The Midnight Game - Skulduggery Pleasant Fanfiction

Chapter 3 - 00:57

Almost an hour into the game and Valkyrie was no closer to finding any of the Dead Men. She hadn't heard so much as a creaking floorboard echoing through the house. Not a breath. Not a whisper. The longer they were apart, the more likely it was they wouldn't make it out of this house alive. She wondered if any of them had found each other, if they were looking for her. If they had seen the Midnight Man standing motionless and bold, if their candles, too, had gone out. If they had felt those icy fingers lightly tracing their spines, making them shiver, making them scared. Valkyrie realised now the real danger of the Midnight Game; you may not get caught by the Midnight Man. You may not be killed. You may not even have to glance at your salt supply...but simply playing, wandering a dark house for three hours and thirty three minutes with a frightening spectre searching for you, maybe even following you, was enough to send you insane.

She held her candle up to the doors she walked past, trying to memorise her surroundings to create a map of the house in her mind so she could avoid dead ends, but any logic that existed in her mind was weak and shaky, so this mental map was impossible. A couple of times she found herself back in the same spot and couldn't quite figure out where she was or how she got there, but she hadn't seen Midnight himself since the bathroom incident. What had she been thinking when she approached the bathroom? Why had she turned to look? If she hadn't seen him, if she hadn't blown his cover, would her candle still have gone out? Or would he just have left her alone for a little while longer? Was looking at him, running from him, a form of mocking? She understood the whole game, really, was running. The point was to avoid the Midnight Man, and avoiding was just another way of saying running.

What would happen at three thirty three? Would they just walk out and carry on with life? Skulduggery would want to solve why they woke up in this place, but Valkyrie knew if she got out alive she never wanted to mention this again. Not even think about it.

That wasn't an option. The nightmares would stick around for a long time after. Nothing could make this go away.

Valkyrie took a right somewhere (possibly on the first floor) and walked down it, blind and deaf to the world. Perhaps halfway down the corridor, beside a door that said Princess Emma on it, she got that feeling again. That chilling, shivering feeling. That cold feeling creeping up her spine.

She looked up and saw that there was a mirror hanging on the wall at the end of the corridor. Black mould crept across it, advancing forwards with grimy fingers, claiming what would have once been a shiny surface. She could have sworn that mirror wasn't there when she turned down here.

She turned and looked over her shoulder to see nothing but darkness and when she turned back to the mirror she saw the dark, hooded figure of the Midnight Man standing a few centimetres from her, one hand hovering over her shoulder. She gasped, a scream trapped in her throat, and spun around, but no one was there. He was playing with her. The message was clear - she couldn't advance and she couldn't retreat. She had to enter this room - the room that said Princess Emma.

She twisted the doorknob and entered the room. It used to belong to a little girl of no more than ten, judging by the character of the room. Mermaids were stencilled on the wall. Behind the four poster bed, a rainbow, once bright and vibrant but now dull and dirty, was painted in a bold arch. Multiple toys were scattered across the floor - mostly stuffed animals, some dolls. And for some reason, her gaze was drawn towards a music box on the dressing table.

As she watched, the box opened, revealing a ballerina figurine in a delicate arabesque. It started to turn and London Bridge is Falling Down began to tinkle through the darkness.

So she ran.

She didn't care about her candle going out. She just sprinted as far and as fast from Princess Emma's bedroom as she could, shallow breathing. She rounded a corner and turned quickly, checking to see no one was following, started to turn again and and ran into a body, and she screamed.

"Valkyrie?"

She held her candle up and saw a familiar frightened face.

"Saracen!"

She threw her arms around him and held on tight, careful not to set him on fire. To her surprise, he clung to her with equal strength.

"Thank God you're alive." She sighed.

"I've had worse than this."

"Have you?"

"No."

She pulled away and looked over her shoulder.

"We shouldn't stay still for this long. Come on."

She tugged on his arm and they set back off along the dark corridor. She felt a little braver now she was with Saracen; there was most definitely safety in numbers.

"How are you doing?" He asked, quiet, obviously trying to keep a low profile.

"I've seen him twice," she relplied, "once in a bathroom behind a shower curtain, once in a mirror."

"Has your candle gone out?"

She nodded, biting her lip. Now wasn't a good time to start crying tears of fear; that just made her more vulnerable. "How about you?"

"No. Not yet, at least. You have your salt don't you?"

"Yes."

"Valkyrie, do me a favour. If my candle goes out, just run away. As far and as fast as you can. I'm not going to try and relight it, I'm just going to go straight for the salt. It's not worth running the risk."

She could have argued that she'd much rather stay with him and make sure he was okay...but she didn't, and this was why; she saw him often and he was always happy and proud and confident...and it wasn't even the fact that he was serious. Saracen could be serious when he had to be. It was the fact that Valkyrie could sense he was afraid, and that was unusual. That's why she didn't argue. It would only make things worse.

"Okay," she nodded, "okay. I'll run. But in the meantime, we need to find the others."

Saracen chewed his lip for a second. "Yeah. Okay, I think I know where to go. If I can remember the way, there's a room not far from here that can help us."

"Lead the way, Saracen."

He walked slightly in front of her, and every so often she glanced over her shoulder. She knew it was pointless. If she saw him, what good would it do to run? But that was human nature.

"Saracen," she said after a while.

"Yeah?"

"I'm scared. Are you scared?"

He stopped walking for a second and nervously smiled at her. "Yep. Scared shirtless."