Armageddon Outta Here

I entered a clearing of sorts, getting my first real impression of just how big the basement had grown. It was massive, as big as the warehouse. Maybe it was the warehouse. Maybe the bright light had hypnotised me into confusing the two. But the warehouse hadn’t had all this junk, and along the walls it didn’t have all those wooden steps leading upwards.

  Someone emerged from the stacks on my right.

  “Chrissy!” I hissed.

  She jumped, covering her mouth with both hands, stifling a yell. Then she hurried over, clinging to my right arm.

  “We’re in his house,” she whispered.

  “I know,” I said. “Stay close to me.”

  We moved onwards, through the clearing and back into the stacks. We approached a low table on which sat a dollhouse. As we passed, a light switched on in one of the small windows.

  “That’s mine,” Chrissy said softly. “I used to have that. That exact one.”

  We stared at it for a few more moments. Another light turned on. Chrissy let go of my arm and stepped towards it.

  “What are you doing? Chrissy, don’t.”

  She looked back at me, her face strained. “I have to,” she said, and reached out, fingers hooking into the exterior wall of the dollhouse. She pulled it open and all the lights came on and she stepped back with a cry of disgust. Cockroaches skittered over the toy furniture, burrowing under the thin blankets on the beds to get out of the sudden light and pushing over the plastic plates on the kitchen table. Some of them had got on to her hand and Chrissy cursed, swiping at them as they tried to scuttle up her sleeve.

  I pulled her away and the lights in the dollhouse went out, though we could still hear the cockroaches spilling over the edge of the table and hitting the ground.

  Chrissy pushed against me and we moved on quickly. My foot nudged something so solid I almost tripped. I looked down, cursed, stepped back right into Chrissy. Together, we looked down at the still form, half-hidden by the stacks. When the figure didn’t move, I inched forward, nudged it again. Then I got my foot under it and pushed the shoulder back far enough to reveal the face of the warehouse sentry. Blood leaked from a gash over his eye. He was either asleep or dead. I took my foot away, let the body slump back, and we stepped over it and carried on.

  Ahead of us, around the next corner, another light flickered, and I heard the sound of a helicopter’s rotor blades before it was replaced by synthesiser music. I recognised it immediately as the theme tune to Airwolf. Keeping the gun out in front, I led the way to an old TV with rabbit ears and terrible reception, the same TV that I had sat in front of, cross-legged in my living room, when I was a kid. We’d had that TV until the day my brother and I were throwing around the baseball indoors, and the ball bounced off the wall and hit the screen and cracked it. Our mom was not happy that day. Our dad was furious.

  Even as this memory swam through my head, the crack appeared on the TV in front of us. The screen bulged slightly and retracted, like it was breathing. Every time it bulged, the crack would widen a little, and then it stopped retracting, it kept bulging, and black liquid (blood) started to drip from the screen, and then flow like an open wound. Then the screen burst open and the black liquid gushed out in a torrent that hit me square in the chest, forced me back, splashed into my mouth as I cried out.

  Chrissy slipped and I fell over her and the black liquid covered us, drenched us, and then the torrent weakened, and went back to being a trickle, and then it stopped altogether and there was nothing except the busted TV.

  I went to wipe my eyes clear, but I was dry. I was clean. I looked at Chrissy. There’d been no black liquid. No gushing blood.

  “Playing games,” I said.

  We got up. Ahead, we heard voices. Children’s voices.

  We reached another clearing in time to watch myself, aged eleven, drop down from the narrow window into the basement.

  “Oh my God,” Chrissy whispered.

  I was so small. So tiny. So young. I stared.

  “See anything?” a voice asked from the window. Tyler’s voice.

  “Junk,” my younger self said.

  “Any black magic stuff?”

  My younger self shone his flashlight right into my face and then moved it on without seeing me.

  “Just old lamps and furniture. A table. Sofa.”

  We heard Benny telling me to grab a Ouija board if I saw one, and then Chrissy’s voice came through loud and clear.

  “Don’t you dare. My aunt did the Ouija board once and she doesn’t believe in any of that stuff, but she said that Ouija boards are actually dangerous.”

  Chrissy’s fingers dug into my arm.

  We watched history repeat itself until there were five eleven-year-olds down in the basement with us, the beams of their flashlights cutting through the murk.

  Chrissy yanked on my shirt and I looked round. From behind a distant stack there came a fast-moving, flickering light, like someone going crazy with a flame-thrower. Then it cut off. No light, no flames, no smoke. The kids hadn’t noticed it.

  “Found it,” Chrissy’s younger self said. We walked after Tyler, joined the kids at the circle. Standing inside the circle was Bubba Moon.

  Not the Pete Green Bubba Moon, but the original. A bald man, once heavily muscled, but with all that going to seed now. His gut was expanding, stretching the scars, distorting the symbols on his bare torso. He watched the kids crowd round him. They couldn’t see him and he couldn’t see us.

  “Big bad Bubba Moon,” Pete said in a soft voice.

  Chrissy shrieked as the stacks beside us exploded, sending junk flying and old magazines fluttering like dying bats. A man hurtled through the air, bursting from one stack and disappearing into another. All this went unnoticed by the kids, unnoticed by Moon, but Chrissy and I ran over and I lunged into the stacks, gun at the ready, but of the man there was no sign.

  We looked back at the circle. Pete was lying down in it while Bubba Moon stood over him. “Hey, guys, who am I?” he said, and laid his head back and pretended to be dead.

  Grinning, Moon lay down with him, on top of him and over him, and all the flashlights went out.

  The kids screamed, panicked, ran for the window, but Chrissy and I stayed and watched with mounting horror as Bubba Moon slowly got up, Pete moving within him, aping every movement. When they were both on their feet, Moon stepped back slightly, allowed Pete to stand on his own. Then Moon’s hands went to Pete’s shoulders, fingers digging into his shirt. When he lifted one shoulder, Pete lifted his foot, and together they lurched back towards the window.

  I turned away from the unfolding scene, towards the sound of shouting. Gun in one hand, Chrissy’s hand in another, I stepped cautiously towards a tall pile of shoeboxes. There was sudden movement, and one of Moon’s People staggered out of the darkness. His shoulder hit the pile and he hit the ground and the shoeboxes toppled, spilling out hundreds of cassette tapes that clattered across the floor.

  There was something else now, a sound like the snarl that thing had made as it passed through the portal. It was above us, and around us, moving through the stacks, and with it were more shouts and more gunshots. I heard Valkyrie Cain’s voice.

  When we looked back to the kids, they were gone. All but one.

  Pete Green remained. He stood in the circle, looking at us, an eleven-year-old boy. At his feet, my son, unconscious.

  I fought the urge to rush forward. “Why?” I asked.

  Pete shrugged. “It likes the taste. The thing you saw. It likes the taste of mortal children. Fourteen years old, that’s when they taste best, that’s when it gets all the nutrients it needs. Who am I to disagree?”

  “But why Sammy? Why our children?”

  “Because I couldn’t take you,” said Pete. “I wanted all of you. You two and Benny. We all went down here, but I was the only one who stayed. How is that fair?”

  “You killed Tyler,” I said.

  He grew up before our eyes. He grew taller and older and his clothes changed and
his shirt disappeared and he was bare-chested and tattooed with scars again, just like he had been in the warehouse.

  “Tyler was the only one I could take,” he said. “But I made plans. Contingency plans. I was too late to stop you from leaving, my buddy, my pal, but I made sure Chrissy never got beyond the town limits, didn’t I, sweetheart? I saddled her with a husband who was going to drain the fight right out of her. I left her with nowhere to turn. I left her with one option, and one option only.”

  Chrissy stiffened, and Bubba Moon looked at me and laughed. “All part of the game, you understand. I needed a way to get you to bring your family back to the old homestead for a few days, and really, what choice did she have? It was either your kid… or hers.”

  I frowned, raising the gun. “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” Chrissy said. She stepped away from me. She went to stand beside Moon.

  I stared at them both. My hand started to tremble.

  “You want to shoot me?” said Moon. “Or do you want to shoot the person who broke in and suffocated your dear old dad?”

  He took one single step to the side, distancing himself from Chrissy.

  “No…” I whispered. “Chrissy… what…?”

  “He made me do it,” she said, tears running down her face. “He said he’d take Scott next. He wouldn’t let me leave—”

  “Excuses, excuses,” said Moon. “The point is, she killed your daddy, betrayed you to me, and now she wants me to kill your son instead of hers. You can’t go home again, isn’t that what they say?”

  “I’ll kill you,” I said, pointing the gun at him.

  “Go ahead.”

  The gun shook. He deserved it. For everything he’d done, he deserved it. He wasn’t my friend. He was a killer. He was a killer and he was going to kill my son.

  I pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

  Moon laughed. “You really think she’d give you a loaded gun?”

  A scream pierced the air, and Moon grinned. “That would be your friends, I imagine,” he said. “What, you thought they were going to come save you? They’ve never gone up against anything like this before. You have no one to…”

  He faltered. The scream twisted and undulated and screeched. No human being could ever make anything close to that kind of sound.

  Then there was silence.

  Darkness swarmed my vision and dissipated like smoke…

  … and then we were back in the warehouse with Moon’s People sprawled unconscious around us. Sammy stood beside me, his hands still tied and his mouth still gagged. Next to the cloth-covered table, Moon stood with Chrissy, shaking his head, trying to clear it. Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain stood behind them both.

  Valkyrie pushed Chrissy aside and Moon spun, too startled to do anything more than curse, just before Pleasant stepped into him and flipped him over his hip. Moon crashed to the ground and Valkyrie moved in. The handcuffs that had been used to bind her snapped over his wrists.

  Moon got to his knees, shaking his head. “You can’t stand up to it, you’ll never defeat it—”

  “We already have,” said Valkyrie.

  Moon screamed in abject rage as I dropped the gun and turned, untied Sammy. His hands free, he pulled the gag from his mouth, too startled, too shocked to speak.

  I looked at Chrissy as she ran from the warehouse, then at Moon, tears streaming down his face, and finally I turned to Pleasant. “Are you going to kill him?”

  “I thought we’d have to,” he said. “We didn’t think we’d be able to capture him. But now that we have…”

  Valkyrie held Moon as well as she could while Pleasant picked the knife up off the table and cut a new symbol into Moon’s forehead. When it was done, Pleasant stood over him, his gloved hand splayed against his bloody wound. He looked at me.

  “Before I begin,” he said, “I need you to understand that the words I am about to recite in no way indicate the presence, or indeed the existence, of a Divine Being of any sort. Words are words, and they have power, and arranged in a particular way they can have a particular effect. Is that understood?”

  I nodded.

  Pleasant looked down at his prisoner. “I command you, unclean spirit, in the name of whichever god you believe in, I command you to depart. Depart, then, transgressor. Depart, seducer, full of lies and cunning, foe of virtue, persecutor of the innocent.”

  “Get away from me,” said Moon. “Get away!”

  Pleasant ignored him. “Give place, abominable creature, give way, you monster. Depart, then, depart, accursed one, depart with all your deceits.”

  Valkyrie grinned. “Say it.”

  “I’m not saying it,” said Pleasant.

  “Go on,” said Valkyrie. “Say it for me. Please.”

  Pleasant sighed, and returned his attention to the exorcism, and then, in a loud voice, he commanded, “Get thee behind me, Bubba Moon!” and Valkyrie cheered.

  We went home. Felicity had tried to stay up, but she’d fallen asleep on the couch. I helped Sammy to bed, and he hugged me before I turned out the light. For a moment he was a little kid again, a little kid who needed me.

  I stayed with him until he was asleep, and then I sat on the couch and waited for Felicity to wake. When she did, we talked. I didn’t tell her about Bubba Moon. We didn’t talk about what I had just been through. Instead, we talked about us, and our great kids, and our life together. We talked for hours, until the sun bled into the night and turned the sky orange.

  Bubba Moon’s van pulled up and I went outside. Valkyrie Cain got out, and so did a tall man with dark hair. Skulduggery Pleasant in yet another astonishing disguise.

  Valkyrie told us that the exorcism had lasted three hours. When Pete Green’s body finally slumped into unconsciousness, she’d dragged him out of the circle, leaving only the flickering image of the original Bubba Moon trapped within. By that stage, she said, a team of Sensitives had arrived to drain him of his power. Pleasant told us that Moon would never again get the chance to infect anyone. He would stay there, in that warehouse, in that circle, too weak to possess even a passing pigeon, and that’s where he would remain until the end of days.

  I thanked them. Not only for saving my life, not only for saving the life of my son, but also for saving the lives of all the other children who would otherwise have been sacrificed to whatever creature had lived in that light. Valkyrie smiled, thanked me for rescuing them, and ignored Pleasant when he insisted that he’d had the situation under control. He made a joke about not telling anyone what had happened, or he’d have to send in his friends who’d wipe our memories.

  I’m pretty sure it was a joke.

  They left without saying much else. They didn’t tell me who they were, who they worked for, or what all this meant. Pleasant didn’t explain why he wore so many disguises, although Sammy told me later that he’d caught a glimpse of him when he was handcuffed to the pillar, and he could have sworn Pleasant had a skull for a head. At this point, nothing would have surprised me.

  Bubba Moon’s People were scooped up by whoever scoops people like that up, and Chrissy left town with her son. I asked Pleasant not to send anyone after her. She’d suffered enough, I reckoned.

  Pete Green was introduced to a team of psychiatrists who were very curious to find out what trauma had led a grown man with all those unusual scars to revert to his eleven-year-old self overnight. They told me they didn’t dare reunite him with any old friends for fear it would traumatise him further – but maybe at some stage in the future…

  That suits me fine. Pete’s my best friend, and I’m not going anywhere. This is my home, after all.

  omewhere in the distance, a train rattled on its tracks.

  Conor sat in his kitchen with the curtains drawn, the lamp on the table casting its searing eye over his handiwork. It was the size of a shoebox, and wooden. Heavy. Inside were things he did not, could not, understand. There were gears and levers and finely balanced cogs and symbols painstakingly etched into it
all. He didn’t know what they meant, didn’t know what they were for, but he had seen them in his head for as long as he could remember. Transferring those symbols to metal and wood, after all these years, was… well, it was wonderful. It was a relief. It was like he’d been tense his whole life, every muscle knotted and his teeth gritted and his eyes screwed shut, and now suddenly he was relaxing, and a strange sort of euphoric calm spread through him.

  He took a screwdriver from the junkyard of tools on the table and fixed the lid in place. His hands were covered in nicks and cuts. He had run out of plasters days ago. Some of the cuts still stung. There were particular gears and symbols that required blood. He didn’t know why – he just knew that they did. He saw it in his head. He always had. This device, this box, these designs, these gears and levers and symbols – they had always been a part of who he was. This was all he thought about. It was why he didn’t finish school. It was why he couldn’t hold a job. It was why Cathy had left him. This device had ruined any chance he’d ever had at happiness – but here it was, finished. A wooden box with a big red button on its lid.

  Conor straightened his back. Vertebrae cracked. How long had he been sitting hunched over like that? How long had he been sitting here? He became suddenly aware of how full his bladder was, and how empty his stomach. He needed to go for a walk. He needed fresh air. Was it even daytime? The curtains were closed and everywhere but the table was in darkness. It was night. But what night? Was it still the weekend?

  There was something over by the door, a shape in the gloom. Like a man, standing very still. Conor squinted at it, then turned his head, looked at it out of the corner of his eye. No matter how he viewed the thing, this coat or this shadow or whatever it was, it still looked like a man. A tall man. In a hat.

  Conor frowned at it.

  “Hello, Conor,” said the man.

  A bolt of fear and fright shot from Conor’s belly to his chest, but his body remained still. Would his legs even work if he tried to jump up? He’d been sitting here for so long he doubted it.

  Conor’s mouth was dry. How long had it been since he’d taken a drink of water? His voice cracked. The question he asked was not Who are you? or What do you want?, two questions he felt needed answers, but rather, “How long have you been standing there?”