The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  ONE - Into the Dragon’s Mouth

  TWO - Hot Pursuit in a Cold Town

  THREE - Familiar Faces, Come Round Again

  FOUR - Larry Oblivion, Treasure-Seeker

  FIVE - Everybody’s Talking at Me

  SIX - Crime Scene Investigators

  SEVEN - Not Just Another Walk on the Nightside

  EIGHT - I’m Here, Mark

  NINE - Old Truths Come Home to Roost

  TEN - And He Took Him Up to a High Place

  ELEVEN - Bringing Them All Back Home

  EPILOGUE

  Novels of the Nightside

  SOMETHING FROM THE

  NIGHTSIDE

  AGENTS OF LIGHT AND

  DARKNESS

  NIGHTINGALE’S LAMENT

  HEX AND THE CITY

  PATHS NOT TAKEN

  SHARPER THAN A SERPENT’S

  TOOTH

  HELL TO PAY

  THE UNNATURAL INQUIRER

  JUST ANOTHER JUDGEMENT

  DAY

  THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND

  THE UNCANNY

  Secret Histories Novels

  THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN TORC

  DAEMONS ARE FOREVER

  THE SPY WHO HAUNTED ME

  Deathstalker Novels

  DEATHSTALKER

  DEATHSTALKER REBELLION

  DEATHSTALKER WAR

  DEATHSTALKER HONOR

  DEATHSTALKER DESTINY

  DEATHSTALKER LEGACY

  DEATHSTALKER RETURN

  DEATHSTALKER CODA

  Hawk and Fisher Novels

  SWORDS OF HAVEN

  GUARDS OF HAVEN

  Also by Simon R. Green

  BLUE MOON RISING

  BEYOND THE BLUE MOON

  DRINKING MIDNIGHT WINE

  Omnibus

  A WALK ON THE NIGHTSIDE

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2010 by Simon R. Green.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form

  without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in

  violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  eISBN : 978-1-101-17145-5

  1. Private investigators—Fiction. 2. City and town life—England—London—Fiction.

  3. London (England)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6107.R44G66 2010

  823’.92—dc22 2009040931

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  The good, the bad, and the uncanny.

  We’re all in there somewhere.

  This is the Nightside.

  Hidden away deep in the hollow heart of London is another city, another world, another reality. Where it’s always night, always dark, always three o‘clock in the morning; the hour that tries men’s souls. Rain-slick streets, gaudy neon signs the exact colours of childhood candy we always knew was bad for us. Bars and clubs and private establishments, where you can find everything you’re not supposed to want. Love for sale on every street-corner, love, or something like it. And the constant roar of traffic that never, ever stops.

  Angels and demons lurk in shadowed alleyways, arranging deals and making decisions never to be shared with Humankind. Nightmares go walking in borrowed flesh, and not everything that looks back at you with human eyes is really human. Who watches the watchmen? Who preys on the predators? Who gives a damn, in the night that never ends?

  I’m John Taylor, private investigator. Tall, dark of eye, and handsome enough at a distance. I take the cases no-one else will touch, because I have a special gift for finding things. Most of my clients say they want me to find the truth; but they don’t always mean it. I wear a long white trench coat, like a knight in cold armour; and I have fought monsters, in my time.

  You can find monsters in the Nightside, and gods, too, if they don’t find you first. Forbidden knowledge, appalling pleasures, sex and death and everything in between; all yours for the asking. As long as you remember: buyer beware. If you can’t spot the patsy in the deal, it’s almost certainly you.

  This is the Nightside. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

  ONE

  Into the Dragon’s Mouth

  I was out and about that night, taking my trench coat for a walk, when a sudden fog came rolling down the street towards me like a grim grey tidal wave. I stopped, and studied its progress cautiously. We don’t get many fogs, in the Nightside. We get lots of rain, and thunder-storms, and the occasional hail of frogs, but we don’t really do weather, as such. Weather and seasons are part of the natural order of the world, and we don’t really do natural either. So a sudden fog always means trouble for someone.

  People on the street were already running ahead of the fog, or disappearing into sheltering doorways, as the thick pearl grey wall rolled relentlessly on, enveloping clubs and shops and soaking up the neon light, till only the merest Technicolor glints showed through, like so many half-blinded eyes. A growing silence moved with the fog as it ate up all the life and laughter in the street. I could see dim shapes moving, caught in the thick mists, struggling slowly like insects caught in hardening amber. The fog smeared itself across shop-windows, filling the night and hanging heavily on the air, surging forward in sudden, billowing clouds. Up close, the pearly grey mists were full of shimmering sparks and uncertain shapes that came and went in a moment. I seriously considered running.

  This had all the makings of a flux fog.

  Such things are dangerous. A flux fog means the corners of the world aren’t properly nailed down any more, and reality is up for grabs. Inside a flux fog, all certainties are thrown into question, and all the possibilities that ever were are suddenly made equal. Take the wrong turning, in a grey world where every turn looks just like every other, and you could end up walking out of the fog into a whole new place. With no guarantee you’ll ever
find a way home again. Everything looks blurred and out of focus in a flux fog because you’re seeing a dozen different dimensions, a hundred possibilities, for every object or person or direction. People and places can change subtly even as you approach them; familiar faces can become strangers, and in the blink of an eye you’re trapped in a world that never knew you. The only real defence against a flux fog is not to be there when one manifests.

  I should have known better than to be out and about on such a night. The weather forecast had been Changeable, with a side order of On your own head be it. But I felt the need to go out, to walk up and down the Nightside, to see what there was to be seen and think a few very private thoughts. Some thoughts can only be properly considered when you’ve removed yourself from your comfort zone. A melancholy had come upon me over a period of weeks, and I wasn’t sure why. Things were actually going well, for a change. I was wealthy enough that I could pick and choose my cases, pursuing only those that interested me; and I was respected enough that no-one had tried to kill me in weeks. And Suzie and I were ... closer than ever.

  I had everything I’d ever dreamed of So why was I so restless ? Why was I waiting... for the hammer to fall?

  Suzie was out pursuing a case of her own, hunting down some poor bastard for the bounty on his head, and the house had seemed very still and quiet without her in it. I’d felt strangely agitated, disturbed, uneasy ... as though someone, somewhere, had me in his gun-sight. So I left the house and went out for a walk, to think and brood, and hopefully tempt any possible enemy out into the open, where I could get at him.

  And what I got, for my trouble, was a flux fog.

  The mists really were getting quite close now. People stepped out of the grey wall before me, vague and indistinct, their details only firming up as they left the fog behind them. A giant teddy bear in a World War I British Army uniform looked confusedly about him, clutching his rifle with his furry paws. A scientific person in a pristine white lab coat stalked right past me, gabbling to himself in low Coptic. And a gaggle of Russian tourists in Chernobyl Health Spa T-shirts started to take photographs of me, before they realised who I was and decided to take a sudden interest in something else instead.

  Nothing out of the ordinary, for the Nightside, where some days you can’t trust anyone or anything to stay the same for ten minutes in a row. All the people here have some nasty little secrets, something cold and unpleasant clutched greedily to their bosoms, some special need or fascination that could only be revealed and satisfied in the neon-lit streets of the Nightside. A private face behind every public mask, a hidden meaning peeking through whatever words they choose to share with you. Even I had turned out to be ... not who I thought I was.

  Lilith’s son ...

  The flux fog surged forward, filling the street, and I opened my arms to it, embracing the bitter, tingling mists as they rolled over me. A reckless, stupid thing to do; but the restlessness was so great in me, I felt a desperate need to do something, anything, out of character, just to prove to myself that I was still in charge of my life. That I was still making the decisions. The mists felt hot and clammy, like the steam in a sick-room, where the fever burns like madness and inspiration all at once. Shadowy shapes skittered all around me, like sharks circling a body in the water; and somewhere far away a great bell made of ice tolled the hours before dawn.

  And then, just like that, the fog was gone. The street was back, in all its wild and gaudy details, the clubs and bars and private establishments as loud and raucous as ever. The bright primary colours of the neon signs blazed as sleazily as ever, and the huge oversized Moon shone coldly in the clear night sky. People spilled back out onto the pavements, once again intent only on tracking down their own particular heavens and hells, their very own private rewards and damnations. Nothing had changed, least of all me. I lowered my arms, feeling faintly foolish and obscurely disappointed. The flux fog hadn’t touched me. Perhaps because of my not-altogether-human nature; perhaps because it was afraid of me. Or perhaps because it wouldn’t deign to touch anyone who wanted it...

  Why was I so restless, that night of all nights? Why did I want so badly for my life to change? Was it because I’d finally got everything I ever wanted, and all I could think was ... Is this it?

  Perhaps fortunately, my mobile phone rang, playing Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells.” I finally got rid of the Twilight Zone theme; you can run some jokes into the ground. I took out my phone, hit the exorcism function to keep out the really determined ad mail, and did my best to speak cheerfully and normally.

  “Hi, there! You have reached John Taylor, private investigator, hero for hire, and female impersonator for private functions. This may or may not be a recording. Speak now.”

  “Oh God, you’re in one of your moods again, aren’t you?” said my secretary, Cathy. “I don’t know why you ever try to sound cheerful; you know you’re no good at it. I, on the other hand, am always bright and cheerful and charming because I am young and fresh and still relatively unsullied.”

  She had a point. Cathy was so unrelentingly cheerful I used to think she dosed herself morning, noon, and night with every drug known to man, but no, it was just her. There ought to be a law.

  “What do you want, Cathy?” I said patiently. “You’re interrupting my quality time.”

  “Oh, you’re not going to believe this one, boss.”

  “What have you done this time?”

  “Nothing! Or at least nothing you need to worry about. But you won’t believe who just phoned the office, looking to hire you... An elf! Really! You could have knocked me down with a French tickler. Not only has an elf lord come to the Nightside, which is weird and scary and disturbing enough in itself, but he wants you to solve a case for him! How cool is that?”

  “Which particular elf lord are we talking about here?” I said, since one of us had to be practical and professional in this conversation, and it clearly wasn’t going to be Cathy.

  “Says he’s the Lord Screech; but you can bet good money that’s not his real name. Elves lie like they breathe. They only come into our world to mess us over.”

  “Of course,” I said. “It’s all they’ve got left. What exactly does this putative Lord Screech want me to find for him?”

  “Wouldn’t say,” sniffed Cathy. “Too far up himself to discuss details with a mere underling. Says he’ll be at the Dragon’s Mouth for the next two hours if you’d care to drop by for a little chat. No mention of money. But... he’s an elf! When did you last hear of one of them lowering himself to ask a mere human for help?”

  “Never,” I said. “Which would suggest that not only is this case going to be impossible, unethical, and quite mind bogglingly dangerous, but I’ll probably end up stabbed in the back by my own client.”

  “Well, of course,” said Cathy. “I thought that was all understood when I said, Your client is an elf. But come on, boss, we are talking major bragging rights here! You could dine out on this for months! John Taylor, the private investigator so special that even the high-and-mighty elves come to him to solve their problems! We could have new cards made!”

  “Still,” I said, “why the Dragon’s Mouth? That’s a seriously unpleasant place, even for the Nightside. What would an elf be doing there? Or does he know... that I know the Dragon’s Mouth? That once upon a time, I knew it very well.”

  “You used to frequent the Dragon’s Mouth, boss?” said Cathy, somehow managing to sound scandalized and delighted at the same time. “But it’s...”

  “The Nightside’s premiere drug den,” I said. “You never knew me in my dog days, Cathy; when I was down-and-out and on the run from everyone, including myself. I swore I’d never go back... but if that’s where the elf is, then that’s where I’m going. If only because I can’t have our crafty and underhanded elf lord thinking he has an advantage over me. No-one tells me there’s somewhere I can’t go, not even me.”

  “You’re weird, boss.”

  I shut down the phone a
nd put it away. I’d gone out into the night looking for changes, and it seemed I’d found some. I’d been thinking about my future, but it seemed my past wasn’t finished with me yet. I thrust both hands deep into the pockets of my trench coat, took a deep breath, and headed for the Dragon’s Mouth, and the deepest, darkest part of the night.

  Never trust elves. They always have their own agenda.

  There are places you just don’t go in the Nightside. Either because they’re so dangerous you know you’re going to have to fight your way in, and probably out, or because they’re so extreme, so shameful, and so damned sickening that no-one with any sense would have anything to do with them. There are bad places, dangerous places, and unhealthy places; and then there’s the Dragon’s Mouth.

  Tucked away casually in a shadowy side street not far from the old main drag, the club’s exterior really is a huge dragon’s head, some thirty feet tall and twenty wide, its huge gaping jaws forming the entrance. Rumour had it the dragon had been petrified centuries ago by the gorgon Medusa herself. In which case, I hated to think what they were using for the back door. The wide stone head was a smooth dull grey, untouched by time or weather. The eyes were deep, dark hollows. Great jagged teeth pointed up and down, like stalagmites and stalactites. There were no exterior guards; just walk in, whenever you please. All are welcome, for as long as their money or credit holds out. Anything goes, any need satisfied, enter at your own risk, and abandon hope all ye ... Well, I’m sure you know the rest.