. I recognise everyone framed by the darkness, and the foremost is Mark.
He's at a computer keyboard. Nicholas is standing next to him, arms around his and Natalie's shoulders. The boy must be leaning towards the window, since he appears to dwarf his parents, not to mention the spectators behind them – Warren and Bebe and Joe. I can't make out the room they're in for the crowd at their backs. I suspect I could identify many if not all of those people – some belong to the Comical Companions, I'm sure, and are the girls at the very back Willie Hart's performers? – but I'm too thrown by realising that they aren't beyond a window at all. They're on the far side of a screen.
'Latterly,' I try to call to her. 'Kram, what do youth ink yawed ooing?' My struggles for coherence simply produce worse gibberish until my babbling gags on itself. Perhaps my language has run out, unless I'm silenced by the developments in front of me. Mark has used the mouse to pull a list of favourite sites onto the screen.
I've deciphered just a couple – SENOTSEMIL, DLOG FO TOP – when I'm distracted by his expression. His eyes and mouth have widened, shaping his best Tubby face yet. In a moment his entire audience, or mine, is copying him. The effort seems to inflate some of the heads in the crowd near to bursting, not least my mother's. Mark leans closer to the screen and passes his hand over his face, a gesture that reminds me of somebody much older deep in thought or a magician making a pass, and then he clicks on the name of a site. At once I'm staring through a window at tall slim houses and their writhing reflections in a canal.
I hear an eager object slither across the carpet. Before it can reach me I feel rather than hear another click all around me. I'm in a different hotel room overlooking a Christmas fairground. The slithering is closer, but a third click seems to cut it off, along with all the light. I'm enclosed by more than darkness; when I fling out my arms, wood bruises my knuckles. The impact sets hangers jangling and shakes the wardrobe. The past has finally caught up with me, or is it the future, or both? My companion hasn't far to crawl to me. I haven't time to cry out, even if I'm still capable of making any sound, before it clambers limblessly up my body and closes over my face.