Simon Clark - The Fall

Still reciting the lines, still performing the extravagant windmilling gestures with his arms, Lee watched the front half of the pantomime horse drag its back legs across the stage.

Lee looked once. Then looked again in astonishment. Now that really was impossible.

Still reciting the poem, he stared at the back end of the horse.

It was bleeding.

But pantomime horses don’t bleed , he told himself, pausing for the first time in mid-verse before continuing.

But this one did.

Blood gushed from its rear end. What was more, the brown and white costume had been torn open and—

No.

No, it hadn’t been torn. It had been cut.

Slashed in diagonal rents by what must have been a hell of a sharp knife.

For the first time Lee’s delivery began to falter. The yells in the audience were deafening now.

And why on Earth had someone tried to kill a pantomime horse?

It didn’t make sense.

But so blinded by the theatre lights was he that Lee could see nothing beyond the edge of the stage.

At that moment a huge figure strode in front of him. It was dressed in something like a Viking costume and carried a large curving knife that flashed like neon in the blazing limelight. Again, Lee couldn’t process the information that was rushing through his eyes into his brain.

His mindset was that this was another prank. That he was seeing Jack Shillito in the Viking costume (after all, he was the biggest actor in the troupe); that the wicked-looking knife was merely a wooden prop from the store backstage.

By now the lines had dried on Lee’s lips as he stood there rigid as a statue and watched the knifeman bring the blade down in huge slashing blows. The front half of the pantomime horse tried to run.

The knife blows opened up the costume like a man gutting a fish. From the back half spilled the pantomime horse’s innards, which were, when all was said and done, the man in the rear half of the costume. He tumbled out at Lee’s feet.

One look at Albert’s bloody face and staring eyes told Lee the man was dead.

The knifeman sprang onto the front part of the horse, which struggled to escape. He slashed open the horse’s throat, spilling out kapok in snowy white lumps.

The knifeman paused as if confused by the stuffing, perhaps expecting a gush of blood instead.

His confusion didn’t last long. Again the knife flashed as he drove the blade deep into the horse’s neck.

The jaw of the horse chewed the air with a snapping sound, then the blade passed deeply enough through the costume to find Henry’s body inside. The horse jerked and dropped heavily to the stage.

The knifeman tugged ferociously at the horse’s head, pulling away the costume to reveal Henry’s own head.

He yelled, ‘Please, don’t hurt me… leave me alone! Leave me alone!’

The knife flashed again. ‘ Leave me – Ah! ’ Then Henry’s cries stopped as suddenly as a radio being switched off.

His face clown-white, black diamonds painted around each eye, Lee stood there in his harlequin costume and stared at the chaos erupting around him.

The shock was so great that he didn’t even hear the voice in the back of his head clamouring: ‘ Run! Run! ’

Big Jack Shillito, still in his long dress and petticoats from his pantomime-dame role, ran on stage. He’d painted his face in the caricature of a woman’s: lips a luscious red; rouged cheeks glowing brilliantly in the limelight; eyelashes as thick as spider legs. He ran holding the skirt up to his knees, flashing layers of white petticoats.

He ran desperately, looking for somewhere to hide.

A pair of men followed him. They were wild, barbarian-looking. They roared with laughter, enjoying the chase. One carried a huge axe in his hands.

Jack, kicking up his skirts, tried to scramble over the bed used in one of the comic sketches earlier.

Laughing hugely, one of the barbarians punched Jack full on the jaw, knocking him back flat onto the bed. Grunting excitedly, the wild man threw himself full-length onto the panto dame and started tearing at the skirts and petticoats.

Lee carefully turned his head, hoping if he could only manage to move slowly enough he wouldn’t be noticed by the men now butchering the audience and players in the music hall. He saw a man clamber up onto the stage directly in front of him. He carried a trumpet in one hand that gleamed a brassy yellow in the lights. It was smeared with blood from the mouthpiece to the finger valves.

The man was laughing as if drunk. In one hand he carried a bloodstained hammer. He paused to raise the trumpet to his lips and blow a note that, although it was monstrously discordant, still resonated with sheer triumph and sheer exultation at the slaughter.

The single thing these wild-looking men had in common was that around their mouths and on their chins were tattooed blue lines, as if they preferred artificial blue beards to the real thing.

Lee blinked. Men with their throats cut were being thrown from the theatre boxes down onto the sides of the stage. Women were being dragged by their long hair, bonnets hanging down below their chins.

The man stopped blowing the trumpet. Then he turned to bring his glittering eyes to bear on those of Lee Burton.

Now Lee understood. He looked again at the blue tattooed lines running across the bottom of the man’s face. It had been a long time coming. But the Bluebeards were here at last.

Lee’s muscles locked tight with shock. He couldn’t move.

Not even when the Bluebeard threw aside the trumpet, then walked slowly towards him, grinning, the axe raised ready to strike.

‘Why have we stopped?’

Jud rubbed the icy window of the stagecoach and looked out. ‘This’s the junction by Barley Wood. We’re still another mile from town yet.’

Sam Baker pushed away the blanket and stood up so he could open the window in the stagecoach door. ‘What’s the betting snow’s blocked the road ahead?’

‘I hope not,’ said one of the female passengers. ‘Our brother is meeting us in the market square at ten.’

Sam leaned out, screwing up his eyes as snowflakes immediately rushed into them. He could hear passengers riding on the outside of the coach talking in hushed voices.

Immediately he realised something was wrong.

‘Oh, my God.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Jud asked.

‘Hell,’ Sam breathed. ‘I think you should take a look yourself.’

Sam opened the door and stepped down from the stagecoach into the deep snow. The landscape ahead had become surreal.

It was as if gigantic roses had bloomed there in the winter’s night.

Yellows, oranges, yellows, pinks, reds – dark blood-reds, at that – burst out from the town that lay in front of them.

‘Oh, sweet Lord have mercy,’ breathed a passenger as she leaned out through the window. ‘It’s on fire, Mary. All the town is burning!’

There was nowhere to run; nowhere to hide. That much was obvious to Lee.

The Bluebeard tearing at Jack Shillito’s panto-dame skirts and petticoats was enraged to find a man beneath them. Seconds later, Jack shrieked piercingly and balled himself up onto the bed, rolling from side to side in agony. The Bluebeard grinned at a bloody lump in his hand before throwing it to one side. Then he pulled off Jack’s blonde wig and slit his throat.

Meanwhile, Lee stepped back from the man coming towards him with the axe.

He could hardly breathe. His heart trip-hammered in his chest, furiously beating at his ribcage.

All he could see in his mind’s eye was the axe swinging down to split his head wide open like a melon.

He took another step.

Then some instinct made him look down.