Skulduggery Pleasant: Dark Days (18 page)

39
HOLLOW MAN

V
alkyrie grabbed the thick thread that was holding the Hollow Man together and yanked. The sewing came undone and the gas hissed at her as the skin deflated. She tasted the stench and gagged as she rolled off the table, the gas making the bile rise in her throat. She threw up, her eyes stinging and streaming tears.

She felt rough hands on her and then she was hauled off her knees and thrown against the wall. A fist crunched into her ribs and she cried out. Something crashed into the side of her head and she went stumbling, tripping over a discarded chair and falling painfully to the hard ground.

Her eyes wouldn’t open. She tried crawling away, but her ankle was grabbed and she was pulled back. She knocked her chin against the floor and tasted blood. She turned over, lashing out a kick at knee-height. Her boot hit the Hollow Man’s leg and it was soft, but there was no knee to break. The grip on her ankle was released and she covered up, waiting in the darkness for the next blow. It found its way above her raised knees and below her elbows, dropping straight down on to her belly, and the breath left her. She tried to roll over, but those hands were on her again, those coarse, clumsy fingers, and she was yanked to her feet and sent stumbling blindly. Her hip struck something, the edge of the table, and Valkyrie folded and sank to her knees.

Her eyes opened a crack. All she could see was a blurred murkiness. She closed them. She couldn’t breathe. She heard the whispering of papery skin behind her and she launched herself backwards. She collided with the Hollow Man, but she’d misjudged the angle and she felt it stagger but not fall. She tucked her head in as she rolled, came up in a crouch, her stomach muscles still not allowing her to straighten. She felt tears on her face and tasted blood and vomit.

She moved, staying low, stepping away from the Hollow Man’s footsteps. Her hands were held out in front and she concentrated on feeling the air against her skin. Immediately, she felt the draughts, the heat from the furnace pushing through the room, rising up through the gap from which she had fallen. She stood on something and nearly tripped. The bellows maybe. The furnace was behind her. A blast of heat, uncomfortable on her back.

The air shifted and she felt the Hollow Man’s movements, felt it lurching through the streams of clogging warmth, disrupting them as it came. It was close and unsubtle, coming head-on, and she used the air, drawing it in to her and then pushing, hard. It collided with the Hollow Man and drove it back, out of her sensory range. She heard it crash against the table.

Valkyrie rubbed her eyes before attempting to open them. They still stung, but it was bearable. The tears turned everything to a blur. She wiped her face with her sleeve and blinked rapidly. The Hollow Man came into focus. It was on the ground, crawling towards her, its own sewing needle sticking out of its lower back. Its legs were already half-deflated, the green gas slowly escaping through the puncture wound.

Valkyrie stepped sideways to avoid its grab. She went to the chair, righted it and sat with a groan. She worked at getting her breathing under control as she watched the Hollow Man change direction and crawl over. By the time she was taking deep breaths again and her eyes had stopped watering, the Hollow Man’s flat, outstretched fingers were centimetres away from her foot. It had stopped moving.

Valkyrie stood and spat, trying to get rid of the foul taste in her mouth. She crossed to the door and opened it, making sure there was no one around, and eased out. As she hurried down the flame-licked corridor, she felt the pain, but ignored it, just like she ignored the part of herself that wanted to hunker down and cry. She focused on the
other
part, the part that revelled in her triumph. Another fight that she’d won. Another battle where she hadn’t died.

She moved through the junction and found stairs leading up. She listened for a few seconds, made sure no one was going to surprise her, and ascended. The stairs curled around a thick column of stone like a vine around a sapling. Valkyrie reached the top and kept moving in what she decided was a southerly direction. She came to a corner and Billy-Ray Sanguine rounded it.

He looked at her for a moment, a little surprised, like he couldn’t quite place her, and then that white-toothed grin came, but by then she was running the other way. She heard him laugh as she barrelled through a door.

There were shouts now, from all over, and she heard running footsteps, the echoes rebounding along the stone. Valkyrie came to another set of stairs leading up and took them three at a time. There were two Hollow Men at the top. They reached for her, but she slipped by them. She reached a corridor with a window at the end and piled on the speed, hearing someone behind her. Beyond the window was a room, its light spilling through into the darkness. The walls of this room had tapestries. She saw a chandelier. It was the castle’s main hall. Which meant that this wasn’t a window – it was a mirror.

Valkyrie jumped, curling into a ball as she hit the glass. The world fragmented with a crash that filled her head. The main hall was lower than the corridor and she fell through the air, shards of mirror falling with her. She slammed to the floor and rolled, crunching the glass beneath her. She caught a glimpse of Skulduggery and then he was beside her, helping her up, and Ghastly, Fletcher and Shudder were running in.

Somebody cleared his throat. Loudly. They all looked up at the broken mirror. Billy-Ray Sanguine stood in the corridor above them, hands in his pockets. “How is everyone?” he asked. “How’s everyone doin’? We should catch up later, all of us, talk about old times and have a laugh. Can’t do it now, I’m afraid. Bit pressed for time, what with our ultimate masterplan and all.”

“Come down here, Sanguine,” Skulduggery said.

“Why, so you can arrest me?”

“No,” said Ghastly, “so we can kick the hell out of you.”

An elderly man appeared beside Sanguine and Valkyrie knew she was looking at Scarab.

“We have guests?” Scarab asked.

“Yes, we do, Pops,” Sanguine replied. “I’m afraid the girl broke a mirror though.”

“Well, that’s OK,” smiled Scarab. “I don’t believe any of that
seven years’ bad luck
stuff anyhow. Heck, even if I did, it wouldn’t matter – they’re all going to be dead by tomorrow anyway. Hello there, Detective Pleasant. Been a while.”

“We want Tanith Low and Kenspeckle Grouse returned to us,” Skulduggery said. “And then we want you and the others to give yourselves up.”

Scarab laughed and Sanguine shook his head, amused.

“I like you guys,” Sanguine said. “I do. You know why I like you? Because you’re
funny.
You look all weird and you say all these silly things. Funny, y’know?”

“You act as if you’re not hopelessly outnumbered,” said Scarab, “which, by the way, you
are.
You act like you’d stand a chance against the fellas we have with us
and
all the Hollow Men we’ve been stitching together – which, by the way, you
don’t.
That’s impressive.”

Sanguine nodded. “That, and I don’t mind sayin’ this because I know it’ll stay in this room, is a beautiful thing.”

It was a psycho double act they were watching – father and son lunatics. But even so, they were talking too much. Skulduggery felt it too.

“I take it you’re not going to surrender,” he said.

“The last time you arrested me,” Scarab responded, all humour gone from his voice, “you locked me away without a trial. If it’s all the same to you, I’m not going to repeat my mistakes. There will be no prison cells this time. There will be no cover-ups. There will be justice.”

“That’s why you had Professor Grouse repair the Desolation Engine? You think setting it off will be justice?”

“Depends who I kill, now doesn’t it?”

Skulduggery tilted his head. “What’s to stop us from putting an end to all of this right
now
, and kicking the hell out of the both of you while we’re at it?”

Sanguine frowned. “Well, we’re, we’re up so
high
…” He brightened. “Oh, yeah
and
we’ve got reinforcements.”

“See,” Scarab said, “we
were
planning to use the Hollow Men in our grand finale, but seeing as how you found our base here, we’ll just have to improvise a little. So we’re going to head off now and no doubt we’ll meet again to, you know, hit each other or whatever it is people like us do nowadays.”

“It’s still hit each other,” Sanguine told him.

“Well, there you go. You can’t beat the classics.”

“You can try and stop us,” Sanguine said, “but I have a feelin’ you’ll be just a
tad
busy fending off the army of Hollow Men that are about jump out at you.”

At that, a section of wall opened up and a single Hollow Man stumbled out and stood there. Sanguine pursed his lips. A moment passed.

“Awkward,” he murmured.

Another wall slid open and Hollow Men poured out, dozens of them, and Sanguine clapped his hands in delight and then disappeared from view with his father.

Valkyrie stood beside Skulduggery and Ghastly, and they clicked their fingers and threw balls of fire. The flames caught the skin of the Hollow Men, taking a few seconds to burn through, and ignited the gases within. And still they came, dozens of them, swarming into the hall.

“The Cleavers are on their way,” Skulduggery said, “but we don’t have time for this. Anton, we need them taken down
fast.
”

Shudder nodded. He closed his eyes and his fists clenched. Then a head pushed through his chest.

Valkyrie stepped back in shock. The head was hazy, like a ghost, and it was Shudder’s head, only different. The hair was longer and it had pointed teeth. It snarled as it pushed its way out. Its shoulders came next, then its arms, then its clawed hands. It was dressed in the same shirt and black jacket as the real Shudder. It stayed where it was for a moment then opened its eyes, which were narrow and black. It saw the Hollow Men, its face contorted with effort and it lunged, trailing a blurred stream of light and darkness from its torso back into Shudder’s chest. It flew to the nearest Hollow Man and slashed, its claws solid enough to rip through the papery skin.

It moved on, the stream that connected it to Shudder lengthening, and it screeched as it went, tearing and ripping through the Hollow Men as they swiped at it. It looped and curled, swooped and whirled, the stream crossing over and under itself. This ghostly Shudder, this
gist
, was relentless. With each pass its visage became fiercer, and it was no longer so hazy, so transparent. It looked demonic. It looked evil.

Shudder himself grunted. Valkyrie looked at him and saw the sweat on his face, saw the straining muscles on his neck. The stream that flowed from his chest became tight and taut, and the gist screamed in anger as it began to retract. Like a fish on a hook it twisted and writhed, but it could do nothing to stop itself from being pulled back into Shudder’s chest. The last Valkyrie saw of it was a flailing claw.

Shudder took a heavy step back, his face pale, his breathing uneven. The Hollow Men were gone, nothing more than tatters and a foul smell that made her eyes sting again.

“Are you OK?” Valkyrie asked.

“It takes me a few minutes,” Shudder said quietly, “to regain my strength.”

“What
was
that?” Fletcher asked.

“It’s my
gist
,” he said. “It’s my anger, my hate, my determination. It’s the strongest part of me, but it needs to be carefully controlled. Gists can’t be allowed too much time out of the host body.”

“Why not?”

Shudder looked at them. “It would take over, and then
I’d
be reduced to something that lived inside
it.
”

“Fletcher,” Skulduggery said, “take Anton outside. Wait there for Marr and the Cleavers. Tell them where we are.”

Fletcher nodded, glanced at Valkyrie and disappeared with Shudder.

“Let’s go,” Skulduggery said to Ghastly and Valkyrie.

They used the air to rise to the broken mirror, then touched down and hurried on. There were more Hollow Men here, but they were dispatched easily.

“Tanith’s this way,” Valkyrie said, taking the lead. “Kenspeckle’s with her. He’s been…She’s hurt.”

They ran on, until Valkyrie pointed at a door and Skulduggery blasted it open.

Kenspeckle Grouse leaped to his feet, snarling. Tanith could barely raise her head. Ghastly moved to Kenspeckle and hit him with a right cross. Kenspeckle laughed. He pushed Ghastly and Ghastly hit the far wall. Kenspeckle threw his chair at Skulduggery and used the distraction to get closer. He laughed again as he yanked Skulduggery’s arm from his shoulder. Skulduggery roared in pain and Kenspeckle shoved him away. Valkyrie splayed her hand against the air and Kenspeckle went tumbling backwards.

There were footsteps behind her and Davina Marr burst into the room. “Do not move!” she commanded, gun aimed at Kenspeckle.

Kenspeckle snarled again and turned on his knees, his mouth opening wide. Something bulged in his throat, something that was trying to crawl its way out. If that Remnant got loose in here, it could possess any one of them, or seize its chance to escape, and they’d never get it back. Valkyrie ran forward and kicked, the toe of her boot slamming into Kenspeckle’s chin. He lifted slightly with the impact and dropped on to his back.

Marr hurried over, shackles in his hand. She cuffed Kenspeckle’s wrists behind him, sealing the Remnant back inside. Valkyrie looked around, realising there were Cleavers over by Tanith, freeing her from the seat.

“This won’t hold me for long,” Kenspeckle said, spitting blood as Marr hauled him up. “I’ll get out. I’ll come for you. Every last one of you.”

“Cleavers” Marr said, “take him away.”

Fletcher came in as Kenspeckle was led out.

“Fletcher,” Skulduggery said, stifling a groan as he fixed his arm into place, “take Tanith to the Sanctuary. She needs urgent medical attention.”