The Unnatural Inquirer Read online

  Max weighed the thing thoughtfully in one oversized hand, then looked round sharply, as though he’d heard something he didn’t like. He gestured grandly with his free hand, and all the cabalistic signs on the floor burst into light. The ivy on the walls writhed and twisted, as though in pain. One by one, the lines on the floor began to gutter and go out. Max headed for the door.

  I went after him, Suzie right there at my side. She couldn’t see what I was Seeing, but she trusted me.

  In as much as she trusted anyone.

  * * * *

  We tracked Max Maxwell’s ghost half-way across the Nightside. I had to fight to concentrate on his past image. When my inner eye is cranked all the way open, I can See all there is to See in the Nightside, and a lot of it the human mind just isn’t equipped to deal with. The endlessly full moon hung low in the star-speckled sky, twenty times the size it should have been. Something with vast membranous wings sailed across the face of the moon, almost eclipsing it. The buildings around us blazed with protective signs, magical defences, and shaped curses scrawled across the storefronts like so much spitting and crackling graffiti. A thousand other ghosts stamped and raged and howled silently all around me, memories trapped in repeating loops of Time, like insects in amber.

  Dimensional travellers flashed and flared in and out of existence, just passing through on their way to somewhere more interesting. Demons rode the backs of unsuspecting souls, their claws dug deep into back and shoulder muscles, whispering in their host’s ear. You could always tell which ones had been listening; their demons were particularly fat and bloated. Wee winged sprites, pulsing with light, shot up and down the street, fierce as fireworks, buzzing around and above each other in intricate patterns too complex for human eyes. And the Awful Ones, huge and ancient, moved through our streets and buildings as though they weren’t even there, about their unguessable business.

  I kept my head down, focused on Max Maxwell, and Suzie saw to it that no-one bothered me or got in our way. She had her shotgun out and at the ready, and no-one ever doubted that she’d use it. Suzie had always been a great believer in the scorched-earth solution for all problems, great and small.

  Max led us right through the centre of the Nightside, and out the other side, and I had a bad feeling I knew where he was headed. Bad as the Nightside undoubtedly is, even it has its recognised Bad Places, places you simply don’t go if you’ve got any sense. One of these is Fun Faire. It was supposed to be the Nightside’s very first amusement park, for adults. Someone’s Big Idea; but it never caught on. The people who come to the Nightside aren’t interested in artificial thrills; not when there are so many of the real thing available on every street corner. Fun Faire was shut down years ago, and the only reason it’s still taking up valuable space is because the various creditors are still arguing over who owns what. Now, it’s just a collection of huge rusting rides, great hulking structures left to rot in the cold, uncaring night.

  Last I’d heard, they’d run through fourteen major league exorcists, merely trying to keep the place quiet.

  Max had chosen Fun Faire as his bolt-hole precisely because so many bad things had happened there. So much death and suffering, so much cheerful slaughter and infernal malice, had turned the Fun Faire grounds into one big psychic null spot. The genius loci had become so awful, so soaked in blood and terror, that no-one could See into it. Which made it a really good place to hide out, for as long as you could stand it.

  Suzie and I stopped at the amusement park entrance, and stood there, looking in. Max’s ghost image had snapped off the moment he walked through the main archway. I shut down my Sight. The great multi-coloured arch loomed above us, paint peeling and speckled with rust. The old neon letters along the top that had once blazed the words FUN FAIRE! to an unsuspecting public were now cracked and dusty and lifeless. Someone had spray-painted over them ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE. Graveyard humour, but I had to admire their nerve. Beyond the archway it was all dark shapes and darker shadows, the metal bones of old rides standing out in stark silhouettes against the night sky. No lights, anywhere in Fun Faire. Only the uneasy shimmering blue-white glare of the full moon, marking out the paths between the rides. A glowing maze, where the monster wasn’t trapped in the centre any more. A slow breeze issued out of the arch, pressing against my face, cold as the grave.

  Bad things had happened here, and perhaps were still happening, on some level. You can’t kill that many people, spill that much blood, delight in that much suffering and slaughter, and not leave a stain on Time itself.

  It all started out so well. The Fun Faire did have its share of unusual, high-risk, high-excitement attractions. Just the thing to tempt the jaded palates of Nightside aesthetes. Or perhaps even the worst of us need to play at being children again, just for a while. So, the Dodgems of Doom could hit Mach 2 and came equipped with mounted machine-guns. The planes on the Tilt-A-Wheel had heat-seeking missiles and ejector seats. The Ghost Train was operated by real ghosts, the Tunnel of Love by a real succubus. The roller coaster guaranteed to rotate you through at last five different spatial dimensions or your money back. And the candy floss came treated with a hundred and one different psychotropic drugs.

  But eventually someone noticed that though an awful lot of people were going into Fun Faire, a significant percentage weren’t coming out again.

  And then it all went to Hell.

  No-one’s too sure what started it. Best guess is someone put a curse on the place, for whatever reason. The first clue that something was severely wrong came when the wooden horses on the Merry-Go-Round became possessed by demons and started eating their riders. The Tilt-A-Wheel speeded itself up and sent its mock planes shooting off into space. They didn’t fly far. The roller coaster disappeared into another dimension, taking its passengers with it, and never returned. Distorted reflections burst out of the distorting mirrors and ran amok, killing everyone they could get their hands on.

  Screams came out of the Ghost Train, and even worse screams out of the Tunnel of Love. The I-Speak-Your-Weight machines shouted out people’s most terrible inner secrets. The Clown that never stopped laughing escaped from his booth and strode through Fun Faire, ripping off people’s heads and hanging them from his belt. Still laughing. The customers ran for the exit. Some made it out.

  The Authorities sealed off Fun Faire, so nothing inside could get out, and soon the whole place was dark and still and silent. No-one volunteered to go in and check for survivors, or bring out the dead. The Nightside isn’t big on compassion.

  The owners, and then their creditors, turned to priests and exorcists, air strikes and high explosives, and none of it did any good. Fun Faire had become a Bad Place, and most people had enough sense to stay well clear of it. But, this being the Nightside, there were always those brave enough or stupid enough to use it as a hiding place, secure in the knowledge that only the most desperate pursuers would even think of coming in after them.

  I looked at Suzie. “Fancy a stroll around? Check out all the fun of the fair?”

  “Why not?” said Suzie.

  We strode through the archway, shoulder to shoulder, into the face of the gusting breeze. It was bitterly cold inside the Faire, and the silence had a flat, oppressive presence. Our footsteps didn’t echo at all. The rides and attractions loomed up around us, dark skeletal structures, and the rounded, almost organic shapes of the tattered tents and concession stands. We stuck to the middle of the moonlit paths. The shimmering light couldn’t seem to penetrate the shadows. Here and there, things moved, always on the edge of my vision. Perhaps moved by the gusting wind, which seemed to be growing in strength. Suzie glared about her, shotgun at the ready. It might have been the oppressive nature of the place getting to her, or it might not. Suzie always believed in getting her retaliation in first.

  We passed an old-fashioned I-Speak-Your-Weight machine, and I stopped and regarded it thoughtfully.

  “I know a guy who collects these,” I said, deliberately
casual. “He’s trying to teach them to sing the ‘Halleluiah Chorus.’”

  “Why?” said Suzie.

  “I’m not sure he’s thought that far ahead,” I admitted.

  And then we broke off, as the machine stirred slowly into life before us. Parts moved inside it, grinding against each other, even though neither of us had stepped on it; and the voice-box made a low, groaning sound, as though it was in pain. The flat painted face lit up, sparking fitfully. And in a voice utterly devoid of humanity, or any human feeling, the machine spoke to us.

  “John Taylor. No father, no mother. No family, no friends, no future. Hated and feared, never loved, or even appreciated. Why don’t you just die and get it over with?”

  “Not even close,” I said calmly. “You’d probably get my weight wrong, too.”

  “Susan Shooter,” said the voice. “Always the celibate, never the bride. No-one to touch you, ever. Not your breast, or your heart. You miss your brother, even though he sexually abused you as a child. Sometimes you dream of how it felt, when he touched you. No love for you, Susan. Not any kind of love, now or ever.”

  Suzie raised her shotgun and blew the painted face apart. The machine screamed once, and then was still. Suzie pumped another shell into the magazine. “Machines should know their place,” she said.

  “You can’t trust anything you hear in Fun Faire,” I said carefully. “The Devil always lies.”

  “Except when a truth can hurt you more.”

  “He doesn’t know you like I do,” I said. “I love you, Suzie.”

  “Why?”

  “Somebody has to. There’s a man for every woman, and a woman for every man. Just be glad we found each other.”

  “I am,” said Suzie. And that was as far as she would go.

  She spun round suddenly, her gun trained on one particular shadow. “Come out. Come out into the light where I can see you.”

  Max Maxwell emerged slowly and cautiously, even bigger in life than his ghost image had suggested. He held his huge hands up to show us they were empty, and then he smiled slowly, grey lips pulling back to show grey teeth.

  “You’re good, Suzie,” he said, in a low, deep voice like stones grinding together. “No-one else would have known I was there.”

  “No-one sneaks up on me,” said Suzie, her shotgun trained unwaveringly on his barrel chest. His cream suit looked somehow off in the moonlight, as though it had gone sour.

  “I might have known they’d send you two,” he said, apparently unmoved by the threat of the shotgun. “But I’m afraid you got here just a little too late. I didn’t come here to hide; this whole place is a sink of other-dimensional energies, and the Aquarius Key has been soaking them up for hours. Soon the Key will be strong enough to open a door into the world of the loa; and then I will go through into that world…and the power stored in the Key will make me their master. A god of gods, lord of the loa.”

  “Really bad idea, Max,” I said. “Messing with gods on their own territory. They’ll eat your soul, one little bit at a time. What did you think you were doing, bringing them here and humiliating them?”

  “It’s wrong that we should be at their beck and call,” said Max Maxwell, the Voodoo Apostate. “My people have worshipped them for centuries, and still the most we can hope for is that they will deign to ride us as their mounts. This is the Nightside. We have a Street full of gods, and we have taught them to know their place. As I will teach the loa.”

  He held out one hand towards me, and just like that, the Aquarius Key appeared upon it. The metal box looked like a toy on his huge pale palm. Its steel parts moved slowly against each other, sliding around and above each other, and I tried to look away, but I couldn’t. The Key was becoming something actually uncomfortable to look at, as though it was rotating itself through strange, unfamiliar spatial dimensions, in search of the doorway into the world of the loa. It burst open, blossoming like a metal flower, and a wide split opened up in mid air, like a wound in reality.

  A great sound filled the air, echoing through the silent forms of Fun Faire, like a cry of outrage. A bright light blasted out of the opening hanging on the air, so sharp and fierce I had to look away, and just like that the spell of the Key was broken. I fell back a pace, raising one arm to shield my watering eyes against the fierce light. The split in the night widened inexorably, sucking the air into itself. It tugged at me, and at Suzie. I grabbed her waist, as much to steady myself as hold her in place, and she was steady as a rock, as always. Suzie grabbed on to the side of the nearest ride, and I held on to Suzie as the pull increased. Max Maxwell stood unaffected, protected by the Aquarius Key, shuddering and twitching on the palm of his hand. The rushing air shrieked as it was pulled into the growing split in the air, along with everything else loose. All kinds of junk flew through the air, tumbling end over end. I was holding Suzie so tightly it must have hurt her, but she never made a sound, and her white-knuckled grip on the ride never faltered. She raised her free hand, aimed the shotgun with one casual movement, and shot the Aquarius Key right out of Max’s hand.

  He cried out in rage as much as pain, as his hand exploded in a flurry of flying blood and blown-away fingers. The Key flew undamaged through the air, hit the ground, and rolled away into the shadows. The long split in the air slammed shut, and, just like that, the howling wind died away to nothing. Max fell on all fours, ignoring the blood that still spurted from his maimed hand, scrambling in the shadows for the Key. I let go of Suzie’s waist, and we walked purposefully forward. Suzie chambered another round, and Max rose suddenly, the Key raised triumphantly in his good hand. He snarled at me, and I leaned forward and threw a handful of black pepper right into his face.

  I never travel anywhere without condiments.

  The pepper filled Max’s eyes and nose, and he fell backwards, sneezing so hard it shook his whole body, while his eyes screwed shut around streaming tears. He couldn’t even hold on to the Aquarius Key, let alone concentrate enough to operate it, and the metal box fell to the ground before him. So I just stooped down and took it away from him. Suzie nodded respectfully to me.

  “You always did know the best ways to fight dirty.”

  She kicked Max briskly in the ribs with her steel-toed boot, just enough to take the fight out of him. He grunted once, and then glared up at us from his knees, forcing his watering eyes open. He was squeezing his injured hand with the other so tightly the bleeding had almost stopped. There were no signs of pain or weakness or even defeat in his dark face; only an implacable hatred, while he waited for his chance to come round again. Suzie shoved the barrel of her shotgun into his face.

  “I get paid the same whether I bring you in dead or alive,” she said, her voice cold and calm as always. “On the whole, I tend to prefer dead. Less paper-work.”

  “I am not carrying anyone that large out of here,” I said firmly. “Unless I absolutely have to. So let’s all play nice, then we can all walk out.”

  But Max wasn’t listening to either of us. He was staring at something behind me, and even before he said anything, I could feel all the hackles on my neck rising.

  “Ah, hell,” said Max Maxwell. “Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse…”

  Suzie and I turned to look, and there standing in rows behind us was a small army of the Nightside’s very best bounty hunters. Heavily armed and armoured, they stood unnaturally still, all of them grinning unpleasantly, while their eyes glowed golden in the gloom, like so many candle-flames in the depths of Hell. Their wide grins showed teeth, like hunting dogs who’d brought their game to ground at last.

  The loa had found us.

  Max laughed suddenly, a flat, breathy sound. “Protect me, Suzie, Taylor. If you want your bounty money.”

  I looked at Suzie. “Do we really need the money that badly?”

  “Always,” said Suzie. “It isn’t the principle of the thing, it’s the money. No-one takes a bounty away from me.”

  “Maybe we could split him down t
he middle,” I said.

  “Tempting, but messy. And I don’t share.”

  I sighed. “Things are in a bad way if I have to be the voice of reason…”

  I stepped forward, conspicuously putting myself between the loa’s hosts and their prey, and they all fixed their glowing unblinking eyes on me.

  “We know you, John Taylor.” It was hard to tell where the voice came from. It could have been any of them, or all of them. It sounded almost…amused. “We know who and what you are, probably better than you do yourself. But do not presume to stand between us and what is rightfully ours.”

  “And I know you, lords of the loa,” I said, keeping my voice reasonably polite and respectful. “But this is my world, not yours, and Max is mine. He will be punished severely, I promise you.”

  “Not good enough,” said the voice, and the whole possessed army surged forward as one.

  Max reared up suddenly, catching me off guard. He snatched the Aquarius Key away from me with his one good hand and twisted it savagely, shouting Words of Power. And all the bounty hunters screamed, as the possessing loa were forced out of them. Dozens of men and women crumpled to the ground, twitching and shuddering and crying hot tears of relief. For a moment, I actually thought the threat was over. I should have known better.

  All around me, all the old rides and machinery creaked slowly back into life, wheels turning, machinery stirring, while the wooden Merry-Go-Round horses slowly turned their heads to look at us. The loa had found new hosts. A slow, awful life moved through Fun Faire, burning fiercely inside cold metal and painted wood, and out of the mouths of oversized clowns and Tunnels of Love and Horror came the outraged screams of the defied loa.