“Who are the Acapella—?”
“Right, nice to see you again, Alf, Brian, but we need to get a move on,” said War hurriedly. He clamped a hand on Drake’s shoulder and pulled him away from the men.
“Ah, always busy, right, lads?” Alfred said. “Any word on the old... you-know-what, yet?” He tapped the side of his nose. “Just between you and I, of course.”
“Nothing yet,” said War.
“Ah well, keep us posted. Nice to see you again, lads.” A thought struck Alf. He turned to Brian, his manic grin advancing further across his face. “Here, Bri, why don’t we give the lads a proper Alfred Randall X-perience send-off? Sing them on their way, sort of thing?” Alf turned back. “What do you say to that, lads?” he asked.
But the lads were gone.
Drake trudged across the sand, just a few metres behind War. Pestilence followed right behind him. Somewhere in the middle distance, Famine puffed and wheezed in slow pursuit.
“So, I thought Limbo was supposed to be empty?” Drake ventured. “I thought that was the entire point?”
“It was empty, once upon a time,” Pestilence told him. “But cram a few million lost souls in and it starts to feel a lot less roomy, if you know what I mean?”
Drake nodded. That made sense, he supposed. “Right. What’s with all the Barbershop X-press stuff, or whatever they were called?”
“There’s not a lot to do in Limbo,” Pestilence explained. “So a few thousand years ago they started forming singing groups. No instruments, obviously, just voices. Some of them are really quite good. Some of them... aren’t.”
“And some of them are the Alfred Randall X-perience,” added War, with a shudder.
“Quite a few rivalries have developed over the centuries,” continued Pestilence. “The Alfred Randall X-perience hates the Acapella Afterlifers. The Acapella Afterlifers can’t stand the Limbo Lyrical All Stars. And everyone hates the We Are Voice Experience.”
“Christ,” War muttered. “The WAVE. I’d forgotten about them.” He glanced at the dunes on either side of them, as if anticipating an ambush.
“It’s grown into quite a lively old place,” Pestilence went on.
Drake looked around. Apart from Famine, who was now almost too far away to see, there was nothing in any direction. Even the shed had long since disappeared beyond the horizon.
“Yeah, it’s not very lively,” Drake began, before his face thudded into War’s lower back.
“We’ve arrived,” the giant said.
“About time too,” Pestilence complained. “I’ve got blisters on my blisters, and this sand is doing my dermatitis no favours, let me tell you.”
“Sorry, where have we arrived?” Drake asked. He leaned round War, expecting to see more nothing. Instead, he saw a door.
The door was a glossy white with a brass handle situated almost exactly in the centre. There was a wooden frame round the door, painted to match, on to which the door’s hinges had been screwed. The door and frame stood upright on the sand, with no walls above or around them.
There was a sign on the door. It was small and rectangular, black in colour, with a gold-painted border. There were two words printed on the sign, also in gold. Drake read them out loud.
“Staff only,” he said.
“Right then, sunshine,” War said. His powerful hand wrapped round the door knob. “Walk this way and do not – I repeat, do not – touch anything.”
IT WAS DARK on the other side of the door, and the air smelled faintly of damp. War felt along the rough brick wall until he found the light switch. He flicked it on and the darkness was swept away by a sterile white glow.
Row after row of lights came on with a clunk. As they did, more and more of the room was revealed.
At first, Drake thought they were in a garage. Then he thought they were in a warehouse. By the time the last row of lights had come on, he could only imagine they were in an aircraft hanger, and a large aircraft hanger, at that.
He was wrong every time. There were no aircraft hangers in Limbo, and no garages, either. There was a warehouse, if you knew where to look, but this wasn’t it.
“Where did this come from?” Drake asked. He turned and pressed his hands against the wall. “Bricks,” he mumbled. “These are... are... bricks. How is that possible? There weren’t any bricks a minute ago.”
“Oh, don’t ask us how it works,” Pest said. He took a neatly folded plastic bag from his pocket and opened it. Then he removed his hat, carefully folded it flat, and slipped it into the bag for safekeeping. “Just accept that it does. Trust me, you’ll save yourself all kinds of headaches. Nod and smile, that’s what I say. Nod and smile.”
Drake nodded, but he didn’t smile. He turned back, keeping one hand on the wall to make sure it didn’t go anywhere, and tried to take in the enormity of the room before him.
He estimated it to be about twenty football pitches long, and the same across. Then again, he had no real idea how big one football pitch was, so this was a wild guess at best.
It was difficult to judge the size of the room with any accuracy, because of its contents. Vast mountains of boxes and bags reached from the floor to somewhere near the ceiling. They stretched out, forming canyons and valleys between the peaks.
There were cardboard boxes, wooden crates, plastic storage tubs and slatted pallets laden with yet more containers. There were black bags, green bags, string bags and hessian sacks, all bulging close to bursting point.
In among it all Drake spotted fourteen rolled-up lengths of carpet, eleven broken picture frames, two vacuum cleaners and a snooker table with a leg missing; all within fifteen metres of where he was standing.
“The Junk Room,” Pestilence announced. He saw the wonder etched on Drake’s face. “Over the years it’s sort of become a storage space for the afterlife. It’s where Heaven, Hell and all the others put the stuff they never use, but can’t bring themselves to throw away,” he explained.
Drake thought about this. There had been a cupboard in his old house, under the stairs. For as long as he could remember it had been full of taped-up boxes, bulging bin bags and a cardboard owl he’d made when he was eight. The entire contents of the cupboard had been packed into the removal van when they’d left the old house, then placed in their entirety in another cupboard in the new house, whereupon the door to that cupboard had been closed.
This, he guessed, was a bit like that, only on a much larger scale.
“Ready for your first challenge?” War asked, turning to face him.
The big man’s voice roused Drake from his daze. “Yeah, sorry, what?”
“Your first challenge,” War said again. “Are you ready?”
Drake shook his head. “What? ‘First challenge’? What do you mean?”
“In order to become the fourth horseman, you must overcome a series of ancient challenges,” War explained impatiently.
“Whoa, what? No one told me about ancient challenges.”
“Must’ve slipped my mind,” War replied.
“Yeah, that seems to happen a lot,” Drake said. “What if I say ‘no’?”
“Then you will be cast for ever into the fiery pits of—”
“OK, OK, I get it,” Drake sighed. “Fine. What do I have to do?”
War gestured at the landscape of junk strewn ahead of them. “Somewhere within this room is the Robe of Sorrows, a flowing robe woven from darkness itself, which will be worn by the fourth horseman upon the Day of Judgement.”
Drake could guess what was coming next. “And you want me to find it.”
“And we want... Oh. Aye,” said War, looking slightly deflated. “That’s the first challenge. Find the Robe of Sorrows.”
“Is that it?” Drake asked. He pointed to a hook on the back of the door. A black robe hung from it, dangling all the way down to the stone floor.
War’s eyes went from the robe to Drake, then back again. He quietly cleared his throat. “Right. Well. Aye. The second challenge,�
�� he said, moving along quickly. “Hidden in this room is the Deathblade, the long-handled scythe that will be wielded by the fourth horseman upon the Day—”
“All right, all right,” Drake muttered. He cast his eyes across the mountainous territory before him. “Any clues?”
“No,” said War firmly. He was clearly still annoyed about the cape thing. “No clues.”
“But,” said Pestilence, pointing towards a distant ridge of box files and ring binders. He gave Drake a wink. “It’s probably somewhere over that way.”
Drake clambered up a steep incline, using a string of Christmas tree lights to heave himself along. The boxes he was walking on were cardboard, but packed full enough that they didn’t crumple or give way beneath his weight. A few of the boxes tinkled like breaking glass when he stepped on them. He ignored those, and quickly pushed on.
He had been walking, and occasionally scrambling, for fifteen minutes, but had not yet reached the crest of the first hill. He had tried to make his way round the side of the mountain, but the path had been blocked by an outcrop of Beano annuals, leaving him no choice but to make for the summit.
When he eventually made it to the top, his heart sank. Twenty football pitches, he realised, was nowhere near big enough.
The room was so large, it had its own horizon. From up there, Drake could see seventeen or eighteen more junk mountains, and too many valleys and glens to count. They were spread out beyond the limits of his vision, and Drake realised that finding the Deathblade might well be an impossible task.
The ridge Pest had pointed him towards was down on his left, near the foot of the mountain. He should go there, he thought. He should definitely go there. And yet, something nagged at the base of his skull. Something made him turn his head and look towards a cliff face half a mile or so away on his right. Something whispered directly into his brain. Come, it said, or was he imagining it?
He looked down at the ridge, set his jaw decisively, and went left. A moment later, he changed his mind, about-turned, and set off down the hillside towards the distant cliff.
Drake stood at the bottom of the cliff face, looking up. It had looked high from the mountaintop. Down here, ankle-deep in old knitting patterns and gardening magazines, it looked infinitely higher.
It was made up mostly of plastic storage boxes, the type designed to be stacked, one on top of the other. Clearly someone had begun stacking, and then forgotten to stop.
The feeling that had drawn Drake to that spot now drew him upwards. The bottom of each box was slightly narrower than the top, creating a ladder-like series of handholds all the way up the side of the cliff.
Still, it was a long way to the top. He thought about looking for another route up, but the whispering in his brain was louder now, and he wasn’t sure he could resist it, even if he wanted to.
Climb, the voice hissed as he reached up and found the first handhold. Climb!
Drake pulled himself up another few storage tubs. His arms should have been aching. His shoulders should have burned with the effort. But they didn’t. He wasn’t tired and he wasn’t sore.
He was terrified, though, having made the mistake of looking down a few minutes after he’d started to climb. Even then, the ground had looked to be a dizzyingly long way away. He’d been moving steadily upwards for ten minutes or more since then, and had no plans to look down again.
Had he thought about it, Drake would’ve realised it all felt too easy, as if someone else had taken control of his limbs. His fingers did not slip. His feet did not falter. He scaled the vertical face with ease.
At the top of the cliff was another cliff. It was set five or six metres back from the edge of the first one, and stretched almost as high as it had. Drake did not realise how high this second cliff was, though, because he didn’t look up.
Instead, he looked into the dark, rectangular hole situated almost directly in front of him. It was about five metres high by three wide, and seemed to lead directly into the storage-box mountain.
Cautiously, Drake approached the opening. A cool breeze tickled his skin, sending goosebumps along the length of his arm. It was the first time he had felt the air move since entering Limbo and, although he couldn’t explain why, it made him nervous.
“Hello?” he called into the void. “Anyone there?”
A voice called to him. Was it still in his head, or had he heard it out loud this time? He couldn’t say, but it didn’t matter. The words had meant the same thing.
I am the Deathblade, it said. Come to me.
Unbidden, Drake’s legs began to move. His feet made a series of hollow thuds on the lids of the plastic tubs below him as he strode into the cave and was swallowed by the darkness within.
IN A YAWNING CHASM between one world and another, he stops. There is a moment when he feels... something. A sensation. An emotion. Newly born, he cannot yet put a name to the feeling, but in time he will come to know it as “confusion”.
He is confused because it has moved. The shed has moved.
His ghastly outline turns. His gaze sweeps back across the realms he has already traversed. The worlds blur around him as he sets off again in the opposite direction, moving faster than he has ever moved before.
DRAKE FUMBLED THROUGH the dark, feeling his way along a plastic wall, deeper into the heart of the mountain. The cool breeze blew past him, making him shiver just slightly. From up ahead he could hear a low drone, but the blackness within the cave made it impossible to see what was causing the sound.
He stopped, and knelt down on the hard plastic floor. His fingers found the edge of a box lid and undid the flimsy clasps. He felt inside the open container, hoping to find a torch or lantern or something. But the box contained what felt like photographs and postcards, and a small wooden wind chime.
He closed the lid and moved on to the next box. There was a tangle of cables inside; an impossible knot of wires and extension cords. Not what he was looking for.
The next box was filled with wooden cups, shaped like old-fashioned goblets. The next had two flat rectangles of stone, one atop the other. There was writing carved into the surface of the top stone, but Drake couldn’t tell what it said.
Another box contained CDs, mostly, and a few books. The next one appeared to be filled with salt. Something hissed and snarled in the box after that one. Drake decided not to open it, and moved on to the next.
He decided to check two more of the plastic containers. If he didn’t find anything to light the way by then, he would turn back. There was no way he was carrying on in the dark, regardless of what the whispering voice in his head might say.
Drake didn’t know what was in the next box, but the smell was enough to make him close the lid without checking too closely. It smelled a lot like Toxie the Hellcat, but with a burned-meat edge to it that made Drake’s eyes stream.
He crawled over to the next box and put his hands on the lid.
Then he took them off again. A feeling, like the one that had led him to the cave, steered him three boxes to the left. His fingers found the lid’s plastic clasps and a feeling of warmth spread along both arms.
Drake opened the lid and the sound of a choir rang out from within the tub. A bright, brilliant light flooded the cave. Drake screwed his eyes shut and covered them with both arms, but the light still shone through. Blinded, Drake reached clumsily into the box. His fingers wrapped round some kind of hoop and he pulled it free.
He clicked the lid back into place and the music stopped. The blinding light went with it, leaving only the glow of the object in Drake’s hand to chase away the darkness in the cave.
Drake looked at the thing he was holding. It was a ring of glowing white light, about the size of a dinner plate. The light itself was solid enough for Drake to hold.
It felt warm to the touch, and the surface of the light seemed to move beneath his grip. It was a bit like holding on to a pipe, through which warm water was running, but a magical glowing pipe, that made you want to shout “H
allelujah!” as loudly and as often as you could. Even with everything he’d seen recently, this seemed particularly incredible.
Drake lowered the ring towards the floor. The shadows fled from its warm glow, revealing a printed label stuck to the lid of the plastic box.
HALOS, the label read. (ASSORTED SIZES)
Now come, the voice in his head insisted. Drake did as he was told. Holding the halo out before him to light the way, he continued down the plastic passageway towards whatever lay ahead.
The cave came to a stop twenty or so metres later, in a wall of brightly coloured stackable tubs. A slim wooden wardrobe stood against the wall, its double doors tied together with string. The air was colder around the wardrobe, and Drake found himself rubbing his arms to try to keep warm.
His breath clouded into mist as he opened his mouth and said, “Hello?”
No reply came. Drake took a step closer to the wardrobe. It looked like a cheap, flat-packed one, which surprised him. If the Deathblade was as powerful a weapon as War had said, why keep it in a flimsy wardrobe? In fact, why keep it in a wardrobe at all?
“Hello?” he said again, raising his voice to be heard above the low droning noise that filled this part of the cave. The voice in his head stayed silent.
Drake raised the halo, casting its eerie yellow light across the walls and the ceiling. Above the wardrobe were four large vents. The cold breeze was blowing from within them. An air-conditioning system in a land without temperature. But why?
Welcome, chimed the whispers in his brain. I am the Deathblade. Have you come to claim my power?
“Uh... yeah,” Drake said. “I think so.”
Then come. Claim the power of the Deathblade as your own. “Where are you?”
There was a pause. Guess.
“Are you... are you in the wardrobe?” Drake asked.
I am in the wardrobe, the voice confirmed.
Drake took another step. “The handles are tied together,” he said.
The 13th Horseman Page 7
