The Midnight Mayor

“A man in a suit,” we blurted. “Was it a man in a pinstripe suit? Thin dark hair, slicked back, dark suit, light shirt, shiny shoes? There’d be . . . he wouldn’t have smelt of anything. No smell.”

He waved down the dark staircase. “Hey, I didn’t say anything, OK? You want to know about the Midnight Mayor, it’s your own damn business. I don’t dabble, see? It’s the best way to get by, because otherwise, if you’re just a guy, you know, just doing your thing, that sorta thing would send you crazy.”

I looked at the stairs descending into blackness. “The answers are down there?”

“You wanna know about the Midnight Mayor?”

“Yes.”

“You gotta get in deeper. Sign these.”

He handed me a couple of sheets of paper on a clipboard. I read them over in the gloomy light. “What’s this?” I asked, as their meaning utterly failed to sink in.

“Legal waivers.”

“What?”

“You want to find out about the Midnight Mayor, and you do it on museum premises, then I need your written consent not to hold the museum liable for any damage that may happen to you.”

“‘Damage’?”

“Not my business. You gonna sign? Can’t give you answers unless you sign.”

“Does it have to be in blood?” we asked, curious.

“What? No, Jesus! You’ve got one fucking twisted head on your shoulders.” He handed me a biro. I read, and signed. He snatched pen and paper back from me and gestured down the dark stairs. “Great knowing you, good luck in your research, give me a mention in the credits, right? Byeeeee!”

“What about . . .” we began.

He slammed the door.

We stood on a staircase painted black in a black corridor leading down to unending blackness, with any light switches that might have illuminated the blackness probably having been painted black.

We swore.

I let out a long patient breath, pressed the palms of my hands together, as much to calm myself as anything else, then opened them up. Light, the shimmering pinkish-sodium glow of the streets, rippled between my fingers. I let it fold out of my skin, taking warmth with it, pressed it into a bubble and threw it up above my head. Our shadow stretched down to a black door at the end of the black staircase. We walked down carefully, trailing our fingers along the cold walls. I could taste something on the air, old and slippery. It smelt of fishmonger, of thin fog and old forgotten things. It set my stomach turning, made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, made my little sodium glow twist and shimmer above me in shared unease. I reached the door at the bottom of the stair, and pushed it open. Not locked. Beyond it was a room. In the middle of the room was a cauldron, placed squarely beneath a single overhanging, metal-shaded lamp.

I said, “You are taking the mick.”

I was talking to the cauldron; but the voice that answered me came from a woman.

She was in her mid- to late thirties, had a haircut that reduced her blonde hair to straight shoulder-length discipline, and wore sensible leather pumps and a neat woollen jumper. She came out of the endless shadows so suddenly that despite her smiling, friendly face I started away from her. Putting her hand, with its short, tidy nails, around my shoulder, she said, “Cup of tea?”

I looked at the contents of the black iron cauldron. A dozen sad, drained tea bags were floating on the surface. I said, “Oh, you have got to be taking the piss!”

“You disrespectin’ us?” demanded another voice. I looked up and saw another woman’s face, younger, not out of her teens, hair dyed black and bright purple, face drilled with metal rings, in her ears, her lips, her cheeks, her tongue, her eyebrows, her nose.

“Erm . . .” I mumbled.

“Biscuit?” A third voice, a third woman. This one had steel-silver hair, a cream blouse with gold buttons done all the way up to her drooping chin, a dark blue tartanesque suit and an expression of mild reproach. She held a small plate of assorted biscuits, neatly arranged.

“Um . . . thank you.” We never say no to free food.

“You can dunk, you know,” added the old woman, and to prove her point, selected a digestive from her plate, and dipped it in the bubbling black cauldron.

“You know, this isn’t how I imagined the Museum’s archives department . . .”

“Huh!” grunted the young woman.

“Oh, dear,” sighed the middle-aged woman.

The old woman looked at me like I was a persistent fly circling closer to the sticky paper.

“. . . but I mean I’d heard stories, wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t heard stories . . .”

“Of course you have.”

“. . . and I suppose in a way, it makes sense . . .”

“Well, duh.”

“Maybe we can help, dear.”

“Another biscuit?”

I looked at them. Three ladies in a room beneath a museum, with a cauldron full of tea. There are certain things that never change. Call them Fates, Muses, Furies, Prophets, Seers or just three twisted biddies with a caffeine fixation, the magic of three women and a cauldron will never fade, even when the cauldron is full of PG Tips.

So I bowed, opening my arms wide in a gesture of peace, and said, “Ladies.”

The young one said, “Fucker!” It would have been nice to call her the Maid. I doubted I could.

The middle-aged one said, “So nice to meet a polite young man!” It would have been appropriate to call her the Mother, but I wasn’t sure how she’d take it.

“Society is on the down!” concluded the old woman. We wanted to call her the Hag, and were smart enough to steer clear of the idea.

But whatever we called them, we could recognise them for what they were. Three women with a cauldron — that meant power, ancient and old power, and old power meant old traditions, and that meant rules, and rules usually meant risk, since 90 per cent of the time rules are invented to stop something, that could be bad, from being even worse.

Then the Maid said, “He’s a fucking sorcerer. Jeezus.”

Then the Mother, patting me nicely on the shoulder, said, “They’re the blue electric angels.”

Then the Hag, putting the biscuits down, leant straight over to me and grabbed my bandaged hand. She jerked it towards her and I, still seeing just old woman — forgetting the rules — staggered straight into her grip and half fell at her feet. Turning my hand every which way, she dug her sharp fingers into the bandages until we nearly screamed.

“He’s the Midnight Mayor,” she said. She leant up close, steel-coloured eyes beneath silver hair that didn’t even twitch with her moving. “That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it?” I looked into her perfect false teeth made of plastic, smelt tea on her breath and ancient, ancient magic in the dull thick cut of her jacket, and heard her say, “You’re the Midnight Mayor. Say it until it becomes natural, say it until you believe it. You’re the Midnight Mayor, sorcerer. Electric angel. Isn’t that what you needed to hear? That bit of info’s a freebie, take it or leave it.”

She squeezed one last time on our bloody hand and let go. We flopped against the edge of the cauldron, cradling our hand and hunched around the pain until our eyes were no longer full of blue electric fire, biting our tongue to force away everything but staying in control.

“He doesn’t look much like a Midnight Mayor,” sighed the Mother.

“You look kinda a dork, mate,” concurred the Maid.

The Hag grunted, picked up the biscuits and set about carefully nibbling around the sticky centre of a jammy dodger, saving the best for last.

I dragged us back onto our feet, leaning heavily on the edge of the cauldron. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a cup?” I asked at last.

“Of course!”