The Smallest Of Things

by Ian Whates

  They both came to a dead stop.

  What faced them was a nightmare. Chris knew enough history to appreciate that his own London had been a heavily polluted place in the not-so-distant past. He once sat in a pub in Belgravia—a comfortable watering hole that nestled in a street of exclusive white-walled terraced townhouses—listening to an old-timer describe to a couple of American tourists how in his youth you could hear the smog coming down the road; how the windows of buildings would tinkle and rattle from all the dust and pollutants caught up in the dark billow that steadily engulfed the street, the smog rolling towards you like some predatory monster.

  In the London he and Claire had just stepped into, none of that had changed. There might have been no smog in immediate evidence, but he couldn’t escape the sense that they’d simply arrived during a lull between bouts of the stuff.

  The brickwork around them was dark with grime and the air tasted acrid and unpleasant. The sky was overcast, and black smoke billowed from tall industrial chimneys in the near distance to spread lazily across the skyline. Even the plumage of the pigeons that strutted hurriedly away from these interlopers seemed to bear its own personal coating of soot. Claire coughed—not a polite clearing of the throat but a hacking convulsion, as if her lungs were rebelling at their first taste of this fetid atmosphere. He could hardly blame them.

  The greatest aberration, though, was the people. Not that they were physically as grubby as their surroundings—though that’s certainly how his recollection would paint them later, so perhaps they were. It was more their attitude. One thing that united just about every version of London Chris had ever set foot in was the hustle and bustle, the sense that everyone you pass in the street was on their way to somewhere, that their journey—however long or short—had a purpose. Not here. People loitered. They were listless. They stood and stared. At them.

  He led Claire up a flight of stone steps—geography too strayed from the norm here; in his own London, there were no steps leading from Bethnal Green Road and no ‘up’ for any such to link to. Beggars sat hunched against the wall at irregular intervals; at least, he took them for beggars. They were uniformly silent and made no effort to secure alms. They simply followed their progress with their eyes.

  The sense of malaise, of utter hopelessness that pervaded this London, was as stifling as the air, their own animation as out of place as a pair of nudists on an arctic safari. Chris couldn’t wait to be somewhere else, and by the way Claire clung to his arm he didn’t doubt she felt the same. Already he was alert for any stirring that might indicate a potential rift, but at the same time he had to concentrate on where they were going. While they stayed on Bethnal Green Road, retracing their steps would have been simple. Straying off it could only make things more complicated. The risk was a calculated one, though, worth taking in the hope of losing their pursuers.

  They reached the top of the steps without the brown coats putting in an appearance, and Chris dared hope they’d now done the hard part. Unless, having lost sight of their quarry, the brown coats chose to simply linger by the gateway and wait for their return.

  It all came down to how much they knew about his abilities, or could guess. He had to be a wildcard. They couldn’t possibly have anticipated that Claire would turn for help to someone who could cross between the different Londons. Everything he’d seen suggested that the brown coats method of reality-hopping differed from his own—otherwise they would have been breathing down their necks by now. So they were likely to be making some on-the-hoof assumptions about him. Logic would lead them to overestimate what he could do for fear of underestimating him, which meant they couldn’t afford to simply wait, in case Chris had some other means of finding a way home.

  Of course, there was no guarantee that their thought processes would mirror his own. Thankfully, in this instance, it seemed that they did. As they turned right down a side street, Chris glanced back to see the two brown coats appear at the top of the steps. They spotted them at the same instant. Right on cue, Chris felt a familiar tingling from somewhere ahead. The chase was on again.

  They crossed another London and into the next in fairly quick succession—the first a city that might almost have been their own, though Chris knew it wasn’t. Following that, they trespassed on a hi-tech world of dizzying skyscrapers, where the streets seemed reserved for long and swift-moving articulated vehicles that resembled behemoth caterpillars. These could have been either a form of public transport or goods haulage—the windows were opaqued or perhaps absent entirely, making it impossible to say. Above and between the buildings zipped a plethora of smaller craft that Chris initially thought had to be flying, but every now and again he caught a glimpse of something that suggested ethereal rails, making him wonder if these elevated cars were in fact being supported and guided by some unfathomable means.

  In both instances the familiar pattern repeated: they would establish a lead over their pursuers when crossing over, only to see the gap narrow as they traversed the city itself. Chris couldn’t speak for Claire, but he was beginning to tire. Evening was drawing in too, which could only make it harder for him to remember the route. It was time to ditch the chasers and return home before they got themselves completely lost, or caught.

  Luck deserted them, as eventually it was bound to. They made the next crossing and stumbled into London at twilight, lit by flickering streetlamps.

  “Hey!” A call of alarm, of challenge, went up as soon as they emerged and before they had time to assimilate these new surroundings.

  Until now, their passage through different realities had caused no more than a ripple of commotion. Not this time. They came through in the vicinity of a pre-existing mob, without any way of knowing what they were after or why they had assembled. The crowd—all men, a distracted corner of Chris’s mind noted—bore torches, clubs, and the grimmest expressions he had seen in a long while. Whatever their original intention might have been, they clearly decided that Chris and Claire would do in the meantime, and came after them en masse.

  Amazing how much of an inspiration an angry lynch mob can provide for weary limbs. They ran.

  As they sprinted, Chris reached into his left-hand coat pocket, reckoning they were unlikely to outrun all of those now after them and could do with a little help. There had to be twenty or so in the pack, and there was only one thing in Chris’s pockets that might work against so many. Just as his fingers closed on what he’d been trying to find, the noise behind them reached a new crescendo. Glancing back, he saw that the two brown coats had emerged a few yards in front of the mob. The look of alarm on their faces might have been comical under different circumstances.

  “Wait a second,” Chris said to Claire, and they both came to a halt.

  “Chris…?”

  “Trust me.”

  Having taken in the situation in an instant, the brown coats started to run, heading straight towards them, but momentum was their enemy and the mob closed relentlessly, roaring in anticipation of triumph.

  Chris took the cloth bag out from his pocket, loosened the cord at its neck, and waited. The inevitable happened mere feet away: The mob engulfed the fleeing pair. Chris flung the contents of the bag at the same moment, bowling them underarm. A selection of small white bones flew from his hand to fall at the feet of brown coats and their pursuers alike.

  Chris stepped hastily back, drawing Claire with him, not wanting to get caught up in what he hoped would follow.

  A pale glow emanated from the bones, reaching out to everyone there. The mob stuttered to a halt as the eerie light touched them. Chris continued to pull Claire further away, keeping ahead of the glow’s furthest edge. As they watched, the rage and hate drained from assembled faces to be replaced by glazed expressions and slack-jawed lassitude. The noise too cut off abruptly, to be traded for unsettling silence.

  Chris waited until the bones’ glow started to fade before taking Claire’s hand and leading her forward. They skirted around the listless crowd, giving
them a wide berth. No one moved to intervene. None of them gave any indication that they even noticed them.

  As they stepped through the reopened gateway and returned to the hi-tech London, Chris glanced back over his shoulder, seeing only the massed backs of statue-like, or even zombie-like, figures.

  “What the fuck just happened?” Claire wanted to know.

  “They’re called Spirit Bones,” he said. “Supposedly, they summon forth your ancestors’ shades and cause you to become…distracted, lost within the spirit world communing with those who went before you. Can’t say for sure; I’ve never been subjected to them; nor would I wish to be.”

  “Seriously? Shit! Is the effect permanent?”

  “No, or at least that’s what I was told.”

  She shook her head. “Remind me to never piss you off.”

  The trip back took longer than it should have. Despite his best efforts Chris had failed to memorise the route properly. They got lost in the hi-tech London and had to return to the same spot—one that they both agreed they’d passed on their first trip through—several times before eventually stumbling on the gateway. The surprising part was that they were in this hi-tech realm for more than an hour without once encountering another living thing, just the cars zipping around high above their heads and the occasional segmented transporter. Given the technology in evidence and how out of place the two of them so obviously were, Chris couldn’t believe that authorities at some level weren’t aware of the intrusion. Perhaps they simply didn’t deem them worthy of attention.

  Once they found the gateway back into Smogworld things were pretty straightforward, and they retraced their steps through the different layers of London without hindrance or brown coats. The women’s boutique and charity shop were both closed, forcing them to break a window to exit the latter, but Chris left them a gem-laden trinket that would more than compensate for the damage. He considered it a small price to pay for successfully ditching the brown coats.

  Even so, it was still past midnight when they eventually arrived back ‘home’.

  “Does it ever worry you?” Claire asked, as they stood on familiar streets at last. “The thought that one day you might not come home at all and never even realise it?”

  “What, you mean that I might find myself in a London that isn’t actually the one I left but is so similar that I wouldn’t know the difference?”

  “Yes.”

  “No,” he lied. Of course the thought had crossed his mind. He had always told himself that he could feel which London was the right one, but what if that was just a comforting delusion? It was a subject he tended to shy away from, suspecting that somewhere down that road lay the path to madness. “Besides,” he continued, a little disingenuously, “if I came back to somewhere that similar, would it really matter?”

  “Maybe not, but the possibility would still freak me out big time.”

  He changed the subject. “We’re going to have to find a place to stay.”

  They’d missed the last train and all the underground stations were shut, the subway entrances guarded by locked iron grilles. Neither of them fancied risking Claire’s flat for obvious reasons. Fortunately, this was Central London, where the nearest hotel is never more than a short walk away. Unfortunately, due to the hour, most of the more affordable ones—and that’s always a purely relative term in this city—would be closed.

  They plumped for an upper range mid-price establishment—not the Dorchester but not a youth hostel either, though it harboured aspirations towards the former. God only knew what they must have looked like as they strode up to the desk, but the tall, smartly suited receptionist didn’t bat an eyelid.

  “I’m afraid the only room we have available at such short notice is a suite, sir,” he said smoothly.

  Like hell. The concierge then named a price that would have paid for a week’s holiday in the sun.

  Chris thanked him but said they would look elsewhere, pointing out as he turned to leave that, at this late hour, the hotel was unlikely to find another occupant for its precious suite. With that in mind, the man magnanimously offered a sizeable discount, and the price promptly dropped to the equivalent of a long weekend away somewhere pleasant. Too tired to risk pushing his luck any further, Chris accepted.

  Hotels late at night always struck him as disconcerting, eerie places—lengthy corridors of closed doors behind which unknown people slumbered, the whole scene rendered surreal by the peculiar tone of artificial lighting such places tended to boast. On this occasion he was too knackered to care; either that or the lighting was more sympathetic than usual. The fact that their suite was situated immediately by the lift doubtless helped, providing the corridor with little opportunity to distract him.

  The room itself was much as expected: a well-appointed lounge area with plasma screen TV, free Wi-Fi and a well-stocked mini-bar, a separate bedroom with king-size bed and another TV, plus an en suite containing both shower and bath—the latter boasting a built-in Jacuzzi. Comfortable rather than luxurious, Chris would have said, though Claire seemed more impressed by the setup than he was.

  She threw herself down on the bed and laughed. “It was almost worth getting chased halfway across the city—several cities—to spend a night in a place like this.”

  Chris shook his head but couldn’t help smiling. “If you say so.”

  “Oh lighten up. We made it, didn’t we?”

  They raided the min-bar for snacks and wine—mealtimes having slipped past unnoticed. After which, Claire bounced to her feet—weariness evidently forgotten.

  “I need a shower.”

  “Why not go the whole hog and try out the water jets in the bath?”

  “Tempting, but I think I’ll save that treat for the morning.”

  Chris watched her disappear into the bathroom, impressed at how well she was coping with everything. His attention then turned to the sleeping arrangements. It was a big bed. The two of them could easily have spent the night in there without undue risk of awkward bodily contact, but space wasn’t really the issue. It was more a matter of whether or not he could trust himself. If asked, he would have denied ever fancying Claire and would probably have laughed the suggestion off with a defensive response along the lines of, “No, of course not, we’re just friends.” He would have been lying, even to himself; and the current intimate circumstance only heightened his awareness of how attractive she was. Tiredness aside, here he was alone with her in a luxurious hotel room…

  It would have to be the settee. The embarrassment of making an inappropriate move was too mortifying to contemplate.

  By the time Claire emerged, his makeshift bed was all set up. He’d taken a pillow from the bed—there were far too many of them on there in any case—and claimed a thin blanket from the spare bedding which he discovered on the top shelf in one of the wardrobes.

  Claire had a towel wrapped round her and was using a smaller one to dry her hair. “You look different,” Chris blurted out, though he couldn’t have explained why.

  “Clean, you mean.”

  He grinned. “Yes, maybe that’s it.”

  “Thank you so much. Oh, by the way, since we had to abandon my change of clothing back at the flat, I’ve washed the clothes I was wearing and turned the heater up to dry them; so be warned, it’s like a sauna in there now.”

  “Thanks for letting me know…Is that all your clothes?”

  “Yes,” she confirmed.

  “Oh. So under that towel you’re wearing…”

  “Nothing.” And with that she lifted her arms wide and allowed the white towel to unravel and drift slowly down to the floor.

  She was beautiful. She stepped towards him, her body slim and toned, with narrow waist and small pert breasts…Chris drew a deep breath. “Are you sure about this?”

  “No, of course not,” she replied. “I’m standing here in front of you stark naked so that we can talk about it.”

  “Yes but…” He almost said What about Bartosz?—whic
h, as passion killers went, would have been a real doozy, but he stopped himself in time.

  “For fuck’s sake, shut up, will you, and take me to bed?”

  Who was he to argue?

  The subconscious is a wondrous thing. It works away at vague unease even when you think you’ve moved on from the issue, doing so with a dogged tenacity that the conscious mind could never match. Sleep proved elusive for Chris that night, perhaps because of everything that was going on, perhaps because of the lingering euphoria of their lovemaking.

  Claire’s breathing had long since slipped into the regular rhythm of slumber while he was at best dozing, when the eureka moment struck. Realisation coursed through him like a chill, banishing any thought of sleep. He sat bolt upright, reviewing the memory, wondering if it was a case of mis-remembering. It couldn’t wait until morning, he had to be certain; he had to know now.

  He reached and turned on the bedside light, gazing down at Claire to see if he’d woken her. She stirred and mumbled, “What’s matter?”

  “Nothing,” he told her. “You’re just so beautiful I wanted one more look at you before I went to sleep.”

  “Silly,” she said muzzily, and draped an arm across his lap.

  He switched off the light and sat there for a moment, then gently lifted her arm away and eased out of the bed.

  “Where are you going?” Her voice sounded a little more awake this time.

  “Sorry, just need the loo; I’ll only be a sec. You go back to sleep.”

  He padded across to the en suite, making sure to close the door behind him before switching on the light so as not to disturb her further.

  For a second he simply stood there, before pouring cold water into the sink, reaching in with both hands and splashing some onto his face. Leaning against the basin, he stared into the mirror, examining his own reflection, staring into his own eyes—perhaps seeking inspiration. He took a series of slow deep breaths, determined to compose himself.