The Unnatural Inquirer Part 1

The Unnatural Inquirer.

Nightside 8.

by Simon R. Green

In the Nightside, the night never ends. Hidden away in the dark, magical heart of London, dreams go walking in borrowed flesh, and temptation and salvation are always on sale. You can find anything you want in the Nightside; if it doesn't find you first.

Hot neon, dark shadows, more sin than you can shake a credit card at, wild clubs, and madder music. Put on your dancing shoes, and dance till you bleed. The night goes on and on, and the fun never stops. And someone, somewhere, has a bullet with your name on it.

My name is John Taylor. Private eye, lost soul, looking for salvation in the d.a.m.nedest places. I have a special gift for finding things, but mostly what I find is trouble. Hire me if you want to know the truth. I can't guarantee to deliver justice, or even a happy ending...but when the bodies have stopped dropping and all the comforting illusions have been ripped away, at least you'll have the truth to hug to your bruised heart.

I'm John Taylor, and this is the Nightside; and this is not a story for anyone who believes everything he reads in the papers.

ONE.

The Wrath of the Loa

One of the many problems with working as a private eye, not counting all the many people who want to kill you, often for perfectly good reasons, is that you have to wait for the work to come to you. And since I refuse to sit around my office, on the grounds that all the high tech my secretary, Cathy, has installed intimidates the h.e.l.l out of me, I seem to spend most of my time sitting around in bars, waiting for something to happen. Not a bad way to spend your life, all told. But in the end, cases are a lot like buses; you wait around for ages, then three come along at once.

I'm a private eye of the old school, right down to the long white trench coat, the less-than-traditional good looks, and the roguish air of mystery that I go to great lengths to maintain. Always keep them guessing. A good, or more properly bad, reputation can protect you from more things than a Kevlar jump-suit. I investigate cases of the weird and uncanny, the sins and problems too dark and too nasty even for the Nightside. I don't do divorce work, and I don't carry a gun. I've never felt the need.

I'd just finished a fairly straightforward case, when trouble came looking for me. I'd been called in by the slightly hysterical manager of one of the Nightside's most prominent libraries, the H P Lovecraft Memorial Library. Their proud boast: more forbidden tomes under one roof than anywhere else. I'd leafed through some of their proud exhibits in the past and hadn't been impressed. Of course they had the Necronomicon, in forty-eight languages, including Braille, and one of the few unexpurgated texts of The Gospel According to Pontius Pilate. They even had Satan's Last Testament, originally tattooed on the inside of the womb of the Fallen Nun of Lourdes. But a lot of it was strictly tourist stuff. The Book of Unp.r.o.nounceable Cults, Satanism for Dummies, and Coa.r.s.e Fishing on the River Styx. Nothing there to expand your mind or endanger your soul.

I'd been called in because twenty-seven of the Library's patrons had been discovered wandering through the stacks wide-eyed and mind-wiped. Not a trace of personality or conscious thought left in them. Which was unusually high for a Monday morning, even in the H P Lovecraft Memorial Library. Using my gift, it didn't take me long to discover that a recently acquired treatise had been reading people...I persuaded the book to put the minds back, mostly in the right bodies, and introduced it to the wonders of the Internet. Which should keep it occupied until the Library could send it somewhere else.

So, happy smiles all round, a wallet full of cash (I don't take cheques or plastic, don't ask for credit, as a refusal might involve a back elbow between the eyes), and all in all I was feeling quite pleased with myself...until I left the Library and looked down the steps to find Walker and Suzie Shooter waiting for me at the bottom. Probably two of the most dangerous people in the Nightside.

Suzie Shooter, also known as Shotgun Suzie, and Oh Christ It's Her Run, is the Nightside's leading bounty hunter. Have shotgun and grenades, will travel. A tall blonde Valkyrie in black motor-cycle leathers, with two bandoliers of bullets criss-crossing over her ample bosom, steel-toed boots, and the coldest gaze in the world. The whole left side of her face was covered in ridged scar tissue, sealing shut one eye and twisting up one side of her mouth in a constant caustic smile. She could have had it fixed easily, but she chose not to. She said it was good for business. It did give her a grim, wounded glamour.

Suzie and I are an item. Safe to say neither of us saw that one coming. We love each other, as best we can.

Walker is even more dangerous to be around, though in more subtle and indirect ways. He looks very much like your average city gent; pin-striped suit, bowler hat, calm air of authority. Someone in the City, you might think, or perhaps a Permanent Under-Secretary to some Minister you never heard of. But Walker polices the Nightside, inasmuch as anyone does, or can. In a place where everything is permitted, and sin and temptation are the order of every day, there are still lines that must not be crossed. For those who do, Walker is waiting.

He used to represent the Authorities, those grey faceless men who owned everything that mattered and took a profit from every dirty and dangerous transaction in the Nightside. Walker spoke in their name, with the Voice they gave him that could not be disobeyed, and he could call in the Army or the Church to back him up, as necessary. But since all the Authorities were killed and eaten during the Lilith War, lots of people had been wondering just where Walker drew his authority from these days. He still had his Voice, and his backup, so everyone went along.

But an awful lot of people were waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He smiled and nodded at me politely, but I ignored him on principle and gave my full attention to Suzie.

"h.e.l.lo, sweetie. I haven't seen you for a few days."

"I've been working," she said, in her cold, steady voice. "Chasing down a bounty."

"For Walker?" I said, raising an eyebrow.

She shrugged easily, the b.u.t.t of the shotgun holstered on her back rising briefly behind her head. "His money is as good as anyone else's. And you know I need to keep busy. I only really feel alive when it's death or glory time. You finished with your case?"

"Yes," I said, glancing reluctantly at Walker.

"Then walk with me, John," he said. "I could use your a.s.sistance on a rather urgent case."

I went down the steps to join him, taking my time. I'd worked with Walker before, on occasion, though rarely happily. He paid well enough, but he only ever used me for those cases where he didn't want to risk his own people. The kind of cases where he needed someone potentially deniable and utterly expendable. We strode together through the Nightside, Walker on my left and Suzie on my right, and everyone else made sure to give us plenty of room.

"I hired Suzie because someone big and important had gone missing," Walker said easily. "And I needed him found, fast. Nothing unusual there. But unfortunately, Suzie has proven entirely unable to locate the target."

"Not my fault," Suzie said immediately. "I've been through all my usual contacts, and none of them could tell me anything. Even after all the usual bribes and beatings. The man's just vanished. Jumped into a deep hole and pulled it in after him. I'm not even sure he's still in the Nightside."

"Oh, he's still here," said Walker. "I'd know if he'd left."

"Who exactly are we talking about?" I said.

"Max Maxwell," said Walker. "Ah; I take it from your expression that you have at least heard of him."

"Who hasn't?" I said. "Max Maxwell; so big they named him twice. Night-club owner, gang boss, fence, and fixer. Also known as the Voodoo Apostate, though I couldn't tell you why."

"The very man," said Walker. "A well-established, very well-connected individual. He tried to have me killed twice, but I'm not one to bear grudges. Anyway, it would appear dear Max came into possession of something rather special, something he should have had more sense than to get involved with. To be exact, the Aquarius Key."

"I know the name," I said, frowning. "Some artifact from the sixties, isn't it? Back when every Major Player had to have their very own Object of Power to be taken seriously. I've never trusted the things. You can never tell when the cosmic batteries are suddenly going to run out of juice, and you're left standing there with a silly-looking lump of art deco in your hand."

"Quite," said Walker. "Still, a very useful tool, the Aquarius Key. Part scientific, part magical, it was created to open and close dimensional doors. This was after the Babalon Working fiasco, you understand."

"Why...Aquarius?" I said.

Walker shrugged. "It was the Age. Word is, the Collector had it for a time, which was how he was able to start his marvellous collection of rare and fashionable items. Then he lost it in a card game to old blind Pew, and after that the Key went wandering through many hands, causing mischief and mayhem as it went, until finally it ended up in the possession of Max Maxwell. Where it apparently gave him ideas above his station."

"And that's how he became the Voodoo Apostate?" I said.

"Unfortunately, yes," said Walker. "Voodoo is, first and foremost, a religion in its own right. Its followers worship a wide pantheon of G.o.ds, or loas: Papa Legba, Baron Samedi, Erzulie, and Damballa. These personages can be summoned, or invited, into our world, where they possess willing worshippers. Max made himself Apostate by using the power of the Key to drag the loa into this world, whether they wanted to come or not, then thrust them into his own people. Who could then be commanded to serve him in all kinds of useful ways. Inhumanly strong, utterly unfeeling, and almost impossible to kill, they made formidable shock troops."

I winced. "Messing with G.o.ds. Always a bad idea."

"Always," said Walker. "Max used his new shock troops to enlarge his territory, with much slaughter and terror; which brought him to my attention. Inevitably, Max became greedy and overstretched himself, spread his control too thin; and the loa broke loose. Max didn't wait for them to come looking for him. He went on the run, taking the Key with him, and none of my people have been able to find him. So I turned to Suzie, with her excellent reputation for finding people who don't want to be found."

Suzie growled something indistinct. I wouldn't want to be Max Maxwell when she finally got to him. She took a target's attempts to escape capture as a personal insult.

"What makes this case so urgent that you need me?" I said. "Suzie will find him. Eventually."

"The loa have come to the Nightside," said Walker. "And they are not in a good mood. They have possessed a whole crowd of the very best bounty hunters and are currently rampaging through the Nightside, on the trail of Max Maxwell."

"Let them have him," I said. "The man is sc.u.m. A jumped-up leg-breaker, who used his voodoo to run protection rackets. Pay up, or he'd turn you into a zombie. You, or someone in your family. Nasty man. Let the loa tear him apart. The Nightside will smell better when he's gone."

"Right," said Suzie. "Wait a minute; if the loa have been possessing all the best bounty hunters...why didn't they choose me? I'm the best there is, and I'll shoot the kneecaps off anyone who says otherwise. Why didn't the loa come after me?"

"They wouldn't dare," I said, gallantly.

"Well, there is that, yes," said Suzie. "And unlike some, I'm always careful to keep my protections up to date. A girl can't be too careful."

I pitied anyone or anything dumb enough to dive into Suzie's steel-trap mind, but I wasn't dumb enough to say so out loud. Besides, a new idea had just occurred to me. I looked at Walker.

"Max still has the Aquarius Key. And you want me to get it back for you."

"I knew you'd get there eventually," said Walker. "I want you to find Max and take the Key away from him. Then bring it back to me, so I can stow it away somewhere safe and see Max locked safely away in Shadow Deep."

I would have shuddered, but it was never wise to show weakness in front of Walker. Shadow Deep is the worst prison in the world, carved out of the bedrock deep under the Nightside. It's where we put the really bad ones; or at least the ones we can't just execute and be done with, for one reason or another. Forever dark, never a glimmer of light, once they've sealed you up in your cell, you never leave again. You stay there in your cell, till the day you die. However long it takes.

"Might be kinder to just let the loa have him," I said. "We could always take the Key off whatever's left of his body afterwards."

"No," Walker said immediately. "Partly because the loa will cause havoc looking for him. Like most G.o.ds, they can be very single-minded when it comes to revenge. It's already become clear they aren't following standard bounty hunter etiquette and allowing informers to live after they've informed. But mostly I want Max back in my hands because the Nightside takes care of its own problems. Can't let outsiders think they can just walk in here and throw their weight around."

He stopped abruptly, and Suzie and I stopped with him. He took an old-fashioned gold repeater watch from his waistcoat-pocket, checked the time, put it away, and gave me a measuring look.

"Don't screw this up, John. I'm under a lot of pressure to get this done quickly, efficiently, and with no loose ends. That's why I'm handing this case over to you instead of just flooding the Nightside with my own people. If you can't locate Max, and the Key, within the next three hours, I'll have no choice but to unleash my dogs of war, which will make me very unpopular in all sorts of areas. So don't let me down, John, or I shall be sure to blame it all on you."

Suzie looked at him steadily, and give the man credit, Walker didn't flinch.

"You come for him," Suzie said coldly, "you come for me."

"Sooner or later, I come for everyone," said Walker.

"Under pressure?" I said thoughtfully, and he looked back at me. I grinned right into his calm, collected face. "From whom, precisely? Whom do you serve, now the Authorities are all dead and gone?"

But he just smiled briefly, nodded to me, and tipped his bowler hat to Suzie, then turned and walked away, disappearing unhurriedly back into the night.

Suzie Shooter and I went to the Spider's Web. A sort of up-market c.o.c.ktail bar, owned by Max Maxwell ever since he had its previous owner killed, stuffed, mounted, and put on display; it was widely known as his seat of power, where he did business with the poor unfortunates who came before him. By the time we got there, the place had already been very thoroughly trashed. Bits of it were still smouldering. Suzie drew her pump-action shotgun from its rear holster with one easy movement and led the way as we entered through the kicked-in front door.

The lobby was wrecked, with bodies everywhere. None of them had died easily. Blood had soaked into the carpet, splashed up the walls, and even stained the ceiling. Severed hands had been piled up in one corner, and all the heads were missing their faces. Suzie and I moved slowly and cautiously between the bodies, but nothing moved. The furniture looked like it had exploded.

Max Maxwell's inner office at the back of the club didn't look much better. No blood or bodies, though, which suggested Max had got out in time. A pack of tarot cards had been left scattered across the top of a huge mahogany desk, which had been cracked casually in half. Thick mats of ivy crawled across all four walls, reportedly part of Max's early-warning system; but every bit of it was dead, withered away as though blasted by a terrible frost. Here and there, something had gouged deep claw-marks through the ivy and into the wood beneath. The bare floor was covered with cabalistic symbols, a whole series of overlapping defence systems.

A lot of good they'd done.

"This man had to be seriously worried to have so many protections in one place," said Suzie.

"He had good reason," I said. "G.o.ds really don't like it when worshippers start forgetting their place and flexing their muscles."

I fired up my gift, and the world changed around me. I couldn't use my gift to pin down Max's current location; I need a specific question to get a specific answer. But there's more than one way to find someone who doesn't want to be found. I opened up my inner eye, my third eye, and Saw the world as it really is. There's a lot going on around us that most people aren't aware of, and it's probably just as well. If they knew who and what we share this world with, an awful lot of them would probably rip their own heads off rather than see it.

There were things in the office with us, drifting on currents unknown to mortal men, filling the aether like the tiny creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. And just as ugly. I focused my gift, concentrating on Max Maxwell, and his ghost image appeared before me-his past, imprinted on Time.

Max was just as big as everyone said he was. A giant of a man, huge and looming even in this semi-transparent state. Eight feet tall, and impressively broad across the chest and shoulders, he wore an impeccably cut cream-coloured suit, presumably chosen to contrast with the deep black of his harsh, craggy face. He looked like he'd been carved out of stone, a great brooding gargoyle in a Saville Row suit. He was scowling fiercely, his huge dark hands clenched into fists.

He stamped silently around his office, as though looking for something. He didn't seem scared, or even concerned. Simply angry. He unlocked a drawer in his desk and brought out something wrapped in a blood-red cloth. He made a series of signs over the bundle and then unwrapped it, revealing a bulky square contraption made up of dully shining metal pieces joined together in a way that made my eyes hurt to look at it. The Aquarius Key, presumably. It looked like a prototype, something that hadn't had all the bugs hammered out of it yet.

Max weighed the thing thoughtfully in one oversized hand, then looked round sharply, as though he'd heard something he didn't like. He gestured grandly with his free hand, and all the cabalistic signs on the floor burst into light. The ivy on the walls writhed and twisted, as though in pain. One by one, the lines on the floor began to gutter and go out. Max headed for the door.

I went after him, Suzie right there at my side. She couldn't see what I was Seeing, but she trusted me.

In as much as she trusted anyone.

We tracked Max Maxwell's ghost half-way across the Nightside. I had to fight to concentrate on his past image. When my inner eye is cranked all the way open, I can See all there is to See in the Nightside, and a lot of it the human mind just isn't equipped to deal with. The endlessly full moon hung low in the star-speckled sky, twenty times the size it should have been. Something with vast membranous wings sailed across the face of the moon, almost eclipsing it. The buildings around us blazed with protective signs, magical defences, and shaped curses scrawled across the storefronts like so much spitting and crackling graffiti. A thousand other ghosts stamped and raged and howled silently all around me, memories trapped in repeating loops of Time, like insects in amber.

Dimensional travellers flashed and flared in and out of existence, just pa.s.sing through on their way to somewhere more interesting. Demons rode the backs of unsuspecting souls, their claws dug deep into back and shoulder muscles, whispering in their host's ear. You could always tell which ones had been listening; their demons were particularly fat and bloated. Wee winged sprites, pulsing with light, shot up and down the street, fierce as fireworks, buzzing around and above each other in intricate patterns too complex for human eyes. And the Awful Ones, huge and ancient, moved through our streets and buildings as though they weren't even there, about their unguessable business.

I kept my head down, focused on Max Maxwell, and Suzie saw to it that no-one bothered me or got in our way. She had her shotgun out and at the ready, and no-one ever doubted that she'd use it. Suzie had always been a great believer in the scorched-earth solution for all problems, great and small.

Max led us right through the centre of the Nightside, and out the other side, and I had a bad feeling I knew where he was headed. Bad as the Nightside undoubtedly is, even it has its recognised Bad Places, places you simply don't go if you've got any sense. One of these is Fun Faire. It was supposed to be the Nightside's very first amus.e.m.e.nt park, for adults. Someone's Big Idea; but it never caught on. The people who come to the Nightside aren't interested in artificial thrills; not when there are so many of the real thing available on every street corner. Fun Faire was shut down years ago, and the only reason it's still taking up valuable s.p.a.ce is because the various creditors are still arguing over who owns what. Now, it's just a collection of huge rusting rides, great hulking structures left to rot in the cold, uncaring night.

Last I'd heard, they'd run through fourteen major league exorcists, merely trying to keep the place quiet.

Max had chosen Fun Faire as his bolt-hole precisely because so many bad things had happened there. So much death and suffering, so much cheerful slaughter and infernal malice, had turned the Fun Faire grounds into one big psychic null spot. The genius loci had become so awful, so soaked in blood and terror, that no-one could See into it. Which made it a really good place to hide out, for as long as you could stand it.

Suzie and I stopped at the amus.e.m.e.nt park entrance, and stood there, looking in. Max's ghost image had snapped off the moment he walked through the main archway. I shut down my Sight. The great multi-coloured arch loomed above us, paint peeling and speckled with rust. The old neon letters along the top that had once blazed the words FUN FAIRE! to an unsuspecting public were now cracked and dusty and lifeless. Someone had spray-painted over them ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE. Graveyard humour, but I had to admire their nerve. Beyond the archway it was all dark shapes and darker shadows, the metal bones of old rides standing out in stark silhouettes against the night sky. No lights, anywhere in Fun Faire. Only the uneasy shimmering blue-white glare of the full moon, marking out the paths between the rides. A glowing maze, where the monster wasn't trapped in the centre any more. A slow breeze issued out of the arch, pressing against my face, cold as the grave.

Bad things had happened here, and perhaps were still happening, on some level. You can't kill that many people, spill that much blood, delight in that much suffering and slaughter, and not leave a stain on Time itself.

It all started out so well. The Fun Faire did have its share of unusual, high-risk, high-excitement attractions. Just the thing to tempt the jaded palates of Nightside aesthetes. Or perhaps even the worst of us need to play at being children again, just for a while. So, the Dodgems of Doom could hit Mach 2 and came equipped with mounted machine-guns. The planes on the Tilt-A-Wheel had heat-seeking missiles and ejector seats. The Ghost Train was operated by real ghosts, the Tunnel of Love by a real succubus. The roller coaster guaranteed to rotate you through at last five different spatial dimensions or your money back. And the candy floss came treated with a hundred and one different psychotropic drugs.

But eventually someone noticed that though an awful lot of people were going into Fun Faire, a significant percentage weren't coming out again.

And then it all went to h.e.l.l.

No-one's too sure what started it. Best guess is someone put a curse on the place, for whatever reason. The first clue that something was severely wrong came when the wooden horses on the Merry-Go-Round became possessed by demons and started eating their riders. The Tilt-A-Wheel speeded itself up and sent its mock planes shooting off into s.p.a.ce. They didn't fly far. The roller coaster disappeared into another dimension, taking its pa.s.sengers with it, and never returned. Distorted reflections burst out of the distorting mirrors and ran amok, killing everyone they could get their hands on.

Screams came out of the Ghost Train, and even worse screams out of the Tunnel of Love. The I-Speak-Your-Weight machines shouted out people's most terrible inner secrets. The Clown that never stopped laughing escaped from his booth and strode through Fun Faire, ripping off people's heads and hanging them from his belt. Still laughing. The customers ran for the exit. Some made it out.

The Authorities sealed off Fun Faire, so nothing inside could get out, and soon the whole place was dark and still and silent. No-one volunteered to go in and check for survivors, or bring out the dead. The Nightside isn't big on compa.s.sion.

The owners, and then their creditors, turned to priests and exorcists, air strikes and high explosives, and none of it did any good. Fun Faire had become a Bad Place, and most people had enough sense to stay well clear of it. But, this being the Nightside, there were always those brave enough or stupid enough to use it as a hiding place, secure in the knowledge that only the most desperate pursuers would even think of coming in after them.

I looked at Suzie. "Fancy a stroll around? Check out all the fun of the fair?"

"Why not?" said Suzie.

We strode through the archway, shoulder to shoulder, into the face of the gusting breeze. It was bitterly cold inside the Faire, and the silence had a flat, oppressive presence. Our footsteps didn't echo at all. The rides and attractions loomed up around us, dark skeletal structures, and the rounded, almost organic shapes of the tattered tents and concession stands. We stuck to the middle of the moonlit paths. The shimmering light couldn't seem to penetrate the shadows. Here and there, things moved, always on the edge of my vision. Perhaps moved by the gusting wind, which seemed to be growing in strength. Suzie glared about her, shotgun at the ready. It might have been the oppressive nature of the place getting to her, or it might not. Suzie always believed in getting her retaliation in first.