CHAPTER Four

CHAPTER FOUR

It was a short walk to Bethnal Green Road but it seemed to take forever to Sam. The sun was really bright and he felt ridiculously exposed. He was dripping with blood and he’d wet himself, how could he not attract attention.

Sam and Jimmy kept to the back streets. The blood dried quickly and seemed almost to evaporate, disappearing as mysteriously as the blood in the lock up. No-one paid them any attention when they hit the main road. Typical Londoners, ignoring everything they didn’t want to see.

Sam tried hailing a couple of black cabs but they weren’t having any of it. Eventually an empty one pulled up at some traffic lights and they tried to jump in.

“Sorry lads,” said the driver, a middle aged guy with thinning hair and brown teeth. “But I can’t have you in the back like that.”

“Please,” said Sam. “We’ve got to get out of here. It’s all dried, we won’t ruin your upholstery.”

“Listen, whatever it is, I’m not interested. I don’t want any trouble.”

“It’s not like you think,” said Jimmy. He pointed to the camera Sam was holding. “We’ve shooting a . . . err, zombie film, that’s all. This is just make up.”

The driver shook his head. “Sorry lads, not gonna happen.” He pulled away as the light turned green.

“You boys need a cab?” said a voice behind them. They turned and saw a Turkish guy standing by a car in a little side street.

“Are you a taxi?” said Jimmy.

“Mini-cab,” the guy said and pointed to an office half way down the side street. The sign outside said: ‘Yilmaz Cars.’ “Just about to knock off for the day. Where you going?”

“Camden,” Jimmy said, and gave him Sam’s address.

“Hop in,” said the guy opening the back door.

Sam climbed into the back seat and let Jimmy ride shotgun. He didn’t feel like talking to the driver. His heart lurched and he started to shiver involuntarily. The drug in his system was wearing off. It was incredibly potent, but obviously didn’t last very long. And the come down was a killer.

“Lived here long?” said the driver as he turned off Old Street onto City Road.

“Not in Camden,” said Jimmy. “That’s where my friend lives. But I’ve lived in various parts of London all my life. How about you?”

“London born and bred, same as yourself. City’s changed a lot since I was a child in the 70s though.”

“I’ll bet it has. It’s changed a lot since I was a kid. Not just the odd building either, whole streets and stuff. You wouldn’t recognise it in some places.”

“Cities are constantly changing,” said the driver, turning to Jimmy. Even from the back seat Sam could see a thoughtful look cross his face. “That’s part of their nature. But it’s also part of their nature to hold their original purpose. They’re a bit like ancient stories. Every generation tells them in a different way, adds new passages, leaves out old ones, but the essential idea remains the same. You might dress it up, so that a contemporary audience finds it more relevant to them, but the core concept is timeless. That’s what gives them power, that’s why people keep telling them.”

“And you think cities are the same?”

“Definitely. We might tear down old streets and throw up new buildings for modern needs, but the reasons people come to the city, and gather in certain locations, never changes.”

“Even when all the old places are gone?”

“The old places are never really gone. They’re still there, right under the surface of the city.”

“You mean underground.”

“No, just hidden, often in plain view. You just need to know where to look for them, what turnings to take. They’re still there, whenever you need to find them. Like really old stories that lie beneath the surface of the new ones. Giving them shape and form, drawing people back to them over the centuries.”

“Wow, you’re quite a philosopher aren’t you?”

The driver smiled and shook his head. “No, I spend a lot of time driving round with just myself for company. Gives you the space to do a lot of thinking, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I hear you,” said Jimmy.

Sam knew Jimmy was talking to the driver to take his mind off coming down. He was fidgeting and shuddering as the drug wore off. The driver chose not to see this. He’d probably ferried all kinds of people around in his car. Sam doubted anything would surprise him, not from the way he was talking.

The driver motioned to the back seat with his thumb. “So how about your friend, he from London too?”

“No, he’s from Surrey, what you might call an off-comer, or an adopted son.”

The driver nodded. Sam was mildly irritated by how much personal info Jimmy was giving away. What if the police questioned the driver later about the two blood stained guys he picked up?

Sam stared out of the window as they approached the Angel tube station. Two lanes of the road were cordoned off and several police directed the slow moving traffic into the remaining lane. As they pulled into the far lane, Sam glimpsed a Ford Mazda by the side of the road. It’s windscreen was shattered and its front bonnet crumpled. The numbness Sam felt, about the slaughter he’d just seen, melted at the sight of blood on a lamppost. His mood was plummeting with the comedown and it all became too real for him. His vision blurred as tears filled his eyes.

The driver put his left hand over a tiny ivory statue on top of his dashboard. It was two faced, like the Roman god Janus, but this statue had an old crone on one side and a beautiful maiden on the other. The driver muttered something that might have been a prayer, in a language Sam didn’t recognise. Then he placed two fingers on his forehead, right in the middle of his eyebrows, and touched a small gold pendant hanging from his rearview mirror. It was a mystical symbol, but not one Sam recognised.

Sam hadn’t noticed either the statue or the pendant when they got into the mini-cab. It was as though the driver had conjured them into being as soon as he touched them. Sam shook his head. That sounded crazy. It was the comedown affecting his mind.

The driver shot them a sheepish smile. “Just a prayer,” he said. “For any spirits that might be abroad, newly separated from their bodies.”

“Is that like, a Muslim thing?” said Jimmy gesturing towards the pendant and statue.

The driver’s smile became broader and more knowing. “No, these are artefacts from far older beliefs.”

“Like from Atlantis and shit?”

“Atlantis is a myth, these beliefs are much older than any myth.”

“Doesn’t all myth start with some basis of truth?” Jimmy was really getting into this debate. It was probably the best thing he could do, under the circumstances, but it made Sam uncomfortable. Talk of ‘spirits separated from their bodies’ reminded him of Ashkan and the ruined remains of the other men.

“All myth starts as story,” said the driver. “Sometimes we call the story history, sometimes religion, eventually it all becomes myth. Beneath every myth is an ancient tale, a hidden belief that gives shape and form to every god that’s ever received a prayer on a dark and lonely night.”

“Okay, now you’re getting wa-ay deep. Does this ‘ancient belief’ have a name then?”

“It’s had many names, in every language ever spoken. Some call it ‘the Oldest Truth,’ others—the ‘Faith that Came before Man.’”

“What do you call it?”

“I don’t have to name my faith, I just have to live by it.”

Maybe turning into Sam’s street emboldened him, but it was at that point he decided to join the conversation.

“By praying for the spirits of car crash victims,” he said, with a touch of derision in his voice. “Is that how you live by this ancient faith?”

“Yes,” said the driver. “And by other acts of charity. Like picking up two young men covered in blood and carrying stolen goods, when no-one else would dream of giving them a lift.”

The driver pulled up to the kerb. Jimmy hung his head. Sam went cold all over and paid without saying another word.

“He knows,” said Jimmy. It was a warm evening, but he shivered as the mini-cab pulled away.

“He doesn’t know anything,” said Sam and hustled Jimmy indoors.