I realised why I was in no hurry to get to the Dungeons of Scotland. I had to breathe this city into my lungs. Feel it with my skin, my body... with the blood in my veins.
I decided to wander about in the crowd for a bit longer. And then buy a ticket for the 'room of horror'.
The tourist attraction was closed. The huge sign was still there on the pillars of the bridge. The double doors in the 'entrance-to-ancient-dungeons' style were open, but the opening was roped off at chest height. A handwritten notice on a sheet of cardboard hanging on the rope politely informed me that the dungeons were closed for technical reasons.
To be quite honest, I was surprised. It was five days since Victor had been killed. Long enough for any police investigation. The Edinburgh Night Watch would have examined everything they needed to without advising the human police about it.
But the place was closed.
I shrugged, lifted up the rope, ducked under it and set off down the narrow stairway .The metal-mesh steps echoed hollowly under my feet. Two flights down there were toilets, then a narrow little corridor with ticket offices that were closed. A few lamps were lit here and there, but they were only intended to create a lurid atmosphere for the customers. Standard dim energy-saving light bulbs.
'Is anyone alive down here?' I called out in English, and then realised with a start how ambiguous that was. 'Hey ... are there any Others here?'
Silence.
I walked through a few rooms. The walls were hung with portraits of people with brutal faces, the kind that would have delighted Lambrozo's heart. Framed texts told the stories of criminals, maniacs, cannibals and sorcerers. There were display cases with crude models of severed arms and legs, retorts full of dark liquids, instruments of torture. Out of curiosity I took a look at them through the Twilight. All newly made ?no one had ever been tortured with them, they didn't carry the slightest trace of suffering.
I yawned.
There were strings with rags dangling on them stretched out above my head - they were supposed to represent cobwebs. Higher up I caught glimpses of a metal ceiling with rather unromantic rivets the size of saucers. The tourist attraction had been built in a strictly utilitarian technical space.
There was something bothering me.
'Is there anyone there? Alive or dead, answer me!' I called out again. And again there was no answer. But what was it that had alarmed me like that? It was something that wasn't right... when I looked through the Twilight.
I looked around again, using my Twilight vision.
There it was! That was what was so odd!
There was no blue moss ?that harmless but unpleasant para site that grows on the first level of the Twilight, the only permanent inhabitant of the grey reverse side of the world. In a place like this, where people constantly experienced fear, even if it was only circus fear and not the real thing, the blue moss ought to have flourished with a vengeance. It ought to have been dangling from the ceiling in shaggy stalactites, spread out across the floor in a repulsive wriggling carpet, covering the walls like thick flock wallpaper.
But there wasn't any moss.
Was someone cleaning the premises regularly? Burning the moss off if he was a Light One, or freezing it off if he was a Dark One?
Well, if there was an Other on the staff here, that would be a help to me.
As if in response to my thoughts, I heard the sound of foot steps. They were quite fast, as if someone had heard me shout and was hurrying towards me from a long way away, through the maze of plasterboard partition walls. A few second later the. black-painted door from this room into the next one opened.
And in walked a vampire.
Not a real one, of course. He had a normal human aura.
A man in fancy dress.
A black cloak, rubber fangs in his mouth, pale make-up on his (at c. A good-quality make-up job. Only all this didn't fit too well with the curly ginger hair. He probably had to wear a black wig when he was working. And another thing that didn't fit was the plastic bottle of mineral water that my visitor was just about to drink from.
The young guy frowned when he saw me. His good-natured face turned not exactly angry but strict