Henry tried to sleep but he couldn’t. Though he pulled the duvet over his head, the chill still got in. He could feel it around his neck, creeping down his spine. His room was always a little damp, but tonight he could almost see the moisture glistening on the walls. He was annoyed with himself. This was supposed to be his night of triumph. Maybe he should have gone out and bought himself a drink . . . or several. He had committed murder and gotten away with it! Surely that was something to celebrate.
“Henry . . .”
The voice came as a whisper out of the darkness. He had dreamed it, of course. It was a ghost voice, like something out of a horror film, rising up from a swamp or out of a ruined castle. Only, how could he have dreamed it when he wasn’t yet asleep?
“Henry . . .” The whisper came again, louder this time and filled with venom.
Henry hunched himself up in bed, drawing his knees into his chest, looking around him. There was a strange green glow outside his window. His room looked out onto a strip of wasteland with the railway just beyond. Normally, he could see walls covered with graffiti and topped with broken glass and barbed wire. But the mist had grown thicker. It had smothered the outside world. And as he watched, wide-eyed, he saw it trickling under his door, filling the very room where he lay.
“Who is it?” he whimpered.
The door crashed open. It seemed to have torn itself out of the frame, for there was nobody on the other side. More mist rolled in and Henry smelled something thick and horrible, like rotten, decaying meat. At the same time, he heard footsteps echoing along the corridor. He wondered what had happened to his landlady. She had a room on the floor above and must surely have heard all this. He tried to call out her name, but his throat seized up. He was petrified. No words came.
A figure formed in the half-light, then stepped into the room. Henry stared. He raised a hand, the fingers twisted as if broken, like an animal claw. He knew what he was was seeing. He couldn’t believe it. But he had to accept it.
Darren Shan had come for him.
The children’s writer had been dead for at least twenty-four hours. His skin was a hideous shade of white—it was obvious that not a drop of blood was being pumped through his veins. His eyes were also white and lifeless, as if covered in cataracts. At some time, blood must have gushed out of his mouth and over his chin, for it was still there, dried now, a hideous dark brown stain. His clothes were stiff with it. He was wearing a strange nightgown, but Henry recognized what it was. A shroud. He would have been wearing it in his coffin.
How could this be happening? Henry was trembling so hard, he was making the bed shake. Tears of sheer terror trickled down the side of his face. At the same time, a terrible thought was working its way through his mind. Darren Shan was a horror writer. In Cirque du Freak he had even claimed he was a semi-vampire. Well, suppose it was true. Suppose he was in some way in touch with dark forces, with the ghosts and the monsters that inspired him? Shan was dead. Henry had seen it on the television and read it in the newspapers. And now he had come back from the grave, continuing his life’s work even after that life had ended.
“You killed me,” the creature rasped, its voice rattling in its throat. And as it spoke, Henry saw that its tongue had gone green and there was some dark-colored liquid dribbling over its lower lip.
“No!” Henry replied. He wiped away his tears, but more instantly followed. “How did you find me?” he whimpered. “How did you get here?”
“You wrote to me.” Darren Shan shuddered. “You made me reply. And when I licked the envelope . . . the pain! It was you, Henry Parker.”
“Go away! Just go away!” Henry closed his eyes, hoping this was just some sort of hallucination. But when he opened them again, Shan was still there. “You stole my idea!” he screeched. He couldn’t help himself. And at the same time, he had a sudden, crazy thought. This could hardly be better. He had spent months and months waiting to tell Darren Shan what he thought of him. Well, now Shan had returned from the grave to hear it. What was he going to do about it? He was a phantom! If he wanted to contact the police, he’d have to do it with a Ouija board.
“You stole Ring of Evil from me. I sent it to your publisher and they gave it to you. You took my story and my characters and you made millions of dollars, and I got nothing. Well, now I’ve shown you. I came up with the perfect murder. Yours! And soon you’ll be forgotten, but I’ll write another book and nothing will stop me . . .”
“You killed me!” Shan wailed.
“Yes. I did. It was so easy. A little potassium cyanide mixed with the glue on the envelope. And you were such an idiot, you fell for it. I’d love to have been there when you licked it. You thought you were writing to some sick kid who loved your books, but in fact it was me.”
Henry began to laugh. He was still laughing when the lights in his bedroom flashed on and half a dozen policemen ran in and dragged him out of bed.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Shan,” one of the policemen said.
“It was my pleasure,” Darren Shan replied.
It was only then that Henry saw what should have been obvious all along. He had been tricked. Darren Shan was very much alive. Somebody had given him some clever makeup, turning his skin white. There was red dye in his mouth and he was wearing contact lenses. The smoke and the sewage smell were being pumped into the room by a machine just outside the door. And Shan was holding a tape recorder. There was a microphone attached to his shroud. Everything that Henry had said had been recorded and would be used against him when he went on trial.
“No!” Henry howled as he was bundled out of the room and down the stairs. It wasn’t fair! His plan had been perfect. What could possibly have gone wrong?
They answered that question when they interviewed him at Paddington Green police station. He was interviewed by two grim-faced detectives. The man in charge was named Jack Grest. He was a big man stuffed into an ill-fitting suit.
“You might like to know,” he muttered, “that my son is a big fan of Darren Shan. He’s got all his books. I don’t know how I’d have been able to break it to the little lad if you’d murdered his hero.”
“I—I don’t understand,” Henry stammered. He was crying again, still unable to accept what had happened. “How did you find me? What went wrong?”
“I’ll answer that, you swine,” the other detective said. “Mr. Shan has an assistant who helps him with his fan mail. Her name was Fenella Jones and she was the one who licked the envelope you sent.”
“She was the one you murdered,” Grest continued.
“But how did you know it was me?”
“We didn’t. You covered your tracks well. But the thing is, publishers keep copies of all the crank letters they receive, and they had your name on file. You had every reason to want to harm Mr. Shan—even though he never copied a word of your ridiculous book. And when we found out you were working in a chemical warehouse—”
“But you still didn’t have any proof!”
“That’s right. Which is why we planted the news story and asked Mr. Shan to help us with that little charade. We knew you’d confess to everything if he walked into your room in the middle of the night dressed up like that. And it worked! You were a complete idiot to fall for it and now you’re going to have plenty of time to think about how stupid you’ve been.”
He had been stupid.
Henry realized that, sitting on his own in a maximum-security cell in the middle of the night. He had a bunk, a blanket and a toilet built into the wall. He was still wearing the robe and pajamas that he had been arrested in, although they had taken away the cords. He had been very, very stupid indeed.
How could he possibly have believed, even for one minute, that Darren Shan was a ghost? Henry was a writer! He knew, better than anyone, that ghosts didn’t exist. They were made up by people like him, simply to scare the people who read the books. Horror stories were nothing more than that . . . stories! He had been caught by surprise and had allowed his own imag
ination to get the better of him. An Irish writer covered in white paint had outwitted him. He should never have allowed it to happen.
There were no such things as ghosts. Or vampires. Cirque du Freak, indeed! Cirque du Complete Nonsense.
It was very cold in the cell.
In fact, it seemed to have grown colder and colder in the last few minutes. Henry looked at the door and saw, to his astonishment, that a thin white mist was seeping in, spreading across the floor. And that horrible smell was back. Rotting meat and damp graveyard soil. It was one of the policemen! They had turned on their wretched machine again to frighten him.
“Go away!” he shouted.
His breath frosted around his mouth.
And then something formed in front of him. It didn’t walk in as Darren Shan had done. It seemed to piece itself out of the half-light, the molecules rushing together in the middle of the room. The figure solidified. It was a woman, hideous beyond belief, her face distorted by pain, her eyes bulging out of their sockets, her mouth twisted in a death’s-head smile. She was short and muscular and her hands, stretching out in front of her, seemed too big for her arms.
This wasn’t a trick. This was real. Henry knew.
“Who are you?” he whimpered.
The woman reached out for him. Her fingers clamped down on his shoulders, holding him in place. “Who do you think I am?” she replied, and he smelled the poison on her breath. “I’m Fenella Jones.”
Her teeth closed in on his throat.
BET YOUR LIFE
It was the last night, the grand finale of the quiz show that for three months had, in the words of the TV Times, “gripped the hearts, the minds . . . and the throats of the nation.” Thirty-three million people had watched the semifinal in Great Britain. Even the funeral of Princess Diana had attracted fewer spectators.
“There has never been a program like Bet Your Life,” the TV Times had continued. “Forget X Factor. Forget Big Brother. This is reality TV taken to new limits, smashing through the barriers, thrilling audiences in a way that they have never been thrilled before.”
It was filmed at Pinewood Studios near Iver, northwest of London, and security guards had taken up their positions twenty-four hours before, hundreds of them armed with sunglasses, walkie-talkies and canisters of pepper spray to keep back any unruly fans. The program would be seen in thirty-seven countries. But the studio was only big enough to hold a live audience of four hundred people, and competition for tickets had been intense. One ticket had changed hands on eBay for ten thousand dollars. A multimillionaire in Orpington had offered double that sum in an advertisement he had placed in the national press.
As the sun began to set and seven o’clock approached, helicopters buzzed over the studios, huge spotlights were wheeled into place, the world’s press corps made final checks in their mobile broadcasting units and two thousand people gathered around the giant plasma screen that had been erected outside to allow them to watch the show live.
Inside the studio, in his makeup room, Danny Webster was feeling surprisingly calm. At sixteen, he was the youngest ever contestant, but even so, one or two of the bookies had made him a favorite to win. He was sitting in front of a mirror, looking at his own face, as a makeup girl dusted his forehead with powder to stop the sweat showing in the hot lights.
With his long brown hair, blue eyes and still very boyish face, Danny was unusually good-looking, and all the newspapers agreed that, if he won, he would certainly have a career in TV, either as an actor or as a presenter. But that, of course, was only the secondary prize. Danny tried not to think of the black attaché case containing ten million dollars’ worth of diamonds that would be presented to the winner in less than two hours’ time, by far the biggest prize in television history.
Danny had always been good at general knowledge. In fact, it was rather more than that. From the earliest age he had demonstrated a photographic memory. He had been able to speak fluently before he was two. He had won a scholarship to a private school and had sailed through all his exams. Although he had never been strong at creative thinking or writing, subjects that essentially required a grasp of facts—biology, physics, geography, math—had come easily to him and he had scored effortless A’s throughout.
It had been his father’s idea to enter him onto Bet Your Life when, for the first time, the entry age had been lowered to sixteen. Gary Webster had been a postman until a back injury put him out of work. Since then, he had lived on benefits, punctuating the day with visits to the pub and the betting shop. His wife, Nora, worked as an office cleaner, but this only brought in a small amount of money. The three of them lived in a cramped, unattractive apartment in a high-rise block in Notting Hill Gate. A prize of ten million dollars would completely transform their lives.
Gary had used a mixture of threats and promises to persuade his son to put his name forward. The trouble was that Danny was quite shy and didn’t like the idea of seeing his name and photograph splashed across the world’s newspapers. And there had, of course, been the fear of losing. But in the end, he had agreed. He was a quiet, rather friendless boy. Perhaps his astonishing brainpower, his instant recall, had put other kids off. He didn’t like his school very much and, like his parents, he dreamed of a new life. His father spoke of a house on the Isle of Wight. The money would make that possible . . . and more. For his part, Danny wanted to go to Cambridge (Britain’s second oldest university, founded in 1209). He dreamed of becoming a librarian, perhaps in the British Library (designer: Sir Colin St. John Wilson) itself. He would read—and remember—a million books. And maybe one day he would compile an encyclopedia, a compendium of everything he had learned.
How many people stood between him and his ambition?
To begin with, there had been thirty-five of them. Now just four remained. There was a copy of the TV Times lying in front of the mirror and Danny flicked it open. “Know your enemy,” as the ancient Chinese warrior Sun Tzu had written in his great book, The Art of War (sixth century B.C.). And there they were. Each one of them had two full pages, with a color picture on one side and background details on the other.
RICHARD VERDI (44). He was the man that Danny most feared. Round-headed and bald apart from a narrow strip of black hair around his ears, always wearing black-rimmed spectacles, he was a professor of history at Edinburgh University. He was very serious, completely focused. Nothing ever rattled him. Most of the bookies had made him the favorite to win.
RAIFE PLANT (30). The newspapers loved Raife. He was a thin, curly-haired man with a roguish, handsome face despite his broken nose and crooked teeth. Raife had been sentenced to twelve years in jail for armed robbery. The trouble for Danny was that he had spent that time taking an Open University degree and reading hundreds of books. He was a huge fount of knowledge and—with his unconventional background—he was definitely the housewives’ choice.
MARY ROBINSON (49). The oldest contestant, and the only female, was a computer programmer from Woking. Her photograph showed a slim, unsmiling woman with dark hair swept back and very simple gold earrings. Nobody was quite sure how Mary had amassed her astonishing general knowledge. She gave away very little about herself, although she had let it be known that, if she won, she wanted to become a man.
BEN OSMOND (27). Ben was the only contestant that Danny actually liked. They had met during the audition process and had struck up a sort of friendship. Ben’s grandparents had come from the West Indies and from them he had inherited a sunny, easygoing manner, treating the quiz—like the rest of life—as a bit of a joke. He had written poetry, climbed mountains, studied in a Tibetan monastery and campaigned for animal rights. Now he was doing this. He seemed to be enjoying it.
Just four faces left. Five, including his. Danny thought about all the contestants he had met along the way. There had been Gerald, the fat, jolly headmaster from Brighton. Abdul, the taxi driver who had been so certain he would win. Clive in his wheelchair, hoping to claw something back in a life that had b
een wrecked by a car accident. Susan, who had complained when she had been asked to share a makeup room. So many different people. But they had all gone now.
And in a couple of hours, there would only be one left.
There was a knock at the door and the soundman came in with the little microphone that he would clip to the collar of Danny’s shirt. Danny had chosen jeans and a simple open-neck shirt for the final, although he had been told that the other contestants had been offered thousands of dollars to wear—and promote—designer labels. He had briefly considered it himself, but he felt comfortable in his own clothes and that was important. Staying relaxed was half the battle.
“How are you feeling?” The soundman was cheerful as he slid the microphone into place. Theoretically, the technicians weren’t meant to talk to the contestants, but Ed didn’t seem to care about the rules.
“I’m okay.”
“Good luck. I’ll be rooting for you.”
The makeup girl left with the soundman, and for the next twenty minutes Danny was on his own. He knew he was nervous. He could feel his heart beating. It was hard to swallow. There was a tingling feeling in the palms of his hands. He forced himself to empty his mind and stay calm. A certain amount of nervousness was perfectly understandable. He just had to control it. That was all. He couldn’t let it knock him off course.
At last the floor manager arrived. She was a big, smiling woman in her twenties, always carrying a clipboard and with a large microphone curving around her neck.
“We’re ready for you!” she said cheerfully.
Danny stood up.
He hadn’t let his parents wait with him. They were even more nervous than he was and he hadn’t wanted to be distracted. He knew that he wouldn’t see the other contestants as he made his way to the set. The studio had been specially designed that way. Just for a moment, he felt very alone, following the woman down a tatty, creampainted corridor with neon lights flickering overhead. It was more like a hospital than a television studio, he thought. Perhaps that was deliberate too.