The Cabbie's Story

He remembers the night too well.
Clifton Veleris had been waiting on the junction that bisects Willowbale Way and the grand old gothic bridge on the road leading straight from Six Towers through to Crow's Foot, as per the anonymous instructions.
It was the period known as The Quiet Hours, but the borough of Six Towers resembles that most eerie time at even its most active moments. A great number of the borough's Cabbies had been placed on retainer for the week, and told to wait in the vicinity of the crossroads, nothing more. The stone streets were empty and early fog, that oppressive mist, was soon upon Veleris.

Firstly he heard a hollow and reverberant drip-dripping coming from the direction of the Canal, and as he peered over his Cart to investigate his cart-goats started violently - reared up, bristled. There, approaching  the bridge, from the direction of Old Scurlock Manor was a shadow of a figure - tall, broad, cloaked. That grand and ornate place had been abandoned for years by all accounts. The figure appeared to go out of phase as it approached, and suddenly, with preternatural speed, zipped past the wagon and over the side of the bricked edge, down towards the water.

A body that big ought make an awful splash, the Cabbie noticed as he calmed the two lively engines of his trade, but none was forthcoming. The young man patted the agitated goat and climbed down to peer over the side to the bleak black below. The tentative and timid action coincided with an almighty rush of air and water as not one but two figures were propelled from the depths, up and back over the water's edge to the paving alongside the Cabbie.

After a moment - a second or an hour - the first shadowed outline rose from their kneeling position and lifted the other, from prone, into their arms. The Cabbie watched, petrified, as the shadowed man placed the unconscious figure, with great ease, into the back of the cart. The door was closed and the man in the cloak, at all times concealing his features, half-whispered, half-growled; "thou knowest thy destination"

The cabbie could not discern whether it was a question or a directive, but nonetheless was compelled not to answer. Instead he climbed back to the front of the cart, patted the terrified goats and took the taxicab south, to Nightmarket.

At Nightmarket the Cabbie, whether by his own divination, neglect, or some other  unearthly influence, rode straight through to the southernmost point of Nightmarket, and stopped by the river there. In his account he swears by the strength of his convictions - he knew this was the right place to relieve his passenger. He lay the limp form on the ground by the water's edge and took his cab and made his way home.

The next day, the entire Six Towers division of Cabbies were paid handsomely and their retainers removed.