Kill Baxter (36 page)

‘Gigli!’ I shout.

The Draken kills a badly injured goblin and then trots over to me with a bloody grin. I climb on to his back and clutch his neck as he hurtles after Lefkin. He smells of sewer and blood.

‘You found me, you crazy old dog,’ I say into his ear as he runs. ‘I told you not to follow me.’

He shakes his head in disgust. Even without Nom to translate, his meaning is clear: you don’t tell a Draken what to do. We turn a corner and are greeted by a hail of bullets.

I tumble from Gigli’s back, fire once, and then
click click click.
I’m out of bullets.

Gigli is up and running. He hits the goblin full on in the chest and they tumble to the ground. The goblin has Gigli around the neck and is struggling to keep those jaws from his face.

Lefkin is slumped, wheezing, against the tunnel wall.

‘Just give up,’ I shout to him. ‘You’re hurt.’

He smiles and crooks a finger, and that sucking feeling grips my brain and pulls me into blackness again.

We float above a mountainous field, facing each other.

‘I presume you’ve never commanded an army before?’ Lefkin says. He waves his hand and an army appears beneath him: thousands of ninjas information. ‘They’re going to rip your psyche to shreds. All that will be left of you will be a quivering outer shell, a body with nothing inside.’

‘Tyrone?’ I shout into my psyche. ‘Junebug?’

Nothing. I’m all alone here facing Lefkin. I feel my will fading. I can’t fight this.

Lefkin sees it on my face. ‘I tried to give you an easy way out,’ he says, that cruel smile playing across his twisted features. ‘A bullet through the brain, a clean death. Now you will suffer like I suffered. Come on, Baxter.’ He points down to where Norris, my True Self, is being held captive by a bunch of ninjas. ‘All you have to do to save your True Will is beat me.’

Suddenly Rafe is there next to me, floating in mid-air with his arms crossed in front of him and his red hair streaming behind him like flames.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Lefkin hisses.

Rafe smiles. ‘Me? Oh, I’m the best Dreamwalker in the whole world.’ He waves his hand and an army appears on the field to match Lefkin’s: mech warriors, giant bears, troops in shining armour.

The dream armies clash with a soundtrack full of battle cries and screams. Each of those soldiers is a part of my psyche, and I can feel their dying reverberate through me. If enough of the little bastards die, I’m pretty sure I’ll become a blubbering idiot in the real world.

Lefkin is aggressive and he’s powerful. But he hasn’t balanced his forces. Rafe draws his infantry into an ambush and decimates them with archers. Rookie mistake. Lefkin retaliates with a platoon of black-masked trolls that smash into Rafe’s warriors. My psyche shakes with the impact.

Rafe’s eyes are focused on the battlefield. It’s the classic strategy-game dilemma. Building units requires concentration, which takes your focus away from the actual fighting.

‘Go get your True Will,’ he says.

I fly down awkwardly to where Norris is standing looking bewildered. He clutches his little blue train to his chest. I crash-land on the ground and foot soldiers immediately swarm me. I manage to manifest a shield just in time to block a vicious slash from a ninja with an ugly poleaxe. I stumble backwards and raise the shield above my head, blocking another slash. I’m forced to my knees by the impact of the blow.

I manifest a large handgun, slip the barrel under the shield and shoot the ninja in the crotch. I try to aim again, but I lose concentration and the gun disappears in my hand like smoke. I manifest a sword and attempt to stave off more attackers.

‘Focus,’ I whisper to myself. ‘Focus.’

I change the sword to a battleaxe and take out several soldiers. I swing hard and methodically, mowing through them like a Spartan, battleaxe red with blood and gore. A ninja throws two shuriken, but I bat them out of the air and launch myself forward to decapitate the man.

I reach Norris. He looks at me with big eyes.

‘I want to go home,’ he says.

I grab his jersey and pull him up with me. We float up to the lavender clouds, where Rafe is commanding the army below with grim determination. I watch as he destroys Lefkin’s ninja cavalry, wiping each unit out with scary precision. It’s like witnessing a genocide.

‘I have mastered every strategy game ever made,’ Rafe booms across to Lefkin. ‘On the hardest level. Kids in Korea ask me for gaming advice. I am Rafe378 and you are mine.’

Lefkin screams, a long, anguished howl full of pain and suffering.

I’m jolted back to reality with a sickening lurch. The room swims around me and I clamp my hand to my mouth to stop from throwing up.

Lefkin has slumped to his knees, gurgling. Those dark eyes are unfocused and seem to roll around randomly in his skull. He’s nothing but a poor twisted soul who had the right intentions but the wrong methods of achieving them.

He doesn’t scream or struggle as he dies. He just looks at me with empty eyes, terrible eyes. Is Lefkin a hero, a martyr, or a villain? And what are we, what am I? Who the hell knows. But I’m covered in fat, so my mind is on other things right now. Like a shower.

Ronin appears, limping, covered in grime and fat but clutching the crown of teeth in his hand.

‘Lost that thing in the tunnels,’ he gasps. ‘But it’ll be back.’

‘So destroy the crown,’ I say. ‘Ronin, c’mon!’

‘I tried.’ He turns it over in his hands. ‘It’s just … the power … I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t want to do it.’ His eyes are slipping towards that dark psychosis again. The wolf is back and it’s hungrier than ever. Up close the muti is too powerful, and it’s dragging him back down.

‘No problem,’ I say. ‘Just hang on to it for a while.’ I edge closer. ‘No need to destroy it just yet.’

He clutches the crown and looks up at me with bright eyes. ‘Just for a while,’ he says. ‘Just a little while longer.’

I smile and make as if to pat his shoulder, then quickly change direction and grab the thing out of his arms. He roars with pain but I dance back out of his grasp.

The power of the crown is immense. It’s like being hard-wired into the city with all its rage and hate, its petty irritations and small defeats concentrated in one place. My whole body thrums with the power of it. The pressure builds but it doesn’t crush me. The thing is, I’ve seen my mind. I’ve mapped the contours. The bad part of myself, the part that the crown amplifies, is not a bogeyman in the closet that I’m trying to repress any more. Finding my True Will taught me that.

I raise the crown above my head and for a moment I feel like I’m part of a royal ceremony. Then I bring it down with all the force my tired body can muster and smash it on the ground. It shatters, teeth spraying everywhere, skittering across the floor. I stomp on the remains for good measure.

Ronin looks at me, blinking as some of the sanity returns to his eyes. The wolf recedes to a far-off howling in his mind, always there, but safe in the distance for now.

‘Thanks,’ he says, flicking some of the lard from his hands. ‘Now let’s find a hosepipe and all the soap we can carry.’

CABALES SITS AGAINST
an orange tree that gurgles like a baby as it sways in the wind. When I entered my psyche that evening, Tyrone told me that they couldn’t get the Peruvian shaman to do anything. Not even play bass. I found him sitting in a colourful field, picking listlessly at the giggling grass.

I sit down next to him and we watch the lavender clouds play in the sky.

‘I’m sorry, my friend,’ Cabales says, eventually. His long dark hair hangs over his face and the bone in his nose twitches as he speaks. ‘I’ve betrayed you.’

‘You were trapped in someone’s psyche and forced to perform as one of its developmental stages,’ I say. ‘I’m pretty sure we can allow you some leeway here. Remember what you told me in the Asphodel Meadows?’

‘Yes,’ he replies. ‘I was trying to get you to your True Self. That Crow said he would only help me if I got you there.’

‘It doesn’t matter. It worked. You pulled me out of that depression. I want to do the same for you.’

‘It’s too late.’ He looks at his hands. ‘I’m nothing. I’m nobody.’

‘Dude, when the False Ego came slithering out to finish us, you slapped that bass like nobody I’ve ever seen.’

His mouth quirks into a smile. ‘The bass keeps me going.’

‘Focus on that,’ I say. ‘Focus on the funk. We need you, Cabales, we need you as part of this psyche.’

He sighs and looks up at the sky. ‘Being part of you is not easy.’

‘I know.’ I laugh. ‘Trust me.’

‘Do you know what the anal phase actually is?’ he says. ‘What its function is in the psyche?’

‘Um, potty training?’

‘Yes, on the physical level it’s obvious. Really, your body is one big metaphor. On a more subtle level, potty training is about learning when to hold on and when to release.’

‘Right.’

‘Sometimes you have to learn to let go,’ he says, looking at me with his dark, almond-shaped eyes.

‘Right,’ I repeat. ‘You’re talking about Esmé.’

‘I’m talking about whatever you think I’m talking about.’ He stands up and offers me his hand. I take it and he pulls me to my feet.

‘You do need me,’ he says. ‘I will never betray you again.’

We walk back to where Tyrone and the rest of the band are waiting outside the pagoda. Cabales takes his place among them.

‘It’s time for us to continue our journey through the psyche,’ Tyrone says.

‘See you, honey.’ Junebug plants a kiss on my cheek. Richard gives me a macho man-hug with a pat on the back.

I pick up Chester and he licks my face.

‘Well,’ I say, putting the little bow-tied dog back on the ground. ‘Finding out that my libido is a funk band and my True Self is a suburban dad has been pretty weird.’

‘We are really just reflections of what you want to see,’ Tyrone says with a smile.

‘Don’t ever change.’ I return the smile. ‘Will I see you guys again?’

Tyrone sighs. ‘We ARE you, Baxter. I don’t know how many times I need to tell you that.’

With a final wave they disappear into the lime-green sunset, a band and their dog, on a quest to bring funk to the rest of my psyche. Godspeed and good luck, you ridiculous weirdos.

‘An explosion in the sewers killed dozens of people and covered the city in human waste today. Political parties have hit out at each other, saying the loss of human life was avoidable.’

Ronin presses the mute button on the remote control. I’ve just woken up on his couch and found him with his feet up watching the TV and gulping down a huge mug of coffee. I breathe in and almost gag at the sewer smell that’s leaking from my pores.

When we arrived back at Ronin’s apartment last night, I scrubbed myself until my skin was red and raw, but it wasn’t enough. I can still smell it on me. My whole body hurts and the bullet graze on my scalp is burning like hell, despite the field dressing that King applied.

‘Tone has been spinning this shit all night,’ Ronin says, gesturing at the TV with his coffee mug. ‘In lieu of any credible explanation, people are actually believing him.’

‘And the ones that don’t?’

‘Rattlebone,’ Ronin says. ‘Or a nice little vacation in a dwarven re-education facility. Either way, it’s business as usual.’

‘Tell me you don’t think that’s fucked up,’ I say.

He nods slowly. ‘Did I ever tell you about art school?’

‘You don’t need to do that. You’re right, I have no business playing amateur psychologist.’

‘You’re my apprentice,’ he says. ‘My past is part of who I am and it’s the reason I do some of the things I do. That affects you.’

‘That from your motivational book?’

He reaches across and grabs the yellow book from the table next to the couch. He smoothly pulls a knife from his boot and jams it through the smiling, smug face of the guy on the cover.

‘Fuck that,’ he says. ‘Positive thinking just isn’t for me.’

I laugh. ‘I could have told you that.’

‘You’re the next generation of magic in South Africa, which is a scary thought by the way, but who knows, maybe you can change things. They’ll fight you tooth and nail. But if you do decide to grow a social conscience, then I’ll back you up,’ he says. ‘I hate those fuckers as much as you do.’

‘Thanks, Ronin.’

‘Maybe you haven’t failed. Maybe you have become a better person, sparky,’ he says, looking at me with his clear blue eyes.

I smile. ‘No,’ I say. ‘I really haven’t.’