The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny

SIX Crime Scene Investigators

I travelled to Cheyne Walk on the Underground. After all the more than usually crazy weirdness of my day so far, I felt in need of the ordinary everyday weirdness of the Tube system. From the moment I descended the crowded stairs into the packed station, everything seemed reassuringly normal. The buskers were out in force, singing for their supper with more enthusiasm than talent. A wide-eyed gentleman with multiple personality disorder was doing three-part harmonies with himselves, in a rocking rendition of “My Guy.” A malfunctioning android in a monk’s robe was blasting out Gregorian chants interspersed with quick bursts of hot Gospel soul. And a soft ghost sang a sad song in a language no-one recognised, from a world no-one remembered any more. I dropped a little spare change on all of them. Because you never know. All it ever takes is one really bad day, and we can all fall off the edge.

The tunnels and platforms seemed more than usually crowded, with people—and others—from here, there, and everywhere. All of them full of a restless nervous energy, desperate to get to wherever they were going, as though afraid it might not be there when they arrived. No-one was talking to anyone else, and the crowded conditions led to a certain amount of elbowing and shoving and barging aside, the sort of behaviour that really wasn’t safe in the Nightside.

Everyone gave me plenty of room, though. I’m John Taylor.

I leaned against a platform wall and waited for my train, aimlessly studying the posters on the wall opposite. They stirred and changed in subtle ways, advertising movies that could only be seen in certain very private clubs. Weird images that came and went like scenes from disturbed dreams.

A tall diva in all-white leathers led a shaved chupacabra past me on a leash. A clone boy band with seven identical faces slouched arrogantly after her. A dead surfer with rotting jammies came to stand beside me, leaning patiently on the coffin lid he was using as a board. (Though God alone knew where he thought he was going to find a decent wave in the Nightside.) City gents in smart city suits stood close together in their proud little cliques, discussing ritual sacrifice and the Financial Times shares index. There were also plenty of the usual creatures trying to pass themselves off as human, with varying degrees of success. No-one ever says anything to them. It’s the thought that counts.

A few yards away a group of mimes beat up a pickpocket with their invisible mallets.

Just another day in the Nightside.

By the time the train got me to Cheyne Walk, I was so relaxed I almost dozed off on my seat, and my head came up with a jerk as the train slammed into the station. I made my way up through the tunnels, swept along with the hurrying crowds, and finally emerged onto the street. The air was hot and sweaty, and a gusting wind blew lighter pieces of garbage this way and that. There are no street-cleaners in the Nightside ; because there’s always something around that’ll eat anything. I strolled down the street, taking my time, looking the place over. It hadn’t been that long since the Lilith War, but you’d never have known there’d ever been any fighting or destruction here. It had all been repaired, rebuilt, renewed. Old shops and businesses destroyed by fire and explosion and the madness of rioting mobs had been replaced by bright new establishments; like a carnival built on a neglected graveyard.

Heavy-drinking bars stood alongside advanced dance salons, while brightly lit book-shops offered volumes of forgotten lore and forbidden knowledge. In paperback, and usually remaindered. There was even one of those new age soul-massage parlours, guaranteed to put your inner self at rest, and a restaurant from the Strange Offerings chain, spe cialising in food from other worlds and dimensions. For the more adventurous, there was a branch of Baron Samedi’s Bide A Wee; where you can pay to be briefly possessed, just for the kick of it. And for the truly creepy among us, there was the Dreamy Travel Agency, where lucid-dreaming potions allowed the discerning client to go tripping through the Dreamtime, to skinny-dip in other people’s dreams.

But still the tourists and the punters streamed this way and that, with eyes bigger than their wallets, on the prod and on the prowl, desperate to give away everything they had for everything on offer that was bad for them. The street was alive with noise and bustle and something very like glamour. Candy-coloured neon signs blazed like beacons, and everywhere you looked there was every kind of come-on. The damned leading the damned; the Nightside doing what it did best.

I stopped half-way along the street, trying to remember exactly where I saw Tommy Oblivion go down; first under a falling wall, then under the clawing hands of a maddened crowd. I always assumed he died here because I saw so many others die that day. Like Sister Morphine, the angel of the homeless. She’d died right in front of me, and there was nothing I could do to help her. There was a war on. I couldn’t save everyone. I could still remember the bodies, piled up like refuse, while blood ran so thickly in the gutters it overflowed the storm drains. I could still hear the screams and pleas from the wounded and the dying ... still see the mobs running wild, driven out of their minds by shock and horror, tearing apart everyone in their path. So many dead, and no memorial for any of them. Not even a plaque on a wall.

Because the Nightside doesn’t look back.

I finally caught up with Larry Oblivion at the end of the street. He was standing in front of what had been one of the new business establishments, but was now just a smoking ruin, with broken, blackened walls surrounding a great pit in the earth. A sputtering neon sign had been driven half its length into the ground, like a Technicolor spike. A crowd of interested onlookers was carefully maintaining a discreet distance between them and the blast zone. Or possibly, between them and the heavily scowling Larry Oblivion. They were all cheerfully debating what had happened, how it had happened, why it had happened; and swapping theories on who might be next. Then they saw me approaching and went suddenly quiet. Not so much because they were impressed as because they didn’t want to miss out on anything. Everyone knew about Larry and me. The Nightside does so love to gossip. I made a point of giving Larry my most friendly smile as I joined him, to spite everyone.

“Hadleigh’s already been here,” Larry said bluntly. “I’ve been talking to people. He scared the crap out of everybody and blew this place up just by looking at it. Typical Hadleigh. At least he only killed a bunch of bad guys this time, and no innocent bystanders. That’s something.”

“Does he do that, sometimes?” I said. “Kill innocent bystanders?”

“Who knows what he does, these days.”

“Why single out this place?” I said, looking interestedly around the still-smoking ruins.

“He disapproved,” said Larry.

“And what business was it of his?” said an angry voice from the crowd.

Larry and I took our time turning round to look. We didn’t want to be thought of as the kind who could be hurried by an angry voice. I spotted the speaker immediately. I knew Augustus Grimm of old, always ready to appoint himself the spokesman for any aggrieved gathering, whip it into violence, then fade quietly into the background once the whole thing kicked off. A defrocked heretic accountant, Grimm had learned just enough mathemagics to be a nuisance, if not actually dangerous, and had been thrown out of the Accountants’ Guild for unethical use of imaginary numbers. (Apparently Grimm could make certain numbers imagine they were in his client’s bank accounts rather than where they were supposed to be. The Guild shut him down fast; no-one messes with business in the Nightside.)

“Shut up, Augustus,” I said kindly. “Or I will come over there and kick the fractions out of you.”

Larry and I waited politely, but Grimm didn’t want to meet either of our eyes. We made a point of turning our backs on him.

“Hadleigh objected to the very existence of this place,” said Larry. “Turnabout Inc. could swap a mind from one body to another, for the right price. An old man could live on in a young man’s body as long as he kept up the payments. Do as much damage to the young body as he liked because he could always move on to another and walk away unconnected from all the evils he’d done. A very popular business; so popular, Turnabout had run out of paid volunteers and taken to snatching kids right off the street.”

I nodded slowly. This was the third case of mind-swapping I’d heard about today. Was someone trying to tell me something ? Or warn me about something?

“Hadleigh blasted the whole building into kindling with just a glance,” said Larry. “Killed the owners and the staff, and all the customers who happened to be there. A handful of the possessed staggered out of the ruins, entirely unarmed, and back in their own bodies again. Not all of them were grateful. A few had gone in with their eyes open because they needed the money. When you’ve sold off everything you own to pay your debts, all you have left to sell is your body, one way or another. Hadleigh had nothing to say to them. It seems the Detective Inspectre is only interested in crime, not its victims.”

The crowd was getting noisy. I looked back, and there was Augustus Grimm, with his pinched, vindictive face, whipping up grievances, pointing the finger at Larry and me. The crowd seemed bigger than before, full of angry faces and raised voices. A slow, cold anger moved through me as I remembered the maddened faces that had killed Sister Morphine, and maybe Tommy as well. No matter where you are in the Nightside, you’re never far from an angry mob, eager to get their hands bloody for any good reason or none. Just for the thrill of it. It’s in the nature of the Nightside to bring out the worst in us. It’s what we come here for.

“You think I don’t know you, dead man?” Grimm shouted at Larry. “You’re his brother! Which makes you as guilty as him! Who are you, to judge us? To take our fun away? You’ll pay for what he did!”

He gestured grandly with one hand, and a long, glowing blade manifested in his grip. I suppose it’s only a short step from imaginary numbers to imaginary weapons. There was no substance to the blade he held; it was the concept of a sword. But that only made it stronger and sharper. The crowd growled its approval. Larry stepped forward to address them, and Grimm cut at him with his imaginary sword. The glowing edge sliced clean through Larry’s jacket and shirt, and opened up a long thin cut in the grey flesh beneath. There was no blood, of course.

Larry looked down, then back at Grimm. “That was my best suit, you little turd!”

He whipped out his magic wand, and just like that Time slammed to a halt. Every sound was cut off; everyone stood still; everything was struck motionless. The very atmosphere seemed to hang in the balance, caught between one moment and the next. Even the impaled neon sign was caught in mid flicker. Larry put his wand away, then moved swiftly through the crowd, beating the crap out of every last one of them. His unfeeling dead hands rose and fell, dispensing brutal punishments. He punched heads and chests and sides, and the sound of breaking bone was crisp and sharp on the enforced quiet. No blood flowed—not yet. And no matter how hard he hit them, none of the bodies stirred or reacted, or even rocked in place.

I saw it all and heard it all, because even though I was frozen in place like everyone else ... I could still think and observe. Perhaps my special gift protected me from the wand’s magic, or maybe my unnatural bloodline. Like it or not, I am still my mother’s son. Either way, I decided to keep this to myself. Larry didn’t need to know.

And I might need to use it against him sometime.

Larry finally returned to his original position, not even breathing hard from his exertions. He took out his wand, started Time up again, then put the wand away and enjoyed the general unpleasantness. The whole crowd cried out in shock and surprise and agony. Bones broke, bruises blossomed, and blood spurted from mouths and noses. Some collapsed; some fainted; some lurched back and forth clutching at broken heads and cradling broken ribs. Augustus Grimm lay flat on his back, fortunately unconscious, so he couldn’t feel all the terrible things Larry had done to him. Never get the dead mad; they don’t have our sense of restraint.

I pretended a certain amount of surprise, then looked sternly at Larry.

“Wasn’t that a bit extreme?”

“You’re a fine one to talk,” said Larry. “At least I don’t rip the teeth right out of their heads. Besides, this bunch wouldn’t have been quite so mad if they hadn’t been customers, or potential customers, of Turnabout Inc. And therefore deserving of what just happened to them, on general principles. Like my elder brother, there is some shit up with which I will not put.”

Those of the crowd who could had already departed, leaving the moaning and the unconscious behind. Larry turned his back on them all, studying the rest of the people on the busy street, most of whom were far too taken up with their own wants and needs to notice a minor scuffle. Business went on as usual, and Larry took it all in; and his cold, dead face showed nothing at all.

“I wasn’t there that night,” he said finally. “I was busy with the war, organising resistance against your damned mother. If I had been here, do you think it would have made any difference? Would my brother still be alive if I hadn’t entrusted him to your care?”

“I couldn’t save him,” I said. “No-one could have. It was a war. People die in wars.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? Is it?” He didn’t look at me. He didn’t expect an answer. “You’re sure this is the street where he fell? This is where he disappeared?”

“A bit further down from here, but yes. I didn’t actually see him die. So there is still some hope.”

“Hope is for the living,” said Larry. “The dead must make do with vengeance.”

He still wasn’t looking at me, apparently concentrating entirely on the street.

“I haven’t seen Hadleigh in years,” Larry said finally. “Don’t even know what he looks like, these days.”

“Shouldn’t think many do,” I said. “Only ones who see him now are his enemies and his victims; and they’re not usually in any shape to talk about it afterwards.”

“He isn’t that bad,” said Larry. “Just a really scary agent of the Good.”

“You ever met Razor Eddie?” I said.

“Hadleigh isn’t a monster,” said Larry. “I have to believe that. The last living Oblivion brother can’t be a monster.”

I looked back at the ruins of Turnabout Inc. and invoked my gift. I concentrated on my inner eye, my third eye, and used it to summon up ghost images from the recent Past. Important events and significant people stamp themselves on Time, for a while. I let go of now, and focused my Sight on what had happened to Turnabout Inc. so very recently. The world went misty and uncertain, then snapped back into focus as the street changed before me. The shop was still a ruin; something kept me from going back any further; but Hadleigh Oblivion was standing right before me.

He didn’t look like any of the usual ghost images I See in the Past: shimmering figures, translucent as soap bubbles, sometimes barely there at all. Hadleigh looked firm and solid and almost unnaturally real. A tall, forbidding presence, in a long leather coat so black it seemed almost a part of the night, with a great mane of long, dark hair. He stood tall and proud, arrogant in his certainty that he had a right to be there and to do whatever he felt like doing. There was a power in him. I could See it, feel it, even at such a distance. His head snapped round, and he stared right at me. His face was bone white, dominated by dark, unblinking eyes and a bright, happy smile. He could see me as clearly as I could See him, even though I was in a future that hadn’t happened for him yet.

“Hello, John,” he said, in a voice so calm and normal it was downright spooky. “Give my regards to Larry. I’ll see you soon.”

The vision broke, and the Past was gone. He’d dismissed me with casual ease, as though my gift and all its power was a thing of no consequence, next to him. And maybe he was right. My inner eye had slammed shut so tight it was giving me a headache. I looked at Larry, but he clearly hadn’t noticed a thing, still lost in his own thoughts. I decided not to say anything about Hadleigh, for the moment.

He might not be a monster, but I wasn’t at all sure he was still human.

Then both of us looked round sharply. No-one had said anything; no-one had called our names; but nonetheless, we knew. We looked down the Cheyne Walk approach, and there he was, Walker, large as life and twice as manipulative, strolling along the street as if he owned it. Heading straight for us. People hurried to get out of his way, and he no more noticed it than the air he breathed. Walker was a shark, and he only noticed other fish when he was hungry. He finally came to a halt before us, smiled easily, tipped his bowler hat politely to Larry, then fixed his steady gaze on me.

“I understand you’re looking for Tommy Oblivion,” he said, not bothering with pleasantries. “I know something of what happened to him, here, on this street on that terrible night; and as it happens, I am in a position to tell you something you need to know. But all knowledge has its price, and I’ll only share what I know with you, John ... if you’ll do something for me.”

“What do you want, Walker?” I said, resignedly, because I was pretty sure I already knew what he was going to say.

“Come walk with me, John, for a while. Walk with me now, and when we’re finished, I’ll tell you what you need to know.”

“This is a bit desperate, isn’t it?” I said. “You don’t normally resort to open blackmail until much later in the game.”

“Needs must when the hounds of time gnaw at our heels,” said Walker, entirely unmoved.

“We don’t have time for this,” said Larry. “If you’ve got anything useful to contribute, Walker, say it. Or butt out. We’re busy.”

“Do we have a deal, John?” said Walker, conspicuously ignoring Larry.

“I could make you tell me,” said Larry; and there was something in his cold, dead voice that made Walker turn to look at him.

“I rather doubt it,” said Walker.

“Tell me what you know about my brother. Do it. Do it now.”

“Ah, for the good old days,” murmured Walker. “When dead men told no tales.”

Larry went for his wand and Walker opened his mouth to use the Voice; but I was already there between them.

“Can you both please put your testosterone back where it belongs and save the showdown for another day? This isn’t getting us anywhere. I’ll go with you, Walker, let you show me all these things you think I need to see; but it had better be worth it.”

“Oh, it will be,” said Walker, smiling easily at me so he didn’t need to look at Larry. “I have such sights to show you.”

I had to raise an eyebrow at that. “You’re quoting Hell-raiser? You’ve watched that movie?”

“Watched it? Dear boy, I was technical advisor.”

I never know when he’s joking.

I turned to Larry. “Sorry, but I have to do this. He’ll never give up what he knows otherwise. I’ll be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, talk to people who knew Tommy and are still around. See if they can verify a connection between him and all the people on your list.”

“All right,” said Larry, not even a little bit graciously. “But don’t be long. And don’t make me come looking for you.”

He turned his back on me and Walker, and strode off. I looked at Walker.

“You just don’t give up, do you?”

“Never,” Walker said calmly. “It’s one of my more endearing qualities.”

“You have endearing qualities?” I said. “Since when?”

He took out his gold pocket-watch and opened it, and the portable Timeslip within leapt out and carried us away.