“I wouldn’t count myself as such, no.”
“Dreadful stuff. No finesse to their writing. Violence and bloodshed in graphic detail. Where’s the character? Where’s the theme? Where’s the nuance? Cheap shocks, cheap thrills. Blood spills, cheap thrills, eh?” He chuckled at his rhyme. “I’m sure you’re successful enough, Gordon. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“Oh? There’s a sales criterion, is there?”
“Oh, absolutely,” said Fawkes. “My associates go through the numbers, pick out the writers who are currently in vogue, like you, writers who sell enough books, and their names go on the list.”
“I feel so special.”
Fawkes’s smile faded a little. “I’m sorry, Gordon? I didn’t quite catch that.”
“I didn’t quite throw it.”
Now Fawkes’s smile was looking decidedly strained. He took a small spiral-bound notebook from his inside pocket, and flipped through it. “Edgley, Edgley… here we are. Gordon Edgley. Writer of, among others, Caterpillars. Oh, dear… was that the book about the killer caterpillars?”
Gordon reddened. “That’s it.”
“The killer caterpillars who eat people?”
“When they swarm, yes.”
“I’m interested – are caterpillars known to swarm?”
“I took… liberties with the science.”
“I can see that,” said Fawkes.
“They’re a mutant strain of caterpillar that feasts on human flesh.”
“Oh dear Lord.”
“I wrote it when I was nineteen,” said Gordon, a touch aggrieved. “It was my first published book.”
“You’re hugely fortunate it wasn’t your last, dear boy. Carnivorous caterpillars, eh? Have you written the sequel yet? Butterflies? Or the prequel? Larvae?”
Gordon ground his teeth. “They’re in the pipeline.”
Fawkes roared with laughter. “Oh, that is brilliant! That is wonderful!”
“Caterpillars is actually an excellent debut,” said Susan, “and it follows in a glorious tradition. You have Herbert’s The Rats, Hutson’s Slugs, Guy N. Smith’s Night of the Crabs, Halkin’s Blood Worm… Caterpillars stacks right up there with the best of them.”
“I’m sure it is esteemed company indeed. I apologise, Gordon, I didn’t wish to insult or belittle you. I’m sure you have enough critics belittling you without me judging you by my own standards.”
Gordon frowned. “That’s an apology?”
“It is nevertheless a pleasure to meet you,” said Fawkes, smiling again, “and thank you for coming. Stick around – I have a feeling it will be a memorable night for you both. If you’ll excuse me…?”
He walked away.
“You’re excused,” Gordon muttered.
Susan looked at him. “Wow.”
“Yes.”
“Wow.”
“So that was Sebastian Fawkes, eh?”
Susan gave a small shrug. “If it’s any consolation, whenever I meet him, he’s lovely to me. Always calls me ravishing.”
“He didn’t call me ravishing.”
“I noticed that.”
“Maybe he has something against Irish people.”
“He probably just hates you,” said Susan.
“I think he’s racist.”
“Are Irish people a race?”
Gordon frowned. “Aren’t we?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Damn. Maybe he just hates me, then. It’s probably because I’m better looking than him.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Susan.
“What? You seriously think he’s better looking than me? He’s old!”
“He looks great.”
“He’s been around forever!”
“Doesn’t look a day over fifty.”
“Fifty is old,” said Gordon sullenly.
“You won’t be saying that when you’re fifty.”
Gordon peered at her, making sure she was telling the truth. “You really think he’s good-looking?”
“I really do.”
“So why does he hate me?”
“I don’t know. Did you sleep with his wife?”
Gordon looked around. “Which one’s his wife?”
Susan laughed. “Hey, I think you’re a great writer, and I loved the hell out of Caterpillars, and every book since just gets better and better, and I’m a ravishing young lady. So who are you going to believe – me or him?”
“Well,” Gordon said, “you do have better taste.”
“See? Now quit your bellyaching and dance with me, you subaquatic fool.”
Gordon stopped drinking halfway through the night. He had a longstanding policy – never drink too much in front of rivals and colleagues. Also never drink too much when you don’t know where the zip is on your costume. That was an important policy, too, but it was a new one, with limited applicability. Still, what these policies allowed him was the chance to stand back and watch as fellow authors got drunk, and the drunker they got, the funnier it all became. Petty jealousies reared their heads. Comments got snippier. Compliments became barbed. There were many backs behind which many things were said. It was all highly amusing.
He started to notice the crowd being thinned. Very slightly at first, with certain people – all at the low end of the pecking order – being escorted into another room. When it was done, the guests had been split into two groups, with Gordon staying in the main ballroom. Walking with his mask tucked under his arm, he searched for Skulduggery, whom he had glimpsed charming various people throughout the night. Surely Skulduggery would not have allowed himself to be escorted away.
Gordon noticed that the music had stopped and, in fact, the string quartet had left. He was about to ask somebody the time when he saw the waiters and waitresses leaving the ballroom, stepping out as if synchronised, and closing the doors behind them.
The conversation died, and all attention was turned to Sebastian Fawkes, standing where the quartet had been playing. He waited for absolute, solemn silence.
“My fellow writers,” Fawkes said, “and here I speak only to the uninitiated… welcome to the darkest of secrets.”
Gordon stifled a groan.
“As writers, it is our solemn duty to take our readers by the hand and lead them down a barely lit path, on either side of which lie perils, waiting in the shadows. This we do out of a sense of duty. Someone has to shine a light into the dark, after all.”
Gordon examined his mask, wondering if he could put it back on by himself. Then maybe he could look as bored as he felt.
“I was approached, years ago, by a being,” Fawkes continued, “an… entity. A man, but… something more than a man. And this being, this magnificent presence, showed me a way to use my talents and be rewarded… not just financially, but also spiritually. Physically. He showed me a way to draw life energy – anguish and pain and emotional suffering – from the hearts and minds of my readers, and to use that energy to keep me successful, young and virile. Behold, Argento.”
OK, now Gordon was deciding he should be paying attention. Had Fawkes just talked about how virile he was? How was that appropriate ballroom conversation? He became aware of someone moving through the crowd. An excited thrill rippled by, utterly failing to thrill Gordon himself. He stood on his tiptoes, but all he saw were the guests parting before a man in a white toga. He was pale and heavily muscled, and brightness seemed to spill out of him, although that may just have been the spotlight that followed his every step.
Fawkes continued talking as the big man in the toga moved gracefully through the room like a body-building angel. “He showed me the symbols to hide in the words on the page, in the arrangement of the letters, the order of the sentences, of the paragraphs. These mystical symbols not only act upon the readers’ subconscious, convincing them to buy multiple copies of my books, but they also draw forth energy, which then flows into me and keeps me young…”
Fawkes smiled beatifically at the people around
him. “Fifteen per cent of which goes to Argento, naturally, with twenty per cent for foreign territories.”
Gordon had gone cold inside his Creature from the Black Lagoon costume. Fawkes was talking here about magic. Real, actual, supposed-to-be-kept-secret-from-mortals magic.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Fawkes said. “I thought it, too. I asked the same questions you’re asking. We all did. Is this right? Is this fair? But don’t we deserve this, after all we sacrifice for them? As writers? We hold a mirror to the face of society, a scalpel to its dark underbelly… Don’t we deserve a little extra for the depths to which we must plunge?”
Gordon spotted Susan in the crowd, looking mystified.
“You have been invited here tonight so that you may become one of us. So that you may become family. We will share with you the secrets, the symbols you need to put in your books. You will learn the different types of pain, the particular strain of anguish that is most effective. You will be shown how to get your readers to care about your characters so much that when those characters die the readers are traumatised far past the point of tears. You will be instructed on the best way to bombard your readers with emotions, with feelings.”
Susan stepped forward. “So you make your readers suffer, and you draw strength from that?”
“Their pain makes me strong,” said Fawkes, smiling. “And your readers’ pain can make you strong.”
“And you actually believe everything you’re saying?”
“You will believe, too, my dear.”
“Uh-huh,” said Susan. “You said something about draining their life energy. Isn’t that, like, bad?”
“No, not necessarily. Is it exploitative? Yes. But fatalities are few.”
“Fatalities? Are you saying you’ve killed your readers?”
“It is regrettable, obviously. We don’t want to hurt anyone. We’re refining the process even now. Argento is supplying me with new, safer symbols. We want our readers living a long life… so they can keep buying our books!” He chuckled.
Susan looked around. “I don’t get what’s going on here. Are you all this stupid?”
“There’s always one,” Fawkes said, his smile growing sad. “Always one who needs convincing.”
The crowd parted and a gap opened between Susan and Argento.
“I can feel your doubt,” Argento said, his voice soft yet piercing.
“Yeah, no kidding,” Susan replied.
“Doubt, uncertainty… these are feelings laced with a bitter aftertaste. Powerful, in their own way, and made all the more so by the fear that always follows.”
“Uh-huh,” said Susan.
Argento held out his hand. “I will drink from you now.”
Susan gasped, her body sagging, and Gordon tried to push through the tightly packed guests.
Argento’s hand glowed and he closed his eyes. “Delicious,” he said. “Doubt turns to realisation… to the truth… and the truth is a scary thing. Let me taste your fear.”
Susan had gone ashen-white, and still Gordon fought to get to her, and then suddenly there was a cry from above and everyone turned, looked up at the balcony from which Skulduggery had just thrown the spotlight operator. He stood there, looking down at them all.
“Terribly sorry,” he said, “but I’m going to have to bring an end to tonight’s festivities. It’s just… I’m disappointed. I wanted tonight to be special. I’m here with my friend, I’m surrounded by writers and I wanted to talk about books and stories and creativity and I wanted to overhear conversations about social responsibilities and the writer as outcast, but… but instead I get this.
“I get an empathy vampire and a group of idiots who are working with him. And he looks ridiculous. I mean we’re all here dressed up in costumes, I understand that, but he wants you to think that this is how he dresses normally. It’s not. No one dresses like that normally. Why would they? I met a vampire once, an ordinary vampire, who dressed like Lestat. I told him what I’m telling this one – stop reading books about vampires.”
Fawkes cleared his throat and looked at Argento, who stepped forward with a dramatic swish of his toga.
“You talk like you know my kind,” Argento said. “You, who are nothing to me but an insect, would dare stand upon that balcony and attempt to wound me with insults. I am made of sturdier stuff, my friend. I cannot be hurt by words, nor by blade, nor by bullet. I am eternal. I am the night. I am the day. I am forever. And who are you?”
Skulduggery let his sunglasses fall, then clicked his fingers and set fire to the bandages around his head. They went up in a blaze that died as suddenly as it began, revealing the skull beneath. “I’m Skulduggery Pleasant.”
“Oh, hell,” said Argento.
“And you’re under arrest.”
Argento spun on his heels and sprinted away. Skulduggery leaped high into the air, using his magic to boost himself halfway across the ballroom. He landed and gave chase. Argento shrieked.
There was a moment of stunned silence. Then somebody screamed, and the guests surged to the doors, yelling and shouting and tripping over each other. Gordon pushed his way through, catching Susan as she fell. He checked her pulse and her eyes fluttered open.
“That was weird,” she said, sounding drunk. “Did that happen?”
“It did,” said Gordon, making sure she could stand on her own. “Are you OK? Will you be OK here?”
Susan frowned at him. “Where’re you going?”
“I’m going after Fawkes.”
Susan grinned. “I’m fine. You go get him, tiger.”
He nodded, left his mask with her, and ran as fast as his costume would allow. He got to the door, emerged into a narrow corridor. He followed it to an empty kitchen with three doors leading out from it. He chose one at random, ran the length of it, and found Sebastian Fawkes trying to get out of a window.
“You’re going nowhere,” Gordon said.
Fawkes turned. “Edgley,” he said. “What the hell are you doing here? Go away. There are forces at work you cannot possibly fathom.”
“I know all about magic,” Gordon said. “I know about the Sanctuaries and the sorcerers. You’re not the holder of dark secrets. You’re an idiot, and you’re not going to get away with what you’ve done.”
Fawkes stopped trying to get away, and regarded Gordon with new eyes. “I don’t understand why you’re against this. It’s power. It’s success. It’s wealth. And it’s a longer life to enjoy all that. Why won’t you just go along with it?”
“Because you’re hurting your readers,” said Gordon.
“Writers hurt their readers all the time! And the readers love it!”
“This is different. This is torture.”
“Nonsense! How can it be torture, how can it be cruel, if they don’t even know it’s happening? We give them stories, they give us longer life. It’s a fair trade.”
Gordon approached. “So what about the readers who’ve died reading your books? What do you call them?”
Fawkes shrugged. “The learning curve.”
“No. This will not continue.”
Colour rose in Fawkes’s cheeks. “Who are you to stand up to me? I am Sebastian Fawkes! The Telegraph called me the world’s greatest living horror novelist. The New York Times said my work was artfully sublime. My last novel was heralded as a humane, heartbreaking journey through a nightmare landscape and a triumph in form. What awards have you won? What accolades have you gathered? You’re a flavour of the month, easily dismissed, easily forgotten. I am a literary horror novelist. What the hell are you?”
Gordon took a last step towards him. “I’m a storyteller, you pretentious buffoon,” he said and he pushed Fawkes.
Fawkes stared at him, his eyes wide. He pushed Gordon back.
Gordon lost his temper, gave Fawkes an extra-hard push to teach him a lesson.
Fawkes let out a roar and charged. Gordon tried to keep him away, but he was too slow. They collided, and stood there, wrestling. Eve
ry so often, they’d move their feet slightly. There was a lot of grunting.
Fawkes got a hand against Gordon’s face. Gordon squeezed his eyes shut. Fawkes’s palm was crushing Gordon’s lips painfully. Gordon stuck out his tongue and Fawkes snapped his hand away, yelling in disgust. Gordon tried to press his advantage, but the Creature of the Black Lagoon suit was making it difficult. Fawkes stumbled and flailed, and his elbow whacked against Gordon’s chin. Gordon cried out and dropped to his knees, cradling his face. Fawkes stood over him, too out of breath to say anything. Ignoring the pain in his chin, Gordon lunged at Fawkes’s leg, wrapping his hands round the left knee.
Gordon held on as Fawkes cursed and staggered back. He weathered the storm of slaps that fell upon his head. One of them clipped his ear – it really hurt – but he didn’t let go. Fawkes turned, tried to pull his leg free. Gordon’s grip slipped a little, but his fingers tightened again like a vice round Fawkes’s ankle. He was dragged a few centimetres across the floor every time Fawkes took a step.
“Let go of me!” Fawkes screeched.
“No,” Gordon gasped.
Fawkes overbalanced and fell and, like a ninja, except slower and with less co-ordination, Gordon crawled on top of him. He was sweating badly now. The suit was way too hot to fight in. Fawkes struggled, tried to turn over on to his back to push him off, but Gordon let his body go limp, and he lay on top of him.
Fawkes’s breath came in ragged wheezes. “You may…” wheeze, wheeze, “think you’ve…” wheeze, “won, but…” wheeze, “you’ll never,” really long wheeze, “escape.”
Gordon focused all his attention on staying as heavy as possible, and gasped. “Your time is…” gasp, “over, you…” gasp, “you utter…” gasp, “utter nutball.”
“Ar…” wheeze, “… gento will…” wheeze, “tear your soul into…” wheeze, “tiny little bits.”
“Your friend is…” gasped Gordon, “already in handcuffs…” gasp, “and your reign of…” gasp, “terror is at an…” gasp, “end.”
Fawkes shook his head fiercely. Gordon nodded insistently. They lay there like that for some time.
When Skulduggery Pleasant and Susan DeWick found them eight minutes later, Gordon was sitting astride Fawkes like an oddly dressed cowboy riding an exhausted and flattened-out horse.