Power surged through me, igniting my gift, and I blazed so very brightly as I advanced on the dark column before me. Suzie and Cathy and all the other victims advanced with me, and the house screamed and screamed. The column shrank and compacted, growing thinner and thinner, until finally I was able to join my shining hands with the trusting Suzie, the furious and betrayed Cathy, and the ghost of a woman I could have loved. We were all shining like suns now. I gathered together all our rage and hate and need, channeling all the many victims through my gift, and struck out at the dark heart of the thing that pretended to be a house. It howled once, with impotent horror, and then the dark swirling column was suddenly gone, and the voice of the house was stilled forever.
The other side of my gift. To find another’s death.
I’ve never carried a gun. I don’t need one.
I looked around the endless plain, that grey and empty place, and all the hundreds of victims were gone, their souls released at last to find the only peace left to them. And gone with them, a designed and programmed piece of bait that had briefly learned what it was to be human, and would not give it up.
You have to believe in dreams, because sometimes they believe in you.
I fell back into my body and glared wildly about me. All my strength was back, restored by the departed souls of the house’s victims. I was still trapped in an enclosed room, with no way out, but the house was dead now. Already the air was thick with the sweet cloying stench of decay. The eye in the ceiling was closed and gone, and the phosphorescent glow from the walls was slowly fading. Ragged cracks spread slowly across the walls, tearing them apart like rotting flesh. And there, on the floor, what was left of Cathy Barrett. Gaunt, desiccated and half-dead, but finally separate from the consuming floor, ejected by the house’s dying spasms, as I’d hoped. She was struggling to sit up, her face mad as hell. I helped her sit up, and wrapped the long coat around her. She held it closed with hands that were little more than bone and skin, and managed a brief, but real, smile for me.
“It lied to me,” she said. “It told me everything I secretly wanted to hear, so I believed it. And when it finally had me, it made me happy; but inside I was screaming all the time. You saved me.”
“It’s what I do,” I said. “It’s my job.”
She studied me for a while. “If my mother had known I was here, and in trouble, I like to think she would have sent someone like you. Someone … reliable.”
“Look, this is all touching as hell,” Suzie said briskly, “but I’d really like to get out of here.”
“Good point,” I said. “I’ve only just had this trench coat cleaned.”
Together, we got Cathy onto her feet and helped support her. It wasn’t difficult. She couldn’t have weighed more than seventy pounds.
“Where were we?” she said abruptly. “The grey place. What was that?”
“The house was only vulnerable through its heart,” I said, urging her towards the place in the wall where the door had been. “So, the house hid its heart in another place. Another dimension of reality, if you like. It’s an old magical trick. But I can find anything.”
“Are you sure it’s dead?” said Suzie. “All the way, not coming back in the last reel, dead? I mean, it’s still here, and we’re still trapped inside it.”
“It’s dead,” I said. “And from the smell and general state of things, I’d say its body is already starting to decay. It never really belonged in our world. Only its augmented will allowed it to survive here. Suzie, make us a door.”
She looked at me. “You might remember, my gun didn’t work too well, last time.”
“I think you’ll find it will now.”
Suzie grinned like a child who’s just been presented with an unexpected present, and drew her shotgun while I supported Cathy. Suzie opened fire on the wall at point-blank range again, and this time the blast punched a hole right through the wall, blowing it apart like rotten meat. Suzie loaded and fired again and again, laughing aloud as she widened the hole, and finally stepped forward to tear at the edges of the hole with her bare hands, widening it still further. She looked at the filth dripping from her hands, and grimaced.
“Damn stuff is falling apart.”
“The whole house will fall apart soon,” I said. “And lose what’s left of its precarious hold on our reality. I really don’t think we should be here when that happens; do you? Give me a hand here, Suzie.”
We took a firm hold on Cathy’s frail body and forced our way through the ragged gap in the wall, half-falling out onto the trembling corridor beyond. We’d barely got our feet under us before the edges of the hole in the wall behind us ran together like melting wax. Strange lights glowed everywhere, like the dim unhealthy glows of corpsefires, and the sickly-sweet stench of corruption was fast becoming overwhelming. I hurried us along the corridor towards the stairs, and the walls we passed were already developing black, diseased patches. The ceiling was bowing down towards our heads, as though it could no longer support itself. The whole floor was shuddering now, and the jagged cracks in the walls were lengthening in sudden spurts. By the time we got to the top of the stairs, the floor was sagging dangerously under our feet.
“Let’s move like we have a purpose, people,” I said. “I don’t think this house is long for this world. And I really don’t think we’d like being trapped in the kind of world that could produce a creature such as this.”
“Right,” said Suzie. “I’d have to kill everything in it, just on general principles. And I didn’t bring enough ammunition with me.”
We hurried down the swaying stairs, Cathy helping as best she could, which wasn’t much. The house had eaten most of her muscles. She was still game as hell, though. The wall beside the stairs was melting slowly, like wax running down a candle. The steps clung to our feet like sticky toffee, until we had to drag them free by brute force. I grabbed at the banister for support, and a whole chunk of it came away in my hand, rotting and purulent. I pulled a face, and threw the stuff away.
We hit the wide hallway running, mostly carrying Cathy now, while the swaying walls bulged forwards on all sides, and the ceiling fell on us in thick muddy drops. Where the front door had been there was only a slumping, rotting hole, dark and purple, its edges dripping like a diseased wound. It was slowly irising shut, collapsing in on itself. Already it was far too small for any of us to get through.
“Oh God,” said Cathy. “We’re never going to get out of here. It’s never going to let us go.”
“It’s dead,” said Suzie. “It doesn’t have a say in the matter. And we are leaving, whatever it takes. Right, Taylor?”
“Right,” I said.
Beyond the collapsing hole that had once pretended to be a door, I could see a glimpse of the outside world, clear and calm and relatively sane. I glared at the closing hole, bludgeoning it with my gift, and it winced open, reluctantly widening again. Suzie and I took firm hold of Cathy and charged the hole, hitting it at a dead run. The decaying tissues grabbed at us, but we crashed through and out in a moment. We burst onto Blaiston Street, back into the world of men, and the newly falling rain washed us clean.
We staggered to a halt in the middle of the street, whooping like crazy in celebration, and lowered Cathy to the ground. She ran her hands over the solid street, that might have been filthy dirty but never pretended to be anything other than what it was, and started to cry. I looked back at the dead house. It was slowly sagging and falling in on itself, the windows drooping shut like so many tired eyes. What was left of the hole we’d crashed through looked like nothing more than a bruised, pouting mouth.
“Rot in hell,” I said.
I hit the dead thing with my gift one last time, pushing it over the edge, and what was left of the creature that had pretended to be a house dropped out of the Nightside and was gone, back to whatever awful place it had come from, leaving behind only a few decaying chunks and a stench of corruption already slowly dissipating in the rain. By the time Walker
arrived with his people, there wasn’t even anything left to bury.
****
The rain had mostly died away. I was shaking just a little, probably not from the cold. At least the night sky was still packed with stars and a huge white moon, and I tried to take some comfort from that. I sat on the pavement, hunched inside my filthy trench coat, watching Walker’s people on the other side of the road as they swarmed all over the vacant lot where the house had been. They didn’t seem to be having much luck, but every now and again they’d get all excited over some mess of decaying tissue, and make a big deal about sealing it into a snap-lock plastic bag. For evidence, or later analysis, perhaps.
Or maybe Walker just fancied his chances of growing himself a new house. Walker was always on the look-out for some new dirty trick he could spring on whoever happened to be his enemy that week. He was currently ordering his people about from a very safe distance, careful as always not to get his own hands dirty.
He turned up with a small army of his people not long after I’d brought Suzie and Cathy out of the dead house. He and they had been standing by, observing, just in case I screwed up after all. Apparently Walker had heard the house scream as it died. I had no trouble believing that. I’d always thought Walker would make a really good vulture.
Cathy sat beside me, still wrapped in the long grubby coat she refused to give up, leaning companionably against me. Walker had conjured up a large mug of beef tea for her from somewhere, and she sipped at it now and again, when she remembered. Her body had been so reduced by the house it had even forgotten how to be hungry. Suzie stood guard over us with her shotgun in her hands, giving Walker the hard look if he even looked like drifting too close to us. Even Walker knew better than to cross Suzie Shooter unnecessarily.
The memory of Joanna still haunted me, though her ghost had disappeared along with the house. I couldn’t believe she’d fooled me for so long … but she’d seemed so real. I had to wonder whether I’d believed in her for the same reasons that Cathy had believed the house’s promises, because we were told just what we wanted to hear. That I’d loved Joanna because she’d been created specifically by my enemies to be my perfect love. Hard, but vulnerable. Strong, but desperate. A lot like me, in fact. Someone had done their homework very well, the bastards. But I still think that in the end Joanna believed in herself because I believed in her, that she became, if only briefly, a real person through an effort of will. Her own will. Dreams can come true, in the Nightside. Everyone knows that.
But they still vanish when you wake up.
Suzie looked down at me, frowning, correctly divining my thoughts. “You always were too soft for your own good, Taylor. You’ll get over her. Hey, you still got me.”
“Lucky me,” I said. She meant well, in her own way.
“And we kicked that house’s arse, didn’t we?”
“Yes,” I said. “We did that.”
Suzie looked across at the vacant lot, unimpressed by Walker’s people and their efforts. “How many people did that thing eat, do you think, before we shut it down?”
I shrugged. “How many lost souls and losers are there, in the Nightside? And how many of them would have to go missing, before anyone noticed? Or cared? Walker only got involved after a few movers and shakers accidentally got sucked in.”
Walker picked up on his name, and strolled casually over to join us, keeping a wary eye on Suzie. She turned her gun on him, smiling unpleasantly, but I gestured for her to let him approach. There were things I needed to know, now I was feeling a little stronger. He tipped his bowler hat to us politely.
“You knew,” I said.
“I suspected,” said Walker.
“If you’d been sure,” I said slowly, “would you still have let me go in there, not knowing?”
“Probably. You’re not one of my people, Taylor. I don’t owe you anything.”
“Not even the truth?”
“Oh, especially not that.”
Suzie frowned. “Are you two talking about the house, or Joanna?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Walker has always been very jealous of the secrets he guards. Tell me this, Walker. Is my mother really coming back?”
“I don’t know,” he said, holding my gaze calmly. His manner was open and sincere, but then, it always was. “There are rumours … but there are always rumours, aren’t there? Perhaps … you should stick around, just in case.” He looked across at the vacant lot, so he wouldn’t have to look at me. “I could always put a little work your way, now and again. Unofficially, of course. Since it seems you haven’t lost your touch, after all.”
“You’ve got some nerve,” said Suzie.
He smiled at her, every inch the polite and demure civil servant. “Comes with the job, my dear.”
“I am not your dear, Walker.”
“And don’t think I’m not grateful.”
I intervened, before things started getting out of hand. “Walker, can you look after Cathy for me? See that she gets back to the real world, and her mother? Her real mother?”
“Of course,” said Walker.
“You can forget that shit,” Cathy said sharply. “I’m not going back. I’m not ever going back. I’m staying here, in the Nightside.”
I gave her my best harsh glare. “Are you crazy? After everything you’ve been through?”
She smiled at me over her mug of beef tea, and there wasn’t a trace of humour in that smile. “There’s more than one kind of nightmare. Trust me; bad as this place can be, it’s still nothing compared to what I ran away from. I thought I’d stay with you, John. Could you use a secretary? Every private eye has to have a smart-mouthed secretary who knows a thing or two. I think it’s in the rule book.”
Suzie started to laugh, and then turned it into an unconvincing coughing fit when I glared at her. Walker became very interested in the vacant lot again. I glowered at Cathy.
“I just saved your life; I haven’t adopted you!” “We’ll sort something out,” Cathy said confidently. She looked across the road too. “What was it, do you think, really?”
“Just another predator,” I said. “A little less obvious than most. Just… something from the Nightside.”
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Simon R. Green, Something From the Nightside
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