A Wild Ride Through The Night (2 page)

‘Ah, so
that’s
how they communicate!’ Gustave told himself. ‘By electricity! I must convey this information to the International Tornado Research Centre without delay—if I survive.’

He looked straight ahead again. ‘It doesn’t matter a row of beans which way I steer,’ he reflected. ‘If we go left, the left-hand tornado will get us. If we go right, the right-hand one will.’

This disheartening thought had only just occurred to him when the
Aventure
was borne upwards by a huge wave. For a moment the ship hung almost motionless in the air, poised on its foaming crest. The ocean seemed to pause in its eternal undulations, almost as if it had become the tornadoes’ accomplice and were serving up the fleeing ship on a tray of white froth.

‘We’ve come to a standstill,’ Gustave thought desperately. ‘We’re done for!’

At that moment the left-hand tornado seized the
Aventure
, enveloping her in darkness. A fearsome gurgle from the bowels of the ocean drowned every other sound including the sailors’ cries of terror. Gustave strapped himself to the ship’s wheel with his belt and shut his eyes.

He was prepared to die—prepared to plunge with his ship to the bed of the ocean if the sea-gods so ordained; as her captain, it was his duty to do so. In his mind’s eye he could already see his skeleton nibbled clean by fish, still lashed to the wheel of a wreck lying on the seabed with stingrays swimming through its splintered remains.

Then silence fell: not a sound, not a whisper, no motion at all.
Gustave
felt as if he were floating, weightless, in space. Only the wheel in his hands reminded him that he had been in the thick of a raging storm just a split second earlier.

‘I’m dead,’ he thought. ‘So that’s what it’s like: you don’t hear a thing any more.’ He risked opening his eyes and looked up. Overhead was a kind of enormous funnel, and through it he could see straight into the cosmos, a black disk filled with scintillating stars. Around him was a vortex of sea water, splintered wood and whirling air, all of it being propelled outwards by centrifugal force: Gustave was in the eye of the storm, the zone of absolute stillness in the heart of the tornado.

He watched in horror as the grey tube sucked his men into the sky, but he could only see their gaping mouths and staring eyes, not hear their heart-rending cries.

The
Aventure
was lifted into the air once more. Gustave thought she would soar straight into outer space, but the tornado suddenly detached itself from the surface of the ocean and rose into the air. It released its hold on the ship and whirled skywards, growing thinner and thinner. Closely followed by its twin, it plunged into the dark mass of clouds like an immense serpent composed of sea water, air, sailors, and ship’s wreckage. The two storms emitted a last, triumphant bellow from inside the clouds. Then they were gone.

But the
Aventure
herself fell back into the sea. The impact snapped her rigging and made the nails pop out of her planks like bullets. White foam blossomed around her hull as she landed. Timber splintered, sailcloth ripped, anchor chains rattled. Then came silence, absolute silence: the waves had subsided. The ship
rocked
gently to and fro, sending a few barrels rumbling across the deck, but that was all. The tempest was over as suddenly as it had begun.

Gustave unbuckled himself from the ship’s wheel. Still thoroughly bemused, he tottered off on a tour of inspection. The
Aventure
was nothing more than a wreck, her sails in shreds, her hull riddled with holes, her deck bristling with sprung planks like the body of a half-plucked chicken. She was slowly but steadily sinking.

‘This is the end,’ whispered Gustave.

‘Yes … “All that comes into being is worthy of perishing,”’ replied a voice from the ship’s stern. Gustave turned to look. Amid the snapped masts and crazy tangle of rigging he saw a horrific figure perched on the taffrail. It was a skeleton, a man devoid of skin and flesh attired in a voluminous black cloak. His bony hands were holding a casket, his empty eye sockets facing in Gustave’s direction.

At his feet knelt a young woman who must once upon a time have been very beautiful. Now, however, her fine features were distorted into a mask of insanity as wild and disordered as her flowing fair hair. She was in the act of rolling two dice across the deck.

‘Goethe!’ said the skeleton.

‘You mean … you’re Goethe?’ Gustave asked, puzzled.

‘No, the quotation was from Goethe. I’m Death, and this is Dementia, my poor, mad sister. Say hello, Dementia!’

‘I’m not mad!’ the young woman retorted in an unpleasantly harsh and strident voice, without interrupting her game of dice.

‘And what is your name?’ asked Death.

‘Gustave,’ the boy replied stoutly. ‘Gustave Doré.’

‘Good,’ said Death. ‘I’m in the right place, then. I’ve come to fetch your soul.’ He indicated the casket in his hand, which, Gustave now saw, was shaped like a miniature coffin. ‘Do you know what this is?’

Gustave shook his head.

‘It’s a soul-coffin,’ Death announced with a touch of pride in his sinister voice. ‘Yes indeed! My own invention. I’m not interested in your body. That will either feed the sharks or be dispersed in the ocean by a process of decay as natural as anything ever is on this pitiless planet of ours. I want your soul, just your soul, so that I can burn it.’

‘No, he belongs to me!’ screeched Dementia, pointing to the dice. Having just thrown a double six for the second time, she scooped them up and threw them again.

‘Hm,’ Death said sullenly, ‘we’ll have to see about that.’ The dice came to a standstill: a five and a six.

‘Five sixes and one five,’ sighed Death. ‘That’s hard to beat.’

‘He’s mine!’ Dementia exclaimed in triumph, and uttered a hysterical laugh. Her glowing eyes flickered nervously as she gazed at Gustave.

‘It’s like this,’ Death explained. ‘I’ll get you anyway, sooner or later, but if you’re
really
unlucky, my esteemed sister will also get a slice of the cake. That means you’ll go mad before you die. In your case the process will probably take the following form: you’ll spend a few weeks drifting around on a raft until the merciless sun dehydrates your brain and you start seeing water sprites, or maybe your dead grandmother, who’ll address you in the voice of your violin teacher—or something of the kind. And then you’ll start to eat yourself alive.’

Death shrugged his shoulders and threw the dice. ‘I’m sorry, those ideas aren’t mine. That’s simply how it is with, er … insanity.’

He tapped his skull meaningfully with a bony forefinger, but not before making sure that Dementia was concentrating on the dice as they rolled across the deck. A double six.

‘You see?’ said Death, ‘I’m doing my best for you.’ He threw again. Another double six.

‘You mean you’re playing for
me
?’ Gustave ventured at last.

‘What else? You don’t imagine we’d board a sinking hulk during a
Siamese Twins Tornado
just for a game of dice, do you? It’s all or nothing now, my boy.’ Death threw the dice for the third time. Another double six came up. He clapped his bony hands with a sound like a bunch of pencils rattling on the lid of a coffin. Dementia uttered a screech that made the hairs on Gustave’s neck stand on end.

‘I was in luck!’ said the skeleton. ‘And now, my boy, would you kindly surrender your soul?’

Gustave shuddered. ‘Surrender my soul? What do you mean? How am I supposed to do that?’

‘
How
you do it is all the same to me.’ Death made a dismissive gesture. ‘You could jump overboard and drown. You could take one of those ropes and hang yourself. Alternatively, there’s a nice, sharp cutlass over there. Ever heard of an admirable Japanese custom known as
seppuku
?’

‘You want me to kill myself?’

‘But of course, what else? You expect
me
to do it? I’m Death, I’m not a killer.’ Dementia greeted her brother’s little joke with an exaggeratedly strident laugh.

‘What do you plan to do with my soul?’ asked Gustave. He wasn’t really interested in knowing; he simply wanted to gain a little time.

‘Oh, fly into outer space with it and throw it into the sun, the way I do with every other soul,’ Death said casually. His supercilious tone became tinged with a trace of compassion. ‘Why do you think that thing up there burns so brightly, you silly boy? No sun, no life; no life, no souls; no souls, no sun—that’s the everlasting cycle of the univ—ouch!’ He looked as indignant as an eyeless skeleton could: Dementia had kicked him hard on the shin.

He clapped a bony hand over his bared teeth. ‘Oh, my goodness, now I’ve given away one of the great mysteries of the universe! Well, never mind, you won’t be writing a book about it, will you?’

The sinister siblings laughed mechanically, as if this were one of their stock jokes.

‘You mean I can’t lodge an appeal or anything?’ All the resolution had left Gustave’s voice. His question was merely another attempt to delay matters. What was he to do? Jump overboard? That would be tantamount to putting an end to himself, which was just what Death wanted.

Death shook his head, and his cervical vertebrae grated against each other with a sound like grinding gears. ‘No, I’m sorry, there’s nothing to be done,’ he said regretfully.

‘Yes!’ screeched Dementia. ‘Yes, there is!’

‘Shut up!’ Death hissed at his sister.

‘If you spoil things for me,’ Dementia snarled back at him, ‘I’ll tell him!’

‘Lunatic!’

‘Bag of bones!’

Death turned away and glared sullenly at the sea.

Dementia directed her fiery gaze at Gustave. It seemed to him that her eyes were forever changing shape and colour, like two slowly but steadily revolving kaleidoscopes.

‘Of course you can do something, boy. Ask my brother about the
Tasks
!’ She laughed with a sound like splintering glass.

‘Dementia!’ Death cut in. Furiously, he pulled his cloak more tightly around him. Then his shoulders sagged and he bowed his bony skull in resignation.

‘Very well,’ he sighed. ‘There
is
a way, but no one has ever tried it. That’s because no one has ever asked me about it. Until
now
, that is.’ His voice started to shake with suppressed fury. ‘Until my enchanting but sadly rather dim-witted sister took it into her head to—’

‘Be careful what you say!’ Dementia snarled, pointing her forefinger at him. Her other hand held the dice in an iron grip, ready to hurl them at her brother’s head. Death ground his teeth horribly.

‘There are five tasks,’ he blurted out.

‘Five tasks?’ Gustave repeated timidly.

‘Now there are
six
!’

Gustave preserved a cowed silence.

‘
Task Number One
: You rescue a beautiful damsel from the clutches of a dragon.’

Gustave nodded as if he had been expecting something of the kind.

‘
Task Number Two
: You traverse a forest swarming with evil spirits.’

‘A forest swarming with evil spirits,’ muttered Gustave, trying to memorise every detail.

‘Yes,’ Death added, ‘drawing as much attention to yourself as possible.’

Gustave groaned.

‘The third task …’ Death thought hard. ‘The, er, third task …’ he muttered to himself, tapping his skull with his forefinger. Gustave waited on tenterhooks.

The skeletal figure straightened up with a jerk, smitten by a flash of inspiration. ‘
Task Number Three
: You have to guess the names of three giants.’

‘
Three
giants?’ Gustave protested. ‘Isn’t that asking a bit—’

‘All right,
five
giants!’ snarled the skeleton.

‘But I—’

‘
Six
giants!’ Death brought his fist crashing down on the ship’s rail.

Gustave bit his lip and resolved to keep mum in future.

‘Task Number Four … Number Four … er …’ Death seemed to be finding it harder and harder to think up new tasks.

‘Imagination never was his strong point!’ sneered Dementia. ‘He can burn souls all right, but as for having a single original thought—’

‘
Task Number Four!
’ Death interrupted her in a thunderous voice. ‘You must bring me a tooth belonging to the Most Monstrous of All Monsters!’

‘Consider it done,’ said Gustave, bowing his head. ‘Anything else you’d like?’ he thought defiantly.

‘Indeed there is!’ Death snapped, so sharply that Gustave gave a jump. Was the Grim Reaper a mind-reader as well?

‘The fifth task …’

‘Monsters, dragons, giants, evil spirits …’ thought Gustave. ‘There can’t be anything harder.’

Death lowered his awesomely deep voice still further. ‘Now
listen
carefully, my boy, because this is the hardest task of all.
Task Number Five
: You must meet yourself!’

‘That’s not only hard, it’s plain impossible!’ thought Gustave, but he didn’t dare protest.

Death stood up and gathered the folds of his cloak together.

‘After that,’ he commanded, clearly relieved to have thought up so many ingenious tasks, ‘you’ll take yourself off to my house on the moon. I shall be waiting there with my, er, enchanting sister to set you your
sixth and final task
—provided you manage to get there, of course.’