The Fort by David Penn
Two children bully a schoolmate into showing them his secret fort, but there are hidden dangers.
It was Neil's idea, as I remember it, as most of our bright schemes were.
That long summer holiday we were bored, he and I, which, as most people know, can lead to serious consequences when you're thirteen. No school, and there was never much to do in Graevwych, but we had to make our mischief somewhere. We knew this kid, a year below us, Daniel Bartlett, who you could mess about with royally and get away with it. Everybody, including the teachers, thought he was a sandwich short of a picnic and nobody minded, really, if he got teased a bit.
So in the playground we used to nick his schoolbag and have him running around after us trying to snatch it back. Get him to hand over his dinner money to us, spend it on fags, and have fun watching him splutter when we gave him one to smoke. Egg him on to say things to girls - I mean things that would have them slapping him, once we'd rehearsed him. Stuff like that. The trick was to make him believe you were his mate. Neil was a genius at that. He hardly looked an angel - dark glasses, bovver boots, cropped hair - but somehow he could make people believe he was just a cute cheeky chappie. I can tell you, he was anything but that.
We knew that Bartlett liked to spend a lot of time on his own, playing at home or wandering around town. There was one place in particular he liked to go - other kids had seen him - an old fort way out along the river, hundreds of years old. Once, it was supposed to defend us from the French, or something, but it was never used and ended up deserted, so the story went. It was a ruin but a lot of it was still standing, with holes for cannon and dungeons below and everything. It wasn't easy to get to. It faced the river, or anyway the mud banks, and was surrounded on all other sides by marsh.
Bartlett would go out there a couple of times a week, we heard, but whenever anyone tried to follow him, there'd come a point when they'd lose him. He knew a way through the marsh but no one wanted to follow him. Our informants said they'd watch him as long as they could, then he'd just vanish, as if into thin air. He'd never tell you what he'd done out there, what was so fascinating in that old pile.
So of course Neil and I were curious. Neil's great brainwave was that we'd go round Bartlett's house and straight out ask him to take us to the fort and show us where he played and what he got up to. Fawn all over him. Take an interest. Best pals and all that. And we'd join in his game but mess it up for him - or if it was enough of a laugh, maybe we wouldn't.
So that's how I found myself one afternoon in my jeans and braces and heavy-duty boots standing on a doorstep, calling round for the poor woodentop Danny Bartlett. Neil knocked and after a while Mrs Bartlett came to the door. She stank of gin and her hair was streaked down her white face like a ripped shower curtain.
Neil laid on the charm and said we'd come to see Danny, our school buddy. She looked like she didn't believe us but didn't care and pushed the door wide so we could walk in past her. The place was a tip: old magazines, records, sweet wrappers and wine glasses everywhere, but there was Danny sitting in the middle of the living room floor, playing with plastic soldiers.
"The Red Coats," he said, "versus Napoleon." He entertained us with a song too:
"Oh, the grand old Duke of York
He had ten thousand men..."
When he looked up at us, he was kind of cloudy, as if he couldn't really quite see us. But his eyes were bright and he was smiling - as if he saw something, and it made him very happy. He looked like that a lot of the time, whatever we did to him. Weird kid.
"He marched them up to the top of the hill..."
"Hey, great, Danny," said Neil. "Do you want to go out today? It's nice and sunny. Out to the fort. We want to go with you."
"You can't. I'm not allowed to take anyone," said Danny, pushing a cannon along. "And he marched them down again. It's a secret."
"Oh, go on Danny," slurred his mother, who'd come to lean on the door jamb. "Get out of the house a bit. Play with your friends. You don't want to be a loner all your bloody life, do you? Anyway, who says you're not allowed to take anyone? Not me."
Danny didn't answer or look up but turned the cannon round to face its own troops, the British. "And when they were up they were up. Boom!" He knocked down a row of redcoats. "They were traitors and cowards. They had to die." He giggled. "And when they were down they were down. Look. Boom! I know what they really did to traitors and cowards, and baddies like that."
He picked up a redcoat and pushed his back against the mouth of a cannon, held him there. "No, no, no... Don't, please. No! Anything but this!" Danny wailed, doing a voice for his toy. "And when they were only halfway up... Die, traitor!" he shouted in a gruffer voice, then: "BOOM!" And he flung the redcoat halfway across the room. "All his guts would be spilled out and burnt from the blast of the cannon. His arms, legs and head all over the place. Nothing left of him. I saw it on telly. ...neither up nor down. Come with me a minute." He stood up, nodding at us, and we followed him out of the room and through the front door.
"I'm not really going to take you," he said on the doorstep. "I can't. It's a secret."
Neil put an arm around him and dragged him down the front garden path out onto the street. A few yards down, where they couldn't be seen from the house, he bent down and pushed his face into the kid's.
"You're gonna take us, Bartlett, you understand? Otherwise I'll beat the living shit out of you. And we'll tell your mother you've been smoking."
Still up there on Cloud Nine, but his wings clipped a bit, a little down in the mouth, the poor sap agreed, went back in to change his shoes and tell his mum he was going out with us, after all. She still thought it was a good idea, it seemed. Then Bartlett led us, dragging his feet all the way, down through the town past the clocktower, past the big statue of Queen Victoria by the ferry pier, and the one of Wellington outside the school - so many statues in this town - along the promenade by the river and on to the path out to the estuary, where things grew wilder. It's a place all out on its own, Graevwych, built as a garrison town, and still more of an ugly old outpost than a home for anyone. As we got deeper into the marshes there was nothing but tall grass and pools of dark brown water either side of the old raised track. We mucked about chucking grass darts at each other. Then the fort came into view.
It was bright, glaring in the sun, a horseshoe shape of brown and red bricks shored up with concrete, its ends pointing back into the marsh. From what you could see, it was barely more than a massive wall with gun emplacements in it, like a row of arches with openings at the front where the cannons would have pointed at the river, with a walkway above. To me right then it looked like it was rising straight out of the mud and made of mud, surrounded by grass and reeds and water - and loads more marsh and mud everywhere. It looked much more than a couple of hundred years old. It looked like one of the Pyramids with its top chopped off. Like it had been there forever. I had to shake myself. I was thinking that whatever it was Danny got up to out here, it might be better to leave him to it.
Danny himself was staring at it, like he was in a trance.
"Hey, Danny," said Neil. "It's a great place to play cowboys and Indians. Remember the Alamo!"
The kid pulled a strange expression at this - he looked almost disgusted - but before he could think too much we each took an arm and ran him along, until we got as close as we could to the fort without coming down off the track into marsh.
The mildewed walls and battlements didn't look any less weird closer up, but now between them and us festered all that mire, with only islands of grass. If the track had ever gone all the way to the fort, that part had disappeared long ago. The dirty red face of the fort mocked us from across a wasteland.
"What is it, then Danny? What is it you do here?" asked Neil.
"If I show you, you won't tell anyone? Promise?"
"Scout's honour," said Neil.
Danny nodded, and smiled, but his shoulders hunched, like he'd taken on a really weighty duty.
"The marsh," he said. "We have to get across first and it's very dangerous here. Only I know the way. You still want to come?"
"Yeah, come on Danny," said Neil. "Let's get on with it."
But I was scared, I admit, not least because Danny's weirdness, the eyes-in-the clouds stuff, really was giving me the creeps by now, especially out here, and I wasn't even sure why. I could hear from Neil's over-the-top bravado that he felt something like that too.
Danny scuffed down the grass slope off the path onto the start of the mud, and began picking his way through like an Indian tracker.
"Put your feet exactly where I do," he said. He was enjoying himself, I could see, and it was Neil and I who were nervous. There was firm ground where we put our feet after Danny, but Christ all that gloop was horrible! - the black, fish-stinking mud and brown pools with scum on top. You had no idea how deep they were. And as if that weren't enough, gnats and flies began to bite, but you couldn't shoo them off because you'd lose your balance. We could all easily have got sucked into the shit and died. And here we were trusting Danny Bartlett.
It seemed to take hours of this agonised moon-walking to get to the fort, far longer than we'd planned. By the time we got to the dry moat all around the landward side and climbed the chalky grass of a ramp that led up to the walkway, it was five o'clock. Only three hours of daylight left, and I was getting more nervous by the minute.
I turned round and looked behind us. I had that tingling feeling you get when you think you're being watched - in your scalp and down the back of your neck. Even though all I could see was that flat marsh, with the tall straggly grass and the pools reflecting the sky, and nothing else. The only other way there was from the river and its mudbanks. The sky was totally clear and we were all hot. None of us had thought of bringing water.
"Good, Danny. We're here then. So what do you do now? Where's all the fun?"
"I'll show you," the kid said. And now he was grinning broadly. Stranger than ever.
He trotted off along the walkway, then waited for us at the top of some steps leading down. We went down below the level of the gun emplacements. As we passed, I thought for a moment I saw all the old cannon, black and new in the sun, lined up ready to fire. But I shook my head and they faded back into shadow: the weird place must have been getting to me, I thought. Down another flight of steps was a row of massive brick chambers full of puddles and mildew that stank like cat's piss, and Danny led us into one of them. In the back wall of it was an iron door, dotted with huge bolts. It looked impossibly heavy, but Danny seemed to yank it open easily. He stood waiting for us at the threshold, beaming like a baby.
Inside, the light from the doorway was barely enough to see anything by. We stumbled after the kid blindly. Then he came to a passage dimly lit by candles spaced along its walls.
"What's this?" Neil asked. "What's fucking going on? Does someone live here? Where are we going, Danny? You're not messing us about now, are you, you little dick?" He hardly bothered to hide the fear in his voice, but he wasn't going to turn back.
A cold breeze, from somewhere deeper in, blew against us, noises, echoes, murmurings carried on it. My chest and stomach ached with fear now and I wanted to run out of that place, but I never would have, not in front of Neil, still less Danny. I was glad of my heavy boots, but I wished I'd brought a knife.
But now, up ahead, the gloom was replaced by dazzling light. At first I was blinded and couldn't see anything. When my eyes adjusted, I could hardly understand what I was looking at: we had walked into a huge chamber, and the blaze of light was coming from hundreds of candles and chandeliers - and out of the light were marching soldiers, old-style soldiers in red jackets, white trousers, tall black hats, shouldering rifles. I thought at first they might be projections in some sort of light show. Or waxworks that moved. But I could smell them - sweat and a stink like old meat. And their faces had expressions like everyday people's faces, with grimy skin and scared eyes. I couldn't pretend they weren't real. But were they alive or dead?
Neil's eyes were wide with absolute terror, even though he couldn't stop staring at the soldiers.
I turned to face the kid. "For fuck's sake, Danny. What the fuck is this?" I was trembling and I could hear fear racking my own voice. "What, are they - actors? Are they making a film down here or something? Or is it some sort of army training? What have you got to do with it?"
"They're my friends," said Danny. "My real friends. And when they were up they were up..."
I grabbed Neil's arm and was going to pull him away. I didn't know what was going on, but I'd had enough of this game. But Neil seemed frozen on the spot.
"If you're thinking of turning back," Danny said, "I'm not going with you. So there's no one to show you the way. And it'll be dark in a couple of hours."
"Danny?" I said. It hadn't sounded like him. But the words had definitely come from his mouth. He was smiling at me and nodding.
Then a shout came from somewhere and the soldiers shuffled round into two parallel lines and snapped to attention.
Between the two lines, emerging from the darkness, riding elegantly on a black horse, came a queen - you could only call her that - dressed in white silk. On her head was a tall crown sparkling with jewels, in her hand an orb, and against her shoulder a diadem. Her face was proud and furious.
A soldier brought a set of wooden steps for this queen to dismount onto, and Danny went to her, giving her his hand as she stepped to the ground. He bowed in front of her, and as he stood up straight again the queen smiled at him. Now he definitely wasn't Danny, or he was like an older Danny, a normal older Danny, a tall man with a bright, intelligent expression.
"Your Majesty," he said. "I present my two enemies. Cowardly bullies, contemptible reprobates who represent the very worst of humanity, the two of them. Though that one is more wicked than the other, his follower. Whatever you think they deserve, Your Majesty, I give them into your mercy."
Four of the soldiers peeled off from their lines and caught hold of Neil and me just as we were turning to run. Their grip was like iron.
"Let me fucking go," Neil screamed. "What have I done to you? I'll tell my dad, Danny you mong bastard!"
Danny - and the soldiers - laughed. But the soldiers' laugh came in a series of hollow echoes.
The queen tipped her head to one side, observing us. "Well, it has to be death, doesn't it?" she said. "I can't think of anything else. They have offended me by their behaviour to one of my favourites. That cannot be tolerated."
She hadn't been looking at us as she spoke. She hadn't looked at anyone. Only into the distance, or at the wall of the chamber, her skin as white as the hood around her face, the pearls of her necklace and the folds of her silk dress. There was colour, though: the red of her smile. It seemed to sparkle like fresh blood.
Danny knelt in front of her and she put a hand on his head, like the Pope giving a blessing. "Thank you, my queen," we heard him murmur.
The soldiers who gripped our arms turned us and marched us across the chamber and through a massive stone gateway set in the wall. I looked back and there was the queen, mounted on her horse again, following, Danny leading it by its bridle, occasionally twisting back as he walked, to gaze at her or speak to her. Behind them marched the dead flesh of the rest of her troop.
"Danny, Danny," Neil screamed. "Fuck it. I'm sorry, right? I'm sorry. It was just a game. We never wanted to hurt you. What is all this? What are you doing? Tell them to stop."
Danny and his queen only laughed.
On the other side of a short tunnel was a wide balcony paved with stone, with battlements running along the outer edge. Beyond that edge, as far as I could see, was nothing at all - a huge darkness, like a night sky. But we hadn't gone out of the fort. We were still inside - somewhere. The air was freezing cold.
Facing out, their barrels pointing over the battlements, were two cannons on wheeled carriages. Our guards waited with us while other soldiers pushed sticks with swabs on the ends into the cannon mouths to clean them, shoved gunpowder into them with other sticks, then lifted the barrels to drop massive iron balls into them, lowering the barrels afterwards to point again over the battlements. At a nod from these gunners, our guards took Neil and me around to the cannon mouths and began chaining us so that our backs were jammed against them. Behind me, I heard Danny laughing, and singing: "And when they were only halfway up they were neither up nor down." I vomited.
"No..." I shouted, when I could, trying to pull myself loose. "Oh, no. Danny! No, no, please. Don't. Stop it, Danny. Stop this. I didn't do anything to you. It was Neil's idea." Part of me still thought this was some weird game, some incredible way Danny had thought up to get back at us, and he'd call a stop to the whole performance soon, having scared the shit out of us. "Danny, I'll never fuck around with you again. I'll never hurt you Danny. We like you Danny. Really we do. We were just having a laugh. I'll be your best friend Danny. I won't let Neil hurt you."
Neil was struggling and screaming hysterically, not making any sense. A pool of piss formed around his feet.
The sharp smell of gunpowder stung my nostrils. I heard soldiers gathering behind the cannon, a snap of metal and flint and the stink of cord burning, like a hyper-firework night... then there was an ear-shattering explosion. But not from my cannon. Neil's head flew over the battlements. One of his arms and one of his legs spun over me. Gobbets of flesh and spats of blood hit my face and chest. I spewed again.
I was shaking and wailing as they unchained me and let me sink on the stone flags.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I heard myself sob. "I'm sorry."
"Realise, Mayfly, I am showing you mercy," said the queen. There was a sadistic smile on her face, mirroring the one on Danny's. "I'm aware the other one was the worse villain. Your punishment is over. Although I think you'll remember it for the rest of your mortal life, won't you? It was Danny who pleaded for you." She leant down and stroked his hair. "And he'll guide you home in the morning. Perhaps you'll be kinder to him now, in your Mayfly world."
After they'd all gone, Danny led me to a place to sleep, deeper in the fort, where there was a pile of grass. I didn't sleep though; I lay there trembling, staring into the darkness in every direction. In the morning, Danny came to collect me. He was Danny again, the dumb little kid. He led me out of the ruin and I followed him about halfway to the path, but from there I ran. I didn't care that I could get stuck or lost. I ran through mud and brown pools of water, scrambling for dry land. On the few occasions I turned back, all I could see was the old fort, still, quiet, deserted, just as it always had been. Danny had gone, and there was no sign of soldiers. No Danny's queen.
Danny, though, reappeared the next day, according to friends of mine. They saw him pedalling his bike along the pavement down his street, with a full shopping bag hung on its handlebars - doing an errand for his mum I suppose. They said he seemed happy enough: there was a grin on his face and he was singing. As for Neil, the police came to interview me when his parents reported him missing. I said I couldn't remember what had happened to him. It's true enough I didn't want to, and I knew if I blabbered what I could face telling, the cops would think I'd gone crazy or was lying. So I said as little as possible. When they conducted a search of the fort and marsh, they concluded from the charcoaled bits of Neil they found that he must have stepped on an unexploded World War II bomb or mine. I didn't argue with them. And I never went near the fort, or Danny Bartlett, ever again.
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That long summer holiday we were bored, he and I, which, as most people know, can lead to serious consequences when you're thirteen. No school, and there was never much to do in Graevwych, but we had to make our mischief somewhere. We knew this kid, a year below us, Daniel Bartlett, who you could mess about with royally and get away with it. Everybody, including the teachers, thought he was a sandwich short of a picnic and nobody minded, really, if he got teased a bit.
So in the playground we used to nick his schoolbag and have him running around after us trying to snatch it back. Get him to hand over his dinner money to us, spend it on fags, and have fun watching him splutter when we gave him one to smoke. Egg him on to say things to girls - I mean things that would have them slapping him, once we'd rehearsed him. Stuff like that. The trick was to make him believe you were his mate. Neil was a genius at that. He hardly looked an angel - dark glasses, bovver boots, cropped hair - but somehow he could make people believe he was just a cute cheeky chappie. I can tell you, he was anything but that.
We knew that Bartlett liked to spend a lot of time on his own, playing at home or wandering around town. There was one place in particular he liked to go - other kids had seen him - an old fort way out along the river, hundreds of years old. Once, it was supposed to defend us from the French, or something, but it was never used and ended up deserted, so the story went. It was a ruin but a lot of it was still standing, with holes for cannon and dungeons below and everything. It wasn't easy to get to. It faced the river, or anyway the mud banks, and was surrounded on all other sides by marsh.
Bartlett would go out there a couple of times a week, we heard, but whenever anyone tried to follow him, there'd come a point when they'd lose him. He knew a way through the marsh but no one wanted to follow him. Our informants said they'd watch him as long as they could, then he'd just vanish, as if into thin air. He'd never tell you what he'd done out there, what was so fascinating in that old pile.
So of course Neil and I were curious. Neil's great brainwave was that we'd go round Bartlett's house and straight out ask him to take us to the fort and show us where he played and what he got up to. Fawn all over him. Take an interest. Best pals and all that. And we'd join in his game but mess it up for him - or if it was enough of a laugh, maybe we wouldn't.
So that's how I found myself one afternoon in my jeans and braces and heavy-duty boots standing on a doorstep, calling round for the poor woodentop Danny Bartlett. Neil knocked and after a while Mrs Bartlett came to the door. She stank of gin and her hair was streaked down her white face like a ripped shower curtain.
Neil laid on the charm and said we'd come to see Danny, our school buddy. She looked like she didn't believe us but didn't care and pushed the door wide so we could walk in past her. The place was a tip: old magazines, records, sweet wrappers and wine glasses everywhere, but there was Danny sitting in the middle of the living room floor, playing with plastic soldiers.
"The Red Coats," he said, "versus Napoleon." He entertained us with a song too:
"Oh, the grand old Duke of York
He had ten thousand men..."
When he looked up at us, he was kind of cloudy, as if he couldn't really quite see us. But his eyes were bright and he was smiling - as if he saw something, and it made him very happy. He looked like that a lot of the time, whatever we did to him. Weird kid.
"He marched them up to the top of the hill..."
"Hey, great, Danny," said Neil. "Do you want to go out today? It's nice and sunny. Out to the fort. We want to go with you."
"You can't. I'm not allowed to take anyone," said Danny, pushing a cannon along. "And he marched them down again. It's a secret."
"Oh, go on Danny," slurred his mother, who'd come to lean on the door jamb. "Get out of the house a bit. Play with your friends. You don't want to be a loner all your bloody life, do you? Anyway, who says you're not allowed to take anyone? Not me."
Danny didn't answer or look up but turned the cannon round to face its own troops, the British. "And when they were up they were up. Boom!" He knocked down a row of redcoats. "They were traitors and cowards. They had to die." He giggled. "And when they were down they were down. Look. Boom! I know what they really did to traitors and cowards, and baddies like that."
He picked up a redcoat and pushed his back against the mouth of a cannon, held him there. "No, no, no... Don't, please. No! Anything but this!" Danny wailed, doing a voice for his toy. "And when they were only halfway up... Die, traitor!" he shouted in a gruffer voice, then: "BOOM!" And he flung the redcoat halfway across the room. "All his guts would be spilled out and burnt from the blast of the cannon. His arms, legs and head all over the place. Nothing left of him. I saw it on telly. ...neither up nor down. Come with me a minute." He stood up, nodding at us, and we followed him out of the room and through the front door.
"I'm not really going to take you," he said on the doorstep. "I can't. It's a secret."
Neil put an arm around him and dragged him down the front garden path out onto the street. A few yards down, where they couldn't be seen from the house, he bent down and pushed his face into the kid's.
"You're gonna take us, Bartlett, you understand? Otherwise I'll beat the living shit out of you. And we'll tell your mother you've been smoking."
Still up there on Cloud Nine, but his wings clipped a bit, a little down in the mouth, the poor sap agreed, went back in to change his shoes and tell his mum he was going out with us, after all. She still thought it was a good idea, it seemed. Then Bartlett led us, dragging his feet all the way, down through the town past the clocktower, past the big statue of Queen Victoria by the ferry pier, and the one of Wellington outside the school - so many statues in this town - along the promenade by the river and on to the path out to the estuary, where things grew wilder. It's a place all out on its own, Graevwych, built as a garrison town, and still more of an ugly old outpost than a home for anyone. As we got deeper into the marshes there was nothing but tall grass and pools of dark brown water either side of the old raised track. We mucked about chucking grass darts at each other. Then the fort came into view.
It was bright, glaring in the sun, a horseshoe shape of brown and red bricks shored up with concrete, its ends pointing back into the marsh. From what you could see, it was barely more than a massive wall with gun emplacements in it, like a row of arches with openings at the front where the cannons would have pointed at the river, with a walkway above. To me right then it looked like it was rising straight out of the mud and made of mud, surrounded by grass and reeds and water - and loads more marsh and mud everywhere. It looked much more than a couple of hundred years old. It looked like one of the Pyramids with its top chopped off. Like it had been there forever. I had to shake myself. I was thinking that whatever it was Danny got up to out here, it might be better to leave him to it.
Danny himself was staring at it, like he was in a trance.
"Hey, Danny," said Neil. "It's a great place to play cowboys and Indians. Remember the Alamo!"
The kid pulled a strange expression at this - he looked almost disgusted - but before he could think too much we each took an arm and ran him along, until we got as close as we could to the fort without coming down off the track into marsh.
The mildewed walls and battlements didn't look any less weird closer up, but now between them and us festered all that mire, with only islands of grass. If the track had ever gone all the way to the fort, that part had disappeared long ago. The dirty red face of the fort mocked us from across a wasteland.
"What is it, then Danny? What is it you do here?" asked Neil.
"If I show you, you won't tell anyone? Promise?"
"Scout's honour," said Neil.
Danny nodded, and smiled, but his shoulders hunched, like he'd taken on a really weighty duty.
"The marsh," he said. "We have to get across first and it's very dangerous here. Only I know the way. You still want to come?"
"Yeah, come on Danny," said Neil. "Let's get on with it."
But I was scared, I admit, not least because Danny's weirdness, the eyes-in-the clouds stuff, really was giving me the creeps by now, especially out here, and I wasn't even sure why. I could hear from Neil's over-the-top bravado that he felt something like that too.
Danny scuffed down the grass slope off the path onto the start of the mud, and began picking his way through like an Indian tracker.
"Put your feet exactly where I do," he said. He was enjoying himself, I could see, and it was Neil and I who were nervous. There was firm ground where we put our feet after Danny, but Christ all that gloop was horrible! - the black, fish-stinking mud and brown pools with scum on top. You had no idea how deep they were. And as if that weren't enough, gnats and flies began to bite, but you couldn't shoo them off because you'd lose your balance. We could all easily have got sucked into the shit and died. And here we were trusting Danny Bartlett.
It seemed to take hours of this agonised moon-walking to get to the fort, far longer than we'd planned. By the time we got to the dry moat all around the landward side and climbed the chalky grass of a ramp that led up to the walkway, it was five o'clock. Only three hours of daylight left, and I was getting more nervous by the minute.
I turned round and looked behind us. I had that tingling feeling you get when you think you're being watched - in your scalp and down the back of your neck. Even though all I could see was that flat marsh, with the tall straggly grass and the pools reflecting the sky, and nothing else. The only other way there was from the river and its mudbanks. The sky was totally clear and we were all hot. None of us had thought of bringing water.
"Good, Danny. We're here then. So what do you do now? Where's all the fun?"
"I'll show you," the kid said. And now he was grinning broadly. Stranger than ever.
He trotted off along the walkway, then waited for us at the top of some steps leading down. We went down below the level of the gun emplacements. As we passed, I thought for a moment I saw all the old cannon, black and new in the sun, lined up ready to fire. But I shook my head and they faded back into shadow: the weird place must have been getting to me, I thought. Down another flight of steps was a row of massive brick chambers full of puddles and mildew that stank like cat's piss, and Danny led us into one of them. In the back wall of it was an iron door, dotted with huge bolts. It looked impossibly heavy, but Danny seemed to yank it open easily. He stood waiting for us at the threshold, beaming like a baby.
Inside, the light from the doorway was barely enough to see anything by. We stumbled after the kid blindly. Then he came to a passage dimly lit by candles spaced along its walls.
"What's this?" Neil asked. "What's fucking going on? Does someone live here? Where are we going, Danny? You're not messing us about now, are you, you little dick?" He hardly bothered to hide the fear in his voice, but he wasn't going to turn back.
A cold breeze, from somewhere deeper in, blew against us, noises, echoes, murmurings carried on it. My chest and stomach ached with fear now and I wanted to run out of that place, but I never would have, not in front of Neil, still less Danny. I was glad of my heavy boots, but I wished I'd brought a knife.
But now, up ahead, the gloom was replaced by dazzling light. At first I was blinded and couldn't see anything. When my eyes adjusted, I could hardly understand what I was looking at: we had walked into a huge chamber, and the blaze of light was coming from hundreds of candles and chandeliers - and out of the light were marching soldiers, old-style soldiers in red jackets, white trousers, tall black hats, shouldering rifles. I thought at first they might be projections in some sort of light show. Or waxworks that moved. But I could smell them - sweat and a stink like old meat. And their faces had expressions like everyday people's faces, with grimy skin and scared eyes. I couldn't pretend they weren't real. But were they alive or dead?
Neil's eyes were wide with absolute terror, even though he couldn't stop staring at the soldiers.
I turned to face the kid. "For fuck's sake, Danny. What the fuck is this?" I was trembling and I could hear fear racking my own voice. "What, are they - actors? Are they making a film down here or something? Or is it some sort of army training? What have you got to do with it?"
"They're my friends," said Danny. "My real friends. And when they were up they were up..."
I grabbed Neil's arm and was going to pull him away. I didn't know what was going on, but I'd had enough of this game. But Neil seemed frozen on the spot.
"If you're thinking of turning back," Danny said, "I'm not going with you. So there's no one to show you the way. And it'll be dark in a couple of hours."
"Danny?" I said. It hadn't sounded like him. But the words had definitely come from his mouth. He was smiling at me and nodding.
Then a shout came from somewhere and the soldiers shuffled round into two parallel lines and snapped to attention.
Between the two lines, emerging from the darkness, riding elegantly on a black horse, came a queen - you could only call her that - dressed in white silk. On her head was a tall crown sparkling with jewels, in her hand an orb, and against her shoulder a diadem. Her face was proud and furious.
A soldier brought a set of wooden steps for this queen to dismount onto, and Danny went to her, giving her his hand as she stepped to the ground. He bowed in front of her, and as he stood up straight again the queen smiled at him. Now he definitely wasn't Danny, or he was like an older Danny, a normal older Danny, a tall man with a bright, intelligent expression.
"Your Majesty," he said. "I present my two enemies. Cowardly bullies, contemptible reprobates who represent the very worst of humanity, the two of them. Though that one is more wicked than the other, his follower. Whatever you think they deserve, Your Majesty, I give them into your mercy."
Four of the soldiers peeled off from their lines and caught hold of Neil and me just as we were turning to run. Their grip was like iron.
"Let me fucking go," Neil screamed. "What have I done to you? I'll tell my dad, Danny you mong bastard!"
Danny - and the soldiers - laughed. But the soldiers' laugh came in a series of hollow echoes.
The queen tipped her head to one side, observing us. "Well, it has to be death, doesn't it?" she said. "I can't think of anything else. They have offended me by their behaviour to one of my favourites. That cannot be tolerated."
She hadn't been looking at us as she spoke. She hadn't looked at anyone. Only into the distance, or at the wall of the chamber, her skin as white as the hood around her face, the pearls of her necklace and the folds of her silk dress. There was colour, though: the red of her smile. It seemed to sparkle like fresh blood.
Danny knelt in front of her and she put a hand on his head, like the Pope giving a blessing. "Thank you, my queen," we heard him murmur.
The soldiers who gripped our arms turned us and marched us across the chamber and through a massive stone gateway set in the wall. I looked back and there was the queen, mounted on her horse again, following, Danny leading it by its bridle, occasionally twisting back as he walked, to gaze at her or speak to her. Behind them marched the dead flesh of the rest of her troop.
"Danny, Danny," Neil screamed. "Fuck it. I'm sorry, right? I'm sorry. It was just a game. We never wanted to hurt you. What is all this? What are you doing? Tell them to stop."
Danny and his queen only laughed.
On the other side of a short tunnel was a wide balcony paved with stone, with battlements running along the outer edge. Beyond that edge, as far as I could see, was nothing at all - a huge darkness, like a night sky. But we hadn't gone out of the fort. We were still inside - somewhere. The air was freezing cold.
Facing out, their barrels pointing over the battlements, were two cannons on wheeled carriages. Our guards waited with us while other soldiers pushed sticks with swabs on the ends into the cannon mouths to clean them, shoved gunpowder into them with other sticks, then lifted the barrels to drop massive iron balls into them, lowering the barrels afterwards to point again over the battlements. At a nod from these gunners, our guards took Neil and me around to the cannon mouths and began chaining us so that our backs were jammed against them. Behind me, I heard Danny laughing, and singing: "And when they were only halfway up they were neither up nor down." I vomited.
"No..." I shouted, when I could, trying to pull myself loose. "Oh, no. Danny! No, no, please. Don't. Stop it, Danny. Stop this. I didn't do anything to you. It was Neil's idea." Part of me still thought this was some weird game, some incredible way Danny had thought up to get back at us, and he'd call a stop to the whole performance soon, having scared the shit out of us. "Danny, I'll never fuck around with you again. I'll never hurt you Danny. We like you Danny. Really we do. We were just having a laugh. I'll be your best friend Danny. I won't let Neil hurt you."
Neil was struggling and screaming hysterically, not making any sense. A pool of piss formed around his feet.
The sharp smell of gunpowder stung my nostrils. I heard soldiers gathering behind the cannon, a snap of metal and flint and the stink of cord burning, like a hyper-firework night... then there was an ear-shattering explosion. But not from my cannon. Neil's head flew over the battlements. One of his arms and one of his legs spun over me. Gobbets of flesh and spats of blood hit my face and chest. I spewed again.
I was shaking and wailing as they unchained me and let me sink on the stone flags.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I heard myself sob. "I'm sorry."
"Realise, Mayfly, I am showing you mercy," said the queen. There was a sadistic smile on her face, mirroring the one on Danny's. "I'm aware the other one was the worse villain. Your punishment is over. Although I think you'll remember it for the rest of your mortal life, won't you? It was Danny who pleaded for you." She leant down and stroked his hair. "And he'll guide you home in the morning. Perhaps you'll be kinder to him now, in your Mayfly world."
After they'd all gone, Danny led me to a place to sleep, deeper in the fort, where there was a pile of grass. I didn't sleep though; I lay there trembling, staring into the darkness in every direction. In the morning, Danny came to collect me. He was Danny again, the dumb little kid. He led me out of the ruin and I followed him about halfway to the path, but from there I ran. I didn't care that I could get stuck or lost. I ran through mud and brown pools of water, scrambling for dry land. On the few occasions I turned back, all I could see was the old fort, still, quiet, deserted, just as it always had been. Danny had gone, and there was no sign of soldiers. No Danny's queen.
Danny, though, reappeared the next day, according to friends of mine. They saw him pedalling his bike along the pavement down his street, with a full shopping bag hung on its handlebars - doing an errand for his mum I suppose. They said he seemed happy enough: there was a grin on his face and he was singing. As for Neil, the police came to interview me when his parents reported him missing. I said I couldn't remember what had happened to him. It's true enough I didn't want to, and I knew if I blabbered what I could face telling, the cops would think I'd gone crazy or was lying. So I said as little as possible. When they conducted a search of the fort and marsh, they concluded from the charcoaled bits of Neil they found that he must have stepped on an unexploded World War II bomb or mine. I didn't argue with them. And I never went near the fort, or Danny Bartlett, ever again.
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