“Right, neither they are,” Mel said. She caught Drake by the arm and began pulling him towards the door. “Sorry for the mix-up, glad you’re not a child-killer, Dr Black. Keep it up.”
“Wait.” Dr Black raised a hand. “Mr Finn, I would very much like to talk to you.” He glared at Mel. “In private.”
Mel hesitated. She was going to argue, Drake knew. That would do neither of them any good. “It’s fine,” he told her, forcing a smile. “I’ll catch up with you.”
Reluctantly, Mel made for the door. “I’ll see you in a bit,” she said, and then she was gone.
Drake turned back to the window, but Dr Black was no longer there. He was sitting at his desk, his fingers loosely clasped in front of him. He indicated with a nod of his head that Drake should sit at one of the desks in the front row.
“I called for you to come to my classroom yesterday,” the teacher began, once Drake was sitting down. “But you did not. Why?”
“I had a doctor’s appointment.”
The teacher’s eyebrows arched. “Nothing serious, I trust?”
“Just a check-up.”
“Ah. Very good. One can never be too careful when it comes to the subject of one’s health. After all, one only lives once.”
Drake remained silent.
“What would it be like, do you think? Death. What would death be like?”
“I don’t know,” Drake said. He hadn’t missed the way Dr Black had emphasised the word. “Don’t really plan finding out for a while.”
“Ah, but the best laid plans...” Dr Black said, leaving the rest of the sentence hanging. He began to drum his chicken-bone fingers slowly on the desktop. “The best laid plans.”
The teacher stopped drumming his fingers and stared so intently that Drake feared he was looking right inside his head.
“You’ve taken life, though, haven’t you?”
Drake was taken aback. “No,” he said.
“Oh? Then perhaps your notes are mistaken. Frogs, I think they said. Didn’t you burn a number of frogs to death? Wasn’t that why they expelled you?”
“That was an accident!”
“A fact I’m sure the frogs were very grateful for,” Dr Black continued. “As they were roasted alive.”
“Look, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Drake asked, a little more aggressively than he had intended.
Dr Black rose slowly to his feet. “We are very alike, you and I,” he said, advancing towards Drake’s desk. “More alike, I think, than you realise.”
“Uh, hi, Dr Black?”
Drake and the teacher both turned to find Mr Franks at the door. He was leaning into the room, a hand on each side of the doorframe. Dr Black’s gums drew back into something like a snarl.
“Yes?” Dr Black said, his voice clipped. “What do you want?”
“I really need a word with Drake,” Mr Franks said. “Mind if I steal him away?”
“I do indeed mind, Mr Franks. Mr Finn and I were in the middle of a conversation.”
“Fine, sorry, of course. Please, carry on. I’ll just wait here until you’re done.”
Dr Black’s left eye twitched. He fixed Mr Franks with a fierce glare. When it was clear the younger teacher wasn’t going to shy away, though, Dr Black turned back to Drake.
“We shall continue this another time,” he glowered. “But if I catch you trespassing in my classroom again, Mr Finn, there will be grave consequences. Grave consequences. Is that understood?”
Drake gave a brief nod as his reply. He got to his feet, pushed the chair back in under the desk and walked, as calmly as he could, over to Mr Franks.
“Thanks, Dr Black,” Mr Franks said. He stepped aside to let Drake out. “It’s really important that I talk to him.”
Dr Black waved a dismissive hand. “I will catch up with him again soon,” he said, then he turned to the window and cast his hawk-like gaze over the school grounds below.
“I don’t believe I just did that,” Mr Franks muttered, as he led Drake along the corridor, away from Dr Black’s room.
“Um... did what? What did you want to see me for?”
“That’s just it. Nothing,” Mr Franks said. He glanced back along the corridor and wrung his hands together nervously. “I met your friend, Mel, and she told me Dr Black was giving you trouble for something you hadn’t done, and that it wasn’t fair, and... well, she convinced me to come and bail you out.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe she talked me into it.”
“She can be pretty persuasive.”
Mr Franks shook his head again. His expression was still anxious, but there was a smile in there somewhere now too.
They pushed through a set of swing doors and carried on along another corridor. The further away from Dr Black’s room they got, the more Drake began to relax.
“So, what did he want to see you about?” Mr Franks asked.
“Oh, you know. This and that.”
“This and that,” Mr Franks said. “Right. And was this or that anything to do with you cutting school yesterday? You didn’t make it back to my class.”
“What? Oh, no, that. I, uh, I remembered I had a doctor’s appointment, that was all.”
Mr Franks stopped. “Look, Drake, I don’t say this often, and don’t take offence, but cut the crap, OK?”
Drake blinked. “Um... what?”
“You didn’t have a doctor’s appointment. You cut school.” He held up his hands diplomatically. “Look, you’re a good kid, I can see that, and I’m sure you wouldn’t duck out of school without a very good reason. You had a good reason, right?”
“Yeah,” Drake said. “I did.”
“Fine, right, I knew you would, but listen, Drake, don’t do it again, OK? We had three kids missing yesterday, and then the accident in the car park, and then you do a runner too. It could’ve turned into a very difficult situation for everyone. I’m not coming on all strict teacher or anything, I’m just saying. You need to think about the consequences of your actions.”
“Sorry,” Drake mumbled. And he meant it.
“Apology accepted,” the teacher said. “But, you know, if you have problems at home or whatever, or you want to talk about... anything at all, come see me, OK?” He gave Drake a firm pat on the shoulder. “We new kids have got to stick together.”
AFEW HOURS later, Drake waited by the gates, watching the rest of the school file past him. No one paid him any attention, not even Bingo, Dim and Spud, the three no-longer-missing bullies. He’d felt a stirring of panic when he’d spotted them approaching, but they’d marched past in single file, none of them so much as shooting a spotty-faced sneer in his direction.
It was ten minutes since the bell had rung. Most of the other kids had left, and now only a few stragglers passed him on the way out of the gates. Drake looked up at the closest bit of the school building. The school was made up of two distinct parts. The bit at the back was a box-like construction of dull grey concrete, with evenly spaced windows that looked in danger of falling out of their frames at any moment.
In front of that was a smaller, more modern-looking extension. The outside of it was clad in weather-beaten aluminium panels, and the windows had been arranged so that, if you squinted just the right way, they almost looked like a face: three storeys of glass along the bottom, and two much larger windows like eyes up above.
Drake watched the main doors. There was a sinking feeling in his chest. Maybe Mel had already left?
He was about to start walking, when she came striding out. She half walked, half skipped over to meet him.
“Hey,” he said, as she fell into step beside him.
“Hey, Chief,” she smiled. “You waited for me?”
“What? Oh, no, I was just...” He shrugged. There was no point trying to hide it. “Well, yeah. Kind of. I didn’t see you at lunchtime. Just wanted to make sure you were OK.”
“Yeah, I was looking for you too. Did Mr Franks bail you out?”
“He did. Thank
s.”
“Ah, I love new teachers. So eager to be liked,” she said. “What did old Blackie want?”
“He just wanted to know why I didn’t go and see him yesterday, like he’d asked.”
“And what did you say?”
She turned to look at him, but found the space beside her empty. Drake was standing in the middle of the pavement, several paces back. He was looking past her at the road ahead.
“You OK?”
Mel turned and followed his gaze. Further along the street, she saw a shed made of dark wood, with a jolly red roof.
“What’s up?” Mel asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Can we not go this way?” Drake asked. “Is there another way to your house?”
“Lots of ways to my house,” Mel said. “What’s the matter, though? Is it that shed? Are you shed-o-phobic?”
“What? No.”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Shed-o-phobia’s really common. Probably.”
“I’m not scared of the shed, I’d just rather—”
“Hey, look, there’s someone inside,” Mel said. She pointed to the door of the shed, which was now opening. A pale-faced man in a neat white suit stepped out and waved a rubber-gloved hand.
“Coo-ee! Drake!”
“Do you know that guy?” Mel asked.
Drake shook his head. “No.”
“It’s just that he’s sort of shouting your name,” Mel said. “And beckoning you over.”
“He must have me mixed up with someone else,” Drake said.
“Let’s go and ask him,” said Mel. She hooked her thumbs through the straps of her schoolbag and made her way towards the shed.
“No, wait, come back,” Drake said weakly, but he knew he was wasting his breath. He had no choice but to go after her.
Pestilence was grinning from ear to ear by the time they reached the shed. “Hello, Drake,” he said. He turned to Mel. “And who do we have here?”
“Mel Monday,” Mel said. She held out her hand. Pestilence looked at it nervously, as if it might explode at any moment.
“He doesn’t really do the handshaking thing,” Drake said. “Don’t take it personally.”
“Very wise,” Mel said. “You don’t know where I might have been.”
Pestilence’s eyes opened a little wider. “Exactly! Ooh, I like you,” he said. “What did you say your name was?”
“Mel Monday.”
Pest smiled warmly. “Monday’s child is fair of face,” he said. “Lovely to meet you, my name’s—”
“Bob,” said Drake, more loudly than he had intended. Pest and Mel both turned to look at him. “Uncle Bob. He’s my... He’s my Uncle Bob. Isn’t that right, Uncle Bob?”
“Will you hurry up?” growled a voice from inside the shed. “My back’s about breaking here.”
“Oh, sorry, sorry,” said Pestilence. He spun a plastic arrow that was attached to a square of card in his other hand. “Left foot green.”
“Left foot green? ” War cried. “How in the name of God am I supposed to—?”
Drake reached over and pulled the door closed, and the voice became muffled. A moment later, a loud thud shook the wooden walls of the shed.
“What do you want, Uncle Bob?” Drake asked.
“We... thought you might like to go horse riding,” Pest said. “We were going to do some practice, remember?”
This time, it was Mel’s eyes that widened. “Horse riding?” she said. “Can I come?”
Pestilence suddenly looked uncomfortable. “Well, I suppose, it’s not... I mean...” He opened the shed door. “One second,” he said, then he stepped inside and closed the door.
Voices muttered beyond the door. A moment later, it was yanked open, revealing a bearded giant standing inside. “You,” he said, stabbing a finger at Drake. “Get in. You,” he said, stabbing the same finger at Mel. “Go home.”
“Maybe you can come another time?” Drake suggested, before War caught him by the arm and dragged him into the shed. “See you tomorrow!” Drake managed to cry, and then the door slammed closed between them.
“Well, she seemed lovely,” Pest said. “But Uncle Bob? I mean, really? Do I look like a Bob? Why not Uncle Jose? Or... or... Uncle Alejandro?”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Drake demanded, glaring at War. “You can’t just go dragging me in here any time you feel like it.”
“And you can’t go shirking your duties any time you feel like it. We let you go home last night on the understanding you met us after school. It’s now after school, so we saved you the bother of coming to us.”
Drake crossed his arms over his chest and looked away. For the first time since entering the shed, he spotted Famine. He was lying face down on a Twister mat, apparently unconscious.
“Right, fine,” Drake scowled. “Where are we going?”
Pestilence slipped a slim remote control into his breast pocket. “We’re already there,” he said, and he opened the door.
Drake didn’t recognise the field at first. It wasn’t until he spotted the narrow river, and the bridge that the floating sphere had hidden behind, that he knew where he was.
“What are we doing here?” he asked, following War and Pestilence outside. Famine, for the moment, remained unconscious.
“Like I said, horse riding,” Pest told him.
Drake swept his gaze across the field. “Won’t we need horses for that?”
“We most certainly will. That’s the first part of the lesson, actually.”
“What do you mean?”
War stepped between them. He curved his middle finger and thumb into the shape of a letter C and stuck them in his mouth. A shrill whistle almost made Drake’s eardrums burst.
“Bloody Hell,” he cried, clamping his hands over his ears. “Tell me when you’re going to do that, will you?”
Even through his hands, Drake heard the thunderclap. It rolled across the field, bending the grass and swirling the surface of the river. The force of it made Drake take a step backwards. Pestilence, who had clearly been expecting it, took shelter behind War.
“Did you... Did you just whistle for thunder?” Drake asked.
“Only gods can make thunder,” War told him. “I just whistled for him.”
“Who?” Drake asked, before a horse leaped from thin air and sailed over his head. He turned and watched it gallop across the field for a few hundred metres, gradually slowing down. Shortly before it slowed to a full stop, it turned and began cantering back towards them. Drake watched its mane dance like fire in the afternoon sun.
“Oh, great,” he muttered, as the red horse clopped closer. “You again.”
Another piercing whistle sent him ducking for cover. He looked up to see Pestilence take both pinkie fingers out of his mouth.
“Seriously, will you please give me some warning before you do that?” Drake cried, but another boom of thunder drowned him out before the sentence was even half finished.
This time Drake was ready for the wind. He ducked his head and angled his body to avoid being shoved back. When he looked up, the front half of a white horse was slouching towards him. The back half followed a moment later. Drake saw the air round the horse ripple, as if the world itself had parted, just for a moment, to let the animal through.
The horse kept walking until it reached Pestilence. “You can pat him, if you like,” Pest said encouragingly.
Drake looked up at the horse. It was almost as big as War’s. Whereas the red horse looked like it should be put on display by an art gallery, though, this one looked like it should be put down by a vet.
Weeping sores dotted the horse’s flanks, and a dark crimson liquid dripped from within its mouth and round its eyes. Its tail and mane were ragged and filthy. As it walked, Drake could see every one of its ribs beneath its dry, shrivelled skin.
The horse whinnied loudly, but the whinny became a cough and the cough, eventually, became a raspy wheeze. The animal limped over to st
and beside War’s horse, which promptly took two paces in the opposite direction.
“Um... is your horse OK?” Drake asked, as diplomatically as he could. “It looks a bit, sort of, under the weather.”
“Don’t let his appearance fool you,” Pestilence said. “He’s fit as a fiddle, that one. Aren’t you, love?”
The horse neighed, retched, then vomited on to the grass. “Fit as a fiddle,” Pestilence repeated, somewhat less confidently.
“Now it’s your turn,” War said.
“My turn for what?”
“Summon your steed. Call forth the pale horse,” War told him.
Drake nodded uncertainly. “How do I do that?”
“You whistle,” snapped War, whose patience was rapidly approaching wafer-thinness. “Like we did.”
“I can’t whistle.”
War stared. A breeze blew. Pest’s horse suffered spectacular diarrhoea.
“What did you say?”
“I said I can’t whistle. Is that a problem?”
War’s teeth clamped together until there was barely room for the words to escape. “Yes,” he growled. “That’s a problem. If you can’t whistle, how can you call your horse?”
“I dunno, can’t I just shout or something?”
“And what would you shout, exactly?”
“Sort of, ‘Here, horsey horsey,’ or something,” Drake suggested. “Would that work?”
War shook his head. “No,” he said, in a voice like two bricks rubbing together. “That wouldn’t work.”
“Can you try whistling?” Pestilence asked. “You just sort of stick your fingers in your mouth and blow. It’s not that difficult.”
“I’ve tried before,” Drake said. He stuck his fingers in his mouth and blew, as Pest had suggested. What came out sounded almost exactly like the white horse’s last bowel movement. “See? Can’t do it.”
“No, you can’t, can you?” Pest said glumly.
“I can whistle normally. A bit,” Drake said. He pursed his lips together and made a warbly, high-pitched squeak. “That any use?”
“Oh, aye, that’ll be very handy if we ever need to summon a budgie,” War spat.
The 13th Horseman Page 10
