Mister Monday: Chapter Four

[pangolin20]

Chapter Three | Table of Contents | Chapter Five

*A woman with dark-blue skin, black hair, and purple eyes comes in. She is wearing light clothing.*

 

Vermaanti: Hi, everyone! I’m the other reviewer for this book, which will also be the first time that you’ve seen me so far. So let’s begin.

The chapter opens with Arthur telling us that he does not look forward to school on Monday morning, “to a much greater degree than usual.” After what happened early that morning, he has only been able to sleep briefly. He woke up every hour “in incipient panic”, with ragged breathing, only to find that everything was fine. I can certainly see that. Come to think of it, IIRC we will not see him be affected by this in any way later on. It might just be that Nix doesn’t keep the best track of how much sleep everyone gets, but there might be another explanation for it…

Anyway, the dragon stays where it is, “immobile”, and when daylight comes, he finds it hard to believe that any of it has happened. He wishes he can dismiss it as a nightmare, “but he [knows] it ha[s] been all to real.” He says the Key and Atlas are proof of that. And of course that the statue now stands by your bed, but whatever.

He considers leaving the Key and Atlas behind, but after breakfast, he takes them from the lizard and puts them in his backpack. Then he checks the garden, before joining Emily in the car. We’re told that “in his previous town”, he walked to school, and here he will eventually ride his bike (because public transport isn’t an option? it seems a little far to me otherwise). But Bob and Emily insist that it’s too soon to exert himself, and Emily has decided to drive him to school before she goes to the lab.

Arthur says that normally he “would have made some show of independence”, especially before Eric. We then get some more information on Eric. He’s a “basketball and a track star”, and he has no trouble adapting to the new school. He is already on his way to become “a stand-out player for the school’s top basketball team.” He even has his own car, which he has “bought with the proceeds of a weekend job as a waiter”, but it’s assumed that he will only use it to get Arthur to school if there’s an emergency. According to him, being seen with Arthur would be “bad for his image.” Despite this, he has helped out Arthur at several points, for example by “putting bullies to flight in the mall or rescuing him after bicycle mishaps.” So he certainly cares for his little brother. Pity that we see so little of Arthur’s family…

Arthur tells us he’s glad to go with Emily that morning, as he has a “strong suspicion” that the dog-faced people will be waiting for him at school. Earlier, he has spent “quite a few wakeful hours” worrying about how he can protect himself. He reasons that it will be particularly hard if adults can’t see them, which he thinks likely from what Ed told him.

The trip to school is “uneventful”, though they again pass the House. Arthur tests if Emily can see it, but she unfortunately can’t. He can remember what it looked like before, but no matter what he does, whether “he squint[s] or suddenly turn[s] his head to look”, he can only see the House.

When he looks directly at it, he finds it “too cluttered, complex and strange to reveal its many details.” There are simply “too many different styles of architecture, too many odd additions”, and he gets dizzy trying to work out how the individual pieces fit together. For example, he starts on a tower and tries to follow it, “only to be distracted by a covered walkway, or a lunette that thrust[s] out of a nearby wall, or some other strange feature.” That does sound magical… Also, I see that a lunette is some kind of fortification; I’m not entirely sure what it’s doing on a house like this.

Arthur also finds it very hard to look twice at the same place. He thinks that it’s either “the House constantly changing when he [isn’t] looking at it”, or a combination of the complexity of the House and the speed with which they’re driving. My guess goes to the first one.

After they’ve passed the House, he’s “put off guard a bit” by how normal everything is. It looks just like any other morning, and there’s no “sign of anything strange” as they drive into the street the school’s on. He feels “relieved and comforted” by “how boringly normal it seem[s].” The sun is shining and there are people everywhere, and supernatural things just don’t tend to happen under such circumstances. Then again, this series doesn’t really follow genre conventions…

As soon as Arthur steps out of the car and Emily drives away, five dog-faces “rise like lifted string puppets between the cars in the teachers’ parking lot, off to his right.” Well, that went bad fast. I really like this moment, I must say. Before now, we might have assumed that stuff like this would only happen if Arthur is either alone or if it is at night, which the two previous incidents seemed to support. But now we see that neither of these restrictions apply, which raises the stakes quite a bit. And we can also see that Monday doesn’t care about people possibly seeing what he does, with the only restriction being that he can only act on Monday. So we can only hope that he’s too tired to send a proper force against Arthur. Well done, Nix!

The dog-faces see Arthur as he sees them, and they begin walking towards him. They do so “in strange straight lines, changing direction in sudden right angles” to avoid people who obviously can’t see them. Huh, really reminds me of robots, like they only change direction when they detect someone in a given space, instead of avoiding before it’s necessary. Even more dog-faces appear to the left. Arthur can see them “issue out of the ground, as dark vapors”, that quickly solidify into “dog-faced, bowler-hatted, black-suited men.” Yes, they’re definitely being created. Come to think of it, maybe Monday’s Dawn was the one who created the Fetcher that came to Arthur’s house. That would fit qua timing, at least… Well, whoever this is, they’re certainly not as merciful.

He sees that there are dog-faces to the right and the left, but none straight ahead. He runs a few steps, and “his breath [catches]”. He decides risking an asthma attack isn’t worth it, so he slows down and tries to work out where the dog-faces will convergence and how fast. He calculates that if he “walk[s] quickly up the main promenade and the steps”, he’ll get inside before the dog-faces catch up to him.

And so he does, avoiding groups of students. He is grateful, “for the first time”, that no one knows him at this school, so no one tries to pull him over for a talk. Yes, that would be quite fatal now. He makes it to the steps. The dog-faces gain on him, as they’re now “only ten or fifteen yards behind”, and the steps are crowded with older students. He can’t push through them, so he zigzags and weaves his way through, calling out apologies as he goes.

He's just at the main doors when “someone grab[s] his backpack and [brings] him to an abrupt halt.” Arthur thinks for a moment that it’s one of the dog-faces, but then he “hear[s] words that reassure him, despite the threatening tone.” And those words are “You knock the man, you pay the price!” So so, what a tough boy. It’s better than the alternative, at least.

The boy who’s holding Arthur’s bag “[is] much bigger, but not really mean-looking.” Arthur says that it’s hard to look tough in a school uniform, and the boy “even ha[s] his tie done up properly.” Arthur recognises him as a “would-be tough guy, not the real thing.” Arthur says he’s going to throw up, and even holds his hand over his mouth and blows out his cheeks to that effect.

The boy immediately lets him go, and they both nearly fall. Since Arthur expects it, he recovers first. He jumps up the next three steps, “only a few yards ahead of a swarm of bowler-hatted dog-faces.” They are everywhere, “like a flock of ravens descending on a piece of meat.” Hmmm, that simile doesn’t really work for me, if only because a “piece of meat” likely won’t attract an entire flock.

People step out of their way “without realising why they [are] doing so, many of them looking puzzled as they suddenly stop[] or step[] sideways or jump[] aside”. Ah, that makes things significantly harder. If this weren’t the case, he could have hidden behind the mass of people, but if everyone lets them through, that’s much harder… It also explains how they got here this fast.

“For a second”, Arthur thinks he won’t make it. The dog-faces are at his heels, he can “hear them panting and snorting”, and he can even smell their breath. He says “[i]t [stinks] of rotten meat, worse than an alley full of rubbish at the back of a restaurant.” The smell and the sounds they make give him extra speed, and he “lunge[s] up the last few steps, collide[s] with the swing doors, and [falls] through.” Woo, made it!

He immediately gets up again, ready to run, and already his breath is shortening. He gets afraid that the dog-faces will get in and that he’ll have an asthma attack “and be powerless to resist them”. But they don’t come in. And that’s because Arthur hasn’t let them in. The dog-face earlier that night also asked to be let in, after all. And they’re not visible to anyone else, so if Arthur doesn’t let them in, which he won’t, he’ll be perfectly safe. It certainly was a close call, though.

The dog-faces now cluster at the door, “pressing their flat faces against the glass panels”. Arthur says they really look like a hybrid “between bloodhounds and men”, “with their little piggy eyes, pushed-in faces, droopy cheeks and lolling tongues that smear[] the windows.” He compares them to “Winston Churchill on a very bad day”. For some reason, they have all taken off their hats and are holding them under their left arms. He says that it doesn’t help their look, because their hair is “uniformly short and brown. Like dog hair.”

One of them tells Arthur to let them in, and then another starts, and soon all of them are, like this: “Us, In, Let, Arthur, Arthur, Us, Let, Let, Arthur, In, In—” Great. Arthur sensibly blocks his ears and walks away into the central corridor. He concentrates on getting his breathing into a safe rhythm again, and slowly, “the baying calls from outside recede[].” Once he reaches the end, he turns around. The dog-faces are gone, and once again people are coming in through the doors, “laughing and talking”. The sun is still shining and everything looks normal. Phew, that was quite tense. He’s also lucky Ed and Leaf saw them too, because otherwise Monday might trick him into thinking that it was only a hallucination or something.

Someone asks him, “not unkindly”, what’s wrong with his ears. Arthur blushes and pulls out his fingers. Heh, just the kind of comment we need to unwind. Arthur says that the dog-faces obviously can’t get him here, so he can focus on trying to survive his second day of school here, and he can try finding Ed and Leaf. He wants to tell them what’s happened, and find out if they can still see the dog-faces. He thinks that maybe they can work out something to do about it all.

He expects them to show up at the gym to prepare for “the cross-country run”. He has “a note excusing him” (good!), but he still has to go there to give it to Weightman. First, though, he has to get through his morning program of “maths, science and English”. He says he can be good at those subjects when he wants to, but today he can’t focus on them. After that, he goes to the gym, careful to keep inside the school. Once there, he’s “surprised to find that the class [is] only two-thirds of the size of the previous week.” I mean, it’s not what is happening, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was because of Weightman’s general incompetency. “At least fifteen children” aren’t there, “including Ed and Leaf”. Well, that’s quite the problem…

Anyway, Weightman isn’t happy to see Arthur. He takes the note, reads it, and hands it back without saying anything, “turning his head away”. Pfff. Maybe he did get called out on not looking out for Arthur better, and that’s why he’s like this now… Arthur awkwardly stands there, wondering what he’s supposed to do now.

Weightman asks if anyone else has got a note, and wonders if a class has been held back, and where everyone is. Someone mumbles they’re “[o]ff sick”. Oh no… Weightman is surprised by this, and says it’s not even winter, and that if it’s “some sort of prank”, there’ll be “serious repercussions.”

One of the more serious athletes says they really are ill, that a lot of people have got it, and that it’s “[s]ome sort of cold.” Hmmm. Weightman says he believes him, and names him as “Rick”. Ah, that was one of the students who was mentioned in the first chapter. Arthur looks at him, saying he’s “clearly a clean-cut athletic star.” He looks like “he could have stepped out of a television advert for toothpaste or running shoes.” He thinks it’s no wonder that Weightman likes him.

Arthur says that it’s strange for “so many pupils to be off sick at this time of year”, especially since “biannual flu vaccinations had become compulsory five years ago.” Hmmm, looks like this world really got a bad rap qua epidemics… And it was “only two months” since everyone should have got the shots, “which usually offer[] total protection against serious viruses.” But I don’t think they’re proof against viruses that aren’t from Earth…

Arthur feels “a small familiar fear” come up within him, the fear “that another virus outbreak [will] take away everyone he love[s].” Yeah, the diseases won’t stop for the duration of this series.

Anyway, Weightman tells everyone to do some “warm-up exercises”, before calling Arthur over. He tells him to “play tiddlywinks or whatever”, as long as he doesn’t cause trouble. Arthur nods, “not trusting himself to speak.” He says it’s bad enough when other kids make fun of him, but at least then he can get back at them or joke about it, and with a teacher, that’s much harder to do.

Well, not when you have a magical object that can let you do a lot, like Arthur has. I really wouldn’t mind if Arthur would let Weightman have it a little, considering how much suffering not listening to Arthur will cause. And, as we’ll find out later, if Weightman hadn’t done this, Arthur wouldn’t be in trouble now, and this would likely cause much less trouble. And yes, I know he can’t know any of this, but he could at least not be such an asshole towards his class, and actually care about his students. We don’t see him anymore after this point, but I do hope he at least gets to see how wrong everything goes.

 

Anyway. Arthur turns away and walks out of the gym. Halfway to the door, he “hear[s] someone run up behind him and then there [is] a touch on his arm.” He freaks out, afraid that the dog-faces have gotten in. But it turns out that it’s only a girl he doesn’t know, with “bright pink hair”. Oh, good. I mean, maybe not the best way to get someone’s attention, but good enough. The class “laughs and giggles” at this (exactly who I’d want to be in class with), as the girl asks him if he’s Arthur Penhaligon. He says yes, and the girl gives him “a folded piece of paper”, saying that Leaf sent her an email to give to him. He takes it, “ignoring the catcalls from the boys behind her.” Down, boys, this is not the series for you. The girl loudly tells him to “[i]gnore those mutants”. She smiles and runs back to “her particular clique of tall, bored-looking girls.”

 

Arthur puts the paper in his pocket and leaves, “his face burning”. He isn’t sure if he’s more embarrassed by Weightman telling him to play tiddlywinks or by “getting a note from a girl in full view of everyone else.” He takes refuge in the library, something I can certainly get behind. He explains to the librarian that he’s excused from gym and shows his note. After taking a good look around, he decides on “one of the desks on the second floor, next to a window that overlook[s] the front of the school and the street.”

 

The first thing he does is “build some walls on the desk out of large reference books, to make a private cubbyhole.” That way, only someone who’d look over his shoulder will be able to see what he’s reading. A very good choice, especially given what he’s about to read. Then he takes the Key and the Atlas out and puts them on the desk, along with Leaf’s email. As he does so, he notices movement, and when he looks out of the window, he sees the dog-faces. They’re “[s]liding out from between parked cars and trees”, and “[s]linking forward to gaze up at his window.” They know exactly where he is.

 

Arthur tells us he’d hoped that he would feel “more secure” if he could actually see them, and that he “would feel braver for having exposed himself at the window”, but he doesn’t. Well, I don’t blame him, especially since he doesn’t know how he can fight back against them. He shivers as they combine into a mob that “star[es] wordlessly up at him.” So far, he tells us, they haven’t shown wings, but he thinks that that may only be a “matter of time”.

 

To make himself look away, he imagines that “he [is] a white mouse tearing its gaze away from a hooded cobra”, and that he can escape if he looks away. Once he’s done that, he says that he’s got “a very strong desire” to flee into the library, and “to hide between the stacks of comforting books.” But he knows that won’t help, and he says that here, he at least knows where the dog-faces are. Not that I blame him for wanting to crawl inside, though.

 

He says that what they are is another question, “one of the many [he is] making into a mental list.” Well, we will be getting an answer on next chapter! Well, Arthur now goes to read Leaf’s email.

 

We can see that the email address of the girl is “pinkhead55@tepidmail.com”. Heh, “tepidmail” sounds like a nice alternative to Hotmail. It’s also just what I could imagine Leaf being into. And the email address Leaf used to send the mail is “raprepteam20@biohaz.gov”. Ehhh, that’s not looking great!

 

Anyway, Leaf identifies the girl as “Allie”, and says it’s her. She asks Allie to give the mail to Arthur, who she identifies as the “boy who flaked on the run last Monday”. She describes him as “kind of thin + pale, about ed’s height hair like gary krag”, which honestly doesn’t tell me very much. She says it’s very important he gets this, and ends with “gotta run. thanx”.

 

Now there comes her message to Arthur, with considerably worse spelling. She first apologises for not seeing him at the hospital. She says that Ed got sick “tues. nite, and then mum + dad did + aunt mango (not real name).” Oh my, this went wrong really fast, didn’t it? Also, we’ll be seeing Aunt Mango a few books down the line. Leaf herself isn’t sick, though their house is quarantined. There’s many doctors all over their place, “in biohazard suitz, v. scary pigface.” They think it’s a new flu “and shots DON’T WORK.” This really is what Arthur was fearing, wasn’t it?

 

No one’s really sick yet (thankfully!), but when she goes near them, “[she smells] the same revolto smell that the DOG_FACED GUYS had”. Well, then it makes sense that Ed and his family would be the first to be infected, since they were near them first. And that also means that they may have infected lots of people when they chased Arthur to school, and may be doing so even now. What a nightmare. Leaf says that the doctors can’t smell it because of their suits, and her family can’t either, “tho so much snot coming out that’s no surprise.” She says the doctors have a “machine that smells 4 them” (futuristic), and it says everything’s okay when it’s not, and no-one believes her.

 

She thinks it’s a virus from the dog-faces, and she really hopes he can see them. She says: “you have to work it out I’M DEPENDING ON YOU.” Poor Leaf. And indeed, Arthur’s one of the few people who can do anything about this now…

 

She says that the feds “cut off net and phone I think afraid of big panic.” Well, they’ll be getting one anyway now. She says that she wrote this message on “one of the docs palmtops which [she] STOLE” and they’ll find out very soon. She ends by writing “im afraid”. And the chapter ends there, too.

 

And what a cliffhanger this is. The book may have been a bit slow before now, but here, it really jumps into action, first with Arthur getting chased by the dog-faces, and now by the reveal of an upcoming disease. It’s quite well-done.

 

Well, I’ll see you next time, when we get some information on what is going on, and we meet one of the book’s main antagonists. See you then!