"This Dr. Fell worries you," I said. "What makes him so different?"
"Dr. Fell is seriously weird," said Ms. Fate. "Even for the Nightside. I would have taken him down myself, just on general principles… but there is that whole private-army thing he's got going. A girl should know her limitations."
"I don't pay tolls," I said. "Normally. But I think you've got the right of it. None of us are in any shape to fight off armies. So, we go in politely, act diplomatically, and see if we can sweet-talk the scumbag. Screech, you'd better stay in the car."
"I am deeply hurt by your insinuation," said the elf. "I can be diplomatic if I have to be. I am an emissary, after all."
"All right, you can come in with us," I said. "But don't kill anybody. Unless I start something first."
"Well, really," said Screech. "What do you think I am, a barbarian?"
"No," I said. "You're an elf. Which is worse." I looked at Ms. Fate. "Same to you, only less so. I've no doubt we're going to see some distressing things in Dr. Fell's court, but patience and dignity at all times. We can always go back and give him a good arse kicking some other time."
"I have had… disagreements with some of Dr. Fell's people, in the past," Ms. Fate said carefully. "Really quite vicious and bloody disagreements, on occasion."
"Oh, this is going to go really well," I said.
We drove a short distance until we came to what was obviously Dr. Fell's place of power. We all got out of the Fatemobile, and I took a long thoughtful look at it while Ms. Fate activated what was left of the car's security systems. From the outside, Dr. Fell's court looked like just another shabby night-club, with boarded-up windows and a really quite understated neon sign-The Penitent. The whole place could have used a lick of paint and quite possibly a tetanus injection. The only signs of life were the bouncers outside the firmly closed front doors, two huge golems in oversized tuxedos. They looked very professional and quite staggeringly dangerous. The only sure way to take down a stone golem is with a road drill.
The fresh air had revived me, or the werewolf blood in me was kicking in, and I actually felt half-way human as I headed for the club entrance. I was in the mood to spoil someone's day, and the bouncers would do as well as anyone. Their heads turned slowly in unison, accompanied by low, grinding sounds. I nodded to them briskly, and they stared silently back with their empty stone faces.
"John Taylor and friends, here to speak with Dr. Fell," I said. "And don't give me any crap about appointments or I'll make you targets for every pigeon in the Nightside."
"There aren't any pigeons in the Nightside, John," said Ms. Fate. "Something eats them."
"Yes," I said patiently, "I knew that, but very probably they didn't, until you told them. Now I have to come up with a whole new threat."
"Ah," said Ms. Fate. "Shutting up now."
"You're not on the list," the stone golems said in unison, in low, grating voices.
"I rarely am," I said. "But I think you'll find Dr. Fell will want to see me anyway."
The two blocky heads turned slowly to look at each other; there was a silent conference, then two empty faces ground back to look at me.
"Go right in," they said together. "Dr. Fell will have words with you, and your friends."
"Wonderful," Ms. Fate said brightly. "Doesn't sound at all intimidating."
Lord Screech sniffed loudly, stepped forward, and thrust a single long finger deep into the blank stone face of the nearest golem. With a few quick gestures, he etched long, sweeping furrows into the stone, giving the golem a nice happy face. He gave the other golem a sad face, then stepped back to regard his handiwork. He nodded, satisfied.
"Never take sass from the hired help."
"Can't take you anywhere," I said.
"Dr. Fell really isn't going to like that," said Ms. Fate.
"Good," I said. "Now, when we get in there, stick close to me, don't pee in the potted plants, and act civilised. If anyone's going to start anything, it's going to be me, and I really don't like to be upstaged."
I led the way forward, and the dull grey entrance doors slowly swung open before us. Above the doors, the neon sign had changed to read Suffer for Your Sins. Nice touch, I thought. Beyond the entrance doors lay a sparse and spartan lobby with cracked plaster walls and a grubby wooden floor. On the far side of the lobby was another set of double doors, apparently made of solid brass. I walked right up to them, but they didn't open on their own. I gave them an experimental push, and they swung slowly backwards, a few inches at a time, their hidden counterweights utterly silent. A bright light flared in the widening gap between, too painful to look at directly. I couldn't see a thing through it, so I waited for the gap to widen enough, then marched forward with all the confidence in the world. And a complete willingness to look down my nose at anyone who wasn't actually a member of a major pantheon.
Ms. Fate strode proudly beside me, like the renowned crime-fighter she was, and Lord Screech… was Lord Screech.
The moment we passed through the doors, the light sank back to a bearable level, and Dr. Fell's curious court was revealed before us. It looked like a circus, seen from the other side. A dark carousel of strange delights and twisted grotesques, candy-coloured clowns with painted-on leers, and malformed supermodels with a strange, wounded glamour. Cold-faced men in smart leisure suits sat stiffly in oversized chairs, surrounded by pretty boys and hard-faced girls in all the more extreme fashions of decades past. All of this was set against a selection of colour schemes that were shockingly bright and almost painfully clashing.
There was no music, no background entertainment; only a constant buzz of whispered conversation.
Every face turned to look at us, but though the whispers continued, no-one had anything to say to us. They looked us over with blank, expressionless faces, staring like so many dead people, as though all the life and passion and independence had been beaten or intimidated out of everyone present. Many of them held champagne glasses in their hands, but no-one seemed to be drinking. They all looked like they'd been standing in Dr. Fell's court forever and might stand there forever more. They weren't his courtiers, or his acolytes, or even his army; they were his, to do with as he would.
Here and there, light flared up suddenly in this pair of eyes or that, and I remembered that Dr. Fell was supposed to be able to See through them. So I smiled cheerfully about me, determined to give him a good show. I heard the heavy brass doors close behind me, but I didn't look back.
Ms. Fate struck a super-heroine pose at my side, her leather fists resting on her black-clad hips, just above the utility belt. Her dark cloak swirled slowly, dramatically, about her. It was a tribute to her reputation and her sheer presence that she didn't look in any way camp or amusing. The dried werewolf blood spattered across her leathers probably helped. Lord Screech struck a carelessly elegant pose on my other side, his bored expression suggesting he was slumming just by being there, and everyone present should feel honoured that he had deigned to stop off on his way to somewhere far more interesting. Typical elf, in other words.
And I… stood straight and tall in my white trench coat, and let everyone get a good look at me. I was John Taylor, and that should be enough for anyone.
Dr. Fell's foot-soldiers bothered me. I'd spotted them right away. Every crime boss and Mr. Big had them; young men with a lean and hungry look, eager to advance in the organisation by demonstrating just how much more vicious and extreme they were than their colleagues. Attack dogs, with good suits that couldn't quite hide the bulges of holstered guns and other weapons. There were quite a few of them, lined up casually in the crowd between me and their boss. Nothing I hadn't seen before, and even wiped the floor with on occasion… but these were different. It was in their eyes… He was in their eyes.
Supermodel types moved listlessly through the packed crowd, sporting garish little numbers and strangely styled gowns, offering trays of drinks and nibbles and the very latest chemical delights. They were all pretty as a pict
ure, criss-crossing the room in simple patterns, moving in perfect unison, like flocking birds. They smiled widely, all the time, the only smiles in that place of whispers and staring eyes; but smiles too perfect and unwavering to be real. Sometimes guests would reach out to caress or slap their perfect bodies, and sometimes a girl would be pulled down to sit on someone's lap, and the smiles looked even more unreal.
This was Dr. Fell's carnival court, just so many living dolls for him to play with.
The man himself sat above them all, on the traditional raised dais, posed stiffly on a chair fashioned from human bones bound together with strips of mummified human muscle and tendon. Supplied, no doubt, by his many deceased victims. In a faded mourning suit, Dr. Fell was a tall, thin presence, with dull grey skin and a hideously mutilated face. Half a dozen naked women stood in a semicircle behind his hideous chair, all of them malformed or abnormal in various unpleasant ways. Missing parts, twisted limbs, gouged-out eyes. You only had to look at them to know they'd been made, not born, that way. They were the way they were because it amused Dr. Fell that they should be. Some of them held knives, some held guns, and some held nasty-looking magical weapons. All of them possessed a strange dark glamour and a dangerous attraction. Dr. Fell's personal body-guards and assassins.
I was beginning to remember where I'd heard his name before; and I didn't think we were going to get on.
Dr. Fell had burned out his own eyes with a white-hot crucifix. Now his scorched and shrivelled eyelids were sealed together under two great cross-shaped scars. He came to the Nightside as a rogue vicar and gave up his eyes in search of a greater Vision. Whatever he Saw, it changed his allegiance completely. Rumour had it he'd looked into a mirror… And the man who'd come here to rage against the darkness ended up embracing it. He wore a crown of thorns, pressed down hard onto his forehead, and rivulets of dried blood ran down his sunken cheeks.
All the time I was considering Dr. Fell, he studied me through the eyes of his people.
I started forward and an aisle opened up, a narrow passage through the crowd to lead me right to Dr. Fell. Ms. Fate and Lord Screech strode along beside me, but Dr. Fell only had eyes for me. A hand reached out from the crowd to tug at Ms. Fate's cape. She punched the man out without even looking round. He made no sound as he fell, and no-one else showed any reaction. A hunchbacked girl lurched forward into the aisle, blocking our way, and we had to stop or run over her. She was bent almost in two by the gnarled mass that ran the length of her spine, clearly visible thanks to her backless dress. She raised her head as high as she could, to smile at Screech.
"You're so beautiful," she said, in a voice like a little girl's.
Screech smiled upon her. "Yes," he said. "I am. You, however, are not a natural hunchback. This was done to you. Why?"
"Because it amused Dr. Fell," she said. "There is no greater purpose, no greater reward. He looks upon us with his divine Sight, and we become what he Sees, what we truly are. He says it is only fitting that our exteriors match our interiors. He lets us be… what we really are."
"Typical human bullshit," Screech said briskly. "You're like this because he can't bear to be the only monster here. And that is not acceptable to me."
He took the young woman by the shoulders and shook her hard. She convulsed in his grip and cried out as the bones in her back snapped and cracked loudly, rearranging and restoring themselves. The hunch sank down into her flesh and was gone, all in a moment. Screech let go of the woman and she straightened up, slowly and disbelievingly, until she stood straight and tall before us all. She looked at Screech with awe and wonder and naked gratitude in her eyes, but he just waved her away. The chorus of whispers around us rose briefly, then fell back to its usual disturbing background noise. I looked at Screech, and he shrugged.
"I can't abide small cruelties," he said, to no-one in particular. "Only the greatest sins are worthy of indulgence."
He sounded as arrogant as ever, but I liked him rather better in that moment. Not that I'd ever tell him.
A hulking figure appeared suddenly before us, blocking the narrow aisle. He wore a ruffled silk shirt over knee-length shorts, and his face was painted like a debauched clown. Rattles and dollies and clutches of blood-stained children's finger bones hung from his belt. Two ugly horns thrust up out of his forehead. He opened his mouth to speak, but Screech cut him off.
"You, on the other hand, aren't nearly ugly enough for what you really are. In fact, your entire existence offends my aesthetic sensibilities."
He snapped his fingers crisply, and the man exploded. Bits of flesh and bone flew over a distressingly large area, spattering the clothes of pretty much everyone in the crowd. Interestingly, although many of them pulled disgusted faces and made appalled sounds, not one of them fell back by so much as a single step; and though the general whispering rose up loudly on every side, no-one protested. I wondered if they could. Ms. Fate looked at Lord Screech.
"Nice trick. You couldn't have used it on the werewolves?"
"Only works on people," said Screech. "The wolves are too far from baseline Humanity to be affected."
"Leaving aside why you'd want a spell that only worked on people… do you think you could teach me that trick?"
"Not if you want to remain human. Though I can't think why anyone would want to. You are such small and limited things."
"Still kicked your arse in the last war," said Ms. Fate.
"Children, children," I murmured. "You're not at home now…"
"John Taylor," said Dr. Fell, and everything stopped. The whispering cut off sharply, and his dry, dusty voice seemed to echo unpleasantly in the new silence. He leaned forward slightly, and I couldn't tell if the soft, creaking sounds came from him or his awful chair. "Approach me, John Taylor. We have so much to talk about."
"We do?" I said, not moving.
"We are both men of vision. Men of power, and of destiny. Fate brought you to me, John Taylor."
"No," I said. "A Fatemobile."
I strode forward to stand at the base of the raised dais. Ms. Fate and Lord Screech had to hurry to keep up with me. I'd had enough of Dr. Fell and his corrupt court, and I wanted this over and done with. Up close, he looked like a museum exhibit. A preserved specimen of something really nasty, only kept around to remind us of past mistakes. He smelled faintly of burned meat, as though some part of his scarred face was still burning. He smiled slowly at me, ignoring my companions. I didn't smile back.
"Dr. Fell," I said flatly. "Not at all pleased to meet you. Sorry if it's taken me a while to get around to you, but you know how it is… Things to see, people to do, and complete and utter scumbags to put in their place. Busy, busy, busy."
"Calm, polite, and diplomatic, remember?" Ms. Fate murmured in my ear. "We're here to beg a favour unless you want to start a war."
"Haven't decided yet," I said. I looked Dr. Fell over, unhurriedly. "So, from rogue vicar to crime lord. I don't know why you people keep coming here; you must know it isn't good for you."
"I came here to test my faith," said Dr. Fell, apparently undisturbed by any of the things I'd said to him. "And I fell from my high station. Sometimes it feels like I'm still falling and always will be."
"I never know what to say when people say things like that to me," I said. "So, moving right along… I will be passing through your territory. I thought it only right and proper to pop in and tell you."
"You wish to beg my permission and pay tribute?"
"No," I said. "I don't do the begging thing, and I don't have any loose change on me. I'm just here to be polite."
"You come into my court, into my domain, you speak roughly to me, and you bring with you a deviant and an elf," said Dr. Fell, his dry, scratchy voice entirely without emotion. "You mock me, Lilith's son."
"Why does everyone keep going on about Mommie Dearest?" I said. "All right, my mother's a Biblical myth, and she nearly killed everyone in the Nightside, but can we please all get over that and move on? I have achieved
a great deal in my own right, you know."
"We are aware of your sins," said Dr. Fell. His pursed, dried-up mouth moved in something that might have been a smile. "Did you really think we would allow one such as you… to travel unmolested in our territory? Sinner…"
"If there's a sinner here, I'm looking at him," I said. "The more I see of you and your people and your operation, the more I think you need shutting down with extreme prejudice. I will get around to you, but it doesn't have to be now. Look the other way while I pass through your territory, and you can live to intimidate the impressionable another day."
"Which part of Let's not piss off the complete and utter loony because he's got his own private army did you have trouble grasping?" Ms. Fate hissed in my ear. "If this is your idea of diplomacy, you should write the Diplomatic Mail Order School and demand your money back."
"I had hoped for more from you," said Dr. Fell. "We are both men of vision, Mr. Taylor, men who have learned to See the world for what it is rather than what most people would have it be. I had hoped, after all this time, to find a kindred soul… but no matter." He turned his head slightly, so that his blind eyes fixed on Ms. Fate. "You can be reconstructed, deviant, returned to what you were meant to be. You shall earn redemption here, through long and painful penance. But the elf… is an abomination. It has no soul. Destroy it."
Without warning or outcry, the whole crowd fell on us, arms outstretched, hands like claws. And every one of them had someone else looking out of their eyes. Ms. Fate threw down some pellets she'd unobtrusively palmed from her belt, and great clouds of choking black smoke billowed up, confusing our attackers. Lord Screech flexed his long fingers like a piano player about to attempt a difficult piece, then stabbed his left forefinger at one attacker after another. Men and women exploded, or melted and ran like candle wax, or burst into flames. People died as fast as the elf could point, but still they fought their way through the smoke to get to us.
Because they belonged to Dr. Fell, who cared for nothing but that his will be enforced. When rogue vicars go bad, they go all the way.
The Good,the Bad and the Uncanny n-10 Page 6
