The well knew I was coming before I did. I hadn’t even turned the corner when it called out to me.
“Well, well, the one and only John Taylor; which is just as well because I don’t think I could stand it if there were more of you. Your entire existence plays merry hell with the time-lines. Look over there in the corner; see that woman, crying her eyes out? That’s Fate, that is. Hello again, John. Knew you’d be back.”
“I never knew an oracle that was so in love with its own voice,” I said. “Now do me a favour and keep your voice down. The soulbomber isn’t far from here, and we really don’t want to upset him.”
“I know! I know he’s there, and I know why he’s there, which is more than you do. I know everything. Or at least, everything that matters, and I fake the rest. I even know what you’re going to ask before you ask it, and you really aren’t going to like the answers.”
“Tell me anyway,” I said, leaning heavily on its stone wall. “What can you tell me about this soulbomber?”
“Cross my palm with silver, sweetie, and I shall unfold wonders and marvels ...”
“Cut the crap. I’m not a tourist. You haven’t got a palm, and no-one’s used silver coins for years. You get the usual—one drop of blood, and that’s it.”
“You have no sense of drama.”
I pricked the tip of my left index finger with the sliver of unicorn’s horn I carry in my lapel to warn against poisons and let one fat drop of blood fall into the dark interior of the well. The oracle made a really disgusting satisfied sound, and I winced despite myself.
“All right, you old ham,” I said. “You’ve had your payment, now answer the question. What do I have to do to stop the soulbomber?”
“There’s nothing you can do. The soulbomb will detonate some forty-one minutes from now.”
I blinked a few times. “That’s it?”
“Afraid so. There isn’t a single possible future where the soulbomb doesn’t detonate.”
“No way of avoiding it?”
“None at all.”
“Can’t I try talking to him?”
“If you like.”
“Will that help?”
“No. Doesn’t matter what you do or say: Mr. Soulbomber, he go boom.”
“Well, you’re a lot of use!”
“Lot of people say that to me ...”
“All right,” I said, searching desperately for some solid ground. “Let’s try something else. What can you tell me about Excalibur?”
“You mean that appallingly powerful thing hanging off your back? Burning so brightly I can’t even look at it? Well, to start with, it’s not really a sword. It only looks like one.”
“What is it, then?”
“Reply cloudy, try again later. I told you, it’s so potent I can’t even get a good look at it. You could cut the world in half with a weapon like that.”
“I thought you said it isn’t a sword?” I said.
“It isn’t. It’s much more than a sword. More than a weapon. It’s the lever you turn to move the world.”
“Can you tell me why it’s entered my life?”
“I see you going on a long journey ...”
“If you tell me I’m going to meet a tall dark stranger, I swear I will unzip right here and now and piss into you.”
“You would, too, wouldn’t you? Bully ...”
“Hold everything,” I said. “You’re predicting a journey in my future. How can I have a future if the soulbomb’s going to go off in forty-one minutes?”
“Actually, rather less than that now. But yes, I see your point.” The oracle hummed tunelessly to itself for a moment. “Look, your whole existence is so unlikely it gives me a pain in the rear I haven’t got just thinking about it. It’s hard to be sure about anything where you’re concerned.”
“Because my mother was a Biblical Myth?”
“That doesn’t help, certainly. But it’s more that you’re involved in so many vital, important, and earth-shaking things, that every decision you make changes not only your life but everyone else’s as well.”
“It’s the destiny thing, isn’t it?” I said.
“See that sacred-looking guy over there, with the nervous twitch, trying to comfort Fate? That’s Destiny, that is.”
“Whatever happened to free will?”
“I do have an answer to that,” said the well smugly, “but it would make your head explode. I could tell you a lengthy but complex parable if you like.”
“Would it help?”
“Not really.”
“But you are completely certain that the soulbomb is going to explode?”
“Oh yes. In thirty-nine minutes.”
“I hate you.”
“I knew you were going to say that.”
I ran through the rest of the corridors to be sure of reaching the soulbomber in time. The oracle is shifty, crafty, and absolutely glories in being spitefully obtuse; but it’s never wrong. My only hope was that it had seen some kind of future for me afterwards. Otherwise, I’d have said,
Sod this for a lark
, and legged it for the nearest exit. There had to be something I could do. Contain the explosion, perhaps, using the mall’s shields? Throw the soulbomber through one of the dimensional doorways? I told myself I’d think of something, and tried very hard to believe it. After all, I wouldn’t lie to me about something like that.
I found him sitting quite casually on the floor, in the very centre of the mall. A balding, dumpy, middle-aged man in shabby clothes, with sad eyes and a tired mouth. Sitting on the floor, doing nothing in particular, waiting for me to turn up. I let him have a good look at me before I moved cautiously forward. I was a bit concerned that the sight of me might be enough to set him off; but he didn’t look scared, or angry, or impatient. He just looked ... relieved, that his waiting was finally at an end. He nodded to me, briefly, and I stopped a careful distance away from him. He didn’t look like a terrorist, or a fanatic. Maybe I could still talk him out of it.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m John Taylor.”
“I know,” he said. His voice was reassuringly calm, and normal. “He showed me several photos of you before they sent me in here, so I could be sure it was you. I’m Oliver Newbury. You won’t have heard of me. No-one has. I was an ordinary, everyday guy, and I liked it that way. I didn’t ask for much, didn’t want much; but the world took it all anyway ... You wouldn’t think you could get bored, waiting to die; but you can. Feels like I’ve been here for hours. And no; you can’t talk me out of this. My wife is dead. I’m crippled with debts I can’t pay and a family I can’t support any more. This is all that’s left—one last act of rage against a viciously unfair and uncaring world. He’s promised to pay off all my debts, you see, if I do this thing. He’ll see my children are protected and cared for. It’s all I can do for them.”
“If you’re so determined to die,” I said, “for revenge, for money ... why have you waited to talk to me?”
“That was part of the deal,” he said, not unkindly. “To lure you in and take you with me when I go. He said you wouldn’t be able to resist a trap baited with your name. He said you were arrogant and predictable. And you’re here, aren’t you?”
“Don’t go off bang just yet,” I said. “I’m also curious. What’s the point of all this? What does your benefactor hope to gain from your suicide?”
“Apparently, when I explode, the energies released will destroy every dimensional door in the Emporium,” Oliver said calmly. “Blow them all right off their hinges and allow Things from Outside to come in and destroy the Nightside. And please: yes, I do know what I’m saying. Don’t try and appeal to my better nature. I don’t care how many people die, or how much of the Nightside gets trampled underfoot by the Outsiders. No-one cared when I lost my wife, and my job, and couldn’t look after my children any more. I’m a suicide, Mr. Taylor. My life is over. I volunteered to be made into this awful thing, a soulbomb. It hurt like hell, but it was worth it because I can’t feel anything any more, only cold. I’m always cold now. At least this way, my death will mean something. It’ll make a difference. I get to show my anger and contempt at a world that let me down, then kicked me while I was down. I get to punish it as it deserves.”
“Do you know the kind of Things from Outside we’re talking about?” I said carefully. “They exist in dimensions far from ours, far from reality, as we understand it. They’re not even life, as we understand it. They hate life, and destroy it wherever they find it. They want to destroy the Light, until there’s nothing left but the Darkness they hide in.”
“You’re saying they’re evil?” he said politely.
“They’re so different from us they’re beyond simple labels like Good and Evil. Those are human beliefs, human concepts. They’re bigger than that, beyond that, monstrous beyond anything we can imagine because our concept of evil isn’t big enough to encompass the things they do. We call them Outsiders because they’re outside anything we can understand or accept: outside morality, or sanity, maybe even Life or Death.”
“You’re very eloquent,” said Oliver. “But I told you ... I don’t care. Let them eat up the Nightside, let them burn it up, let all the people die. Where were they when I needed them?”
“You still care about your children,” I said. “That’s who you’re doing this for, right? You let the Outsiders loose in our world, and they won’t stop here. Eventually, they will get to where your children are and make them scream with horror before they destroy them.”
“That won’t happen,” said Oliver. “He promised the Outsiders would be contained inside the Nightside. He made a deal with them.”
“And he believed them?”
I was about to try for this particular fool’s name when I noticed that Oliver’s breath was steaming on the air before him. Mine, too. The mall was a hell of a lot colder than it had been. Fern-like patterns of hoar-frost crept quickly across the shop-windows and spread unevenly across the floor, walls, and ceiling. And though the overhead fluorescent lights were still burning just as fiercely, darkness appeared in all the surrounding corridors, one by one, filling them up, then edging slowly forward until only a narrow pool of light remained, surrounding Oliver and me.
“Something’s coming,” I said. “Something’s draining all the warmth and energy out of our surroundings, from the world itself, so it can force its way into our reality. Something from Outside is coming here, to talk to us.”
“But I haven’t blown open any of the gateways yet,” said Oliver.
“Something as powerful as an Outsider doesn’t give a damn about doors,” I said. “They come and go as they please. But they can’t stay long if they force their way in; reality itself rejects them and forces them back out. This is only a messenger boy, here to announce their coming.”
A fountain of vomit blasted up out of the floor, slammed against the ceiling, and rained down, thick and foul. Oliver cried out in disgust and scrambled up onto his feet. I grabbed him by the arm and dragged him out of the way. The foul stuff kept spurting up from the unbroken floor, hitting the ceiling and falling back again, a thick, pulsing pillar of vomit. The stink of it filled the passageway, harsh enough to choke on. Maggots curled and writhed in it. A great face slowly formed itself out of the vomit, its details just human enough to be disturbing. The unblinking dark eyes fixed on Oliver and me, and the ragged mouth stretched slowly in an awful smile.
“Don’t let it get to you,” I said to Oliver. “It’s showing off. Trying to find some form that will scare us, disgust us, give it power over us. Think of it as psychological warfare, with a scratch-and-sniff ingredient.”
“This is an Outsider?” said Oliver, past the hand he’d clapped over his mouth and nose to try to keep out the smell.
“No, I told you: this is one of their messenger boys. Hey, you! Yes, you, puke face! Knock off the special effects and take on a more traditional form, or I’ll turn the fire hose on you! I am John Taylor, and I don’t take no shit from demons!”
I did my best to sound confident, like I knew what I was doing, and the demon must have fallen for it because the horror show disappeared in a moment though the horrid smell still lingered. In its place stood a man in a white trench coat, with a familiar face. It was meant to be me, except it had bulging compound insect eyes, and blood dripped steadily from its ragged mouth. The thick blood fell down onto the white trench coat, leaving stains. Its wrists were stuffed deep into the pockets, and something about the way the figure held itself made me think I wouldn’t want to see what it had instead of hands.
I looked it up and down and sniffed loudly.
“I suppose that’s an improvement. What do you want?”
Its mouth moved uncertainly, as though it wasn’t used to human speech. When it finally spoke, it sounded like it was choking on blood.
“We are coming here, and you can’t stop us, John Taylor. Little human thing. When my masters finally manifest, in all their awful glory, the sight of them will blast the vision from your eyes and drive all you little human things howling into madness and misery. And they shall feast upon your suffering and make you worship them until you can’t stand it any more.”
“Ah,” I said. “The usual. What is it about you demons that you always want to be loved and worshipped? Definite self-confidence problems there, and probably abandonment issues, too. Like I give a shit. What brings you to the Nightside?”
“My masters are not coming for the Nightside. They come for the whole world and everything in it. They have been offered an opening here, and they will use it to destroy everything that lives. You disgust us. Your very existence offends us. Meat that dares to think and dream. My masters will tear your upstart flesh apart and eat your souls, and even after you are dead, we will still find ways to make you suffer. Your torment will never end. For ever and ever and ever.”
“I never get a straight answer, but I’ll try one more time,” I said. “Why?”
“Because we can. Because we want to. Because you can’t stop us.”
“Demons,” I said. “I swear, you’re worse than five-year-olds. Want want want and stamp your cloven feet if you can’t get your own way. But ... while you talk a good game, I think you’re running scared. Your masters wouldn’t waste all the power it takes to force a messenger into our reality unless you were worried something might go wrong. You can’t come in ... unless Oliver here blows the doors open; and your masters are shit scared I might talk Oliver out of it. That’s it, isn’t it? You’re afraid his resolve is weakening. You’re trying to bully him into serving you. How do you feel about that, Oliver? Now you know what your death would really bring about?”