Something From The Nightside Read Online Free PDF

variations, from the unnatural to the unlikely, all of them intent on their own pursuits, while the roar of traffic never stopped. Every vehicle moved at great speed, stopping for nothing, in stark and noisy contrast to the packed city streets of everyday London, where the general speed of traffic hasn't changed much in centuries; thanks to the appalling congestion it still averages out at around ten miles an hour. No matter how important you think you are. Though at least these days the streets stink of petrol fumes rather than horse shit.
    You can't step in petrol fumes.
    Many of the sleek and gleaming vehicles darting through the Nightside had to be new to Joanna; shapes and sizes and even concepts that had never known the light of day; some of them powered from sources best not thought about too much, if you wanted to sleep at night. Taxis that ran on debased holy water, limousines that ran on fresh blood, ambulances that ran on distilled suffering. You can turn a profit from anything, in the Nightside. I had to take Joanna by the arm as she drifted unrealisingly too close to the edge of the pavement.
    "Careful!" I said loudly in her ear. "Some of those things aren't really cars. And some of them are hun-
    gry."
    But she wasn't listening to me. She'd looked up at the sky, and her upturned face was full of wonder and awe. I smiled, and looked up too. Deep deep black,
    the sky, falling away forever, blazing with the light of thousands and thousands of stars, far more than you'd ever seen above any earthly city, dominated by a full moon a dozen times larger than the poor pallid thing Joanna was used to seeing. I've never been sure whether the moon really is bigger in the Nightside, or whether it's just closer. Maybe someday someone with serious money will hire me to find out.
    I looked back at Joanna, but she was still clearly struggling to find her equilibrium, so I just stood there and looked mildly about me. It had been five years, after all. But it all seemed much as I remembered it. The same quietly desperate people, hurrying down the same rain-slicked streets, heading eagerly into the same old honey traps. Or perhaps I was just being cynical. There were wonders and marvels to be found in the Nightside, sights and glories to be savoured and clutched to your heart forever; you just had to look that little bit harder to find them, that was all. The Nightside is really just like any other major city, only amplified, intensified, like the city streets we walk in dreams and nightmares.
    There was a kiosk beside the station entrance selling racks of shrink-wrapped T-shirts. I studied some of the legends on the shirtfronts. Good boys go to Heaven, bad boys go to the Nightside. My mother took thalidomine, and all I got was this lousy hammer toe. And the perennial Michael Jackson died for our sins. I snorted quietly. The usual tourist stuff.
    Joanna turned suddenly to look at me, her mouth snapping shut as though she'd only just realised it was hanging open.
    "Welcome to the Nightside," I said, smiling. "Abandon all taste, ye who enter here."
    "It's night," she said numbly. "What happened to the rest of the day? It was only just starting to get dark when we left."
    "I told you; it's always night here. People come here for the things they can't find anywhere else; and a lot of those things can only thrive in the dark."
    She shook her head slowly. "We're really not in Kansas any more, are we? Guess I'll just have to try and keep an open mind."
    "Oh, I wouldn't do that," I said solemnly. "You never know what might walk in."
    She gave me a hard look. "I can never tell when you're joking."
    "Neither can I sometimes, in the Nightside. It's that kind of place. Life, death and reality are all flexible concepts here."
    A street gang came whooping and hollering down the street towards us, shouldering people out of their way, and playfully pushing some out into the road to dodge the traffic, which didn't even bother with horns, let alone