“I could be wrong,” he said, “but I think the Axe-Man’s here.”
57
The town ahead of them wavered, like it was caught in a heat haze, but it solidified as they grew closer. Bushes, trees, hedges, low walls and lamp posts – landmarks that had evolved since Valkyrie’s childhood, lining the road to Haggard. They passed the graveyard and the wide gates of the nursery, passed the service station on their left and the cottages on their right, the bus stop, and the Chinese restaurant that everyone still regarded as the new Chinese place even though it had been there for the last ten years. There were people, too, and cars on the road.
“They’ve stopped looking like him,” said Omen.
“Down,” she said, keeping her eyes away from the rear-view mirror.
“I’m just peeking,” Omen said. “Look at the people. They’re not like Cadaverous any more.”
“No,” said Valkyrie. “They’re taken from my memories.”
She had become aware of a pressure, somewhere in the back of her mind, like the tentative prodding of fingers. She eased her foot off the accelerator, let the car slow right down as she focused.
“Are you OK?” Omen asked.
“Quiet.”
“Sorry.”
She’d had a few lessons on how to shield her thoughts from a psychic assault, and she took what she’d learned and built a wall around her mind. The townspeople flickered in and out of existence. She built the wall taller, made it thicker, and the street emptied of both people and cars.
Omen looked around. “Where’d they go?”
The car drifted and the front wheel hit the kerb and Valkyrie veered off and braked. The people were suddenly back.
“This is so weird,” Omen whispered.
They stayed where they were, pulled into the side of the road. Cars behind her slowed, waited for the opposite lane to clear, and overtook. All very normal.
Valkyrie focused, building the wall up again.
“Um,” Omen said, sitting forward and pointing. “Is that real Alice or an Alice from your memories?”
Valkyrie looked up as Alice crossed the road in front of them, got to the pavement and ran off.
Tearing off her seatbelt, Valkyrie threw open the door, forcing a passing car to swerve. The driver honked his horn, but she ignored him as she jumped out.
“Valkyrie, wait,” Omen said. “It might not really be her!”
“Stay there!” Valkyrie shouted back, and ran after her sister.
She passed a neighbour, out walking her dog. She passed her old friend, J. J. Pearl, who nodded a hello she didn’t return. She got to the corner just as Alice darted through the door into Hogan’s Flowers, and Valkyrie slowed.
The front window was filled with flowers of extraordinary colour. Every Valentine’s Day as a kid, she’d accompany her dad as he went to buy her mum a bouquet. She’d help him pick out the perfect selection, and then they’d tell Mr Hogan and he’d chuckle and start picking and plucking and arranging. Every time, every single time, he’d take a lollipop from the jar beside the till and hold it out to her, and she’d walk up shyly and take it from him. Then he’d chuckle again and go back to work.
But there was something about Mr Hogan that had always unnerved her. The look in his eyes, maybe, or the fact that when he held out the lollipop he’d never step forward. She always had to go to him. Then there was that afternoon she’d been playing hide-and-seek with her friends up and down Main Street. She’d ducked into the flower shop to hide and Mr Hogan had flown into a rage, had grabbed her by the arm and yanked her into the corner. His fingers, like steel, round her arm, his face, contorted in anger, her only way out blocked by his bulk … She’d had a recurring nightmare about that moment. She’d forgotten that.
Valkyrie stepped into the flower shop.
“Alice?” she called. “Alice, come out.”
The inside of the shop was dark. Flowers lined the walls and spilled from the shelves. Hanging baskets swayed slightly on thin chains. There was an opening to a cellar in the middle of the floor that she didn’t remember being there in the real shop. Greasy yellow light bled out from the gloom.
Mr Hogan shuffled out of the darkness, a potted plant in his hands. He saw her and chuckled. “Look who it is,” he said. “Little Stephanie Edgley. Haven’t seen you around in ages.”
Her mouth was dry. “I’m looking for my sister,” she said. “She came in here.”
“Did she now?” Mr Hogan said. “Well then, she must be somewhere, mustn’t she? Feel free to take a look.”
Valkyrie tried to build a wall again, tried to make him vanish, but the bricks were crumbling even before they could set.
She walked forward on stiff legs, quickly checking behind shelves and peering into alcoves. She turned and cried out as she jumped back – Mr Hogan was standing there, a yellow lollipop in his hand.
“Want a sweetie?” he asked.
That’s what he used to say when she was a kid. Only, no, it wasn’t quite right. There was something else, something he used to call her …
“Want a sweetie, sweetie?” he asked.
Valkyrie shook her head. “I just want my sister.”
He chuckled. “She’s probably downstairs, then.” He stepped back, allowing her a clear path to the steps leading down to the cellar.
She was shaking. She was shaking and her knees were weakening. “Is she down there?”
“That’s where they all go,” said Mr Hogan, shuffling away.
This was all wrong. She’d never been this scared of Mr Hogan before. He was a creepy old man who turned nasty when there weren’t any adults around, but this fear was coming from somewhere else. This was a kind of fear she’d only become familiar with recently, in the last few years. It had sidled up to her, lain at her feet like a dog, had started to accompany her wherever she went. It was the kind of fear that weakened her. That paralysed.
The steps down to the cellar were old and wooden. The smell of flowers was pungent in the humid air, like they were ripe, like they were starting to rot. Valkyrie stepped on to the dark floor, into the mulch of petals and leaves and stalks that covered it like a carpet. Crates and wooden boxes were stacked away from the single bulb that didn’t try very hard to pierce the gloom. Some of those boxes looked like children’s coffins.
“Alice?” Valkyrie called. Her voice was quiet. It sounded scared.
She walked further away from the light bulb. Further away from the stairs. The darkness beckoned her.
She stopped. Stepping into darkness was beyond stupid, so she allowed her voice to go on ahead. “Alice,” she said again, louder this time. “Alice? Are you here?”
Nothing. It hadn’t been her. Alice would have answered. Alice would have come running. Valkyrie was certain. She turned, headed back to the stairs.
And yet …
Maybe Alice was frightened. Maybe she was too frightened to emerge from hiding. Maybe she was crouched somewhere, tears in her eyes, waiting for her big sister to come and find her, counting on her big sister not to be scared of the dark.
Goddammit.
Valkyrie went to the stairs and looked up. “Mr Hogan,” she called, “do you have a torch I could borrow?”
No sound from up there. No movement.
“Right,” she said, still speaking loudly as she turned and strode into the gloom. “Alice, I’ll be right there. Hold up your hand when you see me. Call out for me. Can you do that? Of course you can. You’re a brave little thing, aren’t you?”
Into the gloom, into the darkness, checking the corners, moving aside crates, the cloying smell of flowers making her feel sick with every moment she spent down here. Still she moved, still she marched, making lots of noise, talking all the time, pretending to be brave, pretending to be her old self.
The ground was getting softer. With every step, Valkyrie had to pull her foot out of the sickly sweet-smelling muck that sucked at her boots – and then the ground gave way and her lower leg plunged down in
to it. When she put her weight on her other leg to try and free herself, that foot began to sink. She immediately stopped what she was doing, but it was too late.
She looked around for something to grab. There was a table beside her. She reached for it, but it was too far away. She coiled, then sprang, but the ground had her and wasn’t letting go. She splashed down, tried to push herself up and now she’d lost her left arm up to the shoulder.
Panic squirmed deep in her belly.
The mulch was like quicksand. She had no base under her, no solid ground from which to stabilise. She craned her neck, keeping her chin above the muck as her body sank like a lead weight.
“Help,” she said. Then again, louder. “Help.” She wasn’t even able to scream. Screaming required movement and she couldn’t afford to move.
Muck tipped off her chin. It was cold.
“Someone,” she said. “Help me.”
She tried to twist, tried to lunge, and that was a mistake.
With a last, desperate breath, she went under.
58
“I don’t get it,” Temper said, his back braced against the door of the shack as the Axe-Man’s fists pounded on it from the outside. “Why doesn’t he just use his ridiculously large axe to break through?”
The shack was small. Rustic would have been generous. There were two beds – one of them tiny – in the corners. A rocking chair, covered in pelts, stood next to the fireplace.
Abyssinia, sitting at the small table in the middle of the shack, crossed her legs. “Maybe he’s stupid,” she said. “Skulduggery, perhaps you’ll be able to use his stupidity against him. It might be more effective than your bullets.”
Skulduggery, who had already used the Axe-Man as target practice, reloaded his gun thoughtfully. “If you think that’s a practical option, please, toss him a book of Sudoku and we’ll sneak away while he puzzles over it.”
“I don’t know what Sudoku is,” Abyssinia responded, looking up at the ceiling and sounding bored. “I’ve been a heart in a box for two hundred years.”
“As you never tire of reminding us.”
“Are you implying that I talk too much of the time you tried your very best to kill me?”
“I’ve tried to kill lots of people,” Skulduggery replied. “You don’t hear them complaining about it.”
“Excuse me,” Temper said, “could you two possibly stop bickering and come up with a way to get out of whatever the hell is going on here? Also, the kid’s awake.”
They looked over at the boy, lying on his bed in the corner, arms and legs bound.
“Try not to kick him in the face again,” Skulduggery said.
“He’s tied up,” Abyssinia replied. “There’s no sport in it. Ask him who he is.”
“I already know who he is. This is Cadaverous Gant you’re looking at.”
Abyssinia raised her eyebrows with renewed interest. “It is? My, my. Running around with a hatchet, strange Axe-Men coming to kill him … No wonder he grew up to be a serial killer.”
“So this is a memory?” Temper asked. “An eight-foot-tall lunatic who doesn’t mind getting shot really did attack his house with an axe?”
Skulduggery peered out of the window as the Axe-Man continued to pound the door. “We don’t know that,” he said. “For all intents and purposes, we’re inside Cadaverous’s mind right now, so we shouldn’t be too surprised if things get a little muddled. Temper, you should probably move away from the door.”
Temper nodded and straightened up, just as the axe blade came through right where his head had been.
“He’s using his axe now,” Skulduggery explained helpfully.
59
Dark.
Wet.
Cold.
Valkyrie tried bringing her hands to her face, but the muck was too thick. She was still sinking. She could feel it. Tried to turn. Couldn’t. The earth was in her nose and ears and mouth. Her lungs begged to inhale something. Anything. Even muck. They didn’t care. She could feel her body start to respond. Against every command she was issuing, her body was going to breathe in the filth and then she was going to die.
She tried to kick herself to the surface, even though this wasn’t water, even though she couldn’t move her legs.
Apart from her foot. Her right foot. It was moving. She could move it.
And now her left. One moment it was just the foot. Then it was the ankle.
She kept sinking. The more she sank, the more she could move.
Her right knee. She could bend her right knee.
With her lungs burning, Valkyrie kicked out, felt herself sink faster. She was emerging from the other side, whatever it was, wherever it was, so she squirmed, and her hips were free now, and she squirmed more, and more –
– and she fell, dropping, gasping, and she splashed into mud, mud that grabbed at her, pulled at her, and she wiped her eyes clear, saw that she was still in the cellar, and before the muck claimed her she looked up, saw the muck on the ceiling, and then she was submerged once again.
This time she didn’t try to raise herself up. This time she focused on burrowing herself down, and after a moment her foot broke free of the mud, just like last time.
She was going to sink and fall and sink and fall, and it was going to go on until she drowned.
Her hips were free, and she could picture her legs dangling from the ceiling. She kicked them up behind her, plunging them into the mud even as her torso kept sinking.
There was a moment when she thought she’d messed up, a moment when she hung there, on the verge of dropping but not being able to, and then she was out and falling once again. This time she covered her face with her hands, twisted her body and sucked in a deep, deep breath.
She hit the mud with her elbows first, her head went in shoulders deep, her body splashing down behind. Squirming to go faster, she kept her feet out of the mud for as long as she could.
She sank head first. When she couldn’t move her feet any more, she knew she was close to being through. Seconds passed. Long, long seconds, and a lot of them. Again, she became afraid that she’d miscalculated.
And then she emerged. She gasped, took her hands away from her face, cleared her eyes, blinking rapidly.
The cellar looked different from up here.
The table beside the muck. If she could grab it, she might be able to pull herself out of this crazy cycle. When her waist was free, she started swaying, and by the time her thighs were emerging she was swaying back and forth, trying to time it right.
Suddenly she was falling.
She reached out, stretched with both arms. Her hand slapped against the table and then she was in the dirt again – with one hand closing round a table leg. She went to pull herself out, but only succeeded in yanking the table closer.
She started sinking again.
She pulled the table round, grasping the second leg with her free hand, and tugged them both into the muck. With her full weight pressing down, this end of the table sank quickly. Once she’d made a ramp, Valkyrie started dragging herself up.
She clambered on to the table, welcoming the painful knocks, and rolled across, landing on the floor. Despite her exhaustion, she didn’t stay down in case the mulch here started pulling on her, too. She heaved herself to her feet and stumbled to the stairs. She almost cried when her foot found the first step. How firm it was. How solid. She started up, and a shadow fell across her.
“Want a sweetie, sweetie?” Mr Hogan asked.
His bulk blocked out the light, transforming him into a shape of pure darkness.
Then he grunted, and fell forward, and Valkyrie dodged back as he crashed down the steps.
Omen peered down. “What happened to you?”
60
The Axe-Man was shredding the door to splinters. Temper was not happy about this turn of events – not happy at all.
Even Abyssinia was on her feet, though still looking bored.
“Why don’t you do something?” Temper a
sked her. He had to speak loudly to be heard over the racket. “You’re all super powerful and stuff, right?”
“I am super powerful, this is true,” she responded, “but we’re in Cadaverous’s world now, and here I’m probably just as completely weak and useless as you are.”
“Right,” said Temper. “Thanks.”
Skulduggery walked over to the wild man and started untying him.
“What are you doing?” Temper asked.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Skulduggery said.
“Not all the time,” Abyssinia countered.
“Well, no, not all the time, but definitely some of the time.”
Abyssinia made a face. “That’s debatable. A lot of the time they take the opportunity to try to kill you, too.”
“This is also true,” Skulduggery said. He pulled away the last of the rope. “But hopefully not in this case. Temper, hand him his hatchets.”
Temper stared. “The hatchets he tried to kill me with?”
“Unless there are others you can see.”
“He tried to kill me with them, Skulduggery.”
“But I doubt he’ll try it again when there’s a blood-drenched man with an axe trying to get in and he’s got his son to protect.”
Temper grabbed the hatchets, hesitated, and tossed them over. The wild man caught them, but didn’t attack any of them. Yet.
Skulduggery untied the kid, who leaped up and backed into the corner.
The door, or what little there was left of it, broke apart and the Axe-Man came through, hefting his giant axe in his giant hands.
Skulduggery glanced at Abyssinia. “Do you want to try first?”
She seemed to consider it, then shook her head. “Not especially. I vote we all attack together. Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno.”
Temper frowned. “Say what?”
“One for all and all for one,” Skulduggery translated.
“Ah,” Temper said, “The Three Musketeers.”
“I don’t know what that is,” said Abyssinia.
The wild man gave a war cry and ran forward, hatchets at the ready, but the Axe-Man cut him in two with one mighty swing. As both halves of his body hit the floor, Abyssinia let out a sigh.