Afterworlds: The 13th Horseman

Reaching into the top pocket of his pristine white coat, the third man pulled out a pair of glasses. His eyes seemed to double in size as he positioned the spectacles on his nose. “Oooh, he’s right, though,” the man said, looking Drake up and down. “You are a shorty. Still, you know what they say. Size isn’t everything!” The man snorted out a laugh. “No, but seriously. Don’t worry about it, it’s fine. Fine. You’re perfect just as you are. Gorgeous.”

“You sitting down then?” asked the human blancmange. He was munching on another chocolate bar, not even bothering to remove the wrapper first.

Drake’s gaze shifted across each of the men in turn. The only sound in the shed was the slow, rhythmic rattling of the container in the bearded man’s hand.

“Um... um...” Drake stammered. “Sit... sit down?” “Well, you might as well!” chirped the third man, removing his glasses and slipping them back in his pocket. “I mean, let’s face it, you are going to be stuck here for ever, after all!”

The door gave a loud thud as it swung closed. The three occupants of the shed listened to the boy’s screams as he raced from the clearing and back towards the house.

“Oh dear,” said the third man. “Was it something I said, d’you think?”

It was the man in the deckchair’s turn to speak. He spoke with a broad Scottish brogue, his voice louder than the others’, despite the muffling effect of his beard. “Oh, don’t you worry. He’ll be back.”

“You sure?”

“Aye. I’m sure.”

Without another word, he opened his hand, letting a small square object tumble on to the tabletop. All three men peered down at the markings etched on to the object’s surface, and considered their significance.

“A four!” gurgled the fat man triumphantly. “War’s got a four!”

“Aye, all right,” sighed the one known as War.

“Down the snake you go!”

“I can see that, thank you, Famine. No need to rub it in.”

“Right then, Pestilence, my old son, your shot,” said Famine to the man in the white coat. He rubbed his sweaty hands together excitedly. “And pass me them chicken legs, will you? I am bloody starving!”

“Mum! Mum! There’s nutters in the garden!”

Drake scrambled through the grass towards the house, leaving the clearing, the shed and the three strange men behind. The weeds and bracken whipped and scratched at him, but they didn’t slow him down. In no time, he’d made it through the jungle, barged open the front door, and bolted inside.

His mum was in the kitchen, rummaging around in her handbag and patting down her pockets.

She was dressed for work – black nylon trousers with faded knees, off-white T-shirt and pale blue tabard. She worked three cleaning jobs, spread out across the day so she was out more often than she was home. Now that they’d moved, she had longer to travel to get to work, so she was out even more than she used to be.

“Keys,” she said. “Have you seen my keys?”

“Nutters,” Drake panted, pressing his back against the door to keep it closed. “Three nutters. In the shed.”

“What shed? We haven’t got a shed.”

Drake nodded, still getting his breath back. “We do,” he said. “It’s at the bottom of the garden. Didn’t see it at first, but then I found it, and there are three men inside, and they might be dangerous, and—”

“Who’s dangerous? What are you on about?” his mum asked. She was still hunting for her keys, only half-listening.

“The three men,” he said again, less frantically this time. “In the shed.”

“We don’t have a shed,” Mum said, before her face brightened as she lifted a tea towel off the table. “There they are – no wonder I couldn’t find them.”

She slipped the keys into the front pocket of her tabard. “Right, sorry,” she said, finally giving him her full attention. “What’s all this about a shed?”

For ten minutes they had hunted through the grass, sticking close together as they searched for the shed. They had found nothing, aside from the lawn mower. It stood silent and still in a particularly dense patch of foliage. The clearing Drake had pushed the thing into was nowhere to be seen, and nor was the shed.

Over the course of the ten minutes, Drake’s mum had become increasingly irritated. Finally, she’d told him off for wasting her time, and stomped back towards the house, muttering about missing her bus.

Drake followed his mum back into the house. He wanted to argue, but he knew there was no point. He had been sent to a child psychologist after the incident with the frogs, and if he kept going on about the shed, Drake had a feeling he’d be back there by the end of the week. He’d already begun the process of convincing himself the whole frog thing had never actually happened. Maybe, if he tried hard enough, he could do the same with the shed.

Mum looked at her watch. “Right, I’m going to head for this next bus.”

“Will you be home after school?”

“What’s today? Monday? Yeah, I’ll be here for a bit, then I’m out again. Unless I get held up, but there’s stuff to eat in the freezer.”

Drake scraped together one more spoonful of cereal, and took a final glance out through the window at the back garden. Still no shed. “Right,” he said at last.

“Go and get ready,” she said, kissing him on the top of the head on her way to the door. “You do not want to be late for your first day at school.”

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“WELL THEN, MR FINN,” droned Dr Black, his mouth pulled into a mirthless grin. “Perhaps you would care to fascinate and bedazzle us all by sharing something about yourself?”

The old teacher’s leather seat creaked softly as he bent his skeletal frame forward and leaned his elbows on the neat desk. “Aside from your apparent inability to arrive at my class on time,” he added, “which we are all now only too aware of.”

Dr Black was the most angular person Drake had ever seen. Every part of him seemed to taper to a sharp edge, from his pointed chin to the cheekbones that jutted like tiny pyramids from the craggy desert of his face. He wore a dark, neatly pressed suit that looked a size too big for his spindly body. His fingers, which he was steepling together in front of him, resembled chicken bones with fingernails drawn on the ends.

Drake turned from Dr Black’s gaze and swallowed nervously. His new classmates sat like a battalion before him, row after regimented row of unfamiliar faces watching him expectantly. He felt his mouth go dry as his mind frantically scrambled to dig up just one interesting fact to share. All he needed to do was come up with a piece of trivia about himself that was so interesting they’d all be clamouring to become his friend. The only problem was that right now he was having difficulty remembering his own name.

He could tell them about the shed this morning. But no, that would make him sound insane. What could he tell them, then?

Drake felt a tickle as a bead of sweat formed just above his nose. It meandered all the way down to the tip, before dripping silently on to the scuffed floor.

“Mr Finn?”

“I had Frosties for breakfast,” Drake babbled. He bit down on his bottom lip immediately, trying too late to stop the words spilling out of his mouth. His eyes flitted between the six or seven stunned expressions in the front row, and for a few long moments the world seemed to stand perfectly still.

Three boys, shorter than all the others, began sniggering at the back of the class. Drake leaped into the air as the teacher slammed his hands down hard on his desk and roared “BE QUIET!” No one else sniggered after that.

“Well,” said Dr Black, composing himself. “That was… enlightening.” He unfolded upright and gave Drake a firm tap on the back of the head. “Now, if you could endeavour to contain your sugar high long enough to take a seat, the rest of you turn to page two hundred and forty-seven and we’ll find out what the history books have to say about my old pal, Attila the Hun.”

Drake sidestepped through a narrow corridor left between two rows of desks until he came to the only empty seat in the classroom. He hurriedly sat down, desperate to blend in and no longer be the centre of attention.

Almost at once, a skinny girl with big eyes and short hair leaned across from the next desk over and flashed him a smile. “Hi,” she whispered.

“Um, hi,” he whispered back.

“You shouldn’t eat Frosties,” she told him. “Do you have any idea what goes into those things?”