The Faceless Ones

Chapter Twenty-three. Anathem Mire

The tunnel opened into a huge cavern, the size of a football stadium. Shafts of light pierced the ceiling like stars in the night sky and fell upon the two-story house that stood before them. Valkyrie stared at it, somewhat stunned.

'That looks familiar," she eventually remarked.

"It does," Skulduggery agreed.

"That looks a whole lot like Gordon's house."

"It does."

They stayed where they were and looked at the house. It wasn't an exact twin. It was thinner, and the windows were too narrow, and the door wasn't in the proper place. The roof was a lot higher and the angles were wrong. It was like a memory of Gordon's house, filtered through a bad dream.

Valkyrie didn't like asking obvious questions. In fact, she hated it. There were times, however, when the obvious questions were the only ones available.

"How do you think it got here?" she asked. "I don't know," Skulduggery answered. "Maybe it got lost."

They walked toward it. The house was dark. Some of the curtains were closed. Skulduggery didn't bother scouting around. He knocked on the front door and waited, and when no one came out, he pushed the door open.

"Hello?" he called. "Anyone home?"

There was no answer, so he took out his gun and stepped in. Valkyrie followed. It was somehow colder in here than it was in the caves, and she shivered. If it hadn't been for the flashlights, they would have been enveloped in pitch-black.

There were no power lines down here, no access to electricity, so when Valkyrie flicked the light switch, she wasn't expecting the diffusion of sickly green that rose in the dust-covered lightbulbs."Interesting," Skulduggery murmured.

It was an unsettling feeling, to stand in a place familiar yet alien. The staircase that, in Gordon's house, was solid and wide was here narrow and twisted. There were paintings on the walls, images of depravity and torture.

They moved into the living room, and Skulduggery turned on a few lamps. That same sickly green changed the absolute darkness into an unhealthy murk. The color was making Valkyrie nauseous.

There was an armchair and a sofa by the cold fireplace, and an ornate mirror above the mantelpiece. Valkyrie nudged Skulduggery and pointed. Someone was sitting in the armchair.

"Excuse me," Skulduggery said.

The figure didn't stir. All they could see was part of an arm, and the top of a head.

They moved slowly to the sofa, giving the armchair a wide berth. Valkyrie saw a shoe now. Then a knee. A man was sitting in the chair, his right hand on the armrest, his left in his lap. His suit was old-fashioned and stained with something dark around the chest. His mustache drooped over the corners of his mouth, down to either side of his chin. His hair was dark. He looked to be in his fifties. His eyes were open and gazing at nothing.

"Hi," Skulduggery said in greeting. His tone was warm and friendly, but he hadn't put his gun away. "I am Skulduggery Pleasant and this is my partner, Valkyrie Cain. According to our map, there is a vein of black crystals in the rocks around this cavern. Have you seen any?"

The man in the armchair didn't look up.

"The reason I ask," Skulduggery continued, "is that we really need one, and time is of the essence. If anyone would know where to find these crystals, I'd say it would be you, am I right?"

Skulduggery nodded, as if the man had answered.

"This is a nice house, by the way. We know of a similar one, up on the surface. The real one, actually. This is like a half-remembered copy, but that doesn't mean it's any less of a home. I'm sure you're wonderfully happy here, Anathem."

Valkyrie turned her head to Skulduggery. "What?"

"I'm assuming that's Mire," he told her. "He came down here, all those hundreds of years ago, intending to continue his exploration. Obviously he was wounded, as evidenced by the blood on his clothes, by either a fellow explorer or one of the creatures who inhabit these caves, but he didn't want to die here. Who would? It's dark and cold and miserable. So, being a conjurer of some power, he conjured this house, so that he could pass away in more familiar surroundings."

"This house is made of magic?"

"Can't you feel it? There's a certain tingle to everything."

Valkyrie looked at the man. "He's been sitting there for the last few hundred years, slowly bleeding to death? "

"No, no. He's quite dead by now."

"Then why hasn't the house disappeared?"

"Because he hasn't left."

Skulduggery stepped forward.

Valkyrie frowned. "What are you doing?"

"Waking him up."

Skulduggery kicked, hard. The chair tipped over backward, taking the body with it, but the body that hit the ground was decayed and moldy, and it left an indistinct afterimage of the mustachioed man, sitting on thin air. His eyes flickered, like he'd finally noticed something different, and slowly, he looked up."Trespassers," he hissed, face contorting, and his image blurred as he stood. "Interlopers!"

"Calm down," Skulduggery said.

Anathem Mire screeched and went for them, and Valkyrie jerked back and lashed out as he charged straight through her.

"It's a ghost," Skulduggery said. "He can't touch you."

Mire's form turned and came around. His face took shape. "This is my house," he snarled. "You are intruders!"

The sofa picked itself up and hurtled at them. Skulduggery hauled Valkyrie out of its path.

"The sofa can touch you," he told her, and pushed at the air, deflecting the table that rushed at them from behind.

Mire spread his arms wide. "I will bring this house down upon you," he said as the house started to shake.

Skulduggery ran to the large mirror over the fireplace and took it down, turned, and swung it into Mire. The glass soaked him up, and Skulduggery pressed the mirror against the wall.

Valkyrie had read about mirrors being the only thing able to capture souls and spirits. The fact that she didn't have to ask what had just happened made her glow a little inside.

"We're not looking for a fight," Skulduggery said, loud enough for Mire's ghost to hear. "We just want a single black crystal."

"The crystals are mine!" Mire shouted. "Release me, demon!"

"I'm not a demon, I'm a sorcerer. Like you. We didn't come here to hurt you."

"Trickery! Lies! You're another demon of the caves, another monster, sent here to torture me! To drive me mad!"

Skulduggery sighed and looked at Valkyrie. "Take a look around. If he's claiming ownership of his surroundings, maybe he's managed to get hold of some crystals."

She nodded, and left Skulduggery to try to reason with the ghost. She walked into the kitchen, turning on lamps as she went. A giant black stove stood under a chimney that didn't exist in Gordon's house. Valkyrie opened a cupboard, and an insect the length of her finger scuttled around the edge of the door and vanished up her sleeve. She jumped away, ripping the overcoat off and throwing it down, but the bug was on her bare arm, climbing to her shoulder. She swatted at it, but it hung on and darted inside her tunic. She tore the tunic open, reached in, and grabbed it, feeling it squirming in her grip. Valkyrie flung it to the other side of the room and flailed with revulsion.

Once she was done flailing, she picked up Gordon's coat, dusted it off, and checked to make sure nothing else had sneaked in. She put it on, buttoned her tunic, and smoothed down her hair. That, she told herself, was revolting.

She opened the rest of the cupboards much quicker, taking her hand away faster and faster each time. She had a horrible vision of a batlike thing flapping out at her, so she stood to one side as she did it. There were no black crystals in the cupboards, no more bugs, and thankfully no batlike things.

Valkyrie left the kitchen, glaring at the corner where she'd thrown the bug, and climbed the stairs. They creaked with every footstep. The bedrooms were in roughly the same places as Gordon's bedrooms, but the beds were all four-posters, and the headboards had apparently been carved by a degenerate. One room looked uninviting and the light didn't work, so she didn't enter.She stepped into the study. Instead of a desk and bookshelves and awards, there was a single rocking chair in the middle of the room. The window looked out across the cavern. It was not a breathtaking sight.

Valkyrie ran her hands over the wall that opened to the secret room. She knocked, listening to the sounds, but none of them sounded hollow. Disappointed, she left the study and carefully descended the staircase. When she got back to the living room, the ghost was out of the mirror and standing beside Skulduggery.

He had calmed down an awful lot.

"The crystals are not in this cavern," Mire was saying. His voice was unsteady. "I purposefully detailed this part of the map incorrectly, to stop others from gaining from my work. But they are close."

"Can you take us to them?" Skulduggery asked.

"I dare not leave this house. Whatever dark power lives in these caves, it sustains me, even in this spirit form. But I cannot venture from here."

"Then will you tell us where the crystals are?"

"What is the point? You will be turned to ash as soon as you touch them."

"We have a way around that. Will you help us?"

Valkyrie stepped in, and Mire heard her and turned.

"She lives," the ghost said, his face showing something akin to awe.

"I told you," Skulduggery said.

"I had almost forgotten what one looked like."

"One?"

"One of them. One of the living. These caves have been my home for so long. I have been dead for so long, alone down here. I stay away from the creatures, of course. Some of them can hurt me, even in this form. These caves are cursed for sorcerers."

He moved closer to Valkyrie.

"You are splendid," he murmured.

She raised an eyebrow to Skulduggery, and he quickly stepped between them. "Will you help us?" he asked again.

The ghost dragged his gaze away from Valkyrie and looked at Skulduggery. His head blurred with the movement. "Of course," he said, and the wall behind him shifted and grew a door. The door opened. "Beware. The crystals kill."

Mire stayed where he was as Valkyrie followedSkulduggery through to a tunnel with walls of rock. Embedded in those walls were thin veins of crystals, glowing with a black light.

Skulduggery looked at her. "And you're absolutely sure you won't be harmed? "

"Absolutely."

"How do you know?"

She reached out and touched the nearest crystal. "See?"

He stared at her. "That was an amazingly foolish thing to do."

"Potentially amazingly foolish," she corrected. "It was a theory of Gordon's I read about in his notes."

"He could have been wrong, you know."

"I have faith in his theories," she said with a shrug. "Give me the chisel."

He took the chisel from his jacket and handed it over. She lined it up against a crystal; then, using the butt of Skulduggery's gun, she hammered at it, barely making a scratch.

"Hold it in place," Skulduggery told her. He flexed his fingers and swung his hand, and a concentrated blast of air hit the chisel like a pile driver. A chunk of crystal flew free, a little bigger than the one that had been housed in the Scepter. Valkyrie wrapped it in cloth. Skulduggery held out a small box, and she placed the crystal within; then he closed the box and put it in his jacket pocket. She gave him back his gun and chisel. "Easy," she said.

"Never do anything like that again. You could have been turned to dust, and then I'd have to explain to your parents why they were burying their beloved daughter in a matchbox."

"Kenspeckle would never let you hear the end of it either."

Skulduggery looked at her as he led the way back to the door. "I've been meaning to ask you, with everything Kenspeckle has been saying: Do you think I should treat you differently?"

"No," she said at once.

"Don't be so quick to answer."

"Nooo ..." she said slowly.

"You are amusing to me, but the question remains. Maybe I should leave you in the car on occasion."

"But I never stay in the car," she reminded him.

"That's because I've never insisted before.»"It wouldn't make any difference."

"I can be very commanding when I want to be."

"Yeah, but not really though."

He sighed, and they emerged into the living room. Mire's body was still on the ground near the overturned chair, and his ghost was standing, looking at them.

"You're not dead," he said. "That is a surprise."

"Thank you for your cooperation," Skulduggery said. "Is there anything we can do for you in exchange?"

"Waking me was enough."

"What will you do now?" Valkyrie asked.

Mire smiled. "I will be happy, I think. Yes, I think I will."

"I hope we meet again, Anathem," said Skulduggery. "You are an ... interesting being."

Mire bowed, and as he did so, he caught Valkyrie's eye. She gave him a polite nod in return and followed Skulduggery to the front door.

"China owns the Scepter," he said as he stepped out of the house, "so she'll be the only one able to use it. Assuming it works when we replace the crystal."

"And if it doesn't?»"If it doesn't, I'm sure I'll come up with something brilliant to--"

The front door slammed shut just as Valkyrie reached it, and she whirled. Mire drifted to her, a smile that had been neglected for centuries struggling to form on the memory of his face.

"You are not leaving," he said. "The skeleton can return to the surface, but you are mine.»