Nightside 10 - The Good the Bad and the Uncanny

of in the Nightside. Hadleigh was never the same afterwards. He went a bit strange ... and left the Authorities to walk forbidden paths.
    There are forbidden paths, even in a place like the Nightside. Certain doors and ways that are sealed off, locked, and guarded—closed to all but the most powerful and the most stubborn. Not because they’re so dangerous or because so many who go in don’t go back ... The Nightside has always believed that everyone has a right to go to hell in their own way. The problem is that some of those who come back return strangely changed and horribly altered.
    People talk in whispers of the House of Blue Lights, where many are tempted in but only a few come out; and when they do, they aren’t even remotely human any more. They’re Blue Boys. People who’ve been hollowed out to make room for something else. They study our world through human eyes, and they play with us as though we’re just toys. They have appetites, too ... Nasty appetites. Walker has them killed the moment they’re identified, but the bodies take a lot of killing, and they’re always empty. When things get really bad, and Walker decides there are too many Blue Boys loose in the Nightside, he orders a cull. He bangs the drum and waves handfuls of money around, and we all come running. The bounty hunters, the assassins, and concerned citizens like me, who just want the bloody things off our streets. The pay is good, the risks are appalling, and no matter how many we kill, there are always more Blue Boys ...
    Suzie looks forward to the culls. I think they’re her idea of an all-you-can-kill buffet.
    Blue Boys. Dr. Fell. And now, the Collector. All of them looking out at the world through someone else’s eyes. It’s moments like this I wonder if Someone is trying to tell me something ...
    Hadleigh Oblivion went underground after he left the Authorities—all the way underground. He descended into the world beneath the world, into the sombre realms; and there he studied at the Deep School, the Dark Academy. The one place you can go to learn the true nature of reality. Most people fail the course. They die, or go mad, or both. Like the infamous Sigismund, the Mad Mathemagician. I worked with him on one case, when he was simply known as Madman. Last I heard he was still sleeping peacefully in his cocoon. No-one’s sure exactly what will come out of it, but Walker’s arranged an armed guard, just in case.
    However, a few extraordinary souls do make it all the way through the course and return to the world above disturbingly powerful and strangely transformed. Like Hadleigh Oblivion. He walks in the shadows now, between Life and Death, Light and Dark. Or perhaps above them. Hadleigh Oblivion, the Detective Inspectre, who only ever investigates crimes and cases where reality itself is threatened. So if he’d decided to get involved ...
    “Oh shit,” I said.
    “Exactly,” said Larry Oblivion.
    “Why didn’t he show up during the Lilith War?” I said, to avoid saying a whole lot of other things. “We could have used his help.”
    “Who says he didn’t?” said Larry. “There was a lot going on. And Hadleigh has always operated on a far bigger stage than us. Did you never wonder why Heaven and Hell didn’t get directly involved in the Lilith War? Do you really think your mother could have kept them out if they’d wanted in? We were knee-deep in angels when they came here looking for the Unholy Grail.”
    “I didn’t start the Angel War!” I said, perhaps a bit loudly.
    “Never said you did,” said Larry.
    “Sorry,” I said. “I’m a bit touchy about that. Carry on.”
    “The point is, there are rumours that Hadleigh intervened, to keep the angels out and let us take our own shot at winning the War.”
    I looked at him for a long moment. “Could he really do that?”
    “Who knows? Who knows what they made him into, down in the Deep School? He’s the Detective Inspectre now.”
    “Good point.”
    “Enough about Hadleigh; I’m here to talk about Tommy.”
    “All right,” I said. “Let’s talk about Tommy. The existential private eye, who specialised in cases that might or might not have happened. A good soul, but not terribly bright.”
    “No,” said Larry. “Or he wouldn’t have trusted you to look after him. But this isn’t only about him. The more I looked into Tommy’s disappearance, the more I learned of other people who’d just ... vanished in the aftermath of the Lilith War.