The Gates of Noon

by Michael Scott Rohan

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Military Sci-Fi

Synopsis

'East of the sun and west of the moon...' ...you may find a freighter carrying ivory to Huy Braseal, mammoth tusks to Tartessos and Ashkelon, spices from Cathay to Lyonesse. Another world, of infinite strangeness and high adventure, yet never far from our own; round a corner, through a door into a harbourside inn and you may find yourself there. Steve Fisher had been there once, had sailed the cloud archipelagos on a desperate quest to Hispaniola. Or had he? The memories have faded...was it only a dream? Then, in Bangkok, as he struggles to arrange a shipment of vital supplies to the endangered paradise of Bali, Steve finds himself catapulted back into that world, through the eerie gates of the Spiral - and into terrible dangers. For our there is something that wants him stopped, at any costs. Shadows from the past, from the present - and from somewhere that is neither, where myths and legends and terrifying archetypes stalk the world. Entangles by old loves and ancient hatreds, with witches and warlocks to help him and the original Bogeyman on his trail, Steve must fight to reconcile past and present in an epic battle of wits which leads him from the sleazy sex bars of Bangkok to the mist-shrouded islands of the South Seas...

Release date: February 25, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 320

Sample

Too angry to wait for the creaky elevator, I went clattering down the dusty stairs, so fast that I outpaced Dave. I stalked across the little lobby, ignoring the receptionist’s soft-voiced courtesies, and barged straight out into the sunshine before I stopped to take a deep breath. This wasn’t the best idea. Rumour awarded the atmosphere here one of the world’s lowest oxygen counts, and beyond the air-conditioned shade of the shipping offices the sunlight beat down on it with the brassy intensity of a gong. The roar of the city enveloped me, the growl of cars mingled with the deeper cough of the buses, the high-pitched fizz of the little tuk-tuk taxi-rickshaws and the flatulent mopeds. A thousand stinks smote my nostrils: smoke, exhausts, spices, street filth, sweat and all the other stalenesses of humanity. Round here they were pretty considerable, these offices being in a low-rent district not far from the riverside wharves. Just the kind of one-horse outfit who’d normally be falling over themselves for the business of a worldwide agency like ours.

Normally.

I was actually trembling with rage and resentment. I was fed up with this place. I just wanted to walk, to get away to somewhere less hot and stinking and uncooperative. I turned on my heel and plunged away through the counterflowing crowd. A sea of heads hardly reached my shoulder; I had to fight the feeling that I ought to be swimming. But for all the crush and hubbub, the eternal plastic pop blaring from Japanese blasters, there was none of Hong Kong’s earsplitting jabber, nor the barging you’d find in Western crowds. By and large this was a quiet-spoken, courteous people; only their children and their rock bands screeched above the traffic. On the other hand, I became aware of nimble fingers probing my jacket now and again, and was glad I’d zipped away everything in inside pockets. But that was just this part of town. The crush cleared a little, and Dave caught up. ‘All right,’ I said heavily. ‘You told me so. Anywhere else? Or is that the lot?’

‘Nowhere else,’ he said, just as heavily. ‘Look, I only wanted you to see for yourself, that’s all, okay? I’m new in the job, I didn’t want you of all people to think I couldn’t handle it. You’re sort of a hard act to follow –’specially when it’s you I’m reporting to.’

I stormed on, still too angry to appreciate the compliment. Pounding the pavements suited my temper. ‘Damn it, Dave! It’s an everyday deal, this. Just a simple set of consignments to Indonesia, that’s all!’

‘Yeah, so simple nobody wants it.’

‘But in god’s name, why not?’ We skipped back as a string of mopeds ran a light, spattering debris from the gutter, then we plunged across with the human barrier before any more broke through. ‘I mean, we couldn’t make it any bloody easier, could we? One or two shipments at most for any big carrier, but we can feed it through one container at a time if we have to. So how come none of ’em want it? Not the big boys, not the little boys – not the absolute bloody dregs back there! Air, sea, land – no matter how we finagle it, this is the nearest we get. That’s hard enough; but from here it’s just like running into a bloody wall!’ I glared at him. ‘I know damn well just how much pull we used to have around here! So how come you’ve somehow managed to lose it in a week?’

‘That’s unfair,’ said Dave quietly. He flicked his gold-topped Zippo under a cigarette, shielding it between dark fingers, then slid the lighter carefully back into an inner pocket he could fasten. It underlined a point; he was no stranger here, either. ‘Look, I’m slipping shipments through points East all the time, no sweat – as you’d know if you’d read my this month’s sheets. Contracts all nitt and tiddy. Never a bother. It’s just this one. And a pretty penny-ante job at that – or so you say. So why all the fuss? Not doing a little dealing on the side, are we, already? Arms? Nose candy?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Dave! You know damn well I’d never—’I caught the jibe, and reined in my temper. ‘Look, I’m sorry, right? I know you can handle things okay, you’re doing at least as good a job at Contracts as I ever did. That’s why I found it hard to believe you could run into such a foul-up over this one – penny-ante, as you say. Even when you’d flown out personally. So that’s why I came myself.’

‘Yeah. When I couldn’t fix it. And now neither can you. So you might as well spill it. What’s so important about this pipsqueak account, anyhow, that it brings our new assistant managing director out and running?’

‘Well …’

‘Oh, c’mon. I work for you, remember? Why’re you so interested – personally, I mean?’

I shrugged, and jammed my hands hard into the pockets of my light silk suit. ‘Look, it’s nothing like – nothing big, all right? It’s just a favour. A Good Cause one of my political cronies talked me into. Kind of millstone you have to take on now and again, good for street cred. You know! Could be awkward if it flops. Bad PR. That’s all.’

There was a short silence. Only between us; the roar of business as usual in Bangkok, that concrete lump dropped into the belly of Asia, filled in the gap.

‘We’re old mates, remember?’ Dave informed me, reverting to his would-be streetwise manner. He blew a casual jet of smoke back at the street. ‘C’mon, you’re not fooling me, Fisher. I know you – workwise, anyhow. I know just how much trouble you’d take over any given punter – normally, that is. And just how much temper you’d lose, which is not much. This is something you want to go right, and not just because of your precious political buddies, either. Something you care about. And it’s just like you to be embarrassed as hell about that, too.’ He shrugged. ‘Oh, don’t worry. I like that. I like seeing you forget you’re made of wheels and clockwork and cryonic chips, and getting involved with the human race now and again. It suits you.’

As so often with Dave, I was slightly taken aback. ‘Well … I wouldn’t say it like that. Making me out as some kind of altruist or something.’

‘Sure. Could ruin your rep.’

‘Thank you. I mean, this just fell into my lap – at a Rotary do, in fact. Someone suggesting we might be able to help out a foundation they were involved in – friend of a friend, that kind of thing. So I looked into it a bit further, and it sort of … caught my imagination. Barry and I agreed. Right in our field, dead simple, the sort of thing we could pass through in ten minutes before tea, so why not? At cost. No skin off our noses.’

‘So you send a contracts manager jetting halfway round the world, then come chasing after him yourself? Boy, you sure are ruthless. But don’t worry, I won’t spill your secret – if you ever get around to spilling it to me!’

I hesitated. Not because I didn’t want to tell him, but because he’d touched that same old sore point, asking a question I’d been asking myself for some time now. Why was I so interested? Not just because it was a good cause. Every business gets swamped with those and soon learns to be hard-hearted; if we responded to them all we’d be bankrupt in a month, and doing nobody any favours. So why this one, especially? I’d never come up with an answer – unless, as I suspected, it was one particular thing I didn’t want to admit. Not even to myself.

My furious progress was cut short. Even with my eyes closed I’d have baulked at the sudden wall of stench that rose before me, riper even than all the other city stinks put together. Dave wrinkled his nostrils. ‘Wow. Try charging across that crossing and you’d really be in deep –’

The street ended in one of the narrower klongs, the famous city canals that still serve as home, highway, water supply and sanitation – not necessarily in that order – for a chunk of the poorer population. A tour boat raised a churning wake, its cargo of tourists filming the uninhibited behaviour of the dwellers in stilt-borne shacks along the bank; and it said a lot for the dwellers that they didn’t summarily drown the tourists, and even grinned curiously at the all-devouring lenses as they buzzed past. For us, too, they had grins, though they were inclined to stare askance at Dave; Africans were pretty rare in these parts, let alone Oxbridge-accented Africans in raw silk suits. Dave chucked his gilt cigarette-end into the turbid brown water, which swallowed it with a faint greasy belch.

‘Yuk,’ he observed.

‘Yuk it is,’ I agreed. ‘But all the same, that’s what it’s all about, here or anywhere. Water.’

‘You call that water?’

‘To a lot of places it’d be lifeblood. Might even be glad to have it in California, these days. And Bali. You know, the island—’

‘Which just happens to be our consignment destination, right. One more lush tropical paradise I never get sent to.’

‘I haven’t been there either. Not yet. Anyhow, you were born in one.’

‘The Kano suburbs are a tropical paradise? Oi.’

‘Paradise is relative. So is lush. Thing is, Bali’s got little or no water of its own; and that’s what this business is all about. It depends mostly on rainwater flowing down from the central highlands, and there’s none too much of that. Fair shares make the difference between idyll and starvation. It’s been that way for centuries now, so they’ve evolved a pretty sophisticated irrigation system to distribute water – so long it’s become all mixed up with their society, their religion, everything. They have these societies called subaks to govern the community rice paddies, sort of local water-temples with complicated law codes and judge-priests to administer them. It’s democratic, in its way, and it works. So far.’

Dave nodded. ‘We had things like that back home, in some places. Pretty arbitrary, though – the chief or shaman or elders settling disputes under the banyan tree, that kind of thing. Or the District Officer, when you guys took over. This sounds more sophisticated.’

‘It is. Complicated as hell. And Bali’s changing, just like everywhere else.’

‘Tourism booming in the eighties and nineties, sure. Rock stars getting married there, that kind of thing.’

‘That – but not just that. The population’s expanding – better medicine, hygiene, the usual reasons. And whatever the cause, global warming or deforestation or the natural cycle or whatever, the rainfall patterns are definitely altering. For the worse. The subak system’s had its day; the klian subaks, the priests, they can’t cope any more, or soon won’t. A few years back this American college project thought they could get it to hold up by teaching ’em to put the whole damn system on little home computers! But there’s got to be something serious done now, and soon. I can tell you, the central government’s pretty worried. The island’s going to need a whole new system, a couple of desalination plants like they have in the Gulf – and guess what those cost! Plus more efficient collection, storage, distribution, all controlled by a centralised computer network. Maximise the use of every last drop they can get.’

‘The difference between idyll and starvation …’ repeated Dave thoughtfully. ‘Seems like a shame. And how the hell are they going to pay for all that?’

‘Usual channels – World Bank lending, aid from the Gulf States, European Community, a lot of places. But it’s all pretty tight, after the debt crisis; that’s all earmarked for the desalination plants, and they won’t be operational for maybe ten years. They were going to have to muck along with the present irrigation system meanwhile, and that could mean eight or nine crisis years – maybe even hard famine. A hell of a lot of suffering, plus infant mortality, environmental damage, maybe even epidemics. At the very least it’d kill the tourist industry stone-dead, and that means less hard currency, the central government less willing to spend money there – you see the progression?’

‘I do,’ said Dave grimly. He’d grown up in the aftermath of the Nigerian famine; he knew. ‘Anybody doing anything?’

‘They got one of the US college foundations to step in. It set up a project, finagled a bit more public and private funding – good PR. So the Project’s buying the most expensive stuff, the sluice engineering and control systems, in the USA and Europe, and recruiting the manpower; but even there money’s very short. This is an ecologically clean project; big money’s not interested, because there are no massive returns to be made. The islanders will benefit, and the government’s all for it – no political problem involved as far as we can see. Yet it seems that all along the line there’s been trouble.’

Dave cocked his head. ‘Now you tell me?’

I felt slightly abashed. I hadn’t believed it could affect us, that was all. ‘Well, I didn’t fully understand it myself, not at first. All I was told was, the foundation was having a hell of a time shipping their stuff. When I saw what they could afford to pay, that didn’t seem too hard to understand. So we polished up our haloes and said cost or below. And here we are.’

‘Yeah. And we might as well be up to our necks in that damn klong. So it appears you’ve heard a bit more about this mysterious trouble since.’

‘No, it bloody well doesn’t! Just what all our friends and associates here – our usual associates – let drop when they turned us down. Only to me; they don’t know you that well yet. Vague rumbles, worried mutterings; nothing too specific. But each and every one of them effectively stuck the black spot on the whole Project. And you’ve heard nothing else yourself?’

We fetched up at some huts, and absent-mindedly turned down behind them, away from the klong. Dave thought back. ‘Well, now that you mention it … I didn’t even connect it at the time. But old Lee Wang Ji over at Taiwan Star just happened to drop into the conversation that guerrilla trouble on Jawa might be spreading to Bali. He didn’t add anything.’

‘Yes, well, Boonserb at Pacific C did. Hinted the terrorists might have their knives into the Project. But he was shipping right into Jakarta during the last big blow-up a couple of years back – and Sulawesi, too. Never stopped him for a minute. I looked up the Bali incidents, and they were just a couple of bushwhackings, nothing like the same scale. Probably by Javanese fugitives. You’re not telling me that’s the reason!’

We strolled along in silence, thinking deeply. At last Dave stopped and fished for his cigarettes. ‘So the shippers are just looking for excuses. Me with my wicked Third World upbringing, I’d say any block as complete as this has got to be political. Bound to be. Maybe some other governments in the region …’

I felt a great tide of hopelessness surge over me. This was ground I’d been over and over these last few days. ‘Which ones, for god’s sake? What could any of them gain by scuppering this Project? Bali’s about the most peaceful place in Indonesia. Peace, natural beauty, rich farming, good surfing – that’s about the sum total of its resources. No threat to anyone, damn near impossible to invade …’ I sighed, and kicked at the ground. A great fan of dirt showered out. ‘Dave, I don’t know … I’m not just being paranoid, am I?’

‘Well, we both …’ He finished lighting his cigarette, and blew out an irritable blast of expensive smoke. It dawned on us both then; no pavement underfoot. ‘Damn! Just where the hell have we got to?’

We gazed around. Somehow or other the crowded little streets had melted away, and we were standing in some sort of back alley, barren and dirty and unusually empty. The walls around us were a wild assortment. Rows of rotting brown planks, patched with bamboo and rusty corrugated iron, ran right up to elegant old stonework, pitted and cracked. Pastel plasterwork crumbled away from the wall of cheap yellow brick that crowded up against it, shedding its mortar in loose flakes, or absorbed the sordid staining from a cracked downflow pipe, pooling in fetid puddles at its base. A wrought-iron fire-escape sagged drunkenly from windows that seemed to be mostly boards, grinning sharklike with shards of dirty glass. As a child, fascinated, I’d watched windows like that in old half-empty tenements, a strong wind setting the glass teeth chattering with a faint chilly icicle music. Now and again one would work loose and drop with a crash into the sordid lot behind, unregarded by those within. Here they rippled to a softer breeze, like a hot breath on our necks, to a more alien music.

We turned round. Behind us we could dimly see a complex warren of alleys kinking away in all directions, floored with mud and refuse, swimming with pools of accumulated unpleasantness. Dave stared appalled at his elegant brogues. ‘Did we really come stomping through that stuff? Without noticing?’

‘We must have got turned around somehow,’ I remarked, and strode confidently around the next corner. ‘So it must have been …’

I walked straight into a wall of mist. No other word for it; not a cloud, not wisps, just a single sudden wall, the way it looks when you come up against it on a nightbound motorway with too much on the clock and brakes squealing into lock. One minute I was walking in the late afternoon light, the next I was stumbling through obscurity where even sounds rang differently, where refuse piles I’d been carefully avoiding were somehow no longer there. It was warm, clammy, hard to breathe. Even my footfalls sounded different.

‘Dave? You there?’

‘If I knew where there is, I might answer that! I’m sure somewhere.’

‘Can you see anything? What’s underfoot?’

‘Well, dirt … no, wait a minute. Stone?’

‘Remains of one of the older buildings, maybe. And dammit, there’s even a pillar of some sort, I just saw it over there … damn, it’s gone now.’

‘Over where?’

He answered himself by crashing into me. We staggered back against the pillar. What felt like very uneven stonework jabbed into my back. The mist was thinner here, and looking down I saw I was resting on uneven nubs of grey stone, its surface faintly cracked and lichen-encrusted; it was deeply carved, with what looked like hanging foliage. I looked up. Dimly through the whiteness I could see what must be other pillars, tall tapering shadows that seemed to stand alone, supporting nothing more substantial than the coils of mist. I was about to say something when Dave grabbed my arm. He didn’t need to point. Between two of the columns there was now a third shadow, inchoate, changing. It took me a moment to realise it was a human outline, half turning, this way, that way, hunched up as if it was peering about. For an instant it loomed our way, and I found myself silent, short-breathed, desperately hoping it wouldn’t spot us. Then, still in that concentrated half-crouch, it disappeared back into the mist.

If anything it left its feeling behind it. A horrible hunted sensation was growing on me, spreading like chilly lichen. I’d felt something like it once before, a burgeoning unease in my bones – but where? I looked at Dave. There was a grey tinge to his skin as if the mist had got under it. I mouthed Let’s get out of here! and he nodded fervently. Slowly, quietly, keeping a firm grip on each other’s arms, we sidled around the curve of the pillar. Ahead were other pillars, and we hadn’t passed any on our way in; so this ought to be the best bet. If the normal rules applied, that was …

Why had I thought that? When didn’t they apply?

Something was stirring in my memory, something formless as the shadow in the mist. Something that still woke me in the cold chill hours before dawn, confused, in conflict, still spinning on a sparking pinwheel of feelings. Less often, these last few years; but on a night not long ago one girl had put a hand up to my cheek as I sat there, panting. She’d exclaimed, wondering, ‘You’re all sweaty! Like a fever! And …’

Did the silly bitch have to sound so utterly dumbfounded? ‘Steve, you’ve been crying!’

A few years earlier I might have thrown her out on the spot; even then I was tempted. But the strongest feeling in me was loss; only for what? Something definite, but something I struggled against, something I refused to give shape to. My great barn of a flat was in darkness; but in the living room below the gallery that was my bedroom I could see a gleam of light, that just seemed to hang there in the emptiness. I’d got up, padded down the steps past the clothes she’d scattered there – always a bad sign. The light was only the moon, shining through the open window on to the grey Portland stone mantel and the old broadsword I’d hung over it. My designer had shed bitter tears over that; it was right out of place in his glassy post-modernist vision. Most of my guests agreed with him, but I wouldn’t be parted from it. I touched the cool perfection of the blade, like still waters. Impulsively I laid my hot forehead against it, and that seemed to still the confusion. Then I’d mixed up drinks and taken them back to bed. She’d enough sense not to press me, so we’d had a pleasant time making the sun come up – but the darkness of that half-formed dream had lingered. And now, here, I sensed somehow, as with a hint of a long-forgotten scent or flavour, that it was out of that darkness all this had come boiling up.

With the pillar in front of us we hastily backed away, darting looks this way and that as each swirl in the mist threatened us with hidden fears. We’d rounded a corner; so if we went back—

With switching suddenness there was light around us again, the same warm light we’d left, the same soft dirt underfoot, the same compounded stinks. After that formless emptiness they were almost welcome, the stained walls gloriously solid and confining. ‘It’s the alley okay!’ Dave’s grin was a rictus of relief. ‘Now let’s get the hell—’

But as we turned around again, we saw that the alley wasn’t empty any more. A minute ago I’d almost have welcomed company, any company; but these …

They were short compared to me, to Dave even; but there were a lot of them. They were Orientals, but oddly indeterminate, their faces so many scowling masks of light bronze; and even their own mothers might have called them ugly, seamed and scarred and broken-nosed, with gaping gravestone teeth. And their old-fashioned baggy blue pyjamas, bound with heavy black sashes, had an unpleasant hint of uniform about them, ragged and filthy as they looked. So did the long wavy daggers in their hands. Their heads lolled mockingly as they advanced, silently, flicking the blades with expressive, menacing force. Equally silently, Dave and I gave back; I saw the sweat gleam on his face, felt it around my own collar. They came on, steady and relentless, herding us back towards that crucial corner.

‘Can’t you do something?’ hissed Dave, out of the corner of his mouth.

‘Why me?’

‘You, the hotshot leader in the strategy team! Wiped the floor with that Securities team, everyone saying what a fighter you were—’

‘With a bloody paint-ball pistol, yes! I haven’t even got that here!’

‘There’s my lighter! They might think …’

‘Going to offer them a Sobranie? I somehow don’t think a little flame’s going to worry these guys. We’d need a bloody machine gun—’

But even as I said it, the image that sprang to mind wasn’t a gun at all. It was that sword. I could have used that – couldn’t I? In fact, I had. Somehow, somewhere – where the hell had I picked that thing up, anyhow? Down by the docks, wasn’t it? Nearly eight years back …

The docks!

In a summer storm I’d seen a wave arch high over a seawall. It hadn’t looked like much more than spray; but it crashed down on a street of shops and parked cars, and when the water-curtain pulled back it left a shattered chaos in its wake. So memory rose and roared down into my thoughts, spilling tangled images of sea fights and stark terror, of stars and drifting clouds and sails, of sea and fire and the jar of blade on blade, the touch of a woman who burned from within, with hair that rose like smoke. Of once upon a darkling field a swordhilt leaping doglike to my hand. These things had been. Beyond reason, beyond question, they had been. The certainty shone in me, gem-hard and with the same fire at its heart. And out of it, sprouting like a time-lapsed seedling, burgeoned the beginnings of an idea …

With a screeching yell the leading knifeman sprang, flinging his blade up to fall on my throat. Fear takes time – I had none. Instinct flung up my arms in futile self-preservation, but all I felt was anger, furious anger at being interrupted now, of all times, just when I’d suddenly seen what I had to do. The dark fire flared. Now, of all times now, to be distracted, killed even – that couldn’t be. To fight back became an instant, all-consuming need, that sucked me into it like a flooding channel.

The red darkness of oxygen starvation roared in my head, faded to black. A tiny point of light glittered in the blackness behind my eyes, glittered and grew against a swirling dimness, turning in a great slow wheeling motion. A streak of circling light, it sparkled agonisingly against my closed lids, closer, brighter, larger … My eyelids flew open. No time had passed. The knifeman still loomed up in front of me, mouth agape; the knife hung at the top of its sweep, and came slashing down. And into my outstretched palm something slapped with stinging force.

The blow curled my fingers about it; they closed and held, tight. The descending knifeblade clanged against the massive blade I held across my breast, skipped along it and stuck at the hilt. I twisted the heavy blade viciously, tearing the weapon from the wielder’s grasp with a force that whipped him around and dropped him face down into the mud. The knife clattered aside. With a yell I sprang forward, treading on his back, and brought the blade hissing down a hair’s breadth in front of the next knifeman’s flattened snout. It thudded into the mud, kicking up a spray. I tore it free and sprang again, sweeping my way clear with great circling slashes – horribly clumsy, but it made the ancient sword rush and sing like a child. The remaining bandits leaped back, back again, back at every swing till they reached the far end of the alley. Then I yelled aloud and charged at them, and with one massive slashing sweep scattered them into its shadows.

‘Dave?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Run like hell!’

Which he proceeded to do, though he did look back once to be sure I was hard on his heels.

Not for long. He was younger and lighter, and if it hadn’t been for sheer and utter terror I couldn’t have kept up. No doubt fright was winging his feet, too. Certainly it made us both forget we’d no idea where the hell we were running to; any alley without mist and muggers seemed pretty pleasant just then. And I was almost as frightened of the sword in my hand, and of the equally sharp and lethal things that swarmed around in my head. Things I’d made a pretty good job of banishing, all told, these last few years; and yet never had the skill, or maybe the courage, to forget completely. When had I last made it back to the Tavern? Three years, was it? Or four?

Wheezing and panting in the sulphurous humidity, I rounded one more corner – and narrowly missed impaling Dave, who’d stopped stone-dead in my path. This was a gloomy hole, two small side alleys and a dead-end sink of scum and sewage the rickety buildings curved out over, their roof tiles almost touching, as if to hide its shame from the sky. Beneath the arch they made, as the tropical twilight dimmed the sky, the shadows hung in the sweltering air blacker than the coming night. Within those shadows, higher than our heads, something moved.

A mask, one of those processional things you find all over the East – a monstrous animalian face, long-jawed and triangular, that might have been remotely based on some bug-eyed nocturnal tiger. Its colour scheme was more natural than in most Eastern art, lacking the shrieking reds and yellows, a rich shading instead from autumn russet to glossy leaf-green, offset by glistening ivory fangs and its scarlet, lolling tongue; but gold-encrusted ornaments fringed its gaping jaw and sleek silvery mane. It was a rich, amazing sight, and I found myself wondering who in this lousy quarter could have hung out such an expensive-looking, vibrant work of art.

Then the staring eyes narrowed, the jaws spilled slaver and the scarlet tongue lapped it off yellowed leonine teeth. The gilt rustled and jingled as the monstrous head tossed, threateningly. A soft purring snarl throbbed in the air, as disembodied as a lion’s cough and even more alarming. For Dave and myself, still jangling from the mist and the knife attack, this was too much. We yelled with one voice, turned and bolted for our lives. I plunged down the little side alley to the left, feet skidding on decaying garbage and worse, and around a corner stacked with boxes of empty bottles and gaudy food containers. I found myself looking at a wall faced with decaying concrete, blank except for one door, narrow, low and forbiddingly faced with a single sheet of zinc, dented, weatherstained but very, very solid.

I grabbed at the handle; it turned freely, but nothing happened. I hammered my fist on the door; the zinc thudded,