shut. And suddenly, for just a second:
There!
I felt a lurch in my stomach as I forced it to stop, dragged the image back to that flicker of police cars. There it was, a single police car rolling up into the street, coppers around the chain fence, then another police car, then a police truck, tape across the road, people in dressing gowns and slippers coming out of the front door to see what the fuss was about. I pushed back further, to before the first police car arrived and there they were, five of them, all boys, just like Nabeela had said. They had plastic bags, a beer bottle peeking out of the top of one, another splitting under the square bulk of a six-pack. They were only there for a moment before they had vanished inside the football pitch, out of sight of the camera. Images surged by, growing grainier as darkness fell. A couple of kids kicked a ball together down the street. A man and a woman paused to check their A–Z, bickering under a street light about where to go. An old woman pushing a shopping bag on wheels shot a dirty glance towards the invisible pitch. And then nothing.
And a little more nothing.
A plastic bag blew against the edge of the railings, and flapped there.
A car drove by and moved on.
The postmistress closed and left.
There was a shadow across the camera.
Then the first police car arrived.
Wait.
I pushed back. Forced the film to go slow, one crawling image at a time. When it came, it was almost too brief to see; but there, just for a moment in a flare of static, something half unseen flitted past the camera. No, not past the camera; across the lights. I wasn’t seeing it, whatever
it
was: just a distorted shadow, a thing thrown by the light. I froze the picture, tried to find some detail in its grainy shape. The overstretching shadow of a body, swollen and lumpen? A protrusion that might have been an arm, or a flailing leg? Or possibly, just believably, a claw?
And then it was gone.
I let go of the camera with a shudder and slipped down from the top of the bin. Nabeela too was trying to hide a look of concern. I hadn’t realised how much time had passed. My fingers were turning white, my nose was heading for numb.
“You okay?” she asked.
I nodded, trying to catch my breath.
“See anything?”
“Snatches. Bits.”
Just how big, and how bad, could have been the thing that threw that shadow? No answer satisfied me. Then my gaze drifted over to the wall of graffiti; and that single black-and-white eye stared right back.
“Wait here,” I murmured. As I walked back towards it, I opened up my satchel. Inside it I had all the usual tools of the sorcerer—blank keys, travelcard, map, Swiss army knife—as a matter of principle, and I also made sure to carry the most useful enchantment tool of the age. The can of spray paint I had for this purpose held a cobalt blue,and had done me all sorts of service. I shook it as I advanced on the painted eye, stopped a foot away, hesitated, then carefully began to write, straight over it.
I wrote:
IT HAS CLAWS
And as the drips ran down, washing over the perfect white of the eye, I turned and walked away.
We were on our way back to the Tube. As we got close to the station a train was just pulling out, blue-white flashes lighting up the houses clinging to the sides of the track as it screeched off towards Hammersmith.
There was a pause in the traffic on the nearby motorway, rare enough to catch my ear. In that pause, as I happened to look towards Nabeela, in its place there was the sound of hissing, of static hissing, so low and quiet as to be almost unnoticeable except for the lull in other noises. For a moment it was as though it came from close at hand—from where she stood—and…
Then a bus rattled by, and Nabeela was saying, “… so you’ll be okay with that, yeah?”
“What?”
“If I can get something more, you’ll bring the Midnight Mayor down to
see
what’s happening?”
“Uh… I guess so. And,
There!
I felt a lurch in my stomach as I forced it to stop, dragged the image back to that flicker of police cars. There it was, a single police car rolling up into the street, coppers around the chain fence, then another police car, then a police truck, tape across the road, people in dressing gowns and slippers coming out of the front door to see what the fuss was about. I pushed back further, to before the first police car arrived and there they were, five of them, all boys, just like Nabeela had said. They had plastic bags, a beer bottle peeking out of the top of one, another splitting under the square bulk of a six-pack. They were only there for a moment before they had vanished inside the football pitch, out of sight of the camera. Images surged by, growing grainier as darkness fell. A couple of kids kicked a ball together down the street. A man and a woman paused to check their A–Z, bickering under a street light about where to go. An old woman pushing a shopping bag on wheels shot a dirty glance towards the invisible pitch. And then nothing.
And a little more nothing.
A plastic bag blew against the edge of the railings, and flapped there.
A car drove by and moved on.
The postmistress closed and left.
There was a shadow across the camera.
Then the first police car arrived.
Wait.
I pushed back. Forced the film to go slow, one crawling image at a time. When it came, it was almost too brief to see; but there, just for a moment in a flare of static, something half unseen flitted past the camera. No, not past the camera; across the lights. I wasn’t seeing it, whatever
it
was: just a distorted shadow, a thing thrown by the light. I froze the picture, tried to find some detail in its grainy shape. The overstretching shadow of a body, swollen and lumpen? A protrusion that might have been an arm, or a flailing leg? Or possibly, just believably, a claw?
And then it was gone.
I let go of the camera with a shudder and slipped down from the top of the bin. Nabeela too was trying to hide a look of concern. I hadn’t realised how much time had passed. My fingers were turning white, my nose was heading for numb.
“You okay?” she asked.
I nodded, trying to catch my breath.
“See anything?”
“Snatches. Bits.”
Just how big, and how bad, could have been the thing that threw that shadow? No answer satisfied me. Then my gaze drifted over to the wall of graffiti; and that single black-and-white eye stared right back.
“Wait here,” I murmured. As I walked back towards it, I opened up my satchel. Inside it I had all the usual tools of the sorcerer—blank keys, travelcard, map, Swiss army knife—as a matter of principle, and I also made sure to carry the most useful enchantment tool of the age. The can of spray paint I had for this purpose held a cobalt blue,and had done me all sorts of service. I shook it as I advanced on the painted eye, stopped a foot away, hesitated, then carefully began to write, straight over it.
I wrote:
IT HAS CLAWS
And as the drips ran down, washing over the perfect white of the eye, I turned and walked away.
We were on our way back to the Tube. As we got close to the station a train was just pulling out, blue-white flashes lighting up the houses clinging to the sides of the track as it screeched off towards Hammersmith.
There was a pause in the traffic on the nearby motorway, rare enough to catch my ear. In that pause, as I happened to look towards Nabeela, in its place there was the sound of hissing, of static hissing, so low and quiet as to be almost unnoticeable except for the lull in other noises. For a moment it was as though it came from close at hand—from where she stood—and…
Then a bus rattled by, and Nabeela was saying, “… so you’ll be okay with that, yeah?”
“What?”
“If I can get something more, you’ll bring the Midnight Mayor down to
see
what’s happening?”
“Uh… I guess so. And,
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