I’m an uncomfortable person, and I’ve felt uncomfortable many, many times in my life. But nothing – not dark days in Moorfields Eye Hospital, not Zara walking away from me in the street, not even the worst of my nightmares or headaches – comes close to how uncomfortable I feel at this moment. If I’m right, and Jason died for the reason that occurred to me, suddenly, just now … but I can’t be right. I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I need to go somewhere; I just don’t know where.
Giving Solly a shallow hug, and telling him I’ll see him later, I wander away through the festival. I pass the medical tent, with bored gap-year students sitting outside with clipboards and pamphlets; I pass the emergency supplies stall with its overpriced batteries and shaving kits. The tattoo tent blares in neon: Argon Ark. Pairs of animals are lit up in gaudy silhouettes: lions, kangaroos, ducks. I slip my hand under my T-shirt, press against my ribs.
As I watch, the letters of the pink-lit sign swim and jumble and swap places.
R a g n a r o k
Slowly, I back away from it. I walk and walk, limbs uncoordinated, until I reach the outskirts of the Download site. Then I dive under a barrier, weave through skips and caravans, jump over a dry ditch. I turn and tramp up a narrow lane paved with corrugated iron and lined with blackberry bushes, lit with emergency lighting. I come to a car park, one of an interlocking system of car parks, spreading out like great lakes. Giant fluorescent lights smoulder on strings. There’s no one about. The cars look like slabs of stone.
A car alarm goes off, and then another and another and another. A chorus line of beeps and wails gets louder, and louder.
‘Ben Ben Ben Ben Ben!’
I start to run, heading to the top of the car park. I must get to some place higher, I think, higher up. Some place with a view. I climb over barbed wire, clamping my hands freely over the spikes, uncaring.
‘Ben Ben Ben Ben Ben!’
Now a hedge meets me and I slither through it, desperate to get away from the noise. I find myself alone in a giant field. It is curved, like the top of a huge dome. The only light now comes from a sullen three-quarter moon that lurks behind swollen clouds. Distant behind me, the angry cries of the cars. I make my way to the top of the field, my legs automated.
A bonfire at the far edge of the field. Dark shapes around it. Four – five. Berserks, I think. But there’s nowhere to run to. I know they’ve seen me; I hear whoops and high-rising catcalls. One of them stands up, waving. I look for my phone, but there’s nothing in my pockets. In any case, there’s nobody to call.
‘Ben! Get over here!’
Perhaps they are going to kill me, I think. I remember going to the headmaster’s office – it must have been six weeks ago, already feels like a different year, a different me – and standing outside, knowing that when I got in there’d be a long, sorrowing conversation about my lack of ambition, the poorness of my predicted grades. And I remember thinking, Just get rid of me now, if I’ve failed so badly. Just let me go.
Feet slow, I approach the group around the bonfire.
White-faced, black-clothed, they squat around the flames. Some of them hold guitars. Their hair is long and matted. As I get nearer they all look up, their smiles wide and welcoming.
‘It’s Ben! He finally made it!’
‘Take a seat, dude.’
Space is cleared for me on the ground. A warm beer is pressed into my hand. I look around the group. Berserks they cannot be, nor Gods. But … now I’m looking at them up close, I can see – just faintly – a flickerwork of changing light about their heads. Slowly I study their faces, all turned towards me with expectant expressions. The bonfire rustles and sizzles; sparks pop and chatter, springing away like shooting stars.
There’s Dimebag Darrell.
Layne Staley.
Randy Rhoads.
Gar Samuelson.
And Cliff. My beloved Cliff Burton.
My Late Greats of Metal, assembled here like old friends.
‘What are you doing here?’ I mumble.
‘Oh, we don’t like to miss Download,’ says Gar Samuelson, his curled hair rippling.
‘We don’t like to miss anything,’ adds Randy Rhoads. ‘But tonight there’s another show about to start. Just across those fields, there. Look.’
I follow his outstretched arm. He is pointing down, down across the valley. It’s so dark that there’s nothing to see at first; then the image sharpens, lightens, so that I can almost make out the individual shapes of the Monopoly houses, the tiny sheep and cows. I gaze over the knitted fields with their treeline hems, past outhouses and barns, past the snaky glint of river to a small village. It’s about a kilometre or two away, I’d say, though Ordnance Survey map work was never one of my strong points. For a moment I think I recognise the church spire, the curve of the footbridge as the river meets the edge of the village.
‘What is it?’ I say. The village is sleeping, so silent it could be uninhabited. ‘Nothing’s happening.’
‘Just wait. It will,’ says Cliff, in his Californian accent.
‘What is that place?’
‘I think,’ says Cliff, his thin, intelligent face lit up by the flames, ‘you could call it Valhalla.’
Together around the bonfire, the Late Greats and I watch as the lightshow begins on the horizon.
Over the sleeping village the colours bloom: pink, bruise purple, silver and bronze. Otherlife colours. Silent lightning: tinsel spears the sky. Shadowy figures are stirring. I watch the roil and swell of the clouds: flamenco dancers gathering up their skirts. It begins to rain. Fat, angry drops burst on my skin like grenades. The lightshow seems to fade and brighten, brighten and fade, bursts of brilliant intensity alternating with dim flickers. It’s like watching an enormous underwater creature breathing in and out, its gills edged in iridescence.
I climb to my feet, walk to the edge of the field.
The church spire, that line of willow trees, those thick dark woods tucked away behind the lofty grey house … Something in my brain is still tick-tocking away, like Solo-mon’s does when he’s trying to figure out what school someone goes to, which university their siblings are at, which side of the square someone’s house is on. Even through my drug-heavy haze, I’m thinking, I know this place. I know this.
As the lightshow pulses and grows, the air swirling with purpose and menace over the village, I keep thinking, tracing the outlines of the buildings and mapping them against my memories. I swing back to the Late Greats, but – of course – they’re gone; not even a circle of stamped-down fire remains to suggest they were ever there. I turn again to look at the lightshow.
I have been here before.
I have been to that lofty grey house over whose turrets and shingles the lightshow is gathering.
Valhalla.
The steps appear in front of me, rainbow-edged and translucent, and then, gradually, the whole of the bridge assembles, unfolds, reaches over and across the valley towards the lofty grey house at the edge of the village.
It’s Duvalle Hall.
‘Ben!’
I look back. It’s Cliff, whiter and thinner than ever, barely there.
‘Good luck,’ he says.
It’s raining harder now; it’s difficult to hear him.
‘Are you … in the Otherlife?’
‘Who knows where we are … or where we’re going, Ben … We just …’
‘What?’
‘We just came to show you the way.’
I never thought – never – that I’d be watching my grimy trainers take their first faltering steps upon Bifrost. I never thought anything like this would ever happen to me. The Otherlife was born out of books; it came to me in shadows and glow-worm gleams. It hummed quietly in corners. It told me stories. It was never this bright, or this loud, or this … present. At this moment, for some reason, it is the realest thing that I’ve ever felt in all my life.
I’m up above the valley now, still climbing. The rainbow bridge shimmers under my feet. It feels tremulous, like thick slime. The air sings with rain. I take off my sodden hoodie and throw it off the bridge, and watch it flap-flapping down into some fields far below, like a broken kite. I am alive, I think, but I might also be dead, because I don’t know how this can be happening.
I look for Heimdallr, the watchman, and find him at the apex of the bridge. In one hand he holds a heavy-looking horn. A blazing, burnt-orange glow outlines him as he raises the horn to his lips and tips his head back, and blows. A single note rises into the air, like a siren call.
Silhouetted against the rainclouds he stands, neck taut, waiting. He does not notice me as I pass.
The bridge begins to curve downwards now, towards the village. I see the green with its cricket pavilion, the handful of shops and cottages, the bigger houses on the fringes, rising up to meet me as I descend.
I get off by the footbridge over the river. There’s no need to look behind me: I know Bifrost will have already dispersed into the night. There’s no sign of the Otherlife now, as I walk through the sleeping village, past the putting green and the small playground, past the post office and the bed and breakfast. But I’m wrong: in the sky, two wolves hover in clouds of luminescence; one is white, the other dark. High up, they twist and writhe, straining to be unleashed.
Hati will eat the moon. Skǫll will devour the sun. All will fight, and all will fall, I think uneasily.
Ragnarok is the end.
But the end of what?
Now I turn down a gravelled lane and walk past the church and the graveyard and all the way to the end of the road. Here, finally, I come to towering iron gates, built tall and impenetrable, but the wall is loaded with creepers, which make it easy for me to clamber over. A slither and a jump and I’m on the other side. It’s silent: the only sounds are the rain on the trees and my breathing. Still, I’m wary as I approach the house, keeping to the trees and avoiding the winding pebbled driveway. I don’t know who’s out there.
Duvalle Hall rises out of the shadows. It’s larger than I remember, and more imposing. Ike and Elsie must have extended it. I don’t remember the extra wing on the left; I don’t remember the two towers that point like a mano cornuto from the roof. Surely it never had so many windows, so many rooms? But it’s definitely Duvalle Hall. I recognise the yew hedges, the outhouses. The converted stables appear as I get nearer, tucked away behind the house. There’s the croquet lawn, and over to my right I make out the glint of the lake and the ornamental bridge, and the maze beyond. No lights burn in the windows. Shivers eddy along my arms as I come to the front door. I put out my hand to push it, and it opens at once, swinging back with oiled grace. My heart is a kick drum.
I step across the threshold. ‘Zara?’ I call out. ‘Rebecca? It’s Ben.’
They did say, didn’t they, that they’d be here this weekend? Perhaps I’ve got that wrong. The marble floor is cold under my feet as I wander into the centre of the hall, my steps tentative. There’s nothing here, I think. There’s no one. Hati and Skǫll in the sky, the Late Greats – all just the chemical glitches in my brain. But if that’s so, then how did I get here? Because I sure as hell didn’t trek across the fields; I felt Bifrost quiver under my trainers. I saw Heimdallr raise the horn to his lips, so close I could have reached out to touch it – and I know it would have been smooth and slightly warm under my fingers.
‘Christ, it’s dark in here,’ comes a voice. ‘Why don’t you have the light on? Ah yes, the power’s out. Hold on.’
Muscles drawn tight, I wait.
Someone is shouldering the sitting-room door. Footsteps on stone. A match is struck, then another. A candle illuminates the hall.
‘Ben! Great to see you! How was your hike?’
It’s Ike Duvalle, coming towards me, beaming with lordly confidence.
‘What do you think of our new bridge? Pretty handy, huh?’
He claps me on the back; something feels odd about his arm.
‘You’d better head on upstairs. Careful on your way up. There’s a lot of work going on in this house. Ah, but that’s the way Elsie likes it. Now, I should see about brunch. You will be staying for brunch, right?’
As he speaks he walks me towards the stairs, as though he’s in a hurry for me to go.
‘What kind of eggs do you like? Fried are the most greasily satisfying. Poached eggs look like boobs, or so I’ve always thought.’
He doesn’t seem to notice that I haven’t said anything. I don’t know what to say; I’m too disorientated. He’s not how I remember him at all. He leans down to a row of bulbous glass-jar candles on the mantelpiece and there’s something strange about the way he strikes the matches – holding the box awkwardly, his left hand at an odd angle – that bothers me. He catches me looking, and holds his hand up.
‘Prosthetic. You like? Pretty cool.’
Now that I’m looking at it properly, I can see that it’s artificial: jointed, flesh-coloured, the fingers opening and closing with mechanical stiffness.
‘Ike, what happened to your hand?’ I say.
‘Had an encounter with one of our resident beasts. Unpleasant-looking animal. One of our gamekeepers took a shot at him, but I’m not sure we nailed him.’
He holds open the door to the stairs.
‘Thank you,’ I say. There seems to be no choice but to go through.
Just as I pass him, Ike clutches my arm with his artificial hand and whispers, ‘I just wish I knew, Ben. I wish I knew where I went wrong.’
This is a staircase I don’t remember from my time at Duvalle Hall. The stairs I remember were wide and mahogany; they split into two like the ones on the Titanic and had a river of rich dark carpeting running down the middle. The stairs I’m currently climbing are both shallow and steep at the same time; sometimes I take a step and am surprised by how high I have to lift my leg, and other times I stumble, misplacing my foot. It must be a hidden passage. It smells of mould, and something tangy and metallic, and expensive room freshener. The walls are rough-hewn stone, porous, the colour of the inside of a mouth. The stairs twist like DNA strands, so many times that I find I can’t figure out my orientation, or how far I’ve climbed.
A small round window appears, like a porthole. I crouch down and peer through it, and then draw back in alarm.
Through the porthole, Elsie Duvalle is standing in a bra and knickers, going through her wardrobe with quick, cross hands. Her clothes – silver and gold robes, jewel-coloured shawls – are flowing past her on some kind of invisible carousel. Boxes with expensive-looking logos and labels are piled up around her; ropes of fish-scale gems are slung over the free-standing mirror. Elsie pulls a kimono onto her shoulders. She calls to someone out of sight.
‘Clothilde! It is unbelievable. He has stolen some of my dresses. He is literally unbelievable. What are we going to do with him? Can you go and fetch him at once, please? And get the decorator to call me.’
She looks up sharply; I pull back from the edge of the porthole. She has the same waxy appearance as Ike does, as though if I were to peel her skin away there’d be nothing underneath but air.
‘Who’s there?’
She comes towards the porthole. Her hair billows out from her head in a cloud of woven gold. A lemony-green light flickers about her ears as she begins to cry.
The stairs are steeper now. I notice that the walls are inlaid with a web-like substance, like electrical wire, that seems to connect one porthole to another. Some of them are blocked or bricked up, others have curtains or panes of glass. These I peer through, each time with a pulse of hesitation, a buckling in my gut.
Through one porthole, a wolf sits in Pret a Manger with a Super Club sandwich.
Through another, two wolves tear down Westbourne Grove with a chargrilled steak.
Through a third, the boys from 8 Upper are auditioning for Lord of the Flies. Frodo stands on the stage, his fine voice echoing proudly as he delivers one of Jack’s speeches. He ducks as a pair of highlighter pens, bound with rubber bands, freewheels through the air towards his face.
Some of these images are faint, others clear and sharp-edged. I pass a branch of Hamleys, overstuffed with toys. In the centre of a shelf sits a blonde doll dressed in a clown suit. Her hair has been jaggedly cut, and she is crying.
I pass a factory floor where wolves in white aprons are icing hundreds of tiny cupcakes that are dancing quietly by on conveyor belts. Each cupcake has a pale-faced, dark-haired boy delicately painted on its surface.
It’s me.
Higher, higher I climb. I’m nearly beyond thinking; it’s as much as I can do to keep going. One thing I’m sure of: something is wrong here. Ike’s bitten-off hand, the lemony-green light in Elsie’s face … none of this is right. I don’t know what’s happening, but it is something very strange. It’s as though Ike and Tyr have become oddly melded into a single entity; meanwhile, Elsie is Frigg. But why?
This is not my Otherlife. Parts of it are familiar, but parts of it are not. And this is not Duvalle Hall either. It’s somewhere, or something, else. Every few minutes the house shakes, as if a giant hand is clenching in its foundations. The smells are stronger the higher I climb: the copper of blood, fresh-baked chocolate croissants, new-mown grass. The web-like substance on the walls glistens with quick-travelling sparks. Somewhere below, I can still hear Elsie screaming.
And now the stairs are coming to an end. The door at the top of them is heavy and oak-solid and lined with red felt, and it takes all my strength to push it open. With the whole of my weight I lean against it, feeling the threat of cold air on the other side. Suddenly, without warning, the door gives way and I half fall out onto an immense stretch of rooftop covered entirely with grass.
It’s a rugby pitch.
I take a couple of steps out onto the pitch. The rain has died down. The twin fireballs of Hati and Skǫll – one over to the east, one over to the west – leer down from above, like giant floodlights. I squint upwards. Now, above me, a constellation of ice-blue points appears in the sky, and each point gets larger, larger, growing limbs and weapons until they stand, side by side, and ready.
An army of frost giants.
Unannounced, the wolf pounces, knocking me down. Iron-hard body, flailing legs, hot breath. Diamond eyes. Its jaws close on my upper arm. The scream, when it comes, doesn’t sound like mine. It’s the disembodied scream of computer games, heavy metal, air-raid sirens. My arm howls with pain.
I lock eyes with the wolf, wishing I had more violence in me, and prepare to knee it in the throat. Its head comes closer, till its nose is nearly touching mine.
And then, instead of ripping out my jugular with one swift-clawed slash, it licks my face, with a rough tongue that feels like it’s studded with salt crystals. It whines, softly, nudging my nose.
‘Skǫll?’ I whisper.
‘Wrong!’ it says triumphantly, rolling off me and doing a blurry, furred somersault. It scrambles to its feet, shaking its coat. Its four legs become two and it climbs to stand, dressed in white trousers and a red shirt. His curls gleam like butter. He gives me a rugby tackle of a hug.
‘It’s so good to see you,’ says my old friend Hobie Duvalle. ‘Sorry I bit you, dude.’