Neil Gaiman - Fragile Things - Short Fictions and Wonders

He’s in charge, thought Shadow. It was there in the body language. Smith was no longer smiling, no longer cajoling. He was reporting, efficiently and quietly, telling the old man everything he should know.

Smith crooked a finger at Shadow, who walked quickly over to them.

“Shadow,” said Smith. “This is Mister Alice.”

Mr. Alice put out his hand, shook Shadow’s big, dark hand with his pink, pudgy one. “Great pleasure to meet you,” he said. “Heard good things about you.”

“Good to meet you,” said Shadow.

“Well,” said Mr. Alice, “carry on.”

Smith nodded at Shadow, a gesture of dismissal.

“If it’s okay by you,” said Shadow to Smith, “I’d like to take a look around while there’s still some light. Get a sense of where the locals could come from.”

“Don’t go too far,” said Smith. He picked up Mr. Alice’s briefcase, and led the older man into the building.

Shadow walked the outside perimeter of the house. He had been set up. He did not know why, but he knew he was right. There was too much that didn’t add up. Why hire a drifter to do security, while bringing in real security guards? It made no sense, no more than Smith introducing him to Mr. Alice, after two dozen other people had treated Shadow as no more human than a decorative ornament.

There was a low stone wall in front of the house. Behind the house, a hill that was almost a small mountain, in front of it a gentle slope down to the loch. Off to the side was the track by which he had arrived that morning. He walked to the far side of the house and found what seemed to be a kitchen garden, with a high stone wall and wilderness beyond. He took a step down into the kitchen garden, and walked over to inspect the wall.

“You doing a recce, then?” said one of the security guards, in his black tuxedo. Shadow had not seen him there, which meant, he supposed, that he was very good at his job. Like most of the servants, his accent was Scottish.

“Just having a look around.”

“Get the lay of the land, very wise. Don’t you worry about this side of the house. A hundred yards that way there’s a river leads down to the loch, and beyond that just wet rocks for a hundred feet or so, straight down. Absolutely treacherous.”

“Oh. So the locals, the ones who come and complain, where do they come from?”

“I wouldnae have a clue.”

“I should head on over there and take a look at it,” said Shadow. “See if I can figure out the ways in and out.”

“I wouldnae do that,” said the guard. “Not if I were you. It’s really treacherous. You go poking around over there, one slip, you’ll be crashing down the rocks into the loch. They’ll never find your body, if you head out that way.”

“I see,” said Shadow, who did.

He kept walking around the house. He spotted five other security guards, now that he was looking for them. He was sure there were others that he had missed.

In the main wing of the house he could see, through the french windows, a huge, wood-paneled dining room, and the guests seated around a table, talking and laughing.

He walked back into the servants’ wing. As each course was done with, the serving plates were put out on a sideboard, and the staff helped themselves, piling food high on paper plates. Smith was sitting at the wooden kitchen table, tucking into a plate of salad and rare beef.

“There’s caviar over there,” he said to Shadow. “It’s Golden Osetra, top quality, very special. What the party officials used to keep for themselves in the old days. I’ve never been a fan of the stuff, but help yourself.”

Shadow put a little of the caviar on the side of his plate, to be polite. He took some tiny boiled eggs, some pasta, and some chicken. He sat next to Smith and started to eat.

“I don’t see where your locals are going to come from,” he said. “Your men have the drive sealed off. Anyone who wants to come here would have to come over the loch.”

“You had a good poke around, then?”

“Yes,” said Shadow.

“You met some of my boys?”

“Yes.”

“What did you think?”

“I wouldn’t want to mess with them.”

Smith smirked. “Big fellow like you? You could take care of yourself.”

“They’re killers,” said Shadow, simply.

“Only when they need to be,” said Smith. He was no longer smiling. “Why don’t you stay up in your room? I’ll give you a shout when I need you.”

“Sure,” said Shadow. “And if you don’t need me, this is going to be a very easy weekend.”

Smith stared at him. “You’ll earn your money,” he said.

Shadow went up the back stairs to the long corridor at the top of the house. He went into his room. He could hear party noises, and looked out of the small window. The french windows opposite were wide open, and the partygoers, now wearing coats and gloves, holding their glasses of wine, had spilled out into the inner courtyard. He could hear fragments of conversations that transformed and reshaped themselves; the noises were clear but the words and the sense were lost. An occasional phrase would break free of the susurrus. A man said, “I told him, judges like you, I don’t own, I sell…” Shadow heard a woman say, “It’s a monster, darling. An absolute monster. Well, what can you do?” and another woman saying, “Well, if only I could say the same about my boyfriend’s!” and a bray of laughter.

He had two alternatives. He could stay, or he could try to go.

“I’ll stay,” he said, aloud.

It was a night of dangerous dreams.

In Shadow’s first dream he was back in America, standing beneath a streetlight. He walked up some steps, pushed through a glass door, and stepped into a diner, the kind that had once been a dining car on a train. He could hear an old man singing, in a deep gravelly voice, to the tune of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,”

“My grandpa sells condoms to sailors

He punctures the tips with a pin

My grandma does back-street abortions

My God how the money rolls in.”

Shadow walked along the length of the dining car. At a table at the end of the car, a grizzled man was sitting, holding a beer bottle, and singing, “Rolls in, rolls in, my God how the money rolls in.” When he caught sight of Shadow his face split into a huge monkey grin, and he gestured with the beer bottle. “Sit down, sit down,” he said.

Shadow sat down opposite the man he had known as Wednesday.

“So what’s the trouble?” asked Wednesday, dead for almost two years, or as dead as his kind of creature was going to get. “I’d offer you a beer, but the service here stinks.”

Shadow said that was okay. He didn’t want a beer.

“Well?” asked Wednesday, scratching his beard.

“I’m in a big house in Scotland with a shitload of really rich folks, and they have an agenda. I’m in trouble, and I don’t know what kind of trouble I’m in. But I think it’s pretty bad trouble.”

Wednesday took a swig of his beer. “The rich are different, m’boy,” he said, after a while.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Well,” said Wednesday. “For a start, most of them are probably mortal. Not something you have to worry about.”

“Don’t give me that shit.”

“But you aren’t mortal,” said Wednesday. “You died on the tree, Shadow. You died and you came back.”

“So? I don’t even remember how I did that. If they kill me this time, I’ll still be dead.”

Wednesday finished his beer. Then he waved his beer bottle around, as if he were conducting an invisible orchestra with it, and sang another verse:

“My brother’s a missionary worker,

He saves fallen women from sin