away from the window. “Take a seat,” he said. “I’ll get a crick in my neck looking up at you.”
Shadow sat down.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” said Mr. Alice. “Been wanting to meet you for a while. They said you were a smart young man who was going places. That’s what they said.”
“So you didn’t just hire a tourist to keep the neighbors away from your party?”
“Well, yes and no. We had a few other candidates, obviously. It’s just you were perfect for the job. And when I realized who you were. Well, a gift from the gods really, weren’t you?”
“I don’t know. Was I?”
“Absolutely. You see, this party goes back a very long way. Almost a thousand years, they’ve been having it. Never missed a single year. And every year there’s a fight, between our man and their man. And our man wins. This year, our man is you.”
“Who…” said Shadow. “Who are they? And who are you?”
“I am your host,” said Mr. Alice. “I suppose…” He stopped, for a moment, tapped his walking stick against the wooden floor. “They are the ones who lost, a long time ago. We won. We were the knights, and they were the dragons, we were the giant-killers, they were the ogres. We were the men and they were the monsters. And we won. They know their place now. And tonight is all about not letting them forget it. It’s humanity you’ll be fighting for, tonight. We can’t let them get the upper hand. Not even a little. Us versus them.”
“Doctor Gaskell said that I was a monster,” said Shadow.
“Doctor Gaskell?” said Mr. Alice. “Friend of yours?”
“No,” said Shadow. “He works for you. Or for the people who work for you. I think he kills children and takes pictures of them.”
Mr. Alice dropped his walking stick. He bent down, awkwardly, to pick it up. Then he said, “Well, I don’t think you’re a monster, Shadow. I think you’re a hero.”
No, thought Shadow. You think I’m a monster. But you think I’m your monster.
“Now, you do well tonight,” said Mr. Alice, “and I know you will-and you can name your price. You ever wondered why some people were film stars, or famous, or rich? Bet you think, He’s got no talent. What’s he got that I haven’t got? Well, sometimes the answer is, he’s got someone like me on his side.”
“Are you a god?” asked Shadow.
Mr. Alice laughed then, a deep, full-throated chuckle. “Nice one, Mister Moon. Not at all. I’m just a boy from Streatham who’s done well for himself.”
“So who do I fight?” asked Shadow.
“You’ll meet him tonight,” said Mr. Alice. “Now, there’s stuff needs to come down from the attic. Why don’t you lend Smithie a hand? Big lad like you, it’ll be a doddle.”
The audience was over and, as if on cue, Smith walked in.
“I was just saying,” said Mr. Alice, “that our boy here would help you bring the stuff down from the attic.”
“Triffic,” said Smith. “Come on, Shadow. Let’s wend our way upwards.”
They went up, through the house, up a dark wooden stairway, to a padlocked door, which Smith unlocked, into a dusty wooden attic, piled high with what looked like…
“Drums?” said Shadow.
“Drums,” said Smith. They were made of wood and of animal skins. Each drum was a different size. “Right, let’s take them down.”
They carried the drums downstairs. Smith carried one at a time, holding it as if it was precious. Shadow carried two.
“So what really happens tonight?” asked Shadow, on their third trip, or perhaps their fourth.
“Well,” said Smith. “Most of it, as I understand, you’re best off figuring out on your own. As it happens.”
“And you and Mr. Alice. What part do you play in this?”
Smith gave him a sharp look. They put the drums down at the foot of the stairs, in the great hall. There were several men there, talking in front of the fire.
When they were back up the stairs again, and out of earshot of the guests, Smith said, “Mr. Alice will be leaving us late this afternoon. I’ll stick around.”
“He’s leaving? Isn’t he part of this?”
Smith looked offended. “He’s the host,” he said. “But.” He stopped. Shadow understood. Smith didn’t talk about his employer. They carried more drums down the stairs. When they had brought down all the drums, they carried down heavy leather bags.
“What’s in these?” asked Shadow.
“Drumsticks,” said Smith.
Smith continued, “They’re old families. That lot downstairs. Very old money. They know who’s boss, but that doesn’t make him one of them. See? They’re the only ones who’ll be at tonight’s party. They’d not want Mr. Alice. See?”
And Shadow did see. He wished that Smith hadn’t spoken to him about Mr. Alice. He didn’t think Smith would have said anything to anyone he thought would live to talk about it.
But all he said was, “Heavy drumsticks.”
VIII
A small helicopter took Mr. Alice away late that afternoon. Land Rovers took away the staff. Smith drove the last one. Only Shadow was left behind, and the guests, with their smart clothes and their smiles.
They stared at Shadow as if he were a captive lion who had been brought for their amusement, but they did not talk to him.
The dark-haired woman, the one who had smiled at Shadow as she had arrived, brought him food to eat: a steak, almost rare. She brought it to him on a plate, without cutlery, as if she expected him to eat it with his fingers and his teeth, and he was hungry, and he did.
“I am not your hero,” he told them, but they would not meet his gaze. Nobody spoke to him, not directly. He felt like an animal.
And then it was dusk. They led Shadow to the inner courtyard, by the rusty fountain, and they stripped him naked, at gunpoint, and the women smeared his body with some kind of thick yellow grease, rubbing it in.
They put a knife on the grass in front of him. A gesture with a gun, and Shadow picked the knife up. The hilt was black metal, rough and easy to hold. The blade looked sharp.
Then they threw open the great door, from the inner courtyard to the world outside, and two of the men lit the two high bonfires: they crackled and blazed.
They opened the leather bags, and each of the guests took out a single carved black stick, like a cudgel, knobbly and heavy. Shadow found himself thinking of Sawney Beane’s children, swarming up from the darkness holding clubs made of human thigh-bones…
Then the guests arranged themselves around the edge of the courtyard, and they began to beat the drums with the sticks.
They started slow, and they started quietly, a deep, throbbing pounding, like a heartbeat. Then they began to crash and slam into strange rhythms, staccato beats that wove and wound, louder and louder, until they filled Shadow’s mind and his world. It seemed to him that the firelight flickered to the rhythms of the drums.
And then, from outside the house, the howling began.
There was pain in the howling, and anguish, and it echoed across the hills above the drumbeats, a wail of pain and loss and hate.
The figure that stumbled through the doorway to the courtyard was clutching its head, covering its ears, as if to stop the pounding of the drumbeats.
The firelight caught it.
It was huge, now: bigger than Shadow, and naked. It was perfectly hairless, and dripping wet.
