Neverwhere

by Neil Gaiman

  “I fought the bear that stalked the city beneath Berlin. He had killed a thousand men, and his claws were stained brown and black from the dried blood of a hundred years, but he fell to me. He whispered words in a human tongue as he died.” The mist hung low on the lake. Richard fancied that he could see the creatures she spoke of, white shapes writhing in the vapor.

  “There was a black tiger in the undercity of Calcutta. A man-eater, brilliant and bitter, the size of a small elephant. A tiger is a worthy adversary. I took him with my bare hands.” Richard glanced at Door. She was listening to Hunter intently: this was news to her too, then. “And I shall slay the Beast of London. They say his hide bristles with swords and spears and knives stuck in him by those who have tried and failed. His tusks are razors, and his hooves are thunderbolts. I will kill him, or I will die in the attempt.”

  Her eyes shone as she spoke of her prey. The river mist had become a thick yellow fog.

  A bell was struck, a little way away, three times, the sound carrying across the water. The world began to lighten. Richard thought he could see the squat shapes of buildings around them. The yellow-green fog became thicker: it tasted of ash, and soot, and the grime of a thousand urban years. It clung to their lamps, muffling the light.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “London fog,” said Hunter.

  “But they stopped years ago, didn’t they? Clean Air Act, smokeless fuels, all that?” Richard found himself remembering the Sherlock Holmes books of his childhood. “What did they call them again?”

  “Pea-soupers,” said Door. “London Particulars. Thick yellow river fogs, mixed with coal-smoke and whatever rubbish was going into the air for the last five centuries. Hasn’t been one in the Upworld for, oh, forty years now. We get the ghosts of them down here. Mm. Not ghosts. More like echoes.” Richard breathed in a strand of the yellow-green fog and began to cough. “That doesn’t sound good,” said Door.

  “Fog in my throat,” said Richard. The ground was becoming stickier, muddier: it sucked at Richard’s feet as he walked. “Still,” he said, to reassure himself, “a little fog never hurt anyone.”

  Door looked up at him with big pixie eyes. “There was one in 1952 that they reckon killed four thousand people.”

  “People from here?” he asked. “Under London?”

  “Your people,” said Hunter. Richard was willing to believe it. He thought about holding his breath, but the fog was getting thicker. The ground was becoming mushier. “I don’t understand,” he asked. “Why do you have fogs down here, when we don’t have them up there anymore?”

  Door scratched her nose. “There are little pockets of old time in London, where things and places stay the same, like bubbles in amber,” she explained. “There’s a lot of time in London, and it has to go somewhere—it doesn’t all get used up at once.”

  “I may still be hung over,” sighed Richard. “That almost made sense.”

  The abbot had known that this day would bring pilgrims. The knowledge was a part of his dreams; it surrounded him, like the darkness. So the day became one of waiting, which was, he knew, a sin: moments were to be experienced; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding. Still, he was waiting. Through each of the day’s services, through their scant meals, the abbot was listening intently, waiting for the bell to sound, waiting to know who and how many.

  He found himself hoping for a clean death. The last pilgrim had lasted for almost a year, a gibbering, screaming thing. The abbot regarded his own blindness as neither a blessing nor a curse: it simply was; but even so, he had been grateful he had never been able to see the poor creature’s face. Brother Jet, who had cared for the creature, still woke in the night, screaming, with its twisted face before him.

  The bell tolled late in the afternoon, three times. The abbot was in the shrine, on his knees, contemplating their charge. He pulled himself to his feet and made his way to the corridor, where he waited. “Father?” The voice was that of Brother Fuliginous.

  “Who guards the bridge?” the abbot asked him. His voice was surprisingly deep and melodious for such an old man.

  “Sable,” came the reply from the darkness. The abbot reached out a hand, grasped the young man’s elbow, and walked beside him, slowly, through the corridors of the abbey.

  There was no solid ground; there was no lake. Their feet were splashing through some kind of marsh, in the yellow fog. “This,” announced Richard, “is disgusting.” It was seeping through his shoes, invading his socks, and making a much closer acquaintance with his toes than Richard was entirely happy with.

  There was a bridge ahead of them, rising up out of the marsh. A figure, dressed in black, waited at the foot of the bridge. He wore the black robes of a Dominican monk. His skin was the dark brown of old mahogany. He was a tall man, and he held a wooden staff as tall as he was. “Hold fast,” he called. “Tell me your names, and your stations.”

  “I am the Lady Door,” said Door. “I am Portico’s daughter, of the House of the Arch.”

  “I am Hunter. I am her bodyguard.”

  “Richard Mayhew,” said Richard. “Wet.”

  “And you wish to pass?”

  Richard stepped forward. “Yes, we do actually. We’re here for a key.” The monk said nothing. He lifted his staff and pushed Richard gently in the chest with it. Richard’s feet slid out from under him, and he landed in the muddy water. The monk waited a few moments, to see if Richard would swing up and begin to fight. Richard didn’t.

  Hunter did.

  Richard pulled himself up from the mud, and watched, mouth open, as the monk and Hunter fought with quarter-staves. The monk was good. He was bigger than Hunter, and, Richard suspected, stronger. Hunter, on the other hand, was faster than the monk. The wooden staves clacked and whapped in the mist.

  The monk’s staff made sudden contact with Hunter’s midriff. She stumbled in the mud. He came in close—too close—as he discovered that her stumble had been a feint and her staff slammed into him, hard and precisely, on the backs of his knees, and his legs no longer held his weight. The man tumbled into the wet mud, and Hunter rested the tip of her staff on the back of his neck.

  “Enough,” called a voice from the bridge.

  Hunter took a step back. She stood beside Richard and Door once more. She had not even broken a sweat. The big monk got up from the mud. His lip was bleeding. He bowed low to Hunter, then walked to the foot of the bridge.

  “Who are they, Brother Sable?” called the voice.

  “The Lady Door, Lord Portico’s daughter, of the House of the Arch; Hunter, her bodyguard, and Richard Mayhew, their companion,” said Brother Sable, through bruised lips. “She bested me in fair fight, Brother Fuliginous.”

  “Let them come up,” said the voice.

  Hunter led the way up the bridge. At the apex of the bridge, another monk was waiting for them: Brother Fuliginous. He was younger and smaller than the first monk they had met, but he was dressed the same way. His skin was a deep, rich brown. There were other black-clad figures, just barely visible, further into the yellow fog. These were the Black Friars, then, Richard realized. The second monk stared at the three of them for a second, and then recited:

  “I turn my head, and you may go where you want.

  I turn it again, you will stay till you rot.

  I have no face, but I live or die

  by my crooked teeth—who am I?”

  Door took a step forward. She licked her lips and half closed her eyes. “I turn my head . . .” she said, puzzling to herself. “Crooked teeth . . . go where you . . .” Then a smile spread over her face. She stared up at Brother Fuliginous. “A key,” she said. “The answer is, you’re a key.”

  “A wise one,” acknowledged Brother Fuliginous. “That’s two steps taken. One more to take.”

  A very old man stepped out of the yellow fog and walked cautiously toward them, his gnarled hand holding onto the stone side of
the bridge. He stopped when he reached Brother Fuliginous. His eyes were a glaucous blue-white, thick with cataracts. Richard liked him on sight. “How many of them are there?” he asked the younger man, in a deep and reassuring voice.

  “Three, Father Abbot.”

  “And has one of them bested the first gatekeeper?”

  “Yes, Father Abbot.”

  “And did one of them answer the second gatekeeper correctly?”

  “Yes, Father Abbot.”

  There was regret in the old man’s voice. “So, one of them is left to face the Ordeal of the Key. Let him or her stand forward now.”

  Door said, “Oh no.”

  Hunter said, “Let me take his place. I will face the ordeal.”

  Brother Fuliginous shook his head. “We cannot permit that.”

  When Richard was a small boy he had been taken, as part of a school trip, to a local castle. With his class he had climbed the many steps to the highest point in the castle, a partly ruined tower. They had clustered together at the top, while the teacher pointed out to them the whole of the countryside, spread out below. Even at that age, Richard had not been very good at heights. He had clutched the safety rail, and closed his eyes, and tried not to look down. The teacher had told them that the drop from the top of the old tower to the bottom of the hill it overlooked was three hundred feet; then she told them that a penny, dropped from the top of the tower, would have enough force to penetrate the skull of a man at the bottom of the hill, that it would crack a skull like a bullet. That night Richard lay in bed, unable to sleep for imagining the penny falling with the power of a thunderbolt. Still looking like a penny, but such a murderous penny, when it dropped . . .

  An ordeal.

  The penny dropped for Richard. It was a thunderbolt sort of a penny.

  “Hang on a sec,” he said. “Back up. Mm-mm: ordeal. Someone’s got an ordeal waiting for them. Somebody who didn’t have a little fight down in the mud, and didn’t get to answer the riddle . . .” He was babbling. He could hear himself babbling, and he just didn’t care.

  “This ordeal of yours,” Richard asked the abbot. “How much of an ordeal is it?”

  “This way now,” said the abbot.

  “You don’t want him,” said Door. “Take one of us.”

  “Three of you come. There are three tests. Each of you faces one test: that is fair,” said the abbot. “If he passes the ordeal, he will return to you.”

  A light breeze eased the fog. The other dark figures were holding crossbows. Each crossbow was pointed at Richard, or Hunter, or Door. The friars closed ranks, cutting Richard off from Hunter and from Door. “We’re looking for a key—” said Richard to the abbot, in a low voice.

  “Yes,” said the abbot, placidly.

  “It’s for an angel,” explained Richard.

  “Yes,” said the abbot. He reached out a hand, found the crook of Brother Fuliginous’s arm.

  Richard lowered his voice. “Look, you can’t say no to an angel, especially a man of the cloth like yourself . . . why don’t we just skip the ordeal? You could just hand it over.”

  The abbot began to walk down the curve of the bridge. There was a door, open at the bottom. Richard followed him. Sometimes there is nothing you can do. “When our order was founded,” said the abbot, “we were entrusted with the key. It is one of the holiest, and the most powerful, of all sacred relics. We must pass it on, but only to the one who passes the ordeal and proves worthy.”

  They walked through winding narrow corridors, Richard leaving a trail of wet mud behind him. “If I fail the ordeal, then we don’t get the key, do we?”

  “No, my son.”

  Richard thought about this for a moment. “Could I come back later for a second try?”

  Brother Fuliginous coughed. “Not really, my son,” said the abbot. “If that should happen, you will in all probability be . . .” he paused, and then said, “beyond caring. But do not fret, perhaps you will be the one to win the key, eh?” There was a ghastly attempt at reassurance in his voice, more terrifying than any attempt to scare him could have been.

  “You would kill me?”

  The abbot stared ahead with blue-milk eyes. There was a touch of reproof in his voice. “We are holy men,” he said. “No, it is the ordeal that kills you.”

  They walked down a flight of steps, into a low, cryptlike room with oddly decorated walls. “Now,” said the abbot. “Smile!”

  There was the electric fizz of a camera flash going off, blinding Richard for a moment. When he could see again, Brother Fuliginous was lowering a battered old Polaroid camera and was yanking out the photograph. The friar waited until it had developed, and then he pinned it to the wall. “This is our wall of those who failed,” sighed the abbot, “to ensure that they are none of them forgotten. That is our burden also: memorial.”

  Richard stared at the faces. A few Polaroids; twenty or thirty other photographic snapshots, some sepia prints and daguerreotypes; and, after that, pencil sketches, and watercolors, and miniatures. They went all the way along one wall. The friars had been at this a very long time.

  Door shivered. “I’m so stupid,” she muttered. “I should have known. Three of us. I should never have come straight here.”

  Hunter’s head was moving from side to side. She had noted the position of each of the friars and each of the crossbows; she had calculated the odds of getting Door over the side of the bridge first unharmed, then with only minor injuries, and lastly with major injury to herself, but only minor injury to Door. She was now recalculating. “And what would you have done differently if you had known?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t have brought him here, for a start,” said Door. “I’d have found the marquis.”

  Hunter put her head on one side. “You trust him?” she asked, directly, and Door knew she was talking of de Carabas, not Richard.

  “Yes,” said Door. “I more or less trust him.”

  Door had been five years old for just two days. The market was being held in the Gardens at Kew on that day, and her father had taken her with him, as a birthday treat. It was her first market. They were in the butterfly house, surrounded by brightly colored wings, iridescent weightless things that entranced and fascinated her, when her father crouched down beside her. “Door?” he said. “Turn around slowly, and look over there.”

  She turned, and looked. A dark-skinned man wearing a big coat, his black hair tied behind him in a long ponytail, was standing by the door, talking to two golden-skinned twins, a young man and a young woman. The young woman was crying, in the way that grownups cry, keeping it inside as much as they can, and hating it when it still pushes out at the edges, making them ugly and funny-looking on the way. Door turned back to the butterflies. “You saw him?” asked her father. She nodded. “He calls himself the marquis de Carabas,” he said. “He’s a fraud and a cheat and possibly even something of a monster. If you’re ever in trouble, go to him. He will protect you, girl. He has to.”

  Door looked back at the man. He had a hand on the shoulder of each of the twins and was leading them from the room; but he glanced back over his shoulder, as he left, and he looked straight at her, and smiled an enormous smile; and then he winked at her.

  The friars who surrounded them were dark ghosts in the fog. Door raised her voice. “Excuse me, brother,” she called to Brother Sable. “But our friend, who’s gone to get the key. If he fails, what happens to us?”

  He took a step toward them, hesitated, and then said, “We escort you away from here, and we let you go.”

  “What about Richard?” she asked. Beneath his cowl, she could see him shaking his head, sadly, finally. “I should have brought the marquis,” said Door; and she wondered where he was, and what he was doing.

  The marquis de Carabas was being crucified on a large X-shaped wooden construction Mr. Vandemar had knocked together from several old pallets, part of a chair and a wooden gate. He had also used most of a large box of rusting nails.

 
It had been a very long time since they had crucified anybody.

  The marquis de Carabas’s arms and legs were spread into a wide X shape. Rusty nails went into his hands and feet. He was also roped around the waist. After experiencing terrible pain, he was now, more or less, unconscious. The whole construction dangled in the air, from several ropes, in a room that had once been the hospital staff cafeteria. On the ground below, Mr. Croup had assembled a large mound of sharp objects, ranging from razors and kitchen knives to abandoned scalpels and lancets. There was even a poker, from the furnace room.

  “Why don’t you see how he’s doing, Mister Vandemar?” asked Mr. Croup.

  Mr. Vandemar reached out his hammer, and prodded the marquis experimentally with it.

  The marquis de Carabas was not a good man, and he knew himself well enough to be perfectly certain that he was not a brave man. He had long since decided that the world, Above or Below, was a place that wished to be deceived, and, to this end, he had named himself from a lie in a fairy tale, and created himself—his clothes, his manner, his carriage—as a grand joke.

  There was a dull pain at his wrists and his feet, and he was finding it harder and harder to breathe. There was nothing more to be gained by feigning unconsciousness, and he raised his head, as best he could, and spat a gob of scarlet blood into Mr. Valdemar’s face.

  It was a brave thing to do, he thought. And a stupid one. Perhaps they would have let him die quietly, if he had not done that. Now, he had no doubt, they would hurt him more.

  And perhaps his death would come the quicker for it.

  The open kettle was boiling fiercely. Richard watched the bubbling water, and the thick steam, and wondered what they were going to do with it. His imagination was able to provide any number of answers, most of which would have been unimaginably painful, none of which turned out to be correct.

  The boiling water was poured into a pot, to which Brother Fuliginous added three spoons of dried, shredded leaves. The resultant liquid was poured from the pot through a tea strainer, into three china cups. The abbot raised his blind head, sniffed the air, and smiled. “The first part of the Ordeal of the Key,” he said, “is the nice cup of tea. Do you take sugar?”