The 13th Horseman.
Barry Hutchison.
Dedication.
For Kyle and Mia, my own little harbingers of doom..
Epigraph.
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and h.e.l.l followed with him.
a"Revelations 6:8.
THE VAST, LONELY wastelands of oblivion stretch out in all directions, infinite in their scale and in their emptiness. Darkness lies heavy over this most desolate of plains, like a burial shroud on a long-forgotten corpse.
This place a" if, indeed, it can be called a place a" has been this way since before the dawn of time itself. Uninhabited. Undisturbed. It will soon change. Everything will soon change.
Since the first fragments of reality came to exist, there has been nothing but silence here. Yet the silence in the air now hangs ominous and foreboding, as if the very cosmos itself is holding its breath, and waiting.
But waiting for what?
Like the leathery wings of a startled bat, the darkness rustles. In time a" though it is impossible to say how much a" the sound swells in volume, until it crashes and thunders like a storm called down by the devil himself. In all the endless reaches of this place, there is nothing and no one to bear witness to this terrible sound. At least, not yet.
But soon a fragment of the darkness warps and buckles, contorting as if pulled by some violent, invisible hand. The shadows stretch like treacle, screeching and howling in protest as they are forcibly rearranged into a new form. A form that could almost pa.s.s for that of a man.
Almost.
Angry tendrils of inky black hiss and slither across his frame. A fabric woven from the dead of night crawls across bare, bleached bone: a living cape concealing his full horror from all the worlds.
Though freshly born, he is already aware of his purpose. He knows beyond question the reason for his creation. And he knows what he must do.
His empty eye sockets turn and fix on some unseen horizon. He has an epic journey ahead of him. He has unimaginable distances to cross.
It will not take him long.
DRAKE KNEW IT wasn"t the frogs" fault. It couldn"t be. They were, after all, only frogs.
And yet, if it hadn"t been for them, he wouldn"t be here now, standing before a jungle of tall gra.s.s and weeds, holding the smooth wooden handle of an ancient lawn mower. Then again, if it hadn"t been for him, the frogs would never have exploded, his science teacher, Miss Pimkin, would still have her hair, and the top two floors of his school would still be where they were supposed to be. All things considered, he"d probably come off best.
He"d been marched to the headmaster"s office before the dust had settled. By the time the fire brigade had finished beating Miss Pimkin"s flames out, he"d been expelled. And all because he"d tried to help those frogs. So much for good deeds.
Moving school had been bad enough, but the only school he could move to was twenty-five kilometres away, and that meant moving house too. His mum hadn"t been happy about that, and he"d been trying to make it up to her ever since.
The gra.s.s was the latest attempt. He"d promised he"d cut it the day they moved in. That was four days ago, and it was still standing as tall as ever. After a night spent lying awake, worrying about his first day at the new school, Drake had got out of bed at six-thirty, and decided the gra.s.s"s time had come.
The back garden was fairly small a" about the length of an average-sized bus. That was the good news.
The bad news was that the previous occupants didn"t seem to have ever set foot in it, much less made any attempt to keep the gra.s.s in check. A tangled wilderness swayed gently in the summer breeze. Two-metre-high weeds waved slowly forward and back as if beckoning him in.
"OK," he said below his breath. "Here goes."
By the fifth push, Drake realised that the lawn mower was not doing what lawn mowers were meant to do. He knew that the purpose of a lawn mower a" the entire reason for the existence of lawn mowers a" was to cut gra.s.s. No one, it seemed, had bothered to tell that to this lawn mower.
It was an ancient, weather-beaten contraption, with five blades set into a barrel shape, so they spun as the mower was rolled forward. Or, at least, that was the theory. But the entire mechanism had rusted solid, meaning the blades remained completely motionless as Drake shoved the thing further into the jungle of gra.s.s. The effect was that he wasn"t cutting the gra.s.s so much as temporarily flattening it down, only for it to spring back up the moment he"d pa.s.sed, none the worse for its ordeal.
Still, he refused to go back into the house without having made some progress, so he tightened his grip on the handle, dug his toes into the soft ground, and pushed on until he was swallowed by the overgrown undergrowth.
His arms and shoulders quickly began to ache from the strain. Tiny insects with enormous appet.i.tes dive-bombed him, tormenting him with their teeth. Clenching his jaw, he heaved the lawn mower another half-metre up the garden, briefly pushing over yet another patch of head-high gra.s.s.
And then, without warning, the weeds parted and Drake and the lawn mower emerged into a neatly kept clearing. The gra.s.s beneath his feet was a deep, lush green a" not the wishy-washy grey of the other stuff a" and just a centimetre or so long. It looked like a putting green at a golf course, cut into a pattern of perfect straight lines.
A raised flower bed stood off to one side of the circular s.p.a.ce, sprouting with all the colours of the rainbow. A single bee b.u.mbled lazily from flower to flower, happily checking for pollen, and appearing not in the least bit bothered when it found none. Nearby, birds sang songs of joy and harmony to one another, and to anyone else who cared to listen.
But Drake noticed none of these things. Instead, what he noticed was the shed.
It stood in the centre of the clearing. Or perhaps slouched would have been a more appropriate word, considering its condition.
The shed was about two metres wide by three long, with a door taking up most of one of the narrow ends. The walls were a smooth, dark timber that appeared to be immune to the early morning sunlight. Shadows hung over the planks like camouflage netting. Contrasting with the cheerful brightness of the clearing, though, the effect was exactly the opposite of camouflage: the shed stood out like a big square sore thumb. With a little red roof.
A cool breeze blew at Drake"s back as he stepped away from the lawn mower and further into the clearing. Turning, he looked back at the house. He had an un.o.bstructed view of his bedroom window from here, which meant he should"ve been able to see this place from up there too.
And yet, he hadn"t. He hadn"t noticed the neatly cropped circle. He hadn"t spotted the shed. All he"d seen was gra.s.s and weeds and hours of thankless hard work.
"There"s an explanation," he told himself quietly. "No idea what it is, but there"s an explanation. There"s always an explanation."
Drake believed most things could be explained. He knew ghosts were tricks of the light, and UFOs were usually helicopters, or balloons, or far too much alcohol. He knew there was an explanation for this too. And he knew where he"d find it.
He hadn"t noticed the birds tweeting or the bees buzzing, so Drake didn"t notice both fall silent as he approached the shed door. Nor did he hear the breeze hold its breath, or see the flower heads twist slowly in his direction as he turned the handle, eased the door open, and quietly stepped inside.
DRAKE STOOD IN the doorway, still gripping the handle, a scream trapped in a bubble at the back of his throat. He had expected the shed to be empty.
He had, as it transpired, been wrong.
A monstrous figure of a man sat on a folding deckchair directly in front of Drake, his broad, muscular frame making the chair look ridiculously small by comparison. Even sitting down, the man was a clear two feet taller than Drake, with a wild, flame-red beard that covered the bottom half of his face and reached almost all the way down to the floor.
His hair was the same colour as his beard, thinning on top, but long at the back and sides. It hung down over his bronzed shoulders, finally stopping around halfway down his back.
A scar ran from the top of his forehead to his cheek, pa.s.sing through a milky white eye along the way. In one enormous fist he clutched a small red cylinder. It rattled noisily as he shook it back and forth. The clatter seemed deafening in the otherwise soundless shed.
There was a telephone mounted on the wall behind the man, thick with dust. It was an old-fashioned-looking thing, the type that had a dial instead of b.u.t.tons. Only this phone didn"t even have the dial part. It looked like a phone designed solely for receiving calls, and not making them.
The man didn"t look up when Drake entered, just kept rattling the container in his hand, his eyes fixed on the table before him.
It was only as Drake spotted the table that he noticed the other men sitting round it. Afterwards, he would ask himself how he could possibly have missed them. Or one of them, at least.
The... thing sitting across from the first man appeared, at best, vaguely human. Or rather, he looked exactly like a small group of humans would look, were they blended together into a puree, then fed to another particularly hungry human.
Rolls of flab hung off him like tinsel from a Christmas tree. They drooped from his chins and from his neck. They hung down over the elasticated waistband of his grey jogging trousers. They bulged beneath his matching grey top and spilled out through splits in the reinforced seams.
The whole gelatinous mound of blubber wobbled as the man turned to look at the new arrival. He looked Drake up and down, then crammed an entire chocolate bar into his cavernous mouth. Sideways.
There was a wet smacking sound as the fat man"s purple tongue licked hungrily across his lips, and then he spoke. "You must be the new fella," he said, in a voice like a turkey"s gobble. "Thought you"d be taller."
"And I bet he thought you"d be less revolting," snapped the third figure, whom Drake hadn"t even looked at thus far. He turned to look at him now, and was relieved to discover he appeared almost completely normal, aside from the white paper mask he wore over his nose and mouth, and the latex rubber gloves on each hand.
Reaching into the top pocket of his pristine white coat, the third man pulled out a pair of gla.s.ses. His eyes seemed to double in size as he positioned the spectacles on his nose. "Oooh, he"s right, though," the man said, looking Drake up and down. "You are a shorty. Still, you know what they say. Size isn"t everything!" The man snorted out a laugh. "No, but seriously. Don"t worry about it, it"s fine. Fine. You"re perfect just as you are. Gorgeous."
"You sitting down then?" asked the human blancmange. He was munching on another chocolate bar, not even bothering to remove the wrapper first.
Drake"s gaze shifted across each of the men in turn. The only sound in the shed was the slow, rhythmic rattling of the container in the bearded man"s hand.
"Um... um..." Drake stammered. "Sit... sit down?" "Well, you might as well!" chirped the third man, removing his gla.s.ses and slipping them back in his pocket. "I mean, let"s face it, you are going to be stuck here for ever, after all!"
The door gave a loud thud as it swung closed. The three occupants of the shed listened to the boy"s screams as he raced from the clearing and back towards the house.
"Oh dear," said the third man. "Was it something I said, d"you think?"
It was the man in the deckchair"s turn to speak. He spoke with a broad Scottish brogue, his voice louder than the others", despite the m.u.f.fling effect of his beard. "Oh, don"t you worry. He"ll be back."
"You sure?"
"Aye. I"m sure."
Without another word, he opened his hand, letting a small square object tumble on to the tabletop. All three men peered down at the markings etched on to the object"s surface, and considered their significance.
"A four!" gurgled the fat man triumphantly. "War"s got a four!"
"Aye, all right," sighed the one known as War.
"Down the snake you go!"
"I can see that, thank you, Famine. No need to rub it in."
"Right then, Pestilence, my old son, your shot," said Famine to the man in the white coat. He rubbed his sweaty hands together excitedly. "And pa.s.s me them chicken legs, will you? I am b.l.o.o.d.y starving!"
"Mum! Mum! There"s nutters in the garden!"
Drake scrambled through the gra.s.s towards the house, leaving the clearing, the shed and the three strange men behind. The weeds and bracken whipped and scratched at him, but they didn"t slow him down. In no time, he"d made it through the jungle, barged open the front door, and bolted inside.
His mum was in the kitchen, rummaging around in her handbag and patting down her pockets.
She was dressed for work a" black nylon trousers with faded knees, off-white T-shirt and pale blue tabard. She worked three cleaning jobs, spread out across the day so she was out more often than she was home. Now that they"d moved, she had longer to travel to get to work, so she was out even more than she used to be.
"Keys," she said. "Have you seen my keys?"
"Nutters," Drake panted, pressing his back against the door to keep it closed. "Three nutters. In the shed."
"What shed? We haven"t got a shed."
Drake nodded, still getting his breath back. "We do," he said. "It"s at the bottom of the garden. Didn"t see it at first, but then I found it, and there are three men inside, and they might be dangerous, anda""
"Who"s dangerous? What are you on about?" his mum asked. She was still hunting for her keys, only half-listening.
"The three men," he said again, less frantically this time. "In the shed."
"We don"t have a shed," Mum said, before her face brightened as she lifted a tea towel off the table. "There they are a" no wonder I couldn"t find them."
She slipped the keys into the front pocket of her tabard. "Right, sorry," she said, finally giving him her full attention. "What"s all this about a shed?"
For ten minutes they had hunted through the gra.s.s, sticking close together as they searched for the shed. They had found nothing, aside from the lawn mower. It stood silent and still in a particularly dense patch of foliage. The clearing Drake had pushed the thing into was nowhere to be seen, and nor was the shed.
Over the course of the ten minutes, Drake"s mum had become increasingly irritated. Finally, she"d told him off for wasting her time, and stomped back towards the house, muttering about missing her bus.
Drake followed his mum back into the house. He wanted to argue, but he knew there was no point. He had been sent to a child psychologist after the incident with the frogs, and if he kept going on about the shed, Drake had a feeling he"d be back there by the end of the week. He"d already begun the process of convincing himself the whole frog thing had never actually happened. Maybe, if he tried hard enough, he could do the same with the shed.
Mum looked at her watch. "Right, I"m going to head for this next bus."
"Will you be home after school?"
"What"s today? Monday? Yeah, I"ll be here for a bit, then I"m out again. Unless I get held up, but there"s stuff to eat in the freezer."
Drake sc.r.a.ped together one more spoonful of cereal, and took a final glance out through the window at the back garden. Still no shed. "Right," he said at last.
"Go and get ready," she said, kissing him on the top of the head on her way to the door. "You do not want to be late for your first day at school."
"WELL THEN, MR FINN," droned Dr Black, his mouth pulled into a mirthless grin. "Perhaps you would care to fascinate and bedazzle us all by sharing something about yourself?"
The old teacher"s leather seat creaked softly as he bent his skeletal frame forward and leaned his elbows on the neat desk. "Aside from your apparent inability to arrive at my cla.s.s on time," he added, "which we are all now only too aware of."
Dr Black was the most angular person Drake had ever seen. Every part of him seemed to taper to a sharp edge, from his pointed chin to the cheekbones that jutted like tiny pyramids from the craggy desert of his face. He wore a dark, neatly pressed suit that looked a size too big for his spindly body. His fingers, which he was steepling together in front of him, resembled chicken bones with fingernails drawn on the ends.
Drake turned from Dr Black"s gaze and swallowed nervously. His new cla.s.smates sat like a battalion before him, row after regimented row of unfamiliar faces watching him expectantly. He felt his mouth go dry as his mind frantically scrambled to dig up just one interesting fact to share. All he needed to do was come up with a piece of trivia about himself that was so interesting they"d all be clamouring to become his friend. The only problem was that right now he was having difficulty remembering his own name.
He could tell them about the shed this morning. But no, that would make him sound insane. What could he tell them, then?