China Miéville - Looking for Jake and Other Stories

The spot from his torch foraged like an animal, like a guide dog picking out a path for him between the broken metal and obscure imago detritus—unidentifiable rotting things, organic constructs spun out of nothing. The station floor was sticky. Sholl made the only sound, walking into the darkest part of the corridor, descending a little preliminary flight of ten steps, in absolute blackness now, approaching the shaft and the black iron of the spiral stairs, the scuffed paint of its handrail curling close to the cylindrical wall, clockwise down and out of sight.

A pillar of pipe-and rust-scarred metal threaded through the centre of the coiling stairway. Sholl stood on the top step, and angled his torch down through the thin gap between the right-hand rail and the pillar.

The light met more stairs, and he moved it till it pushed past the handrail directly below him, and then again, and then it died, three coils of the stairs down, long before it touched the bottom. Nothing moved in the beam. Nothing sounded.

I saw them come this way, thought Sholl.

He set his foot on the second step down. It made a little noise. He waited, and then continued.

Sholl descended slowly. He brought both feet together on each step, and paused before moving on. He listened to his breath come fast. He was suspended. The steps rose rapidly behind him into darkness. He shone his torch back the way he had come, fearful that he was being followed. He became uneasy about the dark pillar beside him. He imagined that something was hiding behind it, a few steps below him, moving at his pace, keeping just out of his sight. Sholl moved left, until he was touching the shaft’s curving wall, straining himself to see as far down ahead as possible.

He went like that, skirting the wall, lower and lower toward the cold train tunnels, quite cosseted by darkness. His pace lulled him, the slow spiralling descent became hypnotic. There were tiny sounds at the edges of things, as the feral imagos, the little ripped images of hands and eyes and genitals, crawled away from him. Perhaps they were other things, too: the last of the rats or mice, hiding from the predatory reflections.

The light that bobbed from step to step suddenly touched something that moved. The shock of it made Sholl cry out, and flail with the torch as if it were a sword, until its light picked out a face, a line of faces, a mass of them, lips thinned and resolute, eyes distended, and fixed on him.

Soundlessly, the vampires clogged the stairs. He could not count them—twenty at least, in their incongruous clothes, standing still, waiting for him. They watched him as he moved the torch from one face to the other. The constriction of each pair of pupils, in turn, was their only motion.

Sholl breathed fast with his heartbeat. He waited for the vampires to attack him, but they did not come closer. Nothing moved in the shaft for a long time. Finally, Sholl descended one step. The vampires responded in perfect time, like a macabre dance troupe, shifting backward together, staying out of his reach. He came forward again, and they moved back in time with him, and they began to make a sound, a faint humming, an anxious and unpleasant noise.

Anger rose in Sholl. He pointed his gun into the mass, but he did not shoot. He approached them more quickly, and they increased their own pace, their soundtrack becoming louder.

With a sudden lurch, Sholl almost threw himself down the stairs at the human figures, letting his shotgun swing back on its sling. He snatched out so quickly that his hand closed around the lapel of the nearest vampire. The creature screeched and moved away, yanking free of Sholl’s grasp and scuttling past him up the stairs. Sholl’s momentum took him on, and he had to fight to keep his feet, hurtling down, the torchlight swinging from wall to wall, showing the coldly set features of the vampires. Sholl snatched as he ran, and felt cloth and even flesh and bone in his grasp, but again and again it was pulled free.

He swung his shotgun. It clattered against the wall.

Sholl shouted wordlessly, and grabbed desperately for the figures that were scattering, spreading out.

They evaded him. He stumbled down the stairs, grabbing for the handrail. He reached the bottom unexpectedly: the floor changed, disrupting his rhythm, and he fell onto the concrete plateau. His torch skidded away from him, its beam random.

From the floor, Sholl craned his neck. Darkness loomed over him, moving forward and backward as the torch rolled. Ranged around Sholl were scores of figures, the vampires, hollowed out by shadows. He bellowed and rose, hurling himself at them, deeper into the tunnels, following a sign that said THISWAYTOTRAINS.

The vampires surrounded him out of his reach, retreating with him, into the darkness, never touching him, staying beyond his fingertips when he lurched.

Sholl swung his shotgun like a club. He wanted to fire into them, to rain them in bloody bone over each other, but he was afraid that they would scatter, and he needed to reach one, to take one. He screamed in fearful rage, and in frustration.

The torch was a long way behind him now. It was a little point of glimmering at the end of the passage.

He walked in pitch and the vampires were as indistinct as ghosts. Sholl ran at them, and they were gone from his hands, glowering from the darkness.

Get out of here, he felt them think. Get out of our house. Leave us alone.

Sholl stamped like a child and screamed again. They would not get close enough to touch. They just stood at the very edges of light and waited for him to go. He raged at them, becoming exhausted, stumbling farther and farther into their dark. He leaned against the walls and felt despair.

Something came out of the silent crowd around him. He heard it approaching, pushing through the immobile vampires. It made a low sound as it came, and Sholl looked up, into the darkness, not with the terror that made sense but with some kind of hope. He stared into nothing as running footsteps echoed toward him.

Like something rising out of murky water, a face became momentarily visible, inches from him. Dirty white in the darkness, crossed with scars. Sholl did not have time to register its expression before he was hit hard, and he flew backward.

He lay dazed in the cold dirt. He knew he needed to get up. The thought was looping in his head that one of them had touched him. It had hurt him yes but it had touched him; it was not staying out of reach.

It was what he wanted, and needed. He was excited but afraid again, knowing that he could be killed.

His attacker was circling him. Sholl could hear it. He made a sound like mewing and rolled, trying to stand. He was hit again, the momentum pushing him to the tunnel’s wall.

Adrenaline came through the new pain, and he was standing, arms out to fight. There were noises in the tunnel, of consternation, of whispered bickering. Sholl could hear tugging. Bodies buffeted against one another. Something was passing through the vampires, a concern. At the back of the tunnel, in the purest black, a voice was raised (the reflection of a larynx forced, unhappily, to make human sounds).

With a little harsh bark—not at Sholl but at its companions—the attacker broke free of its crowd. Sholl could see an insinuation of it, a shadow in the darkness. He raised his arms to meet it, and when the cold face emerged up close to him he discovered that he was ready. He swung the shotgun, stock out like a mace. He smacked the face aside.

Sholl was elated. To have touched, to have connected. He swung his gun again, toward the ground where his attacker must have fallen. He wielded the barrel with force that surprised him. He was not conscious of anger, but of focusing on a task.