THE FLEET RIVER STARTS SOMEWHERE UP ON THE HEATH. I’VE never bin there, but Morris has. It’s where the North London drug barons live in big houses—palaces, like—all ringed with steel security fences and guard dogs and armed patrols. Morris goes there on business, to get supplies. “You’d never get in unless they wants you in,” he says, and then he grins a bit, showing his gums, and says, “nor you’d never get out again neither.”
Well, the Fleet starts there, up in the woods, and then it dives underground and runs along in drains and sewers for a while, but all the time it’s chewing away at the bricks and burrowing under old roadways till they sag and collapse, till by the time it gets to Kings Cross it’s opened itself a nice deep channel, not that you’d wanta swim in it. There’s whirlpools and sinkholes that’d suck you down hundreds of meters into the old drowned underground system, and there’s lagoons where buildings have crashed across and the water dams up and spreads around, and there’s narrows where the river jist roars along. But the last bit, where it runs into the Thames, is tidal. Coupla times a day, it heaves itself up and over a quarter mile or so of mud banks and ruins, and you can take a boat on it then, if you’re careful.
Which is what I’ll tell Morris if he finds out where we are. Which I hope he don’t. Which he shouldn’t, seeing as my cell’s switched off so he can’t call up with some little job he wants doing, and we’ve got all day, but it’s took longer than I thought, weaving through the channels and the shallows. Some of them rocks is sharp. I’ve seen rusted metal rods poking out of blocks of concrete what would rip holes in the dinghy, and then Morris would kill me. He really might. If we didn’t drown first, a’course.
Billy’s sitting in the front and I can tell he’s not spotted it yet, the place we’re headed for—two sharp towers and a dome rising up behind the spoil heaps. I betted him I’d see it first, but this might be the last thing Billy and me do together for a long time, and now I kinda want him to win. So I don’t say nothing, and at last he turns his head—and then he points, and he says, “Charlie, look! Look!” He beams at me, and I grin back at him like a dog, coz this is intense. We’ve wanted to do this forever. Years. We’ve always wanted to go and visit Nelson.
I open the throttle and the dinghy scoots in over the shallows. The tide’s so high that when we finally touch ground on a tilted shore of red bricks and shattered concrete, we’re hardly a stone’s throw below Sint Paul’s. We jump out, drag the dinghy clear of the water—and we stare.
Sint Paul’s is a cathedral—that’s what it’s called, “Sint Paul’s cathedral.” That’s a kind of palace. Morris says it’s jist a big church, but it don’t look like a church to me. Hundreds a years ago, Morris says, before the world warmed up and the Flood began, important people useta get married in there, and then when they died, they useta get buried; but I reckon they musta lived there too, in between. Be a waste of space otherwise. It hangs over us like a cliff. Seagulls go drifting from its ledges. The doorway at the top of the steps is dark as a sea cave. Billy blinks, his mouth ajar. “Is this where Nelson lives?”
“Lived,” I say, but I know Billy don’t make no difference between lives and lived, and now we’re here neither do I: it’s Nelson’s palace, that’s what counts, where he lived an’ where he’s buried, so I say, “Yeah. This is it. Nelson’s house. Let’s go and find him!”
But first I look around. I’m armed with one of Morris’s little handguns, what he calls his pocket darlings—coz I don’t want no trouble, not with Billy along. The boat’s got DK, for Damned Krew scrawled on it in red and black, and no one wants to mess with the Krew on the west side of the Fleet, but here on the east side is out of our territory and the between-tides zone is teknikly no-man’s land, which means anyone can roam here but they hafta be mad or desperate first, like Hairies and outcasts and refugees from drowned countries, though I don’t know why refugees seemta wanta get into London when most of us spend our lives dreaming of getting out.
I look around and I see the flat gray river spreading away for miles with a far-off cluster of boats riding on it like fleas, and closer in I see the mud banks and the channels winding out between them, and then with a jab of fright I see a dark figure shambling away along the tide edge, headed for a heap of rubble where a mob of seagulls is scritching and quarreling over something to eat.
It’s a Hairy. Has to be.
Billy sees me jump. He puts his arm around my shoulders and kinda hugs me, and he says, “Don’t worry. Hairies ain’t scary,” and I almost laugh since this is what Billy always says, but anyway I’m not scared of Hairies, I just loathe ’em.
“They leaves you alone if you leaves them alone,” Billy says, taking care to get it right, because this is what Morris has told him. Billy trusts Morris.
When I was just a kid—seven or eight years old—I tried some nirv. I sneaked a pinch out of one of Morris’s little foil packets. For a second it fizzed on my tongue. Then it burned a hole right through to the core of me and exploded—like I’d swallowed the sun, like light was busting out of my fingertips. I was King of the Universe. I knew everything. It was intense.
Next thing, I was puking up on the floor, with Morris yelling his head off. He throws a bucket o’ water over me, and then he throws the bucket, and then he lams me some more, and all the time he’s shouting, “Don’t ever let me catch you taking that stuff agin,” till me eyes are spinning in me head. He hauls me downstairs. There’s a room on the ground floor me and Billy was never allowed in, though we’d see the punters comin’ and goin’. Morris unlocks the door. It’s cold and damp inside. Metal shutters across the windows, an awful smell. On the floor…
I hate remembering this…
On the floor there’s a girl. Or what useta be a girl. She’s laying there in a skimpy vest and her skirt all rucked up, making a sorta snorting noise, and there’s hair growing all over her, black hairy hair covering her face and chest and arms and legs. I’m backing away, and she opens her eyes, sudden. And I know her. Under the hair, it’s Maddalena, who useta come in and look after me and Billy sometimes when Ma was sick. Morris shoves me on my knees beside her, pushes my head down to hers. An’ she reaches out fast and grabs my arm. Her fingers are hot and strong, and her breath is sickly sweet. The fur on her cheeks and chin is wet with spit. Her eyes burn into mine like she’s seeing to the back of my head, and she’s gurgling, “Go ’way, go ’way, go, go, go…” but she won’t let go, she won’t let go—
—and I scream—
—and Morris drags me out, and he says, “Don’t you never take that stuff again, Charlie, coz that’s the way it ends.”
I was crying so hard, I was almost choking. He says, “Look at me!” and shakes me till I do. His eyes are bright red, there’s a muscle jumping in his cheek. He says, “You want your brain to rot? You wanta grow hair all over your body? That’s what it does, there’s some kinda hormone in it, some kinda animal hormone …” He spits. “In there, that ain’t Maddalena no more. That’s an animal. No one in the Krew does nirv. I don’t allow it. And I promised your ma—” He stops. Then he says, “We ain’t got your ma no more. We got each other and we got the Krew. You respect me, you respect yourself and the Krew, you don’t take that shit. You hear me?”
For weeks and months after, I’d check my arms and hands to see if they was turning hairy. I never asked what he did with Maddalena, though she kept crawling into my dreams. But I did ask Morris once if he thought it was all right to sell nirv to people when we know what it does. And he said, “They’re not forced to take it, are they? They got choice.” He gives me a real hard look. “If they’ll buy it, I’ll sell. It puts bread in your mouth and mine, Charlie, and Billy-boy’s too. You complaining?”
Well, I wasn’t complaining, coz you don’t cross Morris, and anyway he was right. Anyone stupid enough to go blowing their mind on nirv deserves what they get. They know what it does. And yeah, maybe people think they can stop before it gets a-hold of them—but like Morris says, that’s their choice. I never told Billy how people get turned into Hairies, though. He wouldn’t’ve understood.
I’m thinking all this as the Hairy starts to run, howling some weird kinda mad nonsense like they do, and the seagulls spin up in a squealing cloud, and the Hairy—the thing—waves its fists and falls down on the stones.
If it was any closer, I swear I’d shoot it dead.
“Nelson, Charlie. Charlie!” Billy tugs my arm. “Let’s find Nelson.”
A half-buried flight of stone steps leads up to a platform. We climb them, and I can’t keep from looking up. Them doors at the top hafta be ten meters high. Billy whispers to himself, and I say, “What?” and he says into my ear, “Is Nelson a giant?” and a shiver goes right down my back.
“Nah,” I say, confident enough. “Just—you know—a hero.”
But I don’t know. Why else would doors be that high?
Nelson is two things. One is a statchoo a mile or two to the west. He’s bin there forever, far as I know. Once there woulda bin buildings and stuff all around him; now he’s right on the edge of the tide, a stone man balancing on a stone column fifty meters high, leaning on a sword and staring out over the river.
The other thing Nelson is, is a hero. I dunno what he did, even Ma didn’t know, but it musta bin something big for them to build so high and put him up there. I bothered away at it for years, till one day I just started making stuff up. Before long, specially after Morris came to live with Ma and then when she got the cholera and died, I got to telling Billy tales about Nelson every night. In the stories, Nelson lives in Sint Paul’s. He fights armies of Hairies, he battles in the sewers with giant rats, he smuggles people out to the north. Billy loves it. His eyes sparkle and he chuckles and rubs his fingers like he does when he’s really excited. Far as Billy’s concerned, it’s all real. Even for me, half the time. I know I made it up, but Nelson’s still real, ain’t he? Whoever he was, whatever he did, he was alive once, and he really is buried right here.
The huge doors are open, jammed with rubble. Billy scrambles over it and slips inside. I’m right on his heels. And we’re inside Sint Paul’s.
It’s enormous. A jolt goes through me. Like panic, like I’ve stepped off a cliff. I actually grab Billy’s arm. I can’t see properly. It’s all dark, deep shadows cut by shafts of white light falling through high windows. It smells like the bottom of the river. And there’s a weird soft noise, like someone stroking the back of my neck.
“Birds,” says Billy.
Right. It’s just pigeons cooing overhead and fluttering about. My eyes adjust and I see we’re standing on a floor of black-andwhite squares, but it’s all grimed and filthy, and there’s streaks of pigeon shit down the towering whitish walls.
If my mates in the Krew, Beamer and Sam and Kingy, if they knew how I make up stories for Billy, I’d hafta cut my throat. They don’t know nothing about Nelson and I’d never tell ’em. But there’s something about Nelson I haven’t told even Billy.
I talk to him.
Two three years ago, Billy was sick in his chest, coughing all winter, couldn’t hardly get his breath. Morris wasn’t no use, yelling at Billy to shut up coughing, he couldn’t sleep—I coulda killed him—and I wished Nelson was there, he’d know what to do—and before I knowed it, I was talking to him inside my head. Telling him how scared I was, and begging him don’t let Billy die. And he listened. Don’t tell me any different, he listened, and somehow I just knew then Billy’d get better, an’ he did.
Billy thinks that Nelson’s lucky. When we find him, he wants to make a wish. Me, I’m here to ask Nelson a question. An important one. Here, where he’s buried, I hope I’ll get the answer good and strong.
Thinking about it makes me hopeful but edgy. So I drop Billy’s arm and stroll forward like I know what I’m doing. Right ahead is a massive stone bowl, big enough to sit in. Nelson’s bathtub? I’m grinning at the thought, and I peek in, and it’s half full of green water and dirt and twigs and feathers. A pigeon clatters over, and I look up—and my mouth drops open. The roof ’s all circles and arches, picked out in gold paint and fancy colors….So this is what they thought of Nelson, this is what they done for him….
“Charlie!”
I pull up, swearing, on the very edge of a hole in the floor. A made hole, perfectly round, over a meter across. Farther on there’s another, and another. For fuck’s sake, this floor ain’t solid at all, it’s built over cellars or something, and if Billy hadn’t yelled, I’d’ve fallen through. I go cold all over. It’s all black down there.
And Billy looks about to burst into tears.
“Billy-boy, you saved me!” I hook him around the neck and tousle his hair. He manages a sick grin. I feel sick myself. Chrissakes, what kinda place has holes in the floor like this?
Then I figure it out. The holes are there to light the cellars below. Maybe once they had grids over them, or thick glass. But it’s shook me up. Don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting to nearly die. I get a bad thought. What if this is one of them places that’s, you know, guarded ? Where there’s a curse if you disturb the dead? What if Nelson’s magical house is full of traps?
We shuffle along past the sooty rings of old fires, past heaps of garbage, past a great black gateway guarded by statchoos of angels with smoke-stained wings. The more I look around, the creepier I feel. In every corner there’s marble statchoos of people dying—dropping off horses’ backs, fainting and falling, laying down on their deathbeds. You’d think they was marking tombs, but there ain’t no room for graves in this hollow floor. I take a squint at the lettering cut in the platforms under ’em. They’re all monuments to dead soldiers. Maybe a mighty battle was fought here once—and lost.
Suddenly the walls rise like cliffs. The roof overhead jistabout disappears. “High, Charlie!” Billy gasps. “High as the sky!” He’s right. I’m giddy just looking. We’re standing under the dome we saw from outside, so huge and hollow you could fit the whole sky into it. Way, way up, there’s a curving row of windows with a ledge running around.
“Let’s go up,” Billy says, eyes aglow. I wanta get up there too, there must be stairs. I tug open a door in the wall, and there they are, a spiral flight leading up….
But we won’t find Nelson up there, will we? You don’t bury people in the ceiling. You bury ’em in the ground. In the cellars.
And right on cue, I see an open doorway with steps leading down. In the arch above it, three skulls are carved in the stone.
“Come on!” I say to Billy, and I pull out my cell and click the light. A thin beam streaks out, painting a bluish glare on a flight of steps leading downwards. Billy hangs back.
“Nelson’s there,” he says, pointing up at the dome. “Upstairs.”
“No, Billy, he ain’t. We can go up there later if you like. This way first.”
“S’dark.”
“Use your cell,” I say, and he pulls it out and turns it on and flashes it down the steps. Then he clicks it off and shakes his head.
“Billy, you gotta come with me. I can’t leave you alone.”
People always think Billy’s younger’n me, but he’s nineteen, two years older. He’s shorter than me, and shy, and if you don’t know him it ain’t easy to tell what he’s saying. But he’s not stupid. He just thinks different. And when he makes up his mind about something, you can’t shake it. Like that rabbit of his. He got it off a market stall selling live animals for meat, chickens mostly, but other things too. It’s a monster, a whopping white rabbit he calls Bunny. Bad-tempered as hell. It scratches and bites, and it shits little brown droppings all over the house. Morris and me is always grumbling about it, and Billy knows, but he don’t care what we think. He loves it.
He’s got that stubborn look on his face right now, scowling, tongue pushing out between his lips. I say, “If you don’t come, you won’t get to see where Nelson is. An’ you won’t get to make your wish.”
“Don’t care.”
“How can you say that when we’ve come all this way?” My voice rises. “Chrissakes, Billy!”
That was too loud. Pigeons clatter up and there’s a gusty sweep and rattle as they swirl overhead. The echoes keep coming, like footsteps tapping toward us, and voices whispering, and my hair rises. I hate the feeling of all this space around us, full of shadows where anything could hide. I keep thinking the statchoos’ll move. I feel we’re being watched, yet I look around and behind us and don’t see nothing. It’s only the birds…I hope.
“Come on,” I hiss.
“No,” says Billy, and I’m mad with him, but it’s no good showing it. Billy won’t come. He don’t like the dark. And I wanted this to be a good time together….“All right,” I tell him. “Stay right here. Don’t move. I’ll be as fast as I can.”
I run down the steps, counting under my breath. Thirteen down, then a turn, then a lot more. It’s clammy cold, and there’s a rank, rotten stink. Thirty-three, thirty-four—then the light from the cell flashes off black water at the bottom. I might’ve expected it. Even above the tide line, cellars don’t always drain out.
I prod the water with my toe and it don’t seem all that deep, so I step in and swear as it overtops my boots. I’m standing in an arched passage, and I can see by the stains on the walls that the water level sometimes comes much higher than this. Now what? Billy’s waiting, an’ I really shouldn’t have left him. I’ve gotta be quick.
Which way?
To the left it’s pitch black. To the right there’s a grayish glimmer, so I try that way first, and the light comes through a hole in the floor above, like the one I nearly fell through. The tunnel widens into dark spaces. I hurry along, past more white statchoos, pale and horrible in the dusk. The light off the ripples travels over them, and their faces flicker like life, and I catch my breath hard. Then the passage ends in a wall.
I slosh back past the bottom of the steps and try the other way, the dark way. Pretty soon I come to another choice—straight on or turn right, but it ain’t really a choice at all coz the way ahead is barred by rusted metal gates. I’ll hafta to go right…but it’s gnawing at me that Billy’s on his own, I ought to get back to him, how long have I been down here?
But I’ll never get this chance again. And maybe Nelson’s real close, maybe just around the corner. It’s worth a look. I don’t know if I’m fooling myself, but I’ve got a feeling about it—like a whisper in the dark, like feeling the heat of a fire with your eyes shut. Whether it’s real or not, I go wading into the water anyway.
The floor slopes down gradual, ankle deep, knee deep, thigh deep, and the walls is slimed with green, and there’s black lumps of stuff floating that I try not to look at.
The passage opens into a chamber. I stab the light about, and it flashes off a bunch of white pillars sticking up outta the water. In the middle of them is a stone platform, like an island, and on the platform is a black marble coffin. Big but not giant-sized. On top of that, there’s a golden pillow with a crown.
That’s all. But a shudder runs right down my spine. I know this is the place even before I spell out the golden letters on the platform: horatio visc nelson. I never knew the rest of his name before.
Nelson’s here.
I breathe in, slow and deep and careful.
It ain’t like them palaces up on the Heath that Morris goes on about, all silk carpets and pictures and shandyleers. Maybe it useta be that way upstairs, when Nelson was alive. But when he died they put him down here in the dark, with a black bed to lie on and quiet white walls. An’ a golden crown like a king.
The ripples I’ve made go slopping against the pillars. The beam of my light jumps off the surface: a lake of black water and bright ripples surrounding a black marble coffin on a white stone island.
I’m glad I came. I’ll always remember this. I don’t reckon I’ll ever see it again. Coz I’m leaving.
Morris don’t know what I’m planning, at least I hope he don’t, I ain’t stupid enough to tell him, though he might guess. He’s sharp, is Morris, and he likes to be in control. “Nobody leaves the Krew,” he says. “Family sticks together.” Yeah, but what does that mean? It means selling nirv for Morris in a half-drowned, half-ruined city crawling with Hairies, where the cholera comes back every coupla summers. What sorta life is that? Ma died. What if Billy dies?
Oh, I guess the old bastard’s fond of me and Billy, in his way. But he don’t own me, I don’t need his permission. I’m leaving, all right, and there’s only two ways, upriver or down. Upriver’s too dangerous, patrols and checkpoints and electric fences. Downriver’s dangerous too—you gotta get past the Barrage and right out to sea. I reckon I could do it, though, and find my way north up the coast. It’s worth it. Up in the north there’s a proper government, not like what we got here. Proper jobs—doctors—rights. Up north I can get to be something. Make something outta my life. And Billy’s.
But that’s it—Billy. No way can I take him with me, I’ll hafta leave him behind, at least for a while. (Forever if I get killed—but I won’t get killed.) When I get a job, and a permit and all, I’ll come back for him or send for him, an’ it’ll be better for both of us in the end. How can I tell him, though? I don’t know how to tell him; he’ll never understand. And will he be all right when I’m gone? What’ll Morris do when I skip out, taking the boat and stuff? He’ll be as mad as hell with me (nobody leaves the Krew), but not with Billy, right? Billy’s still family. Will Morris look after Billy if I’m not there? I think so, but I don’t know.
I don’t know.
So I ask Nelson. I square up and speak into the dark. “What d’ya think? Will Billy be okay with Morris? Shall I go?”
I listen, listen for the least bit of sound, listen inside my head as well as outside. In the cold silence, my heart thuds against my ribs. A little bit of me says I’m fooling myself—telling lies to myself—but I gotta believe in something or I ain’t got nothing.
There’s a tiny tickling noise like a cat lapping. My neck prickles, my breath hisses. I flash the light down and see fresh ripples crossing the surface. Toward me. Next there’s a sloshing, regular sound: splash—splash—splash. Someone’s wading out of the deep darkness on the other side of Nelson’s tomb.
My blood turns to acid. My heart comes choking up into my throat. It’s Nelson—I’ve woken Nelson! I swing the cell up. A face appears in the light beam, screwed up an’ blinking—a face buried in long straggles of gray-black hair. My hand dives for my gun, but my pocket’s all wet and tight and I can’t get my fingers in. I start backing away, the water grabbing at my thighs.
The thing whines like a dog, and my hair stands on end. It works its jaw up and down. Around its mouth is draggled and sticky, with feathers stuck to it….Feathers? It’s gripping something—a dead pigeon, all tore open, I can see the dark blood and white bones. It’s been sitting in the dark behind Nelson’s tomb, chewing on a dead pigeon. I’m almost sick. I scream at it, “I’ve got a gun!” and I run.
But the water’s so deep. I hafta force my legs along, elbows pumping, thrashing up stinking spray, nearly falling every stride, and I glance back to see if it’s coming and can’t see nothing in the dark, so it could be right behind me….Then I’m in the shallows, splashing along ankle deep, and now I can really run—so fast I almost miss the steps, but here they are—and I hurl myself up and slip and my knee slams into the stone—hell that hurts!—and I scramble up on all fours, and I’m coming into gray daylight, shouting, “Hairies, Billy, run…”
And he’s not here.
He’s not here!
“Billy!” My voice explodes into the space above me. All the birds hurtle up again and go whirling around. Where the hell is he, he never goes wandering off—and there are Hairies in here, I shoulda guessed a place like this would be crawling with ’em—I took too long, I should never a-left him—“Billy?”
Faint and thin, his voice floats back. “Hi, Charlie…”
I look up. Shit! Overhead, way overhead where the ledge clings to the underside of the dome, I see the tiny white blob of his face looking down. “Hi, Charlie,” he calls again. Or maybe he means, “High!”
He sounds really pleased with himself.
Shit! Shit! I know he’s not gonna come down on his own, I’ll hafta fetch him. Just as I start for the doors leading to the spiral staircase, there’s a noise behind me, a sorta tuneless singing, “Doh-de-doh-de-dum. Dum, dum, dum.”
The Hairy’s coming, limping up outta the cellar like a walking corpse, naked, dripping wet, the hair plastered to its thin shanks and knobby knees. As it comes it hums, jiggles, twitches, scratches itself. I struggle to push my hand into my wet pocket, shove and wriggle my fingers till they curl around the handle of Morris’s little gun, and I drag it out. It musta got well soaked—will it work when it’s wet?
The Hairy sees me. It stops in the archway just under the death’s heads. It’s still got the pigeon dangling from one hand. It tips its head sideways like it’s trying to figure me out. Through the hair its eyes gleam like a dog’s. Then it drops the pigeon and shambles right at me.
“Get back!” I point the gun. It’s as light as a toy, but it ain’t a toy. Any real person would know that, any real person would back off, but this is a Hairy, it don’t understand. I can kill it, but I can’t scare it. I shriek, “Get away from me or I’ll shoot!” and it lets out a yell of its own and waves its arms. I jump about a mile in the air, I nearly pull the trigger, but I don’t, I’ve never killed anyone, and it burbles, “Mad, mad, mad-a, mad-a,” and I’m almost sobbing, I know it’s mad, I back some more and I say, “I’ll shoot, I’ll shoot!” and it says, “Madd-a-lena.”
I almost drop the gun.
And it says, this time I swear it says, “Moh-riss.”
All the skin prickles up all over my body.
I don’t wait to hear no more. I yank open that door in the wall and leap through and go racing two at a time up shallow treads that lead around and around in a never-ending spiral. The Hairy’s hooting in the shaft below. It’s coming after me.
Maybe it’s seen me with Morris on the street, it knows we’re dealers, it thinks I’ve got…When Hairies get to that state, their brains is wrecked, scrambled. Nobody sells it to ’em anymore, they can’t pay and anyway another dose or two’d prob’ly kill them, but they still want the stuff. They still crave for nirv.
But I swear I didn’t rekkernize it, it ain’t anyone I ever met. And even if it knows about Morris, how could it know about Maddalena?
I didn’t hear that. I didn’t. I didn’t hear it.
But I know I did.
Every coupla turns, daylight peeks through a little window covered with thick glass and barred like a prison. I push on—slowing, toiling, gasping—but I keep going, and after I don’t know how many turns, the stairs end in a narrow stone passage, no more than elbow wide. I dive along it and come to another flight, straight this time, a glimmer of daylight at the top. I struggle up and tumble out and grab at the wall.
I’m out on the ledge where Billy was. It rims the bottom of the dome, hugging what looks like about a circular mile of space. Windows march ’round the walls above me. There are huge shadowy paintings up there. Way, way up, higher than I like to look, there’s another gallery hanging right in the middle of the roof. Dusty rays of light slant down.
I peer into the gloom. “Billy?”
Well, he ain’t here, a’course he ain’t, that’d be too easy, wouldn’t it? He’s wandered off again. And the Hairy’s on the stairs and we gotta get out—I’m wild with Billy but I’m furious with myself. What’s wrong with me? Why didn’t I shoot when I got the chance? Next time I’ll pull the trigger for sure.
I try Billy’s cell, which is switched off, and I call for him again, not very loud coz it echoes, and the place spooks me, and then I set off marching around the circle.
A heavy iron railing fences off the drop. Once it musta run all the way around, but now there’s big gaps, places where it’s torn down and twisted. I peer over, careful. A helluva long way down there’s a pattern in the middle of the floor, a starburst so big I never spotted it when I was down there. It’s like a target. If you’re gonna jump, aim right here. I pull back, shuddering, and press close against the wall.
Billy whispers at my shoulder, right in my ear, “Hey, Charlie!” I spin around. And he’s not there.
Christ, the voice—the voice was so weird. All hoarse and hollow. Not like Billy alive. Like Billy’s ghost.
It’s too much—the dome hanging over me like a thundercloud, the Hairy on the stairs, them bloody pigeons what never stop cooing…and Billy’s voice coming outta nowhere. My knees go weak. I croak, “Where are you?” an’ there’s a pause, and his voice whispers, “Here”—still sounding like a ghost—and I go, “Where?” and there’s another pause and he says, “By the door.”
Well, there’s no door anywhere near, and then I look far out across the open space and see the doorway I come in through, more than half the circle away. Next to it I can just make out the shape of Billy, standing there waiting. Relief soaks through me, but I’m exasperated too, chasing each other around like a game of ring-a-roses. I shout, “Stay put! Stay there an’ wait for me!” There’s the pause, and he answers, “All right,” still in that dragged-out hollow whisper, like it’s traveled right up into the cup of the dome. So it’s got to be some kind of echo.
From where I am, it’s quicker to go on than turn back. I’m picking my way careful-like over slippery piles of fallen plaster and pigeon droppings, when I suddenly know I’ve just made the most terrible fucking mistake.
I told Billy to wait where he is—and the Hairy’s on the stairs.
It’s like a fist in my stomach. I start to run, past gaps in the rail where there’s nothing to stop me going all the way to the bottom, and then I come to a place where the rail’s all twisted over the ledge and I hafta stop and clamber over it, and watch where I put my hands and feet in case I break an ankle or fall, and I can’t even look to see what’s happening—if it’s already there, and Billy’s all alone. It gives me the horrors. I gotta get there first, before it reaches the top.
I vault the last tangle of metal, and run on. All of the circle looks the same, like I’m getting nowhere, like the building’s revolving and I’m staying still. I’ve lost sight of Billy, don’t know how far I’ve come, I’m dreading to hear him scream. I grip the gun in my hand. I’ll use it this time, I really will. I’ll kill it if touches him….
I come around the last curve and close the circle. And Billy’s waiting for me like I told him, his face all pleased—and there’s the Hairy clambering outta the black oblong of the doorway behind him.
I slide to a stop, pointing the gun. My hand’s shaking so bad, I daren’t fire. “Billy, get behind me quick, there’s a Hairy, gimme some room to shoot.”
But Billy turns. He sees this thing—this thing what rips pigeons apart and eats ’em raw—and he smiles, all kindly and superior, like he knows best, and, “Don’t worry, Charlie,” he says. “Hairies ain’t scary.” An’ he reaches out and pats it on the head.
It grabs him. It tugs his arms, gibbering, but this time I can’t hear proper words, just a sorta mad moaning like it’s pleading for something and I can guess what. It stinks of salty piss like an old tomcat, it’s covered with filthy tangled hair; who knows what diseases it’s got? The gun’s no use; I drop it and try yanking Billy away, but the Hairy holds on tight and I yell, “Get off! Get off of him! He ain’t got nothing for you!” An’ I grab its wrist—touching it, skin and bone and harsh hair under my fingers—and twist till it lets go. I land a kick to its kneecap, and it screams and collapses. Billy wails something, and I turn on him. “Outta the way! Let me deal with it—”
He shoves me hard in the chest. He’s beetroot red, scowling, really angry. “Charlie hurt it!” He crouches over it, muttering, “Poor thing, poor thing.” He pulls a crumpled foil packet outta his pocket and offers it to the Hairy like a kid sharing candy. “Here, this is nice.”
I go berserk.
I rip the packet outta Billy’s fingers and jiggle the foil open. A pinch of golden-brown powder lays there, with that dry sweet smell. Nirv. Precious, precious nirv, precious as gold dust. I empty it on the floor. The Hairy dives for it, but I don’t care. I grab Billy by the shirtfront with both fists and heave him toward me, and I shake him, the way Morris shook me—and I rage into his face, “Who give you that? Who give you that? Who give it you?”
Billy tries to turn his face away. “Stop it, Charlie, bad Charlie, stop, stop, stop!” His voice rises to a shriek. He flails his arms and punches me; it don’t hurt, but it shocks me rigid. I let go. He’s sobbing. He staggers back and crouches down and wraps his arms over his head. When I move to comfort him he cries out and bunches up tighter.
He’s scared of me. He wasn’t scared of the Hairy, but he’s scared of me.
And I’m sick at myself. I didn’t hafta do that. Only one person coulda give him that packet.
The Hairy’s down on the floor, sweeping and scraping up every trace of the brown powder with its dirty fingers, licking and licking them. Shudders of ecstasy run through its skinny body.
Oh, I remember how that feels. Like the sun bursting outta your skin. Like you know everything….It looks up an’ its eyes burn mad and bright and satisfied. I feel its mind slipping cold into my thoughts like a pickpocket’s fingers.
“Moh-riss,” it whispers, and yawns.
And after a moment I croak, “Morris. Yeah.”
And it lays down and curls up, ribby as a starved dog under the hair, and another big shudder runs through it from top to toe, and it lays still.
Billy always says he ain’t scared of Hairies, but I never listened. I shoulda known he don’t say things he don’t mean. Maybe he’s right. Maybe they’re harmless. But I hate them coz I helped to make ’em, and they’re horrible. I think of Maddalena. I’ve never stopped thinking of her. If Hairies read minds, no wonder this one saw her. She’s always hiding like a spider in the darkness at the back of my head.
I’m shaking so hard, my teeth are chattering. I look at the Hairy laying there. How gently Billy touched it, the way he pets Bunny’s fur. But Billy could get to be like that, growing hair all over him, wandering lost and mad in a place like this.
Only one person coulda given Billy a packet of nirv, and that person is Morris. And why? He never lets anyone in the Krew take nirv. No chances, zero tolerance. “Keeping the family clean,” he calls it. He’s never let Billy anywhere near it before, in case he spilled it or tried some. Plus, it’s expensive, why waste it?
This is about me, not Billy. This is a deliberate threat.
Coz he’s guessed, hasn’t he? Morris has guessed I’m planning to go, and he ain’t going to argue, he’s just letting me see what’ll happen to Billy if I do. He knows I’d find out. He gave the nirv to Billy to show me Billy won’t be family without me around. Won’t be safe. Coz Morris has to have things his own way, and he wants me under his thumb.
You don’t cross Morris, the crooked, devious, evil bastard.
I feel sick. Bitter and sick and stupid. I shoulda known Morris couldn’t be trusted, not really, yet somehow I did trust him….I pick up the gun and wish I could shoot him with it, and then I think I couldn’t even shoot the Hairy, and anyway what good would it do? Then I think, So I’ll hafta stay in London, and the minute I think that I’m so miserable I know I can’t, I jist can’t. So I put the whole idea away, coz right here and now I hafta put things straight with Billy. And then get us both out. I crouch beside him.
“Billy-boy, I’m sorry I shook you. Forgive me? Please?”
He whimpers.
“I’ll make it up, right? Whatever you say.”
A grunt this time. He’s got his eyes shut tight, his head buried in his arms.
“You can thump me if you want.” I pause. “Hey, I’ll even kiss Bunny.”
He unfolds and looks at me. “On the nose,” he says.
“On the nose. Right.”
He don’t exactly smile, but I feel some better. “Let’s go home,” he says, and I say, after a moment, “Let’s do that.”
I get up first, and then I pull him up, and we look at the Hairy laid out on the floor. “It’s asleep,” says Billy, and I say, “Yeah, it’s asleep,” an’ he says, “But its eyes are open,” and I see he’s troubled by that, and I say, “Yeah, it’s asleep with its eyes open. Time to go.”
As we set off down the stairs I say, “Come on, Billy, who give you that stuff?”
His eyes flash sideways to see if I’m going to lose it again. I say, trying to keep my voice level, “Okay, when Morris give you that stuff ”—I wait, but he don’t say nothing and my heart’s like lead, it was Morris all right—“did you try it? Did you”—I lick my finger, dab it in the air, lick it again—“did you taste it?”
He nods once. My heart’s beating really hard. I say, “How many times?”
But he shrugs. I know I’m not going to get an answer.
It’s dark on the stairs now, the light coming in from the little barred windows is feeble and poor. Without talking anymore we go down and down, hundreds a steps, around and around and around and around, and push through the doors to the cathedral floor.
Now I’m looking, now I know they’re here, I see them moving. A long way off across the floor, something wanders slowly past one of the big statchoos and disappears again into the gloom. Under the breathy cooing of the pigeons there’s other noises—hoots and cries, quiet raps and echoes. It’s getting dark outside and the Hairies are coming home.
I grab Billy’s hand, and we hurry past the heaps of rubbish, and around the black openings in the floor. The statchoos loom like huge pale ghosts. We reach the ten-meter slice of dim sky that shows between the open doors, and scramble over the rubble.
It’s raining—big, splashy drops. Evening’s on the way, but it’s lighter than I thought. And much warmer out here. The tide’s going out, the wind smells of seaweed and fresh mud, the river’s gray with streaks of silver. We run down the steps to the boat and lift it between us, stumbling down the exposed wet slope to the edge of the water, and we jump in.
I push off and open the throttle and the water creams behind us. We both look back and see the front of Sint Paul’s rearing up like a cliff, all ledges and pillars and black openings. We draw farther away. The two sharp towers go fading into the rain.
Billy rubs his arms, shivering. His head droops. He looks pale and thin and tired. I’m headed for home, coz where else can we go?
“Billy, that stuff that Morris gave you…nirv…” He gives me a weary glance, and I say, tight-voiced, “Don’t ever try it again, whatever he says, it’s bad for you.”
He jist looks puzzled and I don’t blame him. Coz if it’s so bad for you, what’s me and Morris doing with it? What’s me an’ Morris an’ the Krew doing with it, making Hairies? I feel worse than ever. I say, “Even if it makes you feel…Billy, how did it make you feel?”
I think he won’t answer, can’t answer. And then he says, “Big.”
I’m silent.
We’re done with the channels now, passing out of the Fleet and into the Thames. Sint Paul’s vanishes behind the high spoil heaps and into the dusk. Billy cranes his neck to see it go, and then he says, “Did you see Nelson?”
It’s a second before I know what he’s talking about. It feels like years since this morning, years since we beached the boat below the steps and went to explore. I think of the holes in the floor. I think of wading into the black water, finding Nelson’s black coffin on its white marble stand. I think how I asked him for help. How I got no answer but the Hairy splashing out at me like a bad joke.
But Billy’s looking at me, hopeful. So I get ready to make up some story how I really did meet Nelson himself down there in the cellars, in a golden room glittering with shandyleers and dimonds….Just as I open my mouth, a thought comes to me and I shut it again.
I got my answer.
I go hot and cold all over.
I asked if I could trust Morris, if it was safe to leave Billy with him—and the answer was no.
So Billy’s coming with me.
It’ll make things twice as hard—twice as dangerous. We’ll need so much more stuff, we’re so much more likely to be seen. Can I explain to Billy what it’s all about? Can we really do it—can we really make it all the way downriver to the sea? A bubble of excitement tells me we can.
I sit up straight, feeling better than I have for hours. I don’t hafta try and explain to Billy why I’m going away. I don’t hafta leave him behind. We’ll live and die together.
Screw Morris! We’ll both go!
And Billy’s still looking at me, waiting to hear about Nelson. I say, “Yeah, in a way I did meet Nelson, Billy. In a way, I think I did.”
Billy says, “I saw him too.”
I go hot and cold again. He sounds so matter-of-fact. I almost ask what he means, and then I daren’t. “You did?”
Billy nods. “He was upstairs. I told you he was. I made a wish.”
My voice comes out all faint. “You did? What was it?”
He says proudly, “To be with you, Charlie. Just to be with you.”