by Chris Ward
‘What happened to me?’ he whispered.
Miranda’s hand fell on his shoulder, then sharply pulled away. ‘Um, the journey isn’t easy,’ she said. ‘Not everyone makes it. And for those who do, sometimes it can take a while.’
‘What’s the journey?’
‘I think you’ve asked enough questions. And if I told you the answers, they wouldn’t be right, because they’d be my answers. Only you can answer your own questions, right?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Clearly. I think we’ve established that all you know is nothing. Lucky you have me to look after you.’
Benjamin sighed. ‘Yeah, lucky.’
Miranda scowled. ‘No need to be ungrateful. I only left you alone for a few minutes.’
Benjamin wanted to mention that those few minutes had almost gotten him killed multiple times, but he didn’t want to risk her running off again. Instead, he said, ‘How on earth did you get over here so fast? I had to go through that tunnel, then cross that terrifying bridge, but you just appeared on the other side. How did you do that? And if it was so easy, why couldn’t you have taken me with you?’
She crossed her eyes and turned up her nose. ‘I told you, I’m the class prefect. I know stuff that other people don’t know.’ She smirked. ‘I’m special.’
‘Good for you. What about on the bridge out there? Something invisible stopped me from falling. You did that, didn’t you? What was it, m—’
She clamped a hand over his mouth. Her palm was warm, her skin smelling faintly of salt as though she had washed her hands in the sea.
‘Don’t say it. Don’t say the M-word. You have to remember the Oath, or at least pretend to.’ Gone was the brash, confident exterior; her voice trembled with fear. ‘I don’t want to go into the Locker Room again. Use of it is banned, and even the word will get you a thousand cleans if someone hears you.’
Cleans. The Locker Room. More words Benjamin logged to ask about later. For now, though, best to focus on one thing at a time.
‘This thing I’m not supposed to talk about … you used it, right?’
‘Don’t talk about it. Please.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t want to lose you. You don’t know anything. If you fall into the sea, you’ll get washed over, and once you’re over, there really is no coming back.’
Benjamin put his hands on his hips and took a deep breath. He looked up and down the Great Hall, slowly counting to ten, hoping that Miranda might do the same.
When he felt calm enough to speak without stumbling over his words, he asked, ‘Where are we?’
Miranda rolled her eyes. ‘I told you. Endinfinium. The School at the End of the World.’
‘And where’s that?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ She shoved at his chest. ‘We’re at the end of everything.’
Benjamin smiled. ‘And I’m supposed to go to school here?’
‘That’s right. The same as the rest of us.’
‘Why?’
‘Why not?’
‘Where is everyone else?’
She shot him a look that suggested he was the biggest idiot in whatever world this was, and Benjamin wondered if she had any friends. The class prefects he remembered from his old school, Burnton Secondary, were all snobs who had not so much friends but followers. Perhaps Miranda fit that mould, too.
‘They’re. In. Class.’
‘What class am I missing?’
She looked down at her wrist, at a space where a watch wasn’t. ‘The same one as me. Trigonometry.’
Benjamin stared at her. ‘Trigonometry?’ He grinned. ‘Oh, what a terrible shame. You must have felt so sad that you had to come and find me.’
Miranda returned his grin, and for the first time, Benjamin felt the hint of a connection, some shared sense of conspiracy that might blossom into friendship. No matter what world you were in, everyone hated trig.
‘My instructions were to see that you had the best chance of making it on time. I, you know, did my best. Can’t be helped if we’re a bit late, can it?’
‘If I ever sign up for a camping trip while I’m here, I’ll be sure to make sure you’re not leading it.’
Her smile vanished. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing,’ he said with a shrug, then turned away and wandered off down the hall in the direction of the cleaner. After a few seconds, Miranda trotted in pursuit, but Benjamin had already turned his attention to the only other person he had seen who looked human.
‘Hello,’ he said, offering a hand to the man’s back. ‘My name’s Benjamin. Nice to meet you.’
The man stopped sweeping and straightened the broom in a slow, methodical motion, then turned to Benjamin, lifted his face, and grinned.
Black eyes and a toothless mouth dominated a face long dead, its flesh hardened and leathery. As Benjamin tried to find the breath to scream, a clicking that could have been laughter came up through the dead cleaner’s throat.
Miranda’s hand closed over Benjamin’s wrist, and she dragged him away. He glanced back, but the dead man had already returned to his work.
‘Not a good idea to bother the staff,’ Miranda said. ‘They get easily distracted.’
‘He was dead!’
‘That’s not a very polite way to put it,’ she said. ‘If he was dead, he wouldn’t be very good at his job now, would he? We prefer to say reanimated.’
They had reached the end of the hall, where a huge stage rose above them, level with Benjamin’s eye-line. In the alcove behind the curtain hung several large flags, strange geometric patterns in a multitude of colours, some faded, all dusty and old. Everything about this place had an air of decay and neglect, not to mention bizarre. Even though he was getting used to it, he still hoped to soon wake up in his own bed back in Basingstoke.
‘You have dead people here?’ Benjamin whispered, far louder than he had intended, his heart still beating hard.
‘Well, they have to go somewhere.’
‘But, he’s dead!’
Miranda smirked. ‘Well, aren’t you full of revelations. I’d never have noticed.’
‘This must be a dream.’ Benjamin shook his head. ‘This can’t be real. It just can’t.’
Miranda shrugged. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ she said.
‘Look,’ he said, turning back to Miranda. ‘Is there anyone here who I would recognise as an actual, normal person? Aside from your wonderful self, of course?’
Miranda rolled her eyes. ‘Of course there is.’
‘Could you take me to them, please?’
Miranda looked aggrieved. ‘Well, you only had to ask. Wasn’t that difficult, was it?’
5
ADMISSIONS
Through a door behind the stage was a set of stairs. Miranda switched on a light, and they climbed, emerging through a door into a wider corridor hewn from solid rock. Benjamin sensed they were still inside the cliff itself, yet to enter the buildings he had seen perched on the clifftop. How had these tunnels been created? Very little of this place made sense, so if Miranda told him they had been dug out by giant worms, he would have likely believed her.
Doors and staircases led off at regular intervals. Miranda chose one seemingly at random, and soon they stood inside a tall set of glass doors that opened out to a courtyard on the very top of the cliff. Brightly coloured flowers in ornate pots rested along the edge of a low, stone balustrade overlooking a dramatic coastline. The sky was a familiar ochre blue, and the cliffs looked like regular rock jagging down toward regular beaches. They were on the other side of the headland from the bay, with its strange creatures and rocking vessels, and the sea, fierce and violent, looked like a normal sea … up to a line a couple of miles offshore where everything stopped. Some kind of horizon lay out there, a buttress of rocks perhaps, but after that … nothing. Just a haze of blue-white sky as if he was looking straight up instead of straight ahead.
‘It’s pretty,’ he said. ‘I
suppose.’
Miranda gave a non-committal shrug. ‘We should hurry up,’ she said. ‘Trig finishes at eleven. Then we have climbing. I like climbing.’
‘Climbing? What do we … oh, never mind. I’ll wait and see.’
‘The school focuses on practical skills,’ Miranda said. ‘We have no real time for unimportant things.’
‘I guess that makes sense. What about trig? Since when has anyone ever needed that, ever?’
‘I guess they had space on the timetable. Or they’re just sadistic. Come on, we need to get you enrolled and off to class, otherwise we’ll be sent to the Locker Room for cleaning duty.’ She pouted. ‘And I hate that.’
Behind them rose a postmodern castle, vast and magnificent. Ancient stonework stood alongside glass walls and steel struts. A wide, mirrored glass front beamed the world behind the balustrade right back at them. Already Miranda was headed for a pair of doors at the top of three marble steps. Benjamin took one last look up at the castle front, at a tower with some kind of glowing light behind it.
Only it wasn’t a light. It was a small sun, off-red, just poking out from behind the tower’s stonework, hanging low as though too tired to rise far above the horizon. Benjamin turned around. A second sun, a more familiar kind, hung high in the sky.
That explained the orange-tinted clouds, then. He looked down at his feet, where the ghosts of two shadows stretched out, one to either side, one slightly stronger than the other.
‘Where on earth—or not—am I?’ he whispered, as he followed Miranda to the steps. ‘I must be dead. This can’t be a dream.’
Miranda was waving him forward with a look of frustration. He hurried over and followed her through the doors.
A woman sat behind a desk. A real, normal woman, fifty-ish years old, greying brown hair bunched up behind her head and spectacles over an aging, lined face. A business suit. Overweight, but not excessively so. Smelling faintly of perfume and scribbling with just too much aggression to be in a good mood.
The urge to shout out loud was so strong, Benjamin slapped a hand over his mouth until he was sure he could control himself. Then, in a quiet voice, he said, ‘Mrs. Martin?’
She looked up, and Benjamin stared. It was her. Of all the people to find in this odd place, one of Burton Secondary’s office secretaries was the absolute last he could have expected.
Even of the three main office staff, she was the least likely. Mr. Bennett was suave and cool, a known jazz musician in his spare time, while Miss Jones with her long legs and strikingly pretty face could have been an actress in another life. No one noticed Mrs. Martin, the engine house, the workhorse, the one in the background, the one who—and it pained him to even think it—couldn’t have been anything special at all.
Yet here she was.
‘You took your time,’ she said, looking up, the hint of a smile on her wrinkled lips. ‘I almost threw your paperwork in the bin.’
‘I had some trouble.’
‘Evidently. I’ve seen tidier hair caught up in my vacuum cleaner. Welcome, at any case, to Endinfinium. It’s not quite as hideous as it initially looks.’ She gave Miranda a telling look. ‘At least not yet. Not if we can help it.’
‘Um, thanks, but how did you—’
A phone on the desk behind Mrs. Martin began to ring—an ancient, black dial phone with ornate brass numbering. It shook as it rang, but tape secured it to the desk.
‘Excuse me a moment.’ Mrs. Martin spun on a swivel chair and picked up the phone, and as she nodded urgently, Benjamin glanced over at Miranda. When Mrs. Martin looked back, her expression was somewhere between frustration and anger.
‘I’m afraid we’ve got a problem downstairs that I need to attend to with some haste. Can you wait here for an hour or so?’
‘We have to get to class!’ Miranda protested. ‘We’re missing climbing!’
Mrs. Martin lifted a sharp eyebrow and observed them for a few seconds. ‘Actually, I could do with your help. Do either of you have experience with a vanishing cannon?’
‘You mean, one of those things that makes the—’
Mrs. Martin lifted a hand as she turned away. ‘Yes, yes, those things. I guess you do. Come with me.’
Benjamin, happy to just be going somewhere, asked, ‘What’s the problem?’
‘There’s a blockage in one of the rubbish chutes,’ Mrs. Martin said without looking back. ‘And it’s getting violent.’
6
THE RUBBISH CREATURE
Benjamin was quickly lost in the maze of corridors and stairways, but Mrs. Martin strode along with the purpose of someone who had done this a thousand times before. Miranda was always beside him with a guiding hand whenever he came close to straying, caught askew by Mrs. Martin’s sharp twists and turns. The postmodern glasswork of the main entrance had quickly reverted into stone corridors, as if the admissions division had been tacked on to some ancient ruin, but from time to time, they passed through sections of quaint, lacquered log corridors that perhaps filled gaps created by giant geological fissures. As they walked, Benjamin’s tattered shoes felt alternately warm and then chillingly cold, though he figured best not to dwell too much on the architectural makeup of this wondrous but terrifying place.
‘Here,’ Mrs. Martin said at last, stopping beside a large, wooden closet that had a set of painted levers protruding at chest level. She tugged and depressed them like someone playing an air-clarinet, then the door swung open.
‘We have some unusual locks here,’ Miranda said as way of explanation. ‘It’s not so much to keep people out, but … well, you’ll find out.’
Benjamin wasn’t sure if he ever would, though he didn’t have time to dwell on it as Mrs. Martin thrust a long, vacuum cleaner-like tube into his hands and attached a small box the size of a football to his waist by a strap. It felt warm to the touch.
‘How do I turn it on?’
‘It’s voice-controlled,’ Mrs. Martin said. ‘My voice. You think I’d let a couple of kids loose with these things? Do I look like a complete idiot?’ Before either could respond, she added, ‘Just point it and hold it and you’ll do fine.’
‘Why’s it warm?’ Benjamin asked, worried it might burn him. The substance didn’t feel totally like metal; rather, something molten and viscous but able to dictate its own laws of motion.
‘Don’t ask,’ Mrs. Martin said, and when he glanced at Miranda, she gave him a little smile as if to say, And you thought I was bossy?
Mrs. Martin led them to a thick, oak door which seemed to be vibrating, as the heavy, metal crossbeams were blurred and indistinct. Mrs. Martin cursed under her breath, threw the door open, and led them down a steep set of stone steps illuminated by flickering candles stuck into wooden holders that poked out of the wall. Benjamin wondered who had lit them, how they stayed alight, and why none of them seemed to be melting down, but he figured he might as well just add these questions to his ever-growing list.
At the bottom of the steps, they followed a stone passage that led into a massive chamber stinking of smoke and food waste. A circular stone walkway arced to either side of a wide pit, in which flickered the glow of a deep fire.
‘The incinerator,’ Mrs. Martin breathed, as though it was a personal enemy. ‘Some idiot turned it off.’
Benjamin didn’t have time to wonder what she meant. A thunderous roar echoed from a tunnel on the other side of the pit, this one broken through into an antechamber one level above, as if something large and unstoppable had really wanted to find a way out.
Mrs. Martin, holding her vanishing cannon across her chest like a fumigator off to war with a rat-infested barn, marched straight around the incinerator pit with Benjamin and Miranda hurrying to keep pace.
‘Any idea what’s going on?’ Benjamin whispered.
Miranda gave him a pained smile. In the incinerator’s glow her cheeks shone like red cherries, and her eyes were bright with the thrill of adventure. ‘I don’t need to answer this one,’ she said. ‘Look.’<
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They turned a corner of the collapsed stone tunnel, where something heaving and monstrous lumbered into view. The thing—whatever it was—was an indecipherable conglomerate of rubbish. Crushed boxes flapped like loose skin over crumpled plastic and chunks of metal from old bicycles, refrigerators, gas heaters, garden chairs, musical instruments, clothes horses, and scores of other smaller items all shifting too quickly to be identified.
‘Oi, you!’ Mrs. Martin hollered. ‘I’d like a word, if you please!’
Three lumpy tubes, each the size of a garden shed, swung toward her, rotating around a central lump that had formed into a mouth and eyes. Two massive pillars as wide as a road stumped from side to side as the creature hobbled around in a circle to face them. As it roared, Benjamin gagged at the repulsive wind that stank of kitchen waste. He glanced at Miranda, who was wiping tears out of her eyes.
‘What is it?’ he gasped.
‘It’s made of rubbish,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘When it gets crushed … if they don’t burn it quick enough … it starts to … to reanimate.’
Benjamin stared. Definitely a dream. This had to be. It couldn’t have been anything else. He’d never known a dream to smell so putrid, though. As the creature moved toward them, it knocked aside some crumbling sections of the tunnel wall, and only as they fell did Benjamin realise people were down there, moving the rocks away, attempting to clear up the mess as the monster made it.
‘Who are they?’ he asked. ‘Why aren’t they helping us?’
‘They’re cleaners,’ Miranda said, and Benjamin remembered the sweeper in the Great Hall. ‘They won’t harm their own kind.’
Benjamin had no chance to ask what she meant. Mrs. Martin screamed, ‘Fire!’ and suddenly the thing in his hands hummed with motion, stinging his hands with its heat as a vague, mirage-like blur fired from its wide nozzle and slammed into the creature. The beast howled and tried to turn away, knocking down another section of tunnel wall in the process, but there wasn’t enough room for something of its size to escape. Benjamin stared as pieces of junk and litter peeled off of the creature’s body like shed layers of skin.