The Unnatural Inquirer

by Simon R. Green

  Max was hunched over, struggling to manipulate the Aquarius Key with just the one good hand, trying to open a door that would take him away. Suzie clubbed him in the side of his head with the butt of her shotgun, and he hardly felt it. She hit him again, and while he was distracted I moved in and snatched the Key away. Max glared at me, grey lips pulling back to show grey teeth.

  “I will kill you for this, Taylor. Make you crawl first; make her crawl. I’ll let you watch helplessly as I violate your woman. Do her and do her till she bleeds, until her throat rips from screaming. Tear her apart, body and soul. I’ll send her to Hell…and then it’ll be your turn.”

  I looked at Suzie. “Kneecap him.”

  She blew off his left kneecap with her shotgun. His leg burst apart, blood spurting, and Max collapsed, crying out in agony as he clutched at his leg. I looked down at him.

  “Shouldn’t have threatened Suzie, Max. No-one messes with me and mine.”

  I turned my attention back to Fun Faire, coming slowly alive like a great beast stretching after a long sleep. Lights were snapping on all around us, flaring blue and green and pink in the dark. The huge rides creaked and groaned as rusting metal stirred to life again. Suzie moved in beside me, swinging her shotgun back and forth, restless for a target.

  “John, what’s happening?”

  “The loa have possessed the whole damned fairground,” I said. “All those exorcisms must have left it wide open…”

  “Can’t we get Max to throw them out again?”

  “Possibly,” I said. “If he wasn’t currently preoccupied with holding his shattered leg together.”

  “It was your idea.”

  “I know, I know!”

  The dodgem cars came first, smashing through the reinforced sides of their stand and heading straight for us at impossible speed. They hammered through the shadows, their wooden sides already splitting as they struggled to contain the terrible energies that were animating them. Suzie stood her ground and blasted the first car at point-blank range. It exploded in a shower of wooden spikes and splinters, some of which pattered harmlessly against the front of Suzie’s motorcycle jacket. The rest of the dodgem cars were already upon us, so Suzie and I threw ourselves in opposite directions, out of their way. The cars swung round and over each other to come after us, their garishly painted faces grinning the same grin I’d seen on the faces of the possessed bounty hunters. The loa were having fun. The loa were playing with us.

  I ran down the moonlit paths between the slowly stirring stands, and the cars came after me, calling out now in terrible voices. I could hear Suzie running, not far away, and yelled for her to intersect with me at the next crossing of the paths. We both arrived at the intersection at the same time, and I grabbed Suzie by the hand and pulled her to the ground. The cars came up on us too fast to stop, and flew right over our heads to slam into each other head-on. There was an explosion of splintered wood and released uncanny energies, and when Suzie and I scrambled to our feet again, their was nothing left of the dodgem cars but gaily painted wreckage.

  “We need to get back to Max,” said Suzie. She’d already pulled her hand out of mine, the moment we were safe. She couldn’t bear to be touched for long, even when I was saving her.

  “Max isn’t going anywhere on that leg,” I said.

  “He could crawl,” said Suzie.

  So back we went, to face the loa again. I sometimes wonder which of us is crazier—Suzie for suggesting these things or me for going along with them.

  She was right. We found Max at the end of a long bloody trail, crawling for the exit, dragging his useless leg behind him. We’d just caught up with him when the snub-nosed planes came flying down at us from the Tilt-A-Whirl. They’d broken free of their supporting struts and shot through the air towards us on stubby wooden wings. I just hoped someone had got around to removing the heat-seeking missiles. Suzie shot them out of the air, one by one, just like pigeon shooting. (There are no pigeons in the Nightside, and people like Suzie are the reason why. Sometimes you can’t even find a dove to sacrifice when you’re in a hurry.) The last plane crashed to the ground not five feet away from us and gave up its ghost. Suzie looked at me as she reloaded her shotgun.

  “So? Do I win a prize?”

  “Depends,” I said. “You shoot horses, don’t you?”

  Suzie looked where I was looking and hurried her reloading. The carved wooden horses had dragged themselves free from the Merry-Go-Round and were heading our way. They were big and nasty and brightly coloured in places where paint still clung to the diseased wood. They had snarling rusty teeth in their grinning mouths, the hinged jaws working hungrily. Their eyes gleamed gold, just like the bounty hunters’, and they stamped their heavy hoofs deep into the ground. And for all their rusty hinged joints, they moved very much like living things, driven by the wrath of the loa.

  The old stories said the horses ate their riders; and right then I believed it.

  “Now this is what I call a Fun Faire,” said Suzie, and she opened fire with her shotgun.

  The noise was deafening as she fired shell after shell, but though she hit every horse she aimed at, blowing huge chunks of wood out of them, they just kept coming. Suzie emptied her shotgun in under a minute and swore harshly as she scrambled at the bandoliers over her chest for reloads. The horses were very close now, but she still held her ground. The first wooden head lunged forward, and rusting teeth snapped shut on her black leather sleeve.

  Which meant it was down to me, and one last desperate idea. I raised my gift and used it to find the last traces of the old magic that had once run the Faire, when it was still just an amusement park. Some last vestiges of that old innocent magic still remained, untouched by all the prayers and exorcisms, the evil and the horror, and I found it and put it back in touch with the wooden horses.

  They stumbled to a halt, one by one, as the old magic stubbornly reinstated the terms of the original compact. And one by one the horses were dragged back to the Merry-Go-Round. They fought it all the way, shaking their heads and stamping their heavy feet, but back they went. And as they stepped backwards up onto the Merry-Go-Round, the old steel poles slammed down again, piercing their wooden bodies through and holding them mercilessly in place.

  I looked round at Suzie. She’d finished reloading her shotgun and was standing with one foot in the small of Max’s back, to keep track of him. I nodded to her, and she took her boot away. I knelt down beside Max and helped him roll over onto his back. He was breathing hard, sweat beading all over his face, but he still glared unwaveringly up at me. I showed him the Aquarius Key in my hand.

  “You know how to operate this, and I don’t,” I said carefully. “Use it and drive the loa out of Fun Faire. Use it for anything else, and Suzie will do to your head what she’s already done to your knee.”

  He glared silently at me, but held out his good hand for the Key. I helped him sit up, then gave him the metal box. Suzie moved quickly forward to press the barrel of her shotgun against the back of his skull. He had to use what was left of his shattered hand in the end, despite the blood and the pain, but he made the Key do what he wanted, and a great cry went up all through Fun Faire as the loa were forced out. I quickly took the Key back again.

  “John…” said Suzie. “Was this what you meant to happen?”

  I looked where she was looking. The bounty hunters were back on their feet again, smiling their awful smiles, watching us with their glowing golden eyes. I had to sigh. Sometimes things wouldn’t go right even if you bribed St. Peter. I moved forward to confront the bounty hunters, holding up the Aquarius Key so they could all see it. They stood very still, their glowing eyes fixed on me.

  “When you were forced out of the rides, you were supposed to take the hint and go back where you came from,” I said reproachfully.

  “We won’t go,” they said, in their creepy single voice. “We can’t go until we have satisfaction. And if you stand between us and our rightful vengeance, we will b
e at your back and at your throat for as long as you live.”

  I considered the problem. I could probably get Max to use the Key to send the loa home; but they’d just come back again, and again, till they got what they wanted. Max had hurt their pride, undermined their status as gods, and posed a threat to their whole religion. Hard to argue with that. It was an intriguing stand-off, and there was no telling which way it might have gone if Walker hadn’t arrived. As usual he appeared out of nowhere, strolling casually out of the shadows as though he happened to be passing and thought he’d drop in for a chat. He came and stood beside me, and Suzie immediately moved to stand on my other side. Walker smiled easily at the ranks of possessed bounty hunters.

  “Well, well, the gang’s all here. But I think we’ve had enough fun and games for one night. Max Maxwell is in my custody, and therefore under my protection. I can give you my word that he will be severely punished. I have a nice little cell just waiting for him, in Shadow Deep. And you know what we do to prisoners there.”

  “Not enough.” One of the bounty hunters stepped forward to confront Walker. “Revenge, to be properly savoured, has to be personal. Has to be…hands-on.”

  “Not this time,” said Walker. “This is the Nightside, and we deal with our own problems. Go home.”

  He used the Voice on them. The Voice that cannot be disobeyed or opposed. It hammered on the air, so loud and forceful that even I winced. But the loa wouldn’t budge. Until I raised my voice.

  “Go home,” I said. “Or I’ll be very upset with you.”

  Perhaps I was bluffing. Perhaps not. I’ll never tell. But it tipped the balance. They might have defied the powerful Walker or the infamous John Taylor, but not both of us at once. The bounty hunters collapsed again as the loa left them, returning at last to their own world. And that…was that. For now.

  I looked at Walker. “You do know they’ll be back, sometime. We hurt their feelings.”

  “Let them,” said Walker. “They should have accepted a place on the Street of the Gods, when I offered it to them. There’s no room for independent operators any more.”

  “Like me?” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  I considered him thoughtfully. “Your Voice was impressive as always; but I can’t help remembering it was granted to you by the Authorities. Who are all now extremely dead. So who powers your Voice these days?”

  Walker smiled briefly. “I’m sure you’ll find out, John. One of these days.” He looked at Max Maxwell. “Come with me.”

  And shattered leg notwithstanding, Max Maxwell rose up and followed Walker out of Fun Faire, limping heavily all the way. The bounty hunters moved off after them, talking rather confusedly amongst themselves. Until only Suzie and I were left. She looked at me with her cold, utterly contained face.

  “You saved my life, John. Again.”

  “And you saved mine,” I said easily. “It’s what we do. All part of being in a relationship.”

  “I know…it’s not easy, for you,” she said. “That close as we are, we still can’t be…close. You’ve been so patient with me.”

  She reached out and touched my face gently with her fingertips. I stood very still and let her do it. I could feel the effort it took, for her to do that much. She trailed a fingertip across my lips—the closest we could come to a kiss. Suzie Shooter, Shotgun Suzie, who took no shit from me, or gods, or anyone in the Nightside, was still mostly helpless in the face of her own inner demons.

  I would have killed the brother who’d done this to her if she hadn’t already killed him years ago.

  “I love you, Suzie,” I said. “If you never believe anything else, believe that.”

  “I love you, John. As much as I can.”

  “That’s what matters. That’s all that matters.”

  “No it isn’t!”

  She made herself hug me, holding me tight. Her bandoliers of bracelets pressed against my chest. She was breathing hard, from the effort of what this cost her. Her whole body was stiff and tense. I didn’t know whether to put my own arms around her or not, but in the end I held her as gently as I could.

  “Love you, John,” she said, her chin on my shoulder. I couldn’t see her face. “Die for you. Kill for you. Love you till the world ends.”

  “I know,” I said. “It’s all right. Really.”

  But we both knew it wasn’t.

  TWO

  Demon Girl Reporter

  Some days they won’t even give you a chance to catch your breath. Suzie and I were just walking out of Fun Faire when my mobile phone rang. (The ring tone is the theme from The Twilight Zone. When I find a joke I like, I tend to stick with it.) An unctuous voice murmured in my ear.

  “You have one phone call and one important message. Which would you like to hear first?”

  “The call,” I said determinedly.

  “I’m sorry,” said the voice. “I’m afraid I have been paid to insist you listen to the important message first. Have you ever considered the importance of good Afterlife insurance?”

  I sighed, hit the exorcism function on the phone, and was gratified to hear the voice howl in pain as it was forced out of my phone. Admail…You’ll never convince me it isn’t a plot by demons from Hell to make life not worth living. With the admail banished, my call came through clearly. It was my teenage secretary, Cathy, calling from my office. (I’d rescued her from a house that ate people, and she adopted me. I didn’t get a say in the matter. I let her run my office to keep her out of my hair. Worryingly, she’s far better at it than I ever was.)

  “Got a case for you, boss,” she said cheerfully.

  “I’ve just completed two in a row,” I said plaintively. “I was looking forward to some serious quality time, with a nice hot bath and my rubber ducky. Rubber ducky is my friend.”

  “Oh, you’ll want to take this one,” said Cathy. “The offices of the one and only Unnatural Inquirer called. They need your services desperately, not to mention very urgently.”

  “What on earth does that appalling rag want with me? Or have they finally decided to hire someone to try to find their long-missing ethics and good taste?”

  “Rather doubt it, boss. They wouldn’t go into details over an open line, but they sounded pretty upset. And the money offered really is very good.”

  “How good?” I said immediately.

  “Really quite staggeringly good,” said Cathy. “Which means that not only are they pants-wettingly desperate, but there has to be one hell of a catch hidden away in it somewhere. Go on, boss, take the case. I’d love to hear what goes on in that place. They have all the best stories; I never miss an issue.”

  “The Unnatural Inquirer is a squalid, scabrous, tabloid disgrace,” I said sternly. “And the truth is not in it.”

  “Who cares about truth, as long as they have all the latest gossip and embarrassing celebrity photos? Oh please please please…”

  I looked at Suzie. “Do you need me to…?”

  “Go,” she said. “I have to claim my bounty money.”

  She strode off, not looking back. Suzie’s never been big on good-byes.

  “All right,” I said into the phone. “Give me the details.”

  “There aren’t many. They want you to visit their editorial offices to discuss the matter.”

  “Why can’t they come to my office?”

  “Because you’re never here. You have to come in soon, boss; I have a pile of paper-work that needs your signature.”

  “Go ahead and forge it for me,” I said. “Like you did when you acquired those seven extra credit cards in my name.”

  “I said I was sorry!”

  “Where do they want to meet?”

  “They’ll send someone to bring you to them. Employees of the Unnatural Inquirer don’t like to be caught out in public. People throw things.”

  “Understandable,” I said. “Where am I supposed to go, to be met?”

  Cathy gave me directions to a particular street corner, in a not-
too-sleazy area of the Nightside. I knew it: a busy place, with lots of people always passing through. A casual meeting stood a good chance of going unnoticed, lost in the crowd. I said good-bye to Cathy and shut down the phone before she could nag me about the paper-work again. If I’d wanted to shuffle papers for a living, I’d have shot myself in the head repeatedly.

  * * * *

  Didn’t take me long to get to the corner of Cheyne Walk and Wine Street, and I lurked as unobtrusively as possible in front of a trepanation franchise—Let Some Light In, Inc. Personally, I’ve always felt I needed trepanation like a hole in the head. Still, it made more sense than smart drinks ever did. People and others came and went, carefully minding their own business. Some stood out; a knight in shining armour with a miniature dragon perched on his steel shoulder, hissing at the passers-by; a fluorescent Muse, with Catherine-wheel eyes; and a sulky-looking Suicide Girl with a noose round her neck. But most were just people, familiar faces you wouldn’t look twice at, come to the Nightside for the forbidden pleasures, secret knowledge, and terrible satisfactions they couldn’t find anywhere else. The Nightside has always been something of a tourist trap.

  I don’t like standing around in the open. It makes me feel vulnerable, an easy target. When I have to do surveillance, I always take pains to do it from somewhere dark and shadowy. People were starting to recognise me. Most gave me plenty of room; some nudged each other and stared curiously. One couple asked if they could take my photo. I gave them a look, and they hurried away.

  To keep myself occupied, I went over what I knew about the Unnatural Inquirer. I’d read the odd copy; everyone has. People do like gossip, in the way we always like things that are bad for us. The Nightside has its own newspaper of record; that’s the Night Times. The Unnatural Inquirer, on the other hand, has never allowed itself to be inhibited by mere facts. For them, the story is everything.

  All the news that can be made to fit.

  The Unnatural Inquirer has been around, in various formats, for over a hundred years, despite increasingly violent attempts to shut it down. These days Editorial, Publishing, and Printing all operate out of a separate and very private pocket dimension, hidden away behind layer upon layer of seriously heavy-duty protections. You can get cursed down to the seventh generation just for trying to find it. The paper’s defences are constantly being upgraded, because they have very powerful enemies. Partly because they print exaggerations, gossip, and outright lies about very important people, and partly because every now and again they tell the truth when no-one else will dare. The paper has no fear and shows no favour.