The Midnight Mayor

shuffling steps.

When we reached the pavement of the road, I nearly tripped on it, feet staggering into a gutter full of foul, blocked and rotting leaf-mould-rain. I hissed, “Here!” and Oda stopped too.

“What now?” she asked.

“Shush! Listen!”

We listened. There was a faint wind now, blowing in from the edges of the smog, promising, somewhere, a slightly fresher air. It blew something else. I looked down at my feet. A small piece of paper had blown up from the gutter and tangled round my ankle. I half-bent down to pick it up. It was a piece of newspaper, torn at the corner. It said:

SHOCKER IN

CHERYL SAYS

utrageous party pranks have led

commented to said that she wo

me back my

of the

en

I looked up.

The only light was coming from my fingertips. It seeped upwards over a foot, no more, from where I stood, before becoming lost in the smog. I should have been able to feel his breath, had he lungs to breathe. I felt his toes brush mine; hard leather toes pressing down on the soft space of my too-big shoes, where my toes should have been. Mr Pinner smiled. We screamed, “Oda, ru—”

His hand came up. It was holding something bright and shiny, which stabbed down towards our eye. We caught his hand, wrapped our fingers around his sleeve and let the neon blaze, let it burn from inside us and screamed again, “Oda, run, get to the end of the—”

His other hand came up and pushed into our throat, pressing our chin back and taking the rest of us with it, and now we could see what was in his raised hand. It was a fountain pen, titanium-gold, hinting at all the shiniest colours of the silvery rainbow as he brought it down towards us, the end stained slightly with black ink. Even ignoring what he was, what he might be, the threat of that stuck through our eye filled us with enough terror to lend us strength, and we let the electricity blaze across us. It should have killed him, would have killed a man, set his hair on fire, but it just flickered harmlessly over his flesh and down to earth, didn’t even singe his suit, and we could hear Oda staggering down the street and see the nib growing bigger and bigger, filling the left-hand side of our world.

The phone in my pocket started to ring. I screamed, “Oda, get to the cab, get to the . . .”

An engine started at the end of the road, I saw a light, a bright orange-yellow light, letters lost somewhere in the smog. “Oda! Oda, get to the—”

Mr Pinner’s fingers tightened around our windpipe, pushing down on the thick muscles, and his eyes were our universe and he murmured, “What are you, blue-blood?”

The orange light grew closer. I could hear the rattle of a great, old engine, that would one day shake itself apart in a shower of bolts and blackened iron, and run without a hitch until that happened. We looked him in the eye and replied, “We are Swift, and I am the angels!”

I let go of his wrist. I let his fingers push back on my throat, I tumbled head-over-heels, flopped back like someone had replaced my bones with jelly and caught him off-balance, threw his entire weight forwards as I went back and kicked and jammed my elbows together as we fell, tried to push my bottom into the pavement as being my least delicate part, landed badly, felt my leg twist beneath me and rolled, heaving him to one side and pushing him away. His fingers fell from my neck and I crawled up, my fingers tangling in his suit, which didn’t tear. It didn’t come away from his flesh, didn’t reveal the shirt beneath, but stayed fused to him, as if a very part of his body and skin. No time, not now, not now . . .

We staggered back onto our feet and ran, waiting for the pain of a thousand paper cuts, ran towards the yellow light, saw Oda already by its source, pushing the bloody Kemsley into the back of the cab, and there it was, TAXI in large letters against the light and it was big and black and curved and belched black smoke from its rear and shuddered on its rickety suspension and it was a black cab, no, not enough: it was the Black Cab, its skin so black it stood out deeper against the darkness; its windows so fouled over with dirt and unwashed filthy rain that you couldn’t see inside, its wheels spitting smoke, its engine roaring like a caged animal. Oda was already halfway inside. I tumbled in after her and shouted at the driver, “Out of here! Go!”

He put his foot to the accelerator.

We went.

There are stories. Some of them, unlike most, are true.

Stories of . . .

A train that goes round and round forever on the Circle Line, will go for ever, will never stop, never rest, never take on a new passenger except for those who know the secrets of the Last Train and when it runs.

The Night Bus, which collects the spirits of the dead who died sleeping and alone in the dark.

Lady Neon, whose eyes are too bright for any mortal to look on without being driven mad.

The Black Cab, which can go anywhere, whose driver has heard of Isaac Newton and thinks he missed a few points, and which will always charge a fare. Usually, a very high fare.

Something to worry about at a later point, we decided.

One problem at a time.

Oda said, “He’s not dead.”

Kemsley lay on the floor of the cab. The driver’s voice drifted in from the intercom, his face lost somewhere in the murky darkness behind the glass shutter. “If he bleeds on my floor, you’ve got to pay for cleaning.”

I said, “Strap him to something.”

She scowled but, grunting and groaning, heaved him into one of the fold-down seats on the backwards-facing side of the cab, and strapped him in. I buckled myself into the seat behind the driver, and added, “Now strap yourself in.” The belt felt hard across my chest, stiff, and a little bit too slippery.

“Why?”

I pointed at a sign. It said, “Passengers Must Wear Seat Belts At All Times”.

“Is this . . .”

“Do it.”

She looked at us, saw through the dirt and grime and knew better than to argue. She strapped herself in. Kemsley was something from the butcher’s yard that had been left out in the rain and the sun for too many weeks, and by this process acquired a twisted mimicry of life. The driver said, “So where can I take you? ”

His voice was a muffled crackle over the intercom, the red LED on the door a little bit too bright, the windows between us and him a little too dark. All I could see was smog in the bright headlights of the cab. I leant forward and said, “The City. Corporation of London. The Thames.”

“That’s three places.”

“Are we caring if the Alderman dies?” asked Oda carefully.

I looked at her, saw a face hacked by stone out of an iceberg, looked at Kemsley. It occurred to us, for a moment, that we didn’t care. Not our problem. I said, “Damn. Damn damn damn. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital for Women, Euston Road.”

“Righto.”

I could see the red lights of the tariff metre in the front of the cab. They were clocking up numbers and letters as we drove, but not by any mathematics I knew.

“You want to go to an abandoned hospital?” asked Oda. She was getting her breath back, wiping dirt from