It was quiet. Very quiet. No sounds at all, save for the shuffling of our feet and our own unsteady breathing. Such utter quiet was eerie, unsettling. The roar of the city was gone, along with its inhabitants. London had been silenced, the hard way. I only had to look around in the awful purple light to know that we had come to an empty place. The heavy silence was almost overpowering, until I felt like shouting out… something, just to emphasize my presence. But I didn’t. There might have been something listening. Even worse, there might not.
I’d never felt so alone in my life.
All around us the buildings were squat, deformed, their shapes altered and the edges softened by exposure to wind and rain. Long exposure. All the windows were empty, every trace of glass gone, and I couldn’t see a single doorway with a door; just dark openings, like eyes or mouths, or maybe wounds. There was something almost unbearably sad in seeing such a mighty city brought so low. All those centuries of building and expanding, all those many lives supporting and giving it purpose, all for nothing, in the end. I moved slowly forward, and puffs of dust sprang up around my feet. Joanna made a noise at the back of her throat and moved slowly after me.
It was cold. Stark and bitter cold, as though all the heat had gone out of the world. The air was still, with not even a breath of wind blowing. Our footsteps seemed very loud in the quiet, loud and carrying as we walked down the middle of what had once been a street, through what had once been a vital, thriving place. We were both shivering now, and it had nothing to do with the cold. This was a bad place, and we didn’t belong here. Off in the distance, broken buildings stood blackly against the horizon in jagged silhouettes, shadows of what they had once been. The city, inside and out, was over.
“Where are we?” Joanna said finally. The hand holding up the lighter was steadier now, but her voice trembled. I didn’t blame her.
“Not… where,” I said. “When. This is the future. The far future, by the look of it. London has fallen, and civilisation has come and gone. This isn’t even an epilogue. Someone closed the book on London and the Nightside, and closed it hard. We’ve stumbled into a Timeslip. An enclosed area where Time can jump back and forth, into the past and the future and everything in between. Needless to say, there wasn’t a Timeslip here the last time I came this way. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows enough to avoid Timeslips, and they’re always well sign-posted. If only because they’re such arbitrary things. No-one understands how they work, or even what causes them. They come and they go, and so do whatever poor bastards get sucked up in them.”
“You mean we’re trapped here?”
“Not necessarily. I’ve been using my gift to try and find us a way out. The physical area of a Timeslip isn’t very large. If I can just locate the boundaries, crack open a weak spot…”
“Not very large!” Joanna’s voice rose, harsh with emotion. “I can see for miles, all the way to the horizon! It’ll take us weeks to walk out of here!”
“Things aren’t always as they appear. You should know that by now.” I kept my voice calm and light, trying to sound knowledgeable and reassuring, and not at all as though I was just guessing. “While we’re in the Timeslip, we see all of it; but the actual affected area is comparatively small. Once I can crack a hole in the boundary, and we walk through, we’ll snap back to our own time. And I’d say we’re only half an hour away. Easy walk. Assuming, of course, that nothing goes wrong.”
“Wrong?” said Joanna, seizing on the word. “What could possibly go wrong? We’re all alone here. This is the far future, and everyone’s dead. Can’t you feel it? The lights of London have finally gone out…”
“Nothing lasts forever,” I said. “Everything comes to an end, in Time. Even the Nightside, I suppose. Let enough centuries pass, and even the greatest of monuments will fall.”
“Maybe they dropped the Bomb, after all.”
“No. The Nightside would survive the Bomb, I think. Whatever did happen here … was much more final.”
“I hate to see London like this,” Joanna said quietly. “It was always so alive. I always thought it would go on forever. That we built it so well, ran it so tightly, loved it so much, that London would outlast us all. I guess I was wrong. We all were.”
“Maybe we just went away and built another London somewhere else,” I said. “And as long as people are around, we’ll always need a Nightside, or something like it.”
“And what if people aren’t around, any longer? Who knows how far into the future we are now? Centuries? Millennia? Look at this place! It’s dead. It’s all dead. Everything ends. Even us.” She shuddered abruptly, and then glared at me, as though it was all my fault. “Nothing’s ever easy around you, is it? A Timeslip … Is this sort of thing usual, in the Nightside?”
“Well,” I said carefully, “it’s not unusual.”
“Typical,” said Joanna. “You can’t even trust Time in the Nightside.”
I couldn’t argue with that, so I looked around me some more. Millennia? The ruins looked old, but surely not that old. “I wonder where everyone is. Did they just up and leave, when they saw the city was doomed? And if so, where did they go?”
“Maybe everyone’s gone to the moon. Like in the song.”
That was when I finally looked up, and the chill sank past my bones and into my soul. It was suddenly, horribly, clear why it was so dark. There was no moon. It was gone. The great swollen orb that had dominated the Nightside sky for as long as anyone could remember was missing from the dark sky. Most of the stars were gone too. Only a handful still remained, scattered in ones and twos across the great black expanse, shining only dimly, a few last sentinels of light against the fall of night. And since the stars are so very far away, perhaps they were gone too, and this was just the last of their light to reach us …
How could the stars be gone? What the hell had happened…
“I always thought the moon seemed so much bigger in the Nightside because it was so much closer here,” I said finally. “Perhaps … it finally fell. Dear Jesus, how far forward have we come?”
“If the stars are gone,” Joanna said softly, “do you suppose our sun has gone out too?”
“I don’t know what to think…”
“But…”
“We’re wasting time,” I said roughly. “Asking questions we have no way of answering. It doesn’t matter. We’re not staying. I’ve got the far boundary fixed in my head. I’m taking you there, and we are getting the hell out of here, and back to where we belong.”
“Wait a minute,” said Joanna. “The far boundary? Why can’t we just turn around and go back the way we came, through the door that brought us here?”
“It’s not that simple,” I said. “Once a Timeslip has established itself, nothing less than an edict from the Courts of the Holy is going to shift it. It’s here for the duration. If we go back, we’ll just re-emerge by the Fortress again, and the Timeslip will still be between us and Blaiston Street. We’d have to go around the Timeslip to reach Blaiston Street, and for that we’ll need a fairly major player to map the Times-lip’s extent and affected area. Or we’ll just keep ending up here again.”
“How long could such a mapping take?” “Good question. Even if we could find someone powerful enough who wouldn’t charge us an arm and a leg, and could fit it into his schedule straightaway … we’re talking days, maybe even weeks.” “How big could a Timeslip be?” “Another good question. Maybe miles.” “That’s ridiculous,” said Joanna. “There must be another way of reaching Blaiston Street!”
I shook my head reluctantly. “The Timeslip’s connected to Blaiston Street, on some level. I can feel it. Which makes me think this can’t be coincidental. Someone, or something, is protecting its territory. It doesn’t want us interfering. No. Our best bet is to cross this space to the far boundary, where I can force an opening, and we should emerge right next to Blaiston Street. Shouldn’t be too difficult. This is all pretty unpleasant, but I don’t see any obvious
dangers. Just stick with me. My gift will guide us right there.”
Joanna looked at me, and I looked back, trying hard to seem confident. Truth be told, I was just winging it, going by my guts and my instincts. In the end, she looked away first, staring unhappily about her.
“I hate this place,” she said flatly. “We don’t belong here. No-one does, any more. But Cathy’s been gone too long already, so … Which way?”
I pointed straight ahead, and we set off together.
Joanna held her lighter out before her, but the yellow glow didn’t travel far at all. The small flame stood still and upright, untroubled by even the slightest murmur of breeze. I tried not to think about how much longer it would last. The purple light around us seemed even darker in comparison. I was feeling colder all the time, as though the empty night was leeching all the human warmth out of me. I would have improvised a rough torch of some kind, but I hadn’t seen any wood anywhere. Just bricks and rubble, and the endless dust.
The quiet was getting on my nerves. It just wasn’t natural, to be so completely quiet. This was the quiet of the tomb. Of the grave. It had an almost anticipatory quality, as though somewhere off in the darkest and deepest of the shadows, something was watching, and waiting, and biding its time to attack. The city might be empty, but that didn’t mean the night was. I was reminded suddenly of how I’d felt as a small child, when my father would put me to bed at night and turn out the light. Back when he still cared enough, and was sober enough, to do such things. Children know the secret of the dark. They know it has monsters in it, which might or might not choose to reveal themselves. Now here we were, in the darkest night of all; and more and more I was convinced something was watching us. There are always monsters. That’s the first thing you learn, in the Nightside.
Some of them look just like you and me.
Perhaps the monster here was London itself. The dead city, resenting the return of the living. Or maybe the monster was just loneliness. A man and a woman, in a place that life had left behind. Man isn’t meant to be alone.
Our footsteps seemed to grow louder and more carrying as we made our way down what had once been a main street. The dust should have absorbed the sound. There was enough of it. It was everywhere, thick layers of it, undisturbed for God alone knew how long. It was at its worst in the street, but we’d learned the hard way that we had no choice but to stick to the very middle of the street. Buildings had a tendency to collapse, if we got too close. Just the vibrations of our tread were enough to disturb their precarious rest, and whole sections of wall would crumble and fall away, crashing to the ground in great angry clouds of the grey dust. I picked up one brick, and it fell apart in my hand. I tried to work out how ancient it must be, to have become so delicate, but the answers I came up with made no sense. The human mind isn’t comfortable with numbers that big.
Just when I thought I was finally coming to terms with where and when I was, things got worse. I started hearing things. Sounds, noises, so faint at first I thought I’d imagined them. But soon they were coming from all around us, from before and behind, subtle, disturbing sounds that seemed to be gradually creeping closer. I don’t have that good an imagination. The sounds were almost familiar, but not quite, giving them a strange, sinister feel. And all the time, drawing gradually, remorselessly, closer. I didn’t turn my head, but my eyes probed every shadow as I approached it. Nothing. I increased our pace, and the sounds kept right up with me. Following us, tracking us, keeping their distance for the moment, but never too far away. My hands were sweating now. Clattering, chattering noises, that I could almost put a name to. Joanna had picked up on them too, and was glaring openly about her. The flame in the lighter flickered so wildly I was afraid it would go out, and I put a hand on her arm, ostensibly to slow our pace again.
“What the hell is that?” she said fiercely. “Could there be something here with us, after all? Something alive?”
“I don’t know. But the sound’s coming from a lot of directions at once, which suggests that there’s a lot of them, and they’re all around us.” I glared at the shadows from which the ruins grew, but I couldn’t make out a damned thing. Anything could have been hiding in there. Anything at all. I was getting less happy by the minute. “Whatever they are, they seem to be content for the moment to keep their distance. Could be they’re more afraid of us than we are of them.”
“Don’t take bets on it,” said Joanna. “How much further to the boundary?”
I checked with my gift. “Half an hour’s walk. Maybe half that, if we run. But running might send the wrong message.”
She looked at me abruptly. “Could it be the Harrowing, after you again?”
I shook my head firmly. “Not so soon after Razor Eddie’s little message. Whoever’s behind the Harrowing will want to consider the ramifications of that for a while. I would. Even the major players can get really twitchy whenever Razor Eddie’s name comes up. Besides, the Harrowing have never been able to track me that accurately. Or I wouldn’t have survived this long. Maybe … it’s insects. I always thought that if anything would outlast Humanity, it would be the bloody insects. Scientists were always saying the damn things would be the only creatures to survive a nuclear war. It could well be insects. Damn. I hate creepy-crawlies.”
“You’re sure it couldn’t be anything human? Maybe some other poor soul who got sucked into the Timeslip, maybe hurt and trapped and trying to get our attention?”
I scowled. I should have thought of that. Unlikely, but… I sent my gift out into the night, trying to find the source of the sounds, and to my astonishment I locked on to a human trace straightaway. We had to be right on top of him.
“There is someone here! A man … one man, on his own. Not moving. Could be hurt … this way.”
I ran down the street, clouds of dust billowing up around my pounding feet, Joanna right there at my side. I was starting to get used to that. I kind of liked it. We lost track of the sounds around us, caught up in the excitement of finding another human being alive in this awful, dead place. Could be a visitor, could be a survivor… could be the answer to a whole lot of questions. And it could be just some poor soul who needed help. First things first. My gift tracked his location as accurately as any radar, leading us off the main street and down a side alley. We slowed to a walk immediately, for fear our footsteps would bring down the brick walls on either side of the alley. But the walls stood firm, not even trembling as we passed.
Finally, we came to a halt beside a large ragged hole in the left-hand wall. The jagged edges of the hole made it seem… organic, more like a wound than an entrance. I prodded a protruding brick with a careful fingertip, but it didn’t crumble at my touch. Odd. It was very dark beyond the hole, and the air had a faint but distinct mouldy smell. I gestured for Joanna to hold her lighter closer, but the light didn’t penetrate more than an inch or two.
“He’s in there?” said Joanna. “Are you sure? It’s pitch-black … and I can’t hear anything.”
“He’s in there,” I said firmly. “My gift is never wrong about such things. But it does feel… odd.” I put my head cautiously into the hole. “Hello? Can you hear me? Hello!”
We waited, but there was no reply. The brickwork didn’t even shudder at the vibrations of my raised voice. As I listened, I realised the faint sounds that had been following us had stopped. I told myself we’d left them behind, but I wasn’t convinced. I pulled my head back and studied the hole in the wall. The more I looked at the situation, the less I liked it. The whole thing smelled of a trap, with the (possibly) injured man as bait. There could be anything waiting in the darkness beyond the hole. But there was definitely a man in there, even if he wasn’t answering, and if he was hurt… we could be his only chance. And I was damned if I’d abandon anyone here in this Godforsaken place. So … I took a deep breath, the smell of mould tickling my nostrils and the back of my throat, and then I eased myself cautiously through the hole in the wall. It was a tight fit. I found th
e floor with my foot and stepped into the utter darkness of the room beyond. I stood very still for a long moment, listening, but there was no reaction anywhere. I stepped aside, and Joanna followed me in, bringing the feeble yellow light with her.
It looked like two rooms had been knocked through into one, and pretty messily at that. There were dark objects all over the floor. They didn’t look like bricks, but I didn’t feel like touching them to find out what they were, so I stepped carefully round them as I moved further into the room. The air was close and foul, dry and acrid, but with an underlying scent of decay, as though something had died here, not that long ago. There was no dust on the floor, but the bare brick walls were thick with ugly mounds of grey furry mould. I kept moving, following my gift, Joanna holding her lighter out before us. Shadows danced menacingly around us. It soon became clear we were heading for the far corner, occupied by what seemed to be a huge, dirty grey cocoon. It filled the corner from floor to ceiling; nine feet tall and three feet wide. I thought about what kind of insect might emerge from a cocoon of such size, and then decided very firmly that I wasn’t going to think about that any more. Hate creepy-crawlies. I kept looking around for the subject of our search, but he was nowhere to be seen, despite my gift urging me forward.
Until finally we were standing right in front of the cocoon, glistening palely in the glow from the lighter, and there was nowhere else to go.