“The owners went ballistic. Took it as a personal affront. They tried everything to get rid of the ghost Bar. They called in heavy-duty exorcists; had Bishop Beastly curse it with bell, book, and candle; even got the old rogue vicar Pew in to give it a good scolding . . . I’m even told they quietly and quite illegally imported some barely trained poltergeists to go in there and tear the place down. Only to watch the poltergeists come running out, screaming. I believe a few of them are still at large in the Nightside, running their own security business. But the Hawk’s Wind Bar & Grille stood its ground.
“You have to understand, John; none of us had ever seen anything like this before, even in the Nightside. The ghost of a building, so real and solid it was almost undistinguishable from the original. I always thought it came back simply because so many people loved and missed it . . . Anyway. Eventually the Bar’s owners shrugged, threw up their hands, and said Have it your own way, and went off to sulk in private. And count their profits, of course.”
I frowned. “Could the owners have finally found a way to dismiss the haunting, and reclaim their property, after all these years?”
“Unknown,” said Julien. “But unlikely. If they had, they’d be here now, dancing and celebrating and boasting how they’d finally won. And they were never more than a pair of minor business men. To do something like this . . . would take real power.”
“Hold that thought,” I said. “I spy a pair of well-dressed city types heading in our direction, who look a lot like owners to me.”
Julien looked round, nodded sourly, and gestured for the Troops to let them pass. The two men strode up to us and glared right into our faces, which was brave of them. They both looked prosperous enough, in an obvious sort of way. Two old men, well into their seventies, in good suits, coats, and gloves. Men with hard faces and harder eyes, and flat, determined mouths. The kind of business men who hadn’t been talked back to in far too long. The taller of the two men produced his business card with a snap of the hand, like a conjuring trick, and thrust it at me. I refused to even glance at it, on general principles, so he pushed it right into my face. So I took the card, tore it into little pieces, and scattered them over him like confetti. Start as you mean to go on, that’s what I always say.
The tall man’s face went pale, then flushed a dangerous shade of purple. “We are Tattersol and Vane!” he said angrily. “We own this most valuable property, and we have a legal right to be here! I am Tattersol, this is Vane. Show him the documents, Mr. Vane!”
While Vane hurriedly fumbled important-looking papers out of his briefcase, I took the opportunity to look the two men over carefully. Tattersol was well dressed in a casual sort of way, while Vane was well dressed in a careless sort of way. Tattersol had thin black hair with pronounced white streaks, while Vane was almost entirely bald. Tattersol had a hulking, powerful presence, while Vane had a shifty, detached presence. I was irresistibly reminded of Badger and Mole from The Wind in the Willows, but kept the thought to myself. I was Walker now. Dignity at all times. I was prepared to be tactful and polite, right up to the point where someone got on my tits, and I said To hell with it, and booted someone somewhere painful. I beamed on Tattersol and Vane in my most avuncular fashion.
“So what can the Authorities and their newly appointed front man do for Misters Tattersol and Vane?”
Vane finally fished out a handful of legal documents and shook them at me meaningfully. I ignored them, so he thrust them at Julien, who looked at him in a disturbingly thoughtful manner until Vane lowered his papers and looked away. Tattersol glared at Vane, then at us.
“We have a legal right to this land! Isn’t that right, Mr. Vane?”
“Of course we do, Mr. Tattersol! I have all the necessary documentation right here!”
“Quite so, Mr. Vane. We are here to demand access to this location, our property. We also insist that you do absolutely nothing that might assist the ghost of the Hawk’s Wind Bar & Grille to return. It is gone, and we want nothing more to do with it. Do we, Mr. Vane?”
“Nothing at all, Mr. Tattersol! We wash our hands of it, at long last. The law is on our side in this matter!”
“We are the law, inasmuch as there is law,” said Julien, entirely unmoved by the two old men shouting at him. “This is a crime scene, and the crime is under investigation. If only to ensure that other buildings don’t start disappearing, too.”
“None of the other buildings are ghosts or phantasms!” snapped Tattersol. “We demand access to our property so we can . . . protect it! Isn’t that right, Mr. Vane?”
“Indeed it is, Mr. Tattersol! We have documents! Signed contracts! The law stands four-square behind us!”
“When has the law ever mattered, in the Nightside?” I said, honestly curious.
“Ah, but this is business law!” said Tattersol, with the air of someone closing a trap. “Contracts must be honoured! Or no-one could make a profit here!”
“He may be obnoxious, and far too loud for his own good, but he has a point,” said Julien.
“Exactly!” said Vane. “What?”
“I was saying you had a point,” said Julien.
“Oh! Yes!” Vane glared at me. “You had better watch your step, Mr. So-called Walker! Or I will have you hauled up before the Better Unnatural Business Committee!”
“You made that up!” I said. I looked at Julien. “Tell me he made that up.”
“Unfortunately not,” said Julien.
“And the Authorities have a duty to enforce business contracts!” said Tattersol, with the air of someone slamming down an ace.
“He’s right,” said Julien. “We do. There are very old agreements to that effect.”
“But I am Walker,” I said. “And I don’t have to agree to anything. In fact, I think that’s part of the job description. Mr. Tattersol and Mr. Vane, while I accept that your legal position is undoubtedly correct, I also find you both guilty of obstructing an on-going investigation and getting on my nerves in a built-up area. I have work to do, and you are getting in the way. So be good little business men and go away, and we’ll let you know whatever we feel like letting you know. In special legal writing. Won’t that be nice? Wave bye-bye, or I’ll run you both in for disturbing my peace of mind.”
“The abuse of authority comes naturally to you,” murmured Julien. “You’re going to make a fine Walker.”
Tattersol’s face was going through a series of dark colours that really didn’t speak well for his blood pressure, while Vane had gone white with shock. And then they both began to splutter loudly.
“I will have your heads for this!” yelled Tattersol, his impeccably gloved hands clenched into fists. “I will have you dragged through the streets by horses! I will ruin you, and your family, and everyone you know and care about!”
“We’ll take everything you own!” said Vane, just as loudly. “Do you have a house? We’ll seize it! Do you have a wife? We’ll throw her out on the streets to starve!”
“Oh no,” Julien said quietly.
“A wife!” said Tattersol, thinking he saw a weak spot. “We’ll sell her to a sporting-house, to sell her body for other men’s pleasures! We’ll . . .”
I used an old magical trick then, one I mostly use to take the bullets out of threatening guns, and ripped every filling, crown, implant, and piece of bridgework right out of their mouths. They all disappeared in a moment and fell in a silent rain from my outstretched palms. Tattersol and Vane clapped their hands to their bloody mouths and made loud noises of shock and distress. They looked at me, horrified, and I looked back at them.
“Never threaten his wife,” said Julien.
“Get the hell out of here,” I said, “before I decide to show you a similar magic trick, involving your lower intestines and a row of plastic buckets.”
They couldn’t leave fast enough. Some of the watching crowd applauded, and some decided they were urgently needed elsewhere. Most of them carried on watching. It takes a lot to impress a Nig
htside crowd. I looked at Julien, who was shaking his head sadly.
“What?” I said.
“Oh, nothing, John. You’ve bullied and assaulted two old men who were technically in the right, very successfully. What do you have planned for an encore? Kicking a puppy?”
“Have you got one?”
“John . . .”
“All right; perhaps I did over-react. But remember; they were business men. Which makes them fair game, in the Nightside. It’s probably time we started culling them again, to thin back the numbers.”
“You see?” said Julien. “That, right there. That is the difference between how you and I operate. I use reason, you favour brute force.”
“It worked, didn’t it?” I said. “They’re gone, aren’t they? In fact, if you look down the street, you can still see them going, at some speed.”
“But they will be back!” said Julien. “Probably attended by serious bodyguards, and, which is even worse, with lawyers! They do own this land, and they do have a legitimate claim to be involved with what happens here. All right, I agree; I don’t like them either, and I don’t want them preventing the return of the Hawk’s Wind. But it behooves the Authorities, and you as Walker, to walk carefully around vested business interests.”
“Statements like that are why I never wanted to be Walker,” I said. “I will defend what is right and just, and let the law catch up when it can. That doesn’t suit you or any of the other Authorities, get yourselves another Walker.”
“You can be a real pain in the arse sometimes, John,” said Julien. “Especially when you’re right.” He sighed. “They will be back.”
“They’ll have to visit a dentist first,” I said. “That should buy us some time.”
“I don’t know why I even bother to talk to you, sometimes,” said Julien.
“Because you have such a beautiful speaking voice,” I said.
Julien ignored me, giving all his attention to the great hole in the ground. “I knew the Hawk’s Wind Bar & Grille when it was still real,” he said finally. “It was a marvellous place, in its prime. In the sixties. Everyone who mattered made the scene at the Hawk’s Wind. It was neutral ground, you see; much like Strangefellows today. So on any given night, you could expect to encounter good guys and bad, famous heroes and infamous villains, and everyone in between. Where the Underworld could meet the elite, gods could sit down with monsters, and every night a whole new gaggle of worshipped celebrities and the briefly fashionable showed up. Some nights you could hardly breathe for all the charisma hanging on the air. The Hawk’s Wind was a celebration of the place and the time . . . And it was such an exciting time to be alive . . . “I came here many times, with my original assistant and companion. A lovely young lady of great charm and enormous energies, what was known back then as a dolly bird. Her name was Juliet; she was an exotic dancer. My first friend and advisor, when I was still coming to terms with having left Victorian England for the Technicolor sixties. Juliet . . . kept me sane, in the face of so many changes, and a whole new world that often made no sense to me. A brave new world that had so many wonders and nightmares in it. Ah yes; all the adventures we had together . . . Solving mysteries, tracking down evildoers, exposing corruption and brutality and then doing something about it. There was a lot of that going on, in the sixties.”
“So what happened to her?” I said. “To Juliet?” I was fascinated; Julien doesn’t talk much about his early days in the Nightside.
“She left me,” he said, not looking at me. “When I gave up free-lance adventuring to work for the Night Times. It seemed the most obvious thing to do, to me, the next obvious step; I thought I could do more good that way. To put pressure on the Powers That Be, to bring about real and lasting change. But she didn’t see it that way.”
“You gave it all up to become the Man,” I said. “ Like me.”
“Because somebody has to do it,” said Julien. “And better us than someone else.”
“Exactly.”
He did look at me then. “Adventuring is when you do it for yourself. Crusading is when you do it for other people.”
“So what happened to Juliet after she left you?”
“Oh, she runs a night-club now, the Adamant. Very fashionable, I’m told. Very selective. I stay away. Because she’s got older, and I haven’t. It wouldn’t be fair, to keep reminding her . . . I think it’s better that we keep our happy memories.”
“Why don’t you grow old?” I said, pushing it since he was in a talkative mood. “Is it to do with the serum you created? The Anti-Hyde?”
He looked at me then and smiled briefly. “The Anti-Hyde? I suppose that’s as good a description as any. Dr. Jekyll created a serum to bring out all the evil in a man, release the beast within. I never did understand why anyone would want to do that. To wallow in the mud when they could fly with the angels. I created a serum to bring out the best in a man and tested it on myself. I suppose it worked. I can’t tell; I’m too close. But I do know I haven’t aged a day since I took it.”
“Are you immortal?” I said, the subject being much on my mind.
“Too soon to tell. I hope not. Most of the immortals I’ve encountered have been an utter waste of space.” He looked back at the hole in the ground. “I used to visit the Hawk’s Wind all the time, back in the sixties. But I rarely went back after it became a ghost. I kept bumping into Time-travellers, from the Past and the Future, and they always wanted to tell me things . . . I wonder if one of them was trying to tell me about this . . .”
“When the Bar disappeared tonight, there were still people inside.”
“Of course. A great many of them famous and important people, from the Past and the Present and a whole bunch of different futures. A few got out, but they’re still in shock. They don’t remember much. The English Assassin died, getting his sister to safety; but he’ll get over it. He always does. The point is, we have to get the Hawk’s Wind back, so we can rescue the people trapped inside, and return them to their proper places in Time. Because if we don’t . . . God alone knows how much damage that might do to the time-stream.”
“Do we have any names, for these famous and important people?” I said.
“Some. The Shimmer Twins; very big rock-and-roll stars. Zodiac the Mystical, from the eighties. Possibly a very-high adept, possibly a major con man. Either way, a Major Player in his day. Shame about what happened to him . . . The Amber Prince, and the Grey Fox. But most importantly . . . I’m in there, John. With Juliet. We Time-travelled here, from the sixties, following a case. I don’t remember the details . . .”
“But if you were in there, in your past, you must remember what happened to the Hawk’s Wind!” I said. “Where you were taken, how you were rescued!”
“No,” said Julien Advent. “It was all too traumatic. All I had was a gap in my memory. I didn’t remember any of this until the Bar disappeared today; then some of it started to come back. Most of it’s still gone. Temporal fugue.”
“I hate Time travel,” I said, feelingly.
“Well,” said Julien, “you do have more reason than most.”
“Why did you bring me here?” I said flatly. “What does the Bar’s disappearance have to do with the current major threat to the Nightside? Is the same person behind both events?”
“Yes,” said Julien. “He’s called the Sun King. And he has come a very long way, to reach this time, this place, this moment. He wants to bring the sun here, in a long-delayed dawn, and put an end to the longest night in the world. He wants to turn the Nightside into Sunnyside. No more shadows, no more shades of grey. He wants to bathe the Nightside in the harsh and unrelenting light of truth and justice. No more hiding places for old gods and lost monsters, for heroes and villains and those in between.”
“You’ve never approved of the way things are, in the Nightside,” I said carefully.
“No,” he said. “But I want to help and save the people here, not destroy them. The Nightside has it uses; it serves a pu
rpose. It must be preserved.”
“Who is this Sun King?” I said. “I never heard of him.”
“Before your time,” said Julien Advent. “But he really was big, once upon a time. He was the real happening of the sixties. He was born out of the famous Summer of Love, in 1967. The herald of Man’s true evolution, and the mind’s true liberation. He believed we could all become more than human, become living gods and walk in glory forever. And he actually managed it. He stepped up and out of the human condition, and became the Sun King. Now he wants to bring back the Big Dream of the sixties, and put us all on the right path again. He believes we’ve lost our way, betrayed the Dream and ourselves. He’s come back to change the world, and he intends to make a start with the Nightside. No more night, no more shadows; Let the sun shine in . . .”
I looked at him sharply. “You know him; don’t you?”
“Oh, we all knew the Sun King, back in the Summer of Love,” said Julien Advent. “But yes, I knew him personally, back in the day. I knew him as just a man, before he burst out of his cocoon and became the Sun King. I left the Nightside to go travel the world and see how much it had changed, since my day, when Victoria was still on the Throne and the British Empire was the greatest the world had ever seen . . . So much had changed, and so much hadn’t, and the more I saw, the less I understood. In the summer of 1967, I went to San Francisco to wear some flowers in my hair. It made as much sense as anything else. These days, the word hippy has become an insult, but back then they were the bravest of the brave, determined to overthrow an unjust society without using violence. That was a revelation to me. My generation changed the world through brute force, with armies and opium and gunboat diplomacy. But these were a new kind of young people, gentle people with strong convictions, dedicated to non-violent action. Sticking flowers in the barrels of soldiers’ guns, knowing that some of those soldiers were quite prepared to shoot them. Standing up to be counted even though they knew someone would club them down. And the Sun King . . . was the very best of them.