Bag of Weasels. Chapter 13

The bridge was clear and Banksy led, and we padded over quick as you like into the South. A couple of streets in, and we were on it; "Eyes up, said Banksy.
Coming on up from the end of the street rose the jagged black outline, the edge of a husk of ruined-castle tenements sooty on the sky. The outside wall circled round the meeting of two skinny streets where they stopped running parallel and crash converged into each other. High up was a hole blasted through the brick where a window once was, a small white-sky square in the black.
And in the square, was a beast. A silhouette shape of sharp ears and a snout, forelegs resting on the blasted ledge, it's head held up to scan the skyline.
Then it looked down, and ducked away into the husk.
A London hyena.
"You saw her, Said Banksy.
Was she asking or telling?
"¦ Yeah.
"You'll see more of her, She said.
Weeds poked their leaves out of cracks in the bricks, high up by the top window-holes overhead. All was black; soot and dirt from the London years pushed all the way in.
Banksy led us round a long wall to a box of tricks that people use to make things work. She climbed it and went over the wall.
She shouted encouragement - "Move your arse, and Ralph went over all lumbersome and then I went too, into the husk, into the circle.
Weeds and discard scattered over the vista, spread out til the weeds turned to bushes splayed up against the black walls, which circled half way round us three stories high, in a tumble down line where they met the sky. The whole thing leaned over us, giving us the once-over before we could go in. I wasn't too gripped by the idea; left to my self I stuck to the empty and unused, I've said it. But these burnt out wrecks are too tough for me. The cold, the wind, the spirits of emptiness, the burntout denizens bombed out on powders and juices to keep out the darkness. Too hard.
Dogs were watching us. They'd appeared at the mouth of an alley that snuck up between the side of the husk and the long snaking wall.
Curious, they were, unsure of their next move; friendly pooch of hellhound, which way to fall.
I felt cold. Which way to go.
But Banksy led us down the alley, and the dogs scattered. The place was a shell. Inside by the door the zig-zag mark of a long-gone staircase traced up the wall and into shadow. The floor was ash, and more discard, like a barn, I thought. And there were holes, some gaping, through the floor, revealing more dirt ash and rubbish lying just below. This place had gone back to emptiness way on back, been skipped over by London harmony.
Banksy led us on through to rooms knocked through, houses even, making a space for many to be. And there were some now, in groups in corners, shifting round last night's embers, poking them back to life.
Odds and sods and colours and creeds, burnt-out heads and live-wires, all seemed to have descended on the circle. A call had gone out and they were coming. Faces I'd seen and passed in dark places, wards and holding cells and run-down roads and collapsing houses.
There were nods and smiles and scuttlings and pulling down of hoods and hats.
And Flea. I'd know those ears anywhere.