The cowboy scratched his stubble thoughtfully. ‘Well, I reckon I can let it go fer now, but I’ll be watchin’ you varmints, you best think on that, hear?’
Teddy nodded, and, after being nudged in the ribs, so did Joseph. The cowboy turned to head back to his posse.
As he passed me, I couldn’t help asking, ‘Why are you here anyway? Are you zombie cowboys or something?’
He chuckled. ‘No, miss, jest regular old cowpokes. We used to run pop culture back in the fifties. The Lone Ranger, John Wayne, Woody’s Round-Up … cowboys were the kings of the range. We might not be fancy su-pee-nat’ral critters like these other folks, but maybe kids are tired of goblins and ghoulies. Maybe The Reshuffle will put us back on top this time. Gotta be worth turnin’ up to see, ain’t it?’
That made as much sense as anything else round here, so I wished him good luck and turned my attention to my one and only love. ‘Where the heck have you been? I’ve been looking everywhere for you!’
‘I was watching events unfold from a safe distance, like you should be! In fact, why are you here at all? Didn’t we agree that you would remain locked in your house until further notice?’
‘No, we didn’t “agree” that, you decided. You might be trapped in the body you had in 1997, but your attitudes should have moved on. I make my own decisions, you chauvinist pig!’
Teddy looked shocked by my outburst, and I immediately relented. ‘Sorry I shouted, my darling. You do still love me, don’t you?’
Teddy rushed to embrace me, and I froze in his cold, hard arms. We were together again, and nothing would ever tear us apart.
Kristina tugged at my sleeve. ‘Um, guys? I think we’ve been spotted.’
I looked up, and saw the massed ranks of supernatural entities advancing on our small group of interlopers. Teeth were bared, claws were raised, horns were sharp looking. Maybe I’d spoken too soon on the ‘never being torn apart’.
The lead mummy was eyeing me hungrily. ‘She is here! Our prophecy says she will join us. Did anyone remember to bring the spare bandages?’
A blue-haired punk screamed in response: ‘No, our prophecy says she will join us, and banshees will rule supreme once more!’
A zombie stretched his grasping hands towards me. ‘Our prophecy says her brains are tasty.’
The blond vampire shrugged. ‘You lot can do what you flamin’ well like, as long as we don’t get stuck with her. Our prophecy says she’s trouble.’
They were almost upon us now, jostling with each other to get to the front of the crowd. I wondered what the collective noun for supernatural fiends was. An abomination? A stench? A malaise?
Teddy stood in front of me to shield me from the approaching horde. His face betrayed uncertainty. There were so many of them, maybe more than even he could handle, with all his violent energies. We backed away. This wasn’t exactly the climax I’d had in mind. But hey, at least I was the center of attention for once, instead of being cruelly ignored. That was something. I clutched Teddy’s hand tightly.
A thin, reedy voice squeaked loudly from behind us. ‘Cease this foolishness.’
The creatures gasped as one, and dropped to their knees, eyes towards the floor. Teddy and Joseph had done the same. I turned round and found myself staring into the face of death.
By which I mean a skeleton. An unusually short one.
He was standing in the open doorway of the arcade, holding a roll of quarters in one hand and an ornately carved stone chest under his fleshless arm. He was at least six inches shorter than I was, about the height of a twelve-year-old. His empty, black eye sockets stared at me from behind thick-lensed spectacles. I could see the flashing lights of the arcade games through the slender ribs of his puny chest.
Why had the sudden entrance of this skeletal nerd had such an effect on the throng of monsters around us? A few moments ago, the whole crew had been vying with each other for the privilege of dismembering me, but now all eyes were on this scrawny dead kid. I had deeply mixed feelings about this development. Before I could suggest that we return to the matter in hand, namely me, Teddy grabbed my hand to drag me back.
‘Give him room. Show some respect to the Codex Master.’
The peculiar figure slipped the roll of quarters into the pocket of his neatly pressed jeans and raised his left arm high above his head. A ripple of excited murmurs passed through the crowd.
‘Silence!’ he commanded.
For a few seconds, there was utter stillness, the ranks of zombies, ghouls and assorted unspeakable entities from beyond time and space frozen in a ghastly tableau vivant. Or not so vivant. The faint beeping of the Codex Master’s digital watch broke the silence. Twelve beeps. Midnight. The time of The Reshuffle had arrived. Unlike the canapés.
‘You all know why we are here, my sinister siblings. But for the benefit of the inattentive who would otherwise have to skip back to Chapter 15, here is a brief recap. Once in a generation, we gather: the tribes of the terrifying, the families of the phantasmagorical, the, er, clans of the creepy. We gather here for the night of The Reshuffle. On this night, the Codex will be reordered, and the supernatural hierarchy forever changed.
‘Each tribe has worked to recruit disciples, and they have given you strength. Now you will be judged, and the strongest creatures will reign supreme. Popular culture will bow before them. Blockbuster movies, TV shows, bestselling books, ubiquitous merchandise – to the victors all these things will be granted. The humans will worship you, and their passion will sustain you while your less fortunate cousins are fighting among themselves for guest appearances on Supernatural.’
A shudder of horror went through the crowd at the mention of this terrible outcome. The Codex Master took the stone chest from beneath his arm and held it out reverently. ‘The Chest of the Codex.’
He opened the chest, and withdrew a black velvet bag. From the bag, he took out a deck of cards, and fanned them out before him. Each bore the image of a creature, and below the image I caught a glimpse of what I initially assumed was some sort of mystical incantation. The assembled throng had gasped at the unveiling of the cards, but I was somewhat underwhelmed.
I whispered to Teddy, ‘Seriously? The Codex is a pack of Horror Top Trumps? That silly kids’ game?’
Then it struck me. So that was what the game of trumps in my dream had meant! Far too vague to be of any actual use; thanks for nothing, Stephfordy.
Teddy didn’t answer me, and the look in his electric-blue eyes told me that he too was in awe of the sacred ‘Codex’. Personally, I’d preferred this whole scene before the stupid little Codex Master had shown up. There was a prophecy, about me, which meant everyone was trying to harm me, and Teddy had been about to save me in the beautiful, insanely violent way that he had. And now we were stood around watching a dweeby skeleton do card tricks?
Codex boy shuffled the deck of cards, and pronounced in his reedy voice, ‘Prepare yourselves, my uncanny kin. The first combatant at Reshuffle XIV shall be …’ He drew a card from the pack. ‘The Missing Link!’
There was a strange, half-gargled whoop from somewhere at the back of the crowd, and then the sound of someone or something apologetically forcing its way to the front. After a moment, a weird green creature stepped out of the crowd, waving its arms above its head. I couldn’t tell precisely what it was: it had yellow eyes, large reddish lips and something like gills on the sides of its neck. Some kind of sea demon, perhaps.
It took up a position to the left of the Codex Master, who announced, ‘The Missing Link has fought at every Reshuffle since his debut in 1954, but has never made it past the second round. He is 5’ 11” tall, has a Fear Factor of 37, and is allergic to harpoons. Give him a round of applause!’
The crowd obliged. I sensed the excitement building. The Codex Master drew the second card. ‘And he will be facing off against the Invisible Man!’
The audience was still, listening for any telltale sound of an invisible presence among us. The silence event
ually became awkward and the Codex Master asked, ‘Has anyone seen the Invisible Man recently?’
‘Maybe he’s still lying low because of Hollow Man 2, I know he was real embarrassed about that one,’ one of the vampires suggested.
‘Oh well, we’ll give him a minute. Invisible Man? Are you there, Invisible Man? Could someone throw some paint or something in the air? No? No Invisible Man. Okay, well, in that case, I hereby declare the Missing Link to be the scariest, you’re through to round two!’
The green sea beast clasped his webbed hands above his head and gurgled incoherently with pleasure. There was some polite applause, but I could feel a hint of dejection in the crowd’s muted response. The Codex Master tried to lift the mood by pressing on with the draw for the second bout.
‘First card, here we go. It’s werewolves! They’ve got one of the best records of any entity. They won Reshuffles V, IX and X. They’re popular, they’re experienced, they have a Fear Factor of 92, let’s hear it for … the werewolves!’
There was wild applause now; clearly the werewolves were one of the main attractions. The crowd parted to let them through, and a large group of giant man-wolves was soon gathered in the open space before the Codex Master. I saw Joe among them and gave him an encouraging wave. ‘Go on, Joe, tear them to shreds, werewolves rule, aawwoooo!’
Teddy frowned at me, but I ignored him. Joe was my friend, and I wanted him to shred his opponents like they were confidential documents.
‘And the werewolves will be fighting …’ The Codex Master paused dramatically. ‘The vampires!’
My breath caught in my throat. Werewolves fighting vampires? Joe versus Teddy? Victory or death? I grasped Teddy’s arm tightly, begging him not to step forward. He looked at me and I saw utter resolution in his bright yellow eyes. He shifted away from me and I whimpered, ‘No, Teddy, don’t …’ But before he could step into the circle, the blond vampire addressed the Codex Master.
‘Before we start, let’s be clear on one thing. Little Teddy there and his weirdo dad ain’t proper vampires, okay? They’ve betrayed our most sacred beliefs, with their trendy colored clothes and their stupid nonsense about “vegetarianism”, so they won’t be fighting with us. We’re vampires – undefeated in three Reshuffles, Fear Factor 97 – and we don’t want to be dragged down by that pair of mimsy ponces. All right by you, chief?’
The Codex Master nodded, and Teddy’s shoulders slumped.
‘I don’t think you’re mimsy, don’t listen to the nasty cockney vampire,’ I reassured him.
The vampires gathered on the other side of the circle to the werewolves, and they began to hiss at their slavering opponents. It was only the second bout of the contest, but everyone knew that the winner of this fight was likely to be the eventual champion. The Codex Master held his hand up, let it fall, and the battle began.
The combatants stood in the light of the crescent moon, each group assessing the strength of the other. The werewolves were bigger, and naturally more powerful, but the vampires outnumbered them. They seemed confident. I knew from what Joe had told me that the werewolves had made very little effort to recruit support for their cause, but the vampires had been planning for this moment for months, recruiting a vast army of impressionable teenagers to their unholy goth cause. Now the power of all those black T-shirts and bad poems about suicide was theirs to draw on.
The blond one shouted, ‘Right, you lot, let’s bloody have the wankers!’ and then both sides charged. I struggled to follow the fight as it unfolded, but at least I wasn’t unconscious this time, which was some sort of progress.
The werewolves lashed out at the vampires with their sharp claws. The vampires moved with the unfathomable speed that Teddy had demonstrated when he’d revealed himself to me in the playground all those weeks ago. They became a blur, leaping and dodging around the wolves, always moving just a whisker faster than their opponents’ mighty jaws. They attacked the beasts in pairs, one drawing attention while another tried to pounce from behind. The other creatures shouted, groaned and ululated their encouragement, and the noise of the crowd quickly became overwhelming.
Then, a vampire succeeded in leaping onto the back of a werewolf, and the giant beast rolled over and over as it tried to shake it off. In its frenzy, it tossed itself into the circle of spectators, and I saw Wanda and Chip crushed beneath its flailing body. The werewolf righted itself and returned to the fray. The crowd closed around where Chip and Wanda had been standing, and I saw them no longer.
This was terrible. Teddy and I were standing on the sidelines, while our friends got to suffer tragic fates center stage. I looked for Joe and found him, too, in the thick of the action. He had a vampire pinned to the ground with one of his massive paws, and I watched as he bit its head clean off. I struggled to process what I was seeing; the Joe Cahontas I knew was such a mellow dude. About half a dozen vampires pounced on Joe then, and he fought to hold them back, lashing out with every pointy appendage at his disposal. One of his adversaries managed to get behind him, slashing at his hind legs. Joe staggered, trying hard to stay upright.
I couldn’t take this any more. I couldn’t stand by watching these ghastly events unfold. I looked at Teddy, who knew what was on my mind before I could even speak.
‘I can’t, Heffa,’ he said helplessly. ‘The Codex Master told me not to fight.’
Maybe the blond vampire had been right, after all; that was a bit mimsy, considering what was going on here. Well, the Codex Master didn’t forbid me from doing anything. I broke free from Teddy’s grip, and dashed into the heart of the story.
‘Stop!’ I screamed, channeling the power of a thousand blazing arguments with my mother. My voice rang out strong and clear, and I felt sure that the grappling fiends could hear me, even if they did continue killing each other. ‘You can’t do this! It’s wrong! You’re all here fighting to the death for some sort of silly supernatural supremacy, but look around you, people are getting hurt. You’ve all forgotten what’s really important.’
The members of the audience looked at each other with a hint of shame on their faces. I had their attention now. The fighting began to die down as here and there the vampires and werewolves started to listen too.
‘Me. I’m what’s really important. Not this stupid Reshuffle business. It started out very promisingly, I’ll grant you that. I arrived, and you were all talking about me, and my place in your prophecies. Great, love that: Heffa Lump finally gets the attention she deserves. But then Codex boy turns up, and you forget all about me. Do your ancient prophecies mean so little?
‘And then, when the fighting starts, I’m not even involved. I’m left standing around narrating, doing my best to describe what’s going on, which is really hard, actually. I wish Stephfordy hadn’t put in this stupid action scene, or I’d got banged on the head and slept through it all. Narrating fights is difficult, and I hate it!’
I stamped my foot for emphasis. The ghoulish mob was paying complete attention to me now, which was just as well. I was only getting started.
‘My boyfriend doesn’t get to fight either, even though he’s been in loads of fights already, and he’s really good at fighting. I wanted him to get involved, because it makes me feel all nice and gooey when he kills things, but – oh no – he’s not good enough to take part in your special Reshuffle.
‘Then my stupid friends, Wanda and Chip, get a really cool death scene, squashed underneath that rampaging werewolf. And my fallback boyfriend Joe is fighting, and it looks like he’s going to get beaten, though I just know he was going to come back and win. But then he’d look really heroic, and Teddy would look even more pathetic than he already does, and I don’t like that idea either.’
One of the zombies groped his arm skywards and groaned, ‘Look, the moon!’ but I ignored his attempt to distract me.
‘And while we’re on the subject, this whole Reshuffle has really messed me around. I haven’t had a proper chapter with school lessons in for ages. I’m supposed to
be here to learn to be more mature, and all you stupid zombies and things are spoiling it. It’s not fair.
‘And it’s my birthday today, actually, which I never mentioned because you were all so busy, but it would have been nice if one of you had remembered …’
I paused for breath. I would need a good lungful before I started on the story of how horrible my mom was to me at my seventh birthday party.
But something strange had happened while I’d been sharing. The monsters had all looked away from me (which I would have something to say about in a minute) and were looking up. At the moon. I allowed my gaze to follow. The moon was still crescent-shaped, but now the horns of the crescent were pointing straight down, as if the moon had shifted in space, rotating through ninety degrees. The moon was making a sad face!
Teddy was standing beside me. He spoke to the assembled throng: ‘Do you see the sky? It is the sign of the New Moan, just as the prophecy foretold!’
There was a collective intake of breath, followed by frenzied murmuring. I had no idea exactly what the New Moan was, but it seemed to mean something to the vampires, zombies and banshees who were suddenly discussing it enthusiastically.
The Codex Master spoke: ‘It is just as the cowardly vampire says. The prophecy speaks of the coming of the New Moan, a creature so overwhelmingly powerful that none can stand against it. Or possibly, stand to be in the same room as it, the translations vary. Regardless, you all witnessed the sign in the heavens, and the spectacular outburst of childish petulance of a few moments ago. There can be no doubt. This human, Heffa Lump, is the New Moan.’
He pointed at me with a bony appendage. I still wasn’t sure where this was going, but everyone was looking at me, and their expressions were far less hungry than I had gotten used to, so I was happy to go with the flow.
‘The New Moan has become the center of the universe. Whomsoever the New Moan chooses to support, her power shall be added to their tally, and their victory in The Reshuffle is guaranteed. There is no need for further conflict; only her choice matters now. Choose, Heffa Lump, thy will be done.’
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