The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [28]
The coachman warily eyed the filthy shape curled up in the corner of Quarter Down and Backstairs Streets. He was almost positive that the man had been following him, but it was hard to say with the degenerate poor in Trowth. They were all covered in filth and soot, and many of them, like this one, had the scrave—another disgusting gift the sharpsie immigrants had brought with them. The filthy man kept coughing up wads of luminescent green phlegm. If the beggar hadn’t smelled like an open sewer, Crowell might never have recognized him. As it was, the stench of sewage was both frighteningly familiar and highly unpleasant; Crowell took the stairs in Backstairs Street two at a time.
Backstairs Street could hardly be called a street at all, as it was really a dark covered staircase that led up out of Quarter Down Street. The single lamp that someone had thoughtfully fixed to the wall had burned out, and puddles of gray, spent phlogiston covered the slippery stairs. The walls of the narrow stair were covered in cheap bills, affixed with the new “stichor” that the Rowan-Czarneckis had patented. The bills were barely visible in the light that seeped in from the streetlamps at the top of the stairs, and they were mostly about sharpsies: lurid images of the sharp-toothed humanoids making off with babies, or wallowing in their own filth, accompanied by mottos like “Protect Yourselves from Predators,” and “Clean Streets Win Wars.” There were two more bills showing copperplates of men being pleasured by tiny homunculi that read, “Culies Destroy Families!” Presumably, there were several posters encouraging young men to enlist in the Royal Marines, but they’d all been pasted over.
Fear fluttered in his belly as he emerged from the Arcadium into Red Lanes. The tall, high-peaked Ennering-Crabtree houses leaned out over the relatively wide street, leaving the icy moonlight to fall in a narrow strip down the road. Stay calm. No one recognized it. They’d have come for you when it was published. Still, he couldn’t help thinking about Herman. Just sharpsie hooligans. Doesn’t mean anything. It was a shocking coincidence, nonetheless.
The filthy, stinking man that the coachman had seen in the Arcadium now emerged from Backstairs, and now Crowell was certain he was being followed. He picked up his pace, and tried to think of the nearest public house he could get to. It didn’t matter which, just that it was crowded and nearby. Whoever the stinker was, he wouldn’t try anything serious if there were other people around. The Quarrel, he thought. Two blocks from here. Crowell was practically jogging now, as he came around the corner onto Cleaver Street.
There was something waiting for him there, something strange. It was all wrapped up in a black coat and cloak, with a black hood over its head. It crouched in the middle of the street, then stood, then crouched again, as though it couldn’t stand being still. It was as tall as a man, but a deep, terrible dread filled Crowell as he realized that the thing in front of him was not a man at all. It twitched weirdly, rolling its head back and forth like it was looking for something.
“Who…” Crowell’s voice cracked. He tried to work some moisture into his throat, while he stood frozen at the intersection. “Who is that?”
There was no apparent change in the thing’s movements, but the coachman was suddenly aware of its attention. James Crowell practically jumped out of his skin. He pulled a small roll of bills from his pocket: the day’s pay. “I…I haven’t got much.” He tossed it on the ground. “But...take it, if you want.