Episode 1 - Chapter 45

“That doesn't bode well” I said before I could think.

“Who are those strange girls?” Mary asked.

“They're not actually girls, and they're the only other creatures that can move freely between the Warp and the Weave. Besides people like myself, anyway.”

“If not girls, then what?”

“Creatures that know no boundaries because everywhere is theirs. They live in the Weave but exist in the Warp, the enemies of all closed doors. You've just seen them as they see themselves. In the Warp, they have more legs.”

“My god,” said Robert, “They're cats?”

Episode 1 - Chapter 44

Raven didn't notice the girls' sudden attention. “A promise, maybe broken, the evil eye, a photograph out of time, a dead flower, an unlucky ticket and sample DNA, all wrapped up in a web, buried seven paces from an ancient tragedy. What's the link?” He looked directly at dad. “Do you have the internet?”

The girls were up now, darting to the back wall and pacing backwards and forwards, sniffing.

“We do, but the blessed laptop's been playing up. A chap at work's looking at it for me.”

Both girls stopped, hissed, and raced from the room.

Episode 1 - Chapter 43

“Why a lottery ticket? Is that important?”

“It could represent luck?” I suggested.

“Maybe, but which kind? Good or bad?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well that ticket didn't win? If it did, it would have been surrendered to claim the prize. The prize hasn't been claimed, or the ticket didn't win. And maybe it's not important, just a scrap of paper for a cry for help.”

Raven began to pace. “There are too many riddles, and something I'm missing.”

At that moment, the ladies on the sofa sat upright staring at the far wall.

Episode 1 - Chapter 42

“Who she gave it to?” asked Robert.

“If she gave it at all.”

“If she....”

“No point in speculating yet, first we must divine meaning. Then we consider method.”

Throughout this exchange, our guests made themselves comfortable on the settee, coiling themselves into each other, curled up as if to sleep. But each kept half an eye open, following everything closely.

“Why a pound note?”

“Something out of date. They don't print them anymore.”

“A bank note is a promise of payment, yes? So it represents an old promise? Or a broken one?”

Episode 1 - Chapter 41

“And why a lock of hair? Is this your wife's hair Robert?”

“I don't know,” I replied, “Could be, it's the right shade. A lock of hair's supposed to be lucky, isn't it?”

“Can be, to some. Others believe if you have a lock of someone's hair you have in your possession the key to their soul.”

“Well that's good, isn't it? If we have the key to Fiona's soul, it'll be easier to get her back.”

“Maybe it will. But if it is her hair, maybe it matters who she gave it to.”

Episode 1 - Chapter 40

“...shimmers and glimmers on a bridge of bones, a cage of insults and sticks and stones, a promise of payment long revoked, jostled with noises to be pricked and poked by hiss-tempered whispers in a season long smoked...

...I am lost, you are lost, not so lost...

...tossed and marooned in a sea of ideas kissed by the lies of let me in jeers, half shadow peers, lords in a court that cannot exist, waging a war that none can resist, a war that is fought in the dark of the night...

...spiny wheels glisten and show me their light...”

Episode 1 - Chapter 39

“Like I said, trouble.” Raven returned to the feathers. “Robert, what do peacocks mean to you? More importantly, what do they mean to Fiona?”

“Well I'm not sure,” Robert replied.

“It's unlucky to bring the feathers into the house, I know that” My wife piped in.

“So they say, the evil eye and all that. But their context is more complicated here. The Greeks called peacocks Persian birds, associated them with Hera, Goddess of Women and marriage.”

“How does that help us?”

“I'm not sure, but that's our starting point, not the photograph.”

Episode 1 - Chapter 38

“No, we stay...”“...and observe.”

With that, they made their curious way to the settee, sitting at each end.

“Look here,” Edward started, “Who are you?”

“We are the children...”“...of the garden...”“...of weeds...”“...Where nothing...”“...beautiful...”“...grows. It is we...”“...who travel...”“,,,beyond The Gate...”“...to the Alley...”“...Of No Comfort...”“...in search of the Quick...”“...and the Pretty. It is we...”“...who wander, twixt the warp...”“...and the weft...”“...as our will...”“...and the moment...”“...dictates.”

Episode 1 - Chapter 37

The dark haired girl sniffed the air, sidled closer to Raven and sniffed again.

“But not a man creature...”

“...after all...”

“What are you,

...not man thing? Who are you...

“...to deny us?”

“I am who I AM,” replied Raven, “You're not welcome here.”

“We are welcome...”

“...wherever we go...”

“...for wherever we go...”

“...is right here, and right here...”

“...belongs to us.”

“Not here it doesn't. Right here is not here, should not exist, and can belong to no one. Now bugger off will you, we're busy!”

Episode 1 - Chapter 36

“We came...”

“...through the door” They spoke in turns as they both arrived at the table, their waltzed tour of the room coming to a perfectly coordinated close.

“They're bloody trouble,” said Raven, “That's who they are.”

“We are...”

“... who we are.” The auburn girl reached for the peacock feathers. “We will...”

“...take these?”

“You will not” Raven slapped her hand away.

For a moment her back arched, her eyes narrowed and a deep hiss escaped through bared teeth. “Careful, man creature...”

“...we have not yet played today.”

Episode 1 - Chapter 35

“Oh that's just what I need,” said Raven.

In the doorway stood two beautiful young women, one with jet black hair, the other auburn. They may have been foreign, oriental even, it was hard to tell. They entered the room obliquely, as if their entrance were the most important thing we would ever see.

They moved around the room in a dance, not together but still coordinated, pausing at odd moments to examine an ornament or picture, walking in straight lines but at odd angles.

“Who the hell are you?” asked Robert. “How did you get in?”

Episode 1 - Chapter 34

“So what do we do?” I asked.

“You come over here and help me make sense of the artefacts.”

The scarf was laid out on the table, the tin to one side. Each item had been carefully arranged on the scarf: the feathers at the top, lock of hair beneath, the pound note and rose side by side under it, the photo and lottery ticket at the bottom.

“Now then Robert, what do any of these things mean to you?” asked Raven.

Robert began to speak but was cut short. “Ooooh, pretty!” said voices in harmony.

Episode 1 - Chapter 33

Robert twitched to a stop as Raven hurried over. “You must believe me when I tell you if you open that door we will be lost forever.”

“But how can that be?” Mary asked, “We're still on Churchill Street, aren't we?”

“We are, but we're also at the very heart of the Weave, the centre of imagination.”

“And things from the Weave can get in?” asked Robert.

“Correct.”

“But we can't get out, even if we wanted to?”

“Oh no, we can leave whenever we choose. It's getting back that's a problem!”

Episode 1 - Chapter 32

Robert gasped. “It's.... it's beautiful. How can it be?”

Raven, distracted, staring at the knotted peacock feathers, dragging them through his fingers. “What, oh, yes. This place has more than one... location, right now.”

“How can we be in more than one place? I want to see more.” He headed for the door.

“Not more than one place. There is only this place, but this place occupies many locations within the weave.”

“Mr Raven,” I said, “You make no sense at all.”

Robert reached for the door handle when Raven screamed “DON'T TOUCH THAT DOOR!”

Episode 1 - Chapter 31

I picked myself up off the floor. Miraculously, nothing seemed to be broken. “More?”

“Oh yes, you mark my words. Bogies and brownies, knockers and clockers, phantoms and spirits of all descriptions are noticing this place for the first time.”

“How can they be noticing this place?”

“Go and look out of the window.”

As I approached the curtains, Raven was laying the scarf on the table, arranging the artefacts.

Drawing back the curtain, my breath caught in my throat. The view looked like Van Gogh had painted the street before Picasso had touched it up.

Episode 1 - Chapter 30

“Tourists?” They looked at me, incredulous.

“Tourists, sightseers, parasites.”

“But, tourists?”

Human beings are amazing creatures. They create and power the weave after all. But whenever there is an event, they make obstacles with questions. I do understand that my arrival is rarely cause for celebration. I do what I can to keep order.

“Right now, this place is a bright beacon in the darkness of the human imagination. Beings in the weave will be inquisitive, will draw near, for a look, or a sniff, or a taste. There will be more before we are done.”

Episode 1 - Chapter 29

How long did it last? A second? An hour? It seemed to go on forever, Mary and I cowering on the floor, while Robert was thrown wildly round the room and Raven struggled to keep hold of him.

“Hold onto me,” he was screaming, “Hold tight and they will pass.”

And just as suddenly as it had begun, the clocks ticked like the crack of lightning, the winds vanished and Robert fell to the floor in a heap, a battered rag doll.

“What on earth?” I asked.

“Dream surfers,” said Raven, “Or some other tourists.”

Episode 1 - Chapter 28

Mr Raven began to answer when something odd began to happen. All the clocks in the room stopped ticking, and the air seemed to rush out of the room.

“Get down” Raven shouted, “Everybody down on the ground.” Edward and I did as we were told, but Robert just stood there.

“What...” he began to ask, but Raven grabbed his hand to drag him to the floor. As he fell, the air rushed back into the room with an almighty force, like a whirlwind with Robert caught in its centre and only Mr Raven holding onto him.

Episode 1 - Chapter 27

“Shadow Vatican?” I asked.

“Established by Innocent VIII, a sort of secret society within the Catholic Church. Their job was to find where evil lived.”

“And they got confused you say?”

“They misunderstood the weave, thought they could map it. Now they hunt deliriums, believing their lairs are the closest points to madness, and madness the closest to evil. But evil is, in the physical world, just another name for selfish. And the weave has no fixed locations.”

“Hang on, if there's no fixed locations in this weave, how can that rubbish be a map?”

Episode 1 - Chapter 26

“What the blazes is the weave?” I asked.

“It's best described as the imagination, the collective imagination that is, of the entire human race. Everything that has ever been thought, or imagined, or dreamed, ever. That's the Weave.” Raven was picking through the box again.

“And these nomad creatures, they belong to this place?”

“They do now.”

“Who on earth imagined them?”

“Oh, they weren't imagined. They used to be men, cartographers from the Shadow Vatican in the sixteenth century. They set out to map the imagination, got a bit confused along the way.”

Episode 1 - Chapter 25

Raven seemed very cross at this news.

“We have wasted too much time” he said. “If I am to prevent Fiona being lost forever, I must know everything. So I will ask questions, and you will give answers. You will tell me everything, no matter how irrelevant it seems to you.”

So we did. For almost an hour he interrogated us, as if we were common criminals. I even began to feel guilty of something.

“What's happening Mr Raven?” I asked as we finished.

“Not sure yet. But I fear the weave has Fiona by design!”

Episode 1 - Chapter 24

“Entered?” I asked.

“Yes, entered. I believe your wife has been absorbed into the Weave. What do you know of the child that was born here?”

“That'd be Fiona.”

“Your wife was born here?”

“Yes.”

“In the house you grew up in?”

“Yes”

“How did you meet your wife, Robert.”

“When mum and dad were buying the house, Fiona and I became friends. We lost touch as teenagers. We met again at the funeral of another childhood friend a few years ago.”

“And you didn't think to mention this earlier?”

Episode 1 - Chapter 23

In a blink, the wall rippled back to normal, though the pictures remained broken.

Mary, Robert and I shuddered, like waking from a shared dream.

“What happens when a delirium goes nightmare?” Mary asked, unprompted.

“Do you know what happened in Salem in 1692? Or Jonestown in 1978?”

Mary gasped. “Is that what's happening now?”

“No. If a cornered delirium panics, it will latch onto an unstable mind, to escape. Once there it cannot help but cause carnage. This is different.”

“How different?” asked Robert.

“I believe somebody from here entered into the weave!”

Episode 1 - Chapter 22

“This witness, what form did it take?”

“The echoes are unclear.”

“Best guess?”

“There... was nothing physical to it.”

“So it wasn't real?”

“No.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Then your duty is discharged. You may return to your brethren. I'll call if I need you.”

“Have a care tinkerer, the children of the weave are not servants to be summoned or dismissed on a whim. The protocols are clear on this.”

“My apologies. The Forest thanks you for your assistance, and relieves you of the burden of duty at this time.”

Episode 1 - Chapter 21

“Well?” asked Raven.

“There is joy, sadness, love and resentment. The usual traces for a dwelling of this type.”

“And betrayal?”

“A faint trace, but it is old.”

“Tragedy?”

“There is always tragedy, but in this place it is ancient.”

“How ancient?”

“It predates the current dwelling.”

“What flavour of tragedy?”

“A woman bludgeoned her husband to death, mistakenly believing he loved another.”

“Anything else?”

“There is a strong smell of unspoken dread and a rich seam of raw wonder. A child was born here, and... something witnessed it.”