Mean Streets

"It's all right," I said. "Take your time, get your breath back. Then tell me how you got here. This isn't an easy place to get to."

"I don't know!" she said immediately. "I've lost a day. A whole day!"

I slipped off my bar stool and offered her a seat, but she shook her head quickly. So I just leaned back against the long wooden bar and studied her openly as she looked around Strangefellows, making it very clear with her face and body language that not only had she never seen anything like it, but that she was quite definitely slumming just by being there. I was impressed. The oldest bar in the world isn't for just anyone. Most people take one look and run away screaming, and we like it that way. Strangefellows is a place of old magic and all the very latest sins and indulgences. This is not the kind of bar where everyone knows your name; it's the kind of bar where you can wake up robbed and rolled in someone else's body.

Liza Barclay deliberately turned her back on the disturbing sights and the appalling patrons, and fixed her full attention on me. I did my best to look tall, dark, and handsome, but I couldn't have been that successful because after only a moment she nodded briskly, as though I'd passed some necessary test, but only just. She switched her gaze to Dead Boy, who smiled vaguely and toasted her with his glass. The graveyard punch made a valiant attempt to escape, and he had to push the stuff back in with his fingers.

Dead Boy was tall and adolescent thin, wrapped in a long purple greatcoat spotted with various food and drink stains, and topped with a fresh black rose on his lapel. Scuffed black leather trousers over muddy calfskin boots completed the ensemble. He let his coat hang open, to reveal a bare torso covered with old injuries, bullet holes, and one long Y-shaped autopsy scar. Dead Boy might be deceased, but he still took damage, even if he couldn't feel it. He was mostly held together with stitches and staples and superglue, along with a certain amount of black duct tape lashed around his middle. His skin was a pale gray, and dusty-looking.

He had the face of a debauched and very weary Pre-Raphaelite poet, with dark fever-bright eyes, a sulky mouth with no colour in it, and long dark curly hair crammed under a large floppy hat. He didn't smile at Liza Barclay. He didn't care. Her tears hadn't touched him at all.

Liza shuddered, but didn't look away. She was impressing me more and more. Most people can't stand being around the dead, and that goes double for Dead Boy. Liza glanced around the bar again, at its various strange and u

"How can you stand being in a place like this?" she said to me, quite seriously.

"What, Strangefellows?" I said. "There are worse places to drink in. The ambience isn't up to much, I'll grant you, but…"

"I don't mean just here! I mean… everywhere! This whole area!" A tinge of hysteria had entered her voice. Liza heard it, and clamped down hard on it. She hugged herself suddenly, as though a cold wind had blown over her grave. "I've been walking back and forth in the streets for ages. This terrible place. I've seen things… awful things. Creatures, walking right out in the open, with normal people, and none of them batted an eye! Where am I? Am I dead? Is this Hell?"

"No," I said. "Though on a good day you can see Hell from here. As far as I can tell, you are a perfectly normal woman who has had the misfortune to somehow find her way into the Night-side."

"The Nightside." She grabbed on to the word, considered it, and then looked to me for more information. And it wasn't a request; it was a demand. I was liking her more and more.

"The Nightside," I said, "the dark secret hidden in the heart of London. The longest night in the world, where the sun has never shone and never will. Where it's always three o'clock in the morning, and the hour that tries men's souls. This is where all (he secret people come, in search of forbidden knowledge and all the pleasures people aren't supposed to want, but still do. You can pursue any dream here, or any nightmare. Sell your soul or someone else's. Run wild in the streets and satisfy any fantasy you over had. As long as your credit holds out. This is the Nightside, Liza Barclay, and it is not a place for normal people like you."

"It's not an easy place to find your way into," said Dead Boy. "I low did you get here?" "I don't know! I can't remember!" Her shoulders slumped, and her strength seemed to seep out of her. I understood. She was having to take in a lot at one go. And the Nightside does so love to break people… I thought for a moment she might start crying again, but her chin lifted, her eyes flashed, and just like that she was back in control again. "I live in London, have done all my life. And I never heard of the Nightside. I just… came to, and found myself here. Lost, and alone."

"And now you're among friends," I said. "More or less," said Dead Boy.

"I am John Taylor," I said, ignoring Dead Boy with the ease of long practice. "And I'm a private eye. Yes, really."

Her mouth twitched in a brief smile. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, to find one more mythical creature, among so many." "And my appalling friend here is Dead Boy. Yes, really." "Hi," said Dead Boy, leaning forward and offering a pale dead hand for her to shake. "Yes, that is formaldehyde you're smelling, so get used to it. I'm dead, I'm wild and exciting and extraordinarily glamorous, and you're very pleased to meet me."

"Don't put money on it," said Liza. "What's it like, being dead?"

"Cold," said Dead Boy, unexpectedly. "It's getting hard for me to even remember what being warm feels like. Though I think I miss sleep the most. Never being able to just lie down and switch off. No rest, no dreams…"

"Don't you get tired?" said Liza, fascinated despite herself. "I'm always tired," Dead Boy said sadly. "Cut it out," I said firmly. "You think I don't know you mainline that synthetic adrenaline when no one's looking?" I shrugged apologetically at Liza. "Sorry, but you mustn't encourage him.

He's not really as self-pitying as he likes to make out. He just thinks it makes him more attractive to women."

"Never dismiss the pity factor," Dead Boy said easily. "Suicide girls go crazy for dead flesh."

"That's disgusting," said Liza, very firmly.

He leered at her. "You haven't lived till you've rattled a coffin with someone on graveyard Viagra."

"Changing the subject right now," I said loudly. "Tell me about your memory loss, Liza. What's the last thing you do remember, before waking up here?"

She frowned, concentrating. "The last twenty-four hours are just gone. A whole day. The last thing I'm sure of, I was in London. The real London. Down in Tottenham Court Road Underground station… though I can't quite seem to remember why… I think I was looking for someone. The next thing I knew, I was here. Ru

"It's all right," I said. "What happened next?"

"I was attacked! They came out of nowhere… Tall spindly men in top hats and old-fashioned clothes, with great smiling faces, and… knives for hands."

"Scissormen," I said. "Always looking for someone weaker to prey on. They can home in on guilt and horror like sharks tasting blood in the water."

"I haven't done anything to feel guilty about," said Liza.

"As far as you know," said Dead Boy, reasonably. "Who knows what you might have done, in the missing twenty-four hours? It's amazing how much sin a determined person can cram into twenty-lour hours. I speak from experience, you understand." "Ignore him," I said. "He's just boasting."