Hayes had not intended to get drunk. He remembered that now, just a few hours after he’d left Garvey behind and gone roving through the streets, trying to purge that stolen image of Garvey’s children from his mind. He knew his actions often had casualties, and it was cowardly to want to ignore them, but it was no longer a question of want as much as need. After the sun had set and the temperature dropped he’d fled into an open pub to huddle next to the barside fireplace, sniffling and cursing, and he’d told the barman that he wanted one beer, and then a chaser of whisky, and no more. But then the gentleman had mentioned one or two specials, and Hayes had listened.
Now it was night and he was stumbling through the alleys of the Shanties. “McNaughton,” he muttered to himself. “Mc-fucking-Naughton. Always McNaughton.” He turned to peer at the Nail, far away, lit up by spotlights along the base. Where had the bastard come from, he wondered. Had Kulahee dreamed of it, sitting in his little hut? Had he sketched it out on parchment, and then forgotten about it? Or had it always been here, waiting to be carved out of everything else around it?
He hiccupped. Then he looked around and realized he was quite lost.
They said that when Evesden was first founded the Shanties had been no more than log cabins cobbled together with hides stretched over them, built right in the woods. Hayes could believe it. The place had the planning and the hospitality of a shabby campground, or perhaps he was just drunk. As the population of Evesden had erupted, the tenements had swelled up between the leaning homes like enormous mushrooms, dark and stinking, and they’d remained that way for the future. Massive, darkly lit buildings with strings of smaller, rambling homes clutched between their ranks.
He looked at one tenement and realized he recognized it. It was Skiller’s, smoke still oozing from the rooftop cracks. Perhaps he’d led himself here without realizing. It seemed like a ruin from some recent war left standing. He reached out and touched it to make sure it was real.
He stumbled around to the side of the building, to a little alley. It swelled and narrowed as the wall of the adjacent building warped. He walked along it and tried to imagine people living here. Tried to match this world with the one in Newton where Samantha had once slept peacefully, or peacefully enough.
Hayes stopped halfway down the alley. He heard someone just ahead, padding through the darkness. There was a snuffle, as though they were crying. Hayes stepped forward and the alley took a hard right down to the debris-filled gutter of the next building. No one was there. He looked back and around and saw no one in the little spaces between the buildings.
Then he heard it again. A child’s sob, but now it was from far behind him. He swiveled around drunkenly to look, but again there was nothing.
“Hello?” he said.
The crying stopped abruptly, but not like the crier had just stopped. It was as if the noise itself had been cut off, like the halting of a record. Then Hayes heard it again down an alley to the right, much more agitated, some little child wailing. Hayes staggered down the gap and peered into the darkness. There was nothing.
“Is anyone there?” he called.
The crying did not stop this time, but he still could not see. It was as though it floated away from him. Then he heard it again, this time behind him, but the first voice did not stop. He heard a third voice, this time to his left, and all of them sobbed together, a child’s chorus weeping all at once in a circle around him.
Hayes reeled around, listening to the many voices. Then it struck him. A keening sense of such sorrow and grief that it brought him to his knees, sadness almost beyond human naming. Ancient tears. Wordless and timeless. He choked and fell to all fours as it filled him.
Then came the sound, a shrieking like metals being ground into one another with unimaginable force. Hayes screamed and lifted his watering eyes and looked down the alley to see a shadow on the wall, a human shadow, but it was blurred at every edge and it moved so fast it was little more than a smear. It was there and it was real, he could tell, and yet when he looked to see what was casting the shadow he could see nothing at all.
The shrieking stopped, leaving a ringing in his ears. Hayes took a breath and started clapping his hands together and was relieved when he found he could hear it. He checked his ears and felt no blood. Then he crawled up and sat on his knees and stared at the empty alley before him.