The Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic Read online

  Let Trevor go. And if he brought back the Other, into this dead place, then perhaps even the Other would regret it, would dwindle and pine and find a job serving hamburgers. If the Other consumed this place and tore down its high halls of glass in a hail of splinters, I could not bring myself to feel sorry for it. Not now.

  And if Trevor brought back the Other to destroy all the rags that were left of our family, it would still be better than one day seeing the Traveller, the Walker of Worlds, hailing a taxi, or crowding into a commuter train, or waiting and waiting for a bus that would never come.

  Not the Territory

  Jaine Fenn

  ‘A map?’ Phil pitched his voice low, even though they were the only ones in the brightly-lit washroom. ‘I was assuming this was about the ghostly centurion.’

  ‘The one in Time Out? Nah.’ The reply came from the next stall along. ‘That was a glitch in the sonetlumiyer.’ Astral’s mis-pronunciation was deliberate and Phil ignored it. More startling was his acknowledgement that a known mystery had a mundane solution.

  Before Phil could reply, he heard the washroom door open. ‘Anyone in here?’ called a brusque male voice. Phil hugged his knees tighter to his chest, hoping the stall door, left carefully ajar, wouldn’t choose this moment to swing open. The Guildhall had started checking the loos before closing time after some American tourist got himself locked in overnight.

  The staff-member sighed, and Phil’s own breath caught, in case that meant the man had decided to be thorough and check the stalls. When Phil heard the main door close he exhaled. ‘Best stay here until five past,’ he murmured to the wall.

  ‘Sure.’

  Astral had been late, as usual. The plan had been to meet on the Central Line platform at Bank station at three-thirty. At ten past four Phil was about to give up. Then, looking up as a train approached, he saw a pale and dreadlocked form outlined in the oncoming headlights. Assuming it was his friend, he’d raised a hand to wave. At that instant, in a jerky slow-motion movement, the figure had stepped to one side, right into the path of the oncoming train. Phil froze, even as his mind screamed at him to Do something! But the train didn’t screech to a sudden halt, it pulled up as normal. Phil took a step forward. The movement put everything back into perspective. A middle-aged woman with a puff of blond hair and too much eye-shadow stood where he’d thought Astral had been. She gave Phil an odd look as she got on the train. Phil stared at the gap between train and platform as the train strobed past, then when it was gone he’d looked down at the rails, his heart still in his mouth. With the exception of a swirling sweet-wrapper, there was nothing down there. Another of the joys of sleep-deprivation: hallucinations.

  Astral had arrived on the next train, and they’d hurried to the Guildhall to catch last admission to the gallery. He hadn’t told Astral about his little fugue; he wasn’t in the mood for the kind of theory his friend would come up with.

  Right now, he wanted to ask about the map Astral had referred to, but his nostrils had just detected a familiar scent.

  ‘You’re not smoking, are you?’ asked Phil. ‘Because a lot of public toilets have sensors these days.’

  Astral inhaled loudly, then wheezed, ‘Tuned to detect baccy, yeah.’

  Phil sighed. No doubt Astral thought he was opening the doors of perception; in fact, the doors of his oldest friend’s perception had been opened wide enough for long enough that the hinges had rusted. ‘So, you were telling me about this map you found. Because your email was pretty vague and these days I need a solid reason to hide in a toilet in order to trespass on a public monument.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. How are the girls anyway?’

  Phil gave a wry smile. Astral was being contrite, making small-talk to show he could fake it with the ‘mundanes’. ‘Helen will be back at work part-time next month.’ Astral was one of the few people who could get away with calling Phil’s wife a ‘girl’.

  ‘And little Emily? Still pukin’ and mewlin’?’

  ‘She slept through until six am last Tuesday. So, this map.’

  ‘Yeah. Found it tucked inside a book. Not just any book: Crowley’s Book of Thoth. Second edition, but it was in good nick so we’ll still get a packet for it.’

  ‘This was a book that came into your shop?’ Phil kept his tone neutral; Astral currently had what passed for a steady job, but Astral had admitted that the shop liked to ‘stock up with shit that fell off the back of a library’.

  ‘Yeah, from a house-clearance,’ said Astral ‘You want to check out the map now?’

  Phil looked at his watch: one minute past five. ‘Yep. Let’s have a gander.’

  The map was small, less than A5. Astral had been transporting it inside a used envelope in an inner pocket of his threadbare army coat. Phil checked the surface beside the sink was dry before putting the map down. It was hand-drawn on ragged-edged off-white paper in purple-brown ink, with the words ‘Under the Guildhall’ written neatly across the top and smaller letters and numbers in a column down one side. The map itself showed a section of a circular structure sketched from above with enough artistic skill to give it a three-dimensional look. There were faint marks across the surface as though an earlier drawing had been rubbed out and the paper reused.

  ‘And you’re sure we’ve got the right place?’

  ‘Right place. Right time. Did the research.’

  Despite Astral’s default attention-span being about the same as Phil’s five-month old daughter, when he found something he considered worth focusing on he covered all the angles.

  ‘So the markings down the side…’

  ‘Dates and times. In Roman numerals. The next one being today, in ten minutes time.’

  ‘Then let’s get down there.’

  Astral’s enthusiasm was infectious. Phil reminded himself, as they crept out of the washroom and into dim corridors, that even if something did come of their latest foray into the unexplained, he wouldn’t be writing tonight’s expedition up for legitimate publication, given it started with an illegal act. This little adventure would be anonymously and pseudonymously posted, if better documented than most similar accounts on the net. Assuming there was anything to document.

  ‘Wait a mo.’ Astral had paused at a side turning. ‘Wrong way. We need to back up.’ He was referring to a map on his phone – a phone which did ‘all the fun stuff’ as he put it but which, typically, had no working facility for making actual calls.

  Phil waited while Astral came back past him. ‘How long does whatever this is last for?’

  ‘The map doesn’t say. But we’ll know.’

  Phil knew better than to ask for details. That was one of the secrets of their oddly matched friendship: Phil tended to over-think things and sometimes worry unhelpfully, but being in Astral’s presence defused stress. It was a reminder of the halcyon days back at uni.

  ‘Here we are.’

  Astral stopped next to a door painted the same insipid blue as the wall and unmarked aside from an oversized key-hole, the sort you sometimes saw on the underground. Thinking that, Phil recalled his unpleasant vision on the tube platform.

  Astral began rummaging in his copious pockets. Phil’s uneasiness grew. ‘Is this likely to be alarmed?’

  Astral put on a head-torch, which looked incongruous on his tangled blond locks. ‘Doubt it. No one’s going to steal a Roman wall, are they? Ah, there it is.’

  Astral fished something small out of a pocket then bent down to examine the lock. Phil wondered how far they’d have to run to reach the nearest exit.

  Astral poked an Allen key into the lock. After a few seconds of jiggling around there was a click. ‘See?’ said Astral, looking up at him. ‘Not even a proper lock!

  ‘Well that’s all right then.’ Phil couldn’t hear any alarms.

  Astral opened the door to reveal darkness. Phil reached into his pocket for his Maglite.

  Astral’s head-torch illuminated a large open space with low, pale structures dotted around the floor. Phil
had been here before, as a legitimate visitor, not long after the excavated amphitheatre first opened to the public. He had been simultaneously disappointed – there were only broken columns and low walls left – and impressed – the recreation was brought to life with structures and figures sketched in light, filling in the gaps; combined with the soundtrack of roaring crowds and gladiatorial combat, this gave a surprisingly vivid impression of what the amphitheatre must have been like in Roman times.

  Astral went first, moving slowly and playing his torch across the stones. Phil followed with a shiver: it was cold in here. And, yes, a bit eerie. Some of that was the memory of his first visit. He’d come during the week and had the place to himself. The projections had motion sensors on them, and the first time one had sprung to life he’d jumped. All they had now, with the ‘sonetlumiyer’ turned off, were a few nicely-presented historical remnants. Hardly worth the effort. Helen understood his fascination with the unexplained, and liked Astral, but he’d still had to promise three extra nights of baby-feeding duties in return for this ‘overnight pass’.

  ‘Over here!’

  Despite himself, Phil jumped when Astral’s voice echoed around the empty room.

  ‘No need to shout,’ he said, and went over to find his friend standing on one of the raised areas off-limits to the public. Some of the walls formed the foundations of rooms; the rooms had been sparsely restored and given a floor of creamy gravel. In the centre of this particular room was a wooden trapdoor, which Astral was pointing to eagerly.

  ‘This is it!’ said Astral.

  ‘This is what, exactly?’

  ‘It’s on the map, see, and it looks a bit out of place, the only thing that’s not a wall or column, it’s just this flat square. So I checked out the plans of this place, and this isn’t here. Not normally here, anyway.’

  Phil didn’t remember the trapdoor from his last visit but it could have been concealed under the gravel, or not installed yet. And Astral hadn’t actually answered his question. ‘So what’s under this?’

  Astral, who had crouched down to examine the trapdoor more closely, reached into his coat and pulled out the map. ‘Check the back,’ he said, handing Phil the envelope without looking up. He began running his hands around the edge of the wood.

  Phil took the envelope, which looked like it had once held some sort of final demand, and carefully extracted the map. Turning it over he saw three words on the back in the same neat hand as the other annotations: ‘Gateway to Palimpsest.’

  ‘Palimpsest…’ murmured Phil.

  ‘It’s like layers, all on top of each other so shit from below shows through in the one above.’ Astral was working his fingers into an indentation at one end of the trapdoor.

  ‘Yeah, I know what a palimpsest is.’ The word, and what it represented, had intrigued Phil for as long as he could remember. He’d heard or possibly read the phrase ‘The City of London is an architectural palimpsest’ somewhere, and it had stuck. Because it was true. Finding a Roman amphitheatre in the cellar of a modern civic building was just one example.

  Astral had got his fingers under the door. As he lifted it a light came on above them, in the upper viewing gallery. Phil and Astral looked up to see a trio of uniformed figures staring down through the glass.

  ‘Oh shit,’ muttered Phil.

  ‘Now that I did not do,’ said Astral, looking between the trapdoor and the three members of the constabulary like there might be a causal link.

  ‘Actually, old mate, I think you did. When you picked that lock earlier. Must’ve tripped a silent alarm.’

  Astral pulled the trapdoor open. Damp air wafted up from the darkness, redolent with rotting vegetation and a hint of sewerage. ‘Best get on in there, then,’ said Astral, and turned round to climb into the hole.

  Someone who didn’t know Astral might say something like, ‘You can’t be serious, we’ve no idea where this hole in the ground goes’. From there they might get onto a discussion about the consequences of trespassing on and defiling a public monument versus the potential dangers of crawling around in ancient sewers. As it was, Phil just said, ‘Hurry up. Two of them are heading down here.’

  Astral was up to his waist in the hole now.

  The remaining police officer, a woman, was shouting something muffled by the glass of the viewing gallery. Phil couldn’t lip-read but he got the gist.

  Astral’s head disappeared into the hole. His voice came up from the darkness. ‘Watch yourself on the ladder,’ he said, ‘It’s a bit rickety.’

  ‘Least there is a ladder,’ muttered Phil. He put his Maglite between his teeth, turned, and stepped into the hole. Astral was right; whatever he was climbing down, it didn’t feel like the metal rungs he’d half expected.

  He was three steps in when the ceiling lights came on, bathing the room above in harsh white light. His heart-rate went through the roof. This evening was turning out to be rather exciting. Just like old times. He reached up for the trapdoor, even as his more sensible side observed that there was no point closing it when it had no lock. Not being able to see the police wouldn’t make them go away. He still pulled the door over as he descended, though supporting it made his unsteady descent even more precarious. When the door finally shut it was with a jarring thud that almost dislodged him from the ladder. He raised his head, in case the torch in his mouth miraculously showed a convenient bolt or bar, but the trapdoor remained plain wood. As, he realised when he looked down again, was the ladder, the rungs nailed and lashed in place with strips of leather. Not likely to last long in here, he thought as he climbed down carefully.

  ‘Three more rungs then you’re at the bottom.’ Astral said from just below.

  ‘Thanks.’ Phil stepped down onto a solid surface. He took the Maglite out of his mouth and wiped it on his sleeve, then played the torch round the small chamber. It was circular, higher than it was wide, and built of flat slabs of stone not unlike those in the amphitheatre above in size and shape, although dirtier. The overall effect was like being inside a large stone beehive.

  ‘Let’s not hang around for the rozzers,’ suggested Astral. ‘There’s a way out just here.’

  ‘Right you are.’ Phil would have liked to examine the unusual room properly, maybe take some pictures, but they’d be coming back this way later. He shone his torch round one last time; the construction of the chamber put the trapdoor at the apex, but in this last, brief glimpse Phil got the impression that the room was capped by a stone slab.

  He followed Astral into a side-tunnel low enough that they both had to duck. It came out on a walkway along a brick-lined sewer. Phil started breathing shallowly.

  ‘So, you reckon this is a lost Roman sewer?’ asked Astral.

  ‘Not that lost,’ said Phil, playing his torch over the dark liquid in the bottom of the tunnel. ‘It’s got shit in it. Literally and figuratively.’

  Astral glanced across. ‘That’s less … turdy than I was expecting. One year at Glasto—’

  ‘Let’s get somewhere safe before we swap portaloo stories, eh?’ Not that Phil was certain what constituted safe in the current situation.

  ‘Fair enough.’

  To their left the sewer was blocked by a grating. They went right, Phil leading the way.

  About ten metres along the passage there was a splash from behind. Phil paused. ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘Rat?’ suggested Astral.

  ‘Maybe.’ When he came across a side passage he hesitated. If the law had followed them down, their best plan was to hole up and wait for them to lose interest. As he thought this a faint noise came from the other passage. It sounded like something large moving slowly through a confined space. An animal of some sort? He shone his light up the passage; darkness swallowed the beam but he got a sense of movement, of something ponderous, fat and maybe bristly. He snatched the light back, but the sound had already receded.

  ‘Whassup?’ asked Astral, coming up to stand next to him.

  ‘Not sure. Thou
ght I heard something.’ He winced at the corny line. If this was a horror movie that would be the cue for a monster to rush out of the dark. Nothing did. Now he came to think about it, he didn’t feel as frightened as he probably should.

  ‘What sort of something?’ Astral peered down the side passage. His stronger light revealed the bricked-up wall of a dead end. ‘An invisible something, presumably,’ he concluded sarcastically.

  They carried on. The passage came to a junction, where their dilute stream of sewerage pooled in a hole about half a metre down, covered by a rusty iron grating. To the right was a perfectly circular concrete pipe, sloping gently upwards with a thin trickle of dark liquid flowing down the centre. To the left was a passage lined with the same ancient-looking bricks as the one they were in, but dry and scattered with debris. Phil’s torch revealed wooden planks and joists, tangled balls of rope and twine slung through denuded tree branches and an old pram upended in the centre. Silhouetted in the light the effect was almost like living vegetation, some sort of subterranean jungle. ‘Don’t reckon we can get through that way,’ said Phil.

  ‘Reckon you’re right.’ Astral lifted his foot with a yelp, looking down. ‘What the fuck—?’

  Phil followed his gaze and flinched at what looked like a huge, boneless rat, splayed out across the grating in the floor.

  Then Astral laughed, ‘Fuck me!’

  ‘That looks like hair.’ And it did; a mass of curls. Which was actually a nastier prospect than a flattened rodent.

  ‘Yeah, it is.’ Astral bent down, to Phil’s dismay. ‘It’s like one of those wigs judges wear, only brown.’

  Astral was right, Phil thought with relief. ‘Please don’t try and pick that up.’