From a Drood to a Kill - Simon R. Green Page 0,104

bothered me. No one even glanced in my direction. I looked around, curious. People were avoiding making eye contact with me. I wondered if they were doing that because they thought I was one of the homeless, or because they genuinely couldn’t see me. No . . . if I was invisible to them, they’d be trying to walk straight through me. And everybody was giving me plenty of room, even stepping off the pavement and into the busy street if I happened to lurch suddenly in their direction . . . without any of them seeming to realise they were doing it. Just as well; one heavy impact, one crash of bodies, would have been painful enough to knock me out cold.

I felt . . . distanced; not a proper part of the world any more. As though I was drifting between the real and the unreal, suspended between life and death. I didn’t understand what was happening. I felt . . . lost. I stopped and stared blearily about me, and realised I no longer had any idea of where I was. My surroundings had changed while I wasn’t looking. The street around me didn’t look anything like Oxford Street. I didn’t recognise the area, or any of the shops, and when I looked up . . . it was into a night sky. Night? How could it be night so soon? Where did the day go? There was no moon, and the stars were like splashes of white paint, sliding slowly down the endless dark of the sky.

I made myself concentrate on the shop-windows around me. All the familiar businesses and tourist traps were gone, replaced by new and unfamiliar places. Like changelings, left in place of a kidnapped baby. The names above these new ugly premises were in languages I couldn’t read, didn’t even recognise. The things on sale in the windows made no sense. Some of them moved around, or bumped angrily against the inside of the glass. Some changed shape even as I looked at them, their details becoming strange and monstrous. Like in those really bad nightmares, where you can’t trust anything to stay what it seems. Neon signs flashed and flared too quickly to be understood, their colours so harsh and overpowering that they hurt my head and made me feel sick. The buildings rearing up around me were now impossibly tall, or broad, or inhumanly detailed, bulging with too many spatial dimensions to be contained in a single shape. Some shops seemed to slide away, backwards and sideways, as though reluctant to meet my gaze. Or to be pinned down to one shape or location, by the pressure of my observing them. Other shops were all too clearly there, staring right back at me, with bad intent.

Come inside . . . Come on in, little Drood, and see what’s waiting for you.

When I peered out at the traffic, most of what was passing by looked more like living things than vehicles. Or perhaps vehicles that were living things. The pavement under my feet felt soft and treacherous. As though I might suddenly sink into it and never come out. And the people on the street around me . . . didn’t look or sound or act the way I thought ordinary people should. As though everyone was just wearing a people mask and pretending to be ordinary. My heart pounded painfully in my chest. I wanted to just run, blindly, wildly, slam people out of my way and leave all this madness behind. But I didn’t know where to go. There was nowhere that felt safe any longer.

I didn’t know where I was, though that shouldn’t be possible. I was Drood field agent in London for years, had been everywhere, leaned on everyone. So why didn’t I know this street, these buildings, these people? I tried to access the street maps stored in my armour, but there was no response. I wondered briefly whether my armour would still come if I called? Or would it defy me now, like the Merlin Glass had? Was I really that alone, that helpless? Where had the Green Door brought me . . . ? I swayed on my feet, cold sweat slick on my face, a nameless horror clutching at my guts. Lost and alone, in a crowd of strange strangers.

Until slowly I became aware that someone was walking through the crowd, heading straight for me. And the crowd was falling back to let