Petyr had visited the Jungle before. There were interviews to be fished out and opinion pieces to be inspired. But he’d stayed on the fringes, where a few street lights still remained. That was also where the more recently homeless tended to live; ordinary families simply fallen on hard times, often living in small communities at that. But since combing the outer fringe of this broken part of the city had been his first impulse, it stood to reason that Redda’s mysterious pursuers would be on the same wavelength. And if she was indeed still alive, then it would be because she was smart enough to understand this herself and retreat further into this wretched no-man’s-land.
That was what he was operating on, anyway, and he fiercely resisted the urge to feel foolish as he stumbled around in the dark.
Why AM I doing this in the dark? he asked himself for a moment, then went back to minding his footing and selecting landmarks for the journey back.
To make a bad thing worse, rain was in the air. The sky was starless and he could feel the weight of the gathering clouds as surely as he could feel the occasional droplet on his skin. The city was probably in for several days of wet misery. Maybe it would keep the street demons indoors, at least.
He had his cane and the knee was being quiet. He was still bruised and battered after that whole business with the Bomber, but overall he felt up for a petty tussle at least.
Asking the occasional local for directions had gotten a very mixed bag of reactions, but it had been a little while since last contact. He began hearing his next stepping stone up ahead; a murmur of voices and small sounds of humanity, and as he passed a length of damaged wall he saw the glow of a fire burning in a small wheelbarrow.
It was a group of about a dozen people. It was hard to be sure which bit of cardboard or debris housed a human being and what was just garbage. The presence of a child put him a bit at ease, although he wasn’t naïve enough to assume it guaranteed anything.
“Good evening,” he said.
“And who are you?” said a man, his face only barely illuminated beneath a hood.
“Well, I’m neither a copper nor a Hound. How is that for a start?”
“It could be worse,” the man went on, though still without any welcome. “What do you want?”
“I’m looking for a woman who I think might be living around here.”
“Good for you.”
“She’s this tall,” Petyr continued, gesturing in accordance with Sila’s description. “With a long face and ginger hair. She’s new to the streets. If she’s been living here it’s only for the last couple of weeks or so.“
“And what do you want with her?” asked one of the women.
For being a rung of society that was often forced to squabble for resources there could be an odd kind of loyalty among the street people. At least when outsiders were involved.
“Her sister’s worried about her,” he said, opting for the simple truth, even if not all of it. “I talked to her yesterday. The sister, that is. I just want to talk to her.”
The woman examined him for a silent while. He supposed she was evaluating his honesty. Petyr knew there was no hidden agenda for her to spot, but people were nothing if not good at making up their own findings.
“Does she have a name?” the woman asked, and Petyr eyed hope.
“Yes,” he replied. “But I don’t think she’d appreciate me spreading it around.”
“Huh,” she said in a neutral tone. “Yeah, I think she’s been squatting down near the old park.”
She pointed.
“But I don’t think you’re going to find her there at this point.”
“And why not?” he asked.
“Bad place, these days,” another man said, voice slightly garbled by some kind of condition. “Reeks of trouble, and something scuttling in the dark.”
“Something?” Petyr said. “Would you care to give me details?”
He could see the invisible gate slam down between him and them; the unspoken agreement between this pack of desperate survivors to keep quiet.
“We have our own problems around here,” the first man said. “And if your ginger lady is near the park, then she’s either in a lot of trouble, or a part of it.”
He meaningfully turned himself to face the fire a bit more fully, a bit more away from Petyr.
“You should head back.”
“Well, thanks for talking,” Petyr said, then continued on.
There were a whole lot of things he should have done, but it seemed that on the whole his course was locked for now. Until the Hounds ceased to be an issue he had little choice but to keep digging. There was an odd sort of calm to be found in that, in only having one path to walk, even if it was across a rickety old bridge over a dark ravine.
May fortune favour its fools, he thought as he left the little camp behind.
In the absence of street lights, or indeed any lights at all, the Jungle was a very confusing place. The depressing destruction and decay all around tended towards a certain uniformity, at least in the near-total darkness that reigned. For all that Petyr wanted to keep alert to his surroundings it seemed he would have to focus on the ground at his feet if he was ever to make it back. The differing state of the concrete, the amount and type of rubble and garbage on it... that was what would hopefully lead him out of this underworld.
He tried to keep a mental map of this area in his mind, to understand just where that old park had been before this area essentially ceased to be a part of the city, but to his shame he got nowhere. His recollection was as vague and gloomy as his surroundings, and all he could do was to continue on in a straight line in accordance with that woman’s hand wave.
Simple in theory, but with debris occasionally blocking his path he was forced to step off the direct path on occasion, like someone in a cautionary fairy tale, and just hope he was managing to realign himself each time.
What am I doing? he asked himself, although he knew the answer perfectly well. And more importantly, what are YOU doing, Redda?
It was little more than luck that his light caught on a street sign. It had survived the devastation crippled but upright, bent at an angle and scraped, but still legible.
Elm Park – 200 metres.
He shone the light up ahead, but it wasn’t powerful enough to show him anything. Still, it seemed he was just about there. The question that had followed him from the start of this little venture got ever more pressing: How to approach a woman who feared for her life enough to hide out in this nightmare of a district?
Still, it was starting to feel a bit like a luxury problem. Simply finding her was starting to feel like a long shot.
He exhaled, fighting against the oppressive atmosphere that seemed to press in from every direction, even as yielding to it carried an odd temptation. There was something uniquely draining about this place, like it somehow went beyond the mere awfulness of destruction and human despair. It didn’t help that by either isolation or some quirk of the remaining architecture the air was almost utterly silent. But it did enable him to hear the noise.
It was soft enough that he couldn’t quite tell what it was. But there had definitely been something. Petyr aimed his flashlight at the building on his left. It looked like a residential. A three-storey, the sort with small apartments for poor people and students. Some of the windows remained but they were quite grimy from neglect, and if there was any movement at all within he couldn’t see it. Nor did he immediately hear anything more either.
“Hello?” he said, feeling he might as well, considering that he’d given himself away with the light.
There was no reply, and no other noise. The night remained oppressive but quiet.
“Hello?” he tried again, to the same result.
Petyr weighed his options. It could simply have been something coming loose. A bit of glass or a tile, finally giving in to gravity after years of dangling loose. He lowered the light down to the doorway. He hesitated at what he saw, squinting in an attempt to dispel the impression. Failing that, he approached, going around the rusted corpse of an old automobile.
Tucking the cane under his armpit, he touched the wall a few feet from the doorway. Four symmetrical gouges had been cut into it, horizontally, all the way to the door. The wall was solid brick, yet when he poked his fingertips into the cuts they reached in a decent depth. Petyr spread his hand open and found that the cuts matched the fingertips fairly well.
“What the hell...” he muttered under his breath.
He looked at the door. It was ajar, opening into the mysterious darkness beyond.
Just leave it, his rational self insisted. But it hadn’t stopped him at any step of this road, and so he gripped the cane again in his free hand and approached the doorway cautiously. He led with the light as he poked in, finding pretty much what one would expect in this location.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
There was a service desk of some sort, but little else other than garbage that had come in through a broken window and peeled off the walls. Staying mindful of his footing, Petyr entered. He stepped around the debris to the best of his ability as he looked for anything of interest, any sign of human habitation or passage, but found little.
Of course, if he were to take up residence in a place like this, he probably wouldn’t settle on the bottom floor. Again he kept the light in front and now found the stairs leading up. It brought him out of sight of the doorway, deeper into this quietly menacing place.
The stairs were largely free of debris, but they looked old and worn. Rainwater probably seeped in and made its way to the bare wood. Petyr stood there, staring up into the unknown, long enough to start to feel embarrassed. He put his foot on the bottom step and began moving up.
He generally liked being big. The power that came with it had gotten him through scrapes and prevented who knew how many others. But it sure didn’t make stealth easy. However careful and measured he tried to be, the stairs complained as he inched his way upwards. The noises felt awfully loud to him, and it seemed near impossible that anyone else in the building wouldn’t hear him. But there was nothing for it, save to keep his senses alert for any movement his own might be covering up.
Petyr reached the upper landing and stood utterly still for a few breaths, sweeping his light carefully around. There was that feeling in this house. The feel of someone else, hiding and watching. Then there were the scratches in the balustrade; four of them, like downstairs, starting at the landing and ending before the second door on Petyr’s right.
Though he couldn’t see inside he could tell the door was open and walked over, cringing at more creaks beneath his feet. He touched the gouges in the balustrade as he went along. They didn’t seem old.
The room was the one facing the building’s front and he hadn’t shone his light in for more than a second or two before he noticed empty food wrappers on the floor. They didn’t seem old either, and he stepped inside. The place was a simple little one-room apartment and someone had been living here. The bed was gone but someone had arranged a couple of blankets in its stead in the corner. Petyr walked by a large window he’d looked up at from the street, past more wrappers and a couple of empty cans, and poked at the blankets with his cane. It revealed a pack, and also the rattling of something metallic and loose.
Petyr bent over and found an old fashioned looking pendant of slightly tarnished silver.
“Give it,” a voice said.
Petyr whipped around as if a gun had been fired. Halfway through the doorway stood a rather dirty-looking woman in a decent coat and hat. She looked haunted, skittish, and flinched at the light. Petyr aimed it to the side enough to see her without blinding her.
“It’s mine,” she added in a voice that matched her demeanour, and Petyr thought she might bolt.
“It was your mother’s, wasn’t it?” he asked, thinking quickly. “Your sister Sila told me.”
“It was,” the woman replied, clutching at the door frame with the one hand she had in view. “In a different time. I came back for it. I had to.”
“Came back?”
“They came for me.”
“Look... here,” Petyr said and approached slowly with the pendant in his hand. The woman snatched it with force he chose not to take personally, and stared at it.
“Your sister is awfully worried about you, Redda,” he went on, speaking gently. He wished there was something for him to sit on so he would loom less, but all the furniture was gone. “She doesn’t even know if you’re alive.”
The woman looked agonised, in a subdued, fatigued fashion, and he got the impression she hadn’t slept much since disappearing.
“It’s better this way,” she said. “Safer. She’s... she’s safer where she is, and I need to be near the arch.”
“Arch? W-”
Petyr caught himself, redirecting to what seemed the most relevant issue.
“Who are they, Redda?” he asked. “Who is after you?”
She looked away and seemed to shrink a little.
“I am a journalist,” he went on. “My name is Petyr. And I get facts out where they need to be. Whatever is going on, it can be dealt with if the public finds out about it. If not, then someone wouldn’t be trying so hard to keep it a secret.”
Her demeanour didn’t change and he had no idea if he was having an effect or not.
“What happened, Redda?” he asked. “Inside the Woodforth Building? Please? What happened that night?”
She opened her mouth twice before anything actually came out of it.
“I think I might have gone mad,” she told him. “I don’t... I don’t know if I woke from a nightmare or into one. Everything... everything is wrong.”
“Redda, what happened?” he pressed. “What exactly happened?”
“I saw something,” the woman said softly. “It was like it was made of light.”
Petyr risked gently putting his hand around hers. She didn’t flinch away, nor really react at all.
“Redda... what? What was made of light?”
She finally looked at him again, although it almost felt like she was simply looking through him.
“Everything. There should be light.”
“Redda, please,” he said. “Come with me. We’ll find a phone booth and you can talk to your sister.”
“No, no,” she said, her baggy, staring eyes widening even more. “They’re after me. I shouldn’t have come back. I just-”
“They who, Redda?”
“The shadows,” she replied. “The nightmare. I think... they guard the whole thing. Or maybe they’re just here to torment us. They-”
She seemed to suddenly lunge to the brink of tears.
“Or maybe I’m just insane...”
“Hey,” he said, doing his best to be reassuring. “Let’s find out. Help me-”
There was a noise outside, reminiscent of something being scraped along the ground by a careless foot. Petyr turned his head to the window. Redda flinched as if burned.
“They’re here!”
“Redda-”
“They can’t follow through the arch!” the woman shouted frantically as she ran for the stairs. “It’s the only rule that’s left!”
“Re-”
Petyr was too slow to react and she had bounded down and out of sight before he took a step. She ran with the speed of fear and Petyr turned on his heel. The big window was only held closed by a flimsy latch and a determined shove with his weight behind it broke it open. He heard Redda sprint out of the house and towards the park, as well as something moving in the dark. Petyr hopped out.
The dead automobile cushioned his drop enough for nothing to break, although Petyr felt his knee start a deep inhale in readiness for complaining. His leg held together well enough in the moment that he could hop down onto the cracked street and lope after the fleeing woman. There was no sign of whatever had spooked her like that, and reason told him it was most likely another vagrant, driven away by the strange scene.
Still, fear was a strangely infectious thing, and the woman’s half-panicked gasps as she fled stirred up his primal terrors.
“Redda!” he shouted, but the distance between them only widened. Aside from his knee he simply wasn’t built for great speed. The flashlight in his hand swung about as he ran, giving him only glimpses of the debris-littered ground and Redda’s back. He wasn’t the least bit surprised when he tripped over something and launched forward in an inelegant dive before hitting the concrete.
Petyr rolled once, hurting his knee a bit in the process, and he had just gotten his bearings when Redda screamed. She wasn’t running anymore; the sounds emanating from up ahead were very different. There was a struggle, and something else mixed in. It was almost like a voice, but somehow not quite.
“Redda!” Petyr shouted again, now in a very different tone. Adrenaline launched him to his feet and into another run. He aimed the flashlight ahead and saw a narrow alley. The woman’s head and flailing arms vanished into it as she was dragged.
He found it in him to go just a little bit faster and reached the alley in seconds. Redda’s attacker was a large, dark figure, made oddly proportioned by the brief flash of light that passed over it. She was beating at it with one hand while trying to cling to the ground with the other. Neither had any effect and the figure simply let out a strange rumble.
“Hey!” Petyr shouted as he charged. He dropped the flashlight and double-handed the cane, sending it into a swing. The figure let go of Redda just barely too late to defend itself and he landed a solid, arm-shaking blow. The woman immediately started scrambling away, getting in the way of his feet for a moment. Petyr sensed a counterattack and fell back one step. He more felt than saw the swipe pass in front of his face, and let out a raw battle cry as he swung the cane again. He connected with something, maybe an arm, and then the enemy struck back again.
The cane flew from his grip and then large hands sought to grab him. Petyr fought, but found himself slammed into a wall. His leg nearly buckled, but his other one held long enough for him to throw a punch. He connected solidly, though with what he didn’t know. His foe just rumbled some more and something hit Petyr in the side of the head. Now his leg did give in and he fell down to one knee.
A hand came down on his right shoulder blade and something pierced through the material, biting into the skin as it raked. But with his blood boiling the pain was distant and dull, and he managed to send out a punch. He connected with what he thought was a knee, and then his hand miraculously found the cane on the ground.
Before the figure could recover he again struck low, sweeping a leg. He followed with another blow as he rose, hitting solidly once more, then roared as he landed a blow that finally bowled the bastard over.
There were more rumbles, but they were coming down along the street, from the direction of the apartment building. Several pairs of feet kicked debris about and echoed off the surrounding buildings.
Petyr snatched up the flashlight and hurried after Redda. She was out of sight but he could hear her passage into Elm Park, though she was nearly drowned out by the pursuers. Petyr didn’t dare look back. He didn’t understand any of this, but sensed his death in whatever was on their heels, and tripping over unseen debris would mean the end of him.
The iron gate into the park was open and Petyr sped through it, feeling worried as his depleting stamina competed with the bad leg to slow him down. Untended plants stood in thick rows on either side, allowing no passage to anything remotely man-sized.
“Redda!” he shouted yet again, although he had no idea what the point of it was. His unsteady beam caught on something up ahead. Something big and pale and man-made, and it was only upon passing through it that he recognised it as some kind of stone arch.
He did not know why he suddenly came to a clumsy, limping stop. But something gripped his soul like a clenched fist and halted him in his tracks. The arch looked old. Something about its design and softened edges spoke of ages and ages of time, and his light travelled over carven images. They were like an itch in his brain, and the feeling of having seen them before was so overpowering that for a moment he fully forgot about his pursuers.
“What are you...?” he breathlessly asked an elegant image of an eagle crowned by flames.
His body and mind were both frozen for a moment, caught in recognition he could make no sense of. Then the situation reasserted itself and he shone the light down the way he’d come with a start. But the rumbles were silent, the feet had stopped, and there was nothing to see.
“What?”
Bewildered and frightened in ways he didn’t even fully understand, Petyr turned back around, facing the wider park.
“Redda!” he called out and started running again, even as his leg started to complain louder and louder. “Redda, what-”
His tongue caught as he left behind the corridor of plants and entered out into a roomy part of the park. The led into a square of sorts before splitting off into five other directions. The woman’s footsteps were as quiet as those of their unseen pursuers.
“Redda!”
He was all alone in the dark. Petyr shone the light around, desperately hoping for some hint. But there was nothing. And the pains he’d just earned started handing in the bill. Petyr leaned up against a dead lamp post.
“Shit.”