K Jeter: Morlock Night

But for the moment I dreaded the thought of being abandoned in the swirling, impenetrable fog more than I had previously abhorred my strange companion. His pallid face, the outlines of which I could still make out beside me despite the gloom, was even welcome now. Still, I kept an eye out for my longed-for constable.

"Day excursions?" said the Pale Man. "At first perhaps, but then… Can you not think of another time, long ago when rude eyes measured the breadth of this land from a distance, and hearts foreign to ours longed to own its green fields?"

"You speak very handsomely," I allowed. "But a proper love for Queen and country shouldn't drive you to excessive fancies. Get hold of yourself, man. It was an evening's dubious entertainment, but nothing more than that. And even if these imaginary Morlocks were hot with greed and poised on the lip of our world like the Visigoths eyeing Rome, what could you – or I – do about it? It took a hero such as King Arthur to drive out the invaders in the Fifth Century. It would take another hero such as he to fight off the fiends that our host's and your imagination have conjured up! And where, pray, could such an Arthur Redivivus be found?! I knew I was taking a risk in going along with a possible lunacy, but I hoped that my companion's obsession might be purged by forcing it to some sort of logical conclusion. Then our conversation could be turned to more constructive channels such as finding our way out of the unknown lane into which we had wandered.

"Arthur Redivivus, eh?" His features, even in the dark and mist, sharpened with excitement. "By God, you are the man I wanted!"

I restrained myself from asking if he often had difficulty in finding people to listen to his nonsense. "I say – do you recognise the area we're in? This damned fog-"

"Never mind that," he snapped. "Keep your mind on the important things."

"My dear sir. I am damp, tired, and my feet are beginning to hurt from this endless perambulation. Nothing strikes me as more pressing than the immediate relief of all three conditions."

"Damn your petty mind," the Pale Man said with some heat. "Cavities of blood and horror yawn beneath your steps, and all you worry about is the condition of your shoe leather."

Clearly there was to be no getting around the fellow's monomania, and my patience was exhausted. "Good night," I said determinedly. "Our paths separate here. I am for home and bed – wherever they are – and you are free to seek out some other poor soul upon whom you may vent your ravings. Time Machines! Morlocks! King Arthur, indeed! Bosh, is all!" I turned on my heel and stalked away from him.

"Find your way home, then!" I heard him call after me, with the sardonic humour that had been brewing all along breaking at last into cruel laughter. "You'll have another conversation with Doctor Ambrose after you've learned a few things!"

In Hell, I thought angrily. I turned around to make some cutting retort, but his form had already vanished into the dark night and fog. Suddenly, the taste of his tobacco burning in my briar became cloying upon my tongue. The fumes clotted sickeningly. I pulled the pipe from my mouth and dashed it to the ground. From the bowl the burning shag spilled, hissing and spitting with a dull red glow like the larger fires I could see through the mist. I ground the loathsome cinders under my boot, then – my heart filling with a sudden, unreasoning fear – hurried blindly away from the spot and into the darkness that swelled around me.

Damnable fool, I thought as I strode on. Did I mean my odd companion of late or myself? No matter. Anger, as it will, had replaced fear. A whole evening behind me wasted on such nonsense, and now I had a few more hours to look forward to of floundering about in the clammy fog before I found myself in my own warm home. Without bearings I pressed on, cursing myself and all the other doltards the English race produces.

Mercifully the fog began to thin and lift. Soon I could see the stars' pinpoints of light through rifts in the scudding clouds overhead. A three-quarters moon broke through and further illuminated the scene. My relief at being able to see around me, though, was soon chased away by a growing dismay.

The section of London in which I found myself was completely unrecognisable to me. Indeed, I was appalled to discover that such an area even existed. Were our municipal authorities really so lax as to allow it? I saw now that the buildings beside which I had been walking were actually nothing but ruined shells, great walls of brick and stone shattered into jag-topped pieces surrounded by mounds of rubble. Twisted pipes and charred, broken timbers poked out of the debris like skeletal fingers. What horrendous disaster could have struck this quarter and left me so unaware of its having happened?

And when could it have happened? Even now I could see that tangled clumps of weeds had burst forth in the crevices of the rubble. The whole area, as far as my eye could detect in any direction, gave the impression of violent destruction, overlaid with years of abandonment and neglect. For thirty years, as child and man, I had lived in London and never been aware that its boundaries contained such a monumental landscape of collapse.

Had I wandered so far in the fog as to have entered an area somehow forgotten by nearly everyone in the city? For a moment I feared that the images of ruin were all disordered hallucinations brought upon me by the sinister tobacco – if that's what it really was – of Dr. Ambrose – if that was his true name. But then I was confronted with a shoulder-high isthmus of broken stone that spilled across the road. No other route lay before me; I was forced to scramble and pick my way over it. The sharp edges of the stones against my palms convinced me of the reality of my surroundings. Wherever this was I had strayed to, it was as undeniable as the tear in the knee of my trousers inflicted by one of the shards.

On the other side of the rubble's barricade I could discern more clearly the distant fires I had first glimpsed through the fog. I had mistakenly thought them to be small and nearby – the contained, productive furnaces of factory work. Instead, I saw now that the nearest was some miles away and engulfed. a large, multi-storied building. Even as I watched, one of the outer walls cracked from the heat and fell away, revealing the pulsing white heart of the conflagration. Columns of turgid smoke billowed upwards, uniting in the sky with the dark outpourings from the further blazes.

My God, I thought, appalled. Some calamity had broken loose upon one of the inner sections – of the city as I had wandered about. For a moment my legs nearly trembled out from under me and I fell back against the sloping rubble I had just crossed. In fear and awe I gaped at the scene ahead of me. It seemed as though I was gazing into one of the fiery circles of Hell itself. In my breast bloomed the desire to creep into some dust-lined pit of broken masonry and hide myself from the sight of the flames. I suppressed the shameful fear as well as I could and regained my feet. Hampered by darkness and the street's mounded litter, I hurried toward the burning buildings – both to render what assistance I could and to regain my bearings in the city.

Before I had gone more than a few hundred yards I found the ruined nature of the district I was in assuming the aspect of some forgotten battlefield. Raw-edged craters pocked the street's surface, with curved segments of ruptured water and sewer conduits glinting dully from pools of stagnant water. I threaded my way cautiously among the pits, fearing the misstep that the dim moonlight made likely.

The shattered walls of the buildings along the sides of the road had become more grotesque in their appearance, reduced even closer to their elementary fragments. With my brain reeling and my heart oppressed by the sights that surrounded me, I pressed on and caught at last in my nostrils the smell of burning that was spreading through the night air like a disease.