But that’s right, I thought. Because it’s daytime. They only come out at night.
The idea came from nowhere, and was chilling.
The phone rang as I was pouring coffee. I jumped and spilled some, cursed, snapped up the phone.
“Hey, it’s me,” Ash said. “Fancy a coffee?”
“I just made one.”
“Right. Can I come over?”
“Er… why?” It wasn’t often that Ash and I saw each other on the weekends. She was usually doing stuff with Max, and I was busy with the football club, or meeting friends, or travelling down to Devon to visit my family. Dad would grumble and talk about politics. Mum would ask if I’d met a nice girl yet.
“Max and I are moving away. I got that job in Wales. I heard yesterday.”
“Oh. Wow.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Of course. Delighted for you!”
Ash was silent for a while. “You go walking last night?”
“No.” Once uttered, I couldn’t take back the lie. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because Ash had already started to move away, and to include her in my troubles would be selfish. She’d wanted this for a long time. That didn’t mean I had to be happy, but I could still be pleased for her.
“So I can come over, tell you all about it?”
“Come on over.”
“I’ll bring cake.”
“You know me so well.”
* * *
“The city eats people,” she said. She took a bite of cake as if to illustrate the fact. “We’re communal animals, but we’re not meant to be somewhere with so many other people. Why do you think places like London feel so impersonal? Live in a small village, a hamlet, know almost everyone there, that’s when you’re happiest. Here… it’s like we’ve created a monster and we’re feeding it every day.”
Her comments hit me hard. They sounded like her trying to defend her decision to leave for somewhere more rural, and that wasn’t like Ash––she was always headstrong and positive. Maybe she was worried about me.
“You think that’s why Nigel did what he did?”
Ash raised her eyebrows, as if she’d never even considered it.
“I think Nigel was a sensitive soul. Life was too much for him, and living in the city didn’t help at all. But no, he had his own real problems, only aggravated by being here. What I mean is… people disappear. One day they’re here, the next they’re gone, and it’s as if they’ve vanished into nothing. Know what I mean? The city eats them, spits nothing out, and eventually they’re just forgotten.”
“That’s pretty depressing.”
“I don’t want to disappear,” she said.
“You never could. You’re too… wonderful.” I grinned, bashful at the compliment. But she saw how serious I was, because she didn’t take the piss.
“You should leave too.” She tapped her engagement ring against her mug.
“I’m… not sure I could.”
“Really? You love this place so much?”
I shook my head. No, I didn’t love the city at all. I just couldn’t imagine anywhere else feeling like home.
We chatted some more, then talked about her leaving party which she’d be throwing in a couple of weeks’ time. She wanted me to DJ there. I said I was honoured, and I’d only do it if I could throw in some AC/DC. She hated them, but relented.
As she finished her cake I thought of the city eating people, and the outline of a face in broken tiles, and the bubbled surface of blown bricks in the shape of an arm with a clenched fist.
* * *
Now that I had an idea of what to look for, I saw the city in a whole new light.
That Sunday afternoon I walked. There were plenty of people around because many of the shops remained open, and the place felt relatively safe. But as time passed by, and I saw more, that sense of safety began to evaporate.
By the end of the afternoon I felt like a meal in the jaws of a beast.
I saw distortion in an old swimming pool’s caged-over window, and if I looked at just the right angle I could make out the shadow of a naked torso in the imperfect glass.
At the base of an old hotel’s side wall, where access chutes into the basement had been concreted over, two knotted protuberances might have been hands with fingers broken off. Clasping for air forever, the stumpy remains of digits pointing accusingly at everyone left alive.
The stepped marble plinth of a war memorial had been damaged by vehicle impacts and the effects of frost, but there was another imperfection in its structure that became obvious to me now. The curve of a back, ribs plain to those who could see, one shoulder blade arched as if the buried subject were swimming against its solid surroundings.
Finally I decided to go to the place where Nigel had died. I had only been there once since his death, and facing the reality of the scene had been too disturbing. Now, there was more I had to see.
I would go at night. I dreaded what I might find.
* * *
It was three in the morning, and the homeless woman was there with her dogs once more. The creatures glanced at me, then as I started to approach they pulled on their leashes, one whining, the other snarling.
“I haven’t got anything!” the woman said. The fear in her voice was awful.
“I’m no harm,” I said. “I just want to––”
“What are you doing here at three in the morning, then?” she snapped.
“What are you?”
She didn’t answer this. Instead, she tugged on the leads and settled her dogs. We were outside a pub, long-since closed for the night, and she leaned against some handrailing that delineated its outdoor smoking area.
“I’m walking because someone I know died,” I said. “A friend. And I want to know…” Whether the city took him, I wanted to say, but I wasn’t sure how that might sound. “I’m going to see…”
“Plenty wrong with the city at night,” the woman said. “During the day, people keep it alive. Probably best you go home.”
“But I’ve seen you before. You’re always walking.”
“I know where not to go.”
“How?”
“Experience.” She muttered something under her breath. I couldn’t see her face properly, and I didn’t want to go any closer in case that looked threatening. Perhaps she was talking to her dogs.
“I’m going to the old station building,” I said. I hoped that might encourage some comment, positive or negative.
“Hmm.”
“Should I?” I asked.
I saw her silhouette shrug. “You should just go home.” She started walking away and the dogs followed. When I tried to trail after her the animals turned and growled, both of them this time. I slowed, then stopped.
“Why?” I asked, expecting no reply.
“Make a habit of this and the city will notice you.” Then she was gone, keeping to the middle of the street and avoiding the deep shadows beside buildings.
The night was quiet and still, no storms, no rain, and on the way through town I saw several other walkers. I wasn’t sure who or what they were. I did not follow them. I was also careful to keep my distance, partly because they scared me, but also because they deserved their privacy and peace.
I carried on towards the old station building. It was six storeys high, converted into an office block a decade before, and Nigel had worked in an advertising agency on the second floor. That morning he’d taken the stairs, walked past the door exiting the staircase into his studio, and continued to the top. The maintenance door into the plant room on the roof should have been locked, but he’d planned his morning enough to make sure he had a key.
Once out on the roof, no one knew what he had seen, said or done. There was no note. Three people in the street below had seen him step up onto the parapet. Without hesitation he had walked out into nothing.
Where he’d hit the ground there was a raised planting bed at the refurbished building’s entrance. He’d struck its wall, b
reaking his back. I went there now, a torch in my hand, dread in my heart.
At every moment I expected to see Nigel walking somewhere ahead of me. The echo of a man taken by the city and clasped to its dark, concrete heart, out of place and no longer of this world. But I was alone.
I searched for half an hour––the brick paved area around the entrance, the planter wall, the soil and shrubs of the planter itself. But I found no sign of Nigel. As every minute passed by my sense of apprehension lifted some more.
He’s not here. The city didn’t get him. It didn’t eat him.
People had seen him jump, and perhaps that made a difference. He hadn’t died alone with only the cold concrete for company. His body hadn’t lain there for hours or days afterwards, night crawling across him, darkness coalescing around him. Even dead, Nigel had remained in the human world, because his suicide was born of it.
Though still sad at his death, I felt relieved that he had escaped something worse.
My mood buoyed, I started for home as dawn peered across the built-up skyline. Yet something was different. The skyline I saw looked slightly out of skew, as if new buildings had risen during the night and others had been taken down. The silence remained, broken only by cautious footsteps echoing from unknown walls. Occasional strangers avoided each other’s glances. But there was now something else that I had never noticed before. In the silence that hung over the city, a terrible intelligence held its breath.
As I reached home, I feared that the city had noticed me at last.
THE WAY SHE IS WITH STRANGERS
by
HELEN MARSHALL
It was only after the papers were signed, the dissolution of the marriage arranged and witnessed, that Mercy Dwyer finally moved to the city. She had never lived in a city before. She had known only the sleepy village of Hindmoor Green in which she’d been raised, a place where no street needed a name because there were few enough that they could be recognized, like children: everyone knew what they were, everyone knew where they went, no question as to their identity had ever been raised and for all she expected from now until Judgement Day none ever would be. Hindmoor Green had been comprised of a small circle of buildings clustered around a post office, a one-pump petrol station, and the local pub. Beyond the village boundaries was the hazy sameness of rolling hills and ancient woodland. There were fields too, and pastures; but all of it was so similar that if you looked in one direction, you saw exactly the same view as if you had looked in the other entirely.
There was a legend, she had heard, that the universe had been created and destroyed three times: each time it had been built smaller than the last. Mercy believed it. Hindmoor Green was the smallest version of the universe she could imagine. It was complete. She knew its borders, and she respected them. But the city was, to her surprise, much, much smaller. To herself she called it New Manchester or sometimes New New Manchester. It was claustrophobic, folded up like a paper bird, wing touching breastbone touching foot touching beak. Once she dropped a penny from a bridge. She watched it flutter through the sky, turning end over end, winking. It crashed through her skylight, three miles to the north. She found it on the kitchen table like a gift, nestled amongst ribbons of scattered glass. She knew it by the date, by the tiny indent in the Queen’s chin her thumb had scratched. She didn’t wonder at this. She wondered only about the inevitable suicides. Every city had them. Bridges were portals not just to the next city over but to the next world. But what happened to the bodies? Were there families who woke to startled guests at the breakfast table? Mercy liked to imagine these unexpected meetings, how the children in their school clothes would welcome the visitor with joy or exasperation, cream or sugar with the coffee, eggs on toast. How much could be healed with such simple accommodations?
It was a kind thought, and Mercy thought it because she was a kind person. She had a kind face. In her childhood she had smiled often, and there were lines because of it now. Not deep lines, more like shallow cuts or old scar tissue. But it made people trust her immediately. The first time someone stopped her in the street she was a bit frightened. It was only that day she had moved into the townhouse terrace, and she was still learning her way. But it was a woman and her child, foreigners clearly, just as she was. The woman had sad eyes, sensible shoes, and a smell like wood smoke. She wanted to know how to reach a particular street. “I’m sorry,” Mercy told her, “really, I don’t know. I’ve only just arrived myself.” The silence after this seemed to last an eternity. Mercy felt her heart breaking. She wanted to help. The boy was soft-looking, his flesh hadn’t sharpened into adulthood yet. He turned away from Mercy and stared down the street. It was getting dark, but the lamps hadn’t come on yet. The darkness pressed the cobblestones flat. She shivered. The boy was shivering too though he hadn’t noticed yet. “That way,” said Mercy, guessing desperately. The mother gave her a look—grateful but anxious. “Thank you,” she whispered. Then she tugged at the boy’s hand. They set off into the gloom.
* * *
Mercy had a daughter named Comfort who came to stay with her on weekends. Comfort was a sweet girl, eight years old, but almost nearly very grown up. She took the train from Hindmoor Green to the city by herself with no one but the conductor to watch out for her. Mercy had feared for her daughter the first time she made this trip alone, but lo and behold, when the train had pulled into the station, there was Comfort exactly where she should be. She was always full of questions after the trip. Mercy didn’t know many of the answers. Mostly she made things up. “How many stars are there in the sky?” Comfort would ask her. “Only twelve,” she would say, “but the sky is a mirror maze so it seems like there are many more.”
Mercy had loved her husband, but they had married very early. She had been seventeen, he had been twenty. She didn’t remember what the rush was. It hadn’t been Comfort. Comfort came later. When Mercy looked back on the early months of her engagement to Noah, she remembered the warm glow she had felt in the pit of her stomach, a furnace fueling the engine of her days. In Hindmoor Green he had seemed larger than life: always laughing, big hands, square palms. But they hadn’t really known each other. Had they moved too quickly? Her parents said so. “Build the foundation,” they said, “test it, make it perfect. Don’t put all your weight onto something that may not hold.” But she had never lived like that. She knew all things had a crack at the heart of them. They would fall apart eventually. This had never scared her, not even as a child, when someone—a teacher—had first explained what death was. She had known death was inside her already, she hadn’t needed someone to tell her. The only houses she feared were the ones that were built to stand forever. Those she did not trust. She loved the houses of snails and sea creatures. They grew or were discarded. She lived her life by the same principles. When things with Noah fell apart, she knew how to pull herself from the wreckage. How to start over. She built her life up again, but smaller this time, less expansive, less willing to admit visitors.
“Is this my bedroom?” Comfort asked the first time she saw the townhouse terrace. “Is this where I shall play?” Mercy allowed that it was. Later there were other questions: “How far is it from your room to mine? Why do the stairs make that sound when I stomp on them? What shall we keep in the cellar?” In a fit of exasperation, Mercy said: “Bodies,” and she blinked twice afterward in surprise. It was an accident really, she hadn’t meant to say that. But one of the city’s builders had told her a story in the pub, and it stuck with her. “This building? What it is, right, is a boneyard, this and every other,” he said, spitting on the ground. His eyes were glazed with alcohol. His breath shone. He sniffed his palm, scowled, then whispered into her ear: “The foreman’s dead corrupt. He takes the money for it, gets a heavy bag, about so big, wrapped like so. Bodies. They put them in the foundation. For luck, maybe. Or to seal up the cracks. Me? I dig the hole.” Mercy hadn’t been able to sleep after she heard that. When she walked to the shop where she worked, she couldn’t look at the bu
ilders. She couldn’t look at the buildings. She was afraid that Comfort wouldn’t be able to sleep either. But Comfort slept through the night like a darling. She didn’t stir once. In the morning she wanted to make mudcastles in the back garden. She filled her orange plastic bucket with dirt, and upended it gleefully. “Can I bury you, Mummy?” she asked. “Not today, pet. Maybe tomorrow.”
* * *
Mercy glimpsed the woman and her boy sometimes. They stared at her from the reflections in glass panels of certain buildings. When she saw them, she would turn quickly, whether away or towards she didn’t know. She resolved to do better in the future. So she bought maps of the city. Just a few at first, then more and more until her house was filled with them. Comfort draped them from strings. She built enormous mansions from them. Mercy would find herself crawling through tunnels bridged by paper folds. The hallway lights glowed behind onionskin levees. Streets swirled around her like fingerprints, the snaking lines of the canals. She touched them, and whispered their names. She didn’t know why someone would want to go to one place more than another. They seemed equally strange to her, equally inhospitable. But she had promised herself she wouldn’t lead anyone astray, not if she could help it.
In autumn, the night rain crawled like a stream of black ants down the window. When winter came, an unexpected snowfall made the faucets drip. Water snaked over the counter and seeped into the warren that Comfort had constructed, left the sodden paper hanging like old towels. Now it felt as if Mercy were crawling through seaweed. The tunnels could have been on the bottom of the ocean. The builder told her, afterwards, that it hadn’t been the snows. Something had crawled into the pipes and died there. It had created a blockage. Still, the ink ran. It painted her fingers, her cheeks. It was as if the city was sealing itself onto her. But she didn’t mind. She was learning.
There were foreigners everywhere, and they all came to her: shy, distraught, eager, afraid. Mercy learned their gestures. “How far now…? Which is the way…?” She came to measure distance in five languages, and then six, and then she learned that she didn’t need words at all for what she wanted to tell them. The ones who asked her knew the way already. The city was printed on them as well, only they couldn’t see it. Not yet. But she could. She felt the tracery of lines glowing beneath their skin like thin, blue veins. She only needed to help them remember. And that, she learned, required very little: a kind smile, shy look, her hand touching theirs.
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