Nightingale's Lament

by Simon R. Green

  Dead Boy’s car was parked right outside the front entrance, and I strolled over to it. Gravel crunched loudly under my feet as I approached Dead Boy’s one known indulgence—his brightly gleaming silver car of the future. It was long and sleek and streamlined to within an inch of its life, and it had no wheels. It hovered a few inches above the ground and looked like it ran on liquid starlight. Probably had warp drive, deflector shields, and, if pushed, could transform itself into a bloody great robot. The long curving windows were polarized so you couldn’t see in, but the right-hand front door was open. There was one leg protruding. It didn’t move as I drew near, so I had to bend over and peer into the driving seat. Dead Boy smiled pleasantly back at me.

  “John Taylor. So good to see you again. Welcome to the most popular location in the Nightside.”

  “Is it really?”

  “Must be. People are dying to get into it.”

  He laughed and took a long drink from his whiskey bottle. Dead Boy was seventeen. He’d been seventeen for over thirty years, ever since he was murdered. I knew his story. Everybody did. He was killed in a random mugging, because such things do happen, even here in the Nightside. Clubbed to death in the street, for his credit cards and the spare change in his pockets. He bled to death on the pavement, while people stepped over and around him, not wanting to get involved. And that should have been it. But he came back from the dead, filled with fury and unnatural energies, to track down and kill the street trash who murdered him. They died, one by one, and did not rise again. Perhaps after all the awful things Dead Boy had done to them, Hell seemed like a relief. But though they were all dead and gone long ago, Dead Boy went on, still walking the Nightside, trapped by the deal he made.

  Who did you make your deal with? He was often asked. Who do you think? he always replied.

  He got his revenge, but nothing had ever been said in the deal he made about being able to lie down again afterwards. He really should have read the small print. And so he goes on, a soul trapped in a dead body. Essentially, he’s possessing himself. He does good deeds because he has to. It’s the only chance he has of breaking the compact he made. He’s a useful sort to have on your side—he doesn’t feel pain, he can take a hell of a lot of damage, and he isn’t afraid of anything in this world.

  He’s spent a lot of time researching his condition. He knows more about death in all its forms than anyone else in the Nightside. Supposedly.

  He got up out of his car to greet me, all long gangling legs and arms, then leaned languidly against the side of the car. He was tall and adolescent thin, wearing a long, deep purple greatcoat over black leather trousers and shining calfskin boots. He wore a black rose in one lapel. The coat hung open, revealing his bare scarred torso. Being the revived dead, his body doesn’t decay, but neither does it heal, so when he gets damaged on a case, as he often does, having no sense of self-preservation, Dead Boy stitches, staples, and super-glues his corpse-pale flesh back together again. Occasionally, he has to resort to duct tape. It’s not a pretty sight. There were recent bullet holes in his greatcoat, but neither of us mentioned them.

  His long pale face had a weary, debauched, pre-Raphaelite look, with burning fever-bright eyes and a sulky pouting mouth with no colour to it. He wore a large floppy black hat over long dark curly hair. He drank whiskey straight from the bottle and munched chocolate biscuits. He offered me both, but I declined.

  “I don’t need to eat or drink,” Dead Boy said casually. “I don’t feel hunger or thirst, or even drunkenness any more. I just do it for the sensations. And since it’s hard for me to feel much of anything, only the most extreme sensations will do.” He produced a silver pillbox from inside his coat, spilled half a dozen assorted pills out onto his palm, and knocked them back with more whiskey. “Marvelous stuff. Little old Obeah woman makes them for me. It’s not easy getting drugs strong enough to affect the dead. Please don’t look at me like that, John. You always were an overly sensitive soul. What brings you to this charmless spot?”

  “Julien Advent said you were working a case here. If I help you out, would you be willing to work with me on something?”

  He considered the matter, eating another biscuit and absently brushing the crumbs off his lapels. “Maybe. Does your case involve danger, gratuitous violence, and kicking the crap out of the ungodly?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  Dead Boy smiled. “Then consider us partners. Assuming we survive my current assignment, of course.”

  I nodded at the silent, brooding Necropolis. “What’s happened here?”

  “A good question. It seems the Necropolis suffered an unexpected power cut, and all hell broke loose. I’ve been telling them for years they should get their own generator and hang the expense, but… Anyway, the cryonics section was very badly hit. I warned them about setting that up, too, but oh no, they had to be up to date, up to the moment, ready to meet any demand their customers might come up with.” He paused. “I did try it out myself, once, wondering whether I could sleep it out in the ice until someone found an answer to my predicament, but it didn’t work. I didn’t even feel the cold. Just lay there, bored … Took me ages to get the icicles out of my hair afterwards, as well.”

  I nodded like I was listening, but inside I was cursing silently. Another consequence of my actions at Prometheus Inc. No good deed goes unpunished …

  If the cryonics section was the problem here, we were in for a really rough ride. Bodies have to be dead before they can be frozen and preserved, which means the soul has already departed. However, since some people have a firm suspicion of where their souls might be headed, they see cryonics as their last hope. Get a necromancer in after the body dies, and have him perform the necessary rituals to tie the soul to the body. Then freeze it, and there they are, all safe and sound till Judgement Day. Or until the power cuts out. There were supposed to be all kinds of safe-guards, but… Once the power failed, all the frozen bodies would start defrosting, and the spell holding the souls to them would be short-circuited. So you’d end up with a whole bunch of untenanted thawing bodies, every one of them a ripe target for possession by outside forces.

  “So,” I said, trying hard to sound calm and casual and not all worried. “Do we know what’s got into them?”

  “Afraid not. Facts are a bit spotty. About two hours ago, everyone who worked here came running out screaming and refused to go back. Most just kept running. And given the appalling things they deal with here every day as a matter of course, I think we can safely assume the oh shit factor is way off the scale. According to the one member of the Necropolis management I talked to who wasn’t entirely hysterical, we have five newly thawed bodies to deal with, all of them taken over by Something From Outside. Doesn’t exactly narrow the field down, does it? The only good news is that the magical wards surrounding the Necropolis are still intact and holding. So whatever’s in there is still in there.”

  “Can’t we just turn the power back on?” I said hopefully.

  Dead Boy gave me a pitying smile. “Try and keep up with the rest of us, John. Power was reconnected some time back, but the damage had been done. The corpsicles’ new tenants have made themselves at home, and their influence now extends over the whole building. The Necropolis’s own tame spellslingers have tried all the usual techniques for putting down unwanted visitors from Beyond, from a safe distance, of course, but it seems the possessors are no ordinary imps or demons. We’re talking extradimensional creatures, elder gods, many-angled ones—the right bastards of the Outer Dark. Not the sort to be bothered by your everyday expulsions or exorcisms. No, something really nasty has taken advantage of the situation to wedge open a door into our reality, and if we don’t figure out a way to slam it shut soon, there’s no telling what might come howling through. So we get to go in there and serve the extradition papers in person. Aren’t we the lucky ones?”

  “Luck isn’t quite the word I was going to use,” I said, and he laughed, entirely unconcerned.

>   I looked down at the ground before me. A narrow white line crossed the gravel, marking the boundary of the protective wards surrounding the Necropolis. It had been laid down in salt and silver and semen centuries before, to keep things in and keep things out. It remained unbroken, which was a good sign. Those old-time necromancers knew their business. I crouched clown and touched the white line with a tentative fingertip. Immediately I could feel the presence of the force wall, like an endless roll of thunder shaking the air. I could also feel a great pressure, pushing constantly from the other side. Something wanted out bad. It was raging at the wall that held it imprisoned, and it was getting stronger all the time. I snatched my hand back and straightened up again.

  “Oh yes,” said Dead Boy, draining the last of his whiskey and throwing the bottle aside. “Nasty, isn’t it?” The bottle smashed on the gravel, but the sound seemed very small. Dead Boy fixed the front door of the Necropolis with a speculative look. “Any ward will go down, if you hit it hard enough and long enough. So it’s up to thee and me to go in there and clean their extradimensional clocks, while there’s still time. Ah me, I do so love a challenge! Stop looking at me like that, it’s going to be fun! Stick close to me, John. The charm the management gave me will get us past the wards, but it won’t let you out again if we get separated.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be right behind you. Hiding.”

  Dead Boy laughed, and we crossed the barrier together.

  It hit us both at the same time, a psychic assault so powerful and so vile we both staggered and almost fell. Something was watching us, from behind the blind, windowless walls of the Necropolis. A presence permeated the atmosphere, hanging on the air like an almost palpable fog, something dark and awful and utterly alien to human ways of thinking. It felt like crying and vomiting and the smell of your own blood, and it throbbed with hate. Approaching the Necropolis was like wading through an ocean of shit while someone you loved thrust knives into your face. Dead Boy just straightened his shoulders and took it in his stride, heading directly for the front door. I suppose there’s nothing like having already died to put everything else in perspective. I gritted my teeth, hugged myself tightly to keep from falling apart, and stumbled forward into the teeth of the psychic assault.

  We got to the door without anything nasty actually turning up to rip chunks off us, and Dead Boy rattled the door handle. From his expression, I gathered it wasn’t supposed to be locked. He pushed at it with one hand, and it didn’t budge. Dead Boy pulled back his hand and looked at it thoughtfully. I put my hand against the solid steel door, and it gave spongily, as though the substance, the reality of it, was being slowly leached out of it. My skin crawled at the contact, and I snatched my hand back and rubbed it thoroughly against my jacket. Dead Boy raised one booted foot and kicked the door in. The great slab of steel and silver flew inwards as though it were weightless, torn away from its hinges. It fell forward and slapped against the floor inside, making a soft, flat sound. Dead Boy strode over it into the entrance hall beyond. I hurried in after him as he struck a defiant pose, hands on hips, and glared into the gloom ahead of him.

  “Hello there! I am Dead Boy! Come out here so I can kick your sorry arse! Go on, give me your best shot! I can take it!”

  “You see?” I said. “This is why other people don’t want to work with you.”

  “Bunch of wimps,” he said, indifferently.

  The smell was really bad. Blood and rot and the scent of things that really belonged inside the body. The only light in the great open hall came from a thin, shifting mist that curled slowly on the air, glowing blue-silver like phosphorescence. My eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light, then I wished they hadn’t as for the first time I saw the walls, and what was on them. All around us, the walls were covered with a layer of human remains. Corpses had been stretched and flattened and plastered over the walls from floor to ceiling, layering the hall with an insulating barrier of human skin and guts and fractured bones. There were hundreds, thousands of distorted faces, from bodies presumably torn from the graveyard out back. The human remains had been given a kind of life. They stirred slowly as they became aware of us. Eyes rolled in tightly spread faces, tracking the two of us as we advanced slowly across the great open hall. Hands and arms stretched out from the walls as though to grab us, or appeal for help. I could see hearts and lungs, pulsing and swelling in a mockery of life. I was just glad I didn’t recognise any of the faces.

  At least the floor was clear. Dead Boy strode forward, not even glancing at the walls, and I went with him. I felt somebody sane should be present when push inevitably came to shove. The sound of our feet on the bare floor was strangely muffled, and the shadows around us were very dark and very deep. It felt like walking down a tunnel, away from our world and its rules into … somewhere else.

  We were almost half-way across the hall before we got our first glimpse of what was waiting for us. At the far end, in the darkest of the shadows, barely illuminated by the light of the swirling mists, were five huge figures. The corpsicles. Thawed from unimaginable cold, revived from the dead, reanimated by abhuman spirits from Outside, they didn’t look human any more. The forces that possessed the vacant bodies were too strong, too furious, too other for merely human frames to contain. They had all grown and expanded, forced into unnatural shapes and configurations by the pressures within, and now they were changed and mutated in hideous ways. It hurt to look at them. Their outlines seethed and fluctuated, trying to contain more than three dimensions at once. Mere flesh and blood and bone should have broken down and fallen apart, but the five abominations were held together by the implacable will of the creatures possessing them. They needed these bodies, these vacant hosts. The corpsicles were their only means of access to the material world. I kept wanting to look away. The shapes the bodies were trying to take were just too complex, too intricate for simple human minds to deal with.

  We were getting too close. I grabbed Dead Boy by the arm and made him stop. He glared at me.

  “We need information,” I murmured. “Talk to them.”

  “You talk to them. Find me something useful I can hit.”

  One of the shapes leaned forward. It was twice as tall as a man, and almost as wide, its pale, sweating skin stretched painfully tight. A head craned forward on the end of a long, extended neck. Bloody tears fell constantly, to hiss and steam on the hall floor. Bone horns and antlers thrust out of the distorted face, and, when it spoke, its voice was like a choir of children whispering obscenities.

  “We are The Primal. Purely conceptual beings, products of the earliest days of creation, before the glory of ideas was trapped and diminished in the narrow confines of matter. Kept out of the material worlds, to protect its fragile creatures of meat and mortality. Ever since Time was, we were. Waiting and watching at the Edge of things, searching eternally for a way in, to finally show our contempt and hatred for all the lesser creations, that dare to dream of being more than they are. We are The Primal. We were here first. And we will be here when all the meat that dares to think has been stamped back into the mud it came from.”

  “Typical bloody demons,” said Dead Boy. “Created millennia ago, and still sulking because they didn’t get better parts in the story. Let’s get this over with. Come on, let’s see what you can do!”

  “Can you at least try for a more rational attitude?” I said sharply. And then I broke off, as the head turned suddenly to look at me.

  “We know you, little prince,” said the choir of whispering voices. “John Taylor. Yes. We know your mother, too.”

  “What do you know about her?” My mouth was painfully dry, but I fought to keep my voice steady.

  “She who was first, and will be first again, in this worst of all possible worlds. She’s coming back. Yes. Soon, she will come back.”

  “But who is she? What is she?”

  “Ask the ones who called her up. Ask the ones who called her back. She is coming home, and she will not be den
ied.”

  “You’re scared of her,” I said, almost wonderingly. And you’re scared of me, too, I thought.

  “We are The Primal. There is still time to play in the world, before she comes back to take it for her own. Time to play with you, little prince.”

  “This is all terribly interesting,” said Dead Boy. “But enough of the chit-chat. Back me up, John. I have a plan.”

  And he ran forward and threw himself at the nearest shape.

  “That’s your idea of a plan?” I shrieked, and plunged after him, because there was nothing else to do. It’s times like this I wish I carried a gun. A really big gun. With nuclear bullets.

  Dead Boy reached out to grab the extended head of the speaking Primal, and its whole body surged suddenly forward to engulf and envelop him, holding him firm like an insect in amber. It wanted to possess him, but Dead Boy was already possessing his body, and his curse didn’t allow room for anyone else. The Primal convulsed and spat him out, repulsed by his very nature. Dead Boy hit the floor hard, but was back on his feet in a moment, looking around for something he could hit. The Primal raised their voices in a terrible harmony, chanting something in a language full of higher things than words. And the reanimated dead plastered across the walls heard them. They slipped slowly down the walls and slid across the floor towards Dead Boy and me, a sea of body parts oozing and undulating towards us from all directions, spitting and seething and sprouting distorted limbs like weapons. Stomach acids burned the wooden floor. Eyeballs rose up on wavering stalks. Hands flexed fingers with nails long as knives, sharp as scalpels.