Or, it might be time to have another drink and stop thinking so much. Yes; that felt right. I filled my glass to the rim. Larry Oblivion appeared out of nowhere and sat down opposite me without even waiting to be asked. I glared at him, and he stared calmly, coldly, back. You'd think, after all my time in the Nightside, that I'd be used to seeing dead people; but sitting and talking with the risen dead is never easy. Doesn't matter whether it's an old friend like Dead Boy, or a business rival like Larry Oblivion… There's just something about a walking, talking corpse that puts my spiritual teeth on edge.
Larry Oblivion, an average-looking man in an expensive suit, with a pale, washed-out face under flat straw blond hair. He was dead and didn't care who knew it, so he didn't bother to disguise some of the more distressing aspects, like not blinking often enough and breathing only when he needed to talk. He'd been murdered by his own partner and brought back as some kind of zombie; and he was still bitter about it. Larry was probably the best-known private eye in the Nightside, next to me. The Dead Detective. The Post-Mortem Private Eye. He ran his own Investigations Bureau, did a lot of corporate work, and advertised in all the right places. It must kill him that I made more money than he did. I smiled, politely, and offered him my glass of Valhalla Venom. He shook his head curtly.
"I don't drink. I'm dead."
"No need to be obsessive about it," I said. "Dead Boy eats and drinks and…"
"I know what that degenerate does!" said Larry. "Some of us have more dignity."
"Some of us have more fun," I said. "What do you want, Larry? I have important drinking and brooding against the injustices of the universe to be getting on with."
"I want you to find my missing brother, Tommy. You do remember Tommy, don't you, Taylor? Went missing during the Lilith War, when he was supposed to be under your protection? Still missing after all this time, presumed dead. I don't believe that. I won't believe it. I'd know if he was dead. He's still out there, somewhere, maybe lost, maybe hurt… and you're going to find him for me, with your amazing gift."
"I did what I could to protect him," I said. "There was a lot going on, and in any war… bad things are going to happen. There were crowds; there was fighting. A wall collapsed over Tommy; then… the press of fighting moved us all away." I didn't tell Larry about the half-mad mob that fell on Tommy's half-buried body. I didn't tell him about the screaming. "I went back later, when it was all over, but there was no trace of him anywhere. Why come to me now, Larry, after all this time?"
"Because Hadleigh has decided to get involved."
The name seemed to drop into a sudden silence, and heads rose sharply all around us. Some people got up and left; others just disappeared into thin air. And all through the bar, there was a general feeling of Oh shit…
Everyone in the Nightside knows the history of the three Oblivion brothers. If only because knowledge is so often self-defence. Their father was Dash Oblivion, the famed Confidential Op, private investigator back in the thirties. Their mother was one Shirley den Adel, the Lady Phantasm, a costumed adventurer from the same period. They had their first son, Hadleigh, soon after they were married. Then they went time-travelling in 1946 in pursuit of an escaped war criminal, the Demon Claw. They followed him into a Timeslip, and when they came out again, it was 1973.
They had two more boys, Larry and Tommy. During their long absence, Hadleigh had gone his own way and made a name for himself, outdoing even his parents' reputation. He represented the Authorities in the Nightside, much like Walker, all through the sixties and into the seventies. Hadleigh… was the Man. Taught Walker everything he knew. But then… something happened. No-one knows what, or if they do, they're not talking, which is almost unheard of in the Nightside. Hadleigh was never the same afterwards. He went a bit strange… and left the Authorities to walk forbidden paths.
There are forbidden paths, even in a place like the Nightside. Certain doors and ways that are sealed off, locked, and guarded-closed to all but the most powerful and the most stubborn. Not because they're so dangerous or because so many who go in don't go back… The Nightside has always believed that everyone has a right to go to hell in their own way. The problem is that some of those who come back return strangely changed and horribly altered.
People talk in whispers of the House of Blue Lights, where many are tempted in but only a few come out; and when they do, they aren't even remotely human any more. They're Blue Boys. People who've been hollowed out to make room for something else. They study our world through human eyes, and they play with us as though we're just toys. They have appetites, too… Nasty appetites. Walker has them killed the moment they're identified, but the bodies take a lot of killing, and they're always empty. When things get really bad, and Walker decides there are too many Blue Boys loose in the Nightside, he orders a cull. He bangs the drum and waves handfuls of money around, and we all come running. The bounty hunters, the assassins, and concerned citizens like me, who just want the bloody things off our streets. The pay is good, the risks are appalling, and no matter how many we kill, there are always more Blue Boys…
Suzie looks forward to the culls. I think they're her idea of an all-you-can-kill buffet.
Blue Boys. Dr. Fell. And now, the Collector. All of them looking out at the world through someone else's eyes. It's moments like this I wonder if Someone is trying to tell me something…
Hadleigh Oblivion went underground after he left the Authorities-all the way underground. He descended into the world beneath the world, into the sombre realms; and there he studied at the Deep School, the Dark Academy. The one place you can go to learn the true nature of reality. Most people fail the course. They die, or go mad, or both. Like the infamous Sigismund, the Mad Mathemagician. I worked with him on one case, when he was simply known as Madman. Last I heard he was still sleeping peacefully in his cocoon. No-one's sure exactly what will come out of it, but Walker's arranged an armed guard, just in case.
However, a few extraordinary souls do make it all the way through the course and return to the world above disturbingly powerful and strangely transformed. Like Hadleigh Oblivion. He walks in the shadows now, between Life and Death, Light and Dark. Or perhaps above them. Hadleigh Oblivion, the Detective Inspectre, who only ever investigates crimes and cases where reality itself is threatened. So if he'd decided to get involved…
"Oh shit," I said.
"Exactly," said Larry Oblivion.
"Why didn't he show up during the Lilith War?" I said, to avoid saying a whole lot of other things. "We could have used his help."
"Who says he didn't?" said Larry. "There was a lot going on. And Hadleigh has always operated on a far bigger stage than us. Did you never wonder why Heaven and Hell didn't get directly involved in the Lilith War? Do you really think your mother could have kept them out if they'd wanted in? We were knee-deep in angels when they came here looking for the Unholy Grail."
"I didn't start the Angel War!" I said, perhaps a bit loudly.
"Never said you did," said Larry.
"Sorry," I said. "I'm a bit touchy about that. Carry on."
"The point is, there are rumours that Hadleigh intervened, to keep the angels out and let us take our own shot at winning the War."
I looked at him for a long moment. "Could he really do that?"
"Who knows? Who knows what they made him into, down in the Deep School? He's the Detective Inspectre now."