Neil Gaiman - Neverwhere

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NeverwhereNeil Gaiman----------I have never been to St. John's Wood. I dare

not. I should be afraid of the innumerable night of fir trees, afraid to come

upon a blood red cup and the bearing of the wings of the Eagle. --_The

Napoleon of Netting Hill_, G. K. Chesterton If ever thou gavest hosen or

shoon Then every night and all Sit thou down and put them on And

Christ receive thy soul _This aye night, this aye night Every night and

all Fire and fleet and candlelight And Christ receive they soul_ If

ever thou gavest meat or drink Then every night and all The fire shall

never make thee shrink And Christ receive thy soul --_The Lyke Wake

Dirge_ (traditional)----------PROLOGUE The night before he went to London,

Richard Mayhew was not enjoying himself. He had begun the evening by

enjoying himself: he had enjoyed reading the good-bye cards, and receiving the

hugs from several not entirely unattractive young ladies of his acquaintance;

he had enjoyed the warnings about the evils and dangers of London, and the

gift of the white umbrella with the map of the London Underground on it that

his friends had chipped in money to buy; he had enjoyed the first few pints of

ale; but then, with each successive pint he found that he was enjoying himself

significantly less; until now he was sitting and shivering on the sidewalk

outside the pub in a small Scottish town, weighing the relative merits of

being sick and not being sick, and not enjoying himself at all. Inside the

pub, Richard's friends continued to celebrate his forthcoming departure with

an enthusiasm that, to Richard, was beginning to border on the sinister. He

sat on the sidewalk and held on tightly to the rolled-up umbrella, and

wondered whether going south to London was really a good idea. "You want to

keep a eye out," said a cracked old voice. "They'll be moving you on before

you can say Jack Robinson. Or taking you in, I wouldn't be surprised." Two

sharp eyes stared out from a beaky, grimy face. "You all right?" "Yes,

thank you," said Richard. He was a fresh-faced, boyish young man, with dark,

slightly curly hair and large hazel eyes; he had a rumpled, just-woken-up look

to him, which made him more attractive to the opposite sex than he would ever

understand or believe. The grimy face softened. "Here, poor thing," she

said, and pushed a fifty-pence piece into Richard's hand. " 'Ow long you been

on the streets, then?" "I'm not homeless," explained Richard, embarrassed,

attempting to give the old woman her coin back. "Please--take your money. I'm

fine. I just came out here to get some air. I go to London tomorrow," he

added. She peered down at him suspiciously, then took back her fifty pence

and made it vanish beneath the layers of coats and shawls in which she was

enveloped. "I've been to London," she confided. "I was married in London. But

he was a bad lot. Me mam told me not to go marrying outside, but I was young

and beautiful, although you'd never credit it today, and I followed my heart."

"I'm sure you did," said Richard. The conviction that he was about to be

sick was starting, slowly, to fade. "Fat lot of good it done me. I been

homeless, so I know what it's like," said the old woman. "That's why I thought

you was. What you going to London for?" "I've got a job," he told her

proudly. "Doing what?" she asked. "Um, Securities," said Richard. "I

was a dancer," said the old woman, and she tottered awkwardly around the

sidewalk, humming tunelessly to herself. Then she teetered from side to side

like a spinning top coming to rest, and finally she stopped, facing Richard.

"Hold out your hand," she told him, "and I'll tell yer fortune." He did as he

was told. She put her old hand into his, and held it tightly, and then she

blinked a few times, like an owl who had swallowed a mouse that was beginning

to disagree with it. "You got a long way to go . . . " she said, puzzled.

"London," Richard told her. "Not just London . . . " The old woman paused.

"Not any London I know." It started to rain then, softly. "I'm sorry," she

said. "It starts with doors." "Doors?" She nodded. The rain fell harder,

pattering on the roofs and on the asphalt of the road. "I'd watch out for

doors if I were you." Richard stood up, a little unsteadily. "All right,"

he said, a little unsure of how he ought to treat information of this nature.

"I will. Thanks." The pub door was opened, and light and noise spilled out

into the street. "Richard? You all right?" "Yeah, I'm fine. I'll be back in

a second." The old lady was already wobbling down the street, into the pelting

rain, getting wet. Richard felt he had to do something for her: he couldn't

give her money, though. He hurried after her, down the narrow street, the cold

rain drenching his face and hair. "Here," said Richard. He fumbled with the

handle of the umbrella, trying to find the button that opened it. Then a

click, and it blossomed into a huge white map of the London Underground

network, each line drawn in a different color, every station marked and named.

The old woman took the umbrella, gratefully, and smiled her thanks. "You've

a good heart," she told him. "Sometimes that's enough to see. you safe

wherever you go." Then she shook her head. "But mostly, it's not." She

clutched the umbrella tightly as a gust of wind threatened to tug it away from

her or pull it inside out. She wrapped her arms around it and bent almost

double against the rain and the wind. Then she walked away into the rain and

the night, a round white shape covered with the names of London Tube

stations--Earl's Court, Marble Arch, Blackfriars, White City, Victoria, Angel,

Oxford Circus . . . Richard found himself pondering, drunkenly, whether

there really was a circus at Oxford Circus: a real circus with clowns,

beautiful women, and dangerous beasts. The pub door opened once more: a blast

of sound, as if the pub's volume control had just been turned up high.

"Richard, you idiot, it's your bloody party, and you're missing all the fun."

He walked back in the pub, the urge to be sick lost in all the oddness.

"You look like a drowned rat," said someone. "You've never seen a drowned

rat," said Richard. Someone else handed him a large whisky. "Here, get that

down you. That'll warm you up. You know, you won't be able to get real Scotch

in London." "I'm sure I will," sighed Richard. Water was dripping from his

hair into his drink. "They have everything in London." And he downed the

Scotch, and after that someone bought him another, and then the evening

blurred and broke up into fragments: afterward he remembered only the feeling

that he was about to leave somewhere small and rational--a place that made

sense--for somewhere huge and old that didn't; and vomiting interminably into

a gutter flowing with rainwater, somewhere in the small hours of the morning;

and a white shape marked with strange-colored symbols, like a little round

beetle, walking away from him in the rain. The next morning he boarded the

train for the six-hour journey south that would bring him to the strange

gothic spires and arches of St. Pancras Station. His mother gave him a small

walnut cake that she had made for the journey and a thermos filled with tea;

and Richard Mayhew went to London feeling like hell.ONE She had been

running for four days now, a harum-scarum tumbling flight through passages and

tunnels. She was hungry, and exhausted, and more tired than a body could

stand, and each successive door was proving harder to open. After four days of

flight, she had found a hiding place, a tiny stone burrow, under the world,

where she would be safe, or so she prayed, and at last she slept. Mr. Croup

had hired Ross at the last Floating Market, which had been held in Westminster

Abbey. "Think of him," he told Mr. Vandemar, "as a canary." "Sings?" asked

Mr. Vandemar. "I doubt it; I sincerely and utterly doubt it." Mr. Croup ran

a hand through his lank orange hair. "No, my fine friend, I was thinking

metaphorically--more along the lines of the birds they take down mines." Mr.

Vandemar nodded, comprehension dawning slowly: yes, a canary. Mr. Ross had no

other resemblance to a canary. He was huge--almost as big as Mr. Vandemar--and

extremely grubby, and quite hairless, and he said very little, although he had

made a point of telling each of them that he liked to kill things, and he was

good at it; and this amused Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar. But he was a canary,

and he never knew it. So Mr. Ross went first, in his filthy T-shirt and his

crusted blue-jeans, and Croup and Vandemar walked behind him, in their elegant

black suits. There are four simple ways for the observant to tell Mr. Croup

and Mr. Vandemar apart: first, Mr. Vandemar is two and a half heads taller

than Mr. Croup; second, Mr. Croup has eyes of a faded china blue, while Mr.

Vandemar's eyes are brown; third, while Mr. Vandemar fashioned the rings he

wears on his right hand out of the skulls of four ravens, Mr. Croup has no

obvious jewelery; fourth, Mr. Croup likes words, while Mr. Vandemar is always

hungry. Also, they look nothing at all alike. A rustle in the tunnel

darkness; Mr. Vandemar's knife was in his hand, and then it was no longer in

his hand, and it was quivering gently almost thirty feet away. He walked over

to his knife and picked it up by the hilt. There was a gray rat impaled on the

blade, its mouth opening and closing impotently as the life fled. He crushed

its skull between finger and thumb. "Now, there's one rat that won't be

telling any more tales," said Mr. Croup. He chuckled at his own joke. Mr.

Vandemar did not respond. "Rat. Tales. Get it?" Mr. Vandemar pulled the rat

from the blade and began to munch on it, thoughtfully, head first. Mr. Croup

slapped it out of his hands. "Stop that," he said. Mr. Vandemar put his knife

away, a little sullenly. "Buck up," hissed Mr. Croup, encouragingly. "There

will always be another rat. Now: onward. Things to do. People to damage."

Three years in London had not changed Richard, although it had changed the way

he perceived the city. Richard had originally imagined London as a gray city,

even a black city, from pictures he had seen, and he was surprised to find it

filled with color. It was a city of red brick and white stone, red buses and

large black taxis, bright red mailboxes and green grassy parks and cemeteries.

It was a city in which the very old and the awkwardly new jostled each

other, not uncomfortably, but without respect; a city of shops and offices and

restaurants and homes, of parks and churches, of ignored monuments and

remarkably unpalatial palaces; a city of hundreds of districts with strange

names--Crouch End, Chalk Farm, Earl's Court, Marble Arch--and oddly distinct

identities; a noisy, dirty, cheerful, troubled city, which fed on tourists,

needed them as it despised them, in which the average speed of transportation

through the city had not increased in three hundred years, following five

hundred years of fitful road-widening and unskillful compromises between the

needs of traffic, whether horse-drawn, or, more recently, motorized, and the

needs of pedestrians; a city inhabited by and teeming with people of every

color and manner and kind. When he had first arrived, he had found London

huge, odd, fundamentally incomprehensible, with only the Tube map, that

elegant multicolored topographical display of underground railway lines and

stations, giving it any semblance of order. Gradually he realized that the

Tube map was a handy fiction that made life easier but bore no resemblance to

the reality of the shape of the city above. It was like belonging to a

political party, he thought once, proudly, and then, having tried to explain

the resemblance between the Tube map and politics, at a party, to a cluster of

bewildered strangers, he had decided in the future to leave political comment

to others. He continued, slowly, by a process of osmosis and white

knowledge (which is like white noise, only more useful), to comprehend the

city, a process that accelerated when he realized that the actual City of

London itself was no bigger than a square mile, stretching from Aldgate in the

east to Fleet Street and the law courts of the Old Bailey in the west, a tiny

municipality, now home to London's financial institutions, and that that was

where it had all begun. Two thousand years before, London had been a little

Celtic village on the north shore of the Thames, which the Romans had

encountered, then settled in. London had grown, slowly, until, roughly a

thousand years later, it met the tiny Royal City of Westminster immediately to

the west, and, once London Bridge had been built, London touched the town of

Southwark directly across the river; and it continued to grow, fields and

woods and marshland slowly vanishing beneath the flourishing town, and it

continued to expand, encountering other little villages and hamlets as it

grew, like Whitechapel and Dept-ford to the east, Hammersmith and Shepherd's

Bush to the west, Camden and Islington in the north, Battersea and Lambeth

across the Thames to the south, absorbing all of them, just as a pool of

mercury encounters and incorporates smaller beads of mercury, leaving only

their names behind. London grew into something huge and contradictory. It

was a good place, and a fine city, but there is a price to be paid for all

good places, and a price that all good places have to pay. After a while,

Richard found himself taking London for granted; in time, he began to pride

himself on having visited none of the sights of London (except for the Tower

of London, when his Aunt Maude came down to the city for a weekend, and

Richard found himself her reluctant escort). But Jessica changed all that.

Richard found himself, on otherwise sensible weekends, accompanying her to

places like the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery, where he learned that

walking around museums too long hurts your feet, that the great art treasures

of the world all blur into each other after a while, and that it is almost

beyond the human capacity for belief to accept how much museum cafeterias will

brazenly charge for a slice of cake and a cup of tea. "Here's your tea and

your éclair," he told her. "It would have cost less to buy one of those

Tintorettos." "Don't exaggerate," said Jessica cheerfully. "Anyway, there

aren't any Tintorettos at the Tate." "I should have had that cherry cake,"

said Richard. "Then they would have been able to afford another Van Gogh."

Richard had met Jessica in France, on a weekend trip to Paris two years

earlier; had in fact discovered her in the Louvre, trying to find the group of

his office friends who had organized the trip. Staring up at an immense

sculpture, he had stepped backwards into Jessica, who was admiring an

extremely large and historically important diamond. He tried to apologize to

her in French, which he did not speak, gave up, and began to apologize in

English, then tried to apologize in French for having to apologize in English,

until he noticed that Jessica was about as English as it was possible for any

one person to be. By this time she decided he should buy her an expensive

French sandwich and some overpriced carbonated apple juice, by way of apology,

and, well, that was the start of it all, really. He had never been able to

convince Jessica that he wasn't the kind of person who went to art galleries

after that. On weekends when they did not go to art galleries or to

museums, Richard would trail behind Jessica as she went shopping, which she

did, on the whole, in affluent Knightsbridge, a short walk and an even shorter

taxi ride from her apartment in a Kensington mews. Richard would accompany

Jessica on her tours of such huge and intimidating emporia as Harrods and

Harvey Nichols, stores where Jessica was able to purchase anything, from

jewelry, to books, to the week's groceries. Richard had been awed by

Jessica, who was beautiful, and often quite funny, and was certainly going

somewhere. And Jessica saw in Richard an enormous amount of potential, which,

properly harnessed by the right woman, would have made him the perfect

matrimonial accessory. If only he were a little more focused, she would murmur

to herself, and so she gave him books with titles like _Dress for Success_ and

_A Hundred and Twenty-Five Habits of Successful Men,_ and books on how to run

a business like a military campaign, and Richard always said thank you, and

always intended to read them. In Harvey Nichols's men's fashion department she

would pick out for him the kinds of clothes she thought that he should

wear--and he wore them, during the week, anyway; and, a year to the day after

their first encounter, she told him she thought it was time that they went

shopping for an engagement ring. "Why do you go out with her?" asked Gary,

in Corporate Accounts, eighteen months later. "She's terrifying." Richard

shook his head. "She's really sweet, once you get to know her." Gary put

down the plastic troll doll he had picked up from Richard's desk. "I'm

surprised she still lets you play with these." "The subject has never come

up," said Richard, picking up one of the creatures from his desk. It had a

shock of Day-Glo orange hair, and a slightly baffled expression, as if it were

lost. And the subject had indeed come up. Jessica had, however, convinced

herself that Richard's troll collection was a mark of endearing eccentricity,

comparable to Mr. Stockton's collection of angels. Jessica was in the process

of organizing a traveling exhibition of Mr. Stockton's angel collection, and

she had come to the conclusion that great men always collected something. In

actuality Richard did not really collect trolls. He had found a troll on the

sidewalk outside the office, and, in a vain attempt at injecting a little

personality into his working world, he had placed it on his computer monitor.

The others had followed over the next few months, gifts from colleagues who

had noticed that Richard had a penchant for the ugly little creatures. He had

taken the gifts and positioned them, strategically, around his desk, beside

the telephones and the framed photograph of Jessica. The photograph had a

yellow Post-it note stuck to it. It was a Friday afternoon. Richard had

noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they

would run in packs and leap out at him all at once. Take this particular

Friday, for example. It was, as Jessica had pointed out to him at least a

_dozen_ times in the last month, the most important day of his life. So it was

unfortunate that, despite the Post-it note Richard had left on his fridge door

at home, and the other Post-it note he had placed on the photograph of Jessica

on his desk, he had forgotten about it completely and utterly. Also, there

was the Wandsworth report, which was overdue and taking up most of his head.

Richard checked another row of figures; then he noticed that page 17 had

vanished, and he set it up to print out again; and another page down, and he

knew that if he were only left alone to finish it . . . if, miracle of

miracles, the phone did not ring . . . It rang. He thumbed the speakerphone.

"Hello? Richard? The managing director needs to know when he'll have the

report." Richard looked at his watch. "Five minutes, Sylvia. It's almost

wrapped up. I just have to attach the P & L projection." "Thanks, Dick.

I'll come down for it." Sylvia was, as she liked to explain, "the MD's PA,"

and she moved in an atmosphere of crisp efficiency. He thumbed the

speakerphone off; it rang again, immediately. "Richard," said the speaker,

with Jessica's voice, "it's Jessica. You haven't forgotten, have you?"

"Forgotten?" He tried to remember what he could have forgotten. He looked at

Jessica's photograph for inspiration and found all the inspiration he could

have needed in the shape of a yellow Post-it note stuck to her forehead.

"Richard? Pick up the telephone." He picked up the phone, reading the

Post-it note as he did so. "Sorry, Jess. No, I hadn't forgotten. Seven P.M.,

at Ma Maison Italiano. Should I meet you there?" "Jessica, Richard. Not

Jess." She paused for a moment. "After what happened last time? I don't think

so. You really could get lost in your own backyard, Richard." Richard

thought about pointing out that _anyone_ could have confused the National

Gallery with the National Portrait Gallery, and that it wasn't _she_ who had

spent the whole day standing in the rain (which was, in his opinion, every bit

as much fun as walking around either place until his feet hurt), but he

thought better of it. "I'll meet you at your place," said Jessica. "We can

walk down together." "Right, Jess. Jessica--sorry." "You _have_

confirmed our reservation, haven't you, Richard." "Yes," lied Richard

earnestly. The other line on his phone had begun to ring. "Jessica, look, I .

. . " "Good," said Jessica, and she broke the connection. He picked up the

other line. "Hi Dick. It's me, Gary." Gary sat a few desks down from

Richard. He waved. "Are we still on for drinks? You said we could go over the

Merstham account." "Get off the bloody phone, Gary. Of course we are."

Richard put down the phone. There was a telephone number at the bottom of the

Post-it note; Richard had written the Post-it note to himself, several weeks

earlier. And he _had_ made the reservation: he was almost certain of that. But

he had not confirmed it. He had kept meaning to, but there had been so much to

do and Richard had known that there was plenty of time. But events run in

packs . . . Sylvia was now standing next to him. "Dick? The Wandsworth

report?" "Almost ready, Sylvia. Look, just hold on a sec, can you?" He

finished punching in the number, breathed a sigh of relief when somebody

answered, "Ma Maison. Can I help you?" "Yes," said Richard. "A table for

three, for tonight. I think I booked it. And if I did I'm confirming the

reservation. And if I didn't, I wondered if I could book it. Please." No, they

had no record of a table for tonight in the name of Mayhew. Or Stockton. Or

Bartram--Jessica's surname. And as for booking a table . . . It wasn't the

words that Richard found so unpleasant: it was the tone of voice in which the

information was transmitted. A table for _tonight_ should certainly have been

booked years before--perhaps, it was implied, by Richard's parents. A table

for _tonight_ was impossible: if the pope, the prime minister, and the

president of France arrived this evening without a confirmed reservation, even

they would be turned out into the street with a continental jeer. "But it's

for my fiancee's boss. I know I should have phoned before. There are only

three of us, can't you _please_ . . . " They had put down the phone.

"Richard?" said Sylvia. "The MD's waiting." "Do you think," asked Richard,

"they'd give me a table if I phoned back and offered them extra money?" In

her dream they were all together in the house. Her parents, her brother, her

baby sister. They were standing together in the ballroom, staring at her. They

were all so pale, so grave. Portia, her mother, touched her cheek and told her

that she was in danger. In her dream, Door laughed, and said she knew. Her

mother shook her head: no, no--_now_ she was in danger. _Now._ Door opened

her eyes. The door was opening, quietly, quietly; she held her breath.

Footsteps, quiet on the stone. _Perhaps he won't notice me,_ she thought.

_Perhaps he'll go away._ And then she thought, desperately, _I'm hungry._

The footsteps hesitated. She was well hidden, she knew, under a pile of

newspapers and rags. And it was possible that the intruder meant her no harm.

_Can't he hear my heartbeat?_ she thought. And then the footsteps came closer,

and she knew what she had to do, and it scared her. A hand pulled the covers

off her, and she looked up into a blank, utterly hairless face, which creased

into a vicious smile. She rolled, then, and twisted, and the knife blade,

aimed at her chest, caught her in the upper arm. Until that moment, she had

never thought she could do it. Never thought she would be brave enough, or

scared enough, or desperate enough to dare. But she reached up one hand to his

chest, and she _opened . . . _ He gasped, and tumbled onto her. It was wet

and warm and slippery, and she slithered and staggered out from under the man,

and she stumbled out of the room. She caught her breath in the tunnel

outside, narrow and low, as she fell against the wall, breathing in gasps and

sobs. That had taken the last of her strength; now she was spent. Her shoulder

was beginning to throb. _The knife,_ she thought. But she was safe. "My, oh

my," said a voice from the darkness on her right. "She survived Mister Ross.

Well I never, Mister Vandemar." The voice oozed. It sounded like gray slime.

"Well I never either, Mister Croup," said a flat voice on her left. A light

was kindled and flickered. "Still," said Mr. Croup, his eyes gleaming in the

dark beneath the earth, "she won't survive us." Door kneed him, hard, in

the groin: and then she pushed herself forward, her right hand holding her

left shoulder. And she ran. "Dick?" Richard waved away the

interruption. Life was almost under his control, now. Just a little more time

. . . Gary said his name again. "Dick? It's six-thirty." "It's _what_?"

Papers and pens and spreadsheets and trolls were tumbled into Richard's

briefcase. He snapped it shut and ran. He pulled his coat on as he went.

Gary was following. "Are we going to have that drink, then?" Richard paused

for a moment. If ever, he decided, they made disorganization an Olympic sport,

he could be disorganized for Britain. "Gary," he said, "I'm sorry. I blew it.

I have to see Jessica tonight. We're taking her boss out to dinner."

"Mister Stockton? Of Stocktons? _The_ Stockton?" Richard nodded. They hurried

down the stairs. "I'm sure you'll have fun," said Gary, insincerely. "And how

is the Creature from the Black Lagoon?" "Jessica's from Ilford, actually,

Gary. And she remains the light and love of my life, thank you very much for

asking." They reached the lobby, and Richard made a dash for the automatic

doors, which spectacularly failed to open. "It's after six, Mister Mayhew,"

said Mr. Figgis, the building's security guard. "You have to sign out." "I

don't need this," said Richard to no one in particular, "I really don't."

Mr. Figgis smelled vaguely of medicinal liniment and was widely rumored to

have an encyclopedic collection of soft-core pornography. He guarded the doors

with a diligence that bordered upon madness, never quite having lived down the

evening when an entire floor's worth of computer equipment upped and left,

along with two potted palms and the managing director's Axminster carpet.

"So our drink's off, then?" "I'm sorry, Gary. Is Monday okay for you?"

"Sure. Monday's fine. See you Monday." Mr. Figgis inspected their

signatures and satisfied himself they had no computers, potted palms, or

carpets about their persons, then he pressed a button under his desk, and the

door slid open. "Doors," said Richard. The underway branched and

divided; she picked her way at random, ducking through tunnels, running and

stumbling and weaving. Behind her strolled Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, as

calmly and cheerfully as Victorian dignitaries visiting the Crystal Palace

exhibition. When they arrived at a crossroads, Mr. Croup would kneel and find

the nearest spot of blood, and they would follow it. They were like hyenas,

exhausting their prey. They could wait. They had all the time in the world.

Luck was with Richard, for a change. He caught a black taxi, driven by an

elderly man who took Richard home by an unlikely route involving streets

Richard had never before seen, while holding forth, as Richard had discovered

all London taxi drivers will hold forth--given a living, breathing,

English-speaking passenger--on London's inner-city traffic problems, how best

to deal with crime, and thorny political issues of the day. Richard jumped out

of the cab, left a tip and his briefcase behind, managed to flag down the cab

again before it made it into the main road and so got his briefcase back, then

he ran up the stairs and into his apartment. He was already shedding clothes

as he entered the hall: his briefcase spun across the room and crash-landed on

the sofa; he took his keys from his pocket and placed them carefully on the

hall table, in order to ensure he did not forget them. Then he dashed into

the bedroom. The buzzer sounded. Richard, three-quarters of the way into his

best suit, launched himself at the speaker. "Richard? It's Jessica. I hope

you're ready." "Oh. Yes. Be right, down." He pulled on a coat, and he ran,

slamming the door behind him. Jessica was waiting for him at the bottom of the

stairs. She always waited for him there. Jessica didn't like Richard's

apartment: it made her feel uncomfortably female. There was always the chance

of finding a pair of Richard's underwear, well, anywhere, not to mention the

wandering lumps of congealed toothpaste on the bathroom sink: no, it was not

Jessica's kind of place. Jessica was very beautiful; so much so Richard

would occasionally find himself staring at her, wondering, _how did she end up

with me?_ And when they made love--which they did at Jessica's apartment in

fashionable Kensington, in Jessica's brass bed with the crisp white linen

sheets (for Jessica's parents had told her that down comforters were

decadent)--in the darkness, afterwards, she would hold him very tightly, and

her long brown curls would tumble over his chest, and she would whisper to him

how much she loved him, and he would tell her he loved her and always wanted

to be with her, and they both believed it to be true. "Bless me, Mister

Vandemar. She's slowing up." "Slowing up, Mister Croup." "She must be

losing a lot of blood, Mister V." "Lovely blood, Mister C. Lovely wet

blood," "Not long now." A click: the sound of a switchblade opening,

empty and lonely and dark. "Richard? What are you doing?" asked Jessica.

"Nothing, Jessica." "You haven't forgotten your keys again, have you?"

"No, Jessica." Richard stopped patting himself and pushed his hands deep into

the pockets of his coat. "Now, when you meet Mister Stockton tonight," said

Jessica, "you have to appreciate that he's not just a very important man. He's

also a corporate entity in his own right." "I can't wait," sighed Richard.

"What was that, Richard?" "I can't wait," said Richard, rather more

enthusiastically. "Oh, please hurry up," said Jessica, who was beginning to

exude an aura of what, in a lesser woman, might almost have been described as

nerves. "We mustn't keep Mister Stockton waiting." "No, Jess." "Don't

call me that, Richard. I loathe pet names. They're so demeaning." "Spare

any change?" The man sat in a doorway. His beard was yellow and gray, and his

eyes were sunken and dark. A hand-lettered sign hung from a piece of frayed

string around his neck and rested on his chest, telling anyone with the eyes

to read it that he was homeless and hungry. It didn't take a sign to tell you

that; Richard, hand already in his pocket, fumbled for a coin. "Richard. We

haven't got the time," said Jessica, who gave to charity and invested

ethically. "Now, I do want you to make a good impression, fiance-wise. It is

vital that a future spouse makes a good impression." And then her face

creased, and she hugged him for a moment, and said, "Oh, Richard. I _do_ love

you. You do know that, don't you?" And Richard nodded, and he did.

Jessica checked her watch and increased her pace. Richard discreetly flicked a

pound coin back through the air toward the man in the doorway, who caught it

in one grimy hand. "There wasn't any problem with the reservations, was

there?" asked Jessica. And Richard, who was not much good at lying when faced

with a direct question, said, "Ah." She had chosen wrongly--the corridor

ended in a blank wall. Normally that would hardly have given her pause, but

she was so tired, so hungry, in so much pain . . . She leaned against the

wall, feeling the brick's roughness against her face. She was gulping breath,

hiccuping and sobbing. Her arm was cold, and her left hand was numb. She could

go no farther, and the world was beginning to feel very distant. She wanted to

stop, to lie down, and to sleep for a hundred years. "Oh, bless my little

black soul, Mister Vandemar, do you see what I see?" The voice was soft,

close: they must have been nearer to her than she had imagined. "I spy, with

my little eye, something that's going to be--" "Dead in a minute, Mister

Croup," said the flat voice, from above her. "Our principal will be

delighted." And the girl pulled whatever she could find deep inside her

soul, from all the pain, and the hurt, and the fear. She was spent, burnt out,

and utterly exhausted. She had nowhere to go, no power left, no time. "If it's

the last door I open," she prayed, silently, to the Temple, to the Arch.

"Somewhere . . . anywhere . . . _safe_ . . . " and then she thought, wildly,

_"Somebody."_ And, as she began to pass out, she tried to open a door.

As the darkness took her, she heard Mr. Croup's voice, as if from a long way

away. It said, "Bugger and blast." Jessica and Richard walked down the

sidewalk toward the restaurant. She had her arm through his, and was walking

as fast as her heels permitted. He hurried to keep up. Streetlights and the

fronts of closed stores illuminated their path. They passed a stretch of tall,

looming buildings, abandoned and lonely, bounded by a high brick wall. "You

are honestly telling me you had to promise them an extra fifty pounds for our

table tonight? You are an idiot, Richard," said Jessica, her dark eyes

flashing. "They had lost my reservation. And they said all the tables were

booked." Their steps echoed off the high walls. "They'll probably have us

sitting by the kitchen," said Jessica. "Or the door. Did you tell them it was

for Mister Stockton?" "Yes," replied Richard. Jessica sighed. She

continued to drag him along, as a door opened in the wall, a little way ahead

of them. Someone stepped out and stood swaying for one long terrible moment,

and then collapsed to the concrete. Richard shivered and stopped in his

tracks. Jessica tugged him into motion. "Now, when you're talking to Mister

Stockton, you must make sure you don't interrupt him. Or disagree with him--he

doesn't like to be disagreed with. When he makes a joke, laugh. If you're in

any doubt as to whether or not he's made a joke, look at me. I'll . . . mm,

tap my forefinger." They had reached the person on the sidewalk. Jessica

stepped over the crumpled form. Richard hesitated. "Jessica?" "You're

right. He might think I'm bored," she mused. "I know," she said brightly, "if

he makes a joke, I'll rub my earlobe." "Jessica?" He could hot believe that

she was simply ignoring the figure at their feet. "What?" She was not

pleased to be jerked out of her reverie. "Look." He pointed to the

sidewalk. The person was face down, and enveloped in bulky clothes; Jessica

took his arm and tugged him toward her. "Oh. I see. If you pay them any

attention, Richard, they'll walk all over you. They all have homes, really.

Once she's slept it off, I'm sure she'll be fine." _She?_ Richard looked down.

It _was_ a girl. Jessica continued, "Now, I've told Mister Stockton that we .

. . " Richard was down on one knee. "Richard? What are you doing?" "She

isn't drunk," said Richard. "She's hurt." He looked at his fingertips. "She's

bleeding." Jessica looked down at him, nervous and puzzled. "We're going to

be late," she pointed out. "She's _hurt_." Jessica looked back at the

girl on the sidewalk. Priorities: Richard had no priorities. "Richard. We're

going to be late. Someone else will be along; someone else will help her."

The girl's face was crusted with dirt, and her clothes were wet with blood.

"She's hurt," he said, simply. There was an expression on his face that

Jessica hadn't seen before. "Richard," she warned, and then she relented, a

little, and offered a compromise. "Dial 999 and call an ambulance then.

Quickly, now." Suddenly the girl's eyes opened, white and wide in a face

that was little more than a smudge of dust and blood. "Not a hospital, please.

They'll find me. Take me somewhere safe. Please." Her voice was weak.

"You're bleeding," said Richard. He looked to see where she had come from, but

the wall was blank and brick and unbroken. He looked back to her still form,

and asked, "Why not a hospital?" "Help me?" the girl whispered and her eyes

closed. Again he asked her, "Why don't you want to go to the hospital?"

This time there was no answer at all. "When you call the ambulance," said

Jessica, "don't give your name. You might have to make a statement or

something, and then we'd be late . . . Richard? What are you doing?"

Richard had picked the girl up, cradling her in his arms. She was surprisingly

light. "I'm taking her back to my place, Jess. I can't just leave her. Tell

Mister Stockton I'm really sorry, but it was an emergency. I'm sure he'll

understand." "Richard Oliver Mayhew," said Jessica, coldly. "You put that

girl down and come back here this minute. Or this engagement is at an end as

of now. I'm warning you." Richard felt the sticky warmth of blood soaking

into his shirt. Sometimes, he realized, there is nothing you can do. He walked

away, leaving behind Jessica, who stood there on the sidewalk, her eyes stung

with tears. Richard did not, at any point on his walk, stop to think. It

was not something over which he had any volition. Somewhere in the sensible

part of his head, someone--a normal, sensible Richard Mayhew-- was telling him

how ridiculous he was being: that he should just have called the police, or an

ambulance; that it was dangerous to lift an injured person; that he had

really, seriously upset Jessica; that he was going to have to sleep on the

sofa tonight; that he was ruining his only really good suit; that the girl

smelled terrible . . . but Richard found himself placing one foot in front of

the other, and, arms cramping and back hurting, ignoring the looks he got from

passers-by, he just kept walking. And after a while he was at the ground floor

door of his building, and he was stumbling up the staircase, and then he was

standing in front of the door to his apartment and realizing that he had left

his keys on the hall table, inside . . . The girl reached out one filthy

hand to the door, and it swung open. _Never thought I'd be pleased that the

door hadn't latched properly,_ thought Richard, and he carried the girl

in--closing the door behind him with his foot-- and put her down on his bed.

His shirtfront was soaked in blood. She seemed semiconscious; her eyes were

closed, but fluttering. He peeled off her leather jacket. There was a long cut

on her left upper arm and shoulder. Richard caught his breath. "Look, I'm

going to call a doctor," he said quietly. "Can you hear me?" Her eyes

opened, wide and scared. "Please, no. It'll be fine.'It's not as bad as it

looks. I just need sleep. No doctors." "But your arm--your shoulder--"

"I'll be fine. Tomorrow. Please?" It was little more than a whisper. "Um, I

suppose, all right," and with sanity beginning to assert itself, he said,

"Look, can I ask--?" But she was asleep. Richard took an old scarf from his

closet and wrapped it firmly around her left upper arm and shoulder; he did

not want her to bleed to death on his bed before he could get her to a doctor.

And then he tiptoed out of his bedroom and shut the door behind him. He sat

down on the sofa, in front of the television, and wondered what he had

done.TWO _He is somewhere deep beneath the ground: in a tunnel, perhaps, or

a sewer. Light comes in flickers, defining the darkness, not dispelling it. He

is not alone. There are other people walking beside him, although he cannot

see their faces. They are running, now, through the inside of the sewer,

splashing through the mud and filth. Droplets of water fall slowly through the

air, crystal clear in the darkness._ _He turns a corner, and the beast is

waiting for him._ _It is huge. It fills the space of the sewer: massive

head down, bristled body and breath steaming in the chill of the air. Some

kind of boar, he thinks at first, and then realizes that no boar could be so

huge. It is the size of a bull, of a tiger, of an ox._ _It stares at him,

and it pauses for a hundred years, while he lifts his spear. He glances at his

hand, holding the spear, and observes that it is not his hand: the arm is

furred with dark hair, the nails are almost claws._ _And then the beast

charges._ _He throws his spear, but it is already too late, and he feels

the beast slice his side with razor-sharp tusks, feels his life slip away into

the mud: and he realizes he has fallen face down into the water, which

crimsons in thick swirls of suffocating blood. And he tries so to scream, he

tries to wake up, but he can breathe only mud and blood and water, he can feel

only pain_ . . . "Bad dream?" asked the girl. Richard sat up on the

couch, gasping for breath. The curtains were still drawn, the lights and the

television still on, but he could tell, from the pale light coming in through

the cracks, that it was morning. He fumbled on the couch for the remote

control, which had wedged itself into the small of his back during the night,

and he turned off the television. "Yes," he said. "Sort of." He wiped

away the sleep from his eyes and took stock of himself, pleased to notice that

he had at least taken off his shoes and jacket before he had fallen asleep.

His shirtfront was covered with dried blood and with dirt. The homeless girl

didn't say anything. She looked bad: pale, beneath the grime and brown dried

blood, and small. She was dressed in a variety of clothes thrown over each

other: odd clothes, dirty velvets, muddy lace, rips and holes through which

other layers and styles could be seen. She looked, Richard thought, as if

she'd done a midnight raid on the History of Fashion section of the Victoria

and Albert Museum, and was still wearing everything she'd taken. Her short

hair was filthy, but looked like it might have been a dark reddish color under

the dirt. "You're awake," said Richard. "Whose barony is this?" asked

the girl. "Whose fiefdom?" "Um. Sorry?" She looked around her

suspiciously. "Where am I?" "Newton Mansions, Little Comden Street . . . "

He stopped. She had opened the curtains, blinking at the cold daylight. The

girl stared out at the rather ordinary view from Richard's window, astonished,

peering wide-eyed at the cars and the buses and the tiny sprawl of shops--a

bakery, a drugstore and a liquor store--below them. "I'm in London Above,"

she said, in a small voice. "Yes, you're in London," said Richard. _Above

what?_ he wondered. "I think maybe you were in shock or something last night.

That is a nasty cut on your arm." He waited for her to say something, to

explain. She glanced at him, and then looked back down at the buses and the

shops. Richard continued: "I, um, found you on the pavement. There was a lot

of blood." "Don't worry," she said, seriously. "Most of the blood was

someone else's." She let the curtain fall back. Then she began to unwrap

the scarf, now bloodstained and crusted, from her arm. She examined the cut

and made a face. "We're going to have to do something about this," she said.

"Do you want to give me a hand?" Richard was beginning to feel a little out

of his depth. "I don't really know too much about first aid," he said.

"Well," she said, "if you're really squeamish you only have to hold the

bandages and tie the ends where I can't reach. You do have bandages, don't

you?" Richard nodded. "Oh yes," he said. "In the first aid kit. In the

bathroom. Under the sink." And then he went into his bedroom and changed his

clothes, wondering whether the mess on his shirt (his best shirt, bought for

him by, oh God, Jessica, she would have a _fit_) would ever come off. The

bloody water reminded him of something, some kind of dream he had once had,

perhaps, but he could no longer, for the life of him, remember exactly what.

He pulled the plug, let the water out of the sink, and filled it with clean

water again, to which he added a cloudy splash of liquid disinfectant: the

sharp antiseptic smell seemed so utterly sensible and medicinal, a remedy for

the oddness of his situation, and his visitor. The girl leaned over the sink,

and he splashed warm water over her arm and shoulder. Richard was never as

squeamish as he thought he was. Or rather, he was squeamish when it came to

blood on screen: a good zombie movie or even an explicit medical drama would

leave him huddled in a corner, hyperventilating, with his hands over his eyes,

muttering things like "Just tell me when it's over." But when it came to real

blood, real pain, he simply did something about it. They cleaned out the

cut--which was much less severe than Richard remembered it from the night

before--and bandaged it up, and the girl did her very best not to wince in the

process. And Richard found himself wondering how old she was, and what she

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NeverwhereNeilGaiman----------IhaveneverbeentoSt.John'sWood.Idarenot.Ishouldbeafraidoftheinnumerablenightoffirtrees,afraidtocomeuponabloodredcupandthebearingofthewingsoftheEagle.--_TheNapoleonofNettingHill_,G.K.ChestertonIfeverthougavesthosenorshoonTheneverynightandallSitthoudownandputthemonAndChris...

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Neil Gaiman - Neverwhere

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