Tales From the Nightside

by Simon R. Green

  The bar was packed full that night, and the joint was jumping. All the usual unusual suspects were in, desperate for distraction after a hard night’s sinning. All the flotsam and jetsam thrown up by the night that never ends. Everyone comes to Strangefellows, usually on the run. From the comforting shadows of my private booth, I could see Lords and Ladies from a dozen Courts that didn’t exist any more. Standing tall in their faded and shabby finery, wondering what to do now their old lives were gone, their worlds burned down. I could see a dozen different kinds of alien—beachcombers and remittance men—paid off by their own kind, on the condition they never tried to go home again. And here and there I could see hollow-eyed survivors of a hundred failed quests, the burned-out fall-out of a hundred psychic incursions. Ghosts and ghouls, madmen and murderers, hard-drinking men and hard-loving women. Old souls and memories of greatness. It’s that kind of a bar. When no-one else wants you, and no-one else will take you in, Strangefellows is always waiting. As long as your cash and credit are good.

  There was a lot of community activity going on: shouting and laughing, dancing and fighting . . . but I didn’t feel like joining in. I’ve never been a joining-in sort of person. For much of my life, it was safer that way, for me and everyone I cared about, if I kept myself alone and apart. There were an awful lot of people, and a lot of awful things not anywhere near people, trying to find me and kill me. And even after I put an end to that, old habits die hard. I like to keep moving because a moving target is harder to hit. And I always sit with my back to the wall, so I can see who’s coming for me.

  Spiritual wounds never heal; and spiritual scar tissue is armour.

  Rob Dougan’s “Furious Angels” was blasting out of the bar’s music system through carefully disguised speakers. The bar’s owner keeps the speakers hidden so the patrons won’t try to shoot them if they don’t approve of his choices in music. A dozen members of the Tribe of Gay Barbarians were doing the lambada to the music, right in front of the bar, stamping and wheeling. Light flashed from their oiled, muscular bodies. They wore fur boots and loincloths, long swords hanging from their belts, and tall phoenix feathers thrusting up from their big eighties-style hair. Not far away, a young hex witch was putting on a hairdressing display by making the hair fall out of a werewolf’s pelt in intricate patterns. The werewolf seemed to be enjoying it.

  Those two disreputable legends, Dead Boy and Razor Eddie, were holding a drinking competition, trying out some of the dustier bottles from the bar’s back shelves. (The man who came back from the dead to avenge his own murder, and ended up trapped in his own corpse; and the homeless Punk God of the Straight Razor.) There was a lot of betting going on, as to which particular beverage would finally put a stop to the contest. Though given that Dead Boy was dead, and Razor Eddie was a living god, their inhuman systems could tolerate liquors that would have burned holes in most people. So far, the two of them had downed serious amounts of Tsothagua Tequila (eat the worm before the worm eats you), Vodyanoi Vodka (a killer surprise in every bottle), and Atlantean Ale (for that inevitable sinking feeling).

  Dead Boy was swaying in his chair, singing an incredibly filthy song by the Sex Pistols and opening his long, deep purple greatcoat to show off his autopsy scar to passing young ladies. Razor Eddie was eating the shot-glasses, while attracting even more flies than usual. Though they still dropped dead out of the air before they got anywhere near him. I could have gone over and joined them. They were my friends, mostly. But I wasn’t in the mood for company.

  The music cut off briefly, and a raised voice hailed me from behind the bar. I looked up, to see Alex Morrisey scowling fiercely and gesturing for me to come over and join him. Alex is the owner and main bartender of Strangefellows, much to his continuing anger and distress, and the last in a long line of miserable bastards. He always wore black, right down to designer shades, and a snazzy black beret pushed well back on his head to hide his premature and rapidly spreading bald spot. (Proof, he always said, if proof were needed, that God hated him personally.) Alex is one of many reasons why there has never been a Happy Hour at Strangefellows. Permanently pissed off at the world and everyone in it, he mixes the most dangerous cocktails in the world, openly cheats you on your change, and wise men avoid his bar snacks.

  I shrugged on my white trench coat and strolled through the packed crowd between me and the bar. People fell back to get out of my way, without quite seeming to, for their pride’s sake. No-one spoke to me, but I could feel any number of eyes burning into my back. People are always curious about what I’m up to, if only to provide advance warning on the best way to jump once the inevitable trouble kicks off. I like having a bad reputation; it’s better protection than Kevlar.

  Alex glared at me as I eased up to the bar. “Someone wants to talk to you, Taylor. On the bar phone. How many times do I have to tell you; I am not your answering service!”

  “You should pay me to come in here,” I said. “I raise the tone.”

  “Would you like to hear some hollow laughter?” said Alex.

  I took the phone from him, then stood there and looked at him until he took the hint and moved off down the long bar, out of earshot. Alex is a friend, sort of, but business is business. I looked at the phone for a moment, wondering why someone would call me at the bar rather than at my office or on my mobile phone. But then, discretion is a big part of being a private investigator. A lot of my clients don’t want to admit that they’d have anything to do with the likes of me.

  “Hello!” I said loudly into the phone. “John Taylor, at your service. Reasonable rates, an unreasonable attitude, and a dogged determination to find out things other people don’t want me to know. Who am I talking to?”

  “This is the Doorman at the Adventurers Club,” said a deep, rich, and very cultured voice. “It would appear I am in need of your particular services, Mr. Taylor. There has been . . . trouble, at the Club. I require your assistance, immediately.”

  “Why can’t the Adventurers deal with it?” I said. Not unreasonably, I thought. “I mean, you’ve got a club full of heroes and legends. What kind of trouble could there be at the Adventurers Club that they couldn’t handle?”

  “Everyone’s disappeared,” the Doorman said bluntly. “All the heroes and legends are gone, every last one of them. And not a trace left behind to suggest what might have happened. I am therefore forced to turn to you, Mr. Taylor. I need you to find out what has happened to the Club’s missing Membership, and bring them back.”

  I couldn’t help grinning. “That’s why you phoned Strangefellows. Because you didn’t want it showing up on the Club’s official phone records, that you’d been forced to call me in your hour of need.”

  “Exactly,” said the Doorman. “I have my standards. However, the missing Adventurers may be in dire need, and I am not allowed to leave my post to go in search of them. While you have a reputation for solving the most difficult of mysteries, rescuing those in trouble, and bringing them home safely. Will you help?”

  “Of course!” I said. “Do you really think I’d turn down the opportunity to prove my superiority, once and for all, to the snobbish and snotty-nosed Members of your very exclusive club? Still, I have to ask. Can you afford me?”

  There was a pause.

  “You want paying?” said the Doorman. “Some of the greatest heroes of the world could be in mortal danger, and you want paying?”

  “I never work for free,” I said. “It’s not the principle of the thing; it’s the money.”

  “I’m sure we can cover it, out of the petty cash,” said the Doorman. And he hung up.

  • • •

  Alex was there almost immediately, to take the phone from my hand. Which suggested he might not have been as far out of earshot as I’d supposed. I drummed my fingertips on the bar, thoughtfully. The Adventurers Club was home to some of the most powerful and experienced fighters and warriors of all time. So anyone who could make them all disappear all at once had to be pretty damned p
owerful in their own right. A more sensible and emotionally stable person would have turned the case down flat. But I really couldn’t resist a chance to rub their poncy noses in it.

  It was only then, as I peered absently down the bar, that I realised who and what I was looking at. I glared at Alex, almost shocked.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m sure I’m not . . . That elderly gentleman further down the bar; he is a Drood, isn’t he? I mean, a member of that ancient established family who have made it their business to stand between Humanity and all the Evils that threaten us? Whether we like it or not? One of those high-and-mighty, very important people who lord it over the rest of us?”

  “Oh sure,” said Alex. “That’s Jack Drood, the family Armourer. He often pops in here, for a quiet chat with someone he’s not supposed to know.”

  “But he’s a Drood!” I said, a bit excitedly. “They’re banned from the Nightside, the whole damned family, by long compact and ancient charter!”

  “He may be a Drood,” said Alex. “But not here. Not officially. Everyone gives the Drood Armourer a lot of slack because . . . well, because you have to. He’s that kind of person. Don’t ask the questions if you can’t cope with the answers, that’s what I always say.”

  “But what’s he doing here?”

  “You never listen to a thing I say, do you? I pour him his drinks and keep my distance and hope he doesn’t decide to kill everyone here on a whim and burn down my bar. As Droods are sometimes prone to do. However, as to why he might be here right now . . . I’ll say this. There has been an awful lot of gossip going around lately, as to where all the vampires have gone.”

  “Vampires?” I said.

  “Yes! Blood-drinkers, undead walkers of the night, rip out your throat as soon as look at you . . .”

  “All right, all right, I know what vampires are!”

  “Then why did you ask?”

  “Talk to me about the missing vampires, Alex,” I said, hanging on to patience and self-control by my fingertips.

  “No-one’s seen any for some time,” said Alex. “And there are usually one or two hanging around the place, stinking up the joint and drinking Really Bloody Marys.”

  “No great loss,” I said. “Nasty things. Walking corpses, with pretty glamours and delusions of grandeur.”

  “Didn’t you once go out with . . . ?”

  “I was a lot younger then!” I said. “And it was a really good glamour. I sometimes wonder why there aren’t more of them. Why they haven’t tried to take over and colonise the Nightside. I mean, you would have thought a place where the sun is never going to rise would be perfect for them.”

  “The way I hear it, they have tried,” said Alex. “Several times. But the various Authorities have always stamped down on them hard.”

  I nodded. The Authorities run things in the Nightside, inasmuch as anyone does, or can. We are protected; but it’s often best not to ask how.

  “I have to be on my way, Alex,” I said. “And I’d prefer not to be noticed leaving. Is it okay if I use your backdoor?”

  He sniffed loudly. “You use the bloody thing so often, I’ve started to think of it as my Other Front Door.”

  “Well,” I said. “Strangefellows is that kind of bar.”

  TWO

  The Adventurers Club is the long-established, very distinguished, home away from home for all the great heroes, gallants, and living legends who pass through the Nightside. I’ve never been sure why such people would want to come to such a morally dubious area as the Nightside; but I have my suspicions. Some are almost certainly just slumming, popping in for a quick visit so they can feel superior. And some are almost certainly here, on the quiet, for the same reasons as everyone else. To indulge the needs and pleasures that can’t be satisfied anywhere else. But most of the Great Names who favour us with their presence are almost certainly above such things. Real heroes, who earned their legends the hard and morally inflexible way. So why do they feel the need for their own very private club, in the middle of the night that never ends?

  • • •

  I left Strangefellows by the backdoor, and ventured cautiously out into the dark-and-gloomy back alley. As always, it was filthy almost beyond belief and lit only by heavy blue-white moonlight. The moon is always full in the Nightside and far too large. I keep hoping someone will hire me to find out why. The shimmering light gave the back alley a sinister, uneasy air, like the streets we walk in dreams. I looked carefully about me. A lot of people use the backdoor at Strangefellows—for a little peace and quiet, a quick smoke of something unnatural, or to make the kind of deals that require privacy. But it seemed I had the alley all to myself, for once. Which was as well. I didn’t want anyone to know where I was going, or why; and I definitely didn’t want anyone to know how I was getting there.

  The Adventurers Club is located in Uptown, the most civilised and snobbish part of the Nightside. Where even the Devil has to wear a tie if he wants to be allowed inside the very private and exclusive establishments of Clubland. Uptown is where the very best and very worst people go. To sample the sophisticated pleasures of all the very best bars and restaurants and night-clubs. Where Membership is always By Invitation Only, where dues are always paid, where it’s hard to get in, and sometimes even harder to get out.

  Uptown is right on the other side of the Nightside from Strangefellows; and it’s never easy, getting across the Nightside. Because the roads are always packed with traffic that never stops; and driving through the never-ending rush hour is like swimming in shark-infested waters with a bloody steak tied to each ankle. There are no buses, and taxis have been known to eat the people who get inside them. I used to have to depend on the kindness of friends with transport; but they’re never around when you need them. Luckily these days, I have my own personal short cut.

  I reached into an inside pocket, and took out a gold pocket-watch. A small and apparently quite ordinary, functional object, it actually contains a Portable Timeslip. A dimensional doorway, powerful enough to bang two separate locations together and make them play nice. A way to get from here to there, while thumbing your nose at the distance in between. I carefully adjusted the rolled gold fob on the side of the watch, and the delicately engraved lid flew open, revealing an impenetrable darkness within. Looking into that dark was like standing on top of the world’s tallest building and nerving yourself to jump. There are things, in that dark. Sometimes they speak to me. While I was still thinking that, and gathering my courage, the dark leapt up out of the watch and engulfed me; and when it let me go again, I was in Clubland.

  • • •

  After a moment to get my breath back, I carefully closed the watch and put it away, and set off down the street. No-one had noticed my arrival out of nowhere. No-one ever did, that being one of the many useful properties built into the watch. Who needs apps when you have magic on your side? Or possibly advanced alien tech . . . Assuming there’s a difference. I strolled down the packed sidewalk, where everyone made a point of never meeting anyone else’s eyes. None of them were interested in their surroundings; hot on the trail of their own private satisfactions and damnations. There was the occasional brief flicker of eyes in my direction, and no-one ever crushed or jostled me. Because they knew who I was. No-one was surprised to see John Taylor in Clubland, because no-one is ever surprised to see me anywhere. I turn up and do my job; and everyone with a burden on their conscience runs like hell in the opposite direction.

  The traffic roared past, never even slowing. Cars from every period, from Model Ts to Edsels to slick things with no wheels, all of them jostling for position or dominance like rutting deer. Ambulances that run on distilled suffering, articulated vehicles carrying the kind of load best not thought on, and hearses full of ghosts beating silently on the closed windows. Something hideous swept past, on a motorcycle made of bones, laughing shrilly, with its head on fire. Long strings of melted fat fell away behind it.

  The usual.

  Clu
bland also looked much the same as always. A gaudy collection of gathering-places and watering holes, dedicated to everything from the outrageously erotic to the determinedly obscure. Quiet places of reflection, in which to read and think. And very private back rooms, to serve the kind of interests the rest of the world would not approve of. It all started out as the ultimate extension of the Old Boys Network, where all the real deals and decisions that mattered could be made in private, and behind the scenes, in a civilised and comfortable setting. The idea caught on; and these days there’s a club for everyone and everything.

  Familiar names caught my eye on every side. Club Dead, for the mortally challenged. Schrodinger’s Club, for supernatural creatures so extreme they might or might not actually exist. You have to open the door and look in, to find out if there’s anyone in there or not. Club Cannibal, where those who want to eat meet those who want to be eaten. (All done in the best possible taste, of course. Though it’s never wise to hang around outside the front door.) And The End of the World Club, for those convinced the world really is coming to an end, anytime now, and are determined to do something practical about it. I subscribe to their monthly newsletter. Just in case.

  The clubs in Clubland are rather like the churches and temples on the Street of the Gods. They come and they go, and they move around—the old being continuously replaced by the new, the weaker giving way and location to the stronger. It wasn’t unusual for a Member to come looking for his club, and find it had been bounced half-way across Uptown by a bigger, more aggressive establishment. There are always traders standing on street-corners, selling street guides to the tourists; but since things move so fast in Clubland that the details in the guides can change before your very eyes . . . no-one ever buys them but the tourists. The longer-standing, established clubs never budge an inch. It’s a matter of pride. The Adventurers Club hasn’t moved in centuries.