“Don’t worry about it,” came the response. He turned his face to the boy, revealing a blank, strangely terrible smile. “Just do what I say and you’ll be fine - We’ll be fine, I mean. If I can take Vespinner ... it’d be a hell of a blag. You know what I’m saying?”
Benjamin nodded, not because he understood what Strifer had said, but because the turn of conversation seemed to call for it. “Is he a phragodol?” he asked, needing to get some handle on what they were dealing with.
“It is a phragodol,” said Strifer, returning to the controls. “One of the worst.”
“What does it want?”
“Beats me.”
The boy tried to swallow, but found it difficult. He tasted metal on the back of his tongue, felt a lightness in his chest. It had, he remembered, been like this when he had fought the clown. “What does he look like?” he asked falteringly.
“A swarm,” said Strifer. “Of wasps. A kind of amalgam. A heap.”
“I suppose -” he cleared his throat. “I suppose I’ll know him - it - when I see it. Right?”
“Right.”
A moment of calm. I’ll be fine, he either thought or whispered as he turned back round and waited, his eyes as wide and as searching as those of an ill-omened soldier. He heard a change in the sound of the saucer, a kind of rising drone underlying the hum. But any notion he might have had that they were speeding up - and therefore escaping their unseen pursuer - was quickly dashed by Strifer’s response to it.
“You hear that?” the atulphi called.
“What - the noise?”
“Guess you do.” He punched hard at a series of buttons on the console. “But it doesn’t matter now, it -”
And then his words were lost to the noise of the drone, as hundreds and hundreds of small, fiery bodies flew up from below, ascending in a whining, spiralling funnel which, for one deadly second, encompassed the craft so completely that it felt as if they were caught in the core of a tornado. “The goddamn fleg was underneath us!” Strifer yelled, as the insects - for they were wasps all, each and every one identical to those seen on the railing and outside Lilac’s window - began to mass above them. “They’re gonna strike,” cried Strifer, following it with a shout: “Hit them - now!”
Benjamin lifted the head of the guitar, taking aim at what he guessed must be the bulk of the swarm. But it was difficult; his hands felt cumbersome and saggy, unready for the moment. He tried to strum and missed; the second time his fingers brushed the strings but made no discernible sound. “One sec,” he said, in a small, tremulous voice that spoke of just what he was: a boy so suddenly panicked that he couldn’t even comprehend the obvious. He checked the guitar, with some vague notion that there might be something wrong with it. “No!” Strifer screamed, glancing feverishly to the sky, then back to the boy. “Let go of the neck - LET GO OF THE STRINGS!”
“Oh,” said Benjamin, looking at his left hand which - as Strifer had indicated - was gripped tightly to the neck of the guitar, his fingers clamping the strings flat to the fretboard. He let the hand fall away, and again took aim, this time levelling it by means of his forearm. The swarm, he saw, was descending fast; he thought of the stings that these creatures carried, the little drills. With a yell, he strummed again, thrashing the strings so hard that he feared they would break. They didn’t - not that he had time to care anyway: at the instant of his attack, a spray of blue electricity burst out from the headstock, accompanied by a boom of discordant, ear-thumping noise that cracked the air like a thunderclap. “YES!” yelled Strifer, jubilant. And while the sound rang out, then so did the shower of electricity continue; and the boy hit the strings again and again, blasting blue fire into the sky, drenching the swarm as a firefighter drenches a conflagration.
But Vespinner was quick - so horribly quick. Benjamin might well have picked off some of the wasps, but on the whole it was like trying to hit smoke. “No good,” he murmured, as the swarm diffused into a vast umbrella, the creatures becoming so scattered that it was impossible to make a decent assault. “No good,” he said again, sinking down to his knees as the fearsome, humming veil coursed down to meet him. He punched the strings once more, his onslaught catching only a few; and then the wasps were upon him, alighting on his clothes, his neck, his hands. Shrieking, he batted out at them, revolted by how they squirmed against his touch, gagging at the smell of burnt hair they brought to his nostrils. He covered his eyes with his hands, lowered his head. He heard Strifer struggling nearby, his cries and curses muffled. He heard, too, a high-pitched whirr, similar to that of a dentist’s drill - and felt the tears well-up as he thought of the pain to come.
He thought he might die. Thought he would die.
There was a sound of tearing fabric, and the guitar fell away from his body.
I could run, he said to himself, in a final rush of defiance. I could jump the railings, or crawl under them and fall into the sea.
It didn’t matter that he might drown, or emerge, falling, into the sky of another world. Right now, both options seemed better. But first he had to take his hands away from his eyes - and when he did so, he was surprised to see that there was really no need to escape.
Not yet, at least.
21
Strifer had fallen, he saw, and was immobile, his splayed body now the province of the wasps, which were alighting en masse, blanketing him in an ugly, seething shroud.
Benjamin himself was free of the creatures, though at first he had thought otherwise, yelling and patting wildly at his gown before realising that it was merely the skin-crawling effect of his own revulsion. Vespinner, it transpired, had decided to leave him alone - not that it made him feel any better. The only sign of the monster’s infringement was the guitar, lying in front of his buckled knees, its strap severed cleanly in two.
He turned away, unable to bear the sight of what all those stings could do to Strifer if, as he suspected, it had only taken one to cut the strap. He waited, expecting the dentist-drill whine to arrive at any second, yet the seconds passed and nothing happened. Steeling himself, he looked again at Vespinner, which by now had established itself as a looming, whirring termite-tower that almost completely engulfed the prone atulphi at its root. The boy brushed wetness away from his left eye and sniffed; from what he could see, Strifer appeared to be dead.
“What do you want?” he said, daring, at last, to speak. His words were thick and clotted, and they seemed to hurt his throat when they came out.
Vespinner was both as still and as silent as such a creature could be. It moved only as much as its elements moved, a shape immobile but in flux. It was quiet, but only by cause of offering no other sounds than those supplied by hundreds of humming wings and scurrying bodies.
“What do you want?” the boy said again, shouting a little when he reached the last word. Again, the defiance; again, that surge of fear so powerful it felt like rage.
And this time, Vespinner did reply.
You. To join us.
The words came out of it like a breath; a whisper. It crumpled when it answered, the top of the peak lowering like the tip of a tentacle. It seemed to be looking at him.
Benjamin said nothing. He had not, in truth, expected the thing to respond with words. An attack, maybe; a sign. But not words.
It spoke again: dreamshader, it said.
I have been watching you.
“Yes?” The boy’s voice was meek. Small.
Yes. I know all about you.
The lowered peak moved up and down, up and down, as if it were nodding.
You know nothing about me.
And then the peak darted forward, causing the boy to scramble as far back as the railing posts would allow - which was not far. Yet the thing did not strike; rather, it levelled itself at Benjamin’s face, as if the extrusion was there to serve as a face of its own.
Am I not clever?
Benjamin did not reply.
Ah well. The tentacle-tip retracted somewhat. It curled over, seeming
to point at the guitar.
I did the same to the birds. Cut their bonds and set them free. Swish - swish! And nobody saw.
Three - no, four - wasps sailed out from the mass, alighting on the guitar.
T’was me! came the voice, as one of the wasps twitched.
And me! it said, as another of the wasps also twitched.
And me! A twitch. And me! A twitch. And when the performance was over, the wasps took off, merging with the tentacle-tip as it withdrew to its former, upright position.
So now you see, said Vespinner.
Benjamin said nothing, only stared at the thing. As confused and as panicked as he was, he could still understand the gist of the confession: that it was Vespinner who had sabotaged Lilac’s transport, not Wolfgang. But did it mean that the monster had killed the birds, too? Some had survived, admittedly - but what about the rest?
He again pictured Lilac, wandering, calling to darlings that would never come. He wiped his eyes, and found, once more, that the tears would not go away.
Nothing to say? came the voice, mocking.
Benjamin shook his head.
A shame.
Benjamin remained silent.
I did it for you, you know.
The boy glared at the creature.
Yes. I did. I wished to talk with you on land, hence the need for the delay. But I did not count on the surety of friends, nor of your desire to be gone from this world so quick.
The boy blinked. A teardrop fell on his hand.
Why is that? Why did you want to leave us so fast?
“I wanted to go home,” said Benjamin, recovering his voice - unimpressive though it was - at last.
Home, said Vespinner, as reflectively as it could. Where your mother waits, yes?
“Yes.”
And your father?
“No.”
Hm. And then the creature was silent for a while.
“What do you want?” asked Benjamin again. There was no defiance this time, no demand; he only offered the question because there seemed nothing better to do.
To give you a chance for greatness, dreamshader, it said, visibly shaking itself out of contemplation in a fall of insects. On behalf of my lord Gogmagog.
“I - I don't understand.”
My lord wishes to offer you a place at his left. To learn his greatest secret. To make and unmake. To live, to rule; to be at his side when he conquers the blasphemous island; to share in his supreme triumph when he takes all the world. For this he needs seven, but has only six. And if you refuse -
The flittering pile abruptly collapsed into a heap that left nothing of Strifer Dyne except his outstretched limbs.
- if you refuse I will kill this one. I will go into his mouth. Then I shall kill you.
Yet the threat, in bearing a disclosure that the atulphi was still alive, did not move Benjamin as much as it should. True, he was still terrified - but now there was a grain of hope in the idea that if he were to play for a little time, then there was every likelihood that Strifer might come round. Of course, he might not; the monster might kill them both. And besides, even if Strifer was roused to the point of a fightback, there still remained the possibility that Vespinner could defeat them. The boy, however, refused to think of that. He had seen a chance, slim though it was, and he had to take it; he had to act, play along, and believe, wholeheartedly, that he no longer had to simply sit there and die. The fact that Vespinner had already proposed an alternative - to join it and its master in war and nightmare - was as good as lost upon him. Benjamin had heard only the threat, and could see no other course than to escape this horror, no matter what promises it gave.
Now do you understand? it said.
The boy nodded, rubbing away what might have been the last of his tears.
So what say you?
He told himself to think carefully; to not appear too eager, nor too cringingly afraid. “What will I have to do?” he asked, fighting the temptation to raise the quaver in his voice in case it seemed too contrived.
Do what all of them have done.
“All who?”
The dreamshaders who assented before you; who met with my lord and found greatness with him. Malakin, Enlai, Raphael, Pella -
And then it gave a name which left Benjamin shocked.
- Crosskeys -
After which there came another name, which went unheard: “That’s my name,” he said, blurting it out over the words of the monster.
What?
For one instant the mound became utterly still. Then it surged forward, stopping at Benjamin’s feet before cresting up like a sluggish wave.
What did you say?
“My name. You spoke my name,” the boy said, pushing his head as far back as it would go. The crest had become a tumescent, gibbous bulge, and it was only inches away from his face.
What name?
“Crosskeys.”
Cross-keys, the horror said, retracting a little. Cross-keys, it repeated, drawing out the word as though it was considering some element of the name itself.
Benjamin spoke without thinking: “It’s my dad’s name,” he said.
Is it now.
“Yes.”
And suddenly, just as it seemed as if Vespinner was about to say more, the pitch of the saucer’s engine changed; and from the place where the monster had perched itself, at the foot of the heap, there emerged the voice that Benjamin had been longing for.
“I got you now, you stink!” said Strifer Dyne, rising unsteadily to his feet, the buzzing congeries collapsing all around him. “You’ve LOST, boy!”
Vespinner exploded, every wasp launching outwards as Strifer lunged towards the guitar. Strange grey gashes marked his body, and his tattoos had broken up into scurrying squiggles; he was hurt badly, stumbling to his knees as he grabbed the instrument by its neck and pulled it towards himself. Nevertheless, he was quick - and quick enough: as Vespinner began to swarm back at him, he was already in the process of lifting the headstock, the body of the guitar held snugly against his ribs by an elbow. He gave a cheer - a cowboy cheer of “YEE-HAW!” - and wrought out a series of powerful, chiming chords. From the headstock there emerged not the fountain of electricity that the boy had incurred, but a steady stream of pulsing, crackling, disciplined fireballs that erupted, upon hitting their targets, in bursts of glowing, equally lethal shards. Within moments, Vespinner had taken some terrible hits, though the loss of so many of its constituents had left it far from being beaten. It had spread itself wide, encircling the now lilting saucer, and was soon launching assaults from every direction; wherever Strifer fired, it immediately sent interceptors from the sides or behind. If he aimed high, it attacked from below; if he levelled his weapon low, the sorties came from above. Despite what the atulphi had said, it was clear that it was not the monster who was about to lose; it was clever, and fast, and already settling on the reeling Strifer in furious, seething clumps. In seconds the atulphi would be engulfed again - and, no doubt, killed this time - and the boy, sensing the terrible speed with which this could happen, wasted nothing in coming to his aid. Screaming, he lashed out at the clumps, batting them away in feverish desperation, ignoring his disgust, his terror; but then the wasps turned on him, too, and before he was even barely aware of it, several had alighted upon him, their backs arched, their stings whirring. One scrabbled violently in his hair; two - or three - scratched and buzzed and fluttered at his neck. He staggered away from the atulphi, beating at himself and the air around him; a wasp clawed at his right shin, seeming to bite; another clamped itself, pinching, to his left hand. He shrieked when he felt the sting at his wrist, the pain of that needle-thin drill as it slipped through the skin; he punched, punched, punched at the spot with the other hand, not stopping until the wasp, pulped, dropped to the floor. Immediately afterwards, two more landed on his face, one of which gripped his right eyebrow while the other scrabbled at his chin and lips. With his jaw set tight, he clawed them away. Then came more - landing o
n his hands, his face, his legs, his scalp. Then more. And more.
And then the world changed.
He did not notice it at first. Only the nausea in his belly, which he assumed to be the inevitable result of so fraught and hopeless a struggle. Even when he saw the wasps, twitching morbidly at his feet, he had no other thought than that these were the few amongst the still living, still murderous many. He glimpsed the sky, finding it cloudless, colourless and clear of all but a lambent quarter-moon, and heard something on the air which he could scarcely believe: the absolute absence of Vespinner’s evil, droning hum. As understanding dawned, his gaze turned to Strifer. The atulphi, kneeling, was braced against the railing, supporting himself with a trembling arm, the guitar fallen on the floor beside him. The grey gashes on his arms outnumbered the tattoos now, and there seemed to be wispy strands of mist rising up from him. He was obviously not well, but he was alive, and grinning.
“We made it,” he said thickly, panting. He stared down at the wasps, scattered all around his knees and spasming as if in great pain. “We beat it.”
Benjamin leaned over the railing, and discovered that the sea had gone, to be replaced by a night-cast landscape of glowing street lamps and moon-glossed rooftops. And beautiful though the Amar Imaga was, this was even better.
Then the aftershock of panic; he brushed vehemently at himself, certain that the conflict was not yet over, that Vespinner was somehow still at large. But the look in Strifer’s eyes told all ... as did the fact that he then crushed one of the wasps under his fist.
“How?” asked Benjamin, eyes wide and incredulous. “I thought we were -”
Strifer shook his head, and gave the best smile his shattered state would allow. “Just tell me,” he said, extinguishing another wasp. “Are you home?”
The boy again studied the landscape below. In this light, the place could be anywhere; but he could see the spire of St. Jude’s, he was sure; and the distinct floodlights of the football pitch, where only five out of the six were ever lit. Using both landmarks, he was readily able to gain his bearings.
His house was probably a mile away; but yes, he said, he was home.