Un Lun Dun

40. Ghostwards

Two iron ladders stretched down the outside of the tower. They were rickety and rusted, but after her epic clamber up the cliff of books, they couldn’t intimidate Deeba.

She waved thanks and good-bye to Margarita the bookaneer, and began to descend. Beside her was the other ladder, for readers coming up, to avoid the nightmare of bottlenecks.

After a minute or two, she heard the rattling of a typewriter. Beside the steps jutted a shelf of bricks, only slightly larger than the desk that sat on it. A suited man sat behind the desk, staring at Deeba.

“I don’t have nothing to check out,” she said.

“Wait…how did you get up here?” he said. “Did you sneak past?”

“No I didn’t,” Deeba said indignantly. She continued down. “Ask Margarita,” she shouted up to him. “I come from inside.”

“Really?” he said. “A visitor!” He leaned over the edge of his little work space and called down: “Welcome to UnLondon!”

Yes, it’s really welcoming, Deeba thought sarcastically, thinking of the boroughs of bubbling Smog. And now I have to go and beg a favor of a bunch of ghosts.

But despite herself, Deeba could not pretend that she was not excited to have returned.

At last she touched down onto the pavements of the abcity. Streets meandered away in various directions, their bricks and mortar interrupted by moil technology and other oddities. Bits and pieces of feral rubbish moved skittishly from shadow to shadow.

“You don’t scare me this time,” Deeba said.

The sky was growing lighter, from the random direction in which the UnSun was going to rise. Deeba shouldered her bag and swung her umbrella. She looked up at the enormous pillar of the Wordhoard Pit, towering so high it looked as if it were falling.

Deeba got her bearings and set off in the direction of Wraithtown, considering what she had learnt about its inhabitants.

No one knew why certain of the dead came, as ghosts, to live in Wraithtown. The vast majority of those who died in UnLondon and in London went straight on to wherever it was they went. Of the few who did stick around, many stayed elsewhere, typically haunting the site of their death. A few others would roam.

The majority of the ghost population of the city and abcity, however, did settle in Wraithtown. Sometimes they stayed for years, before fading gradually and moving on, going wherever the dead go.

Wraithtown was an area of UnLondon but was also a suburb of the land of the dead, so far from the necropolis city center that it was hazily visible in the living world. Those dead who lived there must be those with some reason for sticking close to the living, the UnLondoners figured, and their refusal to explain themselves was suspicious.

It was very difficult to make sense of Wraithtown, as the dead were extremely uncommunicative. This led to thousands of rumors. Why else would the Wraithtown dead stay around, unless they were jealous of the bodies of the living?

Deeba was afraid. But it was in Wraithtown that she knew she could find out some vitally important information about Unstible. She tried to work out how she could get safely into its streets, learn what she needed to learn, and leave again without having her body stolen from her. She had a mile or two to decide.

“What am I going to do?” she said out loud.

As she walked quickly through the unlit alleys, Deeba had to admit she wasn’t quite so sure as she had been that UnLondon didn’t frighten her anymore. Margarita had warned her that the empty and emptish streets on the way to Wraithtown weren’t safe. Deeba told herself that because it was almost dawn, and because she was impatient, it would make sense to set off straightaway. She wondered if she’d made a mistake.

She began to hum to herself, to keep her spirits up.

It can’t be very far, she thought. She still hadn’t worked out what she was going to do when she got to the Ghost Quarter. Deeba shivered in the damp, cold air.

From somewhere nearby came the smashing of glass.

She froze.

There was an awful scream, that might be a dog or a fox or possibly, just possibly even a person. Abruptly, it was cut off.

Deeba crept close to a nearby building, a moil house made of ancient record players. She listened.

There were no more cries. There was, though, another noise. A faint wet grinding. And something that was not quite padding, nor quite the noise of hooves. Something in-between.

Deeba crept forward. In those narrow streets and that close air, she could not tell where the sounds were coming from. They were moving.

Behind her, she saw a dark shape bobbing for a moment between roofs. Something was approaching, a street away, high over the pavement.

She edged slowly forward, and peeked around a corner.

Oh… she thought, her heart lurching. Wrong turn.

A few meters ahead, a huge animal loomed in the dark. It towered on legs like sinewy trees. From its muscular body jutted an enormous extended neck. It was poking its head into the remnants of a top-floor window.

Deeba heard the liquid-and-grinding noise again. The creature was chewing on the body of its prey.

A minuscule noise escaped Deeba’s throat, and instantly the dreadful figure turned its head and looked at her with predator’s eyes. Loonlight shone on the curves of its horns. It pulled back its lips from a mouth full of fangs, which dripped slaver and blood. From deep in that immense neck came a growl.

I should never have doubted, thought Deeba in terror.

It’s true. In UnLondon, giraffes aren’t cute.