CHAPTER 1

LONDON

Enough is enough.
Chan stood in the midst of yet another dim-witted party, being thrown in another hellish, hole-in-the-wall pub in the heart of the giant, bustling creature of a metropolis that was London. This time it was in Old Street, to be exact. He loved London to its core, but at that moment, he was feeling every one of his thirty years.

"You’re officially an old bastard," grinned Ollie, though only two years his junior.
"Be that as it may, my friend, I’m still getting out of here, as I can no longer be arsed with this. See you later. And remember, wash it before you use it, man-whore."

Ollie roared laughter, his eyes already half-closed from too much cider, and disappeared into the crowd to meet Jez and the others they had come with, grabbing a multi-pierced, doe-eyed girl’s backside en route, and earning himself a much-deserved fuck off. Chan sighed and made my way to the exit, squeezing past the throngs of chain-smoking, tarted-up girls and packs of slobbering, pimple-faced men, all of whom looked depressingly young to him.

Ollie was one of Chan’s English friends. Of old money but unpretentious with it, Ollie was from Putney and a self-proclaimed rugby lad, though the way he spoke, an accent more at home in the rougher East End of London, betrayed neither. Loud and politically incorrect at the best of times, he was forever the life of every party, and possessed a charisma so strong it was like he had his own gravitational pull, a quality that ensured he never quite crossed the line over into boorishness when on one of his booze adventures. They’d met at university just over two years ago, when they were still both doing their Masters in Anthropology at UCL, and had now returned to do their respective PhDs. Ollie was doing some far-flung thesis on the reproductive ecology of the Kunama tribe of Eritrea, a place he’d visited quite often in the past year, while Chan was exploring the origin of folklore in the West Indies, particularly that of his homeland of Trinidad and Tobago.

They had met in the Jeremy Bentham pub on University Street after one of their first lectures, and had instantly got along. Ollie was already drunk, a state of being that seemed to be almost constant where he was concerned, and on seeing Chan bellowed across the pub, Wha’ gwan, rasta? in the worst attempt at a Jamaican accent Chan ever heard, causing him to wince slightly and wonder for the hundredth time why Brits tended to mimic West Indians in a second-rate, Hollywood-style Jamaican accent regardless of their island of origin. It was a curse he blamed Bob Marley for. Jus’ cool, dread was the reply, the accent purposely thickened for effect, resulting in fits of delighted laughter from Ollie. When Ollie laughed, he turn beet red, until it was impossible to decide where his forehead ended and his ginger hair began.

They had never formally met prior to that occasion, but Chan was the only West Indian in that year, and a bit of a novelty, so word had spread, hence Ollie’s opening gambit. It would be through him that Chan was to have his first glimpses of British culture, an education in itself. But despite their cultural differences, they shared a mutual sense of humour and quickly became thick as thieves. It was also through him that Chan met most of their group of friends, including Jez, the medic of the group, who, together with Ollie and Chan, was to become deeply entwined in the events to follow.

Having finally forged a path to the pub’s exit via the cloakroom, Chan stepped out into the chilly mid-February air that stole his breath away like only air at two o’clock in the morning can, wrapped his scarf around his neck, and looked for a cab to take him home. No easy feat, as at that time of the morning, no one cared to take him to Barnet, which, in all fairness, was only just about in London, sitting precariously at the top end of the Northern Line. Those who did offer insisted on charging three times the going rate. After telling a few of the drivers what he thought they could do with their going rate, he impulsively decided to walk, a three hour job at best. But he was in that sort of mood, feeling the need to clear his head. The cold air would probably help. His mood stemmed from the fact that in his own mind, his thesis was not going well. Truth be told, it was in dire straits as far as he was concerned. He had done all the necessary research, island-hopping around the West Indies in search of any scrap of folklore or Ananci story, scouring the public libraries in Trinidad and Jamaica for collected works, and interviewing professors of history at The University of the West Indies on their views and thoughts. Last year, he had even travelled to Ghana and the Ivory Coast, two of the original suppliers of the slave trade, to hunt out any similarities between legends there and back home, legends that may have been carried across the Atlantic when those first unfortunates finally landed in the New World under the crack of colonial whips. But something vital was lacking. Perhaps paradoxically, his thesis still all seemed too fake to him, still stuck in fantasy. Nothing more than a collection of generations-old yarns spun to frighten children into obedience. The thing was, he knew the subject of his thesis to be all too real, having had first-hand experience with it as a child. Though he had never told a soul about what happened that night so many years ago now, save his grandmother at whose house it happened, and who had sworn him to secrecy, the experience was the driving force behind the perusal of his chosen career path. To date, however, he had been unable to provide proof: hard evidence that at least some of these mythical creatures he had spent the last year officially (and the previous twenty or so unofficially) chasing actually did exist. A deep air of despondency had begun to sink into his bones. Fate, however, had other plans that night. It came in the form of a serendipitous encounter.

It happened about one and a half sweaty hours into his walk, whilst traversing the leafy residential stretch of Highgate Village, mulling over his thoughts, cursing himself for deciding to walk and generally wallowing in self-pity when he stopped and looked around, not able to shake the feeling that he was being followed, and had been ever since he left Old Street. True to that evening’s forecast, there was low-lying fog everywhere. The fog in Highgate can hug its streets in an ethereal shroud given the right time of year, and it did not disappoint that night. Indeed it was thicker than Chan could ever remember. The street lamps struggled to blaze through it, each one succeeding in nothing more than an eerie orange nimbus crowded around its bulb. It was now three in the morning, and quiet, almost preternaturally so. His hackles rose. He sensed that who- or whatever was following him was just off to his left, but the thickness of the fog denied him a clear view.