I got off the bus at a stop no-one else seemed interested in and strolled down the grim, shabby streets to where my office used to be. The whole area looked even grubbier and seedier than I remembered, though I wouldn’t have thought that was possible. Narrow streets and crumbling tenements, smashed windows and kicked-in doors. Broken people in worn-out clothes, hurrying along with their heads lowered so they wouldn’t have to look anyone in the eye. A cold wind gusting down deserted alleyways, and shadows everywhere because someone had been using the street-lamps for target practice.
Homeless people sitting bundled up in doorways, drinking forgetfulness straight from the can or the bottle. Soot-stained brickwork, darkened by generations of passing traffic. Posters slapped one on top of the other, messages from the past, advertising things long gone, faded and water-stained. When I finally got to the old building that housed my small office, most of the windows were boarded up. There were a few lights on, in the surrounding buildings. People too stubborn to leave, or with nowhere else to go. Rubbish in the gutters, and worse in the alley mouths. And what street lighting there was seemed faded and stained.
I was surprised my old office building was still there. I’d been half-convinced, half-hoping, it would have been torn down by then. The place had been officially condemned even while I was still living in it. I stopped on the opposite side of the street and looked it over. No lights, no signs of life. People had given up on it, like rats deserting a sinking ship. The front door was hanging open, hinges creaking loudly on the quiet, as the gusting wind gave the door a shove, now and again, to remind it who was boss. I stood there for a while, studying the gloom beyond the door, but I was putting off the moment, and I knew it.
I looked round the deserted street one last time, then walked briskly across the road, pushed the front door all the way open, and strode into the dark and empty lobby. It was dark because someone had smashed the single naked light bulb. The place stank of stale piss. And yet, the place couldn’t just be abandoned, or the local homeless would have moved in and claimed it for their own. No light, no heating, no signs of occupation; so why had the front door been left so conveniently open? An invitation—or a trap?
I smiled despite myself. Looked like this might turn out to be interesting after all.
I made my way up the narrow wooden stairway to the next floor. The steps complained loudly under my weight, as they always had. The tenants liked it that way, to give warning that visitors were coming. I paused at the top to look about me, my eyes already adjusting to the gloom; but there was no sign anyone had been here in ages. I moved along the landing, checking the open office doors along the way. Old memories of old faces, neighbours who were never anything more than that. Cheap and nasty offices that had been home to a defrocked accountant and a struck-off dentist, dark and empty now, cleaned out long ago, with no sign left to show anyone had ever used them.
My office was still there, exactly where I’d left it. The door stood quietly ajar, with just enough of the old flaking sign to make out the words TAYLOR INVESTIGATIONS. The bullet-hole in the frosted-glass window was still there, too. I should have had it repaired, but it made such a great conversation piece. Clients like a hint of danger when they hire a private eye. I pushed the door all the way open with the tip of one finger, and the hinges complained loudly in the quiet. I took a deep breath, bracing myself against something I couldn’t quite name; but all I smelled was dust and rot, so I walked right in.
My old office was completely empty, abandoned—lots of dust and cobwebs, and a few rat droppings in the corner. Amber light fell in through the single barred window, pooling on the floor. All the furniture was gone, but I could still see it with my mind’s eye. The blocky desk and the two functional chairs, the cot I’d pushed up against the far wall when I was sleeping in my office because the landlord had locked me out of my flat, as a gentle hint that he’d like some of the back rent paid. This was the place where I tried to help people even worse off than I was, for whatever money they had. I did my best for them. I really did.
I looked slowly round me. Hard to believe that I’d spent five long years here, trying to pass for normal. Trying to help real people with real problems, in the real world. Burying myself in their problems, their lives, so I wouldn’t have to think about my own. I found out the hard way I wasn’t that good as an investigator when I didn’t have my gift to back me up. I didn’t dare use it, not here. The Harrowing would have detected it immediately, known I’d fled the Nightside, and come after me. They could pass for normal, when they had to. They looked like people, but they weren’t. They wore plain black suits with neat string ties, highly polished shoes, and slouch hats with the brims pulled low, so no-one could see what they had instead of faces. They’d been trying to kill me since I was a child. They wouldn’t have hesitated to come into the real world after me.
One of the reasons why I’d come here. To be free of them. They terrified me. Dominated my life for so long. Gone now, at great cost to me and those who’d stood by me.
They were only one of the reasons I’d left the Nightside. I wanted to at least try to be a man rather than a monster. To live my own life rather than the one planned for me by so many vested interests. I thought I’d be safe, in the real world, as long as I didn’t use my gift, or get involved with any unnatural situations. I should have known better. It didn’t take me long to discover that, without my gift, I wasn’t half the investigator I thought I was. I helped some people, solved my fair share of cases, but made damn all money doing it. I amassed a lot of debts along the way, and made a number of real-world enemies, human monsters. Because even in the real world, no good deed goes unpunished.
Because I wouldn’t take bribes, I wouldn’t back down, and I was too damned honest for my own good.
I later found out that my once-and-future Enemies in the Nightside had orchestrated the series of tragic events that sent me running from the Nightside with Suzie’s bullet burning in my back. Their idea of mercy. A second chance, to not be the person they thought I was, or might become. I did try to take the chance they offered. But it wasn’t me. My hand drifted to my lower back, where the scar from Suzie’s bullet still ached dully when it rained. A struck-off doctor dug it out of my back while I bit down on a length of cord to keep from screaming. Welcome to the real world.
Suzie hadn’t meant to kill me. It was just her way of trying to get my attention. We forgave each other long ago.
I looked round sharply, brought back to the present by the sound of someone approaching. Slow, steady footsteps ascending the wooden stairs, making no attempt to hide themselves. Someone wanted me to know they were coming. I moved quickly over to stand behind the open door. A white trench coat may be iconic as all hell, but it does make it difficult to hide in the shadows. I stood very still, straining my ears at every sound, as the footsteps made their unhurried way along the landing, ignoring all the other offices, heading straight for mine. They stopped outside my open door, then a man walked unhurriedly in. A short, middle-aged, balding man in an anonymous coat, so nondescript in appearance he was hardly there. I relaxed, a little. I knew him. I stepped out from behind the door.
“Hello, Russell.”
He turned his head calmly, not surprised or startled in the least. He nodded once, as though we’d happened to bump into each other in the street. Russell was a small grey man, always quiet and polite, always ready to do something illegal. If the price was right. He did some work for me, back in the day. Russell did some work for a lot of people. He was a grass, a runner, and a reliable supplier of dodgy items. He never got his own hands dirty; he made it possible for other people to do what they had to. He knew all the wrong people, drank in all the worst dives, heard it all and said nothing. Until you put money in his hand. No-one liked him, but everybody used him. Russell never complained. He had self-esteem issues.