Tales From the Nightside

by Simon R. Green

  I was probably the only person on that street strolling along. Everyone I passed was in a hell of a hurry, on their way to somewhere special, to do something the rest of us wouldn’t want to know about. They were going to a place that would welcome them in and make them feel at home, among their own kind. I’d never been anywhere I felt like that, not even Strangefellows. Perhaps especially not at Strangefellows. I wasn’t alone, any more. I had my Suzie Shooter, also known as Shotgun Suzie; the most respected and universally feared bounty hunter in the Nightside. We lived together, as closely as we could manage. But, still, it would have been nice to have somewhere else to go, a home away from home. Clubs might only be substitute families, but they’re better than none.

  I did wonder whether I should call Suzie on my mobile phone and ask if she’d like to be brought in on the case. Because I knew for a fact she had applied to join the Adventurers Club, sometime back; and they turned her down. Ostensibly because she didn’t meet their high moral standards. And therefore wouldn’t fit in. Suzie thought it was because they were all scared of her. She would love the chance to rub their noses in it by saving their heroic arses when they couldn’t save themselves. But I couldn’t justify asking for backup on what seemed like such a straightforward case. I have my pride.

  I wondered, fairly casually, why I’d never applied to join the Adventurers Club. I’m not the joining kind, but . . . I did wonder what it would feel like, to be among my . . . well, peers. To talk about the kinds of things only we could understand and appreciate. But I am not an adventurer. I would never have fitted in. I’ve never thought of myself as a hero, only a man doing a job.

  • • •

  I finally reached the Adventurers Club—that huge, squat, and resolutely old-fashioned building, steeped in history and acclaim. The Doorman standing guard before the huge front door saw me coming, and a brief expression of relief flickered across his dark face before quickly disappearing behind a stoic, professional mask. I stopped right in front of him and nodded cheerfully. The Club’s Doorman was a huge black gentleman, dressed in a long white Arabic gown, left hanging open at the top to show off the heavy necklace of sabre-tooth-tiger claws displayed on his massive black chest. Making it clear to everyone that he was a member of the were sabre-tooth-tiger clan, like all his predecessors. Every Doorman of the Adventurers Club is given the charm, and made a were sabre-tooth tiger, as they take office. To make it clear to all the world that they are tough enough to take on any and all uninvited visitors. Presumably the pay was good enough to make the curse worth it.

  The Doorman was big and muscular enough in his own right to make me feel he could probably have taken care of business even without the claws. His face was broad and very dark, with raised ceremonial scars, dominated by fierce, dark eyes. He glared unblinkingly at me, as though daring me to justify my existence; so, of course, I smiled easily back at him.

  “What do you want, tiny white man?” said the Doorman. In a deep, rich, cultured voice.

  “Don’t give me that crap,” I said. “You know who I am.”

  “Of course,” said the Doorman. “Who does not know the infamous John Taylor?”

  “What happened to the old Doorman?” I said. “I liked him. He didn’t give me any trouble.”

  “He got eaten,” said the Doorman.

  I decided not to press the matter. “You’re not from around here, are you?” I said. “I can see Time hanging around you. Deep Time.”

  “I am from the Past,” said the Doorman, a bit reluctantly. “I arrived here through a passing Timeslip. Abducted from ancient Africa, when it was a mighty place, full of great cities and marvellous civilisations. All gone now, and long forgotten. No-one now remembers the glories of the great city of Kor. I do not like it here. The people of this place and time are small and know not honour. I am merely keeping myself occupied, until I can find another Timeslip, to take me back to civilisation.”

  I didn’t say anything; but I knew from experience how arbitrary most Timeslips are. I’d met a lot of people in the Nightside who were waiting for the right Timeslip to take them home again. Most of them were still waiting.

  “You called me here,” I said, to remind the Doorman which one of us was in charge. “I take it the Adventurers are still missing?”

  “Of course.”

  “Have any of the Club’s shields and protections been broached? From inside or outside?” I said, to show I was a professional.

  “They are all still in place and still intact,” said the Doorman.

  “What first made you suspect something was wrong?”

  “Just a feeling. A shiver in the bones, a chill in my soul.”

  “Do you think they might all be dead?” I said, carefully. “Do you want me to call in the Authorities?”

  The Doorman shook his head firmly. “If I had wanted them involved, I would have contacted Walker, not you. I do not believe the Club Membership would want the Authorities’ people sniffing around inside their very private rooms.”

  “You think I can be trusted?” I said.

  “Of course,” said the Doorman. “As long as you are being paid.”

  “Exactly!” I said. “You’d better take me in, show me around.”

  “I cannot help you,” the Doorman said steadily. “It is my duty to stay at my post and guard this door against intruders. More than ever now, with the Club so vulnerable. I only left my position long enough to assure myself the Club Membership were all gone, then I returned to my post; and called you. It is not necessary for me to leave again, now you are here. I am sure you do not need my help, Mr. John Taylor.”

  “What if some of the Club Members die because you didn’t help me?” I said, craftily.

  “I am sure they would understand,” said the Doorman. “There will be new Members, in the future, to make up the numbers. My duty is to the Club. To guard this door.”

  I gave him a hard look, but he seemed to mean it.

  “All right,” I said. “How long has it been since any Club Member passed through this door you’re guarding so assiduously?”

  “Not quite one hour,” said the Doorman.

  “Good,” I said. “The trail is still fresh . . . Tell me, if you know. Why do so many honourable heroes and living legends come to the Nightside?”

  “To go on safari, of course,” said the Doorman. “To hunt the really Big Game. To test their skills and courage against the most dangerous prey of all.”

  “Suddenly, a great many things begin to make sense,” I said. “In an alarming, and downright worrying, sort of way. Very well, Doorman. One last matter to be taken care of before I start work. My fee.”

  “You want paying in advance?” said the Doorman. “Before you’ve done anything?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It feels like that sort of case.”

  The Doorman reached inside his white gown, and brought out a credit card. It looked very small, in his huge black hand. He thrust the card at me, and I took it carefully. The card had the Club’s name in it, and was attached to one of the biggest banks in the Nightside. Oh yes; we have banks. And none of them have ever needed bailing out. Sin has always been big business.

  “You can access the card, and charge your fee, after you have found the missing Adventurers,” said the Doorman. “I doubt they will quibble over details if you bring them back safely.”

  “And if I can’t find them?” I said, tucking the card carefully away about my person.

  “Then I will find you,” said the Doorman.

  I nodded, politely. Which is the best thing to do, when you’ve got a massive were sabre-tooth tiger towering over you.

  • • •

  He opened the door, and I strode through into the Adventurers Club with all the casualness I could muster. He didn’t quite slam the door shut behind me. I stopped inside the entrance lobby and took a deep breath. I needed to do this right. I couldn’t afford to screw this up. Bringing home the missing Adventurers would be a major feather in my cap
, and it wouldn’t hurt to have that many heroes and legends knowing they owed me. Never know when you might need to call in a favour, or protection.

  I looked around the lobby, taking my time. It was open and roomy, quiet and utterly deserted. No sign of the Club Members, or any of their staff. It takes a lot of staff to run a club this size. Were the staff taken because the abductors had a need for them, too; or were they taken so no-one would be left to say what had happened? I shuddered, despite myself. I only had to be in the lobby to know something was wrong. Something really bad had happened here and left its mark. A subtle chill, an oppression of the senses, and the soul.

  I moved slowly forward, across the patterned tiled floor. Everything felt wrong. Weird, and eerie. Tainted. When I’d been here before, the Club had always been full of larger-than-life individuals, all of them talking loudly, trying to top each other’s tales of high adventure. Boasting of the amazing places they’d been, the appalling people they’d met, and the astounding things they’d done. The problem with heroes is that they can never do anything small, or everyday. I had been invited into the Club several times before this, to help them out with various problems, when the Members decided they needed an outsider, or at least an impartial view of things. That’s why the Doorman had called me; I was probably the first name on his speed dial.

  It did irk me, a bit, that I had never been asked to join the Club. I would almost certainly have said no; but it would have been nice to have been asked. But they never did. After all I’d done for them. I was good enough to clean up their messes, but not good enough to be one of them. I decided my fee had doubled.

  I made myself concentrate on my immediate surroundings. The lobby was large, opulent, and entirely deserted. I moved over to the large mahogany reception desk and checked the phones and computers for any interesting messages. Nothing recent, nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to warn anyone of what was coming. There was a large book, for Members to Sign In as they arrived. I checked through the most recent entries. Some names I recognised. Julien Advent, the Time-crossed Victorian Adventurer. Chandra Singh, the Sikh monster hunter. Augusta Moon, who looked like one of P. G. Wodehouse’s more eccentric aunts but was actually one of the most dangerous women I’ve ever met. And I’ve been around. Sebastian Stargrave, the Fractured Protagonist, who’d battled so many forces, on so many sides, throughout Time and Space, in so many alternate time-lines . . . that even he wasn’t sure who he was, any more. Monkton Farleigh, consulting detective. A great mind, and arrogant with it. A hard man to dislike but worth the effort. And a blotchy ink mark that was the sign of the Club’s oldest Member; Tommy Squarefoot. The Neanderthal immortal.

  Heroes and doughty fighters, all of them. I had to wonder why they hadn’t fought off . . . whoever it was, when they came.

  I left the lobby and moved on, deeper into the Adventurers Club. Passing from hall to hall and room to room, looking at everything, touching nothing. All the doors stood open; not one of them closed, anywhere. Which was odd. I peered quickly into every room, to make sure it was empty, then hurried on. Looking for one sign, one actual clue, as to what had happened here.

  I saw flowers, wilted in a vase. And butterflies withered, inside a display case. But not a sign of violence anywhere. Not a drop of blood spilled, no overturned furniture, not even a section of rucked-up carpet. Nothing out of place. Just . . . empty deserted rooms, and a silence so absolute it was almost painful. I called out, again and again; but no-one answered. There wasn’t even an echo.

  • • •

  I finally stopped in the bar. I felt in need of a good stiff drink. There was no-one present behind the bar to serve me, so I helped myself. The bar itself was almost overwhelmingly luxurious, a work of art, fashioned out of gleaming beech-wood and highly polished glass and crystal. I poured myself a large glass of single-malt whiskey because it was, after all, that kind of bar, and sipped thoughtfully. There were half-empty bottles and glasses set out the whole length of the bar top. Signs of drinking, interrupted. I could even convince myself I could detect faint traces of cigar-smoke on the air, from tobacco and opium and other less ordinary vices. But nothing to suggest what had happened here, or why.

  Drinks left unfinished, cigar-butts in ash-trays . . . As though the Club Members had all got up and walked away. As though Someone, or Something, had called to them; and they had no choice but to obey. And yet none of the Adventurers had left through the front door; the Doorman would have spotted them. Which strongly suggested there had to be another entrance or exit, somewhere inside the Club. I emptied my glass and went forth in search of the hidden door.

  • • •

  The silence and the solitude were starting to get to me. The sense of life interrupted, suddenly, from outside. The Adventurers Club was starting to feel like the Marie Celeste. I went back through the Club, checking each room thoroughly. There had to be some clue, some evidence, something left behind.

  In the Duelling Room, all the weapons were still in place on the walls. Swords and guns, and other equally nasty and destructive things. No-one had drawn a single weapon to defend themselves against the intruders. Could it all have happened so quickly, they had no chance to defend themselves?

  There was a swimming pool. The waters should have been steaming hot; but when I knelt to check, they were freezing cold. What did that mean?

  All the usual trophies and displays were still in place on the Club’s walls. The distorted shadow of a Leopard Man, imprisoned in its great block of transparent Lucite. A hollowed-out alien skull, put to use as an ash-tray. Something from a Black Lagoon, stuffed and mounted, watched the proceedings from its usual corner, a melancholy look on its face. And a severed demon hand, forever burning but always unconsumed. I’d seen some Club Members light their cigars off the sulphurous flames. High up on one wall, proudly displayed on a memorial plaque, was the withered and mummified arm of the original Grendel monster; presented to the Club by Beowulf himself, back in the sixth century. The Adventurers Club goes way back.

  And there had been one particular case that I worked on, where one of the Club’s most highly treasured exhibits turned out not to be what everyone thought it was. An ex–Ghost Finder had brought in a preserved mummified head, from the Egyptian Valley of the Kings, as his entrance fee. Except it turned out not to be just any old mummy, but that of a Djinn. And they can rebuild themselves from even the smallest fragment. The head grew itself a new body overnight and went rampaging through the Club. It took most of the Members acting together, along with my not-inconsiderable assistance, to bring it down. The Djinn was taken back to Egypt and ceremonially reburied deep underneath the Valley of the Kings, with all the proper Solomonic rituals. Along with the ex–Ghost Finder who’d caused all the trouble in the first place.

  Which did make me wonder. Had someone else brought in a trophy that turned on them? There was no sign of violence anywhere . . . Perhaps the thing was some kind of Boojum, which could make people softly and silently vanish away. But even that would have left some traces behind, something I could pick up on.

  The Doorman said . . . Adventurers came to the Nightside to go on safari. To hunt the really Big Game that couldn’t be found anywhere else. Could one of the Adventurers have run into something too big for him to handle? Something that turned on him and pursued him back to the Club? Was something now hunting Adventurers?

  It was the silence, and the unrelenting solitude. My head ached as wild ideas raced back and forth inside it.

  • • •

  I prowled from room to room, kicking the doors wide open and investigating every open space I could find; and still I couldn’t turn up anything. Old rooms and new rooms, familiar rooms and refurbished rooms. Nothing moved anywhere, and even the shadows were creepily still. I was starting to feel the pressure of unseen watching eyes. My back crawled in anticipation of a blow I’d never see coming.

  I ended up back at the bar. My breathing was coming uncomfortably fast, and I kept almost catc
hing glimpses of something out of the corners of my eyes. So much time and effort, and nothing to show for it . . . So; time to draw the really big gun. I have a gift that enables me to find anyone, or anything. The gift has its limitations, but it rarely lets me down. I concentrated, reaching deep inside myself; and my gift unfolded like a flower with razor-edged petals, bursting forward to fill my mind. My inner eye, my third eye, my private eye, opened wide; and just like that I could See the bar before me with almost unbearable clarity. Every detail jumped out at me, full of meaning and significance. Ghosts of Adventurers surged back and forth before me, shimmering pastel shades that moved in absolute silence. Images from out of the recent Past.

  I concentrated even harder, shutting out all unnecessary details. I asked my gift to show me where the missing Adventurers were; but all I got in return was a splitting headache. It was too vague a question. To get a specific answer, I needed a specific question. So I tried again, focusing on one Club Member I knew would have been here when it all went down; because he always was. Gareth De Lyon, the Resurrected Hero. He’d been at least a dozen different Members of the Club, at various times in its history; and probably a lot more, on the quiet. He spent a lot of time hanging out at the Club because it was one of the few constants in his lives. I fixed my gift on him; but all I got then was a horrible impression of utter darkness, like the dark inside a tomb, or right after they’ve nailed the coffin lid down . . . and the smell of spilled blood. Lots of it.

  Except, I’d already established no blood had been spilled inside the Club.

  I tried something else. I used my gift to find the last place the Club Membership was, before it disappeared. My gift dug into my brain like a fish-hook, and dragged me out of the bar and through the Club, wincing and crying out all the way. My gift finally deposited me in the Club Reading Room, then released me. I swore at it a few times, on general principles, while my gift shut itself down, with the smug air of having done all that could reasonably be asked of it. I looked around the large, brightly lit room. I’d already been here once, but I checked it out again, taking my time, in case I’d missed something.