Simon Green - Just Another Judgement Day

A dozen good men and women stood scattered about the oversized bar, in various garb from various times and places, all intent on each other and thoroughly ignoring Suzie and me. So I just as deliberately ignored them, giving my full attention to the various displays and trophies and portraits that adorned the bar. The walls were positively crowded with portraits of old Club Members who’d distinguished themselves down the years. There were Admiral Syn, Salvation Kane, Julien Advent, Owen Deathstalker, in a whole series of clashing styles and periods. And the bar was positively lousy with impressive trophies.

The shadow of a Leopard Man, imprisoned in a great block of transparent lucite. A hollowed-out alien’s skull, put to use as an ash-tray. Something I didn’t recognise from the Black Lagoon, stuffed and mounted, and a severed demon head, unconsumed by ever-burning flames. Several of the Club Members lit their cigars off it. And up on the far wall, proudly presented, the withered and mummified arm of the original Grendel monster. Donated by Beowulf himself, apparently. (I told you the Club dated back to the sixth century.)

Most of the famous faces were quite happy to pretend Suzie and I weren’t there, but two braver adventurers made a point of coming over to say hello. Augusta Moon was a professional trouble-shooter, and a noted dispatcher of problem supernatural menaces. She was also an impressively large middle-aged woman who looked like she should have been running a girls’ finishing school somewhere in the Home Counties. Augusta was large and loud and famous for not giving a damn. She dressed like an old-fashioned maiden aunt, in a battered tweed suit, with a monocle screwed firmly into her left eye. She also carried a stout walking-stick topped with silver, and wasn’t above poking people with it to make her point. Augusta greeted me with a firm handshake, accompanied by her usual bark of a laugh, loud enough to shake the furnishings. She had the good sense just to nod to Suzie, who nodded back. Augusta shrugged cheerfully.

“What the hell are you doing here, John? Thought you had more good taste than to show up in a dump like this. Place has gone severely downhill, since they started letting in people like us. Eh? Eh? Bunch of stiffs for the most part, old thing, haven’t a clue how to have a good time. Had that Charlston Blue Blade in here the other day, really big noise by all accounts, but he damn near fainted away when I pinned him in a corner and inquired about the possibility of a little nookie!”

She laughed again, a loud, uncomplicated, and only faintly threatening sound. “Did you hear about my latest exploit? Jolly good sport, and a nice day out into the bargain. I was down in Cornwall on a walking holiday, just seeing the sights and putting the wind up the locals, when word came of a possible manifestation of the old god Pan. Well! Wasn’t going to let that one by, was I? You mention Pan these days, to your modern high-tech hero, and all they can come up with is the goaty fella with the pipes and the hairy legs and the maiden fixation. No, no, Pan is where we get the word panic from. The spirit of wild and remote places that strike terror into the human heart for no good reason. Well, thought I, just the thing to shake up the old constitution, so I get myself down there and have a good old poke around.

“Didn’t take me long to track down the source. An old village church, not far from Land’s End. Norman architecture mostly, though not in the best of condition. Only thing holding it together was the ivy. Anyway, turned out that back in the day the locals had captured this terrible beastie and imprisoned it in a dimensional trap under the church, to be used as a defence against marauding Norsemen. Except, of course, the bally Vikings never did get that far south, so the beastie was left there and eventually forgotten. You can see the rest coming, can’t you? The trap was finally breaking down, and beastie was flexing his muscles and preparing a break-out. The locals were picking up on the dread thing’s thoughts of escape and revenge, and reacting accordingly, even if they didn’t know why.

“So I broke into the church, kicked the trap apart, and let the beastie out, then slapped the nasty thing down with vim and vigour. Mercy killing really, poor old chap. No place left for olde-worlde monsters, in this day and age.”

“How did you kill it?” I asked, professionally curious.

Her head went right back as she laughed her appalling laugh again. She brandished her walking-stick before me. “Clubbed it to death with this, old thing! Blessed oak and a silver handle, nothing better for beating the brick-dust out of a tall dark nasty!”

Some heroes are more frightening than others. I turned, with a certain amount of relief, to the only other adventurer who was prepared to be seen talking with the likes of me. Sebastian Stargrave, also known as the Fractured Protagonist, who claimed to have been three other Members of the Adventurers Club at different times in his confused time-line. Sebastian was tall and fragile, with an air of defeated nobility. A pale face under stringy jet-black hair, with eyes like coals coughed up out of Hell. He never smiled, and an air of quiet melancholy hung about him like an old tattered cape. He wore shimmering, futuristic golden armour, cut close to the skin, that murmured and whispered to itself, and rose up in a tall, stiff collar behind his head. Sebastian had been back and forth in Time so often, explored so many different timetracks and been so many different people, that he’d quite forgotten who he originally was. I’ve seen five different versions of him discussing the problem at the Hawk’s Wind Bar & Grille, trying to work out where they might have come from originally. He may, or may not, have done many amazing and impressive things, in his time. He was quite certainly crazy as a bagful of badgers, and dangerous with it. I smiled and shook his frail hand, and said pleasant things because everyone does. Sebastian’s been down on his luck for so long he brings out the protective instinct in most of us. Especially Augusta, who was always ready to clap him on the back and offer bluff, well-meant advice. Which is probably why he avoided her as much as he did.

Sebastian started one of his long, wandering quest stories, but none of us had the patience for that, so Augusta butted in and fixed me with a blunt glare through her gold-rimmed monocle.

“So, you and Suzie gal are here to meet the new Authorities, eh? Auditioning, are you?”

“Possibly,” I said. “What do you make of them, Augusta?”

She snorted loudly, polished off the last of her single malt in one good gulp, and shrugged good-naturedly. “Someone’s got to be in charge, I suppose, so why not some of our own, for a change? Doubt they’ll last, though. Far too full of good intentions, and we all know where they lead. And you’ve got to be a little crazy to think you can run a madhouse like this. Eh? What?”

All of a sudden, a new figure appeared out of nowhere, right in front of us, and everyone in the bar fell silent to look at him. He was short and stout, dressed in black from head to toe, with ten alien power rings on his fingers, and I knew him immediately. Bulldog Hammond—burglar, thief, and quite possibly the most useless criminal in the Nightside. He lucked into those powerful alien rings and immediately became convinced he could use them to make himself a criminal mastermind. Unfortunately, the rings didn’t come with an instruction manual, and he was still trying to figure out how to use them properly.

His eyes bulged in his silly face as he looked around and realised he wasn’t where he’d meant to be. He fiddled desperately with his teleport ring but couldn’t make it work again. He bestowed a strained smile on the barful of heroes and adventurers glaring at him, while giving every indication of a man who desperately needed a toilet.