Part Seventeen

"What do you mean, I must have lost him?" Marshall demanded.

"Well he was with you, and now he isn't!" said Dash. "Look," he went on, as Mars made incoherent noises of indignation, "Just turn the portal back on and you can go back and get him. Then you two can get back to helping old ladies cross the street or whatever it is you do in your free time and just stay out of my way."

Dash didn't exactly see the punch coming – it was, after all, pretty dark where they'd ended up – but given the circumstances, when it landed it wasn't a total shock. Unfortunately, the fact that he was half-expecting it didn't make it hurt any less once it connected.

"Fuck you, Teller," he hissed, but the venom in his tone was muffled by the coat sleeve pressed to his mouth to stop the trickle of blood he could feel there.

"This is all your fault!" Marshall spat back, and the anger in his voice was enough to make Dash take a couple of stealthy steps to his right, just in case there was a follow-up attack heading his way.

"You followed me," he pointed out, and with his free hand he removed a flashlight from his coat pocket and shone it in the direction of Marshall's words. "I didn't ask you to chase me through that portal, and I sure as hell didn't ask you to leave all my stuff behind with only the midget to guard it."

Marshall squinted in the flashlight beam, but the set of his jaw made it obvious that even being temporarily rendered half-blind by the glare didn't stop him from also being really, really pissed off.

All things considered, thought Dash, it might be smarter to try an approach that consisted of something other than 'yelling at Marshall Teller' and 'antagonising Marshall Teller' and 'extorting money from Marshall Teller.' Unfortunately, more than that was way, way outside his comfort zone when it came to interacting with anyone, so it was going to be an experiment conducted on a strictly trial-and-error basis.

He angled the flashlight higher, out of the other boy's eyes. Not deliberately blinding him struck Dash as being a good start.

"Have you got the remote?" he asked.

"I left it back at the lighthouse," said Mars, and fought very hard to keep the terror he was feeling out of his voice when he continued, "Simon should have been able to open the portal back up straight away, even if it collapsed after we came through."

"Well, maybe the batteries were low or something," said Dash. "There should be a remote on this side too, right? We'll just open it from our end; your little buddy brings our stuff through, everyone's happy."

"Simon," said Marshall.

"Yeah, that's what I just said," said Dash, already starting to lose patience with this whole antagonism-free plan.

"No," said Mars. "His name is Simon. Not 'the midget', 'the sidekick', my 'little buddy' or Shrimpenstein."

"It's kind of dark in here so you might have missed it, but you should know I just rolled my eyes," said Dash.

Marshall sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands tiredly. "Shut up, Dash."

Dash thought about throwing the flashlight at him, and then imagined having to crawl around in the gloom trying to find it when it hit the floor and the batteries inevitably fell out. Besides, he'd need the light to aim, and pulling back for the throw would result in taking the light off Teller, and he'd probably miss and the whole thing would be rendered pointless, extremely annoying and kind of embarrassing.

"Are you gonna help me look or are you just going to stand around crying about the use of proper names to me of all people?" he asked instead, and was rewarded when a guilty expression took up brief residence on Marshall's face.

"Sorry," he muttered, ducking his head.

Dash shrugged, realised that from Marshall's vantage point the action would be visible only as a slight movement of the torch beam, and settled for a mumbled "Whatever."

There was a long, awkward silence. Dash cast about for some way to break it, angrily reminded himself that he didn't in fact care, and began shining the flashlight across the floor in an effort to locate the remote and, he realised with a mounting sense of disquiet, the portal they'd come through.

The squeak of rubber-soled trainers on linoleum told him Marshall was heading his way.

"Got another flashlight?" Mars asked, from startlingly close behind him. Dash managed not to jump, but it was a near thing.

"No," he said. "Maybe you should go back to wearing those Goonie helmets you used to like so much."

"They're too heavy to wear for very long."

"You're breaking my heart," said Dash, and it came out a lot nastier than he intended. He turned, found Mars standing over his shoulder less than a foot away, and thrust the flashlight at him. "You lost him, you look."

Mars took it, fumbling a little, and sat cross-legged on the floor. Dash stared at him.

"I'm not stumbling around in near-dark, not being able to see where I'm stepping," Mars explained. "Didn't you ever see Scooby-Doo? You either fall into a trap or you break something important that you end up needing later."

"Like a leg?"

"Usually Velma's glasses," said Mars. "It's a kids' show, after all."

Dash made a non-committal noise, not feeling up to a conversation about narrative conventions in cartoons featuring talking dogs. Mars aimed the flashlight up, then methodically began shining it in a circle around him. Then he grunted in irritation.

"Dash, sit down!" he snapped. "You're blocking the beam."

Dash sat down without really thinking about it and was instantly annoyed with himself. If they ever made it back to Eerie, the first thing he would do was let all the air out of Marshall's bike tires and steal the repair kit. Preferably when he was a long way from home or a payphone. Maybe he would take the receiver out of every payphone in Eerie before he made his move, just in case.

The room they were in was the size of a large classroom, and like so much of the Bureau, its walls were lined with shelves. Unlike the boxes and jars and sometimes just mounds of jumbled-up bric-a-brac they'd been before, in this part of the Bureau the shelves held only one type of Lost object.

"Kind of looks like the basement in the Eerie library, huh?" said Mars.

Dash shrugged. "Never been down there," he said.

"It's cool," said Mars. "You know, in a creepy, cobwebby, haunted mansion kind of way."

"Because God knows there aren't enough actual creepy, cobwebby, haunted mansions in Eerie."

"It's warm down there," said Mars. "And dry – I guess 'cause of all that old paper, you know? Even in winter, if you were-"

"I like the mill," said Dash, in a tone that suggested that further discussion on this topic was not only unwelcome, but as far as Marshall was concerned, quite possibly unhealthy[,] too.

"I'm just trying to help," said Mars.

"So find the stupid portal and get your little friend to bring me my stuff."

"I'm looking!" Mars snapped. "What do you think I've been doing while I've been sitting here?"

"Offering me real-estate advice and talking about Scooby-Doo."

"And looking! We're down here because of you, you know; it wouldn't kill you to show a little gratitude."

"It might. But if you can show me one single thing that I have to be grateful for on this whole trip, I'll try to fake it for you."

"You could be down here alone."

Dash made a little scoffing noise in the back of his throat, but when he didn't follow it up with another barbed comment, Mars decided to count that as a win and resumed his search for a giant inter-dimensional portal disguising itself as a television.

"Where is it?" he muttered, swinging the flashlight back and forth across the room and revealing only stacks of books. "Dash, can you see it?"

"I'm right next to you, Slick; if I'd seen it, don't you think I'd have said something?"

"But that's impossible." Mars dropped the flashlight into Dash's lap and crossed to the bookcases, running his hands along the dusty spines. "It has to be here, it can't have just vanished!"

"In case you hadn't noticed, this is the Bureau of Lost," said Dash. "Making things vanish is kind of their stock-in-trade."

Mars felt a surge of helplessness that he hadn't experienced since the day he'd watched the doors of a large moving truck close on the neat boxes that represented the Teller family's worldly goods, before that truck pulled out of his driveway in New Jersey and head out for the wholesome, squeaky-clean, American-dream-come-true hellhole in the middle of who-the-hell-cares Nowheresville that his parents were moving him to. He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the dusty bookshelves.

"What are we going to do?" he asked. "I've lost Simon, we don't know where we are, all that stuff Radford gave us is back at the lighthouse and we can't go get it, I'm hungry, the portal's vanished and I'm stuck in this stupid place with you, no offense."

"You realise saying 'no offense' right after you insult someone doesn't stop it from being offensive, right?" said Dash. "And being landed with a whiny suburban princess isn't my idea of super-happy-fun-times either, just so you know."

"I am not whining!" said Marshall. "Or a princess!" he added quickly.

"No offense," said Dash, and even if Mars couldn't see the malicious grin on his face, he could certainly hear it in his voice.

"I'm probably going to die down here," said Mars dramatically. "I don't even have my notebook to record my final thoughts for the betterment of future generations."

"'Dear diary,'" said Dash. "'Today I complained for over an hour because my dad made me mow the lawn before I could go inside and watch TV in my clean, warm living room with my best friend who worships me, while my surprisingly hot sister does gymnastic stretches on the rug and my mom brings me milk and fresh-baked cookies and tells me how great I am, which probably contributes to my huge ego and delusions of grandeur.'"

"It's not a diary," said Mars. "And don't say stuff like that about Syndi, it's creepy and weird, and that's not what I would have written anyway because I don't sound like that."

"Could have fooled me."

"And what would yours say?" Mars shot back. "'Day Seventy-Two. I wonder who I can find to annoy and get into trouble today. I guess I'll think it over while I go steal a bunch of stuff that I won't ever need and maybe find some old ladies to push into the path of an oncoming milk truck.'"

"Mine was way better. And that milk-truck thing was more-or-less an accident, and mostly I steal money or food, both of which are things that I do in fact need."

"I saw you try to steal a plastic hand!"

"Yeah, that was weird. I think The Donald's shopping-hell thing was messing me up that day. And," he went on, "I know that you Teenage Mutant Ghostbusters were getting into trouble way before I caught you snooping around my place, so don't try to blame that on me."

"You threatened us with jumper cables!"

"You broke into my place. And I was only demonstrating them for you – contributing to your education, sort of thing."

"And trying to get me killed off my own show, that was what, graduation?"

Dash hesitated. Marshall waited.

"I guess I took that one a bit far," he admitted finally.

"'A bit far'?" Marshall repeated incredulously. "You were going to shoot me!"

"I probably wouldn't have gone through with it." Dash winced – even with his own limited experience of apologies, he had to admit that one sounded weak.

Marshall apparently agreed, because his only response was to pick up a heavy Stephen King omnibus ('To Joey, Merry Christmas '87, love Mom and Dad XOXO') and throw it at him. Dash ducked as it sailed overhead, then clicked off the flashlight. He got to his feet, moving as quietly as is possible when you're wearing workmen's boots several sizes too big for you, stumbled over a trailing shoelace and dropped the flashlight. He could tell just from the sound when it hit the floor that the batteries had indeed fallen out, and he cursed under his breath.

"Okay!" said Dash, holding up his hands before remembering that Marshall wouldn't be able to see the gesture of defeat. "I admit, I was out of line for trying to kill you!" There was no response from the direction of the bookshelves. Dash took a deep breath. "I'm apologising, all right? I'm sorry for getting you sucked into a parallel universe and almost blasting you with a double-barrelled shotgun." Still nothing. "Oh, probably you should also know that it was me who put your name down for that whole Harvest King deal. Sorry."

"You put me in the lottery?" He couldn't see Marshall, but he could picture his confused expression. "Why?"

Dash squirmed, grateful for the concealing darkness. He didn't think he could go through with this if he had to look at Teller's face.

"Uh, no," he said. "Chisel already picked the winning ticket. I just put your name on it."

"I knew that thing was rigged!" said Marshall. "No way Chisel would ever take the risk of sacrificing one of the town elders to a werew- wait, what?"

"Well, they were gonna send me up there, but I heard them talking about it and it sounded like something I'd want to avoid so I crossed out my name and put yours." Dash tsk-ed. "You know he actually called me 'the kid with the grey hair' in writing? As if I would put something that lame on a ticket, assuming I was enough of a sucker to buy one."

"You didn't want to go, so you thought you'd just send me to Wolf Mountain instead?" There was a dusty scraping sound, as if Mars were testing the heft of various books, the better to judge their potential as airborne projectiles.

"You and Simon were the only people in Eerie that I knew by name, and you have to be thirteen or over to enter so I couldn't use Simon," said Dash. He almost added 'be reasonable', but the thick hardback that landed a foot to his left convinced him that this was not his best course of action. Judging by the thump it made as it hit the ground, it was sized somewhere between War and Peace and the combined Lord of the Rings trilogy. Dash wasn't a fan of Tolstoy or Tolkien, so he edged away, putting a little distance between the books and him.

"I did come back and help you after," he reminded Mars. "I could have just let you get eaten, but I didn't. And I let you cure that guy instead of selling him to the zoo and never even asked you for compensation, which I was perfectly entitled to after you screwed me out of my share of the money we would have made. I think that makes us practically even."

Marshall sighed, somewhere off to his left. There was a brief scuffling and Dash was suddenly squinting in the glare of the flashlight.

"For the record," said Mars, "You're a self-centered asshole, and just being homeless and not having a real name doesn't mean that you can get away with this kind of bullshit. I can't totally promise that I won't just punch you in the face at some point, for what you said today and generally just for being you," He aimed the beam of light off to one side, so Dash could see again. "But we're stuck down here anyway, and since I'm not about to leave without Simon,and given that I did already promise I'd help you - not that you deserve it - we might as well work together to find a way out of this."

"Don't do me any favors," said Dash, who felt a little put out that his extremely fine apology was not being received with more gratitude.

"And you can cut out that attitude as well," he said, pulling on a memory of Syndi delivering a particularly effective verbal beating to a recalcitrant boyfriend (whose belief that 'I was playing Mutant Attack at World o' Stuff' was an acceptable excuse for not calling when he said he would had seemed very fair to Marshall, but for some reason had failed to wash with his sister) to get the tone just right. "Jeez, maybe if you get your memories back you'll remember this thing called 'manners' and you won't go around being such a jerk all the time."

Dash shoved his hands in the pockets of his trenchcoat. "Whatever," he said, apparently to the floor.

Figuring that the apology/confession super-combo had taxed Dash's already limited reserves of common courtesy, Marshall let it go. Besides, much as he hated to admit it, if Dash hadn't shown up that night on Wolf Mountain, all subsequent enquiries as to Marshall's whereabouts would have been greeted with a toneless 'He's in Spain', so all-in-all…

All-in-all, thought Mars, it still added up to a giant red-and-black warning sign saying 'DO NOT TRUST!' in his notebook.

"This portal is not showing up," he said. "Maybe the TV is just used to open it at one end, but you don't need a second TV at the other." He retrieved Stephen King and Tolstoy from where they'd landed, and replaced them carefully on the shelves. He had no idea if they were back in their original spots – the books weren't organised by any system he recognised – but there was no harm in leaving the place tidy. "Let's get out of here," he said. "We'll take a look around, maybe we can find another TV set."

Dash was staring at the bookshelves, a faint scowl creasing his forehead.

"If Intangible Three is for the stuff you can't touch and it doesn't have a Claw system, how come they have all these books here?" he wanted to know.

Mars shrugged. "Maybe the Radford that runs this place likes to read, how should I know?" He grabbed Dash's coat and tugged him towards the door set in the only corner of the room not already occupied by shelving. Dash let himself be drawn along, pausing only to shoot suspicious glances at the rows of books.

The door was unlocked, and they stepped through into yet another dimly-lit corridor, which trailed away into the distance on both the left and right sides, and which proved to be lined with yet more heavily-loaded bookshelves. Dash pulled up short as they passed one shelf, over-loaded and sagging in the middle. He squinted in the dim light and snatched the flashlight from Marshall's grasp.

"Hey!"

Dash ignored his protest and carefully slid one slim folio from between a row of tattered Mills and Boon and Virginia Andrews paperbacks. He flipped it open to reveal the title page under the bright flashlight beam.

"'Love's Labour's Won'?" read Mars. "Yeah great, another lame beachside romance. My sister would love that."

"You really don't know what that is?" asked Dash, looking faintly stunned and very, very condescending. "Come on, Teller, even you must have heard of Shakespeare."

"Ugh, who cares?" said Mars. "Some old dead guy writing about a bunch of people cross-dressing and saying 'thee' and 'thou' all the time, whatever."

"Love's Labour's Won is one of Shakespeare's missing plays," said Dash. "It's worth an absolute fortune, which you will not be sharing in because you are a product of America's failing educational system and can't recognise a goldmine when you see it." He slid the slim volume inside his coat, smirking.

"You can't steal that!" said Marshall, horrified.

"It's not stealing, somebody just lost it. And besides allowing me to live in luxury the rest of my days, it has cultural significance. Or something. Anyway, people care about it, and selling it'll make me rich."

"Put it back!"

"You didn't even care about it a second ago!"

"That was before you told me it was a historical treasure. Dash, put it back!"

"Why? It should be in a museum or something, so people can see it, right? Don't ruin this, Teller, I'm just going to make a little money and give millions of academics spontaneous orgasms at the same time."

"Ugh."

"Does your sister like poetry?"

"You need to stop that," said Mars with a shudder. "Keep the stupid book, as long as you don't talk about Syndi."

"Fine."

"And how do you know about magical lost Shakespeare anyway?"

Dash shrugged. "I guess I'm just more cultured than you."

"Funny. But seriously, do you read about this stuff or is it like that cupboard in the Loyal Order of Corn?" Dash looked blank. "I mean," Mars clarified, "Is it something you learnt since you woke up here, or is it something you just kinda knew?"

Dash thought about it. "Kinda knew already, I guess," he said. He shook his head. "Weird, huh?"

"Mega-freaky," Mars agreed. "It's like someone loaded you up to play the best game of Trivial Pursuit ever, but forgot to give you any personal background."

"Well, if this all goes wrong, I can buy myself a new identity with the money I'll make from this baby."

"Dash!"

"You can have ten percent if we make it out of here alive and you stop whining about me taking it."

"Dash!"

"Eleven."

"Fifteen."

"Twelve."

"Twelve, and Simon gets three."

"Simon should get more than you, he's poor and your parents are rich."

"Dash!"

"You can have seven and I'll give Simon eight. If you stop complaining about it."

"Fine."

They walked on.

"You know, there could be all kinds of lost treas-"

"Dash!"

"I'm just saying, it wouldn't hurt to take a l-"

"No!"

Dash sniffed. "As a professional weirdness-investigator, shouldn't you be more enthusiastic about exploration and discovery?"

"Yes, but as I'm currently teamed with a professional thief and grifter, I'll have to pass up this opportunity until I can get my regular, trusted associate back. Then maybe Simon and I can check this place out without worrying about you stealing stuff."

"It's not stealing," said Dash. "It's… re-appropriation."

"No."

"Teller, you are the absolute-" Dash stopped. "Did you see a light up there?"

Mars peered into the semi-gloom. "No," he said, but they walked in silence and trod more carefully after that.

Some fifteen minutes later, Dash was proved right. A door opening off the corridor lead to a smallish room, furnished with green reading lamps and a scattering of old-fashioned leather armchairs. There were a number of small, battered bedside tables arranged in rough proximity to the chairs, and a large roll-top writing desk off to one side. The desk held several dried up inkwells, a stack of broken quill pens, thick, cream-colored writing paper cut to various sizes and stored neatly in the appropriate compartments of the desk itself, and a three-tiered cake stand, decorated with the kind of pink floral patterns beloved of cat-loving maiden aunts everywhere, and bearing an assortment of finger sandwiches (the small, crustless kind found in English restaurants serving traditional Afternoon Tea, not the kind with actual fingers) and small cakes.

"You said you were hungry," said Dash, throwing himself into one of the armchairs and gesturing at the cake stand.

Marshall examined the food suspiciously.

"This one's just cucumber and butter," he said. "Who makes a sandwich out of nothing but cucumber and butter?"

A crash from the doorway made both of them look around. A slim man, falling into that age range that Marshall classified as 'older than Syndi but younger than Mom and Dad', wearing half-moon spectacles and dressed in the distinctive garb of a Radford stood in the doorway. At his feet, a filigreed silver teapot was spilling strong black Assam all over the polished wood floor, where it pooled among shards of fine bone china bearing a now-fractured pattern of roses.

"I'm terribly sorry," he said politely. "I'll just go and fetch some more cups, shall I?"