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He stayed another day in that hotel, and then he caught the bus to Thurso, and the train from Thurso to Inverness.
He dozed on the train, although he did not dream.
When he woke, there was a man on the seat next to him. A hatchet-faced man, reading a paperback book. He closed the book when he saw that Shadow was awake. Shadow looked down at the cover: Jean Cocteau’s The Difficulty of Being.
“Good book?” asked Shadow.
“Yeah, all right,” said Smith. “It’s all essays. They’re meant to be personal, but you feel that every time he looks up i
“It’s all on the cover,” said Shadow.
“How d’you mean?”
“The difficulty of being Jean Cocteau.”
Smith scratched his nose.
“Here,” he said. He passed Shadow a copy of the Scotsman. “Page nine.”
At the bottom of page nine was a small story: retired doctor kills himself. Gaskell’s body had been found in his car, parked in a picnic spot on the coast road. He had swallowed quite a cocktail of painkillers, washed down with most of a bottle of Lagavulin.
“Mr. Alice hates being lied to,” said Smith. “Especially by the hired help.”
“Is there anything in there about the fire?” asked Shadow.
“What fire?”
“Oh. Right.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if there wasn’t a terrible run of luck for the great and the good over the next couple of months, though. Car crashes. Train crash. Maybe a plane’ll go down. Grieving widows and orphans and boyfriends. Very sad.”
Shadow nodded.
“You know,” said Smith, “Mr. Alice is very concerned about your health. He worries. I worry, too.”
“Yeah?” said Shadow.
“Absolutely. I mean, if something happens to you while you’re in the country. Maybe you look the wrong way crossing the road. Flash a wad of cash in the wrong pub. I du
“So?”
“So we think you should leave the U.K. Be safer for everyone, wouldn’t it?”
Shadow said nothing for a while. The train began to slow.
“Okay,” said Shadow.
“This is my stop,” said Smith. “I’m getting out here. We’ll arrange the ticket, first class of course, to anywhere you’re heading. One-way ticket. You just have to tell me where you want to go.”
Shadow rubbed the bruise on his cheek. There was something about the pain that was almost comforting.
The train came to a complete stop. It was a small station, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. There was a large black car parked by the station building, in the thin sunshine. The windows were tinted, and Shadow could not see inside.
Mr. Smith pushed down the train window, reached outside to open the carriage door, and he stepped out onto the platform. He looked back in at Shadow through the open window. “Well?”
“I think,” said Shadow, “that I’ll spend a couple of weeks looking around the U.K. And you’ll just have to pray that I look the right way when I cross your roads.”
“And then?”
Shadow knew it, then. Perhaps he had known it all along.
“Chicago,” he said to Smith, as the train gave a jerk, and began to move away from the station. He felt older, as he said it. But he could not put it off forever.
And then he said, so quietly that only he could have heard it, “I guess I’m going home.”
Soon afterward it began to rain: huge, pelting drops that rattled against the windows and blurred the world into grays and greens. Deep rumbles of thunder accompanied Shadow on his journey south: the storm grumbled, the wind howled, and the lightning made huge shadows across the sky, and in their company Shadow slowly began to feel less alone.
About the Author
NEIL GAIMAN is the critically acclaimed and award wi
www.neilgaiman.com
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FOR ADULTS
Anansi Boys
American Gods
Stardust
Smoke and Mirrors
Neverwhere
MirrorMask: The Illustrated Film Script
(illustrated by Dave McKean)
MirrorMask
The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish
The Wolves in the Walls
Coraline
Credits
Jacket design by Richard L. Aquan
Jacket images: butterfly by Jan Cobb; eggshell © by Paul
Lindamarie Ambrose/Getty Images; snowflake by Floyd Dean/Getty Images;
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Some of the pieces appearing in this collection were first published elsewhere; permissions and copyright information as follows:
“Introduction” © 2006 by Neil Gaiman.
“A Study in Emerald” © 2003 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Shadows Over Baker Street.
“The Fairy Reel” © 2004 by Neil Gaiman. First published in The Faery Reel.
“October in the Chair” © 2002 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Conjunctions no. 39.
“The Hidden Chamber” © 2005 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Outsiders.
“Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire” © 2004 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Gothic!
“The Flints of Memory Lane” © 1997 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Dancing with the Dark.
“Closing Time” © 2002 by Neil Gaiman. First published in McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, Issue 10.
“Going Wodwo” © 2002 by Neil Gaiman. First published in The Green Man.
“Bitter Grounds” © 2003 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Mojo: Conjure Stories.
“Other People” © 2001 by Neil Gaiman. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy Science Fiction 101, nos. 4 and 5.
“Keepsakes and Treasures” © 1999 by Neil Gaiman. First published in 999.
“Good Boys Deserve Favors” © 1995 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Overstreet’s Fan Magazine 1, no. 5.
“The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch” © 1998 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Frank Frazetta Fantasy Illustrated #3.
“Strange Little Girls” © 2001 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Tori Amos’s Strange Little Girls tour book.
“Harlequin Valentine” © 1999 by Neil Gaiman. First published in the World Horror Convention Book, 1999.
“Locks” © 1999 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Silver Birch, Blood Moon.
“The Problem of Susan” © 2004 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Flights.
“Instructions” © 2000 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Wolf at the Door.
“How Do You Think It Feels?” © 1998 by Neil Gaiman. First published in In the Shadow of the Gargoyle.