Notes: A sequel to Underground. George and Sandra Underwood's son, Joe, has been stolen by the Goblin King (who had taken on human shape for 30 years as George's childhood friend, David Jones) from George's flat in Kent, England. Sarah Williams has been given a book by the Goblin King, The Labyrinth. And Sarah's parents, Linda and Robert, return home to New Hampshire from Kent following the night George's son is stolen.

The idea for parts of this story came from the Wikipedia entry for Labyrinth, where Linda Williams' description mentions the possibility that she met Jareth in the human world. And then I started writing, and it all got terribly serious. I hope you'll like it, regardless.

The events in this story take place nine years before those of Labyrinth. It is 1977.

Act I

George Underwood was a failure. He had failed at forming and maintaining a band, and he had failed as a freelance graphic artist. A few pub bands whose members were friends or acquaintances had requested posters (created with such high-tech materials as A4 copy paper and a Xerox machine), and his one-time band promoter, Hamish Brentshaw, had talked a great deal about a record sleeve that George was never actually hired for. George failed at retaining what haphazard part-time employment he was able to get, and found himself on the dole more often than he cared to contemplate. He was fairly certain that his marriage was on its way to becoming a failure as well, and this—in addition to work woes and the constant drizzle that passed itself off as weather in Kent—sent him running to the one thing he was not a failure at: drinking.

He drank often, and he often drank himself into a blank stupor.

All in all, George's life was not what he had hoped it would be. He had vague memories of his fifteen year-old self wanting to be George Harrison, but he had not even learned to play the guitar. He played the saxophone. Not very well, either. Probably why the band never took off. Now he had random dreams of someone influential spotting one of his photocopied band posters (flyers, if he was honest with himself) and hiring him on somewhere big. In his dreams, he was designing record sleeves for Blondie and Led Zeppelin.

Those were good dreams. He was happy, and very, very rich.

Sometimes, George had strange, sad dreams. In some, recurring and insistent, he wandered through his memories of a young man called David Jones. They went to school together. They were best mates. David was tall and skinny and had a dilated left pupil, which gave him curiously mismatched eyes—and George's dreams hinted that, somehow, this was his fault—and he sang in a band with George. Seeing him there, standing against a black sky in the slightly warped unreality of dream time, regret and a great sense of loss filled George, and he woke uneasy and pensive. He had never known anybody named David Jones. He could not think of a single David that he knew, come to think about it. The David dreams, however, he welcomed more readily than the dreams in which his son, Joe, was still alive.

Joe had been George's biggest failure.

"That baby," his mother said to her friends, unaware that George often overheard her, "was in a house with four adults. Four supposedly responsible adults. How, in God's name, does a baby disappear from a house with four adults in it?" She stirred lemon into her tea and frowned her despair and anger into the liquid on her cup. "Because my no good son was likely drunk. His no good Cousin Robert was out, gallivanting about town with that actress wife of his, and my fool son's useless wife was probably unaware of where her own toes were, she's so fat and stupid!"

Sandra had been devastated when Joe disappeared. She sat on the living room couch and pulled at a loose thread on her sweater as the police searched the house. They trailed their smell of sweaty police car interiors and tac-vests and the acrid metal bite of their handcuffs mixed with Velcroed gun pockets behind them as they trooped in. A short man and a plump woman in blue woollen jumpers. Sandra heard them from her place on the couch as they looked at the kitchen, Joe's bedroom, the street outside. They asked her hundreds of questions that she could not even remember answering. She was scared to think back on that night, because whenever she did all she could remember was drying the dishes. Those damned pink dishes her mother had given her last Christmas. Everything else was a blank. A total blank.

"When did you last see your son, ma'm?"

"I don't remember."

"How can you not remember? Think, m'am, did you leave the bedroom window open? Was the front door locked?"

She hung her head, worrying at the sweater thread that now trailed well past her thighs. "I don't remember."

"Look, jest leave 'er alone for now, right?" George said, putting his arm around Sandra's limp shoulders. It was as if she had caved in from within, the way she seemed to weigh nothing. "Jest find our son. Put yer bloody dogs on it, eh? Tear apart the city if you 'ave to."

They nearly had. The search had been on every front page and on every late night news programme for days. George avoided the pub, for fear of coming face to face with Joe's picture on the news, some poncy newscaster waxing all bleeding hearts over slushy piano drivel. "The tragedy that has shocked the county of Kent." George wanted to ram a fist down the bastard's nose. Sandra never even turned on the tellie at home. She avoided the newspapers and barely spoke to the neighbours. At night, she lay on her side of the bed, silent and distant in a way that made George's insides knot with grief and anger and the weight of his uselessness.

"I'm so sorry," Cousin Robert said over the phone, his voice thick and embarrassed. "If only I had been there. I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry, man."

"S'not yer fault," George muttered. "I was bloody there, fer pride's sake. And I didn't see a thing. How did I do that, Robs? How did I not see a bloody thing?"

After a week, the police informed them that, having passed well beyond 48 hours missing, the likelihood that Joe was alive was practically nonexistent. "We'll keep him on our active, missing person's list," the plump police woman said, "but we don't want to give you any false hopes, Mr and Mrs Underwood. It's best to think of him as dead."

They drove home in silence, drizzle dyeing the car interior a glacial, early morning grey. George attempted to reach for Sandra's hand. She pulled it away and banged her fist on the dashboard.

"How can they say that? How can they just sit there and say that? It's best to think of him as dead? What is bloody wrong with those people?!"

Her sobs seeped in through George's skin, so that he lay awake that night with those sobs still ringing in his head.

There was beer in the icebox. There was always beer in the icebox. He heaved two six-packs onto the kitchen table at 2.00AM on a Tuesday and had a private wake for his son.

"No, I see." A pause. "Yes, I understand. Thanks for letting me know, Marge."

Robert poked his head out from the kitchen. "Bad news?"

Linda shrugged her shoulders. "I didn't get the part. Marge was kind about it, said the usual nonsense about keeping me in their files." She yanked at the bracelet around her wrist, pulling on its linked silver chains as she tried not to groan in frustration. "It's a play. You show up, you audition. Pass, fail. There's no stupid file to keep."

"I'm sorry, honey."

"Yeah. Me too."

Linda Williams was not used to failure. In high school, she landed practically every lead in every school play the drama teacher dreamed up. Linda had been everybody from Cinderella to the Virgin Mary to Nora in Ibsen's A Doll's House. Glowing reviews and sober, "You'll go far, young lady," followed her like a puppy down the school halls. Where other parents frowned at their kids so much as wanting to lip-synch at a talent show, hers were actually supportive. They payed for acting classes and drove her to her first audition. A gaggle of their friends—excitable old ladies and grandfatherly men—joined them in cheering for her at her first, non-school play, a community theatre production of As You Like It. Rake thin Adrian at the community theatre referred her to a friend of his at the Riverbed Theatre Company. More glowing reviews, more accolades. "You'll go far." When a call came from her agent, Marge, about a possible West End play, she was on the plane to England as fast as her eager legs could carry her.

Robert loved her success. He admired it and bragged about it to all his friends at the office. Kept all the notices and reviews, posters, flyers, programmes. "This'll be one to show the kids," he kept saying. When their daughter was born, he would heave Sarah up by her armpits and show her the framed programme of the Riverbed Theatre Company's production of A Street Car Named Desire. A black and white Linda sat on a bed in a satin nightdress, long dark hair like ermine fur down her shoulders. Sarah—being only fifteen months old—could only gurgle. By the time she was six, she was right there beside Robert, telling all of her kindergarten schoolmates that, "My mommy is a movie star!"

"Actress, sweetie," Linda gently corrected her, straightening her daughter's sagging socks, "not movie star. Mommy is a serious actress."

"She sure is," Robert beamed. He folded up his shirts and placed them with business-like efficiency into his tidy suitcase. "And she'll wow those English snobs at West End and they'll have to rebuild London a second time 'cause she is gonna set the town on fire, ain't she, Sarah?" He whooshed out cheesy flame noises as Sarah laughed, jumping on the bed.

"Westen! Westen!" she said, echoing Robert's footballer hoots of, "West End! West End!"

Everything was brimming with possibilities, success and recognition frothing along the top. Landing West End would be the proverbial cherry. Linda endured the eight hour flight to London and then the drive to Robert's cousin's place in the suburb of Kent—where they had decided to stay to save on the cost of a hotel—with excitement straining within her like a chick ready to burst from its egg. She could almost feel the part sliding down her tongue, promising her notices by respected, British theatre critics, a triumphant return to Londonderry, New Hampshire, then Broadway, her picture on Playbill. She was such a success.

Not getting the part never crossed her mind.

Oh, she toyed with the thought. But never for long, and never seriously.

"They thought you were good," Marge said over the phone. "But not quite what they needed. Don't worry, Linds, I'll keep your name in their files."

That night, Robert took Linda out to dinner, to clear her mind. They ate roast chicken and roasted West End theatre types and revelled in their loud, American voices amidst the somewhat scandalized Kent patrons. Two bottles of Semillon Chardonnay coated over Linda's memories of the audition and Marge's phone call. She stumbled out of the restaurant singing random snatches of "Broadway Baby," Robert carrying her in his arms, like a proud groom on his wedding night. They giggled, Linda half-slumped against Robert's shoulder, pulling on his earlobe, as they rang the doorbell to Cousin George's flat.

A short police man opened the door.

"Oh. Oh, God." Linda's hands cupped around her nose and mouth. To her horror, she heard herself laughing. "Oh, good Lord, officer. Are we in trouble?"

"Do you live here?"

"It's my cousin's place," Robert said, straightening out Linda beside him. "We're staying with him."

"When did you leave the house, sir?"

"What business is that of yours?" Robert said. He frowned into the flat, looking for George, ready to level an annoyed stare at him. He spotted George on the living room couch, his arm around his wife, Sandra. They both looked like wax dummies. George looked at Robert as if he could not see him at all, before his eyes dropped to the floor in a dazed, sightless way. A nervous flutter began within Robert's stomach. "Has something happened…?"

"Oh my God," he heard Linda giggle. He shushed her, kissing her cheek.

The police man beckoned them both inside and shut the door. He said nothing as Robert joined George and Sandra on the couch. Linda stumbled into the kitchen for some water. The voice of what Robert presumed was a female police officer drifted into the living room, asking if Linda was drunk, advising her on what to drink and where to sit and for how long. It was embarrassing, and Robert could barely look at George.

"He's gone," George said, his voice flat and disbelieving. "He's just gone."

"Who's gone?" Robert said. Then, half-sitting up, "My God, Sarah?"

"She's fine," George said. He moved and talked like a sleepwalker, as if somebody else were providing him with the words. "She's asleep. We didn't want to wake 'er."

"Somebody took my son," Sandra said. She stared at nothing, twisting a thread from her sweater round and round and round her index finger. "Somebody took my Baby Joe." She hung her head. "And I can't remember. I can't remember."

"My son's gone, Robs," George said. He pushed off the couch and headed into the kitchen. The fridge door opened and closed, followed by the voice of the police lady.

"Sir, I advice against drinking at this time." Linda giggled, a gurgling, mindless sound. "M'am, please. And sir, please hand me that can." A pause, then, "Thank you, sir."

When Linda was told, next morning, she sat on the edge of the inflatable bed they had purchased, in the middle of a living room littered with Sarah's toys, books, socks and shoes. She hugged Sarah to her and could not think of anything to say to George or Sandra or even Robert.

She had been drunk. Robert's cousin had lost his son, and she had been stumbling and giggling across their kitchen, laughing at the police woman's cap and the way she kept telling George not to drink.

The flight home had been subdued and long. Only Sarah, who had not been told all of the facts yet, seemed impervious. She swung her legs and read from a little red book she had brought with her. Robert slept. Linda read the same sentence in her on-flight magazine, "The azure beaches of Cancun beckon," over and over and over.

Back home at Londonderry, the Riverbed Theatre Company cancelled Moliere's The Hypocrite due to low ticket sales. Linda failed an audition for Juliet for that summer's free Shakespeare performance in the park. "We're looking for someone who doesn't look so much like that girl in the Zeffirelli movie, you know? Keep it fresh." Linda came home in a daze and hugged Sarah to her. She protested and broke free, bounding outside in the white, princess Hallowe'en costume she insisted on wearing nearly all the time now. The front door slammed, and Linda stood there as if she had blanked out on stage.

"Honey?" Robert said. "Are you all right?"

"I'm just rattled," Linda said, wandering out to the porch. She wrapped a shawl about her and sat looking at the maple tree across the yard. "It'll pass. This is just a low." She closed her eyes. "Poor George. That poor man. Did they ever…?"

"No. It's been two weeks, Linds. That boy's as good as dead. I'm sorry. It's a fucked up thing to have happen to him. George's a decent guy, damn it. These fucked up things always happen to the decent guys. It's fucked up."

"Who does that kind of thing?" Linda murmured. "Who steals people's babies? It's so…" Sarah ran out across the yard, waving a branch like a sword. Garbled words followed her as she disappeared around the front of the house. "It's so cruel," Linda said at last. "It's just cruel."

Adrian bounded up onto the stage at the rented rehearsal hall and clapped long, bony hands.

"People, as I'm sure you've all noticed, our ticket sales haven't been exactly stellar of late. Understandably, some people have left us," he said this with his hands raised against a rustling of bad blood murmurs, "and we wish them all the best, even if it leaves us a bit short."

"Let's pull a Shakespeare," Ethan, who specialized in boyish roles, called out from his place by the radiator. "I'll dress up as a girl to cover Hannah's roles."

"Yes," Adrian said. "And while we're at it, we'll buy you a fat suit as well, being as Hannah did mostly Shakespeare nurses." He waved away further jokes in a good humoured way, shushing everyone with one, dramatic finger to his lips. "We do have some good news, and if you'll all pull your thoughts away from the delights of cross-dressing, I'll introduce it to you."

A few people sat forward or craned their necks in interest. Linda folded her arms across her chest and steeled herself for some drop-dead gorgeous red head or some impossibly glamorous blonde to step out from behind the curtain. Similar vibes were coming from some of the other female actresses, as well as from several of the men, who likely envisioned some handsome, Hollywood type behind the curtain. They wouldn't put it past Adrian—who made no secret of his love of youth and beauty—to have gone off and hired some ticket selling eye candy for the company.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Adrian said with all the aplomb of an Oscar night presenter, "may I present Mr David Weddell!"

The curtains fumbled back, and a tall, skinny man stepped out onto the stage. He wore faded jeans tucked into combat boots and a hideous, oversized sweater with neon coloured triangles, imitation paint splashes, and dots. A bright pink shirt collar peeked out from the neck. Short, dyed blonde hair had been mussed up in an artistic impression of bed head. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, grinning in a self-conscious, affable way at them.

"Well," he said. "Hullo, everybody. I am certainly pleased to be standing up here, getting scrutinized by all of your lovely eyes." His voice was soft, with an accent that dipped and fell in the strangest places. It was an English accent, although no one in the room could say exactly where from in England. Perhaps it was an affectation. David smiled. Nope, no affectation. He was English, all right. Those were some exceptionally crooked and yellowed teeth inside that mouth. "How do you do?"

"How do you do?" Linda echoed. She returned the somewhat startled smile he sent her way. "And what do you do?"

David scratched the back of his head. "I, uh, was under the impression I acted." Laughter. "But that's not what you mean, is it? Comedic roles. Adrian tells me your resident buffoon has sailed off to land's unknown. I'm here to make sure King Lear has his Fool."

"Will you be our resident cross-dresser as well?" Ethan said.

"If it's required," David said, so plainly and humble that people's laughter was half mirth, half pity for someone who took his job so seriously.

Riverbed was not exactly the Royal Shakespeare Company. They weren't even Off-Broadway, or even Off-Off-Broadway. But at least the guy did not seem likely to waste their time. The company stood up from their chairs or places along the floor or against the wall and clambered onto the stage to shake his hand and thump his back and murmur random words of welcome. There was a great deal of bowing and flourishes, curtsies and mock-pompous speeches. It all seemed to delight David in a way that hinted at his having scurried over from some pathetic, dire little theatre, the kind that makes a half-hearted mess out of a simple children's play.

"He's sweet," Linda said over lunch at a fast food joint to Robert. "Kinda jumpy. Half the time he looks as if Americans frighten him half to death."

Robert bit into a burger. "Yeah, us and our loud, colonial ways." He balled up his wrapper and aimed it at a trashcan. It bounced off the rim. "When's your next play?"

"Anouilh's Antigone. Some time in September. Mr Weddell'll be one of three, nameless guards. Not many speaking lines, but I think he'd be happy playing a broom on a corner."

"Really?" David said at the next rehearsal, eyebrows raised. He was, as it happened, pushing a broom across the stage, clearing glitter and construction paper bits left over from a Girl Scout meeting. "Do I look that excited? Dear me. Perhaps Adrian should produce Hansel and Gretel next. You can be the witch that snatches children, I'll be the broom."

Snatched children. Guilt banged out against Linda's ribcage, stirred to life after weeks of dormancy. Something must have shown on her face, because David paused in mid-sweep and peered at her.

"Did I say something wrong?"

"Eh?" Linda looped a strand of hair behind her ear, tugging at the ends in a nervous way. "Oh, no, no, it's nothing. Really. Just some… some sad news I read in the paper once. It's…" David looked concerned and serious, but not in the way the police had looked, or the way Robert tried to look and sound whenever he spoke on the phone to George. David was sincerely concerned, his emotions untainted by familiarity or the need to say the correct words. "It's amazing, the amount of shit we put up with in this world," she said, surprised at her swearing. Then, to her greater surprise, "Would you like to get a cup of coffee?"

He frowned in thought. Linda was so certain that she would hear a soft, polite, "No thanks," that she nearly missed the soft, strangely eager, "Yes, yes I would."

Frank Sinatra played from a coin-operated jukebox on the corner. A large, plaster Betty Boop in a red mini-dress had menus sticking out of a slit over her belly. David's fingers brushed against her plaster breasts as he pulled out two menus, and Linda tutted in amusement as he apologized for his brazenness to Betty.

"What a marvellous place," David said. Rusted street signs and soda pop adverts hung above his head, Coca Cola billboards from the 1910s nailed to the ceiling. A chipped rocking horse hung down near the jukebox, and hundreds of framed, B&W photographs of people at the beach in the 1940s frolicked away along the walls, a sea of bobbed curls, wide hips and thighs, and toothy smiles. David scrutinized a platinum blonde on a spotted towel. "What perfect teeth. This is all so horribly American."

"Horribly?"

"Oh, it's a good thing, never you fear. Similar to terribly and awfully." He cracked open a menu sheathed in warped plastic. "Oh, look," he said, "even the menu is full of little pictures. Hand drawn, too. How charming."

"You don't have that in England?"

Instead of answering, he closed his menu and put one elbow over it. His chin dropped into his palm, a grin hovering at the corners of his mouth as he looked at her. His eyes, she realized, were odd. There was something strange about his left eye. Too much pupil, and not as much blue as in the right eye. She could see brown and green and specks of blue in it, depending on the tilt of her head or the tilt of David's head or the sunlight coming in through the wide, glass windows. The effect put Linda in mind of an owl. David caught her looking, and his grin widened somewhat, his body rocking a bit, like an impatient child jogging his knee up and down.

Sweet, Linda had told Robert. Kinda jumpy.

"Was there anything you wanted to tell me?" he said after a while.

"Nothing specific, no."

A waitress took their order. Two small coffees, milk for David, sugar for Linda. After a great deal of face pulling at his menu, David settled on a cheese burger platter. Salad for Linda, vinaigrette dressing, on the side. "In other words," the waitress said in a thick, Dominican accent, "the usual for Linda, la nena linda." She nodded her head at David. "New kid? Welcome to Porter's."

Haphazard, afternoon traffic made its way past the windows, old, slow cars in need of a wash. A woman pushed a stroller down the street, chewing gum. Across from Porter's, a group of Black women sat outside a hair salon, reading magazines and smoking cigarettes in the fading August heat. Autumn was coming, and two of them already wore sweaters. They laughed and shoved each other in a familiar, carefree way. Linda wondered what sadness they kept inside, what tragedy sat at the corners of their minds, waiting for just the right word or image, smell or sound to bring it all back.

You can be the witch that snatches children.

Linda stirred sugar into her coffee. At the corner of her sight, David bit into his cheeseburger, pausing to pull out a soggy pickle. He had not pressed Linda to talk again, content to just sit and eat and watch the cars amble by. He passed on ketchup and drenched his fries in vinegar. One long, bony finger tapped against his thumb as his hand hovered over the perfect, plump fry to pick next.

"My husband's cousin," Linda said, "had his son stolen."

David nodded, serious and attentive.

"I was out with my husband, Robert." She paused. Odd. The word husband had never sounded as heavy as it did then. It was almost unnecessary. She referred to him as simply Robert as she told David the story of what happened that night. Her voice was even throughout it all. She hated women who could not describe anything without speaking in halting sobs, hands flapping over tears ready to spring from the corners of red, emotional eyes. Bleeding hearts.

"And it's so odd," Linda finished. "Because whenever Robert speaks to George, it's always the same conversation, how neither George nor Sandra can remember anything about that night."

"The human mind is incredibly adept at creating defences. Pain, emotional pain, is as much a threat to them as physical pain. The brain reacts accordingly, and shields them. If they cannot remember, then the memories cannot hurt them."

"Not remembering is causing them great pain. They can never be sure of what they did that night, what they left undone or didn't do well enough."

"Of course," David said. He set aside his burger with an oddly incongruous, elegant gesture. He threaded his fingers and brought his hands up against his lips, a priest at the confessional. "But at least they cannot remember what they did do wrong." He corrected himself with a half-frown. "Not that they did anything wrong. These things are merely tragedies. What you do or do not do is immaterial, and ultimately useless." He held Linda's eyes. "Why are you blaming yourself for this?"

Linda looked away. "I don't blame myself."

"I have to disagree." He tapped his joined hands against his lips, chasing thoughts and words in his head, turning them like pages in a book before he dropped his arms on the table. "You could not have stopped it, had you been there."

For a moment, a very brief moment, Linda could have sworn that something touched her mind. Something tentative, like a fingertip dipped into a cold lake. Thoughts and ideas, about George and the missing baby and about herself stumbling up the flat stairs, jumped sideways, as if prepared to rush out through some door. Only they paused midway and settled back where they belonged. Linda saw herself once more at the door to George's flat, saw the top of Robert's head and the way his curly hairs were dyed neon orange under the street light across the street. A tree stood behind him, a cross-hatched copper plate etching in the darkness. She could see—she could remember now—that there had been something in the tree, looking at her.

Something. Someone. No, something. She was sure of it. How odd, that she had forgotten that one detail. How very odd, that she could remember at all. She had been drunk.

The touch passed from her mind, and Linda sat at the dinner booth, David across from her and a tall milkshake between them.

"Did I order this?" she said.

"I did," David said, looking equal parts a child and an imp. "You needed some cheering up. You're a fine looking woman. You have no need of so many lines on your face."

He said many more words after that. They both did. Whipped cream passed between them on a dessert spoon, and Linda ate the cherry. They dipped two straws into either side of the milkshake and laughed at the thought of themselves as part of the soda fountain nostalgia nailed above them. Linda paused to hunt up an elastic band, pulled her hair back into a high ponytail.

"Perfect," David said.

And he said more than that again. They talked about antique cars, about their childhood that followed in the wake of World War II, he of ration cards, she of a lingering hatred of all things Japanese. They both hated it when Shaun Cassidy came on the jukebox, covering "Da Doo Ron Ron." They said nothing for a few stretches, just sat there, Linda gazing out the window, David dipping his finger into the milkshake glass, scooping up the last dregs of ice-cream.

Words piled up on top of words, but, afterwards, when Linda was on the bus back home and David had waved goodbye from the bus stop shelter, it was only five words that remained. They weaved in between every thought, ridiculous and insistent and alarming and wonderful and heavy.

You're a fine looking woman.

You're a fine looking woman.

Linda unlocked the door to her house. She called out hello to Robert, in the kitchen spreading jelly on toast, heard the radio coming from Sarah's room. She walked with quick, decisive strides to the bathroom. She shut the door behind her and looked at her face in the mirror.

Blue eyes. Fair complexion. Dark hair in a ludicrous ponytail. She pulled it off with a guilty jerk.

You're a fine looking woman.

Linda leaned forward and kissed the lips of her own reflection. "Thank you," she said. "You're not so bad looking yourself, David Weddell."