The Wrong Way, page 1
Contents
The Wrong Way
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About the Author
Copyright
The Wrong Way
“I know where we’re going.”
“You absolutely do not. We’ve been going in the wrong direction for so long I don’t even recognise this place.”
“We’re heading west. We haven’t crossed the ring road which means we still need to go west. There’ll be signs to the A564 when we hit a main road, then it’ll be easy.”
“You have no idea if we’re heading west, east, upward or down. Your pride’s planted us in a labyrinthine ghetto on the wrong side of gentrification. Just pull over and ask for directions.”
“There’s no need. We can’t be more than five minutes-”
“Pull over, Roger, or I swear to God.”
“I am not going to-”
“I swear to God, Roger! I swear to God!”
Swearing to God was the pinnacle of her rage. She did not go beyond invoking the deity; it was a punctuation mark, the breaking point at which, through her shrill escalating voice and the tense tightening of her skin, she let it be known that if something did not change, that instant, there would be Hell to pay. Roger liked to think he was not afraid of her and that there was nothing she could actually do beyond swearing to God, but for the sake of a quiet life he never pushed it. He slammed on the breaks and they screeched to a juddering halt alongside the nearest pedestrian.
As Carol placed her finger on the switch for the window, Roger leant towards her and invoked his own angry zenith: the quiet, logical explanation made through gritted teeth. “It is not a matter of pride, Carol. I am aware of where we are. I am not afraid to ask for directions, I simply trust my own instincts more than I trust the advice of someone we don’t know from Adam.”
Carol made a point of holding Roger’s challenging gaze a moment longer than necessary, to show she was most certainly not backing down and, though she would say no more on the subject, she was still most certainly right. She was still looking at him as she lowered the window, then finally turned to the pedestrian.
The man that Roger indicated was watching them with a smile that seemed to list unnaturally high up one side of his face. He had a pencil-thin moustache, a tiny cigarette and a natty old dinner jacket that belonged in a coffin. His wiry hair hung in patches across an uneven skull, as though afflicted by chemical poisoning. He did not, Carol had to admit to herself, appear to be the most trustworthy individual. That was beside the point, though.
She called out, “I say, could you help us? We’re on our way to Morricone Hall, for an anniversary party, and we appear to have got hopelessly lost and have no mobile signal. I assume we’ve ended up in Ten Gardens?”
The man dragged heavily on his cigarette as though trying to suck treacle through a straw, with a suitable noise to go with it. He puffed out an elegant smoke ring. Carol feared he was not going to answer her, but she did not dare look back at Roger to share her concerns. Instead she simply waited. Behind her, Roger quietly muttered, “Waste of god-damned time.”
“You’re beyond Ten Gardens, right enough,” the man finally spoke, his voice coming out in a scratchy hiss, “By about two blocks. Morricone Hall, that’s back along the A564.”
“Well we haven’t crossed the ring road yet, have we?” Roger said.
“No sir,” the man pointed his cigarette up the road, “What you need to do is take the next left, up ahead, loop around onto Pestfax Road, follow it about a quarter mile, take another left onto Milton. Then you’ve got the third right, down the hill, follow the left fork and you’re there.”
“We’d be at Morricone Hall?” Carol asked.
“Rightly so, can’t be more than five minutes out,” the man nodded. “Left, onto Pestfax, left onto Milton, third right and follow the fork.”
“Thank you ever so much!” Carol sighed with relief. She closed the window as the man gave them both an obliging nod. She turned back to her husband with a smug scowl. He was frowning, though, eyes distant as he drifted into thought.
“What are you waiting for?” Carol asked.
“That doesn’t sound right at all. If we take two lefts we’ll be doubling back on ourselves. I think we crossed Pestfax earlier-”
“Seriously? You still can’t let it go? For crying out loud, Roger, drive the damned car.”
“Look, just because he lives here doesn’t mean-”
“I’m done with this discussion, Roger. Drive the car. Right now. Or I swear to God.”
Roger glowered at her. He looked from her to the odd man, who was still standing there, smoking, watching them as though he had no other purpose in the world than to give them directions. Roger huffed and pulled out. He started to follow the directions as given.
They drove in icy silence.
Roger took the first left. They trundled along a wide, curving road that ran between tall factory buildings, the brickwork crumbling and windows broken or boarded up. The neglected warehouse district was well known as a domain of junkies and vagabonds, even with the slow gentrification of Ten Gardens starting to encroach on it. This road appeared to be in greater need of middle class artists than most.
A quarter of a mile down, Roger turned onto Milton Road and started voicing the disagreement he was bottling up, “This isn’t right, I’m telling you. It’s taking us in a circle. We went past-”
“That gentleman clearly knew what he was talking about, just admit that you were wrong.”
Roger chose not to respond. They continued driving in silence for a moment more before Carol decided to press for her victory, “Of course, you can’t. Heaven forbid you should need to seek help in anything so important as navigating an area of town you have never set foot in before.”
“I have nothing against asking for directions,” Roger grumbled quietly, “I just don’t think you should be so trusting.”
He had to admit to himself that the man’s directions had been so confident that it was hard to question them. No doubt they would reach Morricone Hall soon, through some strange bygone route that only a local’s knowledge could reveal, and he would be left looking the fool. But he had a plan for that. The insistence that he had been following a different but equally effective route would suffice as an explanation. If anyone should suggest he was the one being unreasonable, all he’d have to do is make a joke of the frightful nature of the man Carol chose to ask.
The road banked steeply down, as the man had promised, and they rolled towards a small tunnel. As they passed through it and came to a fork in the road, sticking to the left, Carol enacted her own plan to secure a win in this debacle, “Perhaps you shouldn’t be so quick to judge people. However strange he looked that man proved to be perfectly helpful.”
Roger was quiet as the buildings either side of them seemed to grow taller and more erratic, the road basked in shadow. Her comment presented a problem, which stirred anger in him. He reacted without a plan, now, “Maybe if you had read the damn directions right in the first place we wouldn’t have ended up way out here.”
“Oh so now it’s my fault? Sorry but I don’t remember asking you to turn early on-”
“Hold on, hold on a moment,” Roger uttered urgently, waving a hand.
“Don’t you shush me, I’ll-”
“Look!”
He stopped the car as they exited the shadow of the looming buildings. Roger and Carol stared ahead in horrified silence for a moment. From a tall vantage point, on this elevated road, they could see the vast landscape of an unfamiliar city stretching out below them. Sharp towers rose at varying heights, lined with spikes and panels of scale-like armour that gave the unique architecture a reptilian quality. Torn flags with barely decipherable insignia’s flapped at the top of the urban peaks that dotted the horizon. The night sky glowed a sinister purple and black clouds hung between the glittering of thousands of green stars. The road wound down between the claw-like entrances of a series of macabre shops, large glass fronts littered with arcane furniture and tools. A crooked window on the third floor of one of the nearest buildings emitted a warm yellow light, partially blocked by the silhouette of a figure suspended by chains, involuntarily shuddering.
On the pavement nearby, a thin man stood hammering something on an anvil. He stopped and slowly looked up, revealing a head with no face, just the impossible texture of crumbling leaves. Past him, it became apparent, the whole city was teeming with impossible life. Small, hunched humanoid figures stared at the car from the shadows at the edge of the road; humanoid but not human, for their eyes were close to their ears, and their large mouths invitingly gnashed circular teeth together on the tops of their bald heads. One held the leash of an animal with an uncountable number of flopping tentacle-like limbs and a tiny cat-like head that rose on a stalk from its amorphous body.
Crossing the road, a hundred metres down, a car-sized beast was carrying the shell of an enormous snail on rapidly tapping spider’s legs, each as thick as a human arm. As it reached the other side of the road, it launched at one of the humanoid creatures that had become distracted by their arrival. The spidery legs dragged the unfortunate, flailing victim down into the shell, while the nearby oddities pointed and laughed.
The source of the purple hue in the night air was noticeable amidst the strange shapes of the nightmare city; a fast-flowing river ran between the buildings. It created bulbous waves as it moved, full of limp, lifeless objects sinisterly akin to corpses, and it glowed with an unnatural shade of scarlet radiation.
Roger quickly glanced at the rear-view mirror and paused, seeing the dark passage they had entered through was now blocked. He turned in the seat and saw more of the advancing, shadowy strangers.
Somewhere up above them something screeched, and they both looked up to see two vast creatures flapping bat-like wings as they fought to rend a man-sized creature in two.
“This is exactly what I was afraid would happen,” Roger huffed, slumping back into his seat and giving Carol his most accusing, angry glower, laced with every bit of superior triumph he could muster. Her face was pale with shock, her eyes fixed rigidly on the horrors of the world around them, but she was not done yet. She braced herself, took a deep breath, and carefully responded.
“Clearly, we should have asked for directions before you got us so hopelessly lost.”
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The Wrong Way is a standalone story set in Ordshaw, the UK’s third city - and its least well-behaved. The debut novel in the Ordshaw series, Under Ordshaw, is due out in 2018 - exposing the city’s extraordinary underbelly. In the meantime, why not check out Phil Williams’ dystopian series - currently available are Balfair’s Confinement and Wixon’s Day, with the latest novel, Aftan Whispers, due for release in January 2018. You can download Balfair’s Confinement, an Estalia novella, for free by joining Phil Williams’ mailing list - go to www.phil-williams.co.uk for more information.
About the Author
Phil Williams is the author of the Estalia, Ordshaw and Faergrowe series. Living in Sussex, UK, with his wife, he also writes screenplays and spends a great deal of time walking his impossibly fluffy dog, Herbert. You can find him online at www.phil-williams.co.uk. Connect with Phil on Facebook and Twitter.
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Phil Williams
The moral right of Phil Williams to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Phil Williams, The Wrong Way
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