by Derek Landy
The Dead Men took their hands from their guns. They’d been alive long enough to know when they were beaten, and they had enough wisdom between them to know there was no shame in it. Sometimes the cards flipped right, and sometimes they didn’t.
At Pleasant’s nod, they got back on their horses. The Necromancers began to file into the cave, and the wall of shadows became little more than black smoke in the wind. Finally, there were just Pleasant and the Necromancer left standing there.
“What’s your name?” Pleasant asked.
That smile again. “Cleric Solomon Wreath, at your service,” said the Necromancer. He even gave a little bow.
“Mr Wreath, today you have prevented me from doing my duty.”
“On the contrary, I have prevented you from exacting your revenge.”
“Which amounts to the same thing. I won’t forget this.”
“I don’t expect you to,” said Wreath, but Pleasant had already turned his back on him.
That night they rested their horses by a stream and didn’t talk a whole lot.
Pleasant sat by himself, looking out into the darkness. To say he had a peculiar anger would of course be something of an understatement, but a peculiar anger it was, as it wasn’t the sort any normal folk could understand. It was a slow-burning heat, capable of firing up at a whim, but never in any danger of puttering out. It kept him. It sustained him. Maybe there was even a part of him that was glad Serpine had wormed his way free.
As long as the man who’d killed him and his family was alive, somewhere out there across the dark plain, Pleasant had a reason to fight, a reason to keep putting one foot in front of the other. But kill the killer, and what was left? Something cold and uncertain. Could be he hung on to what he had – his hate, his anger, his job – because hanging on was all he had. The war was coming to an end. His time as a soldier was coming to an end.
What then? Was there something else out there, something he had yet to discover, that could keep him going when he’d used up everything else? Some thing or some person that would give him a purpose again, that would light a different kind of fire within him?
Most likely, he didn’t know. He probably didn’t care to think that far ahead.
The Dead Men slept. But not Skulduggery Pleasant.
No, Skulduggery Pleasant just hung on, waiting.
Because it was all he had.
ell may well be other people,” Gordon Edgley muttered as they entered the ballroom, “but if you’re looking for an everlasting purgatory of snide remarks and bitter snipes, look no further than other writers.”
The costumed guests mingled and laughed, sipped champagne and wine and plucked tasty but pointless canapés from the trays of passing waiters. A string quartet played from the darkened gallery, as if they’d been shunted to one side to make room in the light for the chosen few. And the chosen few they really were; invitations to Sebastian Fawkes’s parties were rarer than an honest coin in a politician’s pocket.
That wasn’t a bad line, actually, Gordon realised. Needed work, but it had potential.
“Invitations to these parties are rarer than an honest coin in a politician’s pocket,” Gordon said to his companion, and waited for the response. When none came, he frowned, stored the line away and vowed to play around with it later.
He recognised a few of the faces – the moustachioed face, for instance, of R. Samuel Keen, an American whose every book had to have either an unnaturally wise child or a psychic dog. His latest one, which Gordon had tried to listen to as a book on tape before the cassette unspooled in his car, had both. It hadn’t been very good.
He saw Adrian Sykes, a soft-spoken Geordie whose work was fantastically gory and outrageously imaginative. The theme of the party was, as usual, horror, and Sykes had come dressed as one of Clive Barker’s Cenobites, all black leather and hooks. Gordon had met him only once before, and had come away thinking of him as a thoroughly decent person. It was occasionally true to say that the writers of the most disturbing horror stories were among the nicest people you could possibly meet.
There were exceptions, of course. For instance, the gentleman Sykes was chatting to, Edgar Looms, another American, was a man of singular vulgarity. Gordon had first met him ten years earlier, just after Gordon’s first book was published, and since then he had developed quite an abhorrence of the man. Tonight Looms was one of many who had come dressed as Frankenstein’s monster – from the James Whale movie, not the book.
For his first time here, Gordon himself had come as the Creature from the Black Lagoon – a costume he’d had specially created at no little cost. It was worth it, though, even if the flippers made it difficult to walk and the mask made it difficult to see, hear or breathe. It also made it difficult to be heard, which may have explained why his companion hadn’t responded to his politician line.
Gordon leaned in closer, careful not to topple over in his costume, and said, quite loudly and clearly, “Invitations to these parties are rarer than an honest coin in a politician’s pocket.”
His companion, dressed as he was in a 1930s suit and tie, his head covered in bandages exactly like Claude Rains from The Invisible Man, turned slightly, so that Gordon could see his own costume’s reflection in those sunglasses.
“Are you having a stroke?” Skulduggery Pleasant asked. “You keep repeating the same phrase. Is it hot in there? It looks hot.”
“It is,” Gordon admitted. “But I’m not having a stroke. I’m too young. I’m only thirty-five, for God’s sake. Though I may start hallucinating, and thirst will likely become an issue before too long.”
“How do you take the mask off?”
“I’m not entirely sure. It took two people to get me into this thing. They probably told me how to take it off, but the mask makes it hard to hear properly.”
Skulduggery said something.
Gordon leaned in again. “What?”
“I said what about toilet breaks?”
“I hadn’t thought of that. Can you see a zip anywhere?”
“It looks rather seamless.”
“Damn it. And now I want to pee. I didn’t before you brought it up, but now I can feel how full my bladder is. Oh dear God. If I wet myself in front of all these writers, they’ll never let me live it down.”
Skulduggery nodded. “Writers are small-minded like that.”
A waiter came over. Gordon went to wave him away, but his huge flipper hand caught the edge of the serving tray and sent glasses of champagne flying. Even before they’d crashed to the ground, Gordon was spinning on his heels and lurching awkwardly away.
Skulduggery fell easily into pace beside him. “It’s hard to look innocent when you’re the Creature from the Black Lagoon.”
“I suppose that’s the one advantage of this mask,” Gordon responded. “Nobody knows who I am.”
“Gordon Edgley!”
Gordon had to turn his whole body to look round at whoever had called his name. She came out of the crowd like a bespoiled vision in mint green – 1960s skirt and sweater, her blonde hair tied up, scratches all over her face, and attached to her jacket half a dozen plastic birds.
“Tippi Hedren,” Gordon said at once, smiling even though she couldn’t see it.
“What gave it away?” Susan said, standing on tiptoes to kiss both cheeks of his mask. “It was either this or Grace Jones from Vamp, which would have raised a lot more eyebrows, believe me. Who’s your friend?”
Susan was a typical upstate New Yorker – talking a mile a minute.
“This is my associate, Mr Pleasant,” Gordon said. “Mr Pleasant, may I introduce Susan DeWick, author of the Chronicles of the Dead series.”
“Mr Pleasant,” Susan said, shaking Skulduggery’s gloved hand. “How delightfully formal we suddenly are.”
“Miss DeWick, it is a genuine pleasure to meet you,” Skulduggery responded, his voice beginning to work on her already. “I’ve been a fan ever since Gordon recommended you. Your latest book is one of y
our best.”
“Oh, you’re just saying that because it’s true,” Susan said, and laughed. She looked back to Gordon. “So, Fishface, is this your first time here? I’ve been waiting years for an invitation. When it finally came, I have to admit, I squealed a little. Just a little, mind you, for I am a horror writer, and so I comport myself with absolute solemnity at all times.”
“Oh, naturally,” Gordon said, really wishing he wasn’t wearing a stupid mask. “When did you get to London?”
“Wednesday,” she said. “I thought travelling all this way for a silly costume party would have appalled my dear late mother, but my dad insists that even she had heard of Sebastian Fawkes and the extravagant bashes he throws. The who’s who of the horror elite, all in one place. Kind of gives you an illicit little thrill, doesn’t it? Mr Pleasant, are you a writer also? I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the name…”
“I am a mere reader,” Skulduggery said. “Gordon allows me to help him with his research and in return I live out my writer fantasies vicariously through him.”
“Oh, I like a man with writer fantasies,” Susan said, flashing him a smile.
Gordon felt the sudden need to step between them, but doubted he could manage it dressed like a big fish-monster.
A heavily bearded Wolfman swooped upon Susan, nuzzling her neck, and she laughed and allowed herself to be dragged away. She looked back before vanishing into the crowd, but Gordon didn’t know if she was looking at him, or Skulduggery.
“She’s nice,” Skulduggery said.
Gordon made a noise that sounded like agreement.
“She looks a little like Grace Kelly.”
“Now listen here,” Gordon said, “I didn’t invite you to this thing so that you could sweep Susan DeWick off her feet. If anyone is going to be sweeping her off her feet, it’ll be me, in a fitting homage to the Gill-man and Julie Adams. Admittedly, it won’t be easy. Co-ordination is not what this suit was designed for, and I do have a bad back, and all this heat is making me feel quite weak so I may pass out and drop her, but just the same—”
“No sweeping her off her feet,” Skulduggery said, clearly amused. “You have my word. Besides, why would I antagonise a friend who has taken me to the first party I’ve been to in years?”
“You have the Requiem Ball, don’t you?”
“Full of sorcerers talking about Sanctuary business,” Skulduggery said, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. “It’s an evening of carefully chosen words and awkward silences, where nobody wants to mention the name Nefarian Serpine in case I suddenly get it into my head to kick down his door and kill him. As if that thought isn’t constantly swirling through my head as it is. No, Gordon, you have brought me to a proper party, of mortals. Of mortal writers, no less. This is beyond wonderful. This is just what I’ve been looking for.”
“Well, I’m glad,” said Gordon. “We weren’t supposed to bring guests, but I did suspect that you might appreciate it. And if Fawkes finds out and banishes me to the horror wilderness for the rest of my career, it will have been worth it to pay you back, in some small way, for everything you’ve done for me.”
“Why, Gordon, I never noticed this before, but you are such a sentimental fool.”
Gordon laughed. “Indeed I am, my friend, and proud of it.”
The lights suddenly dimmed and the string quartet stopped playing as a spotlight fell upon a balcony high above, on which stood their host for the evening. Sebastian Fawkes was tall and thin with high, narrow cheekbones. His black hair was shot through with startling streaks of silver, as was his goatee beard. Even his eyebrows, arched to perfection, each had a slash of silver. Apart from the Dracula costume he wore, he looked, Gordon realised, exactly like his author photo from twenty years ago. The crowd fell into a deep and respectful hush.
“Horror,” Fawkes said, casting his gaze down upon the room. He had a deep, musical quality to his voice that made him sound like an English Vincent Price. “Fear. Dread. These are the commodities in which we trade. In return for the devotion of our readers, we conjure for them the stuff of nightmares.”
He paused, allowing his words to permeate the air. A tad melodramatic, but Gordon didn’t mind melodrama every now and then – just as long as it didn’t get too pretentious.
“We are the dark guardians of the soul,” Fawkes continued. “The new millennium is a mere twelve years away, and we stand between Scylla and Charybdis to hold back the tide of apathy and indifference that threatens, even now, to engulf us all. We offer glimpses into madness, we bring their hands close to the black fires of terror… and then we guide them, safely, back to the light. Ours is a noble calling.
“Where once we would have sat round the campfire telling our stories, now we sit at our typewriters or our word processors. The world is our campfire now – but while you may think we have banished our demons with our modern technologies, with our VCRs and our CD players and our MTV, they still lurk, out there, in the dark. And we are their hunters.”
He bowed his head and the ballroom erupted in applause. Gordon clapped his webbed hands along with everyone else, glad that he was wearing a fish-mask so no one could see him cringe.
Fawkes motioned for silence. “And here we are, gathered together on this most special of nights. A lot of you have been here before. A lot of you already stand within the inner circle. You know the secrets. You have reaped the rewards.”
A low murmur rippled through Fawkes’s audience. People were nodding and smiling softly.
“But others are here tonight for the very first time,” Fawkes continued. “They stand on the cusp of enlightenment. They stand on the edge of wonder. We have seven uninitiated writers among us, writers who have proven their worth, who are ready to be welcomed into our… family.”
Fawkes chuckled at the word, and the guests laughed along with him. Gordon didn’t know what the hell he was talking about any more.
“But all that is still to be revealed,” said Fawkes. “For now, eat, drink, talk, laugh… be merry. And give me a hip hip hooray for horror. Hip hip…”
“Hooray!”
They did that three times in all, and Gordon could only blink at the sudden shift in tone.
Fawkes gave a wave, everyone clapped, and the lights came back on. A few moments later, Fawkes made his entrance into the ballroom and the string quartet started up again.
Skulduggery looked at Gordon. “The man’s an idiot.”
Gordon nodded. “He does seem to be idiotic.”
“I never liked his books. Maybe he’s improved with age, but his early work is derivative with definite signs of pretention. And look, he’s coming this way. This will be a wonderful opportunity for me to make like the character I’ve come as, and disappear.”
Skulduggery moved backwards into the crowd, and by the time Gordon shifted his position to look around, he was gone.
The mask was ridiculous. He seized it with both hands, squeezed and pulled, and only managed to shift the eyeholes around to his ear. Now he couldn’t see anything.
“Help,” he said. He reached out and heard a crash. Another tray of drinks bites the dust. He stepped back, bumped into someone, heard the unmistakable intake of breath that accompanies a well-dressed lady spilling wine down the front of her dress. “Terribly sorry,” Gordon said, spinning quickly, hitting someone else and getting a muffled curse in response.
Suddenly there was a steadying grip on his arms, and he heard Susan DeWick say, “Hold on there, Fishface. You’re leaving a trail of destruction in your wake.”
“My head’s on sideways,” he explained.
“I can see that. Want me to take it off?”
“If you wouldn’t mind,” said Gordon. “Thank you.”
He felt her hands take hold of the mask. She twisted and pulled and fiddled, and just when Gordon’s claustrophobia was closing in on him, she yanked the Creature’s head off. Air rushed in, cooling the sweat on his forehead, and he gasped, laughed and ignored the glares he was
getting from the people around him.
“You’re a lifesaver,” he said, and Susan laughed and handed him back the mask.
“I couldn’t watch you flail about any longer,” she said. “It was funny, sure, but also kind of sad and pathetic.”
“Sad and pathetic are two of my most charming traits.”
Susan smiled, a wicked look in her eye, but her response was curtailed by the arrival of Sebastian Fawkes.
“Susan,” Fawkes said, kissing her hand, “it is so good to see you again. I’m sure it’s been said already tonight by men more charming than I, but you look simply ravishing. Tippi Hedren, yes?”
“Got it in one,” Susan replied. “Thank you so much for the invitation, by the way. I was just telling Gordon here how much of an honour it is to be at one of your Halloween parties.”
“Ah, yes, Gordon Edgley,” said Fawkes, shifting his gaze and holding out his hand. “Very good to meet you.”
“Likewise,” said Gordon, smiling broadly as he removed one of his gloves. The handshake that followed was unsatisfying and dry. “I’ve loved your books since I was old enough to read,” he said. “I don’t wish to embarrass you, but you’ve been a huge influence on my own work.”
“Have I?” Fawkes said. “I haven’t read your books so I wouldn’t know if I’m supposed to be flattered or insulted.” He laughed. Susan laughed, too, but it was hesitant and accompanied by a frown. “And how are your sales, Gordon? Robust, I hope?”
“I can’t complain.”
“Well, you could,” said Fawkes, “but who would listen, eh? Sales can always be better, can’t they? It still astonishes me, even to this day, the kind of tripe that sells. Are you one of these exponents of splatterpunk that I’ve been hearing about lately? Writers who value vulgar gore over genuine chills?”