Tales From the Nightside Page 7

  And there I was, consoling myself with a large glass of wormwood brandy, while Dead Boy made heavy going of something that heaved back and forth, and looked like it was trying to eat its way through the glass. Being very thoroughly dead, though not in the least departed, Dead Boy doesn’t need to eat or drink, but he likes to pretend. It makes him feel more real. And since his taste-buds are quite definitely damaged, it takes more than the usual hard stuff to hit his spot. Dead Boy knows this appalling old Obeah woman who whips up pills and potions especially for him, potent enough to make a corpse dance and a ghoul show you her underwear. God alone knows what it would do to the living; certainly I’ve never been tempted to find out. For the moment, Dead Boy was drinking a graveyard punch, made with ingredients from real graveyards. I just hoped it was no-one I knew.

  For once, Dead Boy was in a better financial state than me, so he was paying for the drinks. He’d just started a new job, as doorman for Club Dead, the special club for zombies, vampires, mummies, and all the other forms of the mortally challenged. (Club motto: We Belong Dead.) I didn’t see the job lasting. Dead Boy has all the social graces of a lemming in heat or a sewer rat with bleeding haemorrhoids. But, since he was in the money, I was ordering the best of everything, in a big glass.

  The oldest bar in the world is called Strangefellows, these days. You get all sorts in here, the living and the dead and those who haven’t made their minds up yet, along with gods and monsters, aliens and shapeshifters, and a whole bunch of things that shouldn’t exist but unfortunately do. Something from a Black Lagoon was sitting slumped in one corner, big and green and mossy and stinking of brine, drinking whiskey sours one after the other and mourning over the one that got away. The Tribe of the Gay Barbarians, tall muscular fellows resplendent in fringed leather chaps, nipple piercings, and tall ostrich feather headdresses, were challenging all comers to a game of Twister. A dancing bear was giving it his best John Travolta moves. He looked pretty silly in the white jacket, but given his size no-one felt like telling him. And a group of rather disreputable-looking dwarves were selling tickets to see The Incredible Sleeping Woman. (I’d seen her. Forty years of catatonia had not been kind, which was why the dwarves were no longer allowed to bill her as The Incredible Sleeping Beauty.)

  One of Frankenstein’s female creations was singing a torch song, the transvestite superheroine Ms. Fate was reading a gossip tabloid with great concentration, to see if he was in it that week, and Harry Fabulous was doing his rounds, selling chemical adventures, knockoff Hyde formula, and short-time psychoses, for really quite reasonable prices.

  Just another night, at Strangefellows.

  But while the oldest bar in the world has few rules and even fewer standards, we do draw the line at weeping women. So when the tall slender brunette in the expensive outfit came stumbling into the bar, crying her eyes out, everyone fell quiet and turned to look. Weeping women always mean trouble, for someone. She lurched to a halt in the middle of the room and looked about her, and I quickly realised that she was crying hot angry tears of rage and frustration, rather than sorrow. The tears ran jerkily down her cheeks, the sheer force of them shaking her whole body. Something about her gave me the feeling she wasn’t a woman who often gave in to tears. She sniffed them back with an effort, and glared about her as defiantly as her puffy eyes and streaked makeup would allow. And then she looked in my direction, and my heart sank as she fixed her attention on me. She pushed her way quickly through the packed tables, and marched right up to me. The bar’s normal bedlam resumed, as everyone celebrated someone else getting hit by the bullet. I sighed inwardly, and turned unhurriedly on my bar stool to nod politely to the woman as she crashed to a halt before me and fixed me with dark, haunted eyes.

  She was good-looking enough, in an undemanding way, her long lean body positively burning with thwarted nervous energy. Her clothes were expensive, though somewhat dishevelled. She was clutching a white leather shoulder bag as though she would never let it go, and her whole stance screamed stress and tension. Her mouth was compressed into a thin dark red line, and she held herself very stiffly, as though she might fall apart if her control lapsed for just one moment. And yet, behind the clear anger in her eyes, I could see an awful, unfocused fear.

  “Hi,” I said, as kindly as I could. “I’m John Taylor.”

  “Yes,” she said jerkily, the words coming out clipped, in sudden bursts. “I know. You were described to me. The man in the white trench coat. The knight in cold armour. He said you’d help me. Sorry. I’m not making myself clear . . . I’ve had something of a shock. My name is Liza Barclay. I’m lost. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’ve lost all memory of the last twenty-four hours of my life. I want you to find them for me.”

  I sighed again, still inwardly, and handed her my glass. “Take a sip of brandy,” I said, doing my best to sound kind and helpful and not at all threatening.

  She grabbed the brandy glass with both hands, took a good gulp, and immediately pulled a face and thrust the glass back into my hand.

  “God, that’s awful. You drink that for fun? You’re tougher than you look. But then, you’d have to be. Sorry. I’m rambling.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “Take your time, get your breath back. Then tell me how you got here. This isn’t an easy place to get to.”

  “I don’t know!” she said immediately. “I’ve lost a day. A whole day!”

  I slipped off my bar stool and offered her a seat, but she shook her head quickly. So I just leaned back against the long wooden bar and studied her openly as she looked around Strangefellows, making it very clear with her face and body language that not only had she never seen anything like it, but that she was quite definitely slumming just by being there. I was impressed. The oldest bar in the world isn’t for just anyone. Most people take one look and run away screaming, and we like it that way. Strangefellows is a place of old magic and all the very latest sins and indulgences. This is not the kind of bar where everyone knows your name; it’s the kind of bar where you can wake up robbed and rolled in someone else’s body.

  Liza Barclay deliberately turned her back on the disturbing sights and the appalling patrons, and fixed her full attention on me. I did my best to look tall, dark, and handsome, but I couldn’t have been that successful because after only a moment she nodded briskly, as though I’d passed some necessary test, but only just. She switched her gaze to Dead Boy, who smiled vaguely and toasted her with his glass. The graveyard punch made a valiant attempt to escape, and he had to push the stuff back in with his fingers.

  Dead Boy was tall and adolescent thin, wrapped in a long purple greatcoat spotted with various food and drink stains, and topped with a fresh black rose on his lapel. Scuffed black leather trousers over muddy calfskin boots completed the ensemble. He let his coat hang open, to reveal a bare torso covered with old injuries, bullet holes, and one long Y-shaped autopsy scar. Dead Boy might be deceased, but he still took damage, even if he couldn’t feel it. He was mostly held together with stitches and staples and superglue, along with a certain amount of black duct tape lashed around his middle. His skin was a pale grey, and dusty-looking.

  He had the face of a debauched and very weary Pre-Raphaelite poet, with dark fever-bright eyes, a sulky mouth with no colour in it, and long dark curly hair crammed under a large floppy hat. He didn’t smile at Liza Barclay. He didn’t care. Her tears hadn’t touched him at all.

  Liza shuddered, but didn’t look away. She was impressing me more and more. Most people can’t stand being around the dead, and that goes double for Dead Boy. Liza glanced around the bar again, at its various strange and unnatural patrons, and rather than being scared or appalled, she just sniffed loudly and turned her back on them again. They were no help to her, or her problem, so they didn’t matter. Liza Barclay, it seemed, was a very single-minded lady.

  “How can you stand being in a place like this?” she said to me, quite seriously.

  “What, Strangefellows?” I sai
d. “There are worse places to drink in. The ambience isn’t up to much, I’ll grant you, but . . .”

  “I don’t mean just here! I mean . . . everywhere! This whole area!” A tinge of hysteria had entered her voice. Liza heard it, and clamped down hard on it. She hugged herself suddenly, as though a cold wind had blown over her grave. “I’ve been walking back and forth in the streets for ages. This terrible place. I’ve seen things . . . awful things. Creatures, walking right out in the open, with normal people, and none of them batted an eye! Where am I? Am I dead? Is this Hell?”

  “No,” I said. “Though on a good day you can see Hell from here. As far as I can tell, you are a perfectly normal woman who has had the misfortune to somehow find her way into the Nightside.”

  “The Nightside.” She grabbed on to the word, considered it, and then looked to me for more information. And it wasn’t a request; it was a demand. I was liking her more and more.

  “The Nightside,” I said, “the dark secret hidden in the heart of London. The longest night in the world, where the sun has never shone and never will. Where it’s always three o’clock in the morning, the hour that tries men’s souls. This is where all the secret people come, in search of forbidden knowledge and all the pleasures people aren’t supposed to want, but still do. You can pursue any dream here, or any nightmare. Sell your soul or someone else’s. Run wild in the streets and satisfy any fantasy you ever had. As long as your credit holds out. This is the Nightside, Liza Barclay, and it is not a place for normal people like you.”

  “It’s not an easy place to find your way into,” said Dead Boy. “How did you get here?”

  “I don’t know! I can’t remember!” Her shoulders slumped, and her strength seemed to seep out of her. I understood. She was having to take in a lot at one go. And the Nightside does so love to break people . . . I thought for a moment she might start crying again, but her chin lifted, her eyes flashed, and just like that she was back in control again. “I live in London, have done all my life. And I never heard of the Nightside. I just . . . came to, and found myself here. Lost, and alone.”

  “And now you’re among friends,” I said.

  “More or less,” said Dead Boy.

  “I am John Taylor,” I said, ignoring Dead Boy with the ease of long practice. “And I’m a private eye. Yes, really.”

  Her mouth twitched in a brief smile. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, to find one more mythical creature, among so many.”

  “And my appalling friend here is Dead Boy. Yes, really.”

  “Hi,” said Dead Boy, leaning forward and offering a pale dead hand for her to shake. “Yes, that is formaldehyde you’re smelling, so get used to it. I’m dead, I’m wild and exciting and extraordinarily glamorous, and you’re very pleased to meet me.”

  “Don’t put money on it,” said Liza. “What’s it like, being dead?”

  “Cold,” said Dead Boy, unexpectedly. “It’s getting hard for me to even remember what being warm feels like. Though I think I miss sleep the most. Never being able to just lie down and switch off. No rest, no dreams . . .”

  “Don’t you get tired?” said Liza, fascinated despite herself.

  “I’m always tired,” Dead Boy said sadly.

  “Cut it out,” I said firmly. “You think I don’t know you mainline that synthetic adrenaline when no-one’s looking?” I shrugged apologetically at Liza. “Sorry, but you mustn’t encourage him. He’s not really as self-pitying as he likes to make out. He just thinks it makes him more attractive to women.”

  “Never dismiss the pity factor,” Dead Boy said easily. “Suicide girls go crazy for dead flesh.”

  “That’s disgusting,” said Liza, very firmly.

  He leered at her. “You haven’t lived till you’ve rattled a coffin with someone on graveyard Viagra.”

  “Changing the subject right now,” I said loudly. “Tell me about your memory loss, Liza. What’s the last thing you do remember, before waking up here?”

  She frowned, concentrating. “The last twenty-four hours are just gone. A whole day. The last thing I’m sure of, I was in London. The real London. Down in Tottenham Court Road Underground station . . . though I can’t quite seem to remember why . . . I think I was looking for someone. The next thing I knew, I was here. Running through the streets. Crying as though my heart would break. I don’t know why. I’m not the crying kind, usually. I’m just not.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “What happened next?”

  “I was attacked! They came out of nowhere . . . Tall spindly men in top hats and old-fashioned clothes, with great smiling faces, and . . . knives for hands.”

  “Scissormen,” I said. “Always looking for someone weaker to prey on. They can home in on guilt and horror like sharks tasting blood in the water.”

  “I haven’t done anything to feel guilty about,” said Liza.

  “As far as you know,” said Dead Boy, reasonably. “Who knows what you might have done, in the missing twenty-four hours? It’s amazing how much sin a determined person can cram into twenty-four hours. I speak from experience, you understand.”

  “Ignore him,” I said. “He’s just boasting.”

  “But . . . Scissormen?” said Liza.

  “Everything comes to the Nightside,” I said. “Especially all the bad things, with nowhere else to go. Still, it’s always a shame when childhood characters go bad. How did you get away from them?”

  “I didn’t,” said Liza, her eyes and her voice becoming uncertain again as she remembered. “They were all around me, smiling their awful smiles, opening and closing their . . . scissorhands, chanting something in German in shrill mocking voices. They cut at me, always drawing back at the very last moment, and laughing as I jumped this way and that to avoid them. Scuttling round and round me, always pressing closer, smiling and smiling . . . And nobody did anything! Most people didn’t even stop to watch! I was screaming by then, but no-one helped. Until this . . . strange man appeared out of nowhere, and the Scissormen stopped, just like that. They huddled together, facing him like a pack of dogs at bay. He said his name, and the Scissormen just turned and ran. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “What was his name?” I said.

  “Eddie. He was very sweet, though he looked like some kind of vagrant. And from the smell of him, he’d been sleeping rough for some time. I tried to give him some money, but he wasn’t interested. He listened to my story, though I don’t know how much sense I made, and then he brought me here. Told me to look for you. John Taylor. That you’d be able to help me. Do you know this man?”

  “Oh, sure,” said Dead Boy. “Everyone here knows Razor Eddie. Punk God of the Straight Razor. No wonder the Scissormen cut and ran. Most people do.”

  Liza looked at me, and I nodded. “Eddie’s a good man, in his own disturbing way. And he’s right; I can help you. I have a gift for finding things.”

  “Even missing memories?” Liza managed a real, hopeful smile for the first time.

  “Anything,” I said. “But I have to ask . . . are you sure you want to remember? A lot of the time, people forget things for a reason.”

  She looked at me steadily. “Of course I want to remember. I think I need to. I think . . . something bad happened.”

  “In the Nightside? I can practically guarantee it,” said Dead Boy.

  “You’re really not helping,” I said. “Liza, you’re sure you’ve never even heard of the Nightside before? It’s not unheard of for innocents to wander in by accident, but usually you have to want it pretty bad.”

  “I never knew places like this existed,” Liza said stubbornly. “I never knew monsters were real.”

  “The world is a much bigger place than most people realise,” I said. “Magic still exists, though it’s grown strange and crafty and maybe just a bit senile.”

  “Magic?” she said, raising one perfectly plucked eyebrow.

  “Magic, and other things. Time isn’t as firmly nailed down in the Nightside as it might b
e. We get all sorts turning up here, from the Past and any number of alternate Futures. Not to mention all kinds of rogues, adventurers, and complete and utter scumbags from other worlds and dimensions, all looking for a little excitement, or a nice bit of sin that isn’t too shop-soiled.” I stopped, and considered her thoughtfully. “You really don’t care about any of this, do you? It doesn’t interest or attract you in the least.”

  “No,” said Liza. “I don’t belong in a madhouse like this. I have no business being here.”

  “I could just take you home,” I said. “Back to the safe and sane London you’ve always known.”

  “No,” she said immediately. “There’s a whole day of my life missing. It’s mine, and I want it back.”

  “But what if you’ve done something really bad?” said Dead Boy. “Most people come to the Nightside to do something really bad.”

  “It’s always better to know,” Liza said firmly.

  “No,” I said. “Not always. And especially not here. But if that’s what you want, then that’s what you get. The client is always right. Now, the odds are you came here looking for something. Or someone. So let’s take a look in that shoulder bag of yours. The way you’ve been clinging to it since you got here, it must hold something important.”

  She looked down at the bag as though she’d honestly forgotten it was there. And when I reached out a hand to take it, she actually shrank back for a moment. But once again her stern self-control reasserted itself, and she made herself hand over the bag. But there was a subtle new tension in her that hadn’t been there before.

  I hefted the bag. It wasn’t that large, and it didn’t feel like there was that much in it. Nothing obviously special about it. Expensive, yes; white leather Gucci without a mark on it. I opened the bag, and spilled the contents out onto the wooden bar top. All three of us leaned in for a closer look. But it was just the usual feminine clutter, with nothing out of the ordinary. Apart from a single colour photograph, torn jaggedly in two. I fitted the pieces together as best I could, and we all studied the image in silence for a while. The photo showed a somewhat younger Liza Barclay in a stylish white wedding dress, hugging a handsome young man in a formal suit. They were both laughing at the camera, clearly caught a little off guard. They looked very happy. As though they belonged together, and always would. Someone had torn the photo fiercely in two, right down the middle, as though trying to separate the happy couple.