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To Oscar
Acknowledgments
With huge thanks to Talya Baker, Mark Bould, Lauren Buckland, Mic Cheetham, Dea
As always, I’m indebted to too many writers to list, but particularly important to this book are Joan Aiken, Clive Barker, Lewis Carroll, Michael de Larrabeiti, Tanith Lee, Walter Moers, and Beatrix Potter. Particular thanks are due Neil Gaiman, for generous encouragement and for his indispensable contributions to London phantasmagoria, especially Neverwhere.
Note to Reader
People speaking British English and people speaking American English mostly understand each other fine. But there are a few words we use in Britain that you might not recognize, or that we use differently from you. Should you encounter a strange or difficult word in the story, please flip to the short glossary, which is located in the back of this book.
In an unremarkable room, in a nondescript building, a man sat working on very non-nondescript theories.
The man was surrounded by bright chemicals in bottles and flasks, charts and gauges, and piles of books like battlements around him. He propped them open on each other. He cross-referred them, seeming to read several at the same time; he pondered, made notes, crossed the notes out, went hunting for facts of history, chemistry, and geography.
He was quiet but for the scuttling of his pen and his occasional murmurs of revelation. He was obviously working on something very difficult. From his mutters and the exclamation marks he scrawled, though, he was slowly making progress.
The man had traveled a very long way to do the work he was doing. He was so engrossed it took him a long time to notice that the light around him was fading, u
Some sort of darkness was closing in on the windows. Some sort of silence— more than the absence of noise, the presence of a predatory quiet— was settling around him.
The man looked up at last. Slowly, he put down his pen and turned around in his chair.
“Hello?” he said. “Professor? Is that you? Is the minister here…?”
There was no answer. The light from the corridor still faded. Through the smoked glass of the door, the man could see darkness taking shape. He stood, slowly. He sniffed, and his eyes widened.
Fingers of smoke were wafting under the door, entering the room. They uncoiled from the crack like feelers.
“So…” the man whispered. “So, it’s you.”
There was no answer, but beyond the door came a very faint rumble that might just have been laughter.
The man swallowed, and stepped back. But he set his face. He watched as the smoke came more thickly around the edges of the door, eddying towards him. He reached for his notes. He moved quickly, dragging a chair as quietly as he could into place below a high ventilation duct. He looked afraid but determined— or determined but afraid.
The smoke kept coming. Before he had a chance to climb, there was another rumble-laugh-noise. The man faced the door.
1. The Respectful Fox
There was no doubt about it: there was a fox behind the climbing frame[5]. And it was watching.
“It is, isn’t it?”
The playground was full of children, their gray uniforms flapping as they ran and kicked balls into makeshift goals. Amid the shouting and the games, a few girls were watching the fox.
“It definitely is. It’s just watching us,” a tall blond girl said. She could see the animal clearly behind a fringe of grass and thistle. “Why isn’t it moving?” She walked slowly towards it.
At first the friends had thought the animal was a dog, and had started ambling towards it while they chatted. But halfway across the tarmac[24] they had realized it was a fox.
It was a cold cloudless autumn morning and the sun was bright. None of them could quite[16] believe what they were seeing. The fox kept standing still as they approached.
“I saw one once before,” whispered Kath, shifting her bag from shoulder to shoulder. “I was with my dad by the canal. He told me there’s loads in London now, but you don’t normally see them.”
“It should be ru
“All the better to eat you with,” said Deeba.
“That was a wolf,” said Kath.
Kath and Keisha held back: Za
The girls had never seen any animal so still. It wasn’t that it wasn’t moving: it was furiously not-moving. By the time they got close to the climbing frame they were creeping exaggeratedly, like cartoon hunters.
The fox eyed Za
“Yeah, it is watching,” Deeba said. “But not us. It’s watching you.”
Za
Sometimes even her mates were a little bit wary of Za
Just at that moment, however, she was concentrating hard on what Deeba had just said.
Za
“It’s true,” said Deeba. “It hasn’t taken its eyes off you.”
Za
[5]
Climbing frame: A jungle gym.
[24]
Tarmac: What they make airport runways out of, but we use it to describe normal roads, too.
[16]
Quite: When Americans say something is “quite good/bad/etc.,” you mean it is “very” good/bad/etc. When Brits say it, we sometimes mean it in just the same way— but then sometimes we mean something is only “fairly,” or “moderately,” or “kind-of-but-not-extremely” good/bad/etc. It can be confusing.
[8]
Estate: Several big apartment blocks— a housing project.
[6]
Comprehensive: A school for children aged 11 to 16 or 18.