Tales From the Nightside

  “Books full of the secrets of Heaven and Hell,” said Jackie Schadenfreude. “And all the hidden places in between.”

  “Pleasures beyond human comprehension,” said the Painted Ghoul, licking his coloured lips. “Practices to make demons and angels cry out in the night. Heh heh.”

  “Knowledge of the true nature of reality,” said Deliverance Wilde. “That drives men mad because reality isn’t what we think it is and never has been. Take him and be welcome, Dead Boy. It’s bookleggers like Krauss that give people like us a bad name.”

  “Where is he?” I said.

  All three of them pointed in the same direction. None of their hands were particularly steady.

  I headed straight for Krauss, and everyone along the way fell back to give me plenty of room. Krauss was a nondescript, elderly man in a tweed suit with leather patches on the elbows, wearing an old-school tie he almost certainly wasn’t entitled to. He was so immersed in his auction catalogue, circling things and making notes, that he didn’t even see me coming until I was right on top of him. He looked up abruptly, alerted by the sudden silence around him, and peered at me over the top of a pair of golden pince-nez.

  “Hello,” he said, carefully. “Now what would the low-and-mighty Dead Boy want with a mere booklegger like myself? Can I perhaps be of service, help you locate something? Some suitable tome on the pleasures to be found in dead flesh, perhaps? Something explicit, on the delights of the damned? Satisfaction and complete discretion guaranteed, of course.”

  “You don’t even recognise me, do you?” I said.

  “But of course I do, my good sir! You’re Dead Boy! Everyone in the Nightside knows Dead Boy.”

  “You only think you know me,” I said. “But then, it has been thirty years and more since you paid three young thugs to mug and murder me, down on Damnation Row.”

  His jaw actually dropped, and all the colour fell out of his face. “That was you? Really? I can’t believe it . . . I helped create the legendary Dead Boy? I’m honoured!”

  “Don’t be,” I said.

  Krauss chuckled a little, relaxing now he thought he knew what this was about. “Well, well . . . I can’t believe my past has caught up with me, after so many years . . .” He tucked his catalogue neatly under one arm and looked me up and down, studying the results of his work. “I haven’t been involved in the muscle trade for . . . well, must be decades! Yes! That was a whole other life . . . I was a different person, then.”

  “So was I,” I said. “I was alive.”

  His smile disappeared. “But you can’t blame me for what I did, all those years ago! I’m a changed man now!”

  “So am I,” I said. “I’m dead. And I’m not happy about it.”

  “What . . . what do you want from me?” said Krauss. “I didn’t know . . . I had no idea . . .”

  “Who paid you?” I said. “Who hired you, to have me killed? I want to know who, and why. I wasn’t anybody back then. I wasn’t anyone special. I was a teenager.”

  Krauss shrugged quickly. There was sweat on his face. “I never asked why. Wasn’t any of my business. I only hired out muscle—that was what I did! I never asked her why, and she never said.”

  “She . . . She who, exactly?”

  “Old voodoo woman,” said Krauss. “Called herself Mother Macabre. Spooky old bat. Not the kind you ask questions of.”

  He had more to say, about how he shouldn’t be blamed for someone else’s bad intentions, that he only supplied a service, that if he hadn’t done it, somebody else would have; but I wasn’t really listening. Mother Macabre was the name of the old Obeah woman who’d been supplying me with all those special pills and potions for more than thirty years. Could it really be the same woman? Why would she pay to have me killed, then help me out? Guilt? Not likely; not in the Nightside. It didn’t make sense; but it had to be her. She was why Walker had pointed me in this direction. I looked Krauss in the eye, and he stopped talking abruptly. He started to back away. I dropped one heavy dead hand on his shoulder, to hold him still. He winced at the strength in my hand and whimpered.

  “I helped make you who you are!” he said desperately. “I helped make you Dead Boy!”

  “Let me see,” I said. “How do I feel about that?”

  I closed my hand abruptly, and all the bones in his shoulder shattered. He screamed. I hit him in the head. The whole left side of his face caved in, and his scream was choked by the blood filling his throat. I hit him again and again, breaking him, watching dispassionately as pain and horror and blood filled Krauss’s face because the last pill had worn off, and I didn’t feel anything. I thrust one hand deep into his chest, closed my cold, dead fingers around his living heart, and tore it out of his body. He fell to the floor, kicked a few times, and lay still. I looked at the bloody piece of meat in my hand, then let it drop to the floor.

  I’d killed the man who arranged my death, and it didn’t touch me at all. I sat down on the bloody floor, picked up Krauss’s body, and held it in my arms, cradling it to my chest. I still didn’t feel anything. I let him go and got up again. I looked around me. Even hardened denizens of the Nightside were shocked at what I’d done. Some were crying, some were vomiting. I smiled slowly.

  “What are you looking at?”

  I didn’t really care; but I had a reputation to maintain.

  • • •

  Outside, Sil was waiting patiently. She opened the door for me, and I took a rag out of the inner compartment and scrubbed the blood off my hands. There was more blood soaked into the front of my greatcoat, but that could wait. My coat was used to hard times. I got into the driver’s seat, the door closed, and Sil set off again.

  “Where now?” she said.

  “Just drive for a while,” I said. “And, hush, please. I have a lot to think about.”

  She drove on, cruising through the hot, neon-lit streets, while I looked at nothing and tried to make sense of what I’d learned. Mother Macabre, my trusted old Obeah woman, who’d helped me hang on to what was left of the real me for more than thirty years. Why would she have wanted me dead? I wasn’t anybody, then. Nobody special. What . . . purpose, could my poor death have served? The thoughts went round and round in my head and got nowhere. I’m not a great one for thinking. No; much better to go to the source and ask some very pertinent questions, in person.

  “Sil,” I said. “Take me to Mother Macabre. Take me to the Garden of Forbidden Fruits.”

  • • •

  You can find the Garden of Forbidden Fruits not far from the main business centre of the Nightside. It’s where you go when you want something a bit alternative to all the usual sin and sleaze. It’s the place to buy an inappropriate gift, like a killer plant that will sneak up on the recipient while they’re asleep. Or seeds that will grow into something really disturbing. And very special drugs, to give you glimpses of Heaven and Hell or rip the soul right out of you. If it grows, if it fruits and flowers in unnatural ways, you’ll find it somewhere in the Garden of Forbidden Fruits.

  I told Sil to wait for me and entered the Garden through its ever-open doors. It was just a long hallway that seemed to stretch away forever, lined on both sides with the kind of shop or establishment you only ever enter at your own risk. I’d been here many times before, to pick up my special pills and potions from my old friend, Mother Macabre. The withered old black crone, in her pokey little shop, the traditional image of the voodoo witch, who smiled and cackled as she made up my packages with her clever, long-fingered hands, and only ever charged me what I could afford. That in itself should have been enough to tip me off that something was wrong. You just don’t get that in the Nightside.

  I strode past The Little Shop of Horticulture, with its window full of snapping plants, past The Borgia Connection (for that little something he’ll never notice in his food) and Mistress Lovett’s Posy Parlour, (sleep without dreams . . .). I ignored the hanging plants outside shop doorways, which hissed at me as I passed or sang songs in languages
I didn’t recognise. I ignored the familiar, hot, wet smells of damp earth and growing things, the powerful perfumes of unlikely flowers, and the underlying stench from the bloody earth their roots soaked in. I just looked straight ahead, and everyone and everything in that long hallway shrank back from me as I passed. Until, finally, I came to the only shop-front I cared about, the one I’d visited so many times before and never thought twice about. Mother Macabre’s Midnight Mansion.

  I stood outside the open door. It wasn’t any kind of mansion, of course. Just a shop. Dark and dingy and more than a little pokey. There was never anything on display, and the only window was blank. Mother Macabre’s patrons liked their privacy. I put my shoulders back and lifted my chin. Never let them know they’ve hurt you. I strolled into the shop with my hands buried deep in the pockets of my coat, so no-one could see that my hands were curled into fists.

  It looked as it always did. It hadn’t changed because I was seeing it with new eyes. The familiar four walls of shelves, tightly packed with tightly sealed jars and bottles, full of this and that. Some of the contents were still moving. There was St. John the Conqueror root; mandrake root in sound-proofed jars; vampire teeth, clattering against the inside of the glass; all kinds of raw talent for sale, with colour-coded caps so the assistant could tell them apart at a glance; and a whole row of shrunken heads, with their mouths stitched shut to stop them screaming. All the usual tatt the tourists can’t get enough of. And behind the counter, as always, a tall, young, strong-featured black woman dressed in the best Haitian style, with an Afro and a headscarf, speaking in broad patois for the middle-aged tourist couple dithering over their purchases. Her name was Pretty Pretty, and woe betide anyone who ever raised an eyebrow at that. She had always been very kind to me before; but I wasn’t sure if that would save her now.

  I waited patiently until she was finished with the tourists. They left happily enough, with their jar full of something that glowed with a sour, spoiled light; and I shut the door behind them and turned the sign to read CLOSED. Pretty Pretty looked at me curiously and started to say something in the patois. I raised a hand, and she stopped.

  “Please,” I said. “I’m not a tourist.”

  “Never said you were, darling,” said Pretty Pretty, in the polished voice of her very expensive finishing school. “Now what on earth are you doing here? You can’t have run out already, surely? I mean, honestly darling, you do get through those things at a rate of knots . . . You’re not supposed to just pop them back like sweeties . . .”

  And then she stopped, her voice trailing away. There must have been something in my face, in my eyes, because she stood very still behind her counter. She must have had defences there, but she had enough sense not to go for them. I smiled at her, and she actually shuddered.

  “Mother Macabre,” I said. “I want her. Where is she?”

  “She just left, darling,” said Pretty Pretty. She swallowed hard. “Maybe half an hour ago? You just missed her . . . Is it important?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Stay out of the way, Pretty Pretty. I’m prepared to believe you’re not involved. Keep it that way.”

  I strode past the counter and kicked in the door that led to Mother Macabre’s private office. The lock exploded, and the heavy wood cracked and fell apart. I pulled the pieces out of the broken frame and threw them to one side. There must have been magical protections, too, because I felt them run briefly up and down my dead skin; but they couldn’t touch me. Pretty Pretty made an unhappy noise but had enough sense to stay behind her counter.

  The private office looked very ordinary, very business-like. I tried the computer on her desk, but it was all locked down. And even I can’t intimidate passwords out of a computer. I tried all the desk drawers, and the In and Out trays, but it was all everyday paper-work. Nothing of interest. So I trashed the whole office, very thoroughly. To make a statement. Pretty Pretty watched timidly from the doorway. When I tore the heavy wooden desk apart with my bare hands, she made a few refined noises of distress. When I’d finished, because there was nothing left to break or destroy, I stood and considered what to do next, picking splinters out of my unfeeling hands. I looked sharply at Pretty Pretty, and she jumped, only a little.

  “Where would Mother Macabre be? Right now?”

  “I suppose she could be at her club,” Pretty Pretty said immediately. Anyone else she would have told to go to Hell, and even added instructions on the quickest route; but I wasn’t anyone else. “She owns this private club, Members Only, called the Voodoo Lounge. Do you know it?”

  “I know of it,” I said. “I can find it.”

  “Should I . . . phone ahead? Let her know you’re coming?”

  “If you like,” I said. “It won’t make any difference. I’ll find her wherever she goes.”

  “Why?” said Pretty Pretty. “What’s happened? What’s changed?”

  “Everything,” I said.

  • • •

  I’d heard of the Voodoo Lounge. Not the kind of place I’d ever visit but very popular with the current Bright Young Things keen to throw away their inheritance on the newest thrill. Voodoo for the smart set, graveyard chill for those just old enough to know better. Very expensive, very exclusive, very hard to get into—for most people. I told Sil to take me there, and she didn’t say a word. We drove in silence through the angry traffic, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I was getting close now. I could feel it. Close to all the answers I ever wanted, and one final act of vengeance . . . that even I was smart enough to realise I might not be able to walk away from.

  Sil pulled up outside the Voodoo Lounge. I got out and told her to wait for me. She didn’t answer. She wasn’t sulking, or even disapproving; it was simply that she knew better than to speak to me when I was in this kind of mood. The risen dead don’t have many positive qualities, but stubbornness is definitely one of them. There were two guards on duty, outside the black-lacquered doors that gave entrance to the Voodoo Lounge. Very large black gentlemen, with shaven heads and smart tuxedos. I put on my best worrying smile and strode right at them. They knew who I was, probably even knew why I was there; but neither of them did the sensible thing and ran. You have to admire such dedication to duty. They looked at me expressionlessly and moved to stand just a little closer together, blocking my way to the entrance.

  “Members only, sir,” said the one on the left.

  “No exceptions, sir,” said the one on the right.

  “We have orders to keep you out.”

  “By whatever means necessary.”

  “On your way, Dead Boy.”

  “Not welcome here, zombie.”

  I let my smile widen into a grin and kept on coming. One of them pulled a packet of salt from his pocket, and threw the contents into my face. Salt is a good traditional defence against zombies, but I’ve always been a lot more than that. The other guard produced a string of garlic and thrust it in my face. I snatched one of the bulbs away from him, took a good bite, chewed on it, and spat it out. No taste. Nothing at all. And while I was doing that, the first guard produced a gun and stuck the barrel against my forehead.

  “When in doubt,” he said calmly, “go old-school. Shoot them in the head.”

  He pulled the trigger. The bullet smashed through my forehead, through my dead brain, and out the back of my head. I rocked slightly on my feet, but I didn’t stop smiling. The guard with the gun actually whimpered as I snatched the gun out of his hand and tossed it to one side.

  “That’s been tried,” I said. “I’ll have to fill the hole in with plaster of Paris again.”

  I punched the guard in the face, smashing his nose and mouth and jaw, and then back-elbowed the other guard in the side of the head. They both went down and didn’t get up again. Normally, I would have taken the time to do them both some serious damage, to make a point, but I had more important things in mind. I stepped over the broken guards, kicked in the black-lacquered doors, and strode into the Voodoo Lounge.

 
• • •

  “Hello!” I said loudly, as I strode into the entrance hall. “I’m here! Come on, give it your best shot! Do your worst! I can take it!”

  And the next level of defence came running silently down the hallway towards me. A short, stocky Chinaman, the tattoos down one side of his face marking him as a combat magician. A very powerful and frightening figure—to anyone else. He waited till he was almost upon me, then he gestured sharply and snatched a blazing ball of fire out of nowhere. Vivid green flames shot up around his hand, and he stopped dead in his tracks to thrust them at me. Emerald fires blasted me like a flame-thrower. But I was already turning, putting my back to him; and the searing flames slammed against my deep purple greatcoat. A terrible fire roared over and around me; but it couldn’t touch me. In my dead state, I couldn’t even feel the heat. And when the flames finally died out, I straightened up, turned around, and smiled at the combat magician.

  “I had my coat fire-proofed long ago, on the quiet, for occasions just like this,” I said.

  And while I was saying that, holding his attention, I surged forward, snatched the jade fire amulet out of his hand, and beat him to the floor. I heard his skull crack and break under the blows, but I hit him a few more times anyway, to be sure. I stood over him, listening to the bloody froth bubble in his mouth and nose, and felt nothing, nothing at all. I studied the fire amulet, a simple jade piece with a golden cat’s-eye pupil at its heart. You can buy them at any market in the Nightside, though learning the proper Words of Power to make them work costs rather more. I turned the amulet back and forth, admiring the quality of the workmanship, then I said the right Words and set fire to the combat magician. His screams, and the sound of the consuming flames, followed me down the hall as I walked away.

  • • •

  The interior of the club had been painted all the shades of red and purple. It was like walking through the interior of someone’s body. The air was thick with the scents of burned meat and spilled blood, and all kinds of illegal smoke. Smells so heavy even I could detect them. The air was hot and damp, and heavy beads of condensation ran down my face. I couldn’t feel the heat or the moisture; I only noticed them when they fell down to stain my coat. The pills and the potions had worn off, and it was hard for me to feel anything.