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Armageddon Outta Here - The World of Skulduggery Pleasant
Derek Landy
The ULTIMATE story collection for Skulduggery Pleasant fans. Featuring two AMAZING novellas and fourteen GRIPPING short stories - including three new stories written exclusively for this edition.We all know that doors are for people with no imagination so smash the glass, climb through the window and enter the awesome world of Skulduggery Pleasant with this ultimate story collection.For the first time, every Skulduggery Pleasant short story, plus two novellas – Get Thee Behind me, Bubba Moon and The End of the World – is collected into one magnificent volume. But that's not all…This collection includes fourteen short stories – three of which are AWESOME NEW stories written exclusively for this edition. Two of them delve into the things that our old friend Billy-Ray Sanguine gets up to between books, while the third pits Skulduggery and Valkyrie against a serial killer, a desperate ghost, and a swarm of very nasty insects.So it’s business as usual, then.Introduced by Derek, these are the hidden stories of the skeleton who saves the world… and the girl who's destined to destroy it.
Discover what happens between the books …
This collection includes every Skulduggery Pleasant short story ever written, including two awesome novellas – Get Thee Behind Me, Bubba Moon and The End of The World, written for World Book Day.
But that’s not all.
Written specially for this collection are three new short stories. Two of them delve into the things that fan-favourite, Billy-Ray Sanguine, gets up to between books, while the third pits Skulduggery and Valkyrie against a serial killer, a desperate ghost, and a swarm of very nasty insects.
So it’s business as usual, then.
Copyright
First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2014
The edition published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2015
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
Visit us on the web at www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Visit Skulduggery Pleasant at
www.skulduggerypleasant.co.uk (http://www.skulduggerypleasant.co.uk)
Derek Landy blogs under duress at
www.dereklandy.blogspot.com (http://www.dereklandy.blogspot.com)
Copyright © Derek Landy 2015*
Derek Landy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover illustration © Tom Percival;
Skulduggery Pleasant™ Derek Landy
SP Logo™ HarperCollinsPublishers
* The Lost Art of World Domination, first published in Skulduggery Pleasant, 2012 Down-under Tour Edition; Gold, Babies and the Brothers Muldoon, first published in Playing with Fire, 2012 Down-under Tour Edition; The Slightly Ignominious End to the Legend of Black Annis, first published in The Faceless Ones, 2012 Down-under Tour Edition; Myosotis Terra, first published in Mortal Coil, 2012 Down-under Tour Edition; The Wonderful Adventures of Geoffrey Scrutinous, first published in Mortal Coil, 2012 Down-under Tour Edition; Just Another Friday Night, first published in The End of the World, 2012 Australian Edition; The End of the World, first published in 2012; Trick or Treat and The Button, first published on www.dereklandy.blogspot.com (http://www.dereklandy.blogspot.com); Across A Dark Plain, first published in Armageddon Outta Here, 2014; The Horror Writers’ Halloween Ball, first published in Armageddon Outta Here, 2014; Friday Night Fights, first published in Armageddon Outta Here, 2014; Get Thee Behind Me, Bubba Moon, first published in Armageddon Outta Here, 2014; Death in Texas, Theatre of Shadows and Crazy Little Thing, first published in Armageddon Outta Here, 2015.
Source ISBN: 9780007559527
Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007559558
Version: 2014-12-24
This book is dedicated to my brand new nephew, Cameron.
Cameron, I’m sure you’ll grow taller as you get older, but right now you’re simply way too short. You also can’t talk or stand up, and I have yet to see you read a book. None of this is entirely your own fault, however – I blame the parents – so I hope my words don’t upset you too much.
The problem is, you’re surrounded by a formidable sister and some formidable cousins, so you’re going to have to grow up to be an exceptional person. I’ll do what I can to help, but the rest is up to you.
Contents
COVER (#u0b68c99b-11f1-5c21-ae2b-00b632d8a071)
TITLE PAGE (#u58ea2a63-973e-5957-bb68-f44339347250)
COPYRIGHT (#u77098a63-2c8b-507f-9f96-c50e3b2a8712)
DEDICATION (#uac3fda0f-35f4-5792-8386-06c2ac14c2f4)
THE TIMELINE (#u06e40786-0cb1-5d0d-ace1-71db3306eab6)
INTRODUCTION (#u412d0c4a-2c32-5356-a756-86b5464019af)
ACROSS A DARK PLAIN (#u9972a4a3-e94a-5253-9e44-00e1d7038dea)
THE HORROR WRITERS’ HALLOWEEN BALL (#u42daa8fe-8ce6-51d0-bf65-f7b675f8507f)
THE LOST ART OF WORLD DOMINATION (#u4e19bce9-e47c-5b04-b0f7-87c51d110700)
GOLD, BABIES AND THE BROTHERS MULDOON (#ucc8d03f8-bf8c-5dae-bc4d-6e75a47a1b8e)
THE SLIGHTLY IGNOMINIOUS END TO THE LEGEND OF BLACK ANNIS (#ub5bf0413-9c3c-5c8f-81cb-e0e675b7328e)
FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS (#u11f6cdd3-cd91-5667-844e-7c2138e8d47a)
DEATH AND TEXAS (#u08ad66b2-e1c3-5c88-bca1-27386d35fb39)
MYOSOTIS TERRA (#u7d10bcf4-91a0-566f-bd0f-e0f9e5562775)
THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF GEOFFREY SCRUTINOUS (#uf9444574-3c14-5aa8-aab9-97e2b3646e72)
JUST ANOTHER FRIDAY NIGHT (#u162113ea-c667-5e5e-bdad-79c617e45a81)
THE END OF THE WORLD (#ue40cb331-4b2e-5e63-a2a8-98e7a22a60fe)
TRICK OR TREAT (#uaf867612-2b87-526c-b037-5a158be0e86d)
GET THEE BEHIND ME, BUBBA MOON (#u43177459-6be1-51fd-bb36-42264f54f82d)
THEATRE OF SHADOWS (#uee4994e2-ccd7-5e4d-a360-9a46ec2cf46a)
EYES OF THE BEHOLDER (#u999c94e8-969f-5d02-82a2-5580e7c8cc79)
THE BUTTON (#ua542cfee-8f99-5547-8b2b-330063c59e86)
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#u7caae2b6-43ad-58fe-b4e8-2e51c51b4df7)
I’ve always loved Introductions.
They remind me of when I was a kid, wandering through second-hand bookstores, pulling battered old horror paperbacks from the shelves. Those wrinkled covers, those dog-eared pages, that wonderful, slightly stale smell of stories … Those books pulled you into their own history, made you a part of it, and if you were lucky – like, really lucky – right before the story started you’d find the Author’s Introduction.
This, to a kid who wanted nothing more than to be a writer, was a portal into imagination. I couldn’t Google a writer’s name and read his blog or watch every interview he’d ever done on YouTube (and I hereby wave to some reader way off in the future who’s just read that and is now getting information about “Google” “Blog” and “Youtube” downloaded directly into his brain), so I had to make do with what brief glimpses I was afforded. It was in the Introductions that authors talked about their work and their process, and I scoured these words, searching for the secret to writing, hunting for the Big Clue that would lead me to Where Stories Come From.
I found glimpses of the Big Clue in the words of Stephen King and other masters of the genre, but nothing definite. Still, in many ways it was enough. These glimpses brought with them their own kind of inspiration, and when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, that’s all I needed. My early stories dripped with blood. They were soaked in it. Drenched. I had yet to learn concepts such as subtlety or restraint, and there is definitely a place for subtlety and restraint – but it was not a place that held any interest for me. I was all about the blood, the rawness, the viscera. I was reading King and Clive Barker and James Herbert and Michael Slade and Skipp and Spector and Shaun Hutson and dear GOD the list goes on. My life was blood-soaked books, horror movies and heavy metal.
Ah, youth …
And yet, dig a little deeper and you reveal a love of film noir and craggy detectives in rumpled suits and cool hats. Dig a little more and you uncover a love of westerns inherited from a father, a love of screwball comedies inherited from a mother (and for a kid who has stammered all of his life, to find these movies where everyone talks really really fast was beyond exhilarating), and a love of science fiction and adventure that blossomed in the eighties because of people like Spielberg and Lucas and shows like Knight Rider and Airwolf and The Six Million Dollar Man …
Taking all this into account, I am the sum of my obsessions. I am every movie I’ve ever seen and every book I’ve ever read. I am every song I’ve ever listened to. I am every comic I’ve ever bought. I am entire collections by Joseph Wambaugh and Elmore Leonard and Joe R Lansdale and I am His Dark Materials and I am Harry Potter.
And in all of these things, I have glimpsed the Big Clue. And these glimpses were enough to open my eyes to the ideas swimming naturally through the soup of my mind. It was from that soup that I plucked Skulduggery Pleasant himself, back in the summer of 2005, and he brought with him every genre I’ve ever loved.
He is a detective (crime) who is also a skeleton (horror) who takes on a partner (screwball) and they fight monsters (fantasy) and they save the world (adventure). With a little bit of sci-fi thrown in, to stop things from getting boring.
The stories in this collection – arranged here in chronological order for your reading pleasure – are but fragments of the world that Skulduggery has opened up for me. It is because of him that I am able to write a western and sit it comfortably beside a novella about a middle-aged man revisiting the horrors of his childhood. It is because of him that the tones of these stories shift so radically between one and the next. It is because of him that I have the freedom to write the kind of stories I loved, and continue to love, to read.
And if there is a fledgling writer out there who is searching through this Introduction in an effort to find the Big Clue – the secret to writing that I, along with all the other writers, share only amongst ourselves – I am afraid I must disappoint you. This is something you must find out for yourself, fledgling writer, as the Author’s Code expressly forbids me from speaking of it in public.
I may already have said too much …
Derek Landy,
Dublin
Saint Patrick’s Day, 2014
t was the year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-one, and it was up west of the Missouri River in South Dakota, and the Dead Men were riding again.
This was still years before that damn fool Custer stumbled across all that gold in the Black Hills, years before Wounded Knee and the massacre that took place there. This was back before the territory was admitted into the union, back before Deadwood, back even before that pitiful Treaty of Laramie promised the region to the Lakota people, a treaty that, if ever that was one, was drawn up just to be burned.
It was a time of gunfighters and outlaws and hard living and easy dying and, of course, it was a time of mean-spirited, blood-slicked magic.
The Dead Men had travelled east from Wyoming, tracking their quarry, who’d led them a merry dance. But the longer they tracked, the easier it got. This was on account of the fact that their quarry had taken up with a Necromancer named Noche, who was developing a habit of leaving dead folk in his wake. Not regular dead folk, neither, but the kind that jumped up and ran around and had a madness in their dull eyes and a terrible, terrible hunger that could only be sated by human flesh. The kind only fire or a bullet to the brainpan could put down. Thankfully, fire and bullets were what the Dead Men specialised in.
Seven of them, all Irish, some of their accents a little muddied due to all the travelling and the living they’d done. There was Saracen Rue, all easy charm and easy smiles, like a man trying to convince himself he’s nicer than he is. Beside him rode Dexter Vex, one of the more thoughtful of the group, though he wasn’t one to show it. The quiet one with the week’s worth of stubble was Anton Shudder, and a scarier man was hard to find, even in this forsaken land. There was Erskine Ravel, recently returned from his sojourn to lands even more foreign and forsaken than this one, and Hopeless, a man of one name and many faces.
Riding in the lead was the scarred man, Ghastly Bespoke, and beside him the living skeleton, the one who looked like the Grim Reaper himself, the first of the Four Horsemen written about in the Bible and shouted about from pulpits up and down this wounded and pockmarked country.
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
Skulduggery Pleasant’s clothes were scuffed and faded, and his coat was long and may have been black once upon a time. Among normal folk, what these men called ‘mortals’, he’d take that kerchief from around his neck there and tie it over all those teeth that were fixed in that permanent grin, and he’d pull that hat down low over those empty eye sockets. He had two pistol belts, criss-crossing low and held in place with tie-downs, and in those holsters he had guns with pearl handles and long barrels. Colt Walkers, they were. Guns built for stopping men.
They’d been riding for days and their horses were tired and thirsty, and the riders with flesh were chafed and sore. They came upon the town of Forbidden, and didn’t think much of it. A town of three streets and dirty people who bathed not often or well. There was a mangy dog lying in the middle of the street, who looked at them with mild indifference as they passed. When they were safely gone, the dog offered up a feeble growl, then lay back down and went to sleep or died. Didn’t make much difference to anyone which one it was.
They found the livery down the other end of town and the owner, an ungrateful piece of work called Sully, limped out into the sun, scratching himself in places soap hadn’t touched in a long, long time.
“Yeah?” he said with a mouth full of spit. “What the hell d’you want?”
The Dead Men dismounted. Pleasant and Bespoke stayed at the back, them being the most likely to draw attention, and Rue and Vex looked at the proprietor and frowned.
“What the hell do you think we want?” Vex said. “We want our horses fed and watered. You own this place, don’t you?”
The piece of work Sully looked at these men, saw the steel in their eyes and the steel on their hips, and he lost some of his scowl and swallowed some of his spit.
“I do,” he said. “Proud owner of Sullivan’s Livery. If the paint hadn’t peeled off years ago, you could see my name on the sign up there, even though it was spelled wrong and the ‘y’ was missing from Livery. I blame myself, not being able to read, and I blame the fella I hired to make the sign, him not being able to write. But regrets are what regrets are – we all have ’em, and those who don’t have ’em don’t miss ’em. Fed and watered, you say. You can depend on me, provided you have coin enough to pay for such a service.”
Vex tapped Rue’s arm. “Show the man some coin, Saracen.” He went to join the others, who were walking down the wide patch of dirt called Main Street towards the saloon. The townspeople gave them a decent berth, watched them with wary eyes and waited till they were out of earshot to start whispering. Men with guns were never a good sign. Men who looked like they knew how to use those guns even less so.
Bespoke was first through the doors into the saloon. Inside were a few uneven tables, a solid bar and a cracked mirror. There was a small piano nobody played and the floor was dried mud and sawdust. As far as patrons went, there weren’t many here, but all heads turned, and all mouths dropped open. To see a man of Bespoke’s scarring was not something you’re ever likely to see again, and most people seemed to realise that, so they made sure to stare extra hard when they first met him.
Bespoke tipped his hat to the room and walked up to the bar.
The other Dead Men followed, filing in one at a time. Pleasant came last, found a table in the corner to sit, watching the room from beneath the brim of his hat.
“Good day to you, barkeep,” said Bespoke. “What sort of drinks do you serve here?”
The barkeep, a man who’d seen a lot and heard more, had never been one to allow ugliness to get in the way of making money. There was a time he’d even served a leper who had wandered through town, though he served him out back, away from the eyes of his regulars. Money was money, he figured, and it didn’t matter a whole lot how many stumps for fingers a hand had if what it was holding could add to the coffers.
Fact is, the barkeep hadn’t even washed the mug the leper had used all that much. So the barkeep told the scarred man what was on offer and the scarred man asked for six drinks. Saracen Rue came in as the sixth was poured, and they all drank like thirsty men. Except for Pleasant, of course.
“Now that,” said Ravel, “was a long time coming. And it was welcome.” He smiled at the barkeep. “We’re looking for a friend of ours. Two friends, actually, would’ve just passed through here. Maybe you saw them. Maybe you served them two of these delicious and refreshing beers.”
The barkeep said nothing.
“Our first friend,” said Vex, “is like us – he’s Irish. Tall and dark-haired and kinda pale, though in this sun he’s probably reddened up a little. Wears a glove on his right hand. The other fella wears black and carries a staff with him wherever he goes, the height of a man.”
The barkeep looked at the Dead Men and still said nothing.
“It is very important that we catch up to our friends as soon as possible,” Rue said. “We have news from home that requires their immediate and direct attention. Tragic news. Time is of the essence.”
“Haven’t seen anyone,” said the barkeep.
“You’re sure? Our first friend, he has green eyes. Normally eye colour means very little when talking about a man, but if you’d ever looked into those eyes, you’d remember them. Like a snake’s. And the second, as I said, carries a big old staff. That’s something to stick in the memory, isn’t it?”
The barkeep shook his head. “Can’t help you, fellas.”
