Simon R. Green - Nightside 1 - Drinking Midnight Wine

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DRINKING MIDNIGHT WINE

SIMON R. GREEN

Bradford-on-Avon is a real town, with a real history.

Most of the places described in this book really exist,

as does much of the history.

Anything else...

There is a world beyond the world; a place of magics and mysteries, evils and enchantments,

marvels and wonders. And you are never more than a breath away from all of it. Open the right

door, walk down the wrong street, and you can find waiting for you every dream you ever had,

including all the bad ones. Secrets and mysteries will open themselves to you, if something more

or less than human doesn't find you first. Magic is real, and so are gods and monsters.

There is a world beyond the world. But some things never change.

ONE

WHEN LIVES COLLIDE

Bradford-on-Avon is an old town, and not all of its ghosts sleep the sleep of the just. Nestled in

the rolling hills and valleys of the county of Wiltshire, in the ancient heart of the south-west

of England, many kinds of people have lived in Bradford-on-Avon down the centuries, and some of

their past deeds live on to trouble the present. The Romans have been here, and the Celts and the

Saxons and the Normans. And other, stranger folk, less willing to be recorded in official

histories. In this small county town, far and far from the seat of those who like to think they

run things, the fate of two worlds will be decided, by one ordinary man who dares to love a woman

who is so much more than she seems.

She was there on the train again that evening, in her usual seat - the woman with the most perfect

mouth in the world. Not too wide and not too small, not too thin and not full with the artificial

plumpness of injected collagen or surgically implanted tissues from cows' buttocks. Just a

wonderfully warm and inviting mouth, exactly the right shade of deep red that made the fuller

lower lip look soft and tender and touchable. Toby Dexter wasn't usually preoccupied with mouths,

as opposed to the more prominent curves of a woman's body, but there was something special about

this one, and he liked to look at it and wonder what it might sound like, if he ever worked up the

courage to introduce himself and start up a conversation.

Toby was travelling home from work on the 18.05 train, heading back to Bradford-on-Avon after a

hard day's work in the famous Georgian city of Bath. It was a tribute to that city's relentless

public relations machine that he always added the prefix Georgian whenever he thought of Bath,

though the city was of course much older. The Romans built their famous baths there, that still

stand today. They did other things there too, some of them quite appalling, in the name of the

Serpent's Son; but you won't hear about those from the tourist board. Georgian society made

visiting the baths the very height of fashion, and that was what people preferred to remember now.

The past is what we make it, if we know what's good for us. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-

first century, Bath is a busy, bustling, prosperous modern city, and Toby was always glad to see

the back of it.

The early-evening train was crowded as always, all the seats occupied and all the aisles blocked,

carrying tired commuters home to Freshford, Avoncliff, Bradford-on-Avon and Trowbridge. Packed

shoulder to shoulder, perched on hard seats or leaning against the closed automatic doors, men and

women forced into physical proximity concentrated on reading their books and magazines and evening

papers, so they wouldn't have to talk to each other. The seats were fiendishly uncomfortable:

there was no room to stretch your legs, and anyone who felt like swinging a cat would have clubbed

half a dozen people to death before he'd even managed a decent wind-up. It was a hot and sweaty

summer evening, and the interior of the long carriage was like a steam bath. Toby didn't think

he'd mention it to Great Western Railways. They'd just call it a design feature, and charge him

extra for the privilege.

Toby was pretending to read an unauthorised X-Files tie-in edition of dubious veracity and

unconcealed paranoia, while secretly studying the woman with the perfect mouth who sat opposite

him. He didn't have the energy to concentrate on the book anyway. He'd been on his feet all day,

and the constant rocking back and forth of the carriage was almost enough to lull him to sleep,

safe in the arms of the train, but he fought it off. Dozing on a train always left him with a

stiff neck and a dry mouth, and there was always the danger he'd sleep past his stop. And you

couldn't rely on any of this bunch to wake you up. Toby looked briefly around him at the neat men

in their neat suits, with bulging briefcases and tightly knotted ties, no doubt listlessly

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considering another endless day of shuffling papers from one pile to another... and sometimes back

again. Deadly dull people leading deadly dull lives... Toby envied all of them because at least

they had some kind of purpose.

Toby worked at Gandalf's bookshop, right in the busy centre of Bath. He was officially in charge

of the Crime & Thrillers section, but really he was just a shop assistant with a few extra duties.

It wasn't a bad place to work. The other assistants were pleasant company, and the shop itself was

full of interesting nooks and crannies and intriguing out-of-print treasures. Gandalf's consisted

of four sprawling floors, connected by old, twisting stairways and the occasional hidden passage.

It was an old building, possibly even Georgian, with many unexpected draughts, and floors that

creaked loudly as you walked on them, despite the thick carpeting. And everywhere you went, there

was the comforting smell of books; of paper and glue and musky leather bindings, of history and

dreams compressed into handy volumes.

Every wall was covered with shelves, packed tightly with books on every subject under the sun, and

a few best not mentioned in polite company. There were standing displays and dump bins and

revolving wire stands, filled with more knowledge, entertainment and general weird shit than any

man could read in one lifetime. Gandalf's prided itself on catering for every taste and interest,

from the latest paperback best-sellers to obscure philosophical discourses bound in goatskin. From

science to mysticism, Gothic romances to celebrity biographies, from aromatherapy to creative

knitting to erotic feng shui, you could be sure of finding something unexpected in every genre, on

any subject.

Gandalf's had books on everything, including a few it shouldn't. The shop's owner was fearless,

and would stock anything he thought people wanted. There'd been a certain amount of controversial

publicity just recently, when the owner refused to stop stocking the new English translation of

the infamous Necronomicon, even though it was officially banned. Toby didn't care; he'd already

survived far greater scandals over selling copies of Spycatcher and The Satanic Verses. He'd

flipped briefly through the Necronomicon, just out of curiosity, but found the dry prose style

unreadable and the illustrations frankly baffling. People were still paying twenty quid a copy

though, proof if proof were needed that you could sell absolutely anything if people thought they

weren't supposed to be reading it. He'd been much more taken with The Joy of Frogs, a sex manual

where all the illustrations featured cartoon frogs going at it in unusual and inventive ways. Some

customer had ordered the book over the phone, but so far hadn't worked up enough courage to come

in and pick it up. Just as well, really - the shop's staff had pretty much worn the book out

between them. One had even made notes. The real money still came from the never-ending turnover of

brand-name best-sellers: Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, J. K. Rowling and whoever the hell it was

who wrote those marvellous children's fantasies about Bruin Bear and the Sea Goat.

The only thing Toby really disliked about his current occupation was having to get up so damned

early in the morning. He lived alone, in a characterless semi-detached he'd inherited from an

uncle, and most mornings his bed felt like a womb. He'd had to put his alarm clock on the other

side of the room, so he'd be forced to get up out of bed to turn it off. So; up at seven a.m. to

catch the train at eight, in order to get to work at nine. No doubt there were those who had to

get up even earlier, but Toby preferred not to think about them because it interfered with his

self-pity. Shit, shower and shave, not necessarily in that order, grab the nearest clothes and

then downstairs to breakfast. A quick bowl of All-Bran (motto: eat our cereal and the world will

fall out of your bottom), two large cups of black coffee, and then out of the house and down

through the town to the railway station, with eyes still defiantly half closed. The body might be

up and about, but the brain still wasn't ready to commit itself.

Though he'd never admit it, Toby quite liked walking through the town first thing in the morning.

Down the seemingly endless Trow-bridge Road, with its ranks of terraced houses with their bulging

bay windows and gabled roofs on one side and old stone houses on the other, each one almost

bursting with proud individuality. The street was mostly empty that early in the day, and there

was hardly any traffic as yet. The town was still waking up, and only early risers like Toby

Dexter got to see her with a cigarette in the corner of her mouth and no make-up on. Down the hill

and turn sharp left, past the old almshouses, and there was the railway station, supposedly

his mind. So far it had successfully resisted all attempts at modernisation, and the small monitor

screens offering up-to-date train information had been carefully tucked away in corners so as not

to detract from the building's ambience. The occasional deadly dull lives... Toby envied all of

them because at least they had some kind of purpose.

Toby worked at Gandalf's bookshop, right in the busy centre of Bath. He was officially in charge

of the Crime & Thrillers section, but really he was just a shop assistant with a few extra duties.

It wasn't a bad place to work. The other assistants were pleasant company, and the shop itself was

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full of interesting nooks and crannies and intriguing out-of-print treasures. Gandalf's consisted

of four sprawling floors, connected by old, twisting stairways and the occasional hidden passage.

It was an old building, possibly even Georgian, with many unexpected draughts, and floors that

creaked loudly as you walked on them, despite the thick carpeting. And everywhere you went, there

was the comforting smell of books; of paper and glue and musky leather bindings, of history and

dreams compressed into handy volumes.

Every wall was covered with shelves, packed tightly with books on every subject under the sun, and

a few best not mentioned in polite company. There were standing displays and dump bins and

revolving wire stands, filled with more knowledge, entertainment and general weird shit than any

man could read in one lifetime. Gandalf's prided itself on catering for every taste and interest,

from the latest paperback best-sellers to obscure philosophical discourses bound in goatskin. From

science to mysticism, Gothic romances to celebrity biographies, from aromatherapy to creative

knitting to erotic feng shui, you could be sure of finding something unexpected in every genre, on

any subject.

The station's general elegance and smug solidity was entirely lost on Toby, who tended to stand on

the platform like one of George Romero's zombies, all dull-eyed and listless. Most mornings he had

to be nudged awake to get on the train when it arrived, sometimes on time, and sometimes not. It

all depended on how the train company felt about it. And if you didn't like it, you were of course

free to take your custom to some other train company. Except that there wasn't another train

company.

By the time the train lurched into Bath, the city was already wide awake and bustling with eager,

impatient people hurrying to their jobs, positively radiating motivation and can-do. Toby tried

not to look at them. He found them depressing beyond words. The streets were crowded, and the

roads were packed bumper to bumper with snarling, cursing commuter traffic. At this time of the

day, the air was so thick with pollution that even the pigeons were coughing, and the noise level

was appalling. Head down, shoulders hunched, Toby trudged through the din, wearing his best get-

out-of-my-way-or-I'll-kill-you look.

Toby didn't care for cities. They had far too much personality, like a bully forever punching you

on the arm to get your attention. Toby had spent three years living in the East End of London,

back when he was a student; an area that would have profited greatly from a heavily armed UN

peacekeeping force. Lacking the funds necessary to reach the more civilised areas of London, Toby

endured three very long years to get his BA (English Literature and Philosophy, Joint Honours) and

then ran back to his home town at the first opportunity. Cities crammed too many people together

in too confined a space, and then the powers that be wondered why people fought each other all the

time. Toby thought cities were like natural disasters; enjoyable only if viewed from a safe

distance. Bath, for example, had interesting places to look at like a dog has fleas, but for the

most part Toby couldn't be bothered to fight his way through the crowds to get to them.

Toby had worked in Bath for over a year, but had never once considered moving there to live.

By the time he got to Gandalf's, ready for the great unlocking at nine a.m., Toby was usually

awake enough to know where he was, but not nearly together enough to interact with customers, so

the other staff usually provided him with useful, mindless activities to occupy him until he was

fully conscious. 'Carry these boxes down into the cellar. Carry these boxes up from the cellar.

Plug in this hoover and follow it around for a while.'

Toby quite liked working in the bookshop. Stacking shelves appealed to his sense of order, and he

liked dealing with customers, even the ones who came in ten minutes before closing time looking

for a book, but couldn't remember the title or the author's name, though they were almost sure

they could describe the cover... But at the end of each and every day he was still just a shop

assistant; another faceless drone in the great hive of the city, doing the same things over and

over, achieving nothing, creating nothing. Every day was just like every other day, and always

would be, world without end, amen, amen.

Toby had just turned thirty-three, and he resented it deeply. He didn't feel old, far from it; but

his youth, supposedly the most promising part of his life, was now officially over. When he was

younger, he'd always thought he'd have his life sorted out by the time he was thirty, that all the

important decisions would be made by then. He'd have a chosen career, a wife and kids and a

mortgage, just like everyone else. He'd have worked out who he was, and what he wanted out of

life. But thirty came round as just another year, just another birthday, and brought no special

wisdom with it. He'd had jobs, but none of them meant anything; and girlfriends, but none of them

came to anything. He had ambition, but no focus; dreams, but no vocation. He drifted through his

days, and years, and didn't realise how much time had passed until he looked back and wondered

where it had all gone.

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Most of his contemporaries were married, usually for all the wrong reasons: companionship, regular

sex, baby on the way. Peer pressure, fears of growing old, alone. There were remarkably few great

loves or passions that Toby could detect. Some had already divorced, and were on their second or

even third marriage. Sometimes Toby felt like a late developer. But in his own quiet way he was

stubbornly romantic, and was damned if he'd marry just for the sake of getting married. It helped

that women weren't exactly beating down his door to get to him. And as for a career... Toby was

still looking for a role to play that interested him; something to live for, to give his life

purpose and meaning. He didn't know what he needed, only what he didn't want, and so he drifted

through his life, sometimes employed and sometimes not achieving nothing, going nowhere. Knowing

that his life was slipping away like sand through his fingers, but somehow unable to do anything

about it.

Toby looked at his own reflection in the carriage window, and saw only a pale face under dark

hair, with no obvious virtues; just another face in the crowd, really. He wore a rumpled jacket

over T-shirt and jeans, the official uniform of the anonymous, and even his T-shirt had nothing to

say.

He looked through the carriage window at the passing countryside, stretched lazily out under the

dull amber glow of the lowering sun. Summer was mostly over now, and heading into autumn, and

already the countryside was unhurriedly shutting up shop for winter. But still, it was home, and

Toby found its familiar sights comforting. There were wide woods and green fields, and the River

Avon curling its long slow way towards the town. There were swans on the river, white and perfect

and utterly serene, moving gracefully, always in pairs because swans mated for life. They

studiously ignored the crowds of chattering ducks, raucous and uncouth, darting back and forth on

urgent errands of no importance to anyone except themselves, and perhaps not even to them. Ducks

just liked to keep busy. Every now and again a rowing team would come sculling up the river, the

long wooden oars swinging back and forth like slow-motion wings, and the swans and the ducks would

move ungraciously aside to let them pass. The rowers never looked up. Heads down, arms and lungs

heaving; all effort and concentration and perspiration, too preoccupied with healthy exercise and

beating their own times to notice the calm beauty and heart's-ease of their surroundings.

There were animals in the fields. Cows and sheep and sometimes horses, and, if you looked closely,

rabbits too. And the occasional fox, of course. Giving birth, living, dying, over and over and

over; Nature's ancient order continuing on as it had for countless centuries. Seasons changed, the

world turned and everything old was made new again, in spring. And everywhere you looked, there

were the trees. Not as many as there once were, of course. The ancient primal forests of England's

dark green past were long gone. Felled down the years to make ships and towns and homes, or just

to clear the land for crops and livestock. But still many trees survived, in woods and copses, or

slender lines of windbreaks; tall dark shapes, glowering on the horizon, standing out starkly

against the last light of day.

A single magpie, jet of black and pure of white, hopped across a field, and Toby tugged

automatically at his forelock and muttered, 'Evening, Mr Magpie', an old charm, to ward off bad

luck. Everyone knew the old rhyme: One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a

boy... Toby usually got lost after that, but it didn't really matter. It was a rare day when you

saw more than four magpies at once. Toby watched the countryside pass, and found what little peace

of mind he ever knew in contemplating the land's never-ending cycle. The trees and the fields and

the animals had all been there before him, and would still be there long after he was gone; and

some day they'd lay him to rest under the good green grass, and he'd become a part of it all. And

then maybe he'd understand what it had all been for.

The train paused briefly at the request stop for Avoncliff, a very short platform with stern Do

Not Alight Here signs at both ends, just in case you were too dim to notice that there was nothing

there for you to step out onto. The usual few got off. There was never anyone waiting to get on,

at this time of day. The train gathered up its strength and plunged on, heading for Bradford-on-

Avon like a horse scenting its stables. Toby closed his paperback and stuffed it into his jacket

pocket. Not long now; almost home. He felt tired and heavy and sweaty, and his feet ached inside

his cheap shoes, already on their second set of heels. He looked out of the window, and there, on

the very edge of town, was Blackacre. An old name and not a pleasant one, for a seventeenth-

century farmhouse and surrounding lands, all set within an ancient circle of dark trees, cutting

Blackacre off from the rest of the world - dead land, and dead trees.

A long time ago, something happened in that place, but few now remembered what or when or why. The

old farmhouse stood empty and abandoned, in the centre of a wide circle of dead ground, on which

nothing grew and in which nothing could thrive. The deep thickets of spiky trees were all dead

too, never knowing leaves or bloom, scorched long ago by some terrible heat. Animals would not go

near the area, and it was said and believed by many that even the birds and insects went out of

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their way to avoid flying over Blackacre. Local gossip had it that the house and the land had a

new owner, the latest of many, probably full of big-city ideas on how to reclaim the land and make

it prosper again, to succeed where so many others had failed. Toby smiled tiredly. Some things

should be left alone as a bad job. Whatever poor fool had been conned into buying the place would

soon discover the truth the hard way. Blackacre was a money pit, a bottomless well you threw money

into. Dead was dead, and best left undisturbed.

Sometimes the local kids would venture into the dark woods on a dare, but no one ever went near

the farmhouse. Local builders wouldn't have anything to do with the place either. Everyone knew

the stories, the old stories handed down from father to son, not as entertainment but as a

warning. Bad things happened to those who dared disturb Blackacre's sullen rest.

Which made it all the more surprising when Toby suddenly realised that there were lights in some

of the windows of Blackacre Farm. He pressed his face close to the carriage window, and watched

intently as a dull yellow glow moved steadily from one upper-floor window to the next. Some damned

fool must actually be staying there, in a rotten old building without power or heat or water. Toby

shivered for a moment, though he couldn't have said why. A dark figure appeared against a lit

window. It stood very still, and Toby had a sudden horrid feeling that it was watching him, just

as he was watching it. And then the light went out, and the figure was gone, and Blackacre Farm

was dark and still again.

Toby's upper lip was wet with sweat, and he brushed at it with a finger before settling back into

his uncomfortably hard seat. He would soon be at his stop, and he wanted one last look at the

woman sitting opposite him. She was reading The Times with great concentration, the broadsheet

newspaper spread wide to put a barrier between herself and the world. In all the time they'd

travelled on the same train, Toby had never seen the woman speak to anyone. Most of The Times's

front page was given over to a story about unusual new conditions on the surface of the sun. Toby

squinted a little so he could read the text of the story without having to lean forward.

Apparently of late a series of solar flares had been detected leaping out from the sun's surface;

the largest and most powerful flares since records began. There seemed no end to these flares,

which were already playing havoc with the world's weather and communications systems. Toby smiled.

If the flares hadn't been screwing up everyone's television reception, such a story would never

have made the front page. People only ever really cared about science when it bit them on the

arse.

He looked away, and surreptitiously studied the woman's face, reflected in the carriage window

beside her. She was frowning slightly as she read, her perfect mouth slightly pursed. Not for the

time first, Toby thought she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. She had a classic face,

with a strong bone structure and high cheekbones, and a great mane of jet-black hair fell in waves

well past her shoulders. Her eyes were dark too, under heavy eyebrows, and her nose was just

prominent enough to give character to her face without being distracting. For all her serious

expression, there was still a smile tucked in one corner of her perfect mouth, almost in spite of

herself.

She wore a pale blue suit, expertly cut but just short of power dressing, with the kind of quiet

elegance that just shrieks money. There was no jewellery, no wedding ring. Looking at her was like

diving into a deep pool of cool, clear water. Hard to tell her age. She was young, but still very

much a woman rather than a girl, and there was something about her eyes that suggested she'd seen

a thing or two in her time. Her fingers were long and slender, crinkling the edges of her

newspaper where she held it firmly. Toby wondered what it would feel like, to be held firmly by

those hands.

She changed her outfits regularly, and never looked less than stunning. But no one ever hit on

her. No one ever tried to chat her up, or impress her with their charm and style, the kind of

stuff attractive women always had to put up with, even if they wore a large sign saying, 'Go away;

I have Aids, leprosy and the Venusian dick rot, and besides I'm a lesbian'. Men would always try

it on. Except no one ever did, with her. Toby could understand that. He'd been secretly admiring

her for months, and still hadn't worked up the courage to talk to her.

Sometimes he thought of her as the Ice Queen, from the old children's story. In the fairy tale, a

boy looked at the distant and beautiful Ice Queen, and a sliver of her ice flew into his eye. And

from that moment on, he had no choice but to love her with all his heart, come what may. Toby was

pretty sure the story ended badly for both the boy and the Ice Queen, but he preferred not to

think about that. What mattered was that he and she were fated to be together. He was sure of it -

mostly. He turned away to look at his own reflection in the window next to him, and sighed

inwardly. He was hardly worthy of a queen. Hardly worthy of anything, really.

He often wondered who she was, really. What she did for a living; where she went when she left the

railway station at Bradford-on-Avon, and why he never saw her anywhere else in town. Whether there

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file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Simon%20R.%20Green%20-%20Nightside%201%20-%20Drinking%20Midnight%20Wine.txtDRINKINGMIDNIGHTWINESIMONR.GREENBradford-on-Avonisarealtown,witharealhistory.Mostoftheplacesdescribedinthisbookreallyexist,asdoesmuchofthehistory.Anythingelse...Thereisaworldbeyondtheworld;aplaceofmagicsandmysteries,evilsandenchantments,marvelsandwonders.Andyouarenevermorethanabreathawayfromallofit.Opentherightdoor,walkdownthewrongstreet,andyoucanfindwaitingforyoueverydreamyou...

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