Nightside 10 - The Good the Bad and the Uncanny

enough ... until there isn’t. Now here I am, wondering what I should say to you. My oldest enemy, my oldest friend. Part of me thinks I should have killed you years ago: for all the people you’ve trampled underfoot, for all the lives you’ve destroyed, all in the name of maintaining your precious status quo.”
    “You’re not a killer,” said Walker.
    “I have killed. When I had to. But I try not to. It would make me too much like you.”
    “So you’re admitting we have some things in common?”
    I showed him my teeth in a smile. “Don’t say that like it’s a good thing.”
    “I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done,” said Walker.
    “But are you proud of anything?”
    “I’m proud of you. One of my better long-term projects.”
    “Do you have any idea how creepy that sounds?”
    “I have kept the peace in the Nightside for thirty years and more,” said Walker. “I’ve stopped the Nightside from tearing itself apart, kept it from spilling over its boundaries into the vulnerable everyday world, and even managed a little justice along the way. That’s the best you can hope for, in my position.”
    “When I look back through my life,” I said, “I can see times when you could have killed me, and didn‘t, when anyone else in your position would have. You didn’t because I’m the son of your oldest friend, the man you betrayed and hounded to his death. You can’t kill me, Walker. I’m your conscience.”
    “You keep on thinking that,” said Walker. “If it makes you feel more secure.”
    “What if I told you to take your job and shove it?” I said. “Would you have me killed then?”
    “I am many things,” said Walker. “But not petty. I’d simply move on to my next choice.”
    I had to raise an eyebrow at that. “You have someone else in mind?”
    “Of course.”
    I waited, but he had nothing more to say. I nodded, slowly. “I’ll have to think about this.”
    “There isn’t much time,” said Walker. “I don’t have much time. But you think about it, John. I’ll see you again.”
    And he vanished from his chair, gone, just like that. Didn’t even use his portable Timeslip. Trust Walker always to have another trick up his sleeve.
    I did genuinely consider his offer. Though there had to be a lot more to it than he was saying. Walker wasn’t the kind to go gently into that long night. He had to be planning something. But what if he wasn’t? What if he was just a man, dying too soon, desperate to put some things in order while there was still time? Experience suggested very strongly that he was setting me up for something, but what if the offer really was genuine? Who else would I want for the job if I was in Walker’s position? Someone’s got to do it ... and it was very tempting.
    I always thought Walker would kill me someday, or I’d kill him. But things never turn out the way you expect, in the Nightside.
    I thought of all the things I could finally put right, with the Authorities’ power to back me up. All the bad guys I could take down and put out of business ... Yes. It was tempting. But could that be the first step down the road of power corrupting? The road that led to the devastated future Nightside I’d seen in the Timeslip? The world where I was responsible for the death of all Humanity ... I thought I’d avoided that future; but Time does so love to play its little tricks.
    The smell hit me first. That familiar, bad smell, of someone who lay down with garbage and dead things and didn’t give a damn. I looked up resignedly and sure enough, there was Razor Eddie sitting opposite me. The Punk God of the Straight Razor, his very own smelly and disturbing self. A painfully thin presence wrapped in an oversized grey coat held together with accumulated filth and grease, Eddie looked terrible; but then, he always did. The same gaunt face, close-cropped hair and fever-bright eyes. He was nursing a bottle of designer water, while flies buzzed dolefully around him. The ones that got too close fell out of the air dead. When he spoke, his voice was low and dry and ghostly.
    “There’s something in the air, John.”
    “I had noticed,” I said. “You should hang some of those little pine trees around your neck. So, how are you doing, Eddie? Still sleeping with the homeless and begging for spare change?”
    “I don’t have to beg,” he said solemnly. “As soon as people see who I am, they throw money at me and run.”
    Razor Eddie is the only god I know