by Derek Landy
She snapped both hands against the air and Baffle flew backwards, yelling as he crashed into his fellow villagers. She grabbed the shadows, brought them in low, knocking a big man off his feet before he could get to her. Fire flared in her hands and she lobbed it into the middle of the crowd, scattering them. She slammed her elbow into a woman’s face and stomped on the knee of another man. They were everywhere, all around her, but unable to use their magic in case they hit one of their own. Valkyrie didn’t have that problem.
She caught sight of Myosotis, taking on three at a time, but then more villagers were running in, joining the fight, and Myosotis was blocked from view.
Valkyrie knew there were too many of them. She knew this wasn’t going to end well.
A beam of blue light flashed by her face and she jerked back. It hit the man behind her and he dropped instantly. Villagers were stumbling out of the way as one of them, a man in rags with crazy hair, swung his arms wildly, like he couldn’t control the energy that was pouring from his fingertips. Valkyrie dived to the ground, and the blue beam swept over her, taking down half a dozen villagers in one go. Everyone was screaming at Crazy Hair to stop, but he looked terrified, like he’d forgotten how to turn off his power.
And then Myosotis was behind him, grabbing his arms, redirecting the beams into the crowd above Valkyrie’s head. Villagers fell around her, unconscious before they hit the ground.
But then the beams sputtered and died, and Crazy Hair sagged, exhausted.
“Thanks for that,” Myosotis said, and punched him. He did a little twirl and fell down.
Valkyrie scrambled up before the remaining villagers could grab her. She ran through the stone huts, Myosotis behind her, towards Skulduggery. A man crashed into her and she went down, rolled over, dropped an elbow into his face and hauled herself to her feet.
Skulduggery raised his head. “Oh, hello,” he said. “I see you’ve found Myosotis.”
“Thank you for saving me,” Myosotis called as she ducked the swipe of a crude blade.
“Not a problem,” Skulduggery answered happily. “So this is the exciting battle part, is it? I do so love these parts.”
“You might have to stay up there just a little while longer,” Valkyrie called, using the air to hurl three villagers off their feet.
A fist came in, crunched against her cheek and she stumbled against Skulduggery’s legs.
“How long?” he asked.
She kicked out, brought her elbow to the hinge of the villager’s jaw. “Just another few moments.”
“I feel I have to ask,” Skulduggery said as a woman with earrings made from other people’s ears brought Valkyrie down, “do you have anything resembling an actual plan here, or are you making it up as you go along?”
“We have a plan,” Myosotis said after a headbutt. “But we’re also making most of it up.”
“Best of both worlds,” Valkyrie grunted, shoving the woman off her. She got up, turned, something swung into her face and the world exploded with light. She was aware of her body falling backwards, but couldn’t feel the impact as she hit the ground. She was barely able to crack open one eye, but when she did she saw Owain standing above her, holding that club.
“You think you can invade our home?” he snarled. “Attack my people?”
“Owain,” Skulduggery said, “we’re not here to invade. We came looking for a friend—”
“Quiet!” Owain roared. He looked around. He was the only villager left standing. “This is what you’ve done. We are a peaceful village, but you come and ruin it all.”
Valkyrie heard the scepticism in Skulduggery’s voice. “No offence, Owain, but you’re a village of cannibals. That’s not, strictly speaking, peaceful.”
“We will pull you apart, skeleton,” Owain sneered. He looked down at Valkyrie. “And you,” he said, “are dinner.”
Owain raised the club in both hands, ready to bring it down on Valkyrie’s head, and then a voice said from behind, “Hey! Forget about me?”
He turned and Myosotis hit him, slugged him right across the jaw and his knees wobbled. He swung wildly and she caught his arm and cracked his elbow. He howled in pain and dropped the club, but Myosotis grabbed it before it touched the ground and smashed it into the side of his head. Owain staggered and gurgled and fell down and didn’t get up.
Myosotis helped Valkyrie to her feet, and then searched through Owain’s clothes. She found the key to the shackles and freed Skulduggery. He jumped from the frame and looked around.
“You didn’t leave any for me,” he said.
“Sorry,” Valkyrie said, before groaning in pain.
“You can kick him if you want,” Myosotis said, nodding down at Owain.
“He’s already unconscious,” Skulduggery sulked. “It’s not fun if they’re already unconscious. Wait – what about the Beast? We’ve still got to fight that, don’t we?”
“Uh,” Valkyrie said, “no. And we’re not calling it the Beast any more.”
“We’re naming it Fluffy,” said Myosotis.
Skulduggery tilted his head. “You named the terrifying monster Fluffy?”
“It actually isn’t a monster after all,” said Valkyrie. “It’s a cute little furry thing with big eyes. No fighting necessary.”
Skulduggery looked at her. “So who do I get to punch?”
Valkyrie looked at Myosotis, who shrugged. “No one,” Valkyrie said.
Skulduggery sighed. He picked up his hat and put it on, then walked over to Owain, whom he kicked. “Well,” he said, straightening his tie, “it’s better than nothing.”
This story was written for Charlie Smith, who won a competition to create a new character to appear in Mortal Coil.
The character Charlie came up with was Geoffrey Scrutinous, and this is how Charlie described him in his competition entry:
“Wears khaki shirts (Indiana Jones style), short trousers and maroon socks with leather sandals. Lots of beads and chains, lots of rings on one hand. Has a small goatee and wild frizzy hair with piercing blue eyes. A frantic, disbelieving nature and is very erratic in both appearance and personality. He sorts out disturbances in the non-magical population. He has the ability to get you to agree with anything he says, without you realising it.”
You’ll have seen Geoffrey in Mortal Coil, of course. But as an added bonus, here’s a little story all about him…
Thanks, Charlie!
he cop frowned. “But there’s a dead body in there. I have to… I can’t let anyone into the house. It’s my job to preserve the scene for the forensics people, to investigate and… and solve the crime…”
Geoffrey Scrutinous nodded. “And you will do a wonderful job of preserving and investigating, I know you will. But for the moment, you want to delay all this hustle and bustle.”
“I do?”
Scrutinous nodded. “Oh, yes, very much so. I have some friends coming, they’re special investigators, and they have to look around a bit first.”
“Who are they?” asked the cop.
“Just some friends. A tall man and a teenage girl. They’re very good at this kind of thing.”
“I’m not sure I should be allowing this.”
Scrutinous smiled, maintained eye contact and poured more magic into his words. “It’s perfectly fine. You know it is. You can feel it, that reassuring feeling that everything is going to be fine. You can feel it, can’t you?”
“I… I suppose… They’re good, then?”
“Very good.”
“You think they’ll be able to crack the case?”
“If anyone can, they can.”
The cop nodded. “Good. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. I have no idea how someone could be run over by a train in their own living room.”
Scrutinous patted the cop’s shoulder. “Don’t you worry,” he said. “They handle this kind of thing all the time.”
“I have to confess,” Skulduggery Pleasant said as he took his hat off in the dead man’s living roo
m, “I have no idea what’s going on here at all.”
Valkyrie Cain nodded up to the corner of the room. “What’s that bit?”
“It’s his head,” said Skulduggery. “You can see the rest of it there, hidden behind the curtain.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s disgusting.”
“Nobody ever said being hit by a train was a neat way to die.”
Valkyrie turned to Scrutinous. “And you’re sure that’s what they said?”
“Oh, yes,” Scrutinous answered. “Neighbours reported hearing an old-fashioned train. Like a steam engine, they said, with the ‘choo choo’ and everything. The walls of every house on the street rattled as it passed.”
Skulduggery murmured something to himself. The living room was small and tidy, the furniture in place, the TV still on with the sound muted. It was three o’clock in the morning and the lamps gave the place a gentle, warm light. It would have been a perfectly good room in which to spend an evening were it not for the man who had been splattered across every imaginable surface.
“Well,” Skulduggery said, “purely to get this out of the way, I’ll just go ahead and say it. There does not seem to be any sign of a railway track on the carpet or, indeed, a train hiding behind the sofa. And I don’t think one could have fitted through the door.”
“Maybe it was a ghost train,” Valkyrie said. “Do ghost trains exist?”
“I’ve seen two,” Scrutinous said. “But I’ve never heard of a ghost train that could run over anything living. A ghost train would be able to run over a ghost, not a man.”
“And yet something big killed him,” Skulduggery said. “And it was powerful and fast-moving. Just like a locomotive.”
Valkyrie examined a couple of framed photographs on the mantelpiece. “Who was he? He wasn’t a sorcerer, was he?”
“His name was Brendan Cassidy,” Scrutinous said. “From what I can gather, he was a perfectly normal mortal. He worked as an assistant manager of a local store. Nothing whatsoever to do with us or anyone in our community.”
Skulduggery took a bag of powder from his jacket and threw some into the air. It fell as a light cloud, shimmering with faint colour. “Definite traces of Adept magic,” he said, “but I’m not getting a read on an exact discipline. Which only proves that he didn’t explode of his own volition.”
Scrutinous watched the two of them work, and tried not to get in the way. He wasn’t a detective, after all. He worked in Public Relations – he convinced mortals that they didn’t see what they actually saw. All this looking-for-clues lark was a tad beyond him. He liked to think of himself as a simple man.
He wandered over to a lamp. It was a very nice lamp. He’d seen better, of course he had, but this was a very fine example of a perfectly nice lamp. It suited the room. He approved. Beside the lamp was a fountain pen. He picked it up. It was an old pen, a classic. He wasn’t an expert on pens, but he knew an old, classic pen when he saw one. He remembered when pens like this had first gone on sale, over a hundred and fifty years ago, when they were brand new and cutting edge. He’d probably owned a few. There was a pad of paper on which the pen had been lying, and he looked at it now, at what was written across the top page.
I’m going to be hit by a train, it read.
Scrutinous frowned. “Um,” he said.
“Yes?” Skulduggery asked, from somewhere behind him.
“Um, I’m not sure, but I think I may have found a clue.”
Skulduggery and Valkyrie joined him, and peered down at the pad.
“Ah,” said Skulduggery. “I think you’re right. That is indeed a clue. I don’t know what it tells us, apart from the obvious, but it definitely tells us something. Valkyrie?”
“It tells us Cassidy knew what was going to happen,” Valkyrie said.
Skulduggery nodded. “Anything else?”
“Uh…”
Skulduggery hunkered down and poked the pad with his finger. “The handwriting is very clear. Very legible. When he wrote this, he was calm. That tells us one of two things. Either he had already accepted his fate, or he didn’t believe it would happen. Or he wasn’t aware that he was writing it.”
“That’s three things,” Valkyrie said. “How do we know it’s even his handwriting?”
“There’s a half-finished crossword by the armchair. Most of it is impressively wrong, but the handwriting is a match.” Skulduggery straightened up. “Out of those three possibilities, Valkyrie, which one would you dismiss first?”
Scrutinous stepped away to let them converse. It was always fascinating watching detectives work.
“I don’t think he’d accepted his fate,” Valkyrie said at last. “There’s nothing else here to suggest that he was preparing to die. There’s no note to family or friends, the dinner plate in the kitchen hasn’t been put away… He wasn’t expecting this.”
Skulduggery nodded. “Which leaves us with options two and three – he didn’t believe what he’d written, or he wasn’t aware he was writing it.”
Scrutinous picked up the newspaper by the armchair and glanced at the crossword. He wasn’t a fan of them, to be honest. There were enough confusing things in the world without crosswords.
“If Cassidy didn’t believe what he’d written,” Valkyrie said, “then why not tear out the page? This should be crumpled up in a bin somewhere, as just another bit of nonsense. But he didn’t tear it out.”
“So he wrote it, but didn’t know he was writing it,” Skulduggery said. “Which means something or someone was guiding his hand.”
“Someone wanted him dead?” Valkyrie asked. “A sorcerer? Why?”
“There’s something we’re not seeing,” Skulduggery said. “Geoffrey?”
Scrutinous looked up. “Yes?”
“What are you doing? I thought you hated crosswords.”
“I do, yes.”
“Where did you get that pen?”
“It was on the pad.”
“What are you writing?”
Scrutinous laughed. “Writing? I’m not writing anything.” And even as he said it, he heard the scratching of pen on paper, and looked down. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, dear.” He dropped the pen to the carpet.
Skulduggery held out his hand. “Let me see.”
Scrutinous handed over the newspaper.
Skulduggery read what Scrutinous had written. “I’m going to be eaten by a shark.”
“Oh, dear,” Scrutinous said again. “This does not bode well for me.”
Valkyrie waved her hand, and the pen drifted up off the ground and hovered at eye level. “Haunted pen?” she asked.
“Cursed, more likely,” Skulduggery said. “Physical contact seems to be enough for the curse to pass on. Geoffrey, you had no idea what you were writing?”
“I had no idea I was writing anything,” Scrutinous replied. “I hate to be a pain, but do you think there’s anything you can do to help me? I really don’t want to be eaten by a shark tonight. The next round of my bowling tournament is on Wednesday and we’re not doing too badly, all things considered. I’d hate to miss it.”
“If a shark does come for you, it won’t be tonight,” Skulduggery told him. “The ink on the pad is at the very most a day old, Cassidy died four hours ago, and these kinds of curses really like the twelve-hour rule. Any more than that and the power starts to wane.”
“So I have twelve hours before a shark eats me?”
“Or you have twelve hours for us to save you, if you want to be glass-half-full about it. Cheer up, Geoffrey, you have our full attention focused on your dilemma. Wait, where’s my hat?”
Valkyrie picked it up off the armchair and handed it to him.
“Perfect,” he said. “Now you have our full attention.”
Scrutinous smiled gratefully, suddenly reassured that everything was going to be all right. The skeleton detective and Valkyrie Cain were on the case, and they would stop at nothing to solve it.
“I’m hungry,” Valkyrie said.
Skulduggery no
dded decisively, said, “Then let’s find you something to eat,” and Scrutinous sagged.
They sat in the diner, Valkyrie doing her best to eat a burger that kept slipping from its bun. Skulduggery had activated one of his false faces, one which gave him a slightly bewildered look. He had placed the pen in a wooden box and was peering at it. Scrutinous sat in the booth and did his best not to worry. He had a glass of water in front of him that he didn’t touch.
“This store,” Skulduggery said, “where Mister Cassidy worked – where is it?”
“Donnybrook,” said Scrutinous.
“Donnybrook,” Skulduggery repeated. “Interesting. Do you know of any sorcerers living in Donnybrook? I don’t. Thoroughly nice area, but no sorcerers.”
“This burger is hard to eat,” Valkyrie muttered.
“You’re doing a fantastic job,” Skulduggery said happily. He closed the box and put it in his pocket. “Now then, Donnybrook. No sorcerers in Donnybrook. No sorcerers around where Cassidy lived. So how did he meet the sorcerer who killed him?”
Scrutinous found it hard to know when Skulduggery was addressing him or merely thinking out loud. The eyes on his false face were slowly swivelling in every direction.
“Unless,” Skulduggery said, “he never did.”
Valkyrie asked a question with her mouth full.
Skulduggery’s head tilted. “What I mean is, this is a curse that passes from one person to the next, yes? The pen keeps moving around. Brendan Cassidy may not have been the first victim, which means it’s possible he had no contact at all with the sorcerer who started it. Which means that there should be more unexplained deaths that we haven’t heard about. Excuse me for a moment.”
Skulduggery took his phone from his pocket, then slipped out of the booth. He went away to make a phone call. Scrutinous looked back at Valkyrie. She had managed to shove half of the burger into her mouth but now froze, her eyes on his.
She mumbled something that sounded like, “Sorry.”
He looked away, and she munched on.
A few minutes later Skulduggery slid back into the booth. “Excellent news,” he said. “There have been four unexplained deaths in the past two weeks. The first three were all sorcerers, and the fourth was a mortal woman who knew the last sorcerer killed and who lived in Donnybrook. Before she died, she could have left that pen in the store in which Brendan Cassidy worked. He picked it up, took it home, and got hit by a train.”