Black Tattoo, The

  "That's right," said Jack, when the flock had quieted down enough for him to make himself heard. "I did."

  "Well," said the elder Chinj, suddenly going quiet. "The parliament of Chinj, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to be — muhnuhmuful."

  It coughed, covering its mouth with one withered paw.

  "I'm sorry!" said Jack. "I didn't quite catch that."

  "We've... decided to be... mmmuhful," said the elder Chinj, with obvious reluctance.

  "I'm really sorry," said Jack politely. "But I still didn't—"

  "We're going to let you live!" snapped the elder Chinj. "All right? Satisfied?" It turned and stumped its way out of the cave, which, by now, was ringing with cheers.

  "There," said Number 3, from beside where Jack was standing. "At last. It is all over."

  "I couldn' t have put it better myself," said a voice — and they all turned.

  There, some twenty yards down the passageway, standing beside a large, but still pack-size, technological-looking metal shape—

  —was Number 2.

  "It's no good trying to stop me!" he screamed (though in fact, as yet, no one had). "The countdown has begun. In thirty seconds, all that's going to be left of this place is a mushroom cloud the size of New York!"

  In the silence that greeted this announcement, Number 3 sighed.

  "Number Two," he began.

  "No, wait a second," Jack interrupted. "You mean, that thing in the pack was... a bomb? A nuclear bomb? "

  Number 2 grinned widely, and his eyes glittered. "Project Justice," he said, with a gesture at the device. "As soon as the gateway to Hell was discovered, I gave the order myself. The first away-team to make the trip was to go in with tactical nuclear capability. That way, if Hell's inhabitants proved hostile, we could strike decisively while we had the chance — eliminating a potential threat at its source, and saving the human race!"

  "You... plank!" Jack spluttered. "You stupid, half-witted—"

  "Number Two," said Number 3 again. His voice was quiet, but something in its tone made Jack stop talking suddenly. "This is unnecessary."

  "Don't you try and tell me what's unnecessary, Number Three," said Number 2. "You know your orders, and the situation's been clear ever since we got here. This whole place is a threat to our world and our way of life, and the only chance we've got is to strike first and strike hard. So, listen, any last words you got? You'd better say them now, because in" — he consulted the readout on the device — "less than eighteen seconds, you'll have missed your chance. Permanently."

  "Would someone mind telling me what's going on here? asked Esme. She pointed at Number 2. "This man's not really going to do what he says he's going to do, is he?"

  "Non," said Number 3. "He is not."

  "Watch me," said Number 2. "Here we go! Two! One! MOMMYYYYYYYYYYY!" he screamed, crouching and covering his ears while everyone — Number 3, Number 9, Jack, Charlie, Esme, and the numberless Chinj — just stared at him.

  Beside him, the machine beeped twice, then fell silent.

  After another few seconds, Number 2 opened his eyes.

  "Number Two," said Number 3, "for some time now it 'as been my belief that your judgment as a Son of the Scorpion Flail 'as been less than... reliable."

  Number 2 stared at him, eyes wide.

  "I must say," Number 3 went on, "my observations of your performance on zis mission 'ave certainly borne out my suspicions. Wi' zis in mind, I took the decision to remove Project Justice's security key." He held up the object: it dangled from his gloved hand. "A fact you would 'ave noticed if you 'ad checked for its presence before attempting to detonate the device."

  "You..." said Number 2. "Wait a second. What the Hell is this?"

  "Number Two," Number 3 continued, "you are 'ereby relieved of command, and your membership of the Sons of the Scorpion Flail is rescinded pending a full enquiry."

  "Yeah? Well, I've got new for you, pal," said Number 2, standing up. "You don't have the authority. Only Number One himself has the power to fire me — and his true identy's so top secret that nobody even knows what he looks like!"

  Number 3 allowed himself a small smile. "That is not," he said, "ze case at all, I'm afraid."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well," the man Number 2 had always thought of as his subordinate pointed out, "you know what I look like, do you not?"

  For another moment, there was silence.

  Number 2 turned sheet-white. "Y-you don't mean..." he stammered. "No, I don't believe it. You mean, all this time — all those years — you... were... "

  Still Number 3 — or Number 1, to give him his proper designation — said nothing.

  "What the Hell's going on?" whispered Jack.

  "W-well, IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE!" shrieked Number 2, whipping out his own Sig Sauer and pointing it at his superior officer. "See? Who's in charge now, huh? Who's in charge now? " In three quick steps he moved away from the machine, the fat black hole at the end of the gun's barrel looming ever closer in Jack's vision.

  "I'm going to count to three!" said Number 2. "If you haven't given me that security key and got down on your knees by then, I swear to God I'm going to shoot you in the face."

  "And what difference will that make if you're just going to blow us all up anyway?" said Jack brightly.

  "SHUT UP!" screamed Number 2. "Just SHUT UP! ONE!" He pressed the barrel up against Number 1's forehead.

  "Two!"

  Nobody moved.

  "Thr—uhn! " Number 2 grunted, as the large rock that had been dropped from above landed on his head and he fell to the ground.

  "There said Jack's Chinj, fluttering into view and finding a perch on the back of its prone victim. It looked up at the others. "I did enjoy that," it said — and winked.

  INTERLUDE

  Mr. and Mrs. Farnsworth were standing side by side.

  Mr. Farnsworth was pale: his jaw was clenched, and his lips were pressed together in a bloodless line. Mrs. Farnsworth's eyes were wide and red, and she was blinking a lot: her knuckles were white where she gripped her handbag.

  The two of them were standing in the morgue of Charing Cross police station in London's West End, in front of a mortuary slab. They'd come to identify a body that had recently been found floating in the Thames.

  However, except for a rumpled white shirt, the slab in front of them was empty.

  "But... I don't understand it!" said the attendant. "It was here! It was here not thirty seconds ago, when I went to open the door for you! And now it's—"

  "It's what?" asked Mr. Farnsworth, with heavy emphasis.

  "Gone!" said the attendant. He got a grip on himself.

  "I'm so, so sorry," he said. "I've been helping people to identify bodies for over fifteen years, and I assure you, nothing like this has ever happened before. It's extraordinary! It was here not two minutes ago, and now it's just... vanished!"

  "Not 'it'," said Mr. Farnsworth.

  "Pardon?"

  "Not 'it'," Mr. Farnsworth repeated, his voice rising dangerously. "Stop saying 'it '! That's our son you might be talking about, you bl—!"

  At that exact moment, a phone rang.

  It was a mobile phone. There was an embarrassed pause, at first the attendant and then Mr. Farnsworth huffed, sighed, patted their pockets, checked their phones — and frowned.

  Blinking, Mrs. Farnsworth took her mobile from her bag. She looked at the screen, pressed the button, and, numbly, held it up to her ear.

  "Mum?" said Charlie. "Mum? It's me."

  THE TREE

  "Here," said Esme. "This one."

  "What, really?" asked Charlie, surprised. "But it's just like the others!"

  "That's the whole point," said Jack. "I imagine."

  "Looks safe enough," acknowledged Number 1. He looked at Esme. "We do this now?" he asked.

  Esme said nothing. She took the staff — which had grown strangely dull and rusty looking, like an elderly scaffolding pole — and strode ahead of them into
the undergrowth surrounding the large and gnarled-looking oak tree that stood a little way up the small slope beside the battered tarmac path. Pausing only to look around to make sure no one happened to be watching, Number 1 and the boys set off after her.

  They were in a certain park, in London. It was early autumn now, but the sky was a pleasingly clear pale blue and the sun was warm on Jack's back, casting long shadows on the ground in front of him as he followed the others into the shrubbery. It was a good day to be in a park. A five-a-side football match with jumpers for goalposts was going on some three or four hundred yards away. People were flying kites, walking dogs, throwing Frisbees and doing other park-type things. No one saw the little group disappearing off the path — or if they did, they didn't think anything of it. In another moment, Jack was sloshing through the piles of leaves as the air around him (under the shade of the tree) turned dark.

  "Looks old," he said, looking up at it.

  "Yeah," said Esme. "No one knows how old." Her face turned sad. "At least," she added, "not anymore."

  "Well," said Charlie. "What happens next? How does it work?"

  Esme didn't answer. She was circling the tree, the leaves making soft scrunching sounds under her trainers. The trunk of the tree was wide and solid looking, covered in bulbous lumps like petrified cauliflowers, or possibly, Jack thought, brains.

  "Here," said Esme finally, taking up a spot some four or five feet away to Jack's right. With a sudden smooth movement, she lifted the staff and struck it into the ground. For a fraction of a second, Jack actually thought he could feel an impact tremor vibrating up through the soles of his trainers. But then he told himself he must be imagining things.

  Esme tested the staff, which was now sticking straight up into the air, but it remained where it was.

  "All right," she said. "We need to get around the tree. If we stretch out, I think we should be able to hold hands."

  Before he could do anything about it, Jack felt himself holding hands with Charlie and Number 1, having missed his chance. With hideous predictability, he'd ended up on the opposite side from Esme and the staff — out of sight of whatever was about to happen. Typical. He sighed.

  "Ready?" he heard Esme ask.

  "Er... sure," he said hurriedly.

  "Then we'll begin." Esme took a deep breath.

  Jack suddenly noticed that all around them, all the noises of the park — the people, the traffic from the road beyond, even the birds — seemed to have gone strangely silent.

  "Khentimentu the Scourge," said Esme quietly, and her voice seemed to set off small flowering explosions behind Jack's eyeballs. "To roots that bind and thorns that catch, I consign you."

  Number 1's and Charlie's hands grew warm in Jack's own. He was standing very close to the tree, facing inward, and his nostrils were filled with the dark, earthy, wet smell of the leaves and the mossy bark of the tree in front of him. The smells were strong, sweet, and — suddenly — almost overwhelming.

  "By the light of the world," said Esme in the same clear voice. "By the strength of my will and the curse that first stilled you, I command that you return to your prison. Get you hence," she finished, "and trouble us no more."

  From far away at first, but coming quickly closer, Jack felt a low, bubbling, sizzling sensation. It traveled up his arms and rushed through his veins, a tide of something hot and dark. It was like being hit by a wave of warm oil, but oil that was somehow alive, scrabbling and rippling and seething all through him in a frantic last effort to take hold. Jack held on tight to the hands that held his. The circle remained unbroken, and...

  And then, as quickly as it had come, the sensation vanished.

  For another long second the four of them stood there like that. Then...

  "There," said Esme.

  Charlie let go first, Number 1 a moment after that, and Jack found himself standing in front of what still looked like an ordinary tree, with his hands tingling.

  He walked round to join the others, noticing as he did so that the staff that Esme had been carrying had now vanished.

  "Is that it?" he asked.

  "Yes," said Esme. "Yes it is."

  "And is it... safe?" asked Charlie.

  "As safe as it can be," said Esme. "Yes."

  "Only we know ze secret," said Number 1. He looked around the little group, unsmiling. "Only one of us, or someone that we tell, will be able to release ze demon."

  "Yeah, like that's going to happen," said Charlie, and shuddered.

  For a moment, there was silence among them.

  Jack was looking at Esme. Suddenly, she just looked incredibly, utterly tired. Come to think of it, he felt the same way.

  "So," said Charlie, with a casual tone that was blatantly false. "What's next?"

  Jack had to admit, it was a good question.

  To his surprise, it was Esme who broke the silence.

  "I've been fighting the Scourge," she said, "my whole life. There's nothing I've done — not one single thing — that hasn't been totally taken up with that."

  Jack looked at her. He hadn't thought of this, but it was true. All the time he'd spent in Hell, all the time since this whole thing had started, only really amounted to a few days in real time. Esme had been fighting since before she was born.

  Suddenly, she smiled.

  "I'm going to learn how to live," she said. "That's what I'm going to do next. And maybe you'd all better do the same." She turned to Charlie. "Especially you."

  "Yeah," said Charlie, looking at his feet. "I guess."

  "I've got to go," said Esme, coming toward Jack and giving him a quick hug that was over before he'd even realized that that was what she was going to do. With her hands on his shoulders, she looked into his eyes. "See you round?" she asked.

  Jack was blushing furiously, but he managed not to look away. "Er, sure," he managed, then immediately felt very silly indeed.

  "Bye now," said Esme to the others.

  Then she vanished.

  "I too must go," said Number 1. Ignoring Charlie, he looked at Jack. "It 'as been a pleasure," he said.

  "Thanks," said Jack, surprised.

  Smiling at Jack, Number 1 nodded once — and walked away.

  Then Charlie and Jack looked at each other.

  "Well," said Charlie finally, "apart from thinking of something to tell my folks, I guess that's it."

  "Yeah," said Jack. He felt strangely empty. Almost... disappointed, somehow.

  "You taking the tube?" asked Charlie.

  "Sure."

  "It's not quite as quick as dematerializing, but it gets there in the end."

  "Fine."

  "Let's go, then."

  The two boys emerged onto the path and set off toward the nearest Underground station.

  They didn't look back.

  EPILOGUE

  Three weeks later, Jack was back at school. He was sitting by the window, in a double history class.

  Jack hated double history. He'd spent the first ten minutes of the class drawing little dashes around the edge of his history folder for every single minute there was left. Next, he'd started crossing them out as they passed. In about five minutes' time, he knew, he was going to be exactly one-eighth of the way through the double class, and that wasn't anything like far enough for him.

  He was in a foul mood. And really, he thought, who could blame him? Being forced to sit through the best part of two hours' tiresome waffling about Tudors and Stuarts seemed like a pretty poor reward for recently saving the universe. Plus, naturally, there was the fact that nobody knew about it: there was nobody he could tell. He wouldn't have known where to begin even if there were anyone he could tell. You try explaining to someone that you know Hell exists because you've been there, that you've met God (and God's god) and that the universe only continues to keep going because of decisions and actions that you made. See how far that gets you.

  At first, Jack had been pleased to be back. His parents had been so wildly (and guilt-inducingly) rel
ieved to see him that they'd accepted his story about running away with Charlie and spending a few nights in a hotel, almost without question. To his further surprise (perhaps it was something to do with his meeting with the Dragon), he'd found he was able to eat proper food again rather than Chinj vomit, which had obviously been a plus too.

  But then — very soon after, in fact — the problems had set in.

  He felt... detached from things. It felt to him as though a sheet of clear plastic lay between him and the world. He found he was wandering around in a sort of daze, going about the daily stuff of his average fourteen-year-old's life like a robot, or maybe a puppet. And slowly, grimly, he'd begun to realize why.

  No one has adventures every day.

  This, he realized, was what was "typical". Not the fact that everything that could possibly go wrong for him always seemed to do so — he wasn't sure he really believed that anymore. What was typical, what was really typical, was the universal truth that no matter what amazing things you've done, what incredible adventures you've had, you've still got to come back to reality afterward. You've got to go tot the toilet, you've got to do the washing up — you've got to go to double history, even when, if it wasn't for you, the Tudors and Stuarts would have become even more pointless and irrelevant than (it seemed to Jack) they are already. And this, Jack decided, was even worse.

  There. Five minutes gone. He could now cross off an entire chunk of the dashes around his history folder. Hell, he thought, he might even color them in — anything to help pass the time.

  His reverie was interrupted by a soft tapping at the window beside him.

  Jack looked up. On the other side of the glass, standing on the windowsill, was a large, furry, batlike creature wearing a pair of wraparound sunglasses. It was waving at him.

  Very slowly, Jack looked around the room. Mr. Hildegast was still droning on. Everyone else in the room still looked bored beyond belief. No one appeared to have noticed the Chinj's appearance.