by Tom Fletcher
‘No snail this big or this tough,’ Spider said. ‘The little ones are easier, but you’ve got to eat a lot to fill yourself up. And you shouldn’t eat them raw, not really. Cooking them individually kills the lungworms.’
Alan remembered the weeks immediately following his exile from the Pyramid. He’d eaten a lot of raw snail then. He hadn’t known about lungworms. He was starting to feel slightly queasy.
‘Just stop whining and eat this while we’ve got it,’ Churr said, between swallowing one mouthful and shovelling in the next. ‘Big snail is good eating out here. And any bits of parasite you find are a treat, as long as they’re dead. There are transients who’d kill for this feast. It’s going to be rat and lichen from here on in. We’re lucky to be getting a lot of ballast in us before we set off.’
The only other conscious customers left in the bar were a couple of bikers getting intimate behind the wreckage Eyes had made of the drum-kit and a table of transients playing strip poker beneath the green neon skull on the wall opposite the bar. A man with a long waxed moustache lay on his back on a table, snoring loudly and others had passed out on the floor. Pighead stood behind the bar, counting bugs.
‘What did Bloody Nora say when you took her food up?’ Alan asked Churr.
‘Nothing. She was working. She had her papers out, and her crystals. Trust me – you don’t want to break her concentration.’
‘Is she still joining us for the Omentoad?’ Spider said.
‘Even I’m not joining you for that crap,’ Eyes said.
‘No,’ Churr said, ‘me neither.’
‘You in?’ Spider asked Alan.
‘Not after this food,’ Alan said. And not after the last trip I embarked upon in this dive. ‘I feel sick enough already.’
‘I’ll wait for Nora,’ Spider said. ‘I’ll wait half an hour.’
15
The Clawbaby
The slap shattered Alan’s sleep. He brought his arms up to protect himself, confused and blinking.
‘Get up!’ somebody shouted.
‘Who is it?’ he said. His mouth was dry and tasted foul. His tongue moved only sluggishly. Somebody was standing over him but he couldn’t see who it was. He could hear crashing and shouting. Whoever it was hit him again.
‘Stop it!’
‘Alan, get up. I can’t believe the noise hasn’t already woken your lazy arse.’
‘Eyes?’
Eyes swayed above him, clearly not yet sober. His mouth hung open and there were bits of food in his red-grey beard. The ointment-soaked blindfold he wore to bed was skew-whiff across his forehead, still covering one eye. The other was wide and bloodshot.
‘Haul yourself out of bed, lad,’ Eyes said. ‘We’re under attack.’
Alan climbed out of bed, dragging the sheets with him. Disturbed bedbugs scattered, hopping erratically across the floor, and he staggered, grabbing hold of Eyes for support. ‘My legs,’ he said. ‘They ache like hell.’
‘You sleep in your trousers?’
‘I don’t know.’ He looked down. ‘Sometimes, I guess.’ He found his shirt on the floor and slid his arms through the sleeves. ‘The Arbitrators?’
‘No. Something else.’
‘Bandits? Daunt?’
‘I just fucking said, didn’t I? I said, something else. If I knew what it was I would have just bloody said what it was, wouldn’t I?’
‘Tell me what you do know, then.’
‘I heard something smashing, then a … I don’t know what. Some kind of voice. A roar. Churr woke up as well, like I did, like an ordinary human – I saw her on the landing. Then Spider and Bloody pegged it up the stairs. Come on, Alan! Get it together, will you?’
‘Any of us got rooms with windows?’
‘Aye, I’ve got a window. And a sense of honour.’
‘Okay, okay …’
The Cup and Skull’s rooms were spherical, like huge bubbles in the concrete superstructure. There weren’t any storeys as such, but small clusters of rooms shared landings, connected to them by varying numbers of steps. There was one central spiral staircase from which all of the landings were accessible. Being a negative space, it wasn’t really visible from any one point, but Alan visualised it as something like an absent bunch of grapes hanging suspended inside the concrete. If Eyes had a window it meant that his room, his bubble, grazed the side of the huge corridor that had led them to the place.
From the bar below came a crunch, a metal screech and a scream, and then a gurgle that rose into a slow, loud laugh. The sound crawled up Alan’s spine. He stood at the archway between the landing and the spiral staircase, the others behind him, and shuddered.
‘Go,’ Churr said. ‘Pighead’s still down there.’ Her face was pale. ‘We’ve got to help him.’
More metal scraping, like somebody dragging chains across the stone floor, then heavy breathing, swelling into strange isolated laughs and low giggles. Footsteps. A clang. The footsteps stopped.
A voice like wet gravel, rising up the spiral staircase, bounced off the polished concrete walls. ‘Are you up there, Alan? My friend Alan? Up these stairs here at the sign of The Cup and Skull? I’m going to come up, Alan, and peel you … smear you like a moth against these grey walls … take that voice of yours out of its box and wrap it around your throat, tighten it, tighten it …’
The voice trailed off into low incoherence, but the footsteps resumed, heavy on the steps.
‘Okay,’ Alan said, ‘let’s run. Pighead’s dead. Eyes, you’ve got a window?’Churr grabbed Alan by the throat. ‘Who is it, you cowardly fuck?’ she hissed. ‘Who is this now?’
Alan shook his head as best he could. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I really don’t. Some new thug of Daunt’s?’
‘And you’re prepared to just run? They’ve killed Pighead and anyone else who was down there, and you can just run?’
‘What do you expect? At least if we get away then Pighead won’t have died for nothing.’
‘He died because of you!’ With her free hand she slammed his head against the wall. There were tears in her eyes. ‘Fuck you,’ she said. ‘You’re nothing but fucking scum.’
‘Stay here then,’ Alan said. ‘Do whatever you fucking want – I don’t care. There’s one thing in this world I care about, and it’s not you, and it sure as fuck isn’t Pighead. Is that not clear yet? Can I make it any clearer?’ He pushed himself away from the wall, wrenched free of Churr’s grip, grabbed her by the arm and her hair, then swung her out so that he was holding her over the dark stairwell. ‘Do you need me to make it clearer, Churr?’ he said, spitting as he spoke. ‘Is that what you need? You want me to drop you? I will: I’ll drop you into its path, whatever it is, and then you can die to help me get away too. Just say the word. I’m not fussy. Men, women, friends, lovers, I don’t care. I. Don’t. Care.’
Then there were hands around him, dragging him away, and Nora was holding Churr around her waist and pulling her back from the edge of the stairs. Everything was dark. His vision had scoped down to nothing but his fist wrapped in black hair. He wanted to rip it out.
Darkness was coming up the stairs. He could hear its feet, he could hear it breathing. Something was laughing – not someone but something, coming up the stairs, gurgling up around the spiral.
He saw it then, and he felt like he’d seen it before, but he didn’t know when or where, or what it was. The darker shadow slowly rounded the central column of the stone stairwell. Green light spilled from its eyes: a sick glow that reflected off the long, sharp metal claws extending from its sleeves. They weren’t neat blades but bundles of awful, rusty, mismatched shards, all different widths and lengths, but mostly long. Some were shining, some dull and all were vicious. That was all he could see: the green glow, the claws, the shadowed bulk.
‘There you are,’ it said, in its terrible voice. It was long-limbed and ink-skinned, a silhouette in a lit archway.
‘Wild Alan. I’ve been looking for you, Alan. I’ve been followin
g your voice. It led me like the scent of smoke. Such a voice, my friend. It will be a great shame to silence it for ever, but silence it I must.’
The two green lights held his gaze as he was dragged away, back into the middle of the landing and up the stairs, his heels bouncing on the steps. He’d seen those lights in the past, at a distance, looking at him from out of deep darkness, from beneath archways, from the blank windows of dead buildings, looking in from outside the House of a Thousand Hollows.
Nora slipped past him, towards the stairwell.
‘No,’ Alan said. ‘Nora, no! You can’t. Even you, you can’t. Not this.’
She stood in the archway and looked down. Alan could see the green glow moving beyond her.
‘Get out of the window,’ Nora said. ‘I’ll follow.’
Alan tried to shake off the hands holding him fast, but they were long-fingered and felt like iron. Spider.
‘Come on, son,’ Spider said. ‘We know Nora can fight.’
‘But not that – please, don’t let her, Spider.’
‘I can’t stop her.’
Nora drew a knife, and the thing on the stairs laughed again. ‘A little mouse,’ it said. ‘A little pink-eyed mouse.’
Something flashed, and Nora reeled around to land face-first on the landing, her blood spraying against the walls. The knife flew from her hand and buried itself in the doorframe next to Alan. She was up again in an instant, long cuts striping her arms and face, and gesturing for the weapon. He worked it free. Inside Eyes’ room, Churr was helping Eyes out of the window – Alan heard him yelp as he fell, but he didn’t think they could be that high up. Outside was dark, but it was always dark in the chasms of the superstructure.
Alan threw the knife to Nora and she caught the tip between thumb and forefinger, immediately spun and threw it towards the archway, in front of which their attacker now stood. It was still obscured somehow, as if the shadows of the stairwell had come with it. It wore layer upon layer of tattered black cloth that swept the floor around its feet. Other than the green glow of its eyes – if they were even eyes – its face and head were impossible to see past. It was too tall to stand upright in this space, which meant it was too tall to be an ordinary person; far too tall.
The knife struck the thing right in the middle of the green glow, and stuck there. The lights wavered and dimmed and it fell to its knees and started rocking from side to side. Then it started crying, like a baby wailing. It was a sound Alan hadn’t heard close up since Billy had been young, and it had the same visceral effect on him: sweat sprang from his pores in immediate response and his heart ached with something between sympathy and shared distress. He found his feet moving towards it, towards this thing, before he realised what he was doing.
It was clawing at the knife as it sobbed, its razor ribbons dancing. The sound it made as it pulled at the hilt was clack-clack-clack – metal on metal, as if beneath all those rags it was wearing one of the ancient rusty suits of armour the madder transients sometimes sported.
‘Go,’ Nora whispered. ‘Come on, go.’
‘It shouldn’t have been that easy,’ Alan said.
‘I just buried a knife in its head and it’s still alive. That’s not easy. Now let’s go.’
The thing tumbled backwards down the stairs, its wail becoming distorted by the echo.
Nora pushed him through Eyes’ room to the window. He stuck his head out. It wasn’t too far to fall. ‘You first,’ he said to Nora.
‘Why the sudden chivalry?’
‘Shut up. Do it.’
‘No. I need my things.’
‘Be quick.’
Nora disappeared into the stairwell and headed upwards. Alan turned around and, gripping the windowsill, lowered himself out, then dropped. Eyes, Churr and Spider were investigating the bikes. Two dead bodies were strewn across the main entrance, one with its intestines hanging out. Inside the bar the lights were still on, but nothing moved. The air smelled of lemon and garlic.
‘Where’s Nora?’ Spider asked.
‘Her room. She went back to her room for some stuff. But she got the thing, right between the eyes, with her knife. It fell back down the stairs.’
‘Dead?’
‘No.’
Nora fell amongst them like a kestrel to prey, swift and silent, her grey cloak billowing. A bag was strapped to her back, and a bundle of rolls of paper. Blood dripped onto the concrete around her.
‘You’re hurt,’ Churr said.
‘I do need to bind myself up,’ Nora said, ‘but first we need to go. It’s alive in there and it’s going to come after us.’
Alan nearly let his bladder go as a deep, throaty roar came from the entrance to The Cup and Skull, but on turning, he saw Eyes sitting astride one of the motorcycles. It had a low-slung brown leather seat, a deep red body, blackened twin exhausts pointing straight up behind the seat, long spring forks and workings that looked like a nest of chrome snakes. ‘We could take these,’ Eyes said. ‘I did some electrics in the lab for old Loon. I can start them – I just need to bridge the coils.’
‘Yes,’ Nora said, ‘yes, yes, yes. Good idea. We’ve got a long way to go and if we’ve got transport we can stick with the superstructure corridors.’
‘Quick,’ Alan said, ‘the baby crying … I can hear it again.’ The door to the bar was newly scratched and splintered, just hanging on its hinges. It was wedged open by one of the bodies. Green light spilled out around a pair of huge black boots. Alan peered through the gap. Something was moving at the back of the room, near the bottom of the stairs.
‘It’s coming,’ he whispered. ‘It’s crawling.’
Eyes had hopped off the bike and was picking at the next with a knife. He kept stopping to rub at his eyes.
‘Hurry up, man,’ Alan said.
‘It’s my bloody eyes, lad,’ he said. ‘Come and give me a hand. You do the next one. See if that dead feller’s got any steel on him. We can get two on each, so three’ll do us.’
Alan chose a bike with matt-black bodywork and a seat built for two. A wolf’s head snarled out from the handlebar boss. The crying was getting louder. He could still see through the doorway, just about. He could see the thing hauling itself hand over hand across the floor, weaving between the tipped-over tables and smashed chairs and leather-clad corpses.
By the time he was done, the thing was nearly at the door. Its green eyes were glowing again. Churr had climbed onto the first bike; Spider was sitting behind her. Eyes and Nora were on the second bike. Alan swung his leg over the third as whatever it was lurched shrieking through the doorway. Its cries increased in pitch, becoming hysterical, and it stood up as Alan gunned the bike. The machine shot forward, nearly leaving him behind, and he swerved, almost planted himself into one of the smooth concrete walls and then skidded away, barely managing to avoid the opposite wall.
He heard the other bikes coming up behind him, and once he had straightened up, he risked a brief glance backwards over his shoulder. Churr and Spider were at his left, Eyes and Nora at his right, and the thing, the green-eyed thing, it was running. He saw it reach up to its forehead and pull something free. Nora’s knife clattered onto the concrete ahead as its baby-wail morphed into its inhuman laughing once again.
‘Don’t worry, Alan,’ it shouted. ‘I will catch up with you. Catch you. Catch you. Catch your friends, your lovers, your men, your women. Stick a knife in my head, stick in many knives. I’ll just pull them out again.’
If it could run, then it too could ride. But really, Alan realised, it couldn’t: it was too big to sit on one of these bikes. So what was it?
What was it? And who was it with?
A ribbon of sky was visible above them at the top of the canyon. This wasn’t really a corridor so much as a crevasse. From the sky Alan could see it was still night; the ribbon was speckled with stars. The air rushing past was cold, and it felt good on his face, in his hair. The engines smelled of oil and heat. The greasy glass bulb on the front of the bik
e kept sputtering and dimming as the concrete sped past, grey and monotonous but for the cracks from which sprays of purple lavender grew and perfumed the night. He accelerated. He didn’t know where he was going and for a moment he didn’t care.
*
‘I saw a warm place,’ Spider said later, ‘a magical place. A safe place full of orange light, and people with sated bellies. No. I didn’t see it. I felt it. It was all very abstract.’
‘Sounds like nothing,’ Alan said. ‘Sounds like it just gave you a fuzzy kind of buzz, not all that different from some of your leaf blends.’
‘It was more than that.’
They had stopped at a corner in the superstructure corridor while Nora consulted a map. Alan didn’t want to pause but she had insisted and he wasn’t about to argue with her. There was no sound from behind but the wind, funnelled and intensified by the tunnels.
‘Did it tell you anything useful?’
‘An omen is an indicator of change,’ Spider said. ‘Warmth, safety, good food – that sounds like change to me.’
‘Sounds like the House of a Thousand Hollows.’
‘Well, then. That would be a good sign because as it stands, we’re not welcome there. But I don’t think it was. There was a sense of something older – an ancient presence, something integral to Gleam, to everything. I felt as if I was in the presence of magic.’
Alan grinned at his old friend. ‘I don’t think that was an omen,’ he said. ‘I think something in that sludge made your mind go funny.’
‘Of course that’s what you think,’ Spider said, smiling back. ‘But you are a filthy heathen. No gods, no faith. No reverence.’