Muddle and Win

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  1: Down . . .

  2: Muddlespot

  3: Mission Alpha

  4: Sally

  5: Insinuation

  6: The Mind of Sally Jones

  7: In a Cat Dish

  8: Scattletail

  9: ‘No’

  10: Windleberry

  11: Ismael

  12: First Meeting

  13: Darlington High

  14: The Battle of Food Tech Block

  15: Nightfall

  16: The Reward

  17: Help

  18: You Are in My Power

  19: The Wrath of Heaven

  20: The Wrath of Heaven

  21: A Pillow of Broken Glass

  22: Morning

  About the Author

  Also by John Dickinson

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Everyone has a Lifetime Deed Counter (LDC). It works like this:

  You offer to help with the housework: Lifetime Good Deeds +1

  You steal your little brother’s sweets: Lifetime Bad Deeds +1

  Looks straightforward, huh? But what if your every thought was disputed by opposing forces of good and evil – by an angel wearing ray bans (called Windleberry) and a demon in the form of a wart (called Muddlespot)? And within your mind they were fighting a fierce battle over your actions, a battle dictated by a game of poker?

  When Muddlespot is promoted from a devil’s janitor to special agent, the pressure is on for him to infiltrate Sally Jones and make her Bad. If he doesn’t, it will be Very Bad for him. But as his mission leads him down Sally’s ear and into the deepest recesses of her mind, all becomes unclear. Just what does it mean to be good? And can it be good to be bad?

  PANDEMONIUM IS A place. To get there you go down.

  That’s not ‘down’ as in the bottom of a mine. You can go to the deepest mine you like and dig and dig and dig until there’s so much air pressing on top of you that it squashes you to treacle. But you don’t get to Pandemonium that way. It’s the other sort of down.

  Think of your mind like it’s a house. What you’re looking for is in one of the little rooms at the back. There won’t be much light there, and there’ll be things scattered all over the floor. Most of it’s stuff you’ve always known about but don’t get out and look at too much. You start clearing it to one side. Never mind the dust. Never mind the smell. (Listen – even the best-kept minds have rooms like this.) When you find you’re shifting aside thoughts you would never, ever try to explain to anybody – and there will be some – then you’re in the right place.

  Underneath it all, there’ll be a trap door. It may have a padlock on it. It may be marked with mystic runes or with bright black-and-yellow stickers that say DANGER! DON’T GO HERE! Or it may already be open. It depends what sort of mind you have.

  If it’s locked, you open it. You have the key, of course.

  The trap door opens onto darkness. There are no steps. No lift, no ladder, not even a rope. You just step over the void and drop.

  And you fall. Your stomach goes hollow and hits the back of your throat. The darkness rushes up past you like wind, faster and faster. There’s a tingling in your feet because they’re standing on nothing. Above you, the trap door has already dwindled to a point of light as small as a distant star. You think you’re going to hit the bottom at any moment and be squashed. But there is no bottom.

  Still you fall, faster and faster! You’re sorry you did this now, but there’s no going back. You can’t see anything. There’s nothing to feel or hear except the rush of the darkness. Maybe you aren’t even falling any more, but just hanging there with all that nothingness blasting up past you.

  It goes on like that. On and on. And it’s beginning to get warm.

  For most people, going to Pandemonium is a one-way trip. You probably didn’t want to know that. But of course you’ll come back. (You hope.)

  Now look down! You see it – a dull glow spreading below your feet. Not flames, but a kind of slow, black-red pulse like the embers of a huge fire. You’re getting somewhere at last.

  You don’t look at the glow itself, already swelling as you rush towards it. That comes from a long way down. You’re not going that far this time. You keep your eyes fixed around the edges, where the shapes of huge towers have begun to appear, rising like rockets towards you as you fall. They’re built of brass and domed with metals that gleam dully in the furnace light. There are cupolas and turrets and battlements and hanging gardens where nothing grows but branches of hammered gold. There are bell towers and terraces and ziggurats and monuments and arches and staircases as wide as football pitches that do nothing but go down, down, down.

  Speaking of which . . . Start running!

  You’re careering down a huge staircase – so steep that really you’re still falling as you run, your legs clattering madly as they try to keep up with the rest of you! Shapes whirl past in the gloom – buildings, pillars, the glow of a furnace, glimpsed and gone in a moment. More and more of them. It’s like a huge city built on a slope that falls for ever downwards, and you’re a train coming into the station. Your feet are bruised, your lungs are gasping, but your speed’s easing. Not quite so mad now. You can almost control it. In fact, you’d better control it because the stairs are ending. There’s level ground ahead, ground that you hit stumbling, pitching to the floor (ouch!) where you lie gasping and feeling sick for long moments before you can finally lift your head.

  Now.

  Pick yourself up, and look at Pandemonium.

  You’re in an alley, of sorts, between two huge buildings. On either side are rows of great arches with nothing but blackness behind them. They yawn wide, as if they are mouths about to swallow you. It feels like being caught in the middle of a pack of giant stone tigers. Or flesh-eating ghouls, perhaps.

  The air is warm enough to make you sweat. It smells of hot metal and it’s humming with sounds. You can’t quite hear what they are, but you can feel them crawling on your skin. Sounds like gongs, maybe drums, crowds murmuring. And yes, faint screams.

  Don’t worry. You’ll be quite safe. Somewhere, you’ve got some rules for staying alive in Pandemonium. Let’s have a look . . .

  * * *

  RULES FOR STAYING ALIVE IN PANDEMONIUM

  * * *

  1. DON’T EVER GO THERE. DON’T EVER THINK OF GOING THERE. LOOK, YOU REALLY, REALLY DON’T WANT TO KNOW. THE PEOPLE AREN’T FRIENDLY. AT ALL. IN FACT, IT’S STRETCHING A POINT TO CALL THEM ‘PEOPLE’ . . .

  (Whoops! Blown that one. What else does it say?)

  . . . ENTRAILS WITH RED-HOT FORKS AND SPLIT YOUR TONGUE WITH RAZORS AND PULL OUT EVERY ONE OF YOUR FINGERNAILS VERY SLOWLY AND THEN THEY’LL FLAY YOUR SKIN OFF WITH ESPECIALLY BLUNT KNIVES WHILE LISTENING TO CHEESY POP MUSIC – AND THAT’S JUST THE FIRST MORNING, OK?

  2. ALL RIGHT, SO YOU’VE BROKEN RULE 1. SACK YOUR TRAVEL AGENT. MEANWHILE, IF YOU WANT TO LIVE TO SEE YOUR TRAVEL AGENT AGAIN, LOOK AS THOUGH YOU’RE MEANT TO BE THERE. ALWAYS TRY TO LOOK AS THOUGH YOU’RE IN A HURRY AND YOU’VE BEEN SENT BY SOMEONE IMPORTANT.

  3. IF YOU MEET ANYONE, DON’T SPEAK TO THEM. DON’T LOOK THEM IN THE EYES. (IF THEY HAVE EYES. SOME OF THEM HAVEN’T.)

  4. DON’T ASSUME YOU CAN’T BE SEEN, EVEN WHEN YOU’RE IN SHADOW. YOU CAN BE. SEE THAT ARCHED WINDOW UP THERE, LIKE A MOUTH IN THAT TOWER?

  Er . . .

  Window?

  There is a window up there. Creepy.

  . . . THERE’S SOMEONE IN THERE. YOU CAN’T SEE THEM, BUT THEY’RE THERE, ALL RIGHT. THEY’RE WATCHING YOU. THEY’RE BEGINNING TO WONDER. YOU NEED TO MOVE. NOW.

  Move. Quickly. Think: I’m meant to be here
. I’ve been sent by someone important. And bad-tempered. Nobody mess with me, OK? Keep thinking that. Your footsteps make an ugly, metallic sound on the paving. That’s because the paving isn’t stone. It’s brass. They like brass here.

  At the end of the alley there’s a smaller building that looks a bit like a chapel. There’s a round-arched doorway covered with carvings which . . .

  . . . On a hurried look, seems to be illustrating exactly what happens to anyone caught breaking Rule 1 down here.

  And on a closer look . . .

  Yup. Whatever this little building is, it’s definitely not a chapel. And whoever built it has a twisted sense of humour.

  Round the corner. A big terrace. It seems empty, but take no chances. Don’t run – just move quickly. Beyond the balcony you can see the towers and battlements and domes of the next level of palaces. They’re even bigger than the ones around you. Pandemonium’s built on a slope. The further down the slope a person lives, the more important they are. That’s how it works here.

  The palace in front of you has twisty turrets and curvy, pointy roofs like horns. It’s six storeys high and walled in brass. The windows are great open arches framed with zigzag tooth carvings. They glow with the light of a huge fire within. The person who lives there likes fire. His sort often do.

  You look through the window. He’s got a visitor. The visitor doesn’t want to be there. Right now, he wants to be anywhere else but where he is. His huge eyes are popping, bouncing a little like ping-pong balls in his leathery skull. There’s sweat on his green-grey skin, running down his domed forehead and dripping from his pointy nose. His big, bat-like ears flap in distress. His mouth is gaping, pleading. He’s begging for mercy, but down here using the word ‘mercy’ is like trying to put out a Bunsen burner with a tube of ethanol. (Sometimes literally. They really do like fire here.)

  He struggles, but he can’t escape. He’s held by two great, grinning fiends, each bigger by half than he is. His desperate eyes roll upwards to the ceiling. He sees, with sudden clearness, the intricate, writhing, oh-so-funny carvings there, richly painted in colours and gold leaf to bring out just how funny they are. And with his last thought he thinks – as a brass hammer the size of a cathedral bell-clapper blocks it all from view – that they’re not funny at all.

  Don’t look!

  Ugh.

  Poor devil.

  There’s no visitor now, in the palace of the curvy teeth. There’s a bit more decoration on the ceiling, though. There’s some on the walls and floor too. And scattered around the room . . .

  Well, that’s about half of his chin, over there by the fireplace.

  There’s one of his eyes, rolling gently across the floor.

  That’s one of his arms.

  So is that.

  So is that.

  You’ve no idea what that bit is . . .

  And the air is filled with the laughter of the two fiends, who a moment before had been holding the smaller fiend between them. It’s loud laughter, because they find this sort of thing very funny indeed. And it has that added little note to it which makes you think, maybe, that they’re laughing extra loud and extra long on purpose, to please the person who wields the hammer, and to make it just a little less likely that one day they might be under the hammer themselves.

  They troop out, still cackling, to the tap-rattle-tap accompaniment of their knuckles trailing along the floor. Their laughter echoes down long hallways of glowing brass, fading, seeming now to come from all around. Blending with the pervasive hum that isn’t so much heard as felt upon the skin.

  It’s another day in Pandemonium.

  THE WIELDER OF the hammer was not laughing.

  ‘Tiresome,’ he said aloud.

  He had a voice like layers and layers of dark, cunningly folded velvet, with all sorts of pockets and corners in which little meanings might be hidden. It was the kind of voice that could make something very little seem rather a lot. And when he sighed, as he did now, the light in the room flickered.

  He gathered his rich red robes about him and went to pose before a brass mirror. He wanted to look at something soothing. He was, of course, quite beautiful. His hair was black, gleaming and flowing, curling to fall over the high collar of his cloak. His skin was smooth, his nose straight but not too long. His brows were strong and so was his jaw, on which he allowed a fine stubble to grow, as if he didn’t really care how he looked but just happened to be beautiful anyway.

  His eyes were a little larger than they should have been, and they were very, very deep. They were the sort of eyes that you might not so much look into as fall into. And once there you would just go round and round, in the alternating light and darkness, until you forgot even your own name. And when you had forgotten that, you would never come out.

  He did not have horns, unlike some of his kind. He did not wear a crown or a coronet either. He did not need to. He simply chose to look beautiful. And he chose that his fiends should all look appallingly ugly, to remind himself, and anyone who saw him, just how beautiful he was.

  He also chose that he should be at least four times the size of anyone who worked for him. Size gets you respect, in Pandemonium. And the bright bronze hammer the size of a cathedral bell-clapper, which had just disappeared back inside his robes – yes, that helped too.

  (His name? You’ll need to know it. Here . . .

  Corozin

  Don’t use it more than you have to, and don’t say it aloud, more than you can help. It’s really better not to.)

  He looked at himself in the mirror for a while. Then he lifted his hand, curling his long, beautiful fingers just a little to show that he was sensitive as well as strong. And he looked at himself again.

  Ah, yes. It was a heart-meltingly beautiful sight. Or would have been, if he had had a heart.

  He shifted his feet. Something went squelch! The brass floor of his chamber was still littered with bits of his unfortunate visitor. One bloodshot, bulbous eyeball peered up at him, wobbling slightly. He sighed again.

  ‘Muddlespot.’

  A tiny imp appeared, somewhere down at floor level. He was carrying a brush that was almost as tall as he was, and a dustpan that was half again as wide. Both brush and pan were made of brass, of course. Even the bristles of the brush were brass.

  ‘Clear this up.’

  And Corozin went back to admiring himself in the mirror.

  The imp was a very little imp. His head and body were like two wrinkled peas, of which the slightly smaller one was balanced on top of the larger. He had a long nose and big ears, but his arms were silly little things like the forelimbs of a miniature T. rex and his legs were barely long enough to lift his dumpy body off the floor. Tufts of ginger hair, thick as spines, grew here and there on his grey skin. His eyes were bright and beady. On his head he wore a round red pillbox hat.

  He looked around the room. He pursed his little lips and eyed the body parts scattered across the floor. It was an eight, he decided. An eight out of ten. The boss must have been upset. Teeth didn’t normally get embedded in the brass wall.

  The imp was used to clearing up after these little events. In fact, he himself had been born in one. It had been soon after Corozin’s former boss had been hauled off down to the lower circles and Corozin had become the boss instead. Someone had disappointed him, had come here and gone splat under the hammer, and ended up in bits all over the floor. And Corozin had looked at the mess in distaste.

  Then he had picked up one grey, leathery and now-quite-squishy body part in his beautiful long hands. He had selected one hairy, juicy wart, pinched it off the skin and spat upon it. Immediately, the wart had swelled up by a factor of about ten, grown a head, four limbs, ears, nose and a pair of bright beady eyes. It had even grown the little pillbox hat.

  It had become an imp. A very little little devil. And Corozin had said to it, ‘You are Muddlespot.’

  ‘Yes, Your Serenity,’ Muddlespot had answered brightly.

  ‘Clear this
up.’

  And clearing up was what Muddlespot did. He did not mind the mess. He had got used to the ickiness of it. First he took the big bits and dropped them out of the window. Then he got the brush and swept the loose little bits into his pan, and they went out of the window too. After that he mopped up the squidgy stuff, and burnished the brass floor with the brass bristles of his brush until it shone and no stain was to be seen. Finally he prised out the bits that had got stuck here and there, and beat the brass back into shape with his own little hammer, until it was all smooth and he could polish over those places too.

  He did it carefully and well. It was his job. He liked being good at the job. He liked the zing of his brass-bristled brush across the brass surfaces, and the way dented, stained metal would glow back into life again with a little rubbing and attention. It made him feel useful. It made him feel he was wanted, and would go on being wanted for as long as Corozin went on being disappointed in people.

  And there was no sign of that changing. In fact, it had been happening rather more than usual just lately. That pile of bits under the window was getting quite large. Soon he’d have to climb up to the next floor, just to be able to carry on dropping things on top of it.

  Whisper it low, but Muddlespot was happy. What’s more, he was getting away with it, which doesn’t often happen in Pandemonium. But that’s because he was small and no one paid him much attention.

  Unless they had a reason.

  ‘Muddlespot?’

  ‘Er . . . yes, Your Serenity?’

  Corozin frowned. It was, he admitted to himself, a desperate measure. It had about as much chance as trying to run a ski slope on the lower reaches of Pandemonium. Snowballs in hell. Warts and success. Some things just didn’t go together.

  But for the time being at least, it wasn’t about success. It was about not admitting failure. It was about Being Seen To Be Doing Something. And if he didn’t do something pretty quickly, he was going to find himself under a hammer that would make his own look like a hand-me-down from Tinkerbell.