That hurt. It hurt because it was true. I had always been on my own.
“The teacher…” I began, but then stopped. It sounded lamer than a three-legged dog.
“Won’t help you. Mr Vass is going to be a bit late today.”
I thought about the kid that had left as I came in. I imagined him talking to Vass, using some ruse to keep him away. It wouldn’t be hard. Mr Vass was a good guy, and he’d looked after me as much as he could, but he would sometimes get distracted by a pattern in the carpet or a shadow on a wall.
“You know I had nothing to do with—”
I never finished the sentence. Someone punched the side of my face. It was a flapping, soft sort of punch, but I didn’t see it coming, and it’s always the one you don’t see coming that puts you on your knees.
I looked up. The faces were blurred. I knew why, and what it signified.
“Hey, look, the psycho’s crying,” said someone, not Wilson.
Wilson leered at me.
“Not so tough, eh, Middleton? Not unless you’re killing little insects and chickens.”
“What do you want?” I asked, feeling defeat on me, like skunk spray.
Wilson put on a face that parodied concern.
“We just want you to go.” He flicked his hand back towards the door. “Get out of this school and don’t come back.”
I got up and staggered towards the door. Snot was running out of my nose. I was a cur running with my tail between my legs. But I could still bite. I looked at Wilson, looked at them all. “You’re going to look back on what you did here. You’re going to remember it. And you’re going to beg me for mercy. Beg me on your knees.”
As I left I heard a huge sarcastic wail come up from the class, followed by guffaws and apelike laughter.
On the way out I bumped into Mr Vass and the sneak who’d been sent out to delay him. I careened into the wall and ran on. Vass was too surprised even to yell after me.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE DWARF’S STORY
I’D reached the lowest point. That sorry excuse for a punch had made me weep. And then I’d uttered a threat so feeble it wouldn’t have scared a nervous rabbit.
I crashed through the front doors of the school and stood out in the grey light. The rain had come on again, but I welcomed it on my face, where it washed away the tears and the snot, and brought me back to myself. I was in trouble. Serious trouble. It wasn’t just the Lardies and the Queens who were on my back now, but the whole school. The only way to save myself was to find the real killer. And I had one clue.
Our school caretaker, the Dwarf.
The story went something like this. The Dwarf had been a pupil at the school back when many of the parents of the current generation were there, and the tale had been passed on down to us, warped, perhaps, by the tricks of memory and the usual lies and exaggerations that creep into all stories, but true in its essentials.
The Dwarf was always a tiny creature: frail, crook-backed – even his face was contorted, as if invisible hands around his forehead and chin were twisting or wringing him out. Looking like that in a school like this was bad news for the kid. He was quick, so he could usually escape the big predators, but there were bound to be times when they caught him, and then a good old-fashioned goading would take place.
So things were always tough for him. But then he made a mistake, and things got a whole lot worse. His mistake – isn’t it always the mistake – was to fall in love. The girl he fell for was called Galadriel Curtain, and she belonged to another. That might not have mattered so much if the other hadn’t been Jud Fray. Fray was blond-haired and blue-eyed enough for any girl, and even his muscles had muscles. He was also a bad kid. You’d have called him evil, except that evil requires a rudimentary intelligence, and Fray was a bare evolutionary notch up from the gibbon. He was the kind of dullard whose mother had to write This is you in crayon on the bathroom mirror to stop him from punching it.
Now the thing about the Dwarf is that a silken poet’s tongue lurked inside his twisted mouth. From a distance he spied the fair Galadriel, and fell in love up to his armpits. Naturally, Galadriel didn’t think much of being courted by a creature that looked like it had just climbed off a church roof. But he plied her with sweet words and soft endearments and stolen gifts. He made her feel in turn as though she were an enchantress in a fable, a fair maid in a tale of knights and dragons, a witty Shakespearean heroine (although, of course, all the wit was his). And finally Galadriel overcame her revulsion, closed her eyes and, concealed from the world by the huge metal bins outside the school kitchens, submitted to a kiss.
It was one moment of pure joy for both of them. In that instant, the Dwarf’s soul showed itself to be as straight and true as his body was misshapen. And Galadriel was transformed by that kiss from a pretty, superficial confection of perfume and glitter truly into an enchantress, a fair maid, a heroine.
For seven seconds.
And then the Dwarf was lifted bodily from his rapture and shaken like a rat in the jaws of a terrier.
For the ill-matched lovers had been spied, and the vengeful Fray informed.
The Dwarf opened his eyes to see not just Jud, but a mocking crowd of his followers and sycophants.
Then Jud slapped Galadriel so hard she fell to the ground. She looked at the hard eyes all around her, and said the words that damned the Dwarf:
“He made me.”
For once, the eloquent boy had no words. He lowered his eyes and let them beat him. Would denial have helped him, or would the myth of beauty defiled by the beast have been too strong?
When the beating was done, the torment began. Jud’s mind was slow in most ways, but ingenious in the devising of tortures. He had one of the big bins emptied of all but the age-old slime and foul juices at the bottom, and the Dwarf was thrown in. Then what was by now virtually the whole school began to pound on the metal, some with fists, some with improvised clubs (fence posts, cricket bats, unfortunate younger kids), ringing it like a great bell. And as they drummed, they chanted. Not some clever or witty rhyme, but simply one word, repeated over and over again:
All day they drummed. To begin with he cried out, begging for mercy. Then his voice became shrill. And then faint, inaudible beneath the clanging. Finally, silence.
One by one the tormentors drifted away, until at last only Jud remained, still beating at the metal with a broken shovel. And then even he grew tired of the sport and left. All was quiet for a minute, for two. Then a figure emerged from the shadows, a little bedraggled now, but still beautiful. She put her hand on the bin, and softly called out. There was no reply. A fine rain began to fall. Galadriel ran home, weeping. Or possibly laughing.
He was finally rescued by Jim, the old caretaker. Jim took the thing that had once been the boy under his protection, and when he finally retired, the Dwarf took his place. Jim had been a quiet and secretive man, performing his janitorial tasks with invisible efficiency, but the Dwarf became even more elusive. He was a shade, a ghost, a spirit.
At times you could hear him squirming through the air-conditioning ducts. You’d see him, sometimes, from the corner of your eye, polishing furtively, but when you’d turn to get a proper look, he’d vanish. Sometimes a manic clanging would come from the big metal bins, but when the teachers rushed to the scene, they would find no one there.
But we knew that he was watching everything, listening to everything, a shrunken, fearsome, omniscient god.
And we knew where he lived.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
AN ORPHEUS FOR THE UNDERWORLD
IN this story all roads lead to the Interzone. But now I was headed to a place beyond the Interzone. To the dark heart of the dark heart. This early in the day the Interzone was almost deserted: no freaks or zombies or mutants or Lardies or Bacon-heads. No dirty fingers pawed at me. No faces were upturned in supplication, or averted in shame. It was just an alleyway. It almost made me feel as though the other Interzone, the one filled with th
e helpless and the hopeless was imaginary, the sort of thing my mind used to cook up back when I was ill.
But no. I could still sense the horror, impregnated into the stones and brick and concrete.
I reached the place: a rusting iron grating at the bottom of the wall. I clutched it and the flakes of rust cut into my hands. Someone was pulling at my blazer. I looked down to see Rat Zermatt. He must have followed me here.
“No, not good. Not good at all. Go there not come back. The Dwarf – he – he…”
I shoved him away.
“I need to know what’s going on. The truth is here. The truth is underneath. The truth is – is the Dwarf.”
A final wrench and the grate came away. Rat still clutched at me with tiny rodent hands as I crouched and scraped through the opening. Then I dropped down two metres, landing in a puddle of scummy water. I was in a narrow tunnel. The only light down here was cast by dim red security bulbs. It was like being trapped in a stricken submarine.
I put my hand onto the wall: old brick, slimy with mould and weird fungal growths. One way seemed to lead only to a yet deeper gloom. In the other direction I sensed an open space. I moved towards it.
I was in the Underworld: the labyrinth of channels and passageways under the school. It all dated back to Victorian times. Our school was built on the site of an old workhouse – a sort of prison where you got sent for the crime of being poor. There were stories about the terrible things that went on there. Murdered children buried under the foundations. Spectres. Horrors. Monstrous things without a name.
The gas, electric and plumbing for our school all ran through the basement and whenever workmen went down there they’d always emerge looking ashen, and none could ever be induced to return. Sometimes they’d talk of the tiny, fleeting, twisted figure they’d seen, or thought they’d seen, swinging above them on electrical cabling, or disappearing down a side tunnel. I’d been down here once before, back in the days when I had friends. A bunch of us did it for a dare. We laughed and joshed and pushed each other, and nothing happened. But we didn’t linger. Now I was alone, and running away wasn’t an option.
I reached the big space I’d sensed. It was being used as a storage area for old school junk: mysterious machines with handles and drums from the time before photocopiers and computers; broken desks with blackened, built-in inkwells; outdated gym stuff – quoits and dumbbells. Something about the space made me think it had once been the exercise yard from the old workhouse, crushed now by the building above it into this subterranean existence. I half imagined that I could hear the desolate laughter of long-dead children, playing barefoot in the snow.
And then I heard something else. The sound of movement. Stealthy and yet swift. Somewhere above me. In the vaults, in the mess of wires and pipes and inscrutable tubing.
Behind.
No, in front.
My hair stood on end. I called out. “Dwarf, I need to talk.”
A hiss. Laughter? A curse?
“Come.”
The voice, that word, was the single most terrifying thing I’d ever encountered. Ancient, yet childlike. Evil and innocence compacted. I was frightened. Truly frightened. It was the sort of fear that stalks us in our dreams, but now the dream world and the waking one were together, and the morning would not save me.
“Come.”
“Come where? Come how?” My voice was cracked and feeble.
“Come.”
I found that I was walking through the space, drawn deeper into the nightmare. There was something in the far corner. Some kind of … structure. Boxes arranged. What looked like pillars. Almost like a temple or a tomb. No, a shrine. Or a sacrificial altar. There were candles.
“Come.”
The voice was so close it could almost have been inside my head. I wanted to run, to scream, to wake up, but all I could do was to shuffle forward, down and back through time. Back to the tomb, the shrine, the altar. I was close now. The candles had burnt low. There were three walls built from junk and a sort of roof. The fourth side was open. In one corner there was a rolled-up sleeping bag and a filthy pillow.
Standing in the middle was one of the old school desks. I was close now and I could see something on the desktop. Something almost like a bird’s nest. A metre away I stopped. The nest was made of golden hair, woven in a circle. In the middle of the circle was a faded black-and-white photograph. It was creased and torn, and I could only just make out the contours of a face that might once have been beautiful. I stretched out my hand to pick it up.
And then again I sensed the movement above me. Too late I tried to run, and a weight hit my head and shoulders. I staggered to my knees. I felt tiny, coarse hands over my eyes. I was blind.
“Naughty naughty. No touching.”
The voice was right in my ear. Someone, something was squatting on my shoulders. I hauled myself to my feet, and tried to shake the demon off.
“Dwarf, I mean you no harm. I just want to talk, to ask you—”
Harsh laughter cut me off.
“Mean me no harm? He he ho ho, that’s a good one. Couldn’t do me harm. But I can harm you, oh yes.”
Then I could see again, as the Dwarf’s little fists pummelled the top of my head and scrunched at my ears and pulled my hair. I bellowed and reached up to drag him off. But he held on tenaciously. I ran around the room, tossing my head, pushing, jabbing, hitting. Anything to free myself from his grip. Then I felt him lower his mouth to my ear:
“Stay still or I bite it off. I likes an ear. Very chewy.”
I felt his teeth clamp around the top of my ear. Felt the sharp pressure. Felt blood begin to trickle. I stopped running and let my arms drop to my sides.
“Good boy,” he said, soothingly, as if to a dog.
“I need to ask—”
“Again, asking, asking, asking. Did I ask to be like this? Asking isn’t getting. Did I ask for a flesh that grips my twisted skeleton like teeth? Did I ask for these clumsy fat hands like toads? Did I ask for the bell, the great bell that rings for ever in my head? Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It’s a-tolling for me and my girl.”
Then more hysterical laughter, like the howling of an ape. And all the time he pummelled my head and gouged at my eyes, and squeezed my face with his bony knees.
“Well, Johnny Middleton, you’re all alone here now, aren’t you? No man is an island, except the Isle of Man, ho ho ho. And you. Alone, an island, and just me on the island. A little king. A little emperor. The Napoleon of you.”
“One question … please, that’s all—”
“And now he’s pleasing me with his plea of please.”
I was still staggering about under the Dwarf, and my foot kicked something that skittered away across the floor. I looked down. Bones – of what? The dead. The bones are always of the dead. I was losing … losing what? My mind? Consciousness? I had to do something or I would be bones. Nothing but bones.
And then I remembered that Hobnob had given me a name, and names have powerful magic.
I made myself speak.
“Leo. Leo Pardi—”
The creature screamed again. But now it was a different sound: a high, unearthly sound of anguish, the sound of a soul that knows itself damned. I spoke on through the keening.
“I know your name. I know that you are not a demon. I know that you are not the Dwarf, or not merely the Dwarf. I know that you are a human being. I know that you have suffered. I know that you are good.”
“Not good. Evil. Made evil. Made ugly.”
“No, made human, made free, made noble. And because you are free and because you are noble, you will tell me what I need to know. You must. I gave you back your name.”
The Dwarf made another noise. Not a scream this time. It was the sound a lost child makes to comfort itself in the forest, a tuneless hum for ever on the verge of epic sadness.
“The one who brings death.”
“Yes.”
“The murderer of the innocent.”
&nb
sp; “Yes.”
“Not who you think.”
“Then who?”
“The higher power. The smiling god. The benevolent devil. The lost queen. Paracelsus in his alchemical laboratory.”
With each word the Dwarf’s voice became both more urgent and yet fainter, as if the effort of speaking were draining him of his life force. And suddenly I felt him go limp. He fell from my shoulders and would have crunched to the ground had I not caught him.
I looked for the first time at his face. It was ageless and ancient, young as a spring flower, yet old as Osiris. His eyes were closed. He was mumbling. I put my ear to his lips.
“The shrine.” Just a breath. “Countess.”
I carried him to the shrine that he had built to his love and laid him down on the old school desk. He coiled around the nest of bright hair and he reached for the photograph. His fingers closed around it and drew it to his breast.
“Go,” he said.
I turned and began to pick my way across the room. Then I stopped, partly because my eyes had blurred. I turned again and went back to the tiny form of Leo Pardi. I picked him up once more and cradled him in my arms. For the first time he opened his eyes. Even under the dim red lights they glowed with an intense green fire. They were extraordinary. They were truly, truly beautiful. His mouth moved again, but I could make nothing of the whispered breath. Slowly I carried Leo out of the Underworld, and he did not look back.
We emerged into the Interzone. Time had passed. There were people. The addicts and the lost souls parted before us. We moved into the sun, and as we did, the frail body in my arms became ever lighter. I looked up into the blue sky – the first blue sky that I could remember in a long time – and then down again at Leo. But what had been Leo was melting into the air. His eyes closed again for the last time, and I bent and kissed his cheek. My tears were flowing freely now, so that I could hardly see him. And then it seemed that I saw or felt his spirit begin to rise. I looked up and the sun dazzled through the tears, and when I looked down there was nothing in my arms but a pile of stinking rags with a circle of hair and a faded photograph, and soon even these became dust and passed into the air.
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