The rain had started around noon that day and continued in a greasy drizzle all afternoon.  It was well past sunset – David wasn’t sure how far past sunset, but at this time of year it could have been midnight or three pm.  David’s sense of time wasn’t helped by the fact that he was drunk.  It was a good, old-fashioned Christmas Office Party Drunk: merrily drunk but not boss-offendingly drunk.  This year he hadn’t even managed to get copping-a-feel-from-Debbie-in-Accounts drunk, but that’s life.

David’s spirits were buoyed as he loped down the sidewalk.  He wandered towards the train station on autopilot, and let his mind wander.  He was glad he’d moved to London when they’d offered him the job.  Hazily, David decided that London was a shimmering, multi-coloured dream of lights and culture and pretty, pretty girls.  Not even the rain tracing its way down the back of his shirt could dampen his enthusiasm.  He found his thoughts wandering towards the purchase of meat products of mysterious origin, preferably in a bun.  Life was good.

He tottered to a halt at the corner opposite the train station, and waited for the light to change.

A voice behind him said, ‘Excuse me, did you drop this?’

David turned around to find the space behind him completely vacant.  He let the strangeness of the situation slide off his mind: clearly, he’d heard a snippet of conversation meant for someone else.  Of course.  That’s why there was no one behind him.  He turned back to face the lights.

‘I’m sorry, I just thought it might be valuable, and didn’t want it to be lost.’

Again, David turned on the spot, pivoting unsteadily on one foot.  The voice had come from right behind him; this time he was sure of it.  The complete absence of a speaker was beginning to worry him slightly. His mother’s vague and irrational warning that Strange Things Happen in Very Big Cities floated into his mind.

His lovely, paranoid mother.  Sitting in the kitchen chair from which her own mother had dispensed everything from childhood justice to bridal wisdom, she’d told him about the kinds of people to steer clear of: loose women, for a start. Touts who’d lure nice young men into gambling dens.  She knew a boy who’d moved to London just after he’d finished school: he was last seen walking into a casino and then no one ever saw him again.  It was tales of the Scissorman for grownups, he’d decided, as he sipped his iced tea in the summery warmth of the small kitchen and pretended to listen.

He closed his jacket collar against the rain and had a good look at what was now in front of him. The Grand Hotel occupied the entire block, and the light from the huge revolving door cast a strong back light on the elegant wrought-iron fence between himself and the door.  To the left, a low wall, and a set of stairs leading up to a pair of beautiful Art Nouveau glass doors, strangely dark in this festive season.

He looked all the way up to the sky and all the way down to the ground, just for good measure.  There was no one there.

The traffic behind him began to slow as the light turned red and David turned back to face the crossing.  There was still a meat-bun to be had before catching the train and nothing short of a Christmas miracle or a beautiful girl was going to stand in his way.

Her hand alighted on his shoulder so gently, he wasn’t sure at first it was real.  Her slender fingers were sheathed in a simple black glove which stopped short at her wrist, revealing a pale sliver of skin next to her cuff.  He followed the cuff to a sleeve, to a shoulder, and thence up to a face – a simple, plain face that seemed both honest and open and reminded him of the girls back home.

She smelled of powder.  He wanted very much to kiss her.

In the palm of her other hand, she cupped a single cufflink of silver, red and black.  ‘Here’, she said gently, ‘is this yours? I’d hate for it to be separated from its mate.’  She held it out to him delicately.

He let go of his collar and drew back the sleeve of his jacket, revealing to her a cufflink of gold and green, much lighter, newer and cheaper than the one she held in her hand.  He smiled.  ‘No such luck, I’m afraid.’

Moving like the ribs of a fan folding shut, her fingers closed on the cufflink nestled in her hand. She gave a small, curt nod.  She turned to go.

‘Uh,’ David interjected, his muddled brain pedalling as fast as it could, ‘we could go check the hotel bar?  To see if anyone’s dropped it?  I think there’s a party on. Tonight.’

Idiot.

She raised her eyes to his and smiled.  ‘Good idea, but maybe we should check the casino first.’  She gestured with her head towards the stairs.  David opened his mouth to tell her not to bother, that it was closed – but snapped it shut again at the sight of the doors’ frosted glass panes shining from within and barely able to contain the sounds of jazz and general rumpus inside.  A party was in the fullest of swing, and he wanted in.

‘Say,’ she said, a sidelong smile on her face. ‘How about I buy you a drink?’

David held out his arm to her and they went in.

The joint was, in fact, jumping.  Pretty waitresses flowed past him as he ambled down the loudly-patterned carpet, following her to the bar.  The ringing jingle and symphonic bells of a fleet of slot machines tumbled through the air.  A balding middle-aged man at a one-armed bandit, his tie loose around his neck, caught David’s eye as he lifted a drink off the waitress’ tray. Instead of turning back to the machine, he lifted his glass in David’s direction. They smiled at each other conspiratorially. The music hopped and jived like a heartbeat and the room swayed and danced like a flickering flame.

Behind the bar, the world was doubled in a mirror that spanned the length of the narrow room.  The reflection showed in every detail the long central aisle to the door, the men playing slots and the bronze wall lamps, each one throwing up a yawning V of light.  David watched the smiling bartender mixing a martini, the silver shaker glinting like a lure as it reflected the reds, greens and blues of the slot machines.

As they reached the bar, a tiny thought wormed its way to the forefront of David’s mind. Fortunately, the thought was a drunk as David was, or he might have found its message alarming. It was a message on the theme of ‘There’s something not quite right here.’ David’s brow wrinkled – he knew this was so as he caught his reflection in the mirror. It made him look old, he decided, and resolved not to do it again. He was therefore surprised to catch his reflection looking back at him with an even more perplexed look on his face, as his thought process chimed in with ‘No, there really is something wrong here.’ This annoyed David, as he’d been having such a nice time. He turned away from the frown-revealing mirror, and leaned back on his elbows on the bar.

With a wry smile, she said ‘This one’s on me. After that is up to you.’ She placed her pocketbook on the bar, and next to it, the errant cufflink. She caught the bartender’s eye and he reverse-nodded at her: that peculiar movement both defiant and familiar where the chin leads the nod, rather than the forehead. He put the shaker down behind the bar and ambled over, wiping his hands on his apron. Rather than shout over the din of the room, she leaned across the bar on tip-toe and pointed out a few items on the drinks menu while the bartender discreetly slid the cufflink across the bar and towards himself. The noise of the room easily muffled a sound from behind the bar that was remarkably like a cufflink being dropped into a box of other cufflinks.

David studied the room carefully, quietly. He shut his ears to the increasing noise and watched the eddies of people as they moved around the room. Something about the way the room moved seemed strangely familiar to him, even though (and he’d never admit this to anyone, least of all to her) this was his first time in a gambling house. The waitresses seemed to take several steps forward and then stop, or even take one step back. The people at the slot machines seemed to work with a certain diligence he wasn’t sure was appropriate for people feeding money into a flashing box. He was glad he wasn’t facing the mirror, as by now, his mug was a troubled one indeed.

She tapped him on the shoulder and presented him with a glass of whiskey. A wise choice, he reflected, snapping back to the present. If the conversation went well, the drink could be eked out into a lengthy chat. If it wasn’t going well, it could be thrown back quickly with the excuse of having a train to catch. As he idly wondered whether she’d done this before, he realised his foot was tapping along to the rhythm of the room. Strangely, it wasn’t the beat of the music, which David was convinced was louder than just a few moments ago. This beat was slower: it went one-two (beat). One-two (beat). Over and over.

She said something, and as he leaned his ear to her lovely mouth to better hear her over the blaring music, something in the mirror caught his eye: The waitresses. They all moved to the same beat he was tapping out: move on the one-two, pause on the beat. As if they’d been choreographed to move to the same rhythm or beat or pulse.

Pulse.

It’s a heartbeat, David realised. The room isn’t jumping, it’s beating. You are Jonah, my son, and this is the whale.

Shocked, he turned to face her, to grab her, to run, but she must have come to the same conclusion that he had: her hand was firmly clamped on his left wrist with an iron grip. Oddly, her smile stayed just the same.

There was an ache in his right wrist, and David glanced down to see the bartender’s hand pinning his arm to the bar. David tried to pull his hands away; his movements becoming more frenzied as he struggled to free himself, but all he managed to do was knock over his drink.

The bartender looked up slowly from the spill and David watched in horror as the man’s smile began to grow into a sickening crescent of improbably sharp teeth that nearly bisected his head.  Enthralled, David barely noticed the bartender’s reflection in the mirror had turned to face him and was grinning the same scythe grin.

In the mirror, the balding man lifted his drink and smiled, showing two neat rows of bandsaw teeth.  He winked.

___________________________________________________

The rain had started around noon that day and had continued in a greasy drizzle all afternoon.  Night had long since fallen as Paul waited at the crosswalk near the train station.  Behind him, in the shadowy corner formed by a low wall and a set of stairs leading to the doors of an empty casino, stood a sweetly smiling woman holding delicately in her hand a light, cheap cufflink of green and gold.