Chapter 89: The Chamber (2)

I backed up, tripped over the kerb and staggered backwards into a man. Possibly the foulest smelling man that I have ever encountered. As I grabbed hold of him to keep myself from falling, his clothes made a sticky, squishy kind of noise.

He laughed at me, I counted maybe three teeth in his mouth and he stank of alcohol so strong that I felt myself almost becoming intoxicated from his breath alone. I staggered back and caught my hands on the stone walls that surrounded me on both sides. My eyes were stinging from the fog and from the awful cocktail of smells that assailed my consciousness. I walked along looking for some kind of chalk drawing on the floor. Something that might have told me where I was and how I might get home.

I heard a monster in the distance. It sounded huge with a vast hissed breath and a whistling sound. Then there was another screeching noise as well as the sounds of men shouting but it didn't sound like they were shouting in fear. It almost sounded as though their voices were rehearsed and considered to be normal.

A shape detached itself from the wall a bit further on. It was a woman shape although she was painfully thin. She wore a long skirt of indeterminate colour and what looked like a tight waistcoat that might once have been an expensive one although it looked a little too tight for the woman wearing it. She also wore a ridiculously small bonnet with ribbons on her head and lace gloves. She barked something at me but again I didn't recognise the words. It sounded like a question of some kind. Like the old man that I had bumped into earlier she had very few teeth and her breath smelled of rot. Her face ravaged by some disease. That or a combination of malnutrition and alcohol poisoning. She ran her hand up my chest in what I assume was a sexual way and asked me the same question again.

Without meaning to I recoiled. She, at least had seemed friendly but I couldn't help myself but to recoil from the horror that was in front of me. I recoiled and one step turned into two steps as my brain retreated from sense and I fled from the strange and alien nature of the place. The panic of not knowing where I was and how to get home was too much and I lost my mind for a bit.

I ran through the streets that seemed to be quiet to me. There were still the odd person about but they were much fewer and further between than would be found, even in the heights of Novigrad.

I didn't manage to run very far. The place stank and the poison that seemed to be in the air prevented me from drawing proper breath. I was soon gasping for air and I stumbled to halt, fell to my knee's and vomited again, this time I was vomiting up a yellow bile and what felt like the dust that I had breathed in from the air.

Vomiting is the wrong word for it, more like coughing up the poison that I was breathing in.

I looked up and I saw a grey, white haze through the fog. I climbed up to my feet and stumbled towards it to discover that it was a white building made out of some kind of stone, or whether it was whitewashed or something I don't know. For all the world it looked like a church. Very similar to the churches of the holy fire that you can find dotted around the countryside although it was far more ornate and elaborate. It seemed to have a repeated motif of a vertical cross. I stumbled up to the stone walls and put my hand out to them. They felt like they were solid stone although incredibly dirty. The entire place seemed to be covered in filth. Even I was filthy just from the short period of time that I had been there.

I shuddered.

I looked around, the fog seemed a little thinner here, as if the large white building provided some kind of shelter from the toxins that floated through the air. It looked like I was standing in a graveyard. Huge stone slabs covered every spare patch of grass. Again the cross motif was common. I walked up to the nearest one and bent to try and read what had been carved into the stone but I couldn't make it out. It seemed wrong to me. Somehow alien.

I recoiled again. I hadn't realised it but there were other people in this yard with me. Filthy children played between the stones, their eyes shrunken in filthy faces, what passed for their clothes being tied to their person with other strips of cloth and bits of string. I saw one child, couldn't have been more than eight, lift a bottle to his lips and drink deeply before passing it to his friend. He belched and then swayed in place where he sat.

Now that I looked again I could see more. More people were trying to sleep behind the graves. A man and a woman was coupling against the wall of the, presumed, church just round the corner from the entrance. His face was buried in her neck and she looked at me. She seemed to shrug at me and looked incredibly bored despite the sounds of pleasure that came from her mouth.

I turned and walked away, The little yard around the church was walled in by metal railings with surprisingly sharp spikes on although whether that was to keep people in or people out I don't know. I walked round it until I found an exit and stepped out into the street. I was weeping with a combination of the awful air that I was breathing, fear and confusion. Eventually the strength left my legs and I collapsed leaning against the wall. No longer feeling the strength to carry on..

I was there for, only a few minutes before I felt my feet being kicked. I looked up to see a large man in black standing over me. I blinked at him a few times before he gestured for me to stand up. I levered myself up and when I was approaching upright he put his hand under my arm-pit and helped me the rest of the way.

When I could look at him properly he was wearing some kind of uniform although I didn't recognise it. Black, or at least a very dark shade of blue trousers and coat that was done up with silvery buttons. He had a black belt that sat across his belly from which hung a small black club, some manacles and a long chain which was attached to something that looked like a short whistle. The belt was buckled with a large silver ornament. There was a white stripe around the sleeve and the coat had a high colour that had two pictograms on it very similar to the writing that I had seen on the grave stones.

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He was also wearing an absurd looking conical hat which again had a silver star shape fixed to the front. He said something that I didn't catch and I think I merely blinked at him stupidly. He had a scarf across his mouth which he pulled down to display a bushy moustache that looked as though it had been waxed or oiled in some way. He spoke again although I still couldn't understand him.

Another voice came out of the gloom which distracted the uniformed man as a dark shape came out. The shape resolved itself into the figure of a man who was carrying both a cane and a large cloth bag. The two men exchanged words before the second man moved close to me and clapped his hand to my shoulder in a friendly way.

“You'll have to forgive my friend.” He said and I startled as I could suddenly understand him. “He's a stranger here and we were separated at the station.” His voice sounded cultured although drawn out. As though the speaker could take their time under the surety that whoever he was talking to would have to stay and listen. As though he had time to say whatever he liked.

“Where's 'e from den?” The other man asked. Even with the change I still struggled to understand him. “Circus?”

“Ah, constable, I'm afraid not. He's from the continent come to visit and speak at the university of Cambridge and Oxford. Possibly going so far as Edinburgh.”

The other man looked at my erstwhile saviour as though he was talking about extremely remote and prestigious locations.

“Not sure I would have brought a foriner in to Whitechapel sir if you don' mind me sayin' so. Maybe King's cross might have been better.”

“Better, yes. But not as convenient.”

“Right then... Well I'll be off then.” The man tugged at the brim of his hat and walked off.

“The constablery are well meaning but they sometimes get a bit over keen.” My new companion said. “Now lets have a look at you.” I turned to stare at him. He had a heavy coat over him and detail was obscure. “Ah yes of course, “ he said. “I should have known. Here.” He bent and opened his bag from which he took a long scarf. “Tie this round your neck and use it to cover your mouth and nose. It will help until you get used to it.” Thanks for reading on ManaNovel!

I reached for the cloth but he just held it out of reach. “This is not a gift. It is a loan and I expect it back. This means that this loan is free from any obligation on your part.”

Then he handed me the scarf which I wrapped round my head as instructed.

He looked me up and down for a long moment. I struggled to focus and see if I could see his face but what wasn't obscured by the fog was obscured in a large voluminous, kind of shabby looking coat. It was an oilskin coat with one of those extra little cape things round the shoulders that northern farmers and Shepherds wear. He also had a huge hat on that looked like a chimney with a brim.

After looking at me for a moment he looked around.

“I know a charming little watering hole, not too far away from here where they serve a relatively acceptable mug of ale or a decent claret if that happens to be to your taste. I think it would be much more preferable if we had our little talk over a drink, do you not agree?”

I don't know what I was expected to say after that but he took my agreement as read and stalked off into the night. I stood there for a moment before having to scamper to catch up.

“Where are we?” I asked him as he strode off into the fog.

I thought I heard him chuckle.

“The borough of Whitechapel in the fair city of London. Which might as well be capital of the world in this time and place. But otherwise it is the capital of these fair isles, the Kingdom of Great Britain.”

I took this information in for a moment.

“That means nothing to me.” I decided after a while.

“And I would be surprised if it did.”

“When are we? Is this the future?”

He definitely laughed this time.

“It is both the future and the past but as your species still considers itself prisoner to the artificial, self inflicted law regarding the linear nation of time. I will set a name to it. It is the 16th August in the year of our Lord 1888.”

I mused for a while. “But that makes no sense.”

“My young friend, I suspect that a good deal of this conversation will go easier for you if you just accept that a great deal of it is not going to make any sense.”

The woman that I had seen earlier jumped out of a doorway again and accosted me.

“Buy a lady a drain o pale sir? Just a small cup is all I ask.”

I couldn't help myself as I recoiled again.

“Back wretch,” my companion hissed and struck out at her with his cane. “Back. Mark well your betters and leave us in peace.”

The woman didn't seem to mind the violence of his rebuttal, instead responding. “Can't blame a gal for trying can ye? But I needs the money, I do. Got sick children to feed.”

“If by sick children you mean yourself.” My companion retorted. “And by feed you mean, “Let them drink gin.”

“You says it Y'onour.” She responded without a look of shame. I felt my elbow being taken and my companion led me off insistently.

“They are a plague on the streets,” he said grimly, “poor wretches but there's no helping them. There are thousands of women just like her on the streets, selling what remains of their pox and disease riddled bodies for the price of a cup of gin. But soon she, and women like her will be quaking in their homes in the face of the Leather Apron.”

“Thousands?” I asked incredulously. “How do they make their way? Surely they can't all expect to get work. To support a prostitute population of that size you would need a city of millions.”

The man turned to me and I saw a twinkle in his eye. “You would wouldn't you. Be grateful that you have come to us on a day when the fog is thick. If it was not you would see a sea of humanity stretched out in front of you, behind you and on either side. You would not be able to move for the stench of them. You would see great machines and tall buildings built solely for the purposes of storing goods. You would see chimneys belching forth their poisons into the air all in the name of progress.”

He laughed. “Truly it's a wondrous sight. All the while the betters of society think that they are building an empire that will last for a thousand years when in all truth the first signs of rot have already settled into the body of the great beast. Along with the Pride of people that have built it all without thinking whether or not they should.

“Ah here we are.”

He turned into a building, seemingly at random. In the gloom I couldn't have told you what kind of building that it was. The windows were dark but in I went into a suddenly warm, humid atmosphere full of far too many people who's pass-time seemed to be shouting at each other about whatever it was that had annoyed them most recently. There was the smell of unwashed human and strong tobacco as well. In the back of the place I managed to see a group of men who were playing some kind of game where they threw small hand held arrows into a board which kept score. In the corner another group of men were playing a variety of things which included one man on a washboard and another who was tapping something against his leg to form some kind of rhythm. I saw a couple of fiddles as well but the sound was drowned out by the general hubbub.

My companion forced his way into the landlord by the liberal application of his cane. People swore at us good naturedly and moved out of our way. He seemed out of place here. This was clearly the kind of tavern that was meant for working people. Men were covered in dirt and grime, more than one smelt of river water and sewage but my companions hat and cane set him apart. He made it to the counter and screamed something into the landlord's ear. He ordered a pint of “your finest,” and a large cup of port for me. The landlord raised his eyebrows at me and my companion explained my taste by telling him that I was “french,” whatever that means.

The Landlord nodded knowingly and passed over the drinks.

In turn I was led towards a set of stairs and walked up them to where there was a much quieter atmosphere of people sat at tables and talking quietly. We went to an empty table where my companion gestured and I took of my scarf and handed it back. He, in turn, removed his hat, put his gloves inside the hat and placed it on top of his folded coat.

How to describe him. To my eyes, he looked faintly ridiculous but I was also very aware that we were not in my world any more. Where his coat was rather shabby, the rest of his dress was anything but. His shoes were polished to a mirror sheen, his trousers were pressed to within an inch of their lives with a crease that I suspect that you could have shaved with. He wore a buttoned up long coat style jacked that was made up of material that was so thick and rich to look at that I was astounded. It almost looked furry in nature but only if the fur itself was astoundingly short.

I'm not explaining this very well.

Underneath the coat, which he unbuttoned to sit down, he wore a white waistcoat that was embroidered with a silver thread pattern. A chain went from one of the buttons on his waistcoat to a pocket. As he sat down he withdrew something from the pocket, a strange flat, round contraption which he opened with the press of a button somewhere before examining the insides, closing the lid and returning it to his pocket with a look of satisfaction. He had on a white shirt which was starched to the point of what I would consider idiocy which kept a huge collar, forcing his chin up and around his neck he wore an immaculate, dark green cravat which was held in place with a golden pin with a red jewel of some kind embedded on it.

He was a handsome man. I put him in his late forties, maybe early fifties with the hair at his temple just beginning to go grey. He had a long nose and startling blue eyes that seemed to house a depth of humour that was bottomless. He reminded me a bit of Ariadne in that he seemed to be looking out at the world and finding everything about it rather amusing.

“Well?”

“I'm sorry,” I said, breaking off my inspection, “I don't know what I was expecting.” I said sitting down. I reached for my drink but he held his hand up to stop me. I was really struggling to keep myself from liking the strange man in front of me.

He reached out to my hand and kept me from drinking.

“Once again, this drink is merely the hospitality that is freely offered to a traveller that is a stranger to this place. You are to consider yourself free from any kind of obligation towards either me, as the buyer of the drink, or the landlord who is the provider of the drink.”

He leant back. The words had the ring of, almost a poem or a prayer.

“Really,” he said accusingly. “You need to be more careful with these things. May I give you a piece of advice?”

“You may give it although I would hasten to suggest that I might not follow said advice.”

He laughed. “A good answer. I like that.”

His face went serious again. “Never accept gifts, especially not from strangers. Words are empty and meaningless but gifts. Those things have value and you do not know what value is attached to those same gifts. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you suspect that you might be given a gift, then have a gift of your own, ready for the return gift. Nothing worse than a gift debt.”

“Oh I can think of several worse things.”

He smirked. “Spoken like a human. So lets get down to it shall we? Who are you?”

“My name is Frederick von Coulthard of Redania.”

He sighed and put his drink back down again. He had just lifted it up to his mouth to take a drink.

“So easy. You give me your name so easily. Heh. Not even an evasion or an attempt to obfuscate. You didn't even try to get my name first or to enquire as to whom you would be giving your name.”

“So who are you then?”

“Who am I?” He put his drink down and wiped the foam moustached from his face with a handkerchief that he had kept in his breast pocket. “Don't you know?”

I shook my head, finally managing to take a sip of the drink in front of me. It was a good, highly fortified red wine. Similar but utterly different from anything that I had tasted before.

He shook his own head in wonderment. “I don't know. So very rude of you. You go to all the trouble of trying to summon someone and then you don't recognise them when you see them.”

I staggered back from my chair out of pure reflex. He raised his eyebrow and didn't bother hiding his amusement.

It took me a moment to reclaim my chair.

“Did you bring me here?”

“Of course I did. You can't expect me to drop everything and attend upon you whenever you wish it do you?” There was suddenly just a hint of violence in his face. “You don't summon people like me. You run from us. If we take an interest in you then you flee. You run and you hide but not you. You hunted me out and tried to summon me to your puny little circle at the hands of your ridiculous Sorceress. You should consider yourself grateful that I'm not stringing your entrails from roof-top to roof top while keeping you alive so that you can properly enjoy the process you imbecile.”

I took a swallow of the drink as I watched the shadow cross his face.

“Then why did you decide to speak to me at all?” I asked him.

“Curiosity. A little pity and a certain troublesome sense of humour.”

I stared at him for a long while, I think my mouth must have fallen open in astonishment.

“Who are you?”

“That is a large question?”

“It might be large but it is also simple. Who are you?”

“I am me. Who do you think I am?”

“I think you are evil.”

“Ah, my young friend. Leaving aside the fact that that is a description as well as being a woeful simplification of me, it is still not the who of who I am.”

“You don't think you're evil?”

“Does anyone ever think they're evil?”

“I will concede that point.” I said grudgingly “But that does not get me any closer to the answer of the question as to who you are?”

“But you haven't answered my question. Who do you think I am.”

“I think that you are Jack.”

He chuckled, a little playfully.

“Ah, that name. Do you know that I have never chosen that name for myself. I have never sat up and stated that my name is Jack.”

“Have you not?”

“No. I don't like the name if I'm honest. The name of Jack suggests heroism rather than a predatory being. I can't get angry though as it's in the nature of sentient creatures to name things in an effort to lessen their impact. But Jack?” He shuddered theatrically. “Jack climbed the bean-stalk. Jack slew the giants. Jack of all trades. I'm alright Jack.

“Take this place.” He waved at the surrpoundings. “Whitechapel. In a few days they will find the first body, her throat cut with two strokes before several more cuts to her abdomen. The medical science of this place is enough to recognise that the stabs were done by the same weapon as slashed her throat. Her name is Mary Ann Nichols.

A little over a week later the second body will be discovered by the name of Annie Chapman. Again her throat will be slashed only this time her entire abdomen will be ripped open.

That's all it takes to get the wheels turning. The wheels of fear. Then a letter will be received by the news services which will be forwarded to the local police force. In years to come it will be referred to as the “Dear Boss” letter and it is signed from “Jack the Ripper,”

“There are many more such letters of course. All sent to various sources and it spreads the fame of “Jack,” to the surrounding area.

There are many more deaths but only a total of five are actually killed by the original person. Only five but the letters, which in turn will be discovered to have been sent by the news service to themselves in an effort to up the macabre nature of the crimes and therefore to sell newspapers, will spread the name of “Jack the Ripper” all over the world.

Other killings are done but they are later proven to be the work of other individuals but after those first five, the original killer stopped. No-one ever knows why. But all of London, for this late summer and into Autumn will know the name of Jack the Ripper. Even people who have never been to Whitechapel will scurry from door to door and strangers to an area will be beaten within an inch of their lives before being examined in minute detail. Suspects will be examined and discarded with as much detail as they can. But the name... Jack will be remembered for years to come. Centuries even.”

His voice was hypnotic and I could not help but be swept up in the narrative.

“But I still don't like the name.” He said with a wry chuckle. “I preferred what the police called the killer. They called him “Leather Apron” or “The Whitechapel killer.”

“Why did you prefer those names?” I asked.

“More anonymous.” He said. “An anonymous murderer is a force of nature whereas Jack, no matter how terrifying a countenance the term might summon to the minds eye, Jack is a monster. Jack can be hunted down and slain.”

He stopped for a moment or two, staring into his drink.

“I'm not sure that I understand your point.” I said slowly.

His lips twitched a little. “My point? Tell me, which is the most evil do you think? The murderer Jack, or the people who spread the story, the people who made the populace too afraid to leave their homes?”

“You are joking right? The answer is obvious. The murderer is the more evil. You could argue, and I expect that you will, that if there wasn't a murderer then the town criers would invent something to stir fear into the hearts of the populace to sell their fliers and things and that is true. But if you ask a victim which they would rather be, murdered horribly of fleeced for a bit of money? Having their throat slit before being mutilated horribly or living in fear? I know which one I would choose.”

“Ah, but if I asked someone else, someone else in this very tavern perhaps, they might make a very different choice. Some would argue that death is not to be feared for instance. That fear is the real killer for fear is a paralytic that causes inaction.”

“Maybe.”

“Besides,” he went on. “Evil is an artificial construct made up by moralisers in an effort to make themselves feel better about their general, overall desire to be shitty to their neighbours. You see it over and over again. In your world as well as this one. They construct artificial morality rules and laws, often under the guise of religion to excuse themselves, to tell themselves, “Ah, I might have slaughtered entire cities worth of children but I was doing it for religious reasons therefore I'm still going to heaven.

“Humanity is insane that way. They can't just stand on their own two feet and admit that they just enjoy being horrible to each other. They even go so far as to invent “adversaries” for their “Good” Gods so that there is someone to blame. A stick to their carrot. “Do good or the devil wins.”

I stared at him for an even longer period.

“Who are you?” I asked again.

He smiled at me. It reminded me of the smile that a cat gets before it pounces on a mouse.

“I am surprised,” I said after a while. “You almost seemed as though you were angry at the accusation that you were evil. You almost seemed as though it upset you. You also don't like to be named.”

“Names are power my friend. If you knew my true name then that would give you a power over me. A power that I am not willing to surrender under any circumstances. Not even my wife knows my true name.”

“You have a wife?” I had felt my mouth open.

He grinned at me.

“So many questions.” I moaned.

“Be grateful that you are sat over a table from me rather than my wife.” He commented as he raised the glass to his lips again. “She is far more terrible than I am.”

I took a moment to think about that. “Then she must be pretty terrible as you strike me as the most awful thing that I can imagine.”

“Then your imagination is not very large. To know my wife is to adore her. To love her more than life itself. She would take away your will and your intelligence and your wits and you would give them all to her freely and willingly without a seconds delay. She wouldn't need to even ask for them before you had them all out and you would beg her to take them. You would make yourself into a willing slave and worship her in adoration. If she asked you to you would rip out your own heart to see her smile but importantly, she would do none of those things. She would love you back and that love would burn your soul into a cinder.”

“You sound like you love her.”

He laughed at me. “Did you not hear what I just said? Of course I love her and she loves me. We just hurt each other too much to spend too much time around each other. She is so good, so pure and so gentle that it causes me pain whereas I am too sharp and too cruel for her to stand being around her for any length of time. But we miss each other all the time.”

“I don't understand.”

“Nor should you. What is the question you really want to ask me?”

“Who are you?”

“I don't think that's the question. But I will allow it this time. What form does my answer take? Would you like a name, a title... All of these things are merely titles that other people award us with. Someone else calls me Jack. Someone else calls me evil. Someone else called me the Temerian Strangler or the Butcher of Bakersfield. I have so many names. They call me beast, they call me terror, they call me darkness. All of those things are wrong and none of them are my name.

“My name would mean nothing to you, just a sound, some of it in your level of hearing and some of it that would bypass your educated and evolved sensibilities and head straight down your spine to the primal part of you that is labelled, “terror”. I am King of my kind, father also, and husband to one who is also three. I have been lover and killer and so long as there is a single thing that is living that is aware of it's own ability to feel pain, or is aware of their own mortality then I will always be here.”

“Are you a God?”

“Does all of that sound like I'm a God?”

“It sounds like you think of yourself as a being of myth and legend.”

“Close. Very close. Ask your question.”

I tried to think, the being in front of me was beginning to be agitated and I could feel a small amount of panic fluttering against my chest.

He didn't help.

He slammed his hand on the table to startle me out of my train of thought.

“Ask your question,”

“What are you?”

“Still not the question that you want to ask.” He said after subsiding a little bit. “But a little closer I suppose. Close to a question that I could actually answer with some definition and authority though I suppose.”

“And you couldn't answer the last one?”

“What do you think?”

“I think that after all of this time you have yet to answer a single question of mine straight. I think you've come close a couple of times but more often than not you answer a question with a question.”

“You're catching on. Well done.”

“Did you ever consider something?” He asked. “What makes humans so special?”

“In comparison to what.”

“In comparison to whom. Why do you think that all of the powers that are around compete over the lives of humanity? Why do you think that the elven gods fell before the human ones?”

“I do not know?”

“Why is that?”

“How can I possibly know the answer to something like that?”

“Because you are a scholar? Because you believe in a single truth above all others.”

“We are trained to believe that. We are trained to believe there is a single truth that is true for all things and that all we really need to do is to hone in onto that truth.”

“And thus ignore the role of the observer.”

“I think you are leading me off topic.”

“I might be. But the thing about humanity is that you are unique in your ability to shape the world around you. I'm not talking about magic although that is part of it. This world has only a little magic compared to the one that you are from and it is a deep thing that needs to be ferreted out with a pin in the same way that you would with a splinter. But humanity....Humanity can change the world if it puts it's mind to it. It's already doing so. Why do you think that the elves are falling back from you quite as fast as they are?”

“I thought that was due to differing breeding rates and fertility.”

“It is, but that doesn't mean that the one thing doesn't come from the other.”

“Are you saying that the one thing led to another? Which way round?”

He just grinned at me.

“You're not helping.” I accused him.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “Was I supposed to be wearing a hat that says, “I'm your friend and am hear to help?””

He got up. “Time for another drink.”

He left and came back with a tray. “Time for you to try a beer.” He declared.

I did so. It tasted like how I imagine sewer water tastes. Only with a thicker taste that coated the back of my throat. I grimaced and swallowed before discovering that the after taste was not entirely unpleasant.

He laughed at my face. “It's an acquired taste.”

“How long does it take to acquire the taste?” I wondered.

“I wouldn't know.” He said taking a healthy swallow from his own glass. “So where were we?”

“You were spectacularly failing to tell me what you are.”

“That's right.

“The human imagination is a powerful thing. It literally gives form and shape to only the things that they dream of.

“When humanity first lived in caves, wrapped in fur and leaves, huddled together for the warmth of their own bodies to protect themselves from the cold in the night. To make the time pass more easily they started to tell each other stories.

“It is debatable which came first, the stories or the music of banging sticks against rock for rudimentary rhythm but I do know that the music happened during the day whereas the stories happened at night. In the dead of night, when the children asked why they didn't go outside, their parents would tell them stories about the horrible and terrible things that lived out in the darkness. The quiet, terrible predators that sucked the marrow from the bones of children and drank their blood. Nightmarish creatures who stalked humanity in the same way that humanity stalked the mammoth and the tiger. Horrible things that would skin the child and make a drinking vessel out of a babies skulls.

“I was the thing that waited in the night. It was fear of me that kept those children from running off. I was the thing that drove the fear into those children's minds. When those children became adults then they told the same stories to their children and their children and so the story of me became more powerful.

“I am the invisible predator, the perfect hunter and killer. I toy with my pray as I enjoy the hunt and the explosion of fear that comes with the prey's knowledge that they can't possibly fight any more. That they know that they are about to die.”

“Holy flame.” I whispered. “So they told the story of the thing that lived in shadow and you were born.”

He smiled horribly.

“I was always there, waiting.

“I am fear.

“I am that primal thing that waits in the darkness that instils fear into the hearts of the living.”

I stared at him for a long time. As he had spoken his peace, the flesh had seemed to melt backwards from his face until almost a deaths head visage had sat before me. I will not pretend but instead I will admit that I found it to be terrifying. After a moment or two he leant back and the light returned to his face. Then he was the man again, the man with a wicked and sometimes unpleasantly humorous twinkle in his eye. I found the effect unnerving.

“Now you might begin to understand why I am not fond of being described as evil. I was alive a long time before evil was even a construct, a glint in some proto-church philosophers eye when they were trying to come up with new ways with which to control the populace. They knew the secret. It isn't respect or laws or love or any of that nonsense that keeps society in line, that controls the public. It is fear. Fear of damnation, fear of punishment, fear of the loss of their security, fear of strangers and those things different from themselves. That is my gift to humanity. I am born of it, I am it and I give it.”

“You are fear incarnate.”

“Yes. That most basic of human emotions. Is it evil? I could argue the point if you wish.”

“I am fascinated despite myself.”

“That's what makes you different. That's what I like about you. It's why I took an interest in the first place and I decided to meet with you. You don't react to fear in the same way that your fellow humans do. You are fascinated by your fears. You confront them, label them, categorize them and sort them into boxes where you can take them out and examine them at your own leisure. You are actively in love with a being that prey's on humanity despite your self-confessed and quite sensible terror of who and what she is. You look at fear, you look at me with a notebook in hand and seek to tame it, to wrangle it and bring it into control.

“And when you can't do that. When you find something that you can't comprehend or control then instead of reacting how everyone else does, you get angry and attack it.”

“You find that interesting?”

“It's precisely what fear does. For instance what is caution? But a healthy application of fear. Military men all over the worlds tell their fellows and young soldiers to respect their weapons because of how dangerous they are. To respect their enemies and to not take them for granted. That is also fear. When a parent tells a child not to eat the strange herb it's because of a fear of the consequences. Fear again.”

“So if you're fear. What then, does that make your wife?”

“What is the opposite of fear?”

“Hope? That's the standard answer anyway.”

“It's close. Humanity works on the stick and carrot principle. They need both an incentive as well as a goad to stay in doors. So what would keep you indoors? If you remove the fear of the thing, what would keep you indoors?”

“Love?”

“Close, but more visceral than that.”

“Joy.”

“And that's it. That's my wife. She is literally Joy, personified. She can be just as terrible as I can and just as seductive. There is comfort in joy but there is no...drive to succeed. To improve oneself you have to overcome the fear and make it small. Joy is there to catch you when you fail.”

I mused on what he said. It occurred to me then that I was sat talking with a being of primal and elemental terror and I was getting along with him fairly well. I laughed at the thought.

“What are you laughing at?” He asked over the rim of his glass.

“The absurdity of this situation.”

“I remind you that you sought it out.”

“I did at that.”

“Ask your question?”

“Why do you hate me so much?”

He blinked. For all the world it looked as though I had taken him by surprise. He seemed to think for a moment.

“No, you know what?” he said after churning it around in his mind a little. “I'm going to answer that one for free, even though it isn't the question that you want to ask.

“I thought we'd been over this.

“Hate you? I don't hate you. You fascinate me. You are a riddle. You do not react to fear in the same way that people should. You almost take a joy in it. You seek it out and look for it. Hate you, I don't hate you. I actually quite like you.”

“But you tried to kill me?”

“When?”

“You tried to lead me into the woods at Ambers crossing.”

“Oh, that wouldn't have killed you. My son can be an arrogant little puke when he puts his mind to it but that wouldn't have killed you. I wanted to see how you would react. How you would behave.”

My lack of belief must have shown on my face.

“Oh for the love of the creator of all things. Ask your damn question.”

“You believe in a creator?”

“You don't? ASK THE DAMN QUESTION,”

“WHAT DID YOU DO WITH MY SISTER?”

I had forgotten that we were in a tavern. Men looked up at us and my companion waved them back to their seats.

“Now we're getting into it.” He said with a smile and I suddenly wanted to punch him in the mouth so hard that I could taste it.

“If you don't hate me, then why did you do it? I did nothing to you and yet you have hounded me...”

“Who says I did anything?”

“Oh come on.” I said. “Laughing Jack? It bears all of your hall marks. An uncatchable man, a sick sense of humour, a strange and perverse sense of honour. This is you, in all of your glory.”

He just smiled at me steadily.

“Oh fuck you.” I snarled at him. “Why? If it wasn't you then you must have been involved. You must have been involved.”

“Why? Why must I have been involved?”

“Because...Because there's no other answer.”

“Because....” He prompted.

“Because if it isn't you I don't know what else to do.”

“So you're desperate?”

“Yes,”

“You need answers?”

“Yes.”

“What would you do to get them?”

“What?”

“I'm serious. What's in it for me to give you the answers that you desire?”

I subsided a little, collapsing back into my chair.

“What would you want?”

He laughed. “Is that an offer for anything that I might want. I might even invoke the law of surprise.”

“Your...son, wanted my soul?”

“And you gave it to him?” he seemed incredulous.

“I did,”

He crowed in triumph and amusement. “Foolish,” he said after a moment. “Very very foolish. But no I don't want your soul. What on earth would I do with it?”

“Your son seemed most keen for it?”

“My children? My children are much more complex than I am, their needs are more refined.”

“How many children do you have?”

“I lose count.” He said, waving his hand dismissively. “There are so many of them over so many worlds.”

“The beast of Amber's crossing?”

“Yes, he is one. Lazy little puke, taking up residence in one place and terrorising a village. Heh,”

“What was his whole thing. If you are fear, what was he?”

“I suppose it won't hurt. You've already banished him so he's not going to come back to you. He is darkness itself. Both physically, but he is the darkness in your soul. The part of you that wants to pull legs off spiders and wings of flies. He's the part of humanity that people use to excuse themselves from dark deeds and sinister actions. The part of a man that wants to rape and degrade a woman, the part of the king that wants to raise taxes so that he can pay for a set of jewels to help him seduce this or that woman at court. He is that.”

“But I thought you said that mankind created those demons and devils that give that excuse for themselves.”

“They did, but as I said before. Just because the one thing is true does not prevent the other from also being true.”

“Why would he want my soul?”

“Because he needs to be sustained. That is his true weakness. If, or when humanity moves beyond the point where it can tell itself that it is responsible for it's own actions then he will no longer exist. There will be no need for it to excuse itself for the darkness in it's soul and so my son will simply cease to exist. He, and others, collect souls so that they can use those souls to maintain their own existence in the event of that happening.”

“But you don't need that.”

“No,”

“Why not?”

He smiled, sickeningly. “Because mankind will always be afraid of something. Fear is the most basic of human emotions after all.”

“Then I don't understand, what could you possibly want from me.”

“Nothing in particular. But it goes against the grain for me to give you something for nothing. Especially something that you so desperately want. Even answers to questions are dangerous in the wrong hands.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“I require your service.”

“My what?”

“I want you to work for me. For let's say, the period of a day, I will be able to make free use of your body and mind, after which it will be returned to you.”

“Hell no. so that you can turn me into a killer like that poor teacher that tore his own face apart because of what you made him do and see? So that I can be used as a weapon against those that I love? No.”

“No no no no.” He said raising his hands in defence. “That isn't it at all.” Then he stopped and considered it. “Although I should have thought of that in advance because that's a much better idea than I had. You see how this works? Humanity is much more of an enemy to itself than I am, or any of my children ever could be, but no. Where was I? Ah yes. No, I guarantee that you will not be a murderer. You will not harm any of those people that you love. Nor will you kill anyone or take the lives of anyone. You will not, in fact, have any real effect on the world around you. I can guarantee that you will not perform any act that goes against your conscience.

“I require your service and your service only, for the period of one day. One full revolution of your planet from day to night.”

“Why should I believe your guarantees?”

“Absolutely no reason at all. But, contrary to popular belief, my word is my bond. Once a deal is made then it cannot be broken, nor should it ever be broken. Do this for me and you will know everything I know about the disappearance of your sister. I promise.”

“And my soul will be intact?”

“It will.”

I wanted to take the time to consider. But then it occurred to me that I would talk myself out of it. Then I would always want to know what he knew.

“Done,” I said.

“Excellent,” he said and snapped his fingers.