by Damien Love
Alex started back up the ladder.
One of the bald men made a wild thrust. The blade slashed his grandfather behind his knees. One leg buckled. Alex registered the blow as a physical sensation, as if he had been struck himself, punched hard in the chest.
The old man righted himself, kicked out. As he did, the tall man swung his cane hard at his head.
Alex saw his grandfather raise his own stick to parry the blow, too late, saw his head snap back, saw him shaking his head, trying to clear it.
Pushing up the ladder, Alex’s foot slipped. His chin crashed against a sharp metal rung. He tasted blood, stood stunned a moment.
The second bald man lunged, stabbing forward. He was met with a foot in the face and sent staggering.
Alex’s grandfather was upright again, going hard and fast at the tall man, driving him back. Raising his stick to fend off the old man’s blows, he curled into his curious crouch, then leapt high, shooting over Alex’s grandfather’s head to make a precarious, skidding landing beyond the groggy bald men.
As the old man turned after him, the girl spun in a pirouette. Both fliers came swooping at once, smashing savagely into his head. They stayed close, hovering, blades biting, until he batted them fiercely away with his cane. As he struck each one, the girl’s head snapped back like she had been slapped.
The tall man took his chance, jumped again. He swung his cane wildly as he came down.
Alex saw his grandfather spin from the blow.
The tall man’s blade arced up at him in a vicious slash.
The old man hung there upright for a second under the moon, as though gathering himself to begin fighting again. Then Alex saw him sag, go limp, saw his foot slide away, saw him fall straight back, saw him pitch backward off the roof, saw him fall away out of sight. Then he couldn’t see him anymore.
“Grandad!”
The shadow figures stood gazing down in the direction his grandfather had dropped. Hearing Alex, they snapped around, started moving.
“Grandad?”
His hands were numb on the icy ladder. He stood frozen, staring up at the horrific empty space where his grandfather had been.
They were getting closer, scraping toward him over the treacherous surface. The tall man had already left the others behind. He came crawling at furious speed, cane rattling a cold, evil tattoo on the tiles.
“Grandad.”
Alex had no idea what he was supposed to do.
The tall man was closer, this long, lightless shape, moving faster, slithering, coming down on him like The End.
“Grandad.”
The tall man lifted a hand. Alex heard his grandfather’s words echoing in his head:
“Whatever happened back there just makes me more determined to make sure that he never gets his hands on it.”
He flung himself roughly down the ladder.
His eyes burned. He was weeping. He didn’t bother wiping the tears away. He didn’t want to.
The bleak French roofs were gigantic and strange. The snowy night was vast and dark around him. Now, he realized, he was truly afraid. Truly alone. The tears stung. The pale catwalk blurred before him as he tore along it. When he reached the end, he leapt straight onto the iron railing without thinking, landed like a cat. A flat roof beckoned several feet away across a long black drop. Without breaking his motion, he jumped, landed in a run, sprinted recklessly on.
He flew over massive and mysterious roofs, breath tattered, not glancing back, not thinking where he was heading. Uncaring snow fell, impossibly soft. Then suddenly there was no ground beneath him. He pitched forward, spinning, as the snowy world hushed.
Forward and down into black silence. Falling.
After what seemed a long time, his head hammered something hard that would not move. He saw the moon. His grandfather smiling. His grandfather gone. White lights went off inside his skull, outlined in electric red. It was strikingly pretty. The lights moved off into blackness leaving twin trails, distress flares shooting out over a dark and empty sea. The red-white lines curled and bucked and struck themselves.
The darkness doubled, then doubled again.
X.
A FISHY ESCAPE
FISH.
That was the first thing he became aware of. A stinging smell of fish.
Alex opened heavy eyes. Nothing but black. But he could smell fish. He let his eyes close and thought about it.
He had the odd sensation of being upside down. Things pressed against his face. Lots of small, hard things. Smelling of fish.
He felt sleepy, despite the pungent smell. It wasn’t so bad when you got used to it. He was snoozy, warm, and comfortable. A picture swam lazily into his mind: a tall man in black, all shadow, reaching out.
With a surge of panic, he remembered. He scrabbled blindly in the choking scratchy darkness until his body worked out which way was up. Fighting desperately in that direction, he broke through into cold, sharp air, gulped down burning lungfuls, blinking rapidly, fearfully around in a bright light.
He was in a pale, narrow alleyway. More to the point, he was inside a deep open dumpster, filled to the brim with what looked like the claws of thousands of crabs and lobsters, the bones of countless fish.
He looked up. High above, the roof he had plunged from. How long ago? Pulling out his phone, he saw his hand shaking. A crack ran the length of the screen. He pushed the button. Nothing. Dead.
Dead.
The word sat like a stone in his racing mind.
Snow was still falling. He tried to slow his breathing, calm his nerves. A salt taste on his lips. Tears. His eyes were still sore. He must only have been out for a few minutes, he decided.
He grabbed at his shoulders. The rucksack was there. The toy robot still inside.
His head throbbed. He pressed at a tender spot, lifted trembling fingers away. No blood.
What to do?
He thought again of his grandfather, saw him falling again.
Alex hauled himself out of the dumpster, staggered, stood brushing crabmeat from his clothes. An oyster shell dropped from his shoulder. He blinked dumbly at a small plate screwed to the door.
Cesar & Fanny & Marius:
La haute gastronomie de la mer
He looked around, trying to get his bearings, trying to work out which way his grandfather must have dropped. Keeping close to the wall, he started along the alleyway on watery legs, stopped as his knees buckled beneath him.
He let himself crumple to the cold ground, forcing himself to rest a moment. His head buzzed horribly as the bleakness and weirdness of his situation came into full focus. A sharp shadow play of images repeated in his mind, the tall man’s knife swiping up, the old man sagging, falling backward. Hurt. Helpless. Down.
Dead.
Even if that violent knife blow wasn’t fatal, there was no way his grandad could have survived falling from the roof. But, then, Alex had survived. Maybe he was lying somewhere around there, injured, needing his help. Maybe he was okay and already looking for him. Maybe, maybe.
He wiped his face on his sleeve, stood. Leaning against the wall, taking deep, shuddering breaths, he stamped his feet to ease the shaking. It didn’t help. Tugging the straps of the rucksack tight, he crept along the alley.
Coming out onto a small, quiet street, he could now see the pitched part of the roof they had stood on not long ago, looming dark and high against the moonlight. If he judged correctly, the old man must have fallen in front of the hotel, at the end of this street.
He paused, staring at the dirty white ground between his feet. On the snowy screen, the limp figure dropped endlessly backward. Another kind of sick feeling joined the nausea already clogging his throat. He didn’t want to go around there and see. He had to. He took another breath, let it out, padded on.
At the corner, he crouched against
the wall and peered around.
Nothing. He had been expecting to see, had been dreading to see, a crowd, an ambulance, police. Instead, it was simply the warm lights of the hotel entrance down there, a bright oasis in the night.
He looked up. The roof edge, the long, sheer drop. He scanned the hotel wall, the shadowy balconies. Nothing.
Maybe he’d been unconscious longer than he’d assumed. Maybe it was already a day later. Maybe the tall man’s gang was bigger than he knew. Maybe there had been more of them, waiting down in the street. Maybe they’d had time to clear it all up and bundle his grandfather’s body away and—
His grandfather’s body.
What could he tell his mother? How would he tell her? The street dissolved in painful shapes of gold and white as fresh tears dazzled him. A sob racked his chest. He caught himself, wiped his eyes, forced his rushing mind to a halt.
He hadn’t been out that long. Maybe they had smuggled his grandfather inside the hotel. Or his body. He needed a plan. His mind felt blocked.
He ground his teeth and looked back to the doorway. A taxi pulled up. An elderly couple in evening dress got out and entered the hotel, smiling and nodding to a small group coming out. The tall man. Beckman. The girl. The bald men.
They formed an animated huddle, the tall man pointing this way and that. He turned sharply. For a chilling moment he seemed to point straight at Alex.
Alex ducked back around the corner, sick with fear. When he forced himself to look again, the group had broken up, heading in different directions. He could see the bald men disappearing toward the far end of the street. The tall man turned and stalked back inside the hotel. The girl and Beckman were coming Alex’s way fast, scanning the sidewalks.
He ran back the way he had come, passed the alleyway, kept going.
He had a rough plan to circle back to the hotel, get behind them, get inside. But the streets he took refused to lead the way he wanted to go. Soon he had lost his bearings entirely.
He came to a larger, brighter road, still busy. Groups of people, sounding excited and happy. Two street cleaners stood muttering grouchily, waving their hands at the snow. His mind bleached with blank white panic. What to do?
He went on at a run until he spotted a darkened shop doorway and dived in. He stood panting, looking back and searching faces.
No faces he recognized.
He chewed his lip and counted to ninety, then stepped into the street again, still glancing over his shoulder. When he was sure there was no one coming after him, he turned and ran straight into the girl.
Alex froze.
She stood small and alone on the busy pavement, face blank, large eyes burning darkly. They stared at each other as crowds brushed past in a constant stream. Once again, he was struck by the strange familiarity of her face—he felt certain he had seen her before all this, but couldn’t think where. Panicking, he began to back away, turning.
“Now, now.”
She lifted a finger. Her tone was fussy, her voice surprisingly deep. She spoke quietly, yet the words carried sharp and clear above the street noise. Despite himself, he turned back.
“Look, see?” She was smiling. She held two curious little brass discs, like tiny cymbals, each with a small loop of purple-and-black-striped cloth attached. Slipping them over the thumb and second finger of her right hand, she held them so they caught the light, then snapped them briskly together. The resulting ting was sharp but sweet and sounded to Alex as if it were ringing somewhere deep inside his head.
“Listen, now.” She tapped an intricate rhythm, the varying rings of the cymbals linking up in a resonating chain between Alex’s ears.
“Whatever are you doing out here all alone and lonely, child?” The lulling voice came floating on warm, rippling patterns of rings and tings. She started walking toward him. “Where have you been? It’s late. Time to get you home.”
Still keeping up the rhythm, she held out her other hand. Each fingernail was alternately painted black and purple. Alex watched his own hand reach to take it. With a reassuring squeeze of his fingers, she started leading him along the street.
As they went, hand in hand, the bell-like chimes washed over Alex like waves in her wake. Staring at the small black head bobbing along in front of him, he felt himself relax. The golden Paris night was vibrating, warm and very beautiful. He tried to remember why he was in Paris and why he was worried, but then he remembered that it didn’t matter. Reflecting off the snow, the streetlights were the same color as the shining sound of little brass cymbals, and all the people were busy and happy. Just ahead, a dozen or so young men and women came spilling softly from a cinema and launched into a snowball fight, laughter playing like a melody on the vast shaking beat that filled his mind.
“Not far now, little Alexander,” the girl said. “Then you can have a nice long sleepy-bye.”
“Not far now,” he echoed. He lifted his head to the sky. Beyond the haze of city lights, dim stars winked in blackness. “Not far,” he whispered again.
The snowball that hit him was the perfect kind—the kind that’s solid enough to fly fast and straight, and yet, when it smacks you in the face, breaks apart in a dusty explosion of frost.
The shock brought Alex back to himself instantly. Staggering and snorting, half of it up his nose, he was vaguely aware of a French girl shouting “Pardon!” through giggles off to his left. Most of his attention, however, was taken up with his sheer horror at what he was doing.
“Oh, that’s a shame,” the small girl said, pouting a mock-sympathetic frown.
She tightened her grip with alarming strength, little fingers crushing his. For several seconds they stood arm-wrestling like that, until, with a desperate heave, Alex managed to rip free. Then he was moving.
“Run, then, dreary rabbit,” she called.
He went dodging between grumbling bodies, barely seeing where he was going. He could sense her not far behind. She ran with ease, holding her coat above her ankles, dodging blackly among pedestrians like a small dancing storm cloud.
The crush of people on the sidewalk made the going slow, and when he saw a narrow alleyway looming ahead, he tore into it. He was halfway along before he realized he had picked a dead end. The way ahead lay blocked by a blank wall twenty feet high.
Overflowing trash cans lined the walls on either side. Alex threw himself down to his left, crawling between bins and foul-smelling plastic bags. Pressing into the dingy dampness, he peered back, trying to lie still and hold his shredded breath.
He saw her framed motionless in the alley’s mouth, the bright busy street behind her looking as distant as another world. Slowly, she came walking in his direction, then stopped.
“Little running rabbit?” she called. “Listen now.”
Again, she began tapping a splashing, lulling rhythm. Feeling the sound creep over him, Alex dug his thumbnails into his fingers, fighting to keep his mind clear.
“No?” the girl said after a moment, stowing her cymbals away. “Oh, well. Hide-and-seek. How deeply tedious.”
Rummaging inside her coat, she primly set something on the ground Alex couldn’t see. A moment later, she had a second something balanced on her palm that he recognized all too well.
“High and low,” she said. “Fee, fi, fo.”
With a tiny motion of her hand, the flier lifted, disappearing into the shadows across the alley. Meanwhile, the other thing was moving over the ground on the side Alex hid. He heard it before he could see it: a strange, thin, shishing sound, shivering closer.
He shifted carefully among the garbage bags until he had a view. It was both deeply odd and bleakly familiar: a spring-thing much like the Slinky toy he used to play with when he was years younger. Except, instead of walking down stairs pulled by gravity, this one was walking end over end up the middle of the alleyway under its own eerie steam. Between each step, it
paused and hung erect, quivering snakelike from side to side in the air. Hunting.
“Come on, bunny.” The girl sounded bored. “Out you come. Hoppity-hop. Time for the pot. It’s too late for games. Everyone will be here to see you soon. And then we’ll have story time.” As she spoke, she reached down and pulled something from her boot, held it sharp and ready, and took a few cautious steps into the alleyway.
The spring thing shuddered closer. Alex’s racing mind ran empty. He felt rooted in terror. His whole world had become impossible and deathly.
“Sometimes there isn’t time to think things all the way through. You just have to accept what’s happening and get on and deal with it.”
The memory of his grandfather’s words came out of nowhere, close and clear. He blinked, shook his head. Deal with it. He started looking around, searching for inspiration.
A movement in the shadows across from him caught his eye. A thin gray cat sat hunched on a heavy wooden crate, watching the spring with the same fearful fascination he felt himself. As the thing took another coiling step forward, the cat backed away, lifting a thick, mangy paw. Instantly, with a whipping hiss, the spring lashed out, stretching across the alley at lightning speed. The crate exploded in vicious fragments, ripped apart.
The girl stretched on tiptoe to see what was happening as the spring gathered itself among the splinters, searching. Alex could see no sign of the cat—then he caught sight of it: high behind him, somehow scaling the wall at the end of the alley, clawing upward in pure fear. Watching with grim envy as its tail disappeared over the top, he noticed that, just behind him, an old metal bin lay empty on its side, lid beside it.
“Your turn next,” the girl called.
With a roar half terror and half anger, Alex burst from hiding, grabbing for the bin, trying to lift it. It was heavier than he’d thought. The spring was coming fast, readying itself to lash out. As it did, he managed to haul the bin around to meet it, catch it. He quickly upended it, holding the spring trapped inside the way his mum caught wasps in jars at home.