As we wandered, I began to get a handle on the Acre’s unique geography, learning the blocks less by their names than by their character. Each street was distinct, the shops along them grouped according to type. Doleful Street boasted two undertakers, a medium, a carpenter who worked exclusively with “repurposed coffinwood,” a troupe of professional funeral-wailers who did weekend duty as a barbershop quartet, and a tax accountant. Oozing Street was oddly cheerful, with flower boxes hanging from windowsills and houses painted bright colors; even the slaughterhouse that anchored it was an inviting robin’s-egg blue, and I resisted an odd impulse to go inside and ask for a tour. Periwinkle Street, on the other hand, was a cesspit. There was an open sewer running down its center, a thriving population of aggressive flies, and sidewalks that overflowed with putrefying vegetables, the property of a cut-rate greengrocer whose sign claimed he could turn them fresh again with a kiss.
Attenuated Avenue was just fifty feet long and had only one business: two men selling snacks from a basket on a sled. Children crowded around, clamoring for handouts, and Addison veered off to snuffle around their feet for droppings. I was about to call after him when one of the men shouted, “Cat’s meat! Boiled cat’s meat here!” He came scurrying back on his own, tail tucked between his legs, whimpering, “I shall never eat again, never, never again …”
We approached Smoking Street from Upper Smudge. The closer we got, the more the block seemed to wither, its storefronts abandoned, its sidewalks emptying, the pavement blackening with currents of ash that blew around our feet, as if the street itself had been infected by some creeping death. At the end it curved sharply to the right, and just before the bend was an old wooden house with an equally old man guarding its stoop. He swept at the ash with a stubbly broom, but it piled up faster than he could ever hope to collect it.
I asked him why he bothered. He looked up suddenly, hugging the broom to his chest as if afraid I’d steal it. His feet were bare and black and his pants were sooty to the knee. “Someone’s got to,” he said. “Can’t let the place go to hell.”
As we passed he returned grimly to his task, though his arthritic hands could hardly close around the stick. There was something almost regal about him, I thought; a defiance I admired. He was a holdout who refused to give up his post. The last watchman at the end of the world.
Turning with the road, we moved through a zone of buildings that shed their skins as we walked: first the paint was singed away, and farther along the windows had blackened and burst; next, the roofs were caving and the walls coming down, and finally, as we came to the junction with Smoking Street, only their bones were left—a chaos of timbers charred and leaning, embers glowing in the ash like tiny hearts beating their last. We stood and looked around, thunderstruck. Sulfurous smoke rose from deep cracks that fissured the pavement. Fire-stripped trees loomed like scarecrows over the ruins. Drifts of ash flowed down the street, a foot deep in places. It was as close to Hell as I ever intend to find myself.
“So this is the wights’ front driveway,” said Addison. “How fitting.”
“It’s unreal,” I said, unbuttoning my coat. Sauna-like warmth rose all around, radiating through the soles of my shoes. “What did Sharon say happened here?”
“Underground fire,” Emma said. “They can burn for years. Notoriously difficult to extinguish.”
There was a sound like a giant can of soda being opened, and a tall prong of orange flame shot up from a seam in the pavement not ten feet away. We started and jumped and then had to collect ourselves.
“Let’s not spend one minute longer here than we need to,” said Emma. “Which way?”
There was only left and right to choose from. We knew that Smoking Street terminated at the Ditch on one end and at the wights’ bridge on the other, but we didn’t know which way was which, and between the smoke, the fog, and the wind-blown ash, we couldn’t see far in either direction. Choosing at random could mean a dangerous detour and a waste of time.
We were getting desperate when we heard a warbling tune drifting toward us through the fog. We scuttled off the road to hide among the carbonized ribs of a house. As the singers approached, their voices growing louder, we could make out the words to their strange song:
The night before the thief was stretched,
the hangman came around
I’ve come, he said, before you’re dead,
a warning to expound
I’ll strangle your neck and send you to heck
and cut off your arm and do you some harm
and flay your hide and give you a riiiiiiiiide …
Here they all paused for breath, then finished with: “SIX FEET UNDER THE GROUND!”
Long before they emerged from the fog, I knew whose voices they were. The figures took form in black overalls and sturdy black boots, tool bags swinging gaily at their sides. Even after a hard day’s work, the indomitable gallows riggers were still singing at the top of their lungs.
“Bless their tuneless souls,” Emma said, laughing softly.
Earlier we’d seen them working at the Ditch end of Smoking Street, so it seemed reasonable to assume that’s where they were coming from—which meant they were walking in the direction of the bridge. We waited for the men to pass and disappear again into the fog before venturing back onto the road to follow.
We shuffled through reefs of ash that blackened everything—the cuffs of my pants, Emma’s shoes and bare ankles, the full height of Addison’s legs. Somewhere in the distance the riggers took up another song, their voices echoing weirdly through the burned landscape. Nothing around us but ruin. Now and then we heard a sharp whoosh, quickly followed by a spout of flame bursting from the ground. None erupted as close as the first one. We were lucky—getting roasted alive here would’ve been easy.