Midnight

  She ran a hand along the wall. It looked rough, uneven, but it was smooth to the touch. She walked back the way she’d come, back through an alley identical to the one she’d just left. How many of these identical alleys there were in this city, she couldn’t begin to guess. Cadaverous had designed everything here – she supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised to find that he’d used duplicates for some of it, and hadn’t bothered with exact detail in the parts that didn’t matter.

  Maybe that applied to the people, too. He needed a population, after all, and she supposed that the easiest thing would be to populate it with versions of himself. It was weird, sure, but kind of understandable.

  She turned left, feeling calmer now, heading for the cars and people. She reached the corner and stood there, watching.

  People passed, all wearing Cadaverous’s face. They ignored her, for the most part, but it didn’t seem to be out of spite. Rather, they each appeared to be caught up in their own thoughts. Like regular people. Those who did happen to glance at her, to catch her eye, didn’t fly into a rage or call on the others to attack. Instead, they gave a quick nod and carried on walking, chatting or driving. A city of Cadaverous Gants, and not one of them recognised her.

  A Cadaverous shuffled by, using a walking stick. Valkyrie walked beside him.

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  He looked at her, irritated. “Yes?”

  “I’m terribly sorry, but I think I’m lost.”

  “So why are you apologising to me?”

  She smiled. He was a mean-tempered old grouch. “Could you tell me where we are? The name of this city?”

  He grunted, eyes returning to the pavement on which he was walking. “Cities don’t have names. Everyone knows that.”

  “Oh,” said Valkyrie, “of course. What’s your name? I’m Valkyrie.”

  “That’s a stupid name.”

  “What’s yours?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I think we could be friends.”

  He grunted again. “Charlie,” he said. “I’m Charlie.”

  “Hi, Charlie. Where are you off to?”

  “Home.”

  “Is that close?”

  “Round the corner.”

  “I’m looking for someone. Maybe you’ve seen her? Her name’s Alice. She’s my sister, and I think she’s somewhere here.”

  “Don’t know any Alice,” Charlie said.

  “She’s only seven. Have you seen any kids? Charlie?”

  He stopped, reluctantly giving her his full attention. “Why do you want to be friends with me? Eh? Everyone hates me and I hate everyone.”

  “I’m sure not everyone hates you.”

  “Of course they do,” he said, barking out a laugh. A Cadaverous in a scarf walked by. “Hey, you, do you like me?”

  The Cadaverous in the scarf glared. “I hate you,” he said. “Everyone does.” And he walked on.

  “See?” Charlie said. “Nobody likes me. Not in college. Not in work. Not in life.”

  “What did you do? For a job?”

  “I taught,” he said, chest swelling a little. “I’m retired now, but I taught English literature to idiots and airheads. Gave them a little culture, not that it did them any good. Ungrateful lot. Do you know the problem with the younger generation? They’re victims. They think they’ve got it worse than anyone who’s ever come before them. They collect weaknesses like badges, wear them for all to see.”

  “I’m young,” said Valkyrie. “I’m not a victim.”

  “You could be,” Charlie said. “Just as easily. You could be.” He looked at her for a long while, then grunted. “A sister, eh? I think I’ve seen a little girl somewhere around here.”

  Valkyrie’s eyes widened. “Is she here? Is she close?”

  He started walking again. “Come along. Come this way.”

  Valkyrie wanted to pick him up and run with him, but she forced herself to match his pace, agonisingly slow though it was. They turned the corner on to a residential street, lined with identical houses.

  Perfectly identical houses. Two-storeyed. Wooden. Dark. The curtains were drawn at every window.

  Charlie shuffled up to his front door. “In here, I think,” he said. “I think she’s in here.”

  He led the way in. Valkyrie followed. Inside it was dark. Musty. “What a nice house,” she said.

  “Yes. The house where I grew up. Come now. Your sister is in here.”

  He opened another door and stood there, walking stick in hand, waiting for her to rush past. His eyes were bright. He looked eager. Expectant.

  “You had another house, didn’t you?” Valkyrie asked. “Bigger than this, I’d say.”

  He shook his head. “Lived here my whole life,” he said. “Come now. Hurry.”

  “You had another house,” she said again. “It had a lot of different builders working on it. There were doors that led nowhere. Hidden stairs. Hidden rooms. Traps. You remember all that, Charlie?”

  He frowned. “You must be … you must be getting me mixed up with someone else.”

  “You sure it doesn’t ring a bell? It was when you were living in Missouri.”

  “I … I’ve never …”

  “Yes, Charlie?”

  “I’ve only ever lived here. I’ve never lived in …” He shook his head. “I’ve never lived in St Louis.”

  “I didn’t say you lived in St Louis. I said you lived in Missouri.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “What are you doing to me?” he muttered. “What are you doing to my head?”

  She walked up. “I don’t think you are who you think you are, Charlie. Parts of you are missing. Why did you want me to come inside? Were you going to kill me?”

  “No.”

  “I think you were going to try and kill me, just like you killed all those other people. Most of them were your students, weren’t they? The idiots and airheads who didn’t appreciate what they were being taught? You invited them in and then what did you do? Did you hunt them? Did you hunt them through your little house of horrors?”

  A smile broke through Charlie’s confusion. “Yes,” he said.

  “You hunted and killed them, didn’t you, Charlie?”

  “Yes,” he said, eyes brightening.

  “You’re not whole. There’s something missing. You can feel it, right?”

  Charlie nodded. “I’m not me,” he said. “I’m not who I

  am.”

  “There’s a man out there, Charlie. His name is Cadaverous. He’s got all your thoughts and memories, and he made you. He made this city, and all these people. But he didn’t bother making you whole. He left bits out. Important bits. The bits that make you who you are.”

  “The bits that make me happy.”

  “Yes. Yes, those bits. He’s a sloppy creator. He’s waiting for me, Charlie. He took my sister and he wants me to go to him. He wants to hurt me. He wants to kill me.”

  “Kill you.”

  “But I think my sister got away from him. I think she left me signs to come here. Is she here? Where would she hide, if she were here?”

  “Kill you,” Charlie muttered, and swung his walking stick at Valkyrie’s head.

  She dodged back instinctively, and Charlie launched himself at her, teeth bared. She stumbled, wrestling with him, then got a hand to his throat, pushed him back and kneed him between the legs. He jerked, and stiffened, and then crumpled slowly, unable to even gasp. He sank to his knees and Valkyrie resisted the urge to break his walking stick over his head.

  “You’ve got to help me.”

  Valkyrie turned.

  A teenage boy stood in the doorway. He was dressed in frayed trousers and a threadbare shirt. His shoes were heavy. Looked uncomfortable. She recognised Cadaverous in his features, but not his eyes. He had sad eyes.

  “You put up those signs?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. His accent was American with a hint of something else – Russian, maybe. “I had to
talk to you, but I cannot leave this city. He will find me if I do.”

  “Who will find you? Cadaverous?”

  The boy nodded. “He does not know I’m here. He thought he’d destroyed me, long time ago. He almost did. I’m nothing to what I was once.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but he’s seeing you right now, through my eyes.”

  “Yes. And I feel his rage. But he cannot find me. This city, for him, it’s too confusing.”

  “But he built it.”

  “He did, to store thoughts, to put them away and never think them again. This land he’s made, it’s him. His mind. To create something so big … is something he has never tried before. He controls most of it, but there are areas where he fears to tread.”

  “I need to find Alice.”

  “She’s waiting for you, in his house. On the island, beyond your town.”

  “My town?”

  “He spent five years building this land, but he kept a space for you. He built it specially. It’s powered by a distorted Echo Stone that will draw from your memories and construct your town when you get close. He wants to hurt you. He wants to kill you for what you did to Jeremiah.”

  “I didn’t do anything to Jeremiah,” Valkyrie said. “He attacked me. He fell.”

  “You’re responsible,” the boy said.

  “I’m not arguing about this, OK? You got me here, fine. How do I beat him?”

  “In here, you can’t. You have to get him outside.”

  “Can you help me do that?”

  “I can’t do anything.”

  “Then what do you need? How can I help you, if I can’t beat Cadaverous?”

  “You can’t win,” he said. “He has your sister and he will kill her. This is going to happen. When he does this, I fear, you’ll attack him. Then he’ll kill you, too. And this place will go on, and I’ll stay here and hide here and nothing will ever change. Unless …”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless you accept your sister’s death.”

  “No.”

  “You must. Do it now, so that, when it happens, you are ready. Don’t play his game. When she is dead, run. Lead him out of this place, and kill him. When he dies, destroy this land.”

  “I’m getting out of here, with my sister.”

  “No,” the boy said sadly, “you’re not.” He frowned. “You’d better go. The city is starting to notice you.”

  He stood aside. Valkyrie hesitated, then went past him, emerging on to the street.

  A car slowed, then stopped. The driver, Cadaverous, looked straight at Valkyrie.

  Across the road, people stopped walking. They looked over.

  “You’d better run,” said the boy.

  Valkyrie wanted to get back to her car, but there was a crowd coming round the corner so she darted across the road. A car pulled up, narrowly missing her. Cadaverous opened the door and tried to grab her.

  She ran. There were people chasing her. There were people in front, running at her. Cadaverous lunged out of a doorway just ahead and she jumped, slammed a knee into his chest. He went down and she stumbled over him, managed to stay on her feet. Ran on.

  There was a park on her left, but the fence was too high to scale. She rolled across the bonnet of a parked car, avoiding the hands that reached for her. She landed on the other side, punched someone. Someone else grabbed her and she headbutted him, tore free, sprinted. The streets surged with people, everyone wearing Cadaverous’s face, like antibodies flushing out a virus. They were right behind her. She couldn’t turn back. The road ahead was blocked. Crowds flooded in from either side. She stopped running. Nowhere to run to. She turned. Turned again. They were all around her. They closed in, ready to tear her apart.

  A phone rang.

  The city stopped. It just … stopped. The people, all those snarling Cadaverouses, stopped moving, stopped snarling. Not a sound but for the ringing phone. No distant car engines. Not one singing bird. Nothing.

  Just that ringing phone.

  The telephone box stood next to a streetlamp. Like everything else in the city, it looked like it was from the eighties. Her breathing under control after all that running, Valkyrie walked towards it slowly. All those Cadaverous eyes watched her, but not one of those Cadaverous feet moved.

  She pulled the door to one side. It opened like an accordion, folding in on itself. She plucked the receiver from the cradle and held it to her ear.

  “You’re not supposed to be there,” said Cadaverous Gant.

  “I took a detour,” she told him. “Talked to a nice young gentleman.”

  “He shouldn’t have done that. Now I know where he is.”

  “He seems to think you’re afraid to come here. Is that true? What would happen if you did? Would you get lost? Would you be consumed by all these versions of yourself?”

  “I should kill little Alice right this second.”

  “What do you call this place, anyway?” Valkyrie asked, her voice dripping with a confidence that sprang from somewhere desperate. “Cadaverousburg? Gantville? Yeah, it looks like a Gantville.”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

  “You’re not going to kill her,” said Valkyrie. “You do that and the game’s over. I’ve still got an hour to get to you. Those are the rules.”

  “You’d better hurry.”

  “I’ll get to you when I get to you,” she said, and hung up.

  56

  After five minutes of trampling through the Carpathian Mountains as remembered by Cadaverous Gant, they came to three wooden shacks in a clearing.

  “Recognise these?” Skulduggery asked.

  Abyssinia shook her head. “I was never able to get this far into Cadaverous’s mind. Tread carefully.”

  There was a rustle of movement and Temper turned in time to see a hatchet swing for his head.

  He jerked back and his attacker, a scrawny man in filthy clothes with hatchets in both hands, swung at him again and kept swinging, his bearded face contorted in fury. One of the hatchets swished by Temper’s face and he stepped in, his knee buckling the guy’s leg while his fist cracked against the guy’s jaw.

  His attacker hit the ground, one of his hatchets spinning out of his grip. He scrambled up and launched himself back into the fight and Temper sent him to the ground again, this time with an arm twisted and Temper’s knee on his chest.

  “Thank you,” Temper said to Skulduggery and Abyssinia. “Thank you for just standing there.”

  “You had it covered,” Skulduggery said.

  Abyssinia walked over, looked down at the squirming wild man. “And who might you be, my unshaven friend?”

  He snarled at her in a language Temper didn’t know. It sounded vaguely Russian.

  Abyssinia looked at Skulduggery. “You’re the genius. What’s he saying?”

  Skulduggery tilted his head. “I’m expected to know all the languages?”

  “You’re four hundred and fifty years old. What else have you been doing with your time?”

  “Punching people, mostly.”

  The wild man tried to break free, but Temper wrestled him down, then glanced at Abyssinia. “Can’t you read his mind or something?”

  “Oh, he isn’t real,” she said. “He is no more self-aware than that rock, and even that rock isn’t real. Everything you see here has been conjured in some fashion by Cadaverous, and acts according to the rules of this world.”

  “I can understand roughly every third word that he’s saying,” Skulduggery said. “He is not pleased to see us, and he’s calling us some very bad names.”

  Abyssinia raised an eyebrow. “How dare you. I am royalty.”

  “Now he’s threatening us. He doesn’t seem particularly perturbed to be in the presence of a talking skeleton, by the way, but I put that down to the limitations of his programming rather than a true reflection of whoever he’s meant to be.”

  There was a screech behind them, and a kid of about six tore from t
he trees, a hatchet in his hand.

  “I’m not hitting a child,” Temper said immediately.

  “Well, I’m not doing it,” said Skulduggery.

  “I’ll do it,” said Abyssinia, and stepped forward to kick the boy in the face.

  He flipped over backwards, unconscious before he’d even landed.

  “Jesus,” Temper muttered, the wild man going nuts beneath him.

  “I do so love kicking children,” Abyssinia said. She looked up. “Oh, come on. He’s not even real.”

  “He’s real to this guy,” Temper responded, twisting the wild man’s wrist in an effort to control him.

  “Ask him where our son is,” Abyssinia said. “He’s close. I can sense him.”

  “For the last time,” Skulduggery said, “stop calling him our son.”

  Abyssinia smiled. “Admit it, darling. You’re coming round to the idea of being a father again, aren’t you?”

  “Are you going to stop, or is this partnership over?”

  “I’ll stop,” said Abyssinia. “For now.”

  Skulduggery spoke to the wild man, and the wild man responded with his usual snarls.

  “He claims not to know,” Skulduggery said, then asked the wild man something else, mentioning Valkyrie’s name.

  The wild man snarled and spat.

  “You are most disagreeable,” Skulduggery murmured.

  He babbled further.

  “What’s he saying now?”

  “I’m not sure.” Skulduggery listened for another few seconds. “Something about an axe. A man with an – no, an Axe-Man.”

  “Is he the Axe-Man?” Abyssinia asked.

  “No. He says the Axe-Man’s coming.”

  “Well, that’ll be nice,” Abyssinia said. “The Axe-Man sounds friendly. Maybe he’ll tell us where my son is.”

  A shape moved, out by the trees.

  For a few seconds, there was nothing, and Temper was about to look away when a man appeared. He was made of muscle, close to eight feet tall and covered in blood with a sack tied over his face. He dragged a gigantic axe after him, the blade making furrows in the dirt.

  “Um,” said Temper.

  Abyssinia looked round. “What?”