Tales From the Nightside

by Simon R. Green

  So how was I going to get in? No handle on the door; no bell or knocker; not even an intercom. No Doorman. Nothing to suggest how anyone was supposed to get in. I did have a little plastique explosive about my person. And a few white phosphorous grenades. For emergencies. But they would make a lot of noise and draw rather more attention than I was comfortable with, for the moment. So I walked up to the door and knocked, politely.

  The door swung slowly, invitingly open before me. There was nothing beyond it but an impenetrable darkness. Not the gloom of an unilluminated place but the cold, flat dark of an interior space without any kind of light. It could have been a few feet or a few miles deep. No way of telling. It could have been a deep well, or a night sky that went on forever. There was nothing there for my mind to get a grip on. A cold shiver went through me. So I put on my most unimpressed face, folded my arms, and glared into the dark opening.

  “How dumb do you think I am?” I said loudly. “Did you really think I was going to walk in there, like a cow into an abattoir?”

  I waited, but there was no response. Just the dark; silent and still, not giving anything away. If I’d had any sense, I would have turned around and walked away. Come back later, better prepared. But then, if I’d had any sense, I would never have set up shop as a private investigator in the Nightside. I couldn’t walk away. Not while the Adventurers were still missing and in need of help. Right now, I was all the hope they had. In the time it took me to go away and come back, that hope might disappear. Bad things can happen really quickly in the Nightside.

  When in doubt, stare the bastards down. I took a deep breath and strode through the door into the darkness. The door slammed shut behind me, cutting off the light and sealing me in, like the lid slamming down on a coffin.

  I stood very still, trying to get my bearings, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark. But there was nothing there for my eyes to adapt to, not even the smallest glimmer of light. No sound, and not even a breath of moving air. I reached out cautiously with both arms, extending them to their limits, but my fingertips didn’t brush against anything. I lowered my arms and took two cautious steps backwards, but my back didn’t slam up against the door.

  “If this is supposed to intimidate me,” I said, loudly, “you really don’t know the Nightside. We’re not scared of the dark; we embrace it. We eat it up with spoons. Now either someone turns the lights on, right now, or I am going to start throwing incendiaries around, in a highly irritating and destructive way. And we’ll see what a few pounds of willie pete will do to brighten the place up.”

  I made it sound like I meant it. Even though I only had a few incendiaries, and I wasn’t ready to use them up quite yet. I did have a small salamander ball tucked away about my person, somewhere, but I was reluctant to use it for illumination till I had to. Those things are expensive. Well, you only get two to a salamander. But bluffing can get you a long way in the Nightside, where you can never be sure who and what you’re dealing with; and you never know what they might have tucked up a sleeve you can’t even see. Somebody must have heard me because a light rose slowly around me.

  Not a light I would have chosen. A flat, crimson glare, as though the air itself was stained with blood. It pulsed around me, as though generated by some massive, beating heart. Very dramatic. I made a point of curling my upper lip, to show how unimpressed I was. A long stone tunnel stretched off into the distance before me, for what seemed like forever. Great curving walls rose to close together above my head in a rounded ceiling. It was like standing in a great stone artery. The blood-red light gave everything a disturbingly organic look. As though I was . . . deep in the body of the Beast. And, of course, when I looked behind me, the door to the club that I’d come in through was no longer there. The stone corridor stretched far and far away, in front and behind me.

  The walls weren’t just stone. Set between the old stones were human skulls. Hundreds, thousands, of them. Dusty, dirty, uncared for, with empty, staring eye-sockets and grinning teeth. Many of the skulls were damaged, cracked apart and broken, the result of blows with appalling strength behind them. And they all looked old, very old, as though they’d been brought here and made a part of these walls long and long ago. Who could have killed so many people? And why? What kind of club was this . . .

  All at once, the skulls were screaming. A horrid, unbearable, overpowering sound. Thousands of human voices, calling out in pain and loss and horror. It was so loud, I clapped my hands over my ears, instinctively; but it didn’t help. These were psychic screams, not natural sounds. The dead, crying out, protesting their fate. I slammed down all my mental shields, blocking the screams out on level after level, until I couldn’t hear them any more. You don’t last long in the Nightside if you can’t protect yourself on every level there is. There’s always something trying to get in. And rarely in a good way. The terrible sound finally shut off, and the skulls were just bones again.

  I slowly lowered my hands from my ears, breathing hard. Something was coming. I could feel it. The silence was broken again, this time by the sound of approaching footsteps, from far off down the tunnel ahead of me. I strained my eyes against the bloody glow, but I couldn’t see anything. The footsteps were clear and distinct, drawing slowly nearer. As though they had all the time in the world. I ran through all the nasty little devices I keep about my person for emergencies like this. But it was hard to know what might be useful until I knew for sure what I was facing. And then suddenly a figure appeared, standing very still, right in front of me. I refused to let myself jump.

  My first thought was how ordinary he looked. Though dressed in the height of fashion for the mid nineteenth century, he was a short and stocky figure, with an everyday face. And yet he had presence. A lot more than he should have had. As though merely by standing there, being there, he gave the moment significance and meaning. He was what I was here to see. Nothing else mattered.

  I broke the mood with a loud and obnoxious sniff because that’s what I do. I looked him up and down, as though I were thinking of hiring him for some necessary but unpleasant task. And then all the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood up, as slowly and steadily, he changed, as though letting more and more of the real him come to the surface. Because he wanted me to see who and what he really was.

  He stood unnaturally still. His face was deathly pale, without a touch of colour in it. He had a receding hair-line, a beak of a nose, sunken eyes, and a firmly closed mouth. His ears were pointed. He had his arms folded across his chest, the hands tucked away out of sight, in his armpits. And because I was beginning to think I knew what he was, what he had to be, I knew what to look for. His chest didn’t rise or fall, and he didn’t seem to be breathing. And for all the blood-red light, coming from every direction at once, he didn’t cast a shadow. He smiled, slightly, his colourless lips twitching; and he inclined his head to me briefly, in something less than a bow.

  “Welcome to my home, Mr. John Taylor.”

  His voice was dry and rasping, as though he didn’t use it often. Just the sound of it made me want to cringe, every instinct I had yelling at me to run while I still had the chance. Some of these old monsters go way back.

  “You know me,” I said, carefully casual. “Can’t say I know you. What is this place?”

  His smile widened enough to show off the sharp points of his teeth. “Don’t you know, Mr. Taylor?”

  “V,” I said. “V for vampire.”

  “Exactly, Mr. Taylor! Welcome to the Vampire Club. Where the blood really is the life. Just a small beginning in my colonisation of the Nightside.”

  “Oh bloody hell,” I said. “Not another one. There’s always someone who wants to take over the Nightside. I suppose it’s the vampires’ turn . . .”

  “Ah, but I am not just any vampire, Mr. Taylor.”

  “It’s been tried before!” I said loudly. “Those who will not learn from historical defeats are doomed to get their arses kicked really hard. The Nightside is a big plac
e, and you’re just a bunch of leeches with delusions of grandeur. What makes you think this attempt will be any different?”

  “Because I am the King of the Vampires.”

  “You’re a bit short for Dracula,” I said. “I’ve met a dozen leeches, down the years, who claimed to be the old Count. None of them were in the least impressive, never mind convincing.”

  His smile widened a little further, showing sharp, pointed teeth, brown and blocky as a rat’s. “No, no, Mr. Taylor. I’m not Dracula. I’m Varney.”

  And that actually did stop me, for a moment.

  “Sir Francis Varney?” I said, my mind working swiftly. “The vampire who terrorised all of England, and most of Europe, more than fifty years before Dracula showed up. Who turned houses and homes into butcher-shops, and filled the gutters with blood . . . The very first vampire boogeyman. Just how many people did you slaughter, down the years?”

  “I don’t keep count,” said Varney.

  “I thought you committed suicide?” I said. “Threw yourself into Mount Vesuvius?”

  He was grinning now, his teeth large and jagged. His eyes were dark and fierce and unblinking.

  “What better way to get the hounds off my heels than to seem to be safely dead and gone? They should have known better. I was always the strongest and most powerful of vampires. I could walk in the brightest daylight, and it did me no harm. Garlic did not poison me, and the cross held no fears for me. So why would you think fire would hurt me? I swam down through rivers of liquid magma until I found a series of subterranean tunnels that led me eventually to the base of the mountain, and out into the world again.”

  “Then where have you been, all this time?” I said.

  “Sitting in a cave,” said Varney. “Far and far from the world of mortal men. Thinking, and dreaming . . . of a better way. Determined not to make the same mistakes, when at last I ventured out again. Human civilisation is such fun to play with; but it has grown too large, and too well educated, to be easily taken down. Even by the largest of vampire armies. No, I needed more than that. And then, finally, one of my disciples brought me news. Of a marvellous hidden kingdom, where the treacherous sun never shines, and it is always dark, always night. What better place for vampires to make a home, and a homeland?”

  “It’s been tried!” I said. “The Authorities always stop you and stamp you into the ground. They’ve probably got an instructional leaflet, tucked away somewhere, telling them exactly how to do it. I mean, come on. What do you have, oh King of the Vampires, that none of your predecessors had? To make your chances any better?”

  “A new kind of army,” said Varles. “I have taken the greatest heroes and adventurers and soldiers the world has ever known, right out of their very own Club, and I have made them mine. They shall be my vanguard, leading my forces, and all their strength and experience and tactics are mine to call on. I shall throw them at the throats of all those who dare oppose me. How do you think the Authorities’ forces will feel when they see their most revered heroes running towards them, to tear out their throats and drink their blood? I think they will scream, before they die. Don’t you?”

  “Tell me how you did this,” I said. “Come on; you know you want to tell me. Or you wouldn’t have let me in.”

  “It has been such a long time since I have had anyone worth talking to,” said Varney. “Yes . . . The heroes come to the Nightside to hunt the Big Game. And one of them had the temerity to think he could hunt me. Gareth de Lyon . . . He’d been around too long, you see. Getting old, and slow. He thought he’d seen everything, done everything, fought everything. And then I let it be known, only to him, that I was back. He thought if he could track me down, and take me down, then he would be acknowledged among his peers as a hunter of the really Big Game. He liked the idea of bringing back the head of the King of the Vampires. That would prove he still had it. That he wasn’t old and past it, after all.”

  “Gareth de Lyon?” I said. “The Resurrected Hero?”

  Varney surprised me then, with a short bark of very human-sounding laughter.

  “You believed that nonsense? Just a story, Mr. Taylor—propaganda to make him seem bigger and more important than he ever really was. So he could claim other men’s victories as his own. I suppose you people encounter so many impossible things in the Nightside that you’re prepared to believe anything . . . He’s merely a man. Or at least, he was. He came after me, confident in what he thought he knew about vampires, armed with the cross, and garlic, and a stake. Like you, Mr. John Taylor. But you never met a vampire like me.”

  “You hypnotised him,” I said. “And then used him to gain access to the Adventurers Club.”

  “Never waste an opportunity, Mr. Taylor. I’ve always understood the usefulness of the Judas goat. I looked him in the eye, and all his precious strength and experience went for nothing. He bared his throat to me; and I bit him. Not enough to change him, to turn him; but more than enough to make him mine. And then I gathered up my people, had Gareth open the Club Door from the other side, and in we went. Into the Adventurers Club. Charging through the rooms and passageways, overwhelming every living thing as we met them. You can’t fight off an enemy if you don’t want to. A few resisted; but their own friends and colleagues overpowered them and dragged them down. Such fun, such sport . . . They all thought they were so important, and powerful; but a vampire’s will has always been superior to any mortal man’s. Because we are the predators; and you are the prey.”

  “Why did you take them away?” I said, steadily. To show I wasn’t impressed or intimidated. “Why not feed on them, right there in their own Club?”

  “Because it will be so much more fun to send them out to fight the Authorities while they’re still human,” said Varney. “Part of them will know what they’re doing, and they’ll scream and scream inside as they fight and kill old friends and colleagues. There will be time for feeding afterwards. And now, Mr. Taylor, that’s enough polite conversation, I think. Now it’s your turn.”

  He moved forward abruptly, without seeming to take a single step. He was suddenly right there in front of me, larger and taller and far more threatening. His eyes met mine, and I couldn’t look away. Didn’t want to look away. His eyes blazed like the fires of Hell, awful beyond bearing. His voice murmured in my ear, soft and seductive.

  “You don’t want to fight me, John. You want to fight the Authorities. You know you’ve always hated them. They’ve always hated you. Serve me; and I will see to it that those who survive will serve you. I will give you your heart’s desire, John Taylor, in return for a little blood. The bite isn’t so bad. You’ll come to love it, in time. As you will learn to love and worship me. Bare your throat, John Taylor.”

  I laughed in his face; and suddenly he was back where he had been, standing some distance away. He looked suddenly smaller, less imposing. And he looked so shocked it was almost comical. I laughed again. So he wouldn’t know how close it had been.

  “Oh come on!” I said. “If Walker couldn’t control me with his Voice, did you really think you stood any chance? I’ve been around. I’ve stepped on worse things than you! I’ve faced angels, from Above and Below! I don’t bow down to anyone! I’m John Taylor!”

  It took Varney a long moment to regain his composure; and then he nodded, briefly.

  “It seems the stories are true, Mr. Taylor. You are indeed your mother’s son.”

  “Don’t go there,” I said. “Really.”

  “We could have done this the easy way,” said Varney. “Your future suffering and degradation are therefore your own fault. It’s time for you to meet my family. Come forth, my children!”

  Holes and openings suddenly appeared everywhere, all the length of the great stone tunnel. Trap-doors swung down from the ceiling and burst up from the floor. Skulls and stones burst out of the curving walls. And the vampires came out. There was a sudden thick stench of blood and carrion, rot and corruption. Physically overpowering and spiritually sickening. A
smell that said, This is where Death is. Death, and so much worse than Death. The vampires came crawling out of their holes, not moving in any human way. They burst out of the walls, like insects disturbed from their nest. They scuttled and scurried across the stonework, in sudden quick rushes. They hung down from the ceiling and crawled up and down the walls.

  Some of them looked young, and some of them looked old; all were dressed in the styles and fashions of past periods. As though they couldn’t bear to give up the last traces of what they were, the last time they were human. The last time they were still alive. They all had perfect faces, handsome and beautiful, which was how I knew I was only seeing what they wanted me to see. This was glamour, not reality. Pleasing illusions to hide the rotting corpses they really were. The undead don’t wear their pleasing masks to hide what they are from the living but to hide what they really are from themselves.

  Vampires are dead bodies animated by a spiritual infection. Blood will have blood because it must, because that’s how the infection is spread. The infected wake up inside their coffins, break out, and dig their way up out of their own graves. Undead, unnatural things, driven by a need for blood and horror. Parasites that prey on the living. There’s nothing romantic, or melancholy, about vampires. They’re leeches on two legs.

  They scurried back and forth, all around me, faster and faster. Running up and down the walls, clinging to the ceiling, scrabbling over one another, like insects. Hanging from the stones and skulls at impossible angles, their heads turning round impossibly far, like owl’s. Fixing me with their dark, unblinking eyes. Showing me their pointed teeth in impossibly wide smiles.

  I stood my ground, glaring back at them, showing them nothing but contempt. Because the moment I showed them the smallest sign of weakness, they’d be all over me. They were only holding off now because they were puzzled. What could I have, they were thinking, that made me so confident? What weapon could I possibly have that could hold them off? I had a few things about me that might prove useful. I had a few bags of powdered garlic, my incendiaries, and a handful of assorted religious items. No wooden stakes. Never thought I’d need any when I left the house.