Chapter 15 #2
Cassius stopped in front of a beautiful building with an Egyptian-style facing—hieroglyphics around tall trapezoidal windows, etchings of pyramids and the sphinx.
“What is it?”
“Last time I was here, it was a renowned museum and art gallery,” he said. “Napoleon’s carriage from Waterloo and Haydon’s painting of Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem were here, among other treasures.”
I looked over some playbills nailed to the front pillars. “Looks like it’s more of a vaudeville hall now for cheap magic and spiritual illusions.”
“It has become a reflection of the prevailing memories that Strata-folk bring with them from the world above. Low amusements seem to be replacing art and history.”
We turned left on Wardour Street and came to building number 90, pretty much the most important music venue in all the world—the Marquee. It didn’t exist anymore topside, but in its heyday, it had hosted Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, the Stones, Metallica . . . all my heroes.
Like the Iron Horse, the Marquee was a touchstone for me.
I’d always wanted to see it. More importantly, just now, music roared from inside the club, thrumming in the windows of the place and pulsing out into the street.
The pressure in my head eased, and I started to feel a whole lot better.
A few patrons passed us, heading into the venue, wearing Winterland Led Zep T-shirts and chatting excitedly.
Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” thumped from inside.
Man, how cool would it be to live in the era when these bands were new, and their music was just hitting the streets?
Especially Zeppelin.
“You have that look again,” Cassius said. “The music helps. Do you want to go in? Perhaps perform one of your songs for them?”
I smiled and shook my head. My own songs felt farther away than ever. “I’d love that more than you know . . . but this is good enough.”
I angled into a secluded alcove and pulled out the dowsing stone, thumbed the Zippo to life, and held it up behind the gem. The thin ray of light pointed south down Wardour Street. So, we followed, weaving in and out of the crowd around the Marquee doors.
“They’re flocking in like Zeppelin fans did in the seventies,” I said as we got clear of the crowd. “But that music’s fifty years old.”
“It is not uncommon for a semblance to lose track of time.” Cassius stepped around a huge baby carriage.
“In the Strata, the distant past can seem like last week. One of my previous binders—Field Marshal Henry Wilson—had assigned me to a security detail on this stratum. I once went from the appointment of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister to the arrival of German zeppelins in the First World War.”
Something about that felt pretty cool to me. “You talking about the Henry Wilson? Chief of the Imperial General Staff during World War One. The guy who got assassinated?”
“My twenty-third binder since I died in old Londinium.” Cassius tugged at his thread bracelets. “Come, we should keep moving.”
The dowsing stone led us over the Westminster Bridge. When we hit the South Bank, the streetlamps, billboards, and flashy automobiles were all gone. Smoke rose into the dim sky from piles of brick and half-standing buildings.
“The Blitz,” I whispered. “This is what the Luftwaffe did to London in World War Two. Why didn’t we see this before?”
“The north side of the river is known as ‘the Showplace.’ What you see over here is known as ‘the Dregs.’ ”
“Why the different parts of the city?”
“As semblances come and go, the shared memory of a stratum changes. Those for whom the war is still present tend to settle here, while more recent semblances prefer the Showplace. Deeper strata have fewer changes in semblance population, and so have a more stable geography.”
We walked through a district of bombed-out brick buildings into a slum of wooden shanties.
Hundreds of soldiers picked through the wreckage, talked in small groups, or huddled around fires.
Mangy dogs scavenged alongside the poor trash pickers.
We wove through a mob of “slump” men looking for day labor near the gates of a trade union.
“Most of your Depression-era people are here, too,” Cassius added.
The Dregs looked like those drawings in old Sherlock Holmes books—black sketches, silhouettes mostly, that appeared like they were drawn with the tip of a burnt match.
Plenty of grimy faces, when you could see faces at all.
We walked on in silence along roads lit by dim firelight.
That, and a whole lot of candles.
Most semblances here carried one. Some had placed them on piles of broken bricks or in windowsills. More than once, I saw a semblance pull theirs from a pocket, the flame lighting as they drew it out.
“The incarnation of the soul’s light,” Cassius explained. “Taken together, they give the Strata what brightness it has. Taken individually, they burn a small hope against the Endless Dark.”
A sudden flash of light and a deep-pitched note broke the quiet ahead of us.
I shared a look with Cassius. “That can’t be good.” He stared back at me, eyebrows arched.
The disturbance came from the direction we needed to go. Maybe that was a coincidence. Maybe it wasn’t.
“Only the good die young,” I said, and we started running toward it.
A hundred yards down the road, another bright flash and deep-throated boom ripped through the rubble-strewn streets.
Across from us, window glass from a four-story building shattered and sprayed out onto the walk.
Fire shot out from the broken windows, and people inside started screaming.
A semblance jumped from a third-story window with a saxophone in his hand.
He thudded to the street below, badly denting his horn, but got up and walked away.
Someone screamed “Wraith!” from a window near the top of the building.
Maybe this was the same wraith we’d just fought at Westminster, maybe not. Either way, we’d just barely walked away from a wraith fight. Stupid to go at another one without catalysts. Especially when we had critical things to do.
An oboist shot from the building door and tore past me, his mouth wide and screaming. “It’s killing them!”
“Screw it.” I bolted over the shattered glass, boots crunching as I raced for the door, Cassius right behind me.