Nightside 10 - The Good the Bad and the Uncanny

Determined not to follow in the footsteps of my famous father. I wanted a bigger adventure, something more glamorous. I wanted to be the Nightside’s Indiana Jones, digging up forgotten treasures from their ancient hiding places and selling them for more money than I could spend in one lifetime. I spent a lot of time in the Nightside’s Libraries, digging patiently through discarded stacks and private collections, sifting through diaries and almanacs and very private histories. Looking for clues to point me in the right direction and set me on the trail of significant valuable items that had slipped through history’s fingers. There have always been treasure-hunters in the Nightside, but I flattered myself that no-one had ever taken such a methodical approach before. Sometimes all you have to do is look carefully.
    I’d just turned twenty, and I’d already had a few triumphs. Tracked down some important items. One of the original seven veils, from when Salome danced before her father for the head of John the Baptist. A set of dentures made up of teeth taken from the skull of the Marquis de Sade. And one of Mr. Stab’s knives. Nothing big, but enough to start a reputation, put some decent money in my pockets.
    I needed to find something special, something important, something to make people sit up and take notice. The Holy Grail, or Excalibur, or Merlin Satanspawn’s missing heart. Think big, and you’ll make it big. I had a lot of sayings like that, in those days.
    I was drinking a nice chilled merlot in the Bar Humbug that night. A small and very exclusive place, for ambitious young people on the way up. A civilised watering hole for every bright young thing prepared to do absolutely anything to get to the top. Kind of place where you swap business cards instead of names, smile like a shark, and preen like a peacock; and slip the knife in so subtly that your mark won’t even notice till you’re gone. The Bar Humbug was comfortable rather than trendy, with richly polished oak-panelled walls, padded booths to drink in, and only the most pleasant music in the background. Refreshingly normal and refined, for the Nightside. An oasis of calm and serenity, and never very full, because people don’t come to the Nightside for calm and serenity.
    Place was run by a sweet-natured old lady in tweeds, pearls, and pince-nez. Grey-haired, motherly, mind like a steel trap when it came to money. Miss Eliza Fritton; always pleasant, always obliging, and not one penny on credit, ever. Only used the shotgun behind the bar when she absolutely had to. She used to run a private girls’ school, back in the day. Until the pupils burned it down and sacrificed half the staff in a giant wicker man. Such high-spirited gels, Miss Fritton would say, wistfully, after her second port and lemon.
    I was talking with the Beachcomber that night, a dry old stick with a military manner who turned up surprising amounts of treasure by spending all his time in the little curiosity shops and junk emporiums that are always springing up like mushrooms in the Nightside. They handle all the lesser flotsam and jetsam that washes up here through Timeslips, or in the pockets of tourists and remittance men from other dimensions and realities. Most of it worthless, of course, but the Beachcomber could find a king penguin in the desert. And teach it to talk before he sold it. He’d had a good week, so I let him buy me drinks and listened patiently while he boasted of his triumphs in a dry, understated way.
    “A Shakespeare first folio, of Love’s Labour Redeemed. A betamax video of Orson Welles’s Heart of Darkness. An old 45 by the Quarrymen, though played half to death, I regret to say. I do so love alternative histories. Though I believe I could have lived quite happily without seeing the nude spread featuring a young Hugh Hefner, from a 1950s copy of Playgirl, Oh, and a rather interesting ash-tray, made out of a werewolf’s paw. Nice little piece, with the disconcerting habit of turning back into a human hand every full Moon. Rather upsetting, I suppose, if you happened to be stubbing out a cigarette in it at the time.”
    I was waiting for him to run out of breath, so I could slip in a few exaggerated claims of my own, when I happened to glance over his shoulder as a very pretty girl walked in. Young and fresh and bubbling over with high spirits, she marched into the bar as though at the head of her very own parade. She wore a tight T-shirt and