by Derek Landy
This book is dedicated to my brand new nephew, Cameron.
Cameron, I’m sure you’ll grow taller as you get older, but right now you’re simply way too short. You also can’t talk or stand up, and I have yet to see you read a book. None of this is entirely your own fault, however – I blame the parents – so I hope my words don’t upset you too much.
The problem is, you’re surrounded by a formidable sister and some formidable cousins, so you’re going to have to grow up to be an exceptional person. I’ll do what I can to help, but the rest is up to you.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
The Timeline
Introduction
ACROSS A DARK PLAIN
THE HORROR WRITERS’
HALLOWEEN BALL
THE LOST ART OF
WORLD DOMINATION
GOLD, BABIES AND THE
BROTHERS MULDOON
THE SLIGHTLY IGNOMINIOUS
END TO THE LEGEND OF
BLACK ANNIS
FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS
MYOSOTIS TERRA
THE WONDERGUL ADVENTURES
OF GEOFFREY SCRUTINOUS
JUST ANOTHER FRIDAY NIGHT
THE END OF THE WORLD
TRICK OR TREAT
GET THEE BEHIND
ME, BUBBA MOON
THE BUTTON
EXCLUSIVE PEEK AT
THE DYING OF THE LIGHT
Copyright
About the Publisher
I’ve always loved Introductions.
They remind me of when I was a kid, wandering through second-hand bookstores, pulling battered old horror paperbacks from the shelves. Those wrinkled covers, those dog-eared pages, that wonderful, slightly stale smell of stories… Those books pulled you into their own history, made you a part of it, and if you were lucky – like, really lucky – right before the story started you’d find the Author’s Introduction.
This, to a kid who wanted nothing more than to be a writer, was a portal into imagination. I couldn’t Google a writer’s name and read his blog or watch every interview he’d ever done on YouTube (and I hereby wave to some reader way off in the future who’s just read that and is now getting information about “Google” “Blog” and “Youtube” downloaded directly into his brain), so I had to make do with what brief glimpses I was afforded. It was in the Introductions that authors talked about their work and their process, and I scoured these words, searching for the secret to writing, hunting for the Big Clue that would lead me to Where Stories Come From.
I found glimpses of the Big Clue in the words of Stephen King and other masters of the genre, but nothing definite. Still, in many ways it was enough. These glimpses brought with them their own kind of inspiration, and when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, that’s all I needed. My early stories dripped with blood. They were soaked in it. Drenched. I had yet to learn concepts such as subtlety or restraint, and there is definitely a place for subtlety and restraint – but it was not a place that held any interest for me. I was all about the blood, the rawness, the viscera. I was reading King and Clive Barker and James Herbert and Michael Slade and Skipp and Spector and Shaun Hutson and dear GOD the list goes on. My life was blood-soaked books, horror movies and heavy metal.
Ah, youth…
And yet, dig a little deeper and you reveal a love of film noir and craggy detectives in rumpled suits and cool hats. Dig a little more and you uncover a love of westerns inherited from a father, a love of screwball comedies inherited from a mother (and for a kid who has stammered all of his life, to find these movies where everyone talks really really fast was beyond exhilarating), and a love of science fiction and adventure that blossomed in the eighties because of people like Spielberg and Lucas and shows like Knight Rider and Airwolf and The Six Million Dollar Man…
Taking all this into account, I am the sum of my obsessions. I am every movie I’ve ever seen and every book I’ve ever read. I am every song I’ve ever listened to. I am every comic I’ve ever bought. I am entire collections by Joseph Wambaugh and Elmore Leonard and Joe R Lansdale and I am His Dark Materials and I am Harry Potter.
And in all of these things, I have glimpsed the Big Clue. And these glimpses were enough to open my eyes to the ideas swimming naturally through the soup of my mind. It was from that soup that I plucked Skulduggery Pleasant himself, back in the summer of 2005, and he brought with him every genre I’ve ever loved.
He is a detective (crime) who is also a skeleton (horror) who takes on a partner (screwball) and they fight monsters (fantasy) and they save the world (adventure). With a little bit of sci-fi thrown in, to stop things from getting boring.
The stories in this collection – arranged here in chronological order for your reading pleasure – are but fragments of the world that Skulduggery has opened up for me. It is because of him that I am able to write a western and sit it comfortably beside a novella about a middle-aged man revisiting the horrors of his childhood. It is because of him that the tones of these stories shift so radically between one and the next. It is because of him that I have the freedom to write the kind of stories I loved, and continue to love, to read.
And if there is a fledgling writer out there who is searching through this Introduction in an effort to find the Big Clue – the secret to writing that I, along with all the other writers, share only amongst ourselves – I am afraid I must disappoint you. This is something you must find out for yourself, fledgling writer, as the Author’s Code expressly forbids me from speaking of it in public.
I may already have said too much…
Derek Landy,
Dublin
Saint Patrick’s Day, 2014
t was the year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-one, and it was up west of the Missouri River in South Dakota, and the Dead Men were riding again.
This was still years before that damn fool Custer stumbled across all that gold in the Black Hills, years before Wounded Knee and the massacre that took place there. This was back before the territory was admitted into the union, back before Deadwood, back even before that pitiful Treaty of Laramie promised the region to the Lakota people, a treaty that, if ever that was one, was drawn up just to be burned.
It was a time of gunfighters and outlaws and hard living and easy dying and, of course, it was a time of mean-spirited, blood-slicked magic.
The Dead Men had travelled east from Wyoming, tracking their quarry, who’d led them a merry dance. But the longer they tracked, the easier it got. This was on account of the fact that their quarry had taken up with a Necromancer named Noche, who was developing a habit of leaving dead folk in his wake. Not regular dead folk, neither, but the kind that jumped up and ran around and had a madness in their dull eyes and a terrible, terrible hunger that could only be sated by human flesh. The kind only fire or a bullet to the brainpan could put down. Thankfully, fire and bullets were what the Dead Men specialised in.
Seven of them, all Irish, some of their accents a little muddied due to all the travelling and the living they’d done. There was Saracen Rue, all easy charm and easy smiles, like a man trying to convince himself he’s nicer than he is. Beside him rode Dexter Vex, one of the more thoughtful of the group, though he wasn’t one to show it. The quiet one with the week’s worth of stubble was Anton Shudder, and a scarier man was hard to find, even in this forsaken land. There was Erskine Ravel, recently returned from his sojourn to lands even more foreign and forsaken than this one, and Hopeless, a man of one name and many faces.
Riding in the lead was the scarred man, Ghastly Bespoke, and
beside him the living skeleton, the one who looked like the Grim Reaper himself, the first of the Four Horsemen written about in the Bible and shouted about from pulpits up and down this wounded and pockmarked country.
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
Skulduggery Pleasant’s clothes were scuffed and faded, and his coat was long and may have been black once upon a time. Among normal folk, what these men called ‘mortals’, he’d take that kerchief from around his neck there and tie it over all those teeth that were fixed in that permanent grin, and he’d pull that hat down low over those empty eye sockets. He had two pistol belts, criss-crossing low and held in place with tie-downs, and in those holsters he had guns with pearl handles and long barrels. Colt Walkers, they were. Guns built for stopping men.
They’d been riding for days and their horses were tired and thirsty, and the riders with flesh were chafed and sore. They came upon the town of Forbidden, and didn’t think much of it. A town of three streets and dirty people who bathed not often or well. There was a mangy dog lying in the middle of the street, who looked at them with mild indifference as they passed. When they were safely gone, the dog offered up a feeble growl, then lay back down and went to sleep or died. Didn’t make much difference to anyone which one it was.
They found the livery down the other end of town and the owner, an ungrateful piece of work called Sully, limped out into the sun, scratching himself in places soap hadn’t touched in a long, long time.
“Yeah?” he said with a mouth full of spit. “What the hell d’you want?”
The Dead Men dismounted. Pleasant and Bespoke stayed at the back, them being the most likely to draw attention, and Rue and Vex looked at the proprietor and frowned.
“What the hell do you think we want?” Vex said. “We want our horses fed and watered. You own this place, don’t you?”
The piece of work Sully looked at these men, saw the steel in their eyes and the steel on their hips, and he lost some of his scowl and swallowed some of his spit.
“I do,” he said. “Proud owner of Sullivan’s Livery. If the paint hadn’t peeled off years ago, you could see my name on the sign up there, even though it was spelled wrong and the ‘y’ was missing from Livery. I blame myself, not being able to read, and I blame the fella I hired to make the sign, him not being able to write. But regrets are what regrets are – we all have ’em, and those who don’t have ’em don’t miss ’em. Fed and watered, you say. You can depend on me, provided you have coin enough to pay for such a service.”
Vex tapped Rue’s arm. “Show the man some coin, Saracen.” He went to join the others, who were walking down the wide patch of dirt called Main Street towards the saloon. The townspeople gave them a decent berth, watched them with wary eyes and waited till they were out of earshot to start whispering. Men with guns were never a good sign. Men who looked like they knew how to use those guns even less so.
Bespoke was first through the doors into the saloon. Inside were a few uneven tables, a solid bar and a cracked mirror. There was a small piano nobody played and the floor was dried mud and sawdust. As far as patrons went, there weren’t many here, but all heads turned, and all mouths dropped open. To see a man of Bespoke’s scarring was not something you’re ever likely to see again, and most people seemed to realise that, so they made sure to stare extra hard when they first met him.
Bespoke tipped his hat to the room and walked up to the bar.
The other Dead Men followed, filing in one at a time. Pleasant came last, found a table in the corner to sit, watching the room from beneath the brim of his hat.
“Good day to you, barkeep,” said Bespoke. “What sort of drinks do you serve here?”
The barkeep, a man who’d seen a lot and heard more, had never been one to allow ugliness to get in the way of making money. There was a time he’d even served a leper who had wandered through town, though he served him out back, away from the eyes of his regulars. Money was money, he figured, and it didn’t matter a whole lot how many stumps for fingers a hand had if what it was holding could add to the coffers.
Fact is, the barkeep hadn’t even washed the mug the leper had used all that much. So the barkeep told the scarred man what was on offer and the scarred man asked for six drinks. Saracen Rue came in as the sixth was poured, and they all drank like thirsty men. Except for Pleasant, of course.
“Now that,” said Ravel, “was a long time coming. And it was welcome.” He smiled at the barkeep. “We’re looking for a friend of ours. Two friends, actually, would’ve just passed through here. Maybe you saw them. Maybe you served them two of these delicious and refreshing beers.”
The barkeep said nothing.
“Our first friend,” said Vex, “is like us – he’s Irish. Tall and dark-haired and kinda pale, though in this sun he’s probably reddened up a little. Wears a glove on his right hand. The other fella wears black and carries a staff with him wherever he goes, the height of a man.”
The barkeep looked at the Dead Men and still said nothing.
“It is very important that we catch up to our friends as soon as possible,” Rue said. “We have news from home that requires their immediate and direct attention. Tragic news. Time is of the essence.”
“Haven’t seen anyone,” said the barkeep.
“You’re sure? Our first friend, he has green eyes. Normally eye colour means very little when talking about a man, but if you’d ever looked into those eyes, you’d remember them. Like a snake’s. And the second, as I said, carries a big old staff. That’s something to stick in the memory, isn’t it?”
The barkeep shook his head. “Can’t help you, fellas.”
“Well,” said Ravel, “that is a shame.”
Bespoke turned to the dusty, dirty patrons. “How about the rest of you? Seen anyone like the men we just described?”
A few people kept staring at Bespoke’s face. Others looked down at their beers. One or two, and this caught the attention of the Dead Men, flickered their gaze to a man who sat alone with his eyes fixed on his hands. He was so knotted up, he was shaking. The long silence that followed grew heavy and seemed to weigh down on his narrow shoulders. It grew so heavy he evidently couldn’t take it any more and he jumped to his feet and went for his gun all at the same time. He made a mess of both, went stumbling and fumbling and panicking, and Hopeless crossed to him so quick no one knew quite what was happening till the man hit the floor with a broken nose and no gun in his hand.
Hopeless walked back to the bar, put down the man’s gun and picked up his drink, finished it just as the man realised he was bleeding.
“What did you do that for?” he said. He had a peculiar accent, German or Dutch or some such.
“You were going to shoot us,” said Vex.
“I was not,” said the man, though there wasn’t a person there who believed him.
“People try to shoot me all the time,” Rue told him. “Usually because of a wife or a daughter or a sister or a mother. The point is, I’m used to having people shoot at me. We all are. But we generally know why we’re being shot at.”
The man got to his feet, blood running freely through the fingers that cupped his nose. “I wasn’t going to shoot you.”
“I’m having a hard time believing you,” Ravel said, “seeing as how you were going for your gun at the time.”
The man didn’t have much to say about that.
“What’s your name, friend?” said Rue.
“Joost,” said the man.
“Joost? What kind of name is that?”
“Dutch,” said Joost.
Rue nodded. It figured. From the accent and all, and anyway, half the world had come west to search for gold.
This was when Anton Shudder stepped forward, and the five other Dead Men at the bar seemed to step ba
ck, even though no actual steps were taken. Shudder looked at Joost, and to the poor, panicking Dutchman it seemed like the world was narrowing to a very tight space.
“Tell us what the man with the green eyes said to you,” Shudder said in his quiet voice.
“Church,” Joost managed. “He said something about going to church.”
The church, such as it was, stood on a hill a few miles south. A ramshackle place where not much worshipping went on – and when it did, half of it was half-remembered and most of it was made up. It catered to three different townships, of which Forbidden was one. Its roof sagged and let in water when it rained, its walls groaned and let in wind when it blew, and its doors creaked and let in hypocrites when it suited.
There were two sides of narrow pews and a narrow aisle in between, and there was a table for an altar and the pulpit was a box to stand on. It had once been a barn, and it had never got rid of the comforting smell of cow dung.
In town, there’d lived a man named Wooley, a quick wit who always found amusing, if sometimes crude, names for people and places. He’d come up with a name for this falling-down church-barn that smelled of dung, and it was quite a clever and funny name, but he died of dysentery before he could tell anyone. Mighty unlucky man, that Wooley.
The Dead Men walked up from the bottom of the hill towards this sad-looking church with a single candle burning in its window. It was night, and a warm one at that, and they followed the winding trail between all those graves. They walked single file, with Pleasant in the lead, the moonlight making his skull shine beneath his hat. At the top of the hill the trail widened out, and it was at this point that the Dead Men stood abreast of each other, observing the double doors with the window on one side.
“Nefarian Serpine,” Pleasant called, “if you’re in there, come out. Come get what’s coming to you.”
The candle flickered behind the thin, cracked glass. The doors banged gently in the hesitant breeze. Pleasant looked at Rue, who shook his head. No one was in that church.
Pleasant made to step forward, then stopped. The other Dead Men watched him as he turned slowly. They started to turn, too.