Dark Cities

by Christopher Golden

  “It will get easier,” she said, hooking her arm through mine as we walked.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Wish I’d known him better.”

  I nodded. Felt a lump in my throat and swallowed it down. “Me too.”

  As we approached the place where I’d seen the woman earlier that morning, I heard the cheerful shouts and laughter of a group of school kids. They were maybe nine or ten, posing around the bronze statues as teachers took photos. They probably shouldn’t have been up on the plinths, but no one would tell them to get down. Who would intrude on such excitement and joy?

  I headed past the statues and children, aiming for the alley between the newsagent’s and the fast-food joint, which was doing a busy trade. People queued out the door. A young woman emerged from the alley, wearing an apron with the takeaway’s name emblazoned across the front. She offered us a quick smile, then pushed past the queue and back into the shop. I felt a release of tension from my shoulders, a relaxing in my gut. Ash must have felt it too.

  “See?” she said. “No gruesome murders.”

  I turned to her and nodded, and then something caught my eye. A litter bin stood beside a bench close to the statues, and splayed across its lip was a dirtied white vest.

  “Oh,” I said. I blinked, remembering the woman lifting the vest up over her head.

  “What?” Ash asked.

  I pointed at the vest. “Why wouldn’t she dress again afterwards?” After what, I did not say, or even wish to consider. She must have walked home naked. If she had walked home at all.

  I headed for the alley, and Ash came with me. It smelled of piss. No surprise there. But it also smelled of rain, fresh and sharp, even though it had stopped raining before I’d finished running home eight hours before.”

  “Delightful,” Ash said. She stepped over a pool of vomit on the ground.

  It was unremarkable, a narrow alley with a dead end thirty feet in, dirty rendered wall on one side, old bare brick on the other. A couple of metal doorways were set into the walls, without handles and looking as if they’d been locked for decades. There were a few black bin bags, one of them split and gnawed at by night creatures––cats, rats, foxes. A pile of dog crap held a smeared shoe print. A dead rat festered against the blank end wall.

  “She didn’t come out again,” I said.

  “Not while you were watching.”

  “But her clothes.”

  Ash shrugged.

  I walked the length of the alley, fearing what I might see, eager to make sure there was nothing there. I shifted a couple of rubbish bags with my foot, releasing a foul stink that made me gag.

  “Jesus, what a wonderful smell you’ve found!” Ash said.

  I covered my mouth with the collar of my coat and went in deeper, shoving bags aside with my feet. Old wrappers spilled, slick with rotting food. Things crawled in there, dark and wet, reminding me of the nude woman flowing with rainwater, silvery, flexing and shifting like something inhuman. I bent down to look closer and saw a nest of slugs, leaving trails like slow echoes and pulsing like something’s insides.

  “Weird,” Ash said. She was looking at a spread of brickwork close to the ground, a few feet from the end of the alley. I went to her and stood close, our coats brushing. She grabbed my hand.

  “What?”

  “Don’t know,” she said. She shivered. “Let’s go.”

  “Hang on.” I crouched, leaning in closer, trying not to block out precious light so that I could see what she’d seen.

  “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “What is that?” I asked. But neither of us could answer.

  The bricks were old and crumbling, covered with black moss, joints clotted with decades of filth. This wall had never seen sunlight, and perpetual shadow had driven darkness into the brick faces and the mortar in between. Across a spread of brickwork, something protruded. It looked like a swathe of dark pink pustules, solid-looking rather than soft, dry and dusty even though the brickwork around them was damp. I reached out to touch, but Ash grabbed my arm.

  “What if it’s poisonous?” she asked.

  “It’s just the bricks,” I said. “Frost-blown, maybe. They’ve deformed over time.” I reached out again, but didn’t quite touch. Something held me back. Something about the shape of the feature, the way it swept up from the ground and spanned several courses of bricks.

  It looked like an arm reaching from the ground, embedded in the wall and only just protruding. At its end, a clenched fist of brickwork protruded more than elsewhere, cracked and threatening to disintegrate at any moment.

  I wondered what that fist might hold.

  Ash grabbed my coat and pulled me upright, shoving me before her along the alley and back into the street. “It should be cleaned,” she said. But she didn’t enter the fast-food shop or the newsagent’s to share this opinion with them. Instead, she headed back to work.

  I stood there for a while looking at the discarded clothing in the litter bin. It was slowly being buried beneath lunchtime refuse––coffee cups, crisp bags, sandwich wrappers. Soon it would be completely out of sight. Forgotten.

  I wondered where the woman had gone.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry,” Ash said. She’d called me after work, on the way to her boyfriend’s place.

  “For what?” I was in the park, beyond which lay the old terraced house where I lived. It was raining again, and a few umbrellas and coats hid anonymous people as they took various paths home.

  “I just… that place at lunchtime felt a bit odd. Didn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” But I couldn’t quite verbalise how the alley had felt strange. Like somewhere else, I might have said. The idea crossed my mind that I’d seen a ghost, but I had never believed in them. I was a rationalist, an atheist, and until Nigel’s death I’d been happy and comfortable with that. Since he’d taken his own life, I had been struggling. Not for him, because he was gone now, flickering out from a wonderful, expansive consciousness to nothing in the space of a pavement impact. But for me. All that was left of Nigel was in my mind, and the minds of those who loved him. That didn’t seem much to leave behind.

  I thought of those weird shapes across the rotting brickwork, blown clay in the shape of a rising, clasping arm and hand.

  “Max says hi.”

  “Hi, Max.”

  “See you soon. And don’t go wandering tonight. Weather forecast is awful, and you need sleep.”

  “Damn right. Bottle of wine, then bed, like a good boy.”

  “Good boy.” Ash hung up, leaving me alone in the park with the rain, and the puddles, and the memory of a time me, Nigel and a few others came here to play football when we were kids. I thought I heard his laugh. But it was someone else, and I started walking again before whoever was laughing caught up with me.

  * * *

  Wind roared around my house and made the roof creak, rain hammered against the closed windows, and next door’s dog barked, waiting for them to come home. I tried to sleep for a while, but failed miserably. The brief buzz I’d had from the bottle of wine was gone, melted away into the darkness of my bedroom. I lay awake for a while staring into the shadows.

  Then I got up, dressed, slipped on my raincoat that was still wet from walking home from work, and went out into the night.

  It was almost two in the morning.

  I walked into the city. I lived in a suburb, but it was only fifteen minutes through the park, past the hospital and into town. All that time I saw no other pedestrians, and only a few cars. Some of them were police vehicles, and one slowed when it passed me, a pale face peering from the window obscured and made fluid by rain impacting the glass. I stared back, hiding nothing. The car moved on.

  I was heading along the main street, intending to visit that alley again. There had been something strange about the woman, but I found that I was not afraid. I had no idea why. Maybe it had been Ash’s strange, repulsed reaction to that feature on the wall, and my realisation th
at I was less troubled than her.

  The weather was atrocious. Wind howled along the town’s main thoroughfares like a beast unleashed, revelling in the fact that there was no one there to view its nighttime cavortings. It whistled through the slats of fixed benches, rattled shutters on jewellers’ shops, and flung litter into piles in doorways and against wet walls. Rain lashed almost horizontally, spiking into my face and against my front, the coat hardly any barrier at all.

  I leaned into the wind and rain, working my way through the town, and the night was alive around me.

  I saw a few people. It was earlier than I usually chose to walk, and a couple of the later clubs had only kicked out an hour or so before. A few drunks huddled against the weather and tried to remember where they lived. Some were in pairs, more alone. I also saw the homeless woman with the dogs. The hounds looked my way, but I don’t think they growled, or if they did the wind carried the sound away. Maybe they were growing used to me.

  There’s a part of town where five roads converge. People call it a square, though it isn’t really. It’s disordered and accidental, the same as most people who pass through from midnight onwards. That night it was a wilder place, and as I approached along the main street I had to stop and stare. The square seemed primeval. Great cliffs of brick, stone and glass rose up on all sides, channelling torrents of wind and rain that met in the middle as if in battle. A tornado of litter and rain twisted back and forth, throwing off its contents and sucking more in. The sound was staggering, the effect intimidating. I could see shop windows flexing beneath the onslaught, as if the buildings themselves were breathing great, slow, considered breaths.

  I stood there for a while just watching, and then as if carried like shreds of refuse on the storm, memories of Nigel came in.

  We cross the square, arms around each other’s shoulders. It’s a Saturday afternoon and we’ve been in the pub all day, ostensibly to watch a big rugby match, though neither of us is really into sport. The atmosphere was electric, the pub a sea of shirts of two colours, good-natured banter fuelled by beer turning into hearty singing, and much friendly mockery of the losing team. It’s been refreshing and upbeat, and Nigel has said that tribal warfare has never been so much fun. We’re going to buy food. We head down one of the narrower streets––

  ––and Nigel reels from the blow, staggering back into a doorway as the big, thick thug storms after him. I’ve never been so afraid in my life. But that’s Nigel getting picked on for no reason. We simply walked the wrong way and met the wrong nutter. He’s drunk, that’s obvious, and though I’m not one to judge by first appearances, he looks like he likes a fight.

  He launches another punch at Nigel, then I’m piling into the bastard from behind, shoving him forward as hard as I can into the shop window. Glass cracks. He half-turns to glare at me, murder in his eyes and blood running from a cut in his forehead. Nigel lands a punch on his nose, a pile-driving crunch that we’ll talk about for years to come––

  ––we’re following two girls who have been smiling at us all afternoon. We’re too old to stay at home, too young to hit the pubs, so town is our afternoon playground, and today feels special. Nigel is the good-looking one, and both girls have been eyeing him. I’ve become used to playing second fiddle to my friend.

  I sighed, and my breath was lost to the storm like so many memories. His death still hit me like this, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever grow used to it.

  Buffeted by high winds, soaked to the skin, I decided to make my way home.

  The shape started across the square just as I took my first step. It was a man, perhaps late fifties, long grey hair swirling around his head and coat flapping in the wind. Yet none of his movements seemed quite right. His hair moved a little too slowly, like flexing wire on a stop motion mannequin instead of real hair. His coat seemed to shift and wave in slow motion. He paced across the square with a definite destination in mind.

  He looked just like the woman I’d seen the night before. Out of place, removed from his turbulent surroundings, walking his own path through a city that seemed unable to contain him.

  I followed.

  Walking across the square, emerging from the shelter of the buildings, I submitted myself to the full force of the storm. It was as if with every step I took, the storm focussed all of its attention on me, driving along streets and roads and smashing together at that violent junction. I staggered left and right, arms spread for balance, the hood of my coat alternately filling with wind and acting like a sail, then flattening against my scalp like a second skin. I forged on, head down, thinking of Arctic explorers fighting against harsh gales to reach their goal. Rain stung my face. I could hardly see anything, squinting at the ground just ahead of me to see where I was going. I crossed the paved area, then a road, and then finally I felt the storm lessen as I neared another building. Hugging myself to its shelter, I looked ahead and saw the man. He was barely visible, a hundred metres ahead and already passing into the night. Winds whipped around him. Rain hammered down, dancing swirls in weak streetlights.

  Between one blink and the next, the man was gone.

  I strode ahead, moving fast to try and catch up. The storm screamed at me, threatening or warning. I paid no heed. I needed to see the man again, follow him, try to talk with him. I walked back and forth along the street, passing closed shops and cafes, and saw nothing. I ventured into doorways in case he had fallen and was hidden beneath piles of wind-blown litter. When I faced a narrow arcade, I pressed against the metal grille securing its entrance and tried to see deeper.

  The night seemed even darker in there, and more still. The shadows were heavy. Watching, I also felt watched.

  I took a couple of steps back. My breath was stolen by the wind. Glass smashed in the distance. A car alarm erupted somewhere out of sight, and part of a large advertising hoarding bounced along the road towards the square, shedding parts of itself as it went.

  Even if the arcade was not locked up, I would not have wanted to go that way.

  I hurried back through the square and started towards home. I saw a couple of other people, and they avoided me as surely as I avoided them.

  I slept for three hours that night, naked and cold in my bed with wet clothes piled beside me. Dawn woke me. The man haunted my dreams even as I lay in bed awake, still walking, grey hair and coat shifting to some force other than the storm.

  * * *

  Morning brought relative calm. As I ate breakfast I watched the news, and saw that the storm had wreaked havoc across the country. Damage was in the millions. Miraculously, no one had died.

  I chewed cereal that tasted like cardboard and thought about that.

  No one had died.

  It was a Saturday, and as I followed my previous night’s route into town, the streets soon started to bustle with cheerful shoppers, gangs of kids laughing and joking, and people all with somewhere to go.

  I had somewhere to go as well. The square was a very different place from just a few hours before, full of people and life, none of them aware of the shattering storm that had existed there so recently. The storm was a dangerous animal, come and gone again, and it had visited with almost no one knowing.

  Across the square and along the street where the man had disappeared, I expected to see his discarded coat slowly being buried in a litter bin or draped over the back of a bench. There was nothing.

  The arcade was open. Home to a cafe, a clothes shop, a candle shop and a second-hand bookseller, it wasn’t somewhere I ventured frequently. In daylight, it looked less threatening. I stepped inside. A waft of perfumed air hit me from the candle shop, followed by the scent of frying bacon. It felt safe and warm.

  I tripped, stumbled, almost fell, and a youth reached out and grabbed my arm to stop me hitting the ground.

  “You all right, mate?”

  “Yes,” I said, startled. “Thanks.”

  “No worries. They should fix that.” He nodded vaguely at my feet then went on his way, headphones
in and thumb stroking his phone.

  I looked down. The mosaic floor covering was humped as if pushed up by something from below. Yellow paint had been sprayed across the area some time ago, either a warning to beware or an indication of somewhere that needed to be fixed. No one had fixed it. The paint was faded and chipped, worn away by thousands of feet.

  “Hey!” I called after the kid. “You know what happened here?” But he had his headphones in and was already leaving the arcade.

  I frowned and moved sideways, shifting my perspective of the raised area. The mosaic tiles weren’t only pushed up a little from below, forming the dangerous swelling that I’d tripped on. There was something in their clay shapes.

  It looked like a face.

  I gasped, closed my eyes, turned away and leaned against a wall. When I opened my eyes again I was looking through a window at an old man sitting inside the cafe, nursing a mug of tea. He stared at me, and past me, then looked down at his phone.

  I glanced down at the ground again.

  It might have been a face. The curve of one cheek, forehead, the hollow of an eye socket, and splayed out behind it was a flow of irregularities in the old tiles that resembled long, grey hair.

  “Oh, God,” I said. I wanted to grab someone and ask them if they saw what I saw. But if they didn’t, what then? What could I say, ask, believe?

  I took a photo of the raised area then hurried away, because there was someone I could ask. Ash was my leveller. She would hear me out.

  * * *

  As it turned out, Ash had already phoned that morning and left a message on my landline.

  “Hey. Give me a call. Got some news.”

  I made some coffee first. Every step towards home had calmed my panic, and I was feeling more and more foolish over what I thought I’d seen. As I waited for the coffee to brew, every second that passed seemed to bring me closer to normality once more. Looking at my phone helped. The photo I’d taken showed nothing amiss, other than a slightly misshapen area in the arcade floor. However I viewed it, whether I zoomed in or not, there was no face.