wide with terror, and their shrieks joined the symphony.
And then it passed. The wind began to diminish and so did the volume of the screams, until moments
later it lin-gered as nothing more than a distant whistle, just as it had been the first time she'd heard it from
so far away with Harry and Cadge.
The men did not rise immediately, nor did they curse or shout. One by one, they looked up, eyes still
wide. One of them wore a grin that seemed slashed into his face. He started to laugh and the BMW man
slapped him, which only made the thug laugh harder.
The BMW man's gouged eye bled down his cheek. He glanced around with his one good eye and
spotted her, then he bared his teeth and growled like an animal. His upper lip curled back to reveal crooked
teeth.
One by one they rose, driven mad by the Hour of Screams.
"Rats," one of the men muttered, staring at Cadge and licking his lips. "Drive 'em out."
"Jazz," Cadge whispered.
The men were moving slowly. The first one reached the platform and began to haul himself up.
"Jazz!" Cadge shouted. He grabbed her arm and whipped her around, shoved her toward the ladder.
"Climb!"
Heart thundering in her ears, she grabbed hold of the rungs and scrambled upward. Cadge shouted
after her, urg-ing her faster. Jazz caught his face with the heel of her shoe, so quickly was he following.
"Go! Go!" he yelled.
At the top, hands sliding over dust and grime, she pulled herself into the crawl space between the
thick pipes. It couldn't have been more than two feet high but wide enough that she twisted sideways and
rolled into the dark-ness. Turning around to face the way she'd come, she reached out to grab hold of
Cadge's hand as he topped the ladder.
He froze, clung tightly to the top rung, and she saw a terrible understanding in his eyes: they had
him.
Cadge knew he wouldn't be getting away.
The BMW man roared in triumph as Cadge's fingers were torn away from the rungs.
Jazz screamed for him. And for herself.
At the edge of the crawl space, she could see down onto the platform. The BMW man dropped onto
his knees on Cadge's chest and began to beat him. There was a cracking of bone and the wet slap of skin
on skin, growing slippery with blood. The others pulled him off, desperate to have their turn. They had been
sent down into the underneath to hurt or even to kill, but they were madmen now. They kicked Cadge in the
side and the head.
In the dim gloom of the tunnel, she thought she could see the life go out of his eyes. But Jazz knew it
before the men did, and so her own screams turned to numb horror and she edged backward through the
crawl space, deeper and deeper. Eventually, it would lead to some other tunnel or passage, but she would
be the only one to emerge.
The BMW man still growled like an animal, but soon the wet noises and the thumps of their blows
ceased. One last smack echoed through the tunnel and into the crawl space, and then she heard them.
"What was that? That wind. What just happened?"
"Fuck's sake, look at him. What'd we... ?"
The sound of vomiting followed.
"Couldn't stop myself," one of them whispered.
The ladder grated, metal upon stone, as one of them climbed up to the crawl space. Jazz held her
breath. She saw the silhouette of a head blocking out most of the ambient light from the tunnel. The BMW
man. She could smell the blood on him, could hear the low snarl that came up from deep inside him. The
madness of the others might be pass-ing, but not this one. He was broken forever.
"Come on, Philip," one of the others said. "Girl's long gone. Work's done for the day."
The BMW man hesitated. He reached up to touch his ruined face, but she was far enough back in
the darkness that he could not see her with his remaining eye. After a few mo-ments, he descended the
ladder.
Jazz could hear them moving off but worried that it was a trap. So she lay there quietly, waiting for
some sign that they were really gone, waiting for Cadge to tell her it was time to come out. Dear, sweet
Cadge, who'd fancied her so much. She wished now that she'd given him a kiss. Just one. He was so
young, but what harm could one kiss do?
Perhaps she could still give it to him.
Maybe he'll know, she thought. Maybe he'll see. All the ghosts of old London are down here.
Now they've one more
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