The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 13

Michael Chislett Off the Map

Fletcher was, in his perverse way about such things, proud of still using his old A to Z when finding his way around London. The street atlas had been published in the mid-sixties and in the years since many places in the city had altered out of all recognition. Streets had vanished, new ones been added, and whole districts erased more effectively than by the Blitz. So Fletcher thought of the book of maps as an indicator, albeit a not very reliable one, of likely ways to go. But he was sure that, even if the chart he steered by was no longer trustworthy, his instincts would set him right. For he knew that London could never be reduced to lines on paper, its nature was to change, and when travelling in the metropolis it was often best to go as an explorer entering unknown country.

‘I am,’ Fletcher would declare, ‘one of those born with a natural sense of direction.’

‘Are you claiming never to have been lost at all?’ asked his friend Mathews.

‘I have often been confused,’ Fletcher admitted, ‘but never lost.’

They were standing in Greenwich Park atop the hill and Mathews pointed at Canary Wharf.

‘It is easy to get lost round there,’ he said, ‘even with a good map. Imagine if you had lived in the area as a child and returned after thirty or forty years, not knowing how things had changed. It would be as if you had gone with the fairies for what seemed but a night, to return to a world no longer yours.’

‘As one taken under the hill,’ mused Fletcher. ‘Not many places like that on the Isle of Dogs.’

They stared at the glass and concrete buildings that dominated the riverside. The setting sun was reflected by a thousand windows. When it was full dark, Fletcher would look at the lights on Canary Wharf and think of the Last Redoubt in Hodgson’s The Night Land.

‘If one had been taken away,’ Fletcher said, ‘or lost part of one’s memory, so that you could only remember things as they had been years before, that would be. difficult.’

They walked in silence to the observatory, where they stopped once more to view the reach of the Thames. With silent contempt they turned their backs on the Dome to look upriver toward the setting sun.

‘It has ruined it,’ said Mathews, indicating the tower that dominated the north shore. ‘Just think of how many painters have put on canvas the view of London from this spot. And now. ’

He waved a hand expressively and shuddered.

‘It is not a building that I could ever like,’ said Fletcher, ‘but it has a certain something.’

‘I know that things must change,’ Mathews allowed reluctantly, ‘for London cannot be still. That’s the best thing about a great city. But that building, well. it’s everywhere.’

Fletcher could not disagree.

They walked out of the park and across the heath to Point Hill, where they stood looking down on the roofs below.

‘Now this is an area that has hardly changed, except for the view, of course, since I was a child,’ observed Mathews.

‘One of the great high places of London, the Maidenstone,’ said Fletcher. ‘If it were not for the haze over the city we might see “Appy” Ampstead.’

‘The air is cleaner now than for a couple of hundred years,’ returned Mathews. ‘The “London Particular” is a thing of the past.’

‘Because there is no industry left,’ said Fletcher who looked sadly upon the bow of the Thames as it rounded Deptford. It was empty now; but he recalled a river full with ships, its banks lined by busy warehouses and thriving factories. It had not been so long ago, but all trace of the working Thames was now gone.

The sun sank slowly, its brightness lingering in the air above the city as the shadows of evening seemed to rise up from the soil beneath their feet. The trees that bordered the high, flat place seemed to be oddly misshapen as, one by one, the street lamps came on down the hill. If there were others about on the Maidenstone the two friends were oblivious to them, for in the thickening twilight it was difficult to see things, even if they were close by; even if they were closer than one might wish.

‘This is one of the last unspoilt places, one of the few left alone,’ sighed Mathews.

‘Amazing that it has never been built upon,’ said Fletcher, adding: ‘I suppose if anyone tried they would have been stopped.’

They walked down the steps from the hill, their route taking them between two rows of cottages. There was the unspoken promise of a pint or three ahead of them.

‘I know of a similar place,’ said Mathews, ‘on a hill, still unspoilt, with steps leading between the houses as a short cut between the streets. Not the usual thing that you find in this part of London, and not really all that far from here.’

‘Do you mean One Tree Hill at Honor Oak?’ asked Fletcher, who prided himself on knowing all the high places of the city. ‘The steps up the hill to the church there are very steep. They say that sometimes the ghost of a girl can be seen dancing on the steps.’

‘No, not there, but close to it,’ said Mathews. ‘Mabb’s Hill — it rises above the station.’

‘Mabb’s End,’ said Fletcher with interest, ‘a station where the trains rarely stop. I didn’t know that there was anything there, despite the name.’

They had walked down Royal Hill and stood, undecided, before two adjoining pubs.

‘Young’s, I think,’ said Fletcher.

‘Pint of special will do nicely,’ Mathews agreed.

They were soon sitting in the beer garden with their drinks. The summer night had grown humid and the lights strung from the trees and on the fence between the pubs glowed like fireflies. Fletcher had taken out his A to Z and studied the volume, with its tape-repaired spine, in the dim, uncertain light.

‘Now just where is this place?’ he asked. ‘I have the station here.’

Mathews peered at the open book. Above the garden the air was dark, for the light seemed to enclose the place in a glowing box. The uncertain illumination made the lines of the streets in the outdated atlas shift in odd patterns, as if the geography of the city was mutating before his eyes.

‘I can’t remember the name of the road, but one walks up the hill from the station and into a twisting street of Victorian houses. It is quite a climb, for the road turns sharply several times as if it were built on a zigzag pattern. Easier to use the stairs between the houses? Yes, but I think it best to be quite sure where one comes out. It is a place that might be easy to get lost in — even for someone with such a phenomenal sense of direction as yourself, Fletcher. Ah! I think that this is it.’

Fletcher looked down, trying to make out the tiny lettering at the tip of his friend’s finger.

‘Overhill Road — very apposite. And I see that behind the station, below the hill presumably, is Underhill Road. Have you ever noticed how these names always seem to go together? But I see no park or open space marked there. There is a park, farther across, opposite the station, but that cannot be the vantage point you mean. ’

‘It is a very small place,’ Mathews agreed, ‘hardly more than the size of a couple of suburban gardens, but the view is splendid.’

Quite unaccountably, Fletcher felt suddenly unsure that his friend meant the view over London. He looked up at the night sky where no moon or stars showed as yet, for overhead all was a canopy of dark blue which turned to indigo and then black as his gaze swept from horizon to zenith. Moths danced beneath the hanging lights, flitting about the coloured glass.

‘But is it splendid enough?’ Fletcher asked. ‘I mean, is it worth going out of one’s way for?’

‘If one is near there, yes,’ said Mathews.

‘But is it worth making a trip for?’ persisted Fletcher.

Mathews appeared lost in thought for a moment.

‘If you are disappointed then you will blame me for wasting your time,’ he said at last, ‘but it is an odd spot. I came across it completely by chance.’

He took a long pull at his beer, and Fletcher sensed that an anecdote was on its way. An anecdote or perhaps something more substantial.

‘It was quite a long time ago,’ began Mathews, ‘when I was looking for a flat. I had been given the address but had got myself a bit lost.’

‘I never get lost,’ Fletcher could not resist boasting. Pointing to his A to Z, he added, ‘It never lets me down.’

‘Something to depend on in a turning world,’ said Mathews dryly. ‘Do you want another pint?’

As Fletcher awaited his friend’s return he idly studied the atlas. He wondered if he might be due for new glasses for the lines on the page seemed to be all a-tumble, as if they were forming a new chart of the city, one that he could make no sense of.

Mathews returned with the ale and they sat silently for a few minutes, drinking contentedly.

‘It was quite a while since I was there and the place may have changed a good deal,’ Mathews said at last.

‘In the darker reaches of history, then,’ joked Fletcher. ‘Well, I can’t find any open space marked there at all.’

‘It is a very small area,’ said Mathews thoughtfully, ‘like the place had been overlooked when the district was first built up. Not really a park at all.’

‘Probably not worth going to,’ said Fletcher, who was mildly annoyed at not being able to find the place in his book of maps. ‘I really don’t know why you bothered to tell me of it.’

‘Oh, but it is worth going to, if one is near and can find it. For the view.’ Mathews looked at Fletcher for a moment and raised his glass, but before drinking could not resist adding, ‘Perhaps you do not know London quite as well as you think.’

Fletcher, as was his way, began to regale his friend with rather tall tales of his adventures in the odder and more neglected corners of the city. Soon the conversation turned to other, perhaps more interesting things: the Matter of London, the terrible decline in the standard of real ale and its rising price. The hill above Mabb’s End and its wonderful view were forgotten, for the time being.

The conversation with Mathews had almost slipped Fletcher’s mind until a few months later, when he unexpectedly found that business would take him near Mabb’s End.

‘I shall have the time,’ he mused, ‘so I might as well seek out Mathews’s wonderful view.’

Later that day he stood outside the station consulting his battered street atlas. Fletcher saw that Overhill Road was almost directly opposite, and rose quite steeply, just as Mathews had described. On each side of the road, which curved sharply to the left, Victorian houses of three and four storeys rose sheer as cliffs. Fletcher set off and turned the bend in the road, only to find that another faced him but a few dozen yards away.

‘Turn and turn again,’ he muttered when, on navigating this second corner, he was confronted by yet another bend, only a house length ahead. Certain that the map had not shown all these sharp turns he opened the book and a slip of paper, one that marked the relevant page, fell out and, caught by a vagrant breeze, fluttered before his face. Fletcher, who had written an important address on the paper, snatched at it, but the scrap easily evaded him and floated just out of reach to land on the pavement by the steps of the house.

It was then that Fletcher noticed the old man who stood by the door watching with interest his contortions as he tried to catch the paper.

‘It’s there,’ said the old fellow, pointing to the note, which lay before the steps at his feet.

As he retrieved the slip Fletcher suppressed the urge to retort that he was not blind, and instead thought it prudent to enquire if he was on the right road.

‘Excuse me,’ he asked, ‘but is there a piece of open ground near here? A sort of park at the top of this road?’

Scratching his head thoughtfully, the old man looked up the hill, which rose ever more steeply above them.

‘Don’t know,’ he said, adding by way of explanation, ‘I’ve never been up there.’

‘Oh! Don’t you live here then?’ asked Fletcher.

‘Yes,’ answered the old chap, ‘right here.’ He pointed, rather unnecessarily, to the house. ‘I’ve never needed to go up there.’

Fletcher was at a loss to understand how someone could not take the trouble to walk to the end of their street. Was the man entirely rational? Then another explanation presented itself.

‘Have you just moved in?’

The man gave him an odd look and replied, ‘I’ve been here nearly forty years.’

‘So in forty years you have never been to the end of your street?’ Fletcher exclaimed.

‘No point,’ said the old fellow with a hint of pride. ‘Nothing there.’

Fletcher felt a flicker of excitement. A place with nothing there. Of course, it was silly to put such a literal construction on the phrase. There was always something, even if it was not a very interesting something. With a nod to the old man he resumed his climb.

‘Its a steep way up,’ came a call from behind him.

‘How do you know if you’ve never been up there?’ Fletcher demanded, turning round.

A confused, anxious look passed across the man’s face, as if the question was profoundly upsetting. ‘My wife did once,’ he said abruptly, and disappeared inside, slamming the door behind him.

How peculiar, thought Fletcher, with a shake of his head. He knew that some Londoners took a perverse pride in not knowing their city, but never having gone to the end of one’s own street was taking parochialism a bit far. He shrugged — if he followed Overhill Road he must surely get to somewhere.

Resolutely, Fletcher set off again, noticing as he turned yet another bend that the higher he went, the taller the houses became. There were extra storeys topped off with sharply sloping roofs, and attics with steep gables that overlooked the street. He felt quite dizzy from staring up at them. Pausing for a moment to draw breath, he had the vague suspicion that he was on an Escher-like world, one where up and down, high and low did not quite mean what was normally accepted.

Then he noticed that, between two of the houses, a stepped alley ran. Recalling Mathews’s description, he made for this, thinking to save time that would be wasted negotiating another bend. As he climbed the steps a young woman pushing a pram appeared at the top, and waited for him to ascend.

‘Let me give you a hand,’ he offered, pleased to be able to indulge in a little minor gallantry. The girl, who like so many mothers these days seemed to be distressingly young, smiled assent. Fletcher grasped the bar of the old-fashioned baby carriage, which despite its size felt quite light, and lifted it down with the girl holding on to the handle. On reaching the bottom of the steps he set the pram down and looked inside, ready to make an appropriate remark. But it was quite empty and he was at a loss for words.

‘Keep on going,’ said the girl, cheerfully. ‘You’ll get there before you know it.’

Fletcher smiled at her. He had begun to puff and pant rather and he thought he must be somewhat red in the face.

‘The road does seem to go on for ever,’ he said ruefully.

‘It can do, if you let it,’ said the girl, turning to head downhill.

‘It’s all right for you,’ Fletcher laughed, ‘with an empty pram.’

She turned her head and grinned back at him.

‘It’ll be full on the way back.’

So saying, she disappeared around the abrupt bend. Fletcher thought her smile, while by no means unwelcome, was rather too knowing. She was certainly right about his stamina. The climb was proving much more difficult than he could have anticipated. Mathews really had not properly described how absurdly steep the hill was. Fletcher was beginning to feel worn out and testy.

‘There had better be something at the end of this,’ he muttered darkly, and took out the A to Z again. As he opened the dogeared paperback a page came loose. He looked at it in bewilderment. Despite its age the street atlas was in good condition, and this was the first time that it had shown signs of disintegration. Fletcher looked at the errant page, trying to see what part of the city had come adrift. He could not recognize it at all. Hood Lane, Hobb Street. None of the names were familiar. Ah! Here was a station — Pook End. He had never heard of it.

Then, as he stood shaking his head, Fletcher noticed something even stranger. The road seemed to have changed, for the slope had somehow levelled. For a moment he had the feeling that he might not have walked up the street but had gone down, and that he now stood in a dip or valley between two rises. Closing his eyes in bewilderment, he began to wonder if he had over-exerted himself. Could he be having a mild stroke? After a few seconds he opened his eyes and was relieved to find that the street had returned to normal — if such a punishing gradient could be described as normal.

Fletcher still held the loose page in his hand, but refused to look at it; instead, he placed the sheet between the cover and first page, resolving to study the map later. He saw with dismay that other sheets were coming loose too, and it struck him that the London he knew so well was now falling apart.

‘That’s it,’ he said aloud. ‘I’m going back down.’

‘You’ve come too far now. You have to carry on.’

It was the girl with the pram, or at least it looked like her. But she was coming downhill towards him, moving rapidly, almost at a run, as if by her speed she could take off and all the faster reach the bottom, or wherever she might be going.

‘Straight up?’ Fletcher asked as she sped past. He could not now be sure if it was the same girl, for he saw that this pram had an occupant. But it sped past so fast that he had no time to make out who or what it was. As he spoke Fletcher pointed uphill to where the road made yet another sharp bend.

‘It’s hardly straight and it’s not up,’ she replied without looking back and vanished into the stepped alley, leaving only the sound of wheels clacking on stone. Fletcher decided that it must be a different girl. Perhaps there was a nursery nearby. This might explain why the first girl’s pram was empty. She had deposited her baby somewhere. He took a deep breath and considered the girl’s words. Well, he had come too far now to stop. It would not do to tell Mathews that he had given up on the hill.

Just as Fletcher set off again the sun burst through the cloud, and its warm light gave an odd sense of exuberance to the red-brown Victorian stonework around him.

‘I’ve never seen anything quite like this!’ he exclaimed in wonder. But even as he paused and spoke the moment of epiphany began to fade.

‘Like what?’

A man stood on the pavement, washing a car. The sun gleamed on the bonnet and dazzled Fletcher’s eyes, so that he had to shut them for a second before he replied.

‘Oh, the way the sun shone on the houses — it made the street seem all aglow.’

The car washer looked doubtfully along the road at the houses with their darkening windows. As suddenly as it had emerged the sun retreated behind the clouds, leaving the road all grey and mundane once more.

‘Dunno about that,’ said the man, flicking water from his wash-leather before attacking the car’s gleaming bonnet again.

‘An interesting street, this,’ said Fletcher, and immediately felt like an idiot. He knew from experience that any show of enthusiasm was viewed by most people with the deepest suspicion.

‘ ‘S all right, I suppose,’ the man acknowledged, ‘compared to some.’

‘I’m thinking of moving in, somewhere around here,’ lied Fletcher, to prolong the conversation. ‘Near the top of the hill.’

‘Nothing much up there,’ said the man dully.

‘Always something,’ replied Fletcher. ‘Houses, views, prospects.’

‘There is a bit of a view,’ allowed the man, after pondering for a moment.

‘A view over London?’

‘Just down the hill.’ The man frowned as if recalling something unpleasant. ‘Been there and didn’t like it.’

‘You didn’t like the view?’ Fletcher probed.

‘View?’ the man seemed confused. ‘No, not that. No, London — didn’t think much of it.’

‘Good Lord!’ Fletcher exclaimed, amazed at the idea of anyone not liking London.

‘Overrated. Couldn’t see the point.’

The man turned back to the bonnet and resumed his polishing, and Fletcher found his gaze drawn to the metal. The sun’s brief appearance had dazzled him, and in consequence there was a peculiar blackness at the edge of his vision. He saw his reflection in the car bonnet. How strange his face looked. Like he was trapped in a distorting mirror.

‘You’d best hurry up,’ said the man, ‘before it turns to rain.’

Fletcher saw that the cloud had grown heavier and the sky now loured, black and brooding. It would not be pleasant to be caught out in it, if the rain did come.

‘I should have brought my brolly,’ he said, half to himself.

‘Always brings it on,’ the man muttered gloomily.

‘Umbrellas?’

‘Nah! When I wash me car,’ the man said resignedly.

‘Sympathetic magic,’ said Fletcher, as he walked away. ‘There’s a lot of it about.’

Fletcher began to walk as fast as he could, for it seemed likely that he would be caught out in the open by the rain before he reached the crest. When he saw another of the peculiar stepped alleys he walked up it rather than tramp the length of the road — the road which, he now saw, had abandoned its habit of twisting and turning, and stretched well into the distance, the end of it quite out of sight.

Having climbed the last step he found himself standing by a small green space, in the centre of which stood a large and flourishing oak. He went to it, and from beneath its boughs surveyed his surroundings as the rain began to fall.

The open space covered little more than an acre. Beside the large oak a few smaller trees lined the edge of the grassy area. Some bushes and uncut grass suggested a spot left largely to its own devices; one rarely touched by hand — or, for that matter, foot — of man.

‘Well, has it been worth all that walk?’ he demanded aloud.

Receiving no answer, he defied the rain and crossed to where a low wooden fence stood at the edge of the untamed acre. He looked out and down over a valley, on the other side of which another hill rose steeply. He tried to orientate himself by looking toward London for landmarks — even Canary Wharf — but just the valley and hill could be seen, with the grey roofs of the tall houses darkening in the rain that he noticed was growing steadily heavier.

‘It’s not always like this.’

Fletcher turned on hearing the voice but at first he could see no one. From behind the oak a young girl of about twelve appeared, holding a bunch of wild flowers. She arranged the blooms carefully against the tree, and Fletcher saw that the shrivelled remains of other flowers surrounded the oak. After the girl had finished she came to stand beside Fletcher, and looked down the valley. He followed her gaze.

‘You see different things at different times,’ she said. ‘Sometimes the houses are not there.’

Fletcher imagined that at the height of summer the trees would obscure the buildings to make the view appear deceptively rural.

‘It must be a very nice view, then?’ he asked politely.

The girl looked down with an intent frown, as though (Fletcher thought) she were trying to will the landscape to change. Or perhaps she willed it not to alter?

‘Oh no,’ she said firmly. ‘Sometimes it is really horrible, worse than this.’

She spoke with such vehemence that Fletcher looked at her with surprise, then turned back to the view. It was nothing special. In fact he felt rather let down, and the rain was getting heavier. Why had Mathews bothered to mention the place? It really was a waste of time, and he would be soaked when he got home.

‘The rain spoils the view, I suppose. It can make everything look horrible.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s worse when the sun comes out, you can see more.’

Even as he looked Fletcher thought that the prospect was subtly changing. It must be the rain obscuring the landscape. For a moment he imagined that all was underwater in a drowned world, as if a second Flood had inundated the valley.

‘You’re lucky that you can’t see it all — it’s being covered.’

The girl’s voice was oddly intense for one so young.

‘You don’t have to see it all the time. I do.’

The child was becoming distressed, almost about to cry. Embarrassed, Fletcher looked for what might have upset her, but could see nothing in the view that might be to blame. Indeed, as the air grew thick with ropes of rain the prospect had become almost totally obscured.

‘It’s like we’re all underwater,’ he said, and noticed for the first time that the girl was not dressed for the weather, either. Her shift, or whatever it was, seemed quite soaked.

Unfortunately this remark seemed to upset her all the more, and her lower lip quivered as she pointed out into the rain.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They can swim at you through it, and when it’s dry they creep up, slithering like snakes, or sneaking and crawling like spiders.’

Her words seemed to conjure the mysterious ‘they’, as Fletcher thought to see in the teeming rain a movement in the air, sinuous and slick. Shapes did move there, though what they were he could not quite decide. Rain dragons? Didn’t the Chinese have them? He looked again, and the rain was like smoke, and things crawled in its obscurity. He could not help but recall an obscure passage from Blake about vast spiders crawling after their prey, making smoky tracks in the firmament. Powers of the Air indeed — and it was said by some that Hell was full of spiders.

‘Wriggling and creeping,’ she said, ‘and hot like fires gone dead but that can still burn you.’

Fletcher wondered if this was what Mathews had seen, or something like it. No! He would surely have warned him.

‘What do they do?’ he whispered, fearful now for himself and the child.

‘They show me things,’ she answered, ‘and tell me things too. It’s not fair! That’s why I’m here all of the time, for listening to them. I do wish that I hadn’t!’

And she began to cry bitterly.

The landscape wavered in the subaqueous dimness. It was changing again, more rapidly. The houses had disappeared entirely, to be replaced by what at first Fletcher thought to be human-like figures of monstrous size. He took a fearful step backward, about to flee; but the girl stood still, now wearing a rapt, half-frightened expression. He stayed and looked out again, to see that the menacing forms had changed into — or might they have been so all of the time? — giant standing stones like those of Stonehenge or Carnac. There were many of them, but they formed no apparent pattern.

‘They move,’ she said, ‘if you don’t watch them, and sometimes they move anyway.’

‘But how? Why?’ Fletcher exclaimed. ‘What are they?’

‘Dolls, that’s what the others told me.’

‘But they are nothing like dolls… do you mean dolmen?’

Then Fletcher recalled that he had heard of dhols before, somewhere.

‘Who are these others?’

His mind raced with wild conjecture as the floating nebulous shapes shifted and changed, looming above the alley. The shapes seemed well able to reach out a casual paw and swat at them, and Fletcher felt a sudden urge to protect the girl. But then she looked up at him, and he wondered how he could ever have mistaken her for a child.

‘They showed me the ceremonies,’ she said. ‘The white one, the green one, but the best of all. ’

Fletcher walked rapidly away, almost running, out from what now seemed a dark wood to where the road should have been — should have been but was not. Although he clapped his hands over his ears the voice of the false child still sounded in them as he fled.

‘The scarlet ceremony, that is the best!’

The street he had walked up was gone, replaced by a landscape of such buildings as he had never imagined, temples and palaces, perhaps. Part of a new, or very, very old, London.

Flowers that rarely bloomed in our world spoke to him in insinuating whispers.

‘I am not going mad,’ Fletcher said aloud, ‘I am not seeing or hearing this.’

‘Oh, but you are.’

He did not look to see who — or what — had spoken. But the gloating voice pursued him through the landscape of bloody henges and monstrous standing stones. Why had he not seen it when he had walked up? Why had he not listened to those who had — in their own fashion — tried to warn him?

There were others now who followed him, all childlike in stature, adding their tones to the chorus.

‘There is so much to see, and we have not even started the ceremonies.’

Fletcher raced through the avenue of stones that shifted about him, as if seen through a mist or in the depths of a smoky mirror, until they changed without warning into an ordinary suburban street. He stopped to stare, amazed and wondering at the new transformation. He looked back to the grassy space where trees shivered in the rain — just a few trees. What he had thought a great oak was a stunted relic that marked the centre of a dull plot, not worth the effort of visiting.

Some instinct made Fletcher reach for his A to Z. The pages were all loose now, so carefully he tried to find the street on which he stood. He could not, for not only were the leaves all out of order, but he saw whole districts that were unfamiliar to him and he could not help but think that he did not know the city quite as well as he had thought. The strange pages would have to be shown to Mathews. What would his friend make of it all?

Fletcher fumbled with the loose sheets, trying to get them back between the covers. Some fell from his hand, and he bent to retrieve them before they were soaked by the rain. But even as he gathered them up the print began to run before his eyes, the ink smudging and smearing his fingers.

‘What could it be?’ he exclaimed. ‘Where have I been?’

As he spoke the girl pushing the pram appeared from around the corner of the stepped alley.

‘It’s easier going down than going up,’ she told him and pointed to the alley. ‘You’d best be quick, it might all change again.’

Thanking her, Fletcher was about to ask the girl if she knew where he had been; but, looking down at what the pram contained, he thought better of it. A broom lay there, an old-fashioned one with a head of what looked like birch twigs. A coverlet had been laid over it, reaching to just below where the twigs were tied to the stick.

‘Isn’t he lovely?’ the girl said and smiled. ‘He’s my little poppet.’

She reached out and took the remains of the A to Z from him. Fletcher did not resist. She threw the book up into the air, and the pages came adrift and floated in the rain, hovering like birds. A vortex began to shape the loose, swirling pages into an almost recognizable form.

Not waiting to see what his once-familiar street atlas had become he walked down the steps, his pace increasing to a trot down the hill, not looking back until he reached the road by the station. Then he turned to see an ordinary street rising up a hill to end in a piece of waste ground of no interest, except for its offering a view over London.

‘Not at all what I saw there,’ said Mathews, who had listened without interrupting until his friend had finished. ‘Just a rather nice view of the city. I took the trouble of going there this morning, I thought that I had better after getting that very odd phone call from you, and it was just as I remembered. Victorian streets rising up a rather steep hill, with steps connecting them. There were some sharp bends in the road, but not as many as you recall. The whole walk up from the station took barely ten minutes. There was nothing too unusual.’

‘What do you mean, too unusual?’ Fletcher demanded.

‘When I reached the top I sat down on a bench beneath a stunted oak. I rather thought that it might have been lightning-blasted. There were some flowers around its base. Well, as I sat there a girl pushing a pram came along and sat down beside me, and we exchanged a few pleasantries — as one does — and I looked into the pram to admire the baby.’

‘It was not a baby,’ Fletcher stated firmly.

‘Oh, it was a child all right. It would have been interesting to have seen the father, I fancy. Anyway, as I looked she made a suggestion that I chose not to take up. If I were a younger man, or a bit more adventurous. But you see, I think that would have entailed me being there for some time, in that place. Also I did not like the look of those other girls who were hovering about there.’

‘What was the suggestion?’ Fletcher demanded. ‘Come on, Mathews, do tell.’

They were in a pub, as usual. Mathews took a long drink from his pint before saying: ‘I’d rather not tell but I think that we both had a lucky escape.’

Fletcher thought his friend had a rather smug grin on his face, as if he were pleased about being so mysterious. But he knew that no amount of badgering would get him to reveal what — if anything — the girl had said. Fletcher had his own ideas.

‘I suppose,’ said Mathews, ‘that we are lucky to have been the ones to have discovered them; privileged that the mystery was revealed to us. Part of the mystery, anyway. I think that others have had the same experience, but not recognized it for what it was.’

‘At the end the mystery remains,’ said Fletcher. ‘It’s those girls I feel sorry for. Do you think they are there for ever?’

‘For a very long time, anyway, and I am afraid that there is nothing that we can do to help them.’

Mathews took another sup of his beer, then mused:

‘Shame about your A to Z. Will you be getting a new one? I did see some pages lying in the gutter when I was there but they were quite sodden and unreadable. Do you think that you might have been mistaken about those streets? Hobb Lane, Hood Street, Pook End?’

‘Hardly,’ Fletcher snorted. ‘I bought a new one this morning. They come in handy.’

He took the book from out of his pocket and laid it on the table. ‘Surprising how different it all looks in this one.’

He opened the book at random.

‘This could be a form of bibliomancy. One opens the book, puts a finger on the map and travels to the spot.’

‘One could end up in Wealdstone,’ said Mathews and leant over the table to where the atlas had been opened. ‘Travel broadens the mind, they say, and the most mundane of places can be full of curiosities.’

‘The best journeys take place in our minds,’ said Fletcher, ‘and are purely imaginary. Did I ever tell you of the time I was in North London and found a rather interesting park?’

‘Was it anywhere near Stoke Newington?’ asked Mathews.

‘A shrewd guess.’ Fletcher grinned. ‘It was another case of so near and yet so far.’

And he began to recount to Mathews his most extraordinary adventure in North London.