Angel City (16 page)

‘It's not, really, though some of the monsters go over the top sometimes. Some of them can't, of course. Zombies are supposed to be the slowest of the Undead and you can always hear them coming.' (I bit my tongue and said nothing.) ‘And the Skeletons move quick but are relatively weak. The Vampires are powerful but can be defeated by spells. The ones to watch out for are the Ghouls. They're sneaky and powerful and fast. Very tricky - they play dumb and pretend they can't understand the Spell of Warding.'

I put money on Tigger being a Ghoul if he was there. ‘And just what do these characters do ... er ... ?' I tailed off because I couldn't go on calling him Mr Goodson now he was sitting in the back of Armstrong and I was picking his brains, but I was damned if I could remember his first name, assuming I'd ever been told it.

He didn't notice, because he was on his pet subject, which just proves what I always say: ask the right question and you can get anyone to tell you anything (Rule of Life No. 83).

‘Their role is to stop the questors and the valiant from reaching their goal, or at least slow them down and soak up their life-force.'

‘You have life-force?' I asked, like other people swap brands of deodorant.

‘Every game player is allocated a life-force. Combat damage' – there was that word again – ‘and hostile spells can all diminish your life-force value. The more points you retain, the more you carry over into the next game, then the next level and so onwards.'

‘Sounds like life, really. And you've got to Grand Vizier level?'

I was watching him in the mirror. He was serious about all this.

‘Yes, and that's my game name as well. You'll need one too if you're coming into the caves.'

‘Game name?'

I flashed my lights to overtake a Fiat Panda driven at 22 mph by a large blue hat that I guessed had a little old lady somewhere under it. A few names sprang to mind.

‘Oh yes, no-one uses their real names in Nether World.'

Which probably cut down on the insurance claims, I thought.

‘The younger fraternity,' Mr Goodson went on, ‘go for names like Simeon or Ragnor or Hakklon. There's a very competent Warrior Priest at my level who goes by the game name Schmeichel. That sounds Dutch to me.'

It was Danish and I didn't want to spoil it by telling him it was the name of the Manchester United goalkeeper.

‘The thing to remember is not to go for anything from Tolkien. It's frowned upon as frivolous.'

‘But why will I need a game name? Can't I just ask backstage or something? I just want to see if Tigger's here or not.' Besides, I'd left my wand and fairy dust at home.

‘It doesn't work like that. No-one gets passed by the Gatekeeper unless they are playing, and the monsters have to be there before the game players turn up. They have to get into costume, pick a route and then lie in ambush. Sometimes the monsters have to play two or three quests at the same time. So few people want to be monsters these days, they're quite in demand.'

I wouldn't have said that, but it was neither the time nor the place for a philosophical argument.

 

As I pulled Armstrong into the muddy field that served as the car park for Nether World, I realised I had done one thing right that morning when I had put on a black T-shirt. It seemed to be the uniform for everyone around the cars and the entrance, which was marked by a sign saying: ‘The Real World Declines From Hereon In'.

In fact, I hadn't seen so much long hair or so many black T-shirts since the Black Sabbath collection came out on video.

It had been easy enough to find, despite Mr Goodson trying to give directions from the back. I hoped his sense of geography improved once he was underground. The road sign indicating Biggin Hill and Badger's Bottom had been added to in spray paint so that it ended: ‘Nether World ½ mile further'. It read like the instructions on an elevator to hell.

Mr Goodson climbed out of the driver's-side door and put a small suitcase and a duffel bag down on the ground.

‘I'll leave my overnight things with the Gatekeeper,' he said. ‘You'll want to get off once you find your friend, and my bed and breakfast place is just a few minutes' walk into the village. But I'll get changed here, if you don't mind. I like to make an entrance.'

‘Feel free,' I said. He left the duffel bag on the ground and took the suitcase with him as he climbed back into Armstrong.

There were more people milling around than I had expected and something like 50 cars in the field. The entrance to the caves was sheltered by some small trees, probably planted by the local council to try to hide the goings-on in there. And with good reason, judging by some of the people coming out after a hard day in the Nether World.

Virtually everyone was wearing make-up, almost entirely black or dark green, though one or two had taken a bit of trouble and added sparkly gold eye-shadow. Black T-shirts and jeans were the order of the day, but whereas mine advertised a garage and spray-joint in Raleigh, North Carolina, most of the ones coming up from the underworld were adorned with gold or silver stick-on stars or pentacles or crescent moons. Then came a group wearing armour. Homemade breastplates and leg guards, probably cardboard but painted shiny silver and convincing enough from a distance. I spotted two guys with horned Viking helmets on their heads, one of them carrying a large double-headed battleaxe. It would have been more convincing had he not been swinging it one-handed like a golf club, giving away the fact that it was polystyrene. But still, I could understand why the residents of Badger's Bottom didn't especially want to run into them on a dark night.

‘You'll be given a weapon from the armoury,' said Mr Goodson from the back of Armstrong, ‘but some people like to make their own.'

‘Fine. Is there much light down there?'

‘None at all. Lanterns are permitted but if you take a torch, you have to keep it pointed upwards so the effect is like candlelight. Most of us don't bother. The Game Guide has a torch of course.'

‘Game Guide?'

‘He's a sort of referee. He directs your quest and calls for Time Freezers when you can alter the action or assess your level of damage.'

There he went, talking about damage again. I walked round to the back of Armstrong and opened the boot. I found my torch, checked it worked again and slid it into my jeans in the small of my back, pulling my T-shirt out loose over it. I locked my jacket in the boot after taking out some of Bassotti's money. I shivered in the cool afternoon breeze, but I worked on the basis that it was better to leave everything valuable in the real world. I was entering Nether World with just the bare essentials: my car keys.

The thought struck me that if Tigger was in monster gear (and the people I'd seen so far were the paying punters, so God knew what the monsters looked like), he might recognise me before I spotted him. My problem was I was badly underdressed.

I looked in the glove compartment, where I stash things as and when I can be bothered. I found an ageing packet of Piccadilly No. 1 cigarettes and a Zippo lighter (repro, but good repro) and something I had just thought of, the single black nylon stocking. I smiled as I suddenly remembered the circumstances that had led to it getting there in the first place, then frowned as I remembered the reasons why it was impossible to return it to its owner. Still, one woman's loss was my gain.

I lit a cigarette with the Zippo and took a deep draw, revelling in the political incorrectness of it. Then I pulled the stocking taut over my left fist and took a guess at where two eye-holes should go. I blew on the tip of the cigarette and dabbed two holes, enlarging them with my finger. I measured it up against my face and it seemed to fit, so I dropped the Zippo into the toe of the stocking and tied a knot to keep it there, then pulled the stocking over my head. In Armstrong's wing mirror, I looked like a pigtailed bank robber.

I thought it wasn't bad for on-the-spot improvisation, or at least I did until I tried to smoke the rest of the cigarette. If nothing else I had discovered another good way of giving up: try inhaling through an old black 15-denier. Filter tips? Who needs ‘em?

‘I'm ready,' came a voice from the other side of the cab.

I don't know which of us was the more surprised.

Facing each other over the bonnet, there was I, my features distorted modelling ski masks for serial killers.

But on the other side was Mr Goodson in a full length crimson cloak covered in runic letters. His face was streaked with green and black face-paint zigzags, and around his neck was an amulet that on closer inspection was a life-size metal frog, the sort you can buy in garden shops to enhance your garden pond. On his head, adding two feet to his height, was a coned wizard's hat, obviously hand-stitched from patches of black leather with loving care. So that's what he did at weekends.

‘Er ... fine,' I mumbled through the stocking.

‘I see you're getting into the spirit of things.' He smiled, genuinely pleased.

‘Yeah. Let's go to work, shall we?'

 

On the way into the caves there was a sign saying: ‘Real World Currency does NOT exist Beyond the Armoury'. Underneath that was an exchange rate should you wish to buy anything in the Nether World, where everything was given as equivalent ducats or doubloons. If I had had a stockbroker I would have rung him and told him that in Nether World the Deutschmark was having a bitch of a time against the doubloon.

The actual entrance to the caves was a long slope down into the dark, starting off as grass then moving through gravel to the smooth, dry rock. They had spaced the lights out at increasing intervals so that your eyes got used to the gloom. Either that or they were really cutting back on the electricity bills.

The first barrier was a trestle table behind which sat a huge, bearded guy with forearms the like of which I hadn't seen outside a butcher's. He was wearing a Mettallica T-shirt and looked like a hundred other roadies I knew who had lived too long on fried food. Mr Goodson told me, with some reverence, that he was the Gatekeeper.

Whatever other qualities he had, the Gatekeeper needed a calculator to work out two tickets at £12 each. Then, when Mr Goodson showed him a card, he made a great play of stamping it with a wizened bit of inky rubber and said, ‘Welcome, Grand Vizier.'

‘My friend is a novice,' said Mr Goodson, and I gave him a killer look from behind my stocking mask.

‘Then you'll need a game card,' said the Gatekeeper.

He produced a Filofax from below the table and found a blank one between the pages. It took him a while to find a pen, and then he wrote ‘Initiate' on the cover, folded the card to the size of a European driving licence and began to hand it over.

‘Follow the signs for Level One. Someone will explain the weapons and damage system. Keep your card with you during the game. Oh, wait, you need a game name and a Character Alignment.'

‘A what?'

‘Alignment,' he said wearily. ‘Are you Lawful or Chaotic?'

‘Lawful, every time. Yes, put me down for some of that.'

‘And Character?'

I hesitated as I always do over trick questions. Mr Goodson helped me out.

‘You can't be a Wizard on your first game, so you must choose one of the other Character classes.'

‘Which are?'

‘Warrior – they do most of the fighting.'

‘Not me, I think.'

‘Priest – they're usually in the thick of the fighting, casting spells.'

‘Perhaps something quieter?'

‘Archer? Scout? Pathfinder? Caveman? They're usually regarded as expendable.'

‘Anything sort of further back towards the rear?'

‘Warrior Priest? They actually do most of the healing and can heal their own wounds too, with simple spells.'

‘Warrior Priest, eh? A sort of aggressive clergyman – but mildly aggressive? Yeah, I could go for that.'

‘Fine,' said the Gatekeeper heavily. ‘Warrior Priest it is. And what's your game name?'

‘BBW,' I said. ‘Just the initials. Is that okay?'

‘Call yourself BMW for all I care,' said the Gatekeeper, which I thought was no way to talk to a man of the cloth.

 

 

 

 

 

‘Roll call for Quest Four,' said the Game Guide, producing a small notepad from the folds of his robes. ‘Grand Vizier, Pan, Heartbreaker, Skullsplitter – thought that was a beer – Ug, Bindweed, Bog Myrtle – looks like we've got the Greens in today – Simeon, BBW – is that right? – Canticle – oh, hello there, Kirstie, didn't recognise you for the minute, when did you have the hair blued? – Athelstan and Doric. All here? Good. Any Novitiates?'

Nobody moved. Mr Goodson nudged me in the ribs and mouthed ‘You' at me.

‘No, I don't do drugs,' I whispered.

‘Anyone not played before?' asked the Game Guide in a sarcastic drawl which his parents had paid dearly for through a private education.