by Chris Ward
Benjamin forced a smile, but inside, he was wracked with doubts. ‘How do I know that?’
‘How could it be? If every kid who imagined himself waking up in some Alice-in-Wonderland mystery place actually did so, there wouldn’t be any kids left.’
‘I guess so.’
‘Just hang in there, and you’ll figure everything out.’ Wilhelm shrugged. ‘That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway. Come on, let’s go eat. I go stir crazy cooped up in here, and dinner is the only reason I’ll set foot in that accursed place.’
Crossing the precipice to the main building was just as terrifying as the first time, but stuck in the middle of a line of other kids. Benjamin had no choice but to brave it. There were whoops and cheers as each kid made it to the far door, more of a thrill kind than of absolute fear. Just as he squeezed inside and let out a deep breath, someone screamed, ‘Scatlocks!’, and the line of kids behind him all crouched down in regimented fashion, their arms over their heads as a flock of the fluttering creatures filled the air.
‘Shut the door!’ someone growled beside him, pushing the door out of his hands to slam it shut, and Benjamin realised he had been staring. The older boy glared at him for a few seconds longer, then rolled his eyes and set about taking off his scatlock cape. Benjamin watched through the window until the air had cleared and the rest of the kids resumed their crossing.
‘You have to guard me,’ Wilhelm said as they followed the other kids to the Dining Hall. ‘A couple of teachers have it in for me. Dusty Eaves is one; Captain Roche, the other. I’ve done five spells in the Locker Room, one for a day and a half, but they can’t break me. Whenever they let me out, I go straight back to the dorms and refuse to go to class. I’d stay over there, but breakfast leftovers won’t keep me going all day, will they?’
Having not yet had breakfast, Benjamin wasn’t sure how to answer, so instead he said, ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to just go to class?’
Wilhelm shook his head. ‘Nope. It’s the principle. I didn’t ask to be here, so they’ve got another thing coming if they think I’ll comply. I’m not some dog that will do tricks at a click of their fingers. If I get some straight answers, I’ll think about it, but you know what the truth is?’
‘What?’
Wilhelm leaned close. ‘No one knows what’s going on. None of them. Not even the mighty Grand Lord Bastien himself. I got to meet him, you know. Kind of. He stayed behind a screen so all I could hear was his voice, but he didn’t tell me anything straight up. Just gave me a load of vague answers. They’re only pretending to know what’s going on because knowledge is power and all that, right? If they told us straight out that they have no idea why any of us are here, they’d have no control over us.’
Benjamin was going to point out that they already had no control over Wilhelm, but they had reached the front of the queue, where one of the masked, sunglasses-wearing dinner ladies was scooping brown gunge into a bowl and putting it onto a tray in front of him.
‘Great. Curry night,’ Wilhelm said. ‘A shame it’s not spicy and there’s no meat in it.’
‘Why do they wear sunglasses?’ Benjamin asked as they made their way to a far-corner table.
‘Can’t you guess? They’re reanimated. Do you really want to look at a corpse while it serves your food?’
‘I suppose not.’ Benjamin dipped a piece of lumpy bread into the brown gunge, gave it a sniff, then a tentative bite. It was actually pretty good, even though Wilhelm scowled as though he’d found a cowpat on his plate.
‘You said you’d been in the Locker Room,’ Benjamin said. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s on one of the basement levels, western side of the school. There aren’t any actual lockers, just cubicles for you to sit in. You have to do menial work for a few hours. Kind of like detention. I’d refuse to go, but they’ve cornered me a few times, and those cleaners, they’re stronger than they look. Once you’re in there, you’re stuck.’
‘Can you take me down there? I want to see Miranda.’
Wilhelm rolled his eyes. ‘Can’t you wait until tomorrow? How many cleans did she get? If it was less than five hundred, she’ll be out by the morning.’
‘I want to say sorry for getting her put in there.’
Wilhelm sighed. ‘Okay, but only if you do something for me.’
‘What?’
Wilhelm’s answer came in a rush: ‘Tell Captain Roche you don’t know where I am.’
‘Jacobs!’ boomed a loud voice from behind Benjamin just as Wilhelm ducked down under the table. Captain Roche threaded his way awkwardly through the tables, a task nigh on impossible for a man of his considerable width.
‘Stand up, Master Forrest,’ the captain instructed. ‘Don’t you dare let the little mite escape.’
Benjamin did as he was told. He peered under the table as Captain Roche reached him, but Wilhelm had vanished.
‘Where did he go?’
‘Who?’
‘Your little friend. Tell me the truth, or you’ll be spending your first night in the Locker Room.’
Benjamin peered up at the squat, squinting face. ‘Sir, I honestly have no idea. Did you want him for something?’ Then, unable to resist, he added a little icing to the lie. ‘He talked so highly of you and your classes. I’m sure he’ll be sorry he missed you. Perhaps he went to the bathroom or something? It is curry night, after all.’
Captain Roche glared with his one remaining eye. ‘You just be careful about spending too much time with that little runt,’ he said. ‘I’ll have him scraping the bark off my climbing shoes before the term is out, you mark my words.’
‘I’ll be sure to let him know.’
As the captain scowled and stomped off, Benjamin felt something tug on his ankle. Under the table, Wilhelm appeared to be sticking up out of the floor. Benjamin stared, then realised his roommate had removed a wooden floorboard and slipped down into the space beneath.
‘How did you know that was there?’
‘I made it. It’s the only way I can eat in peace sometimes. The good captain is supposed to eat on third sitting, with the fifth and sixth years, but sometimes he tries to catch me out. Pass down my bowl, will you? Even this dirt starts tasting good when you’re starving.’
‘Here.’
‘Listen, he’s watching for me now. Meet me near the stairs to level four in about fifteen minutes. I’ll show you where the Locker Room is since you helped me hide and all. Go out of the Dining Hall, first left, then first right.’ Wilhelm winked. ‘Enjoy dinner.’
Benjamin couldn’t help smiling. As the floorboard clunked back down, he figured, if he was going to spend the next however long in this bizarre place, it was good at least to have a friend.
13
THE SIN KEEPER
Benjamin had just left the Dining Hall when a bell rang and a voice came over a public address system from a speaker above his head:
‘Captain Roche, Professor Eaves, Mistress Ito, Professor Loane, Doctor Coach, and Mistress Xemian … please assemble at Room one-oh-three on level four at once. Thank you. Repeating message.’
The voice sounded a little like Mrs. Martin’s, but with the amplification, Benjamin couldn’t be sure. He wondered what was going on, but when he reached the rendezvous point Wilhelm had explained, the curly-haired boy jumped out from the shadows of a cleaning closet alcove with a big grin.
‘Did you hear that?’ he said. ‘That’s a roll call of practically every authority in this place, with one notable exception who is supposed to be back by now. Something must be up. But who cares? It means we’ll be able to get down to the Locker Room without worrying about ending up doing any cleans. Let’s go.’
‘How did you get out of the Dining Hall?’ Benjamin asked as Wilhelm led him down a stairwell into the bowels of the school. ‘I thought you got stuck under the floor.’
‘This isn’t just one building,’ Wilhelm said. ‘There’re dozens of them, all built on top of each other, going back hundreds of years. B
uild one: over time it breaks; build it up again. There are whole suites of rooms just lost and abandoned down there. Some of it’s really rather creepy, and some of the guys who live down there … well. On the plus side, it makes it easy to escape from the teachers.’
‘You know,’ Benjamin said, ‘in the hours I’ve been here, every now and again I’ll have this kind of epiphany that this is all a dream, and I’ll wake up in my own bed any minute. Then something else happens, and it just seems all the more real, and as time passes, I get the epiphanies less and less.’
‘Something in the water,’ Wilhelm said. ‘That’s what I reckon. Just don’t forget your family and you’ll see them again, I’m sure.’
‘Do you think about yours a lot?’
Wilhelm turned and looked back. ‘Me? No. Not at all. I don’t have a family. I grew up in an orphanage.’
‘But I thought—’
Wilhelm gave a bitter laugh as he pulled open a heavy, wooden door, holding it aside for Benjamin to slip through. ‘My parents died, or gave me up, I’m not sure. I only have a vague memory of what they even looked like, and I can’t remember much of my early childhood. Even so, that doesn’t mean I want to stay here. The orphanage wasn’t so bad. None of the horrible stuff you read about from time to time. The wardens were all pretty friendly, and the food was way better than it is here.’
‘That’s sad.’
‘About the food? Too right it is.’
‘No, about your family.’
Wilhelm shrugged. ‘Don’t beat yourself up. I got over it ages ago. Made me a little more argumentative, perhaps. At least that’s what my teachers at school always said.’ He winked. ‘I’ll tell you what, if they wanted cooperative pupils here in end-of-the-wherever-we-are, then they made a mistake picking me. That’s why I don’t think you should worry. We’re here at random. I went to sleep in my bunk in the orphanage, and woke up in this really creepy forest inland from the school. I was all tangled up in the roots of a tree, and for some reason, I felt like I’d been there for years and years.’
‘And someone rescued you?’
‘Captain Roche found me. Some people just show up. Others—like yourself—are expected. Don’t ask me how. I was a random. They send out regular search parties looking for new arrivals, as too long wandering about out there with no clue what’s going on will get you in trouble.’ Wilhelm grinned. ‘When Captain Roche showed up, I was terrified. First thing I did when I opened my eyes was call him a monster. He’s hated me ever since.’
‘That’s too bad.’
‘My life here started off bad from the outset. At least you got picked up by Miranda. She’s kind of pretty, if a little sharp around the edges. Ah, here we are.’
The candles replacing the electric lights had thinned out as they descended deeper into basements carved out of solid rock, so the tunnels now became creepy and dark. Through a door up ahead came the sound of machinery.
‘That’s the gatehouse,’ Wilhelm said. ‘If you want to see Miranda, you’ll have to confess to the sin keeper to get into the Locker Room. There’s no other way in or out. Trust me, if there’s one person—or thing—you don’t want to mess with in this place, it’s the sin keeper.’
‘What kind of confession?’
‘A personal one. The teachers usually give you a card or call the sin keeper so he anticipates your arrival. If you’re a rat like me, you’ll get something brutal like a thousand cleans. But if it’s personal, you can get away with ten or fifteen. It won’t take long, and you’ll have a chance to talk to Miranda.’
Benjamin spread his hands. ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘Oh, too late. He here comes. Tell him you didn’t try hard enough on your homework or something.’
The patter of running feet behind him signified Wilhelm’s disappearance as the door up ahead flew open, the light behind framing a metal-clad man in a fedora-style hat.
‘You have come to confess a sin?’ rattled a metallic voice that sounded like a gust of wind ripping through a metal tube at an incredible velocity.
Benjamin’s first instinct was to follow Wilhelm’s retreat, but as the man came closer, his feet refused to move. The man’s legs and feet, arms and hands were covered by a metal armour plating. His body was a crimson red waistcoat of chainmail with strips of black metal that made a shirt around the sin keeper’s waist which rustled as he walked. The hat, Benjamin now realised, was not a fedora but a helmet, one with a central crown and sloping sides to protect the wearer’s ears and neck. By far, the most fearsome part of the sin keeper’s costume, though, was the face mask. Benjamin remembered a kid from school who had collected model soldiers from around the world, and one he had brought into class had resembled this. A Japanese Samurai, with a mask designed to terrify the wearer’s opponents. Now, the snarling mouth and pointed teeth of a red-skinned demon approached him, hollows where eyes should have been—
‘What is your confession, boy?’
The mouth didn’t move and there were no eyes inside the red-and-gold-rimmed sockets. Benjamin gaped. There was no one inside the armour at all. The sin keeper was the reanimated armour itself, and his voice was the whistle of air through his hollow body cavity.
The curved Samurai katana that he drew from his belt in a sudden swift motion was certainly real, though.
‘Confess, or be struck down where you stand!’
‘My math homework!’ Benjamin screamed. ‘I only got a B plus! I wanted an A! I need to work harder! I’m a lazy, lazy boy!’
The sword hung in the air for a moment longer, then the sin keeper replaced it into the scabbard on his belt.
‘Your punishment?’
In his panic, Benjamin tried to remember what Wilhelm had told him. Something about cleans, whatever they were. A low number.
‘Ten isn’t enough!’ he shouted, thumping a hand against his stomach for dramatic effect. ‘I should do fifteen!’
The sin keeper crossed his hands over his metal chest plate. Several other weapons hung at his waist, deterring any thoughts of escape. Benjamin counted three knives, a crossbow, and something with a spiked head that looked very unpleasant indeed.
‘Locker Number Four,’ the sin keeper said.
14
PUNISHMENT
Beyond the door guarded by the sin keeper, who stood just inside on a little pedestal, looking for all the world like a harmless suit of Samurai armour, ran a row of covered cubicles, each with a small door that rose only to the average person’s chest, and each with a number on the side. On the other side was an arm’s-length-wide conveyor belt that appeared out of the wall, then disappeared into the wall again just in front of the entrance. Sliding past came a random assortment of items, from cups and bowls to shoes, little toys, and even books.
The sounds of activity came from several of the cubicles. Benjamin was just wondering where he would find Miranda, when the door of Locker Seven opened. The girl’s head appeared as she turned to place something on the floor outside the cubicle—a bucket filled with random objects—but before Benjamin could wave to her, a door at the far end of the Locker Room opened and one of the strange, dead cleaners entered. The man lurched to the bucket, picked it up, and carried it back through the door.
‘Don’t stare.’
Benjamin jumped. The door was still open and Miranda stood watching him, her sunset-coloured hair tied back into a pony-tail.
‘What are you doing here?’
Benjamin glanced back toward the sin keeper.
‘Don’t worry, he won’t move unless you try to escape before you complete your cleans. Did you get punished for something?’
Benjamin shook his head. ‘I came to see you.’
Miranda frowned. ‘What for? What’s the point of us both being down here?’
‘I wanted to say I’m sorry.’
Miranda’s eyes narrowed as if she were preparing to attack, then she relaxed. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It’s not the first time I got sidetracked.’
> ‘I’m not quite sure what you’re doing down here, but I’m sorry for whatever it is.’
Miranda smiled. ‘How did you get in?’
‘Wilhelm helped me. He told me I had to confess.’
‘That little punk. He’s your roommate, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t get too close to him. He breaks all the rules so they add on ten cleans to everything we get punished for as a kind of warning. Professor Eaves has threatened him with ten thousand for when he next catches him. The sin keeper knows it. That’s a week sleepover. They bring your meals down from the Dining Hall, but I heard it’s just slops scraped off all the unfinished plates.’
‘Oh, yuck. That sounds awful.’
Miranda nodded. ‘Godfrey and his mates always lick their plates just in case.’
A few cubicles farther along, the door opened and a tall boy Benjamin hadn’t seen before leaned out. ‘Hey, shut up over there! Some of us are trying to concentrate so we can get back upstairs before breakfast!’
‘Buzz off, Derek, you clown,’ Miranda snapped. ‘If you’re lucky, Godfrey’s underpants will come past in a minute. You wouldn’t want to miss out. You want them clean for next time you kiss his butt, don’t you?’
The tall boy scowled, but before he could reply, Miranda pulled Benjamin into her cubicle. She closed the door behind her, and Benjamin found himself in a tiny room with a single flickering candle on a table just in front of the conveyor belt moving past the open far end. Attached to the wall on the left was a rack of sprays and brushes. There was only one chair, so Benjamin sat down on the floor next to a pile of stacked buckets.