by D. P. Watt
I made my “pilgrimage”, as the usher said I should, to the slag heaps of the Callors mines. They surround the city; great black mountains that loom as monuments to an industry long since forgotten and no longer understood; the collieries now home to legions of scavengers that work the shrivelled vineyards that perch precariously upon fatal slopes of rubble. I saw the “labour in it’; the desperate toil of an army of vagrants, like lice, scuttling across that perilous expanse of industrial ruin, littered with dangerous debris, each one of them clawing at prune-like grapes as though they were salvation, cramming them into makeshift baskets, and fending off their crippled, desperate brethren before carting their meagre treasure back to an overseer in return for copper pennies to slake their lust for the watery grog served up around the city for the filth like us, to keep us in a stupor for another day; while others—as faceless and miserable—with their masks of weariness, slurp back the toil of these poor lost souls before another evening’s hollow erotic adventures begin.
“Day” and “evening”, I just said. That is a joke. It is almost impossible to discern one from the other. I have not seen the sun, or moon, since I arrived here. Everything is a perpetual twilight, or dawn, and in the heart of the city, where the smog is thickest, it is always deepest night. There only a variance of blackness, the choking fogs pierced here and there by a gas lamp in the wealthier quarters. The centre, where the most gluttonous throngs of revellers are to be found, is alight with gaudy signs pimping each entertainment venue as though it had something different to offer. All is the same here, a crazed merry-go-round of greed and vice.
I had thought some sanctuary might be found in the disused places of the city: by old stinking canals; in abandoned houses and disused factories. But no, even these places come alive at all hours with drunken celebrants and fornicating throngs. Their insatiable lust for amusement can earn me a few coins for a little dance or silly song, to keep me in stale bread and foul liquor. As they watch me perform, their expressionless faces crack into fixed grins and they are pacified for a short while. There is no love here, no passion, just a senseless squandering of everything.
Finally, when my despair was at its deepest, and whilst searching desperately for some coins, in my tattered jacket, with which to buy some bread from another unfortunate street scrounger like myself, I came across the card that the usher had given me at the theatre, “The Metropole, A Gentlemen’s Establishment, 18 Rue Radość”.
Rue Radość was a wide thoroughfare just off the high street. Down its centre a row of trees has been cultivated, with sickly pale green leaves and twisted, thick grey trunks. I had walked the road a dozen times in my wanderings, and had no doubt passed the opulent building frequently, but my amazement and horror at the city must have clouded my memory each time I saw its grand silver signage. Either that or it had sprung into existence at my rediscovery of the card—in this purgatory the latter is not improbable.
So, one day, after contemplating the fine façade of the building for an hour or so, I dragged my weary feet up the marble steps that raised it from the pestilence of the street, in the hope of answers.
Revolving doors, edged in dark wood, opened into an ornate hallway with a grand staircase. Off to my right a bar area was busy with men, all similarly attired in dark evening dress and top hats, each wore a monocle and were clearly in heated debate. They were being served brandy from a large decanter by a tall waiter who had his back to me. These were the first people I had seen here that carried any expression other than the forced joy of clowns, or the mad glee of fools. Something serious, something significant, was happening.
The waiter turned to me.
He resembled the theatre usher in a most uncanny fashion. In another place, less nightmarish than this, I would have said they were brothers, maybe even twins. Here though I am certain that they are one person, broken into two forms of the same existence; this one tall and thin, with a thick head of grey hair, the other, short, bald and plump—each one a fairground mirror image of the other.
I stood there staring at him. He headed over briskly, with a neatly pressed white cloth folded over his arm—a stock character.
“I’m afraid we are fully booked this evening, sir,” he said, nodding deferentially. “We have a conference on, you see—a private hire. I’m very sorry, but I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“You’re the usher,” I said, my voice cracked and gravelly, as it had been unused to speaking for so long.
“I am the waiter, sir, not the usher,” he replied, driving me towards the door.
“But you were in the theatre… The Enterprise… I mean, The Central Theatre…” I insisted.
“I do not frequent the theatre, sir,” he said, taking me gently by the elbow.
“You gave me the black Callors wine and told me about your toy theatres, we talked… I drank…” I burbled.
“Ah, sir, what you know, you know, is that not enough for you?” he interrupted, with a patronising smile. “Now I really must ask you to leave, there are important people here, attending to important things, and, as much as we all might enjoy the pleasure of your company, and fond reminiscences, I’m sure you’ll agree that your attire is hardly suited to this establishment.”
In a moment I found myself outside The Metropole, with its revolving doors tapping out their slowing beat behind me, ushering me back to the dirt and squalor of the city. I watched the ceaseless groups of merry-makers emerging from and retreating to their dens, obeying whatever internal clocks regulated their sleep and their carousing.
“What you know, you know,” echoed in my head as the flat, dead faces trudged by.
I knew nothing.
Then I vomited on the marble steps of The Metropole, the only real thing that had happened at that “Gentlemen’s Establishment” since its last brick was laid.
Scene X—The Ghost Light
My heart is burst, I have lost half my soul, and even now, now, very now, I am playing out the final, appalling act; heading for the polluted river that threads its way idly through the heart of this monstrous, impotent hell. I will give myself up to the fetid waters and end this ludicrous enactment, this mystery play for the perverse and godless. Perhaps my odd usher, with his licentious smile, who so deceitfully lured me here, will watch from a bridge, swigging from a bottle of dark Callors, slowly applauding my rotting corpse as it bobs silently out of all memory, amidst the flotsam and jetsam; my bloated, lifeless hands waving rippling adulation as I am broken into rot and fumes, disintegrating into the chaotic, senseless communion of this mysterious, alien metropolis.
Exeunt Omnes
Archontes Ascendant
I had always been troubled by sentiments of compassion and justice. Whilst all about me were content to abandon themselves to the general customs of betrayal, theft, greed, covetousness and licentiousness to the point of murder, torture and savagery so commonplace on these streets of desolation, I was—for want of a better term—burdened by a sense of “goodness”. It was something that few could understand, least of all myself. My father had been the usual brutal drunkard and my mother a common street whore. I was dragged up in the traditional dockside fleapit with a brood of siblings, half of whom died before they could walk—of neglect, hunger, and some to the rats. Those of us that survived joined the usual street gangs and committed the usual delinquencies until we were old enough to either make an attempt at more professional crimes, or succumb to the terrors of the Grog and the Bacca, or find work in any of the various slavish labourer’s jobs that abound in the docks or on the slagheaps. But I was different, even as I mugged and burgled my way through a typical adolescence, something felt wrong—even the sparkle of the neon inner City could not lure me; I saw there only the wealthy and privileged enjoying their money, fuelled by of all of our wretchedness—that, I felt, was nothing to aspire to. There was clearly something very wrong with me.
The depths of my illness became apparent when one day I found a girl down by the river, cove
red in tar and in danger of falling into the shallows, where the worms are plentiful, lively and hungry. I rescued her from a terrible and painful death. She was blind, and once she’d been scrubbed up I saw she was quite pretty. After a good meal she told me she had been taken into one of Madame Arbuthnot’s Houses of Bodies when she had first bled and had been there many months before finally escaping and wandering the streets for the last week. I could only imagine what had happened to her in one of Arbuthnot’s houses, most of which were frequented by the low-lifes that bordered me in the ever-proliferating dock shanty. The “Madame” was notorious for her desire for footfall rather than quality of clientele and so her prices attracted a very particular customer. The girl told me she had been christened “Angel” by her keeper, but had forgotten her old name given by her mother, who had also been blind (but from an accident with a dredger). How they had both survived in the City, with such a condition, was a mystery to me.
I offered for her to stay with me, that I would help her and keep her from the searchers that would already be out looking for her, and any of the other girls that had managed to flee—it was a common occurrence, and an understandable one.
“If you are to be my keeper now then you have the right to name me,” she said, a shade of fear passing across her face as she realised I might just be another chapter in her hellish existence.
“No,” I said. “I am not your new keeper. I will not name you. Think of me more as… as… I don’t know… a friend.”
The word came as a surprise to both of us. I had not heard it in years, and then only as an insult traded between boys in the gang. If you had shown any level of mercy or remorse you were beaten and spat upon and called “friend of the weak”, “lover of the needy” and other, more vicious phrases that had been passed down the years to the gang bosses to help—along with the whip and the knife—to bring out the most violent and cruel of tendencies already latent in our feral beings.
That evening, with the odd word “friend” echoing in my mind, I resolved to attempt some remedy for my disease.
I went to see the healer down by the docks but even she said, after taking a good amount of my silver, that she had never heard the like of it before and had no remedy she could prescribe beyond a good few days and nights in the brothels and the dens. Mixing with a crowd or two of drunkards and some dock-scum might help me rid myself of such troublesome concerns. Perhaps a knife fight… yes, a stabbing would be good for me… a bit of blood… spread a little pain and suffering.
I returned to my ruin and found the girl there. She had ground together herbs into a paste and had used them to flavour a mouldy loaf I had not managed to finish yet. She offered it to me. There was nothing better. I ate some. It was good.
“I will name myself—Uriel,” she said. “It is a name I heard in tales from a girl who worked with me at the House of Bodies. She told me there are flying creatures that look after us, and love us, without thinking of the good or ill we have done, and that they will abide with us until our dying day and then take us to the Other Lands when our fleshy eyes fade, and we are ready to become again. One of these creatures was named Uriel and I will be named after that.”
I chewed my bread, tasting the truth of decay behind the fresh herb paste.
“Well, that is good, Uriel,” I said. “My name is Kyshmyr. I pull pig carcasses from the River, once they have been cleaned by the vat fish, and hack them apart for the restaurants and street vendors in the centre of the City. I know nothing of any flying creatures, or the Other Lands. But… it is a good name… I hope you will be happy here.”
Once again, we paused. Happy, what a strange, unusual word—it felt like another language, one from beyond The Gates.
Then my brother arrived, with a boot to the door and a bellow of loathing.
He had come to collect his rent for the shack I had near The Foundry—who he had killed to own it, and another ten down by the Old Station, I do not know, and do not want to. I hadn’t any money left, of course, and after he’d finished with me—as I was patching up my split lip and swollen eye and mopping up my own blood—I explained where the money had gone.
“I think I’ve gone and bust my knuckles on your wretched face,” he said, with a chuckle. “Well, I reckon the hag is right. Get yourself out on the town and see the real City. That’ll crush the nice little boy out of you and find the man. Either way, I’d better see my money next week, or I’ll be using more than my fists on your excuse for a body.”
Then he noticed the girl, and grinned.
“Or maybe I’ll have a little fun with your house bitch, to pay me my interest on this unapproved loan—you know how shit your credit is my little Kyshy-boy.”
He grabbed Uriel’s throat and smashed her against the wall. Her eyes rolled without direction as she choked, clawing desperately at his monstrous hands.
“Ah, the Gods! She’s a fucking cripple too,” He laughed. “You’ll never learn will you, you idiotic fool. I’ll let you both have your fun though and come and collect my payment next week—in silver, in flesh, or in blood, the choice is yours!”
He marched out, pulling the door closed behind him with a thud. It tottered a moment and then fell backwards from its broken, rusted hinges.
As the bang of the door’s collapse subsided a strange silence ensued. Normally the early night resounds with cries of agony, screams of abuse and squeals of glee. There was nothing.
After minutes of this silence the whole cacophony erupted again. It is as though we had passed into another place, somewhere safe—somewhere like nowhere.
“Do not be afraid,” Uriel said. “Someone is coming.”
I did not know what to say. Yes, I was afraid, but did not want her to know that. Who was coming? Why?
I fell upon my damp straw mat and fell asleep, the wounds on my face throbbing an almost lullaby to soothe my aching bones; the drying blood slowly etching a transient diary of my misery.
That ominous night brought me dreams of stars—yes, Stars! I had never seen one, not through the clouds of factory smoke and the thick greenish smog that hung about the River—only pictures in a book stolen by another gutter boy, from The Library, when we were children. It showed glistening sparkles of light in a dark blue sky—marvellous patterns of animals and creatures of legend, with names in languages we would never understand, and likely never even hear.
Someone was coming.
*
It proved to be true. Someone did come. Someone came to show me the truth. Someone came to bring me a gift. Someone came to release me from my prison. Someone showed me the way out of the labyrinth of myself. Someone showed me another way.
I was not expecting them though—much as I had hoped they might come, my deadened soul had almost disappeared into the darkness of the City and I was hardly able to open my eyes upon another day.
Uriel had not despaired though and in the early hours of the morning, just as the great booming horns of the coal barges sounded across the murky waters of the River, she sat up from her place on the cold boards of the floor and said, brightly, clearly, dispassionately, “The time is come. She is here.”
A quiet knock came at the door.
I picked up my knife and called, “Who is it?”
“A visitor,” a commanding voice responded. “You have been expecting me.”
I opened the door and was struck by how familiar she appeared, like distant family who carry traces of your own features. She was clothed in a dirty grey smock with a long blue cloak that almost touched the ground. She was barefoot and carried in her arms a bushel of wheat and a sprig of green foliage with white berries. She strode purposefully into the shack and handed these to Uriel, who turned to her as though she could see her, her young face alive with a delighted smile.
She sat upon my dirty straw mat and beckoned me to sit beside her. Her eyes were green, her hair brown, but her features I could not really make out; with each changing moment of light from the lantern she seemed different
, as though her entire face were in the process of forming itself, uncertain what it wished to become.
I barely spoke for hours as I listened to her. She told us long tales that she called myths, of great heroes and great battles, of kings and queens and distant countries where the ways of men are different to here. She spoke of unreal things such as honour and truth, beauty and forgiveness. I recall little detail only a sense of bewilderment and awe.
“But… who… what… what, may I ask, is your name?” I stammered.
“I have no name. I have come only to be a friend to you. I have come to make you happy,” she said.
And so the tales continued as the hours slid away and both Uriel and I became drowsy. As the night came on and the clamour of agony and lust grew louder outside she said to me, “Let us bathe in the Night Pool. You have heard the rumours, I am certain of it.”
I had indeed. The rumours were many. The Night Pool was a place of transformation, where all ills and curses were washed away and the body emerged perfect and unblemished, refreshed and reinvigorated with the strength of one hundred men and the physique of a god. The Night Pool intoxicated the senses with visions, aromas and the sounds of the First Days, when there was birdsong and the creatures of the world lived in harmony and joy. The Night Pool filled the mind with all the knowledge of the heavens and the Lost Gods, and banished doubt and worry. The Night Pool sated every physical need, no longer would the bather require sustenance or sleep. The Night Pool cleansed the hands of the toil of labour, giving to the needy and weak all they required of the world without toil or enslavement, and to the rich and masterly it erased their lust for dominance, teaching the values of equality and compassion.