Tales of the Gog Vol. 1

PROLOGUE

Here comes the Gog. It’s not hiding.

But then again, it’s not making a big fuss. Not really making a fuss at all, to be honest. It’s very large, but it’s very quiet. Far quieter than you’d think, looking at it.

This is a long, one-way street, unbroken by side roads, bending so you can’t see the far end. The never-ending traffic round the borough passes it by, so it’s weirdly quiet. It’s dark, too – one or two streetlights are broken. The night’s cold and dry. A small wind scurries fitfully around the place like the ghost of one of the rats in the embankment. The air outside the cab smells of dying leaves. 

A shift worker passes by, careful on a cold pavement. Her face burrows into the folds of a warm scarf that leaks the steam from her breath. Her shoulders are gathered to keep the heat in. She rolls from side to side a little as she walks, as if her hips were still asleep. 

Inside the cab, Ghaia watches her go. She breathes more quietly than usual, though no one outside could hear her even if they wanted to. Double glazed windows keep the warmth and sound inside, where they should be. 

To the right of the Gog, bare trees scratch at the clouds. Behind and below them, the iron lines of the rails glint through their branches, just visible beneath the embankment. Along the left-hand side of the street a quarter-mile of dark red brick terrace leans into a dirty sky. Some of the houses have holes in the roofs. Families of pigeons live in those now, above drainpipes sticking out at odd angles like broken fingers. Others are neat, with well-tended front gardens arranged just so, trees wrapped in sacks to protect against the frost that breaks them open from the inside. The wind coughs a handful of leaves along the road, and they flare into life, clouds of dancing sparks passing briefly through the wash of light from the headlamps then back into darkness. In the cab Ghaia smells wood and metal and the Tall Man’s terrible aftershave. 

Up ahead, an exhausted mother emerges from a basement flat, fussing around the edges of a wriggling pram. Something inside it is far too awake. 

These are the most exciting times. Nearly there. Cautious and creeping. 

The Tall Man drives with his usual care and says nothing. His eyes stay fixed on the road. Apart from the flexing of his long fingers around the wheel, he might be a statue. He’s disturbing to look at when he’s like this, because there’s already something not-quite-real about the longness of him, and that level of stillness ain’t right. Someone that thin, you ought to be able to see them breathing.

But he talks and he breaks it. 

“What you so nervous about?” 

“I’m not nervous.”

“They’re kids.”

“Yeah, well, so am I.”

He smiles.

Usually, Ghaia would be worried others had got there first. She’d be tense and ready to argue, or run, or fight if she had to. She’d know what she was doing and how she’d like to do it. 

But not this time. This time she’s uncertain they should be here at all. 

She’s a little afraid, too. Because what they’re looking for is too strange – even for her, a girl lost among strange things in a strange city, moving with stranger people. They’re after a different kind of prize now, right or wrong. 

This is something different.

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