London Revenant

by Williams, Conrad

  Gradually, the train slowed. The tunnel beyond the window greyed out and details – cables, switches, ducts – hove into view. Monck was able to read the station sign as it flashed by the windows: The Web. With a final lurch, the train shuddered to a halt. A voice, raspy and baritone, fluttered through the PA.

  ‘This is The Web,’ it said. ‘Passengers change here…’ It drifted away for a while and then: ‘Thank you for your attention. We look forward to the opportunity of serving you again.’

  Nobody, bar him and Mitre, disembarked. There was no-one waiting to get on. Not that the train hung around long enough to collect any passengers; as soon as they were standing on the platform its doors hissed shut and it chuntered away. More of the hives of muck were clustered around his feet – he didn’t want to see what they encased.

  There were no signs hinting at a way out, but Mitre ushered him through the nearest exit and he allowed himself to be led by the point of the spear, while at the same time struggling to understand where he was.

  At the entrance to The Web – a fence with a padlocked gate – Mitre barked a single word: Almond and then left him. Water trickled down the walls here, and ran along an uneven path that was studded with rat droppings, crumbling brickwork and sopping tumbleweeds of hair, dust and grease. Monck took the time to study his own clothes, trying to understand why they looked so different. What had happened here? Had he been sleeping? Had he been ill? He felt much fresher for it, whatever the case.

  Presently, a slightly stooped man appeared, jogging through the soup. His large, sad eyes glittered for seconds before his entire face was visible: they seemed to slope towards the frog-like spread of his mouth, as if his head was slowly melting. He might have been any age between twenty and sixty. His features were filled with dirt and fear: both had erased whatever it is that suggests a vintage.

  ‘What’s the rumpus?’ said Almond, quickening from the dark, like the insects he liked to breed in his burrow, Monck thought, and then: how did I know that? Almond unlocked the gate and shooed him through. ‘You’re lucky. Vane is free for the now. Plagued she is, usually with folk moaning for fruit.’

  As Monck pushed past him, Almond quietened, to the degree that Monck had to turn to see what was wrong. ‘What is it, Almond?’ he asked, wondering why he should feel so familiar with this creep. ‘See something green?’

  ‘Your smell too fresh, too clean,’ said Almond. ‘I don’t like it. You skimmers, you water boatmen, you sicken me. What makes you so special that you should be allowed to dip in and out of the above while the rest of us grow blind down here?’

  ‘Lock your gruel-gate, prater,’ Monck said. ‘Stop gob-shiting me.’

  ‘I’ll report your attitude. We all have to do our jobs. Without divergence. Monck! Come back. I’ll have to report this.’

  ‘At your peril,’ said Monck, and: ‘I am doing my job.’ Yet he couldn’t recall what his job was. Almond’s words flirted with something recent in his memory that he couldn’t solidify. The heavy, almost cloacal smells of deep earth; the dun, hemispherical uniformity of it all. Regiments of train sounds, all of them bass rumbles that, by the nuances their vibrations took, gave away direction and line. It was as close and as identifiable to him as his own skin. Another place away from here he couldn’t begin to envisage, although somehow he knew he’d spent the greater part of his life on the surface. It seemed such a long way away. It took on the rippled nonsense of dreams; a nonsense of tall buildings and queues and the siege mentality of light.

  Vane met him as she came out of her burrow. ‘Follow me,’ she said, giving him the once over. They sank deeper into the earth, the cold becoming something that clung, like wet clothes.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he asked, thinking he ought to know.

  ‘We have to talk to Odessa,’ she replied. ‘About what should happen to you now.’

  ‘Mitre said I needed to see you because I have a headache.’

  ‘Mitre is a brain-dead fool. He’d fuck up a wet dream, that one. And leave it to me to say what you need to do.’

  It grew so dark that he had to catch hold of the woollen tassels on her cardigan in order to negotiate the winding path. Eventually, cold light seeped from a crook in the passageway, lazy as slob ice. Even the air here seemed tired, coiling heavily in his lungs; tasting stale, slightly burned, reminding him of uninvited kisses. Two women flanking a jet black fissure in the rock unwound themselves from hills of blankets. In the unflattering light, their eyes were milky orbs, ceaselessly motile, like flies’ eggs. They wore vaguely recognisable clothes resembling poor, ill-fitting armour that had become matted with filth and plates of mud.

  ‘It’s me, Zoffany,’ said Vane. ‘Let me by. I’ve brought Monck for the Queen.’

  He didn’t like the way she said that, as if he were something to be served. The guards did not stand down. ‘Code me,’ said one, kneeling.

  Vane lifted the stiff folds of her skirt and shot an angry squirt of piss into the guard’s face. No further exchanges were made: Zoffany stepped away from the fissure. They went in.

  Vane made him wait at the edge of this new dark while she disappeared into it. His breath came evenly, despite his not knowing in detail who lay ahead. He knew she was benevolent, of that he was sure, though he didn’t know how. Sighting her would make everything clear, he was sure. Whatever muck was fogging his brain would be put right soon enough. Something tethered by a thick rope clawed its way out of the shadows, snuffling at the ground a metre or so from his left foot. From the slant of its head, the greased sleekness of its hide, he guessed vermin as its root family, though he wouldn’t have put money on it. There was a shadow of dog in that thing, if his eyes were to be believed. And –

  ‘Monck.’

  He moved instantly towards the flat bark of her voice, a child to its mother’s demand. The creature slunk back, baring a yellow tusk that writhed with mites. Monck was standing by the side of a collapsed chair upon which a mouldering stack of newspapers were balanced. When the stack unfolded slightly, twisting to accommodate his approach, he felt his blood quicken. The chair was legless, or rather the legs that had once belonged to it were without shape, blended into the irregular ground on which they stood. As for Odessa, the closer he came to her, the more she seemed fashioned from the very stuff upon which she sat. Her face was oaken and runnelled. Grainy eyes sucked at him greedily, taking in his substance as if she were starved of such visual sport. He couldn’t tell whether the folds that swaddled her were fabric or skin, so gnarled were they, vague upon her shape and without any of the adornments that might give them away. She shifted continually, or rather, the muck piled against her did, like miniature tectonic collisions, re-configuring her posture into varying degrees of collapse. He stopped about three feet away, registering a smell of ancient things: he was put in mind of attics, of seeds in woods cracked open during wet autumn evenings, of classrooms filled with thin clouds of chalk dust.

  She inclined her head towards him as his breathing calmed. A nictitating membrane wetted the surface of her powdery eyes; the papyrus scroll of her mouth fluttered. Though nothing of substance passed through her lips, he heard the words anyway, flirting in his mind, much like the echoes of long-departed trains vanishing through unseen tunnels.

  ‘He walked among us once, Monck. This man who turns against us now. He will be our undoing unless we can arrest him.’

  ‘The Pusher,’ he said.

  ‘Whatever moniker the linens have given him, yes. Here we knew him as Blore. We need to stop him, and the handful he has recruited, bent to his will, or he will reveal us. And that must not happen. An age of understanding has evolved here, Monck. A new direction. There are religions down here, philosophies born of the earth. If knowledge is observation, we have all the wisdom we’ll ever need to survive here. Up Top, we’d be dust.’

  He watched the thick, furry coats of grime move against each other like wads of iron filings crawling on a magnet. He didn’t think to suggest she’d
achieved that status already. A dim flickering in the corner of the chamber caught his eye: a television, he saw, fighting to spray its cathode secrets past a static cling of grit. Its carcase was long gone; tubes and valves and wiring hung free like the innards of a gutted animal. He couldn’t determine where its power was sourcing from: it was being leeched directly from the abundant pool of electricity down here, no doubt. He sensed Odessa watching him with her chalk-dry eyes as he approached the screen, and Vane tensing. He crouched and wiped some of the dust away, revealing black and white images, alien shapes that only became recognisable at the end of their cycle of movement: two mouths, caught up in shade, meeting for a kiss.

  ‘Monck,’ Odessa gentled, ‘Monck…’ Her voice skipped through his mind like dead leaves on a pavement. For some reason, he found it crucial to be cautious around this woman, this Queen. Something in the kiss and the other-worldliness of the television called to him, plucked at a part of his being that wanted away from this place, that didn’t understand its secrets and codes and protocols. And yet, all the while, he was revelling in the womb-like protection the underground afforded.

  ‘Monck…’ Again.

  He waited for her to cap the sentence. She shifted on her chair, steadied by Vane’s hand.

  ‘I’ll find him,’ he said finally, standing.

  Vane studied his face. ‘There’s word gone round that you’ve been spending too much time Topside,’ Vane whispered the final word, as if mention of it down here might be heretical. ‘That you’re suspected of going native. Of becoming Surfacetype. You must know,’ she hissed, looking to Odessa for support, ‘we will do everything in our power to stop you, should that be the case. Our resources might be depleted, but we’ll send someone after you.’ Her voice deepened with the implicit threat, as if it should inspire dread, but he was unimpressed. If there were more dangerous creatures than him down here, then why not send them after Blore? She appeared to mistake his impassiveness for nonchalance, and stepped back, suddenly apprehensive. Whatever his position down here, he knew two things: that people feared him, and that he was largely an unknown quantity. He didn’t know if this was good or bad.

  ‘I’ll find him,’ he said again.

  Odessa’s hand rested upon his for a beat. Her touch felt like wafers of burned paper. ‘Don’t become another Blore,’ she said. ‘Your link with Topside will be important in your search, but don’t linger. Bring him back. To me. Dead if you must.’ Her face twisted into the approximation of a smile then lost its shape to a landslide of soot that clung to her brow. ‘Not that death could protect Blore from what I intend to visit upon him.’

  He left then, Vane in tow, hastening him back to the trains.

  Nuala was sitting in her kitchen, her hands clasped around a mug of Russian tea, when I entered her flat.

  ‘The door was open,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a headache. I didn’t sleep at all well.’ I couldn’t tell her about my narcolepsy. Not yet. I had come to across the street from my flat, next to a manhole cover through which, I was certain, I could hear footsteps and somebody whistling a tune. My clothes were filthy, streaked with oil and grime.

  She was reading a magazine; she didn’t look up. ‘Wherever it was that you tried to sleep,’ she returned.

  ‘Uh… meaning?’

  ‘Meaning: it wasn’t in your bed.’ Now she did look up and I could see real concern in her eyes. It touched me. I hadn’t seen a look like that for a long time. ‘Where were you, Adam?’

  I didn’t know, that was the thing. ‘I went for a walk,’ I said, lamely. I could see she didn’t believe me but then she threw up a barrier; the concern went from her face and she began turning pages. ‘Whatever,’ she sighed. ‘It’s not my business. A few fucks do not a relationship make.’

  ‘I haven’t been anywhere!’

  ‘You’re so hostile,’ she said. ‘Even when you’re on the defensive.’

  ‘Oh come on,’ I retorted, and tried to force an incredulous laugh. ‘Jesus. I feel like I’m in the middle of a Woody Allen film.’

  ‘I know what’s chewing you inside out. It’s her, it’s Laura.’

  ‘Will you please leave that alone.’

  ‘You know, you really should be more open with me. All this stress is ruining me inside.’

  ‘Nuala. It wasn’t somebody else. I didn’t go to see anyone else.’ The wrong thing to say, patently. She hadn’t been thinking that.

  ‘I’m not the jealous type.’ She put up her hands to ward off any further protests. ‘Please, Adam, no more. You’re filling my kitchen with negativity. I’ve hardly moved in.’

  I went back to my place, hoping to find some clues to what had happened after my attack. There were three messages from Yoyo. I couldn’t hear what she was saying in the first two, her voice was fractured by tears and traffic. In the third one, she was pissed, and had called from a silent room. She said, simply: ‘Saskia.’

  I twisted the cap off a bottle of beer and took it to the sofa by the window where I watched life drag by on the street. Prams, shopping bags, briefcases. Everybody carries something, or looks after something. What was I looking after? Who was I carrying? I couldn’t even carry myself. A small child darted from behind a hedge and stood for a while, grubby face turned up towards the sun. She was smiling: even from here I could see her little, blockish milk teeth, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

  I guzzled the beer and fetched another. I put some PJ Harvey on the stereo and returned to the chair.

  The girl had gone.

  My attention was continually drawn to the fireplace and the empty bottle of beer. I couldn’t get comfortable. That bottle. Something about its shape. Why were bottles preying on my mind so much?

  Chapter 6

  Surface tension

  What’s this? The papers are calling It The Pusher? Belittling It, reducing It with a name they give to drugs dealers. It reads the newspaper, a Sun It salvaged from a bin up Top early this morning. The headline screams TUBE TERROR, and beneath: Cowardly Pusher Strikes Again – Police Vow to Catch Killer Soon.

  So she died, then, the last one. It wasn’t what It wanted but it doesn’t matter; It had rescued her and alerted everyone else to the quiet, creeping dangers It had once fallen foul of.

  ‘Don’t end up like me,’ It whispers, scrunching the rag and tossing it into the corner of Its living space. Something flinches there: supper, if It’s not mistaken. Taking a stone from Its pocket, It closes Its eyes and launches the projectile after the noise. It recovers the limp rat – half a foot long – and with deft, sharp fingernails, rips the spine from the flesh before shaving off its fur with a rusty old Bic. With a knife, It delicately slices through a thin web of subcutaneous fat to find the area where the stomach links the duodenum. This tube, thin as a hair, It severs before squeezing its pale contents towards the anus, which It chops away with the tail. It discards the feet, throwing the rest into a kettle to be boiled later. It loves to suck those poached eyes from their sockets: like juicy capers bursting on Its tongue. Real food. Natural food.

  Food. Warmth. Love. These were the things that people ought to crave. Not iPods. Not broadband. Not 0898. London was suffocating from the weight of all the crap being unfolded into it. All the packaging. All the crap. All the people. People were being crammed into London like hens into a battery farm. It was bad enough before the houses were gutted and repartitioned into flats. The thought of sleeping in a room with another dozen stinking animals breathing their shit all over the world makes It feel nauseous. How London has sucked the evil into itself. How It must try to unburden the city. Sometimes it seems such an impossible task. But things can be achieved. The mouse can scare the elephant.

  The peace of Its surroundings creeps into It, subtle as a murmur, working the flints from Its muscles, reducing the core of fire in Its stomach to a manageable ember.

  The roar of a train, eastbound Central Line, electrifies It, reminding It of Its love for this place and the task ahead. It feels the unhappy marria
ge on Its face between skin and bone, dreaming of its wet, crimson promise.

  I got a letter from Greg.

  No mention of his work, no reference to my own life. Perhaps it’s better like that. Just a shallow, obscene letter about all the women he’d either fucked recently, or wanted to fuck. Or women from our working past that he had fucked or wanted to fuck.

  So we ended up snogging half the night and in the taxi home I had her tits all over the back seat and my tongue so far down her throat that I could taste what she’d shat out for breakfast three days ago –

  But something bothered me. It wasn’t the letter itself, but the fact that Greg had never written to me before. Always used the phone or arranged a breakfast meeting. I had a feeling he wanted to tell me something. Or maybe I was just reading things into it, his last line: Hope everything’s all right. Not in keeping with the general tone of the letter. Not in keeping with the general tone of him.