by Felix Gilman
She busied herself preparing food for him to carry. She avoided looking him in the eye.
She asked, “Do you want a weapon?”
“Would it help, do you think?”
“It might.”
“I feel I have never been lucky with weapons.”
“Well, you can’t just talk to him.”
“Perhaps I can! I’ll appeal to his fellow-feeling. It’s hard to be a man out of his time.”
“It’s not funny,” she said. “Now let me take a look at your hand.”
When you’ve found Ivy, come back to us,” Ruth said. “Come back one more time, before you disappear.”
“Ruth …”
“No. Not now. When you bring Ivy back things will be better. Then we’ll talk. When you come back. If you come back.”
“I …”
“Good. Go on, then. Please. It’s stopped raining.”
Arjun set out east along Carnyx Street in the afternoon. The paving-stones were wet and the sky full of black clouds through which a straw-yellow sun cast a cold clean light.
Brace-Bel’s mansion was more than a day’s travel south and east. Arjun carried a bag slung over his shoulder, containing food and a blanket.
Ruth had cut his hair short, and he’d shaved with the Dad’s old straight razor. He wore a suit borrowed from the Dad’s old wardrobe. It was pinstriped and it fit badly. The Dad had been short and fat. It smelled of mothballs and there were ancient scribbled notes-to-self in the pockets: buy eggs and rent due on No. 43 and Ask Stevens about the money and Poss. 7-minute anomaly b/w Ezra Street fountain & Capra Street Theater? and See Smith about the key; see Kaplan about Smith and Thunders roost blw Odradek & 121 A; nets? Poison? and remember Ivy’s Birthday(?).
Also in the pockets: a wallet thinly lined with what money the Low sisters had been able to spare, and a folded map on which Ruth had sketched the omnibus routes for at least the first third of the journey, after which Arjun would have to improvise, or walk. And also everything he’d had in his pockets when he’d first come tumbling through Ruth’s door, a sad little pile of miscellany that she’d kept safe for his return while he went wandering: the red matchbook from the WaneLight Hotel, a worn and crumpled theater ticket for something called The Marriage Blessing, a citation to appear in Lord Chymerstry’s Court for false preaching, on the back of which someone—Arjun himself?—had scribbled a ten-digit number. Some lengths of wire, a pencil stub, some coins.
He had no work papers, no residency papers; according to Marta, there used to be a forger on Carnyx Street, but the Know-Nothings had beaten him and hauled him off one night last year. Arjun would have to get by paperless.
Arjun stopped, on a whim, at the end of the street, outside a public house that called itself the White Horse.
He made his way down damp stone steps into the bar. It was half subterranean, sawdust-floored and filled with rough wooden benches. Someone had painted the walls with horses in primitive style, vast and powerful and surging; others had defaced them with curses and obscenities.
Two men played chess in the corner. A third slumped drunk-enly under the dartboard. The landlord sat smoking at the bar. He did not respond to Arjun’s greeting, and appeared not to listen to Arjun’s question; but he answered, “Mr. Brace-Bel? Yeah, I remember him.” He spat.
The landlord squinted suspiciously. “Not a friend,” Arjun assured him. “He owes me money,” he improvised.
“Big fucking surprise.”
“May I ask you another question?”
“I won’t bite.”
“Do you know where I can find a Mr. Thayer?”
Thayer still lived on Carnyx Street, back west, in a flat over the tobacco shop, in the care of his elderly mother. Old Mother Thayer, half blind, half deaf, not quite right in the head herself, seemed to take Arjun for a doctor of some sort; he did not disabuse her.
Thayer slumped in an armchair in the half-dark and silence. He was a large man, with a boxer’s hands folded in his lap, but gone soft and fat and pale. He looked Arjun up and down without getting up; only his head moved. He was blind in one eye. He asked, “Where are you from?”
“I don’t know,” Arjun said.
“Not from around here. I can smell it on you.”
“I think that’s right. You seem quite astute, Mr. Thayer. I was told you were sick.”
Thayer’s mother, hovering in the doorway, said, “He can’t go outside, sir.”
Without moving from his chair Thayer craned his neck around and screamed at her with sudden unhinged rage to fuck off. She started to sob; Arjun led her gently from the room, sat her on her bed, and returned.
“I don’t want to go outside,” Thayer said. “Nor would you, friend, if you saw what I saw.”
“At Brace-Bel’s mansion? What are his defenses?”
Thayer snapped, “Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of the Low sisters, same as you.”
“Good luck to you, then, friend.”
“What are his defenses?”
Thayer closed his eyes and breathed deeply for nearly a minute. He appeared to reach a decision; he opened his eyes suddenly and said, “He’s got man-traps in the grass. Fuck that, though, Basso used to do a lot of second-story work, you know? He knew his way round a man-trap. But there were trip wires and alarms that Basso didn’t understand.”
“What else?”
“There were … things in the trees. Like shadows. They touched you and you froze. There were lights that made you go blind.” Thayer raised a fat finger to his dead white eye. “If you were lucky. Sol and Miller never made it to the mansion. We left Sol crying by the fishpond; he said it was a fucking mirror. I don’t know what he saw in it. I was shitting myself, you know, and I didn’t want to listen. We left Miller laughing and wanking himself in the rose garden. Who fucking knows, right?”
Arjun said, “Did you make it to the house?”
“It was night. We broke open a window. It took fucking ages. I don’t think we were right in the head by then, it was like we were drunk. I mean we’d had a few before we went, loosen the nerves, that’s good business, but it was like we were … The house was all dark on the ground floor, and all lights upstairs. There was music.”
“Is Ivy alive?”
“There were girls, friend. Lots of ‘em. Dancing. They wore masks. Maybe one of ‘em was Ivy. What’s Ivy to you?”
“Her sisters saved my life, Mr. Thayer. They have shown me great kindness.”
“They’re kind with the rent, I’ll tell you that; not like their Dad. So what have you got that’s going to beat Brace-Bel, friend?”
Arjun shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“All that dancing and masks … not just dancing, know what I mean? Dirty stuff—he made us watch. He made us join in. He’s a fucking monster. He’s in touch with … things. The old Gods. What have you got, ghost?”
“I don’t know. Someone or something has tampered with my memory, Mr. Thayer. Like you I have been wounded in my mind. In my self. I remember things bit by bit but …”
“You mean you won’t tell me.”
“I mean I don’t know. What was he in touch with?”
Thayer moved. One of his thick pale arms lurched into sideways grasping motion; clammy fingers hard as roots closed round Arjun’s wrist. Thayer growled, “Tell me, ghost. What have you got? What’s backing you?”
“Nothing, Mr. Thayer.” Arjun tried to pull away—his hand flaring with pain—and Thayer’s grip tightened.
“What’s backing you? What’s your plan?” Thayer’s whole massive body surged up from the chair and drove Arjun back against the wall. “Why are you here?” Thayer’s broad pale face forced itself so close that his spittle sprayed Arjun with every word: “Fucking ghosts.” Thayer’s hand closed around Arjun’s throat. “What are you and him planning?”
Instinct took over Arjun’s limbs—some rapid twisting motion of shoulders and elbows. A hold-breaking move; a wrestler’s trick. Wh
ere had he learned it? When? He hardly knew what he’d done. Unfortunately Thayer, too, knew how to grapple. He had a bouncer’s confident grip, and was twice Arjun’s size; the effect of Arjun’s resistance was to topple them both to the floor, Thayer’s heavy body on top, pinning and crushing and snorting stale breath … They struggled. Thayer regained his grip on Arjun’s throat and lost it again. Arjun drove a knee into Thayer’s flab but the angle was bad and there was no force to it. Thayer regained his grip again. Thayer’s cheeks quivered and flushed red. There was a murderous light in his eye.
“Who’ll …” Arjun forced out a painful breath past Thayer’s squeezing fists. “Who’ll tell Ruth I failed?”
Thayer relaxed his grip but did not let go.
“Can you tell the Low sisters I failed, Mr. Thayer? Can you face them? Will you send a letter?”
Thayer did not get up. He seemed to be confused. Arjun scrutinized his heavy body for vulnerabilities. He had just decided that gouging Thayer’s one good eye was a suitable opening gambit when Thayer’s mother appeared overhead, ineffectually flogging Thayer’s back with a mildewed dish towel, shrieking, “Stop that stop that stop that.”
Thayer recoiled, rolled over.
Arjun scrambled to his feet. Thayer remained sprawled. Thayer’s mother dropped the towel and started to sob.
“I’m sorry, madam.” Arjun held both of her thin hands in his. “I’m so very sorry.”
Thayer started to get up again, so Arjun picked up his bag and ran downstairs and outside.
With the rains over it turned into a warm and sunny afternoon. The Mountain was at Arjun’s back as he walked and he did not have to look it at. His brush with death put him in high spirits. He felt invulnerable; better, he felt fortunate. He let the omnibus go by and decided to walk. The factory towers, their complex rigging of scaffold and strut and girder and pipe, glittered in the light.
Since Arjun was walking down empty streets, between wire fences and vast bare lots, he felt safe talking to himself to test his bruised voice. It croaked. As he passed a Patagan Waste Mgmt. scrap yard Arjun decided to hum, and then to sing. His voice, he discovered, was quite good; limited in range and power, but still acceptable. And he knew so many songs! The words were lost; he had only a few tantalizing scraps of lyric and he filled in the melody with la-la-la. But the music alone was a remarkable recovery! Hymnal and protest song, drinking song and chant, playground song, wedding song, mourning song … He walked steadily west and south. With every street he recovered another fragment of self; he polished and set them.
… what was Ruth doing? How was she waiting for him? Was she alone or with her sister? Eager to share those precious fragments with her, he picked up his pace.
He caught the omnibus when it started to get dark, when the streets began to feel unsafe. He squeezed onto a crowded bench and rode in silence through the evening.
At midnight the omnibus left Arjun at its terminus. The guards shooed the last passengers out through the gates and they staggered away. Those with no homes to go to, and those too drunk to find them, and Arjun, climbed the railings and slept in the graveyard behind the depot.
He woke to shouting. It took him a moment to identify the source of the noise; it was coming from the trees, from the rooftops, from little ugly forms perched along the spikes of the railings. The birds. Thunders. Dozens of evil bright eyes caught the dawn’s red light. They honked and hooted, barking and boasting in their nearly human voices.
Four of them flapped their way down among the homeless men. Their flight was ungainly, but their movements were rapid. They closed in on an old man who wore grey rags and a bright red scarf. Three of them tugged at the scarf with beaks and claws, while the fourth—a leader?—hovered close to the man’s face, howling its arrogant greed.
The other sleepers, woken, scuttled away, clutching their possessions. One man had carried a bottle; its green glass was bright enough to attract the birds, and they pecked at his heels and shoulders.
Arjun swung his bag at the birds and knocked the ringleader to the dirt, where the scarf’s owner quickly stamped it dead. The other birds hopped back a pace and hung their grey heads nervously.
Four more landed. With their numbers swollen the birds regained their courage, puffed out their chests, shouted a challenge, hopped in closer.
“I remember you.” Arjun crouched in front of them.
The old man grabbed his scarf and ran for it.
The creatures paused, twitching their heads.
They were not quite birds, not quite natural. They were both more and less than birds.
“You used to be something else.”
They shouted nonsense-word curses and flapped their wings.
“In a different place you were different things. I don’t think I ever liked you greatly but you were better things.”
They took tiny fluttering steps forward, and tiny steps back. They seemed nervous to approach.
“Do you remember any other speech? Do you have names?”
They’d fallen silent and grave, solemn the way children could sometimes be, like a little grey choir.
Arjun came slowly closer.
“Everything’s changed. Do you remember?”
They came fluttering suddenly at his head, shrieking and screaming in their booming flat voices. He flailed them away. They vanished into the night sky behind him.
Arjun spent the next morning lost in monotonous identical streets, residential blocks, red-brick, grey-brick, blank windows, roofs high enough to darken the narrow street below but low enough to seem humble and cramped. He asked for directions and received conflicting answers. It was past noon before he found an open lot from which he could see the distant rise of Barking Hill, beautiful and stately—that soft haze on its skyline was not smoke, it was trees. It was midafternoon when he reached its foot, where the streets narrowed and climbed sharply.
There was a checkpoint in the street.
Four men stood, hands in pockets of long brown coats, around a small wooden table in the middle of the street. A fifth man sat at the table, leaning back in his chair, drumming his fingers idly.
They looked up at Arjun as they saw him come close. He nodded and turned briskly away down a side street.
He followed around the Hill’s sprawling perimeter. Every street that turned inward—and there were few of them, as the Hill was ringed around protectively with fenced lots and solid flat-blocks— had a similar checkpoint. Sometimes more men, sometimes fewer.
On a street numbered eleven he saw three men in worker’s overalls pass; the men at the checkpoint sprung to attention and questioned them thoroughly.
On a street numbered thirty-three he saw a black motorcar, sleek and expensive, precious and rare, pull through with a wave and a nod.
Police? Know-Nothings? Some other gang, local to this part of the city? Hired security for the mansions on the Hill? Arjun didn’t dare get close enough to the checkpoints to find out. They slouched and smoked and were unmilitary in their bearing, but they seemed alert, suspicious.
Arjun had had some trick, he knew, some art; he could almost remember it. Once he’d known how to pass all barricades, all walls, all doors. The knowledge itched at the back of his mind. Scattered and buried fragments. He turned over the dust of his memories with an archeologist’s patient care.
A name, a shard of meaning. Shay! The back of Shay’s grizzled, white-haired head retreating through a closing door, and Arjun following, desperate not to lose him in the unraveling maze of the city …
Who was Shay?
The narrow street numbered thirty-three surrounded Arjun with steep ranks of doors, marching up the hill.
On a whim he darted to the nearest door and tugged at its handle. It remained obstinately locked.
It was a trick of the will… A matter of seeing. Hearing?
“Oi! What do you think you’re doing?”
… and they were advancing down the street, two men closing aggressively in while the
rest waited around the table where their captain sat. There was a tone of almost comical outrage in their voices, as if they simply could not believe Arjun’s effrontery.
Arjun took a step back and they sped up, started running, boots pounding down the hill. He considered fleeing, but they had guns, and the street was long and straight and offered no hiding places. He raised his hands.
They dragged him back to the checkpoint.
The man lounging at the table looked him up and down with disgust. He was short, and fat, and dark-skinned, and past middle age. His hair was grey-white and grizzled.
His colleagues, who surrounded Arjun, some glaring, some smirking, were all taller and younger, and most were shaven-headed. They were smart; two of them wore their collars turned up, one wore his short hair oiled and slick, and all of them had shiny, shiny boots.
The man at the desk seemed to have passed beyond such things; he wore his rumpled black suit with an air of elegant, exhausted impatience. His tie was loose. He tapped his pen on the desk and drawled, “Where do you work?”
“Where I can, sir. I have no regular employment.”
A pile of papers on the desk was weighted down with a gun. The man toyed with it as he spoke.
“Where are you from?”
“Northeast of here, sir. Carnyx Street, in Fosdyke.”
“Carnyx? Never heard of it. Fosdyke’s a shit-hole. Let’s see your papers.”
“I have no papers,” Arjun admitted.
“Big surprise. What’s your business here?”
“I have a message for a man on the Hill. May I pass?”
“No, you may not.”
“You’re policemen?”
“Never you mind what we are.”
“Know-Nothings?”
“That’s the Civic League to you. It has a proper name. Only malcontents call us what you just said. Who’s been talking to you about Know-Nothings?”
“My apologies. The Civic League, of course.”
“What man who lives on the Hill?”
“I would rather not say.”
“Who cares what you want? What man on the Hill?”
