Games of Grief

by C. J. Strange

The underground Tube lines haven’t fully run on electricity in years. Not since we reclaimed valuable oil fields in the North Sea from the Scots. So thankfully, I only have to worry about being run over as I make my way down the tracks, and not electrocuted.

  Trains haven’t run this stretch of track in at least two years, though. I doubt I’m in any danger of being hit by one.

  Don’t flippin’ tempt fate, Lestrade…

  I’ve barely begun to eke my way past the headwall into the dark, domed tunnel when I hear a noise behind me.

  Down the tracks. The other way.

  I whirl around, spinning to aim my flashlight-and-firearm combo in the direction of the sound. The smell of dirt and piss and old, cold steel is more rancid in the pit beneath the raised tracks, blurring my vision more than I would want it to. Even still, nothing is moving.

  I switch plans on the spot and creep back the way I came. As I edge further, the beam of my flashlight skims a section of the inner tunnel wall where the bricks have been completely broken through, ripped out to create a crude, alternate entryway.

  I never know if this is the worst or best part of my job.

  There’s another noise, and at the same time, a shadow darts across my scope of vision. My body jerks in reaction, finger stiff against the trigger, but before I can identify a threat and shoot—

  The white-hot flash of pain that burns up all conscious thought comes out of nowhere. I’m vaguely aware of hitting the ground. I’m less aware of the hands that seize the shoulders of my leather jacket and begin to drag me, and even less aware of the person they belong to.

  This is going really well, so far.

  My mind starts to fizzle back into my body as I’m hauled upright and thrown arse-first into a wooden chair. Something has already clamped around my wrists by the time I even think to fight. I struggle, and I’m yanked harder against the back of the chair, against the body of the man standing behind it.

  It takes me a good, long while to accept it’s his hands around my wrists. When I do, I immediately yearn to understand it, or rather, to explain it. No living human being should ever be that cold to the touch—ever.

  “—is he!?” is the short second half of the conversation I hone in on the instant my conscious mind is in control again.

  “I’ve no idea,” is the gruff reply from a second person leaning over me, the one who initially attacked me. He’s digging through the pockets of my jacket and jeans, and when I try to sit up in protest, his partner wrenches me down again.

  My cop training is returning to me at an agonizingly slow speed. My knee snaps up, but he’s faster—impossibly fast. His elbow intercepts, throwing my knee aside hard enough to strain the ligaments.

  It’s too dark to get a good look at either of them. They’re just silhouettes, shadows against a poorly-lit background of whatever hell of theirs lies inside that man-made hole in the tunnel wall.

  I suck in a sharp breath as two huge, powerful hands dig into my jacket and run down the sides of my body, probably seeking weaponry. Cold fingers dig into my ribs through my T-shirt, and I can’t help the way my body twists against them.

  “Fuck me!”

  “What?”

  The second bloke’s hands have found my police badge, wedged in my buttoned back pocket. “Kay—he’s the fuckin’ bobby!”

  The one behind me yanks my arms down further, pinning them tight together in his frigid vise of a grip. It’s enough that I’m forced to arch my back to compensate.

  “You a copper?” he—Kay—demands right in my ear, his beard uncomfortably rough against the side of my face.

  “Wanna scan his Bit and check?”

  “In a sec.”

  “It’s all right, love,” Kay’s partner chuckles. He’s wedged between my thighs, one cold hand gripping my right knee as if threatening me. The other is still holding my badge, turning it over to look at it in the near-nonexistent light. “We like coppers.”

  “Love ‘em.”

  “Love ‘em.” My badge lands on my stomach. The position they both have me bent into is painful at best, but I daren’t do anything that might be taken as struggling. I have to regain my leverage over the situation.

  “L-look,” I try not to stammer. “Lads, I ain’t here to make any arrests—”

  I’m not expecting the open-palm slap, and it violently knocks both my jaw to one side and the sense out of me for a second or two.

  “We don’t like coppers when they run their mouths.”

  “We only like ‘em when they’re screaming,” Kay growls right in my ear, and the way he does makes my hair stand on end. “Or crying. Or moaning.”

  “Or all three,” his mate pipes up.

  “Preferably all three, Tee,” Kay snorts, and they both laugh while I do whatever I can to sink deeper into the chair. Away from them. As far as I can assume, they’re both Anomalies of some sort, the energy they radiate making even Professor Moriarty seem human and ‘normal’. “Our typical initiation rites usually give us all three.”

  Kay’s partner, Tee, leans in again, and I writhe to one side to avoid him. He snickers. “Depends how far they make it. How hard they are.”

  He strips my jacket down one shoulder, then the other, using it to aid in the trapping of my arms behind me. Exposing more of me.

  I don’t think I’ve ever felt this fucking uncomfortable, this helpless, this deathly afraid. Even in all my years on the job.

  A surge of rebellious energy kicks in and I let it go, thrashing and kicking and fighting them with everything I’ve got. It’s embarrassing how easily they wrestle me back into my seat. Kay’s hands may as well be crushing the bones of my wrist for how tight he’s squeezing them, and his mate has a hand in my hair and another across my throat, feeling out the pressure points and arteries in my neck.

  “You ain’t going anywhere, gorgeous,” he sneers, inches from my face. I can feel the cold coming off of him in waves. But it’s what he says next that really ices me up on both the inside and outside.

  “We were promised a pretty bit of pay dirt would drop through our way tonight, and well, well, well. Looks like you proved ‘em right, sweetheart.”

  7 Holmes' Investigation

  Corner of Haverstock Hill and Downside Crescent, Belsize Park

  November 5, 10:06pm

  An afternoon of poking the ghost, for lack of a better metaphor, and I am pleased to have been able to deduce my first legitimate lead: a location discussed by those she remembers turning on her violently, a place they spoke of as if it were some type of ‘secret club’.

  Or frat house, I add darkly, remembering the way she looked down and away when she told me about them.

  The large, circular entrance to what could be described as an ‘underground vault’ of sorts is relatively easy to locate. It now stands as a proud remnant of our past, wrapped in commercial posters, corporate branding, and other forms of advertisement. Makes you proud to be British, it truly does.

  I chuckle, and skip-jog my way down the brisk street toward it.

  I’ve located the entrance and am a hairpin’s breadth from picking the lock when my mobile buzzes in my trench coat.

  Bugger and balls. Don’t tell me I’ve gone and missed another poxy meeting with some—

  “Hello, it’s me, obviously,” I answer, whipping it out of my inner pocket.

  “Hallo, ‘me, obviously’,” is the smart response from the other end of the line, the familiar, rough baritone thickened with the hint of a slight German accent. “I just wanted to say, if your plan was to make me jealous, it worked.”

  Aloud, I scoff. Outwardy, I roll my eyes and continue walking toward the stop for the street tram.

  Inside, my heart is revving up, gaining speed and momentum as it plans to hurtle me once more toward the brink of my own possible self-destruction.

  “Anything and everything I do of my own volition makes you jealous, my sweet albeit salty little firecracker,” I coo at him, peppering my own tone with a decent hel
ping of sarcasm and arsenic. “And to what occasion do I owe the pleasure of your unsolicited digit-pick, my dear?”

  He chuckles. The sound is like leather, like caramel, soft and smooth and warm as it wraps itself slowly around me.

  “When do I come through town and not make my presence known?” he asks. I’m frozen in the dark by the big, green, reinforced iron door, incapable of moving forward with my plan all the while this one particular person is on the other end of the phone.

  “I’ve a busy schedule,” I deflect him.

  “Oh, meine Geliebte,” he purrs. “You always make time for me.”

  I wrap one arm around myself to tuck my fingers into the pocket of my coat. My eyes dart up and down the street, uncommonly dry for the season. Is he watching me right now? I wonder, flicking my gaze between streetlamps. Or does he just want my gaze pointed constantly over my shoulder?

  “Isaac, I am multitasking,” I scowl in annoyance. “Could you come back in a bit, when I don’t have consecutive cases running alongside one another?”

  Isaac is quiet for a few beats of my skipping heart. I can hardly take the strain of his silence, wrenching back words with my teeth tightly clenched. He has to speak first, I stubbornly demand. It is, of course, the only way this conversation can go, if he is the one to break the silence he created.

  Otherwise, he wins. It’s a complicated game, or I would explain it.

  “You should take his case.”

  “Whose case?”

  “The little Anomaly from the tea shop,” Isaac says, and as intently as I search for envy in his tone, I am regretfully unable to locate it. “He wants you to help him find his girlfriend, and I think you should do it.”

  I smirk. “Ah. Going back to those overbearing, control-freak tendencies of yours, are we?” I tease him, but his next words knock the grin right off my face.

  “She is a friend of mine, and she doesn’t deserve what is about to happen to her. Again, Ms. Holmes—I highly recommend you agree to take this case.”

  I blink. Is Isaac Adler—the Isaac Adler—asking me for a personal favor?

  “I presume given your own set of finely-attuned skills and talents that you have legitimate reason not to be involved in this particular instance?”

  “You know better than to presume anything.”

  With that, he hangs up. Cryptic as ever—which is the reason I find him so dangerously ideal.

  Unfortunately, I have another case that requires my undivided attention, lest I meet my end at the hands of a group of horny, hyped-up frat boys. I cannot allow my mind to wander. Especially in directions laid out by any thoughts of the aforementioned European criminal mastermind.

  A breath to brace myself, and I bend to make quick work of the mechanism inside the old, simple lock. The world inside is one comprised of a thick, inky blackness, and I wonder the last time was that light was allowed to acknowledge its presence.

  One more breath, and I plunge myself into the abyss.

  It’s the sort of darkness that’s thick and clingy, and in all honesty just pisses me off as I’m doing what I’m able to in order to gain my bearings. It’s almost unpleasant enough to make me wish I were back on the phone with Isaac, or in the tea emporium under his harsh, intrusive gaze.

  Steps spiral downward, stories beneath street level. I count a grand total of sixty-three. My eyes gradually adjust to the blackness around me, and within it I begin to see the expected shapes and silhouettes of spirits.

  Well, jolly dee. I suppose I would have been a fool to imagine an abandoned underground station any less haunted than this.

  At the base of the staircase is a lightswitch, which I flick fearlessly into the ‘on’ position. A haphazard array of strung-up construction floodlights lead further into the belly of the old World War II bunker buried deep beneath the station, long forgotten by a nation wanting to forget the existence of a world, let alone the memory of a world war.

  It’s clearly inhabited, if not in a military-type of fashion. Bunks and bedrolls, with minimal personal effects and go-bags packed and ready. Each seems to be labeled with a letter, A through V, in bold uniform typeset. D, E, and L are missing. Posters and Sharpie-artwork adorn some of the walls, but I see no real form of security. Given how abandoned the nearby vicinity is, I can’t say I blame them in focusing their efforts elsewhere, which they clearly have done.

  It’s not as if they expected a paranormal consulting detective to come sniffing around their—

  A voice snaps me to attention, and I zip around a corner as two men walk past me, down the long tunnel lined with makeshift beds.

  Who is this alternatively-housed army of sorts? I muse, patiently waiting for enough distance between myself and the oblivious pair to slither out from my hiding place. I’m soaking up everything I see like a sponge. My brilliant, unparalleled mind is absorbing every single minute detail of every single object it acknowledges. Photographic, it’s been called by many. Inhuman, more times than I would like to attest to.

  Absolutely everything about me is 100% human, thank you very much. There is entirely zero speculation to that, whatsoever.

  “—looks like you proved ‘em right, sweetheart,” is what I hear of the voice that echoes into the arched tunnel from around a door that’s sitting ajar. I tiptoe closer to it, toward the relative darkness seeping in from the adjacent room.

  “I always wanted to initiate someone with a fancy fuckin’ title,” the same voice continues, and then a second voice—younger, deeper, and considerably more afraid—answers it.

  “I don’t have a title—”

  “Don’t fuck about with me,” the first voice retorts. “We know who your old man is, junior. Name like that carries weight. Affluence. I want in on some of that shite, and you’re officially my ticket to the sweet life.”

  There’s a weak, short-lived struggle, and a third voice chips in its opinion.

  “If you’re hard enough to survive initiation, we’ll introduce you to the big boys up top. You wanna meet a real celebrity? The kind you only see on telly and in the movies? The SIN’s got ultimate access, mate…”

  The SIN…?

  I inch closer to the door, peeking around the edge of it. A tall, strapping blond around my own age is pinned between two paler, darker-haired men—one a smidge smaller than him, the other remarkably larger.

  “If you survive, that is,” the first, smaller bloke says firmly. He’s feeling for something in their captive’s throat, the blond struggling again to no avail as he grips it tight.

  I wait until the last possible moment, the last sifting speck of a second, to spring from my hiding place. Until I am absolutely sure there is not a drop more information left to gain.

  … and until I really should get a move on and do something, before this rather adorable ‘junior’ fellow severely regrets my inaction.

  8 Lestrade's Saving Grace

  Underground Tube Station, Belsize Park

  November 5, 10:13pm

  I can barely breathe.

  The scent of cold, wind-chilled flesh is everywhere, as well as a strong, metallic odor I really don’t want to admit is probably blood. Inhumanly cool skin presses against my own as Tee reaches under my shirt with the hand that’s not choking me, calling attention to places I’ve never even considered another man touching.

  The more I squirm, the tighter Kay’s grip crushes my wrists and the further down toward the ground he drags them, arching me painfully backward. Tee’s sharp nails find my mesenteric arteries beneath the taut muscles and I jerk involuntarily. He snickers and digs in deeper, leaving searing scratching in their wake. I grit my teeth and hiss.

  Do something, Lestrade…

  For once, the voice in my head ain’t my own. It belongs to a girl, a woman. My eyes snap open and, as Tee’s cold hand covers my mouth and pushes my head the entire way back, I swear for a moment the person who owns it is in the room with us.

  “I beg your pardon! I’m sorry, but—lost young lady of pri
vilege here? I must say, the signage in this part of town is atrocious at best!”

  The heft of Tee’s looming bulk is gone in a heartbeat, leaving me supine and exposed on the chair. Kay tightens his hold on me, keeping me anchored to the spot.

  “The hell are you, darlin’?”

  “No—the hell are you, darling!” is the female response, and I can barely see the bounce of loose curls around one side of Tee’s silhouette. “Is there someone ‘round here what can actually help me? Or should I take my business elsewhere?”

  Then, she leans out, and I catch sight of a flash of brilliant blue eyes for the very first time. My heart snags in my throat, right below the area I was worried might get ripped out not seconds earlier.

  Who the flippin’ heck!?

  “Ohhhhh!” is her enamored, excited reaction, and I’m even more horrified at a pretty young woman seeing me in this situation than I am to be in this situation in the first place. “Are you torturing a copper? Can I have in!? Oh, come on, lads, this is a once in a lifetime—”

  “Shut it.”

  Tee’s put a firm finger against both of her lips before she can utter another word. I notice Kay’s fists slacking a fraction or two as he watches, eager to see what his (from the sounds of it) younger partner is going to do with this party-crasher.

  “How’d you find us?”

  “Well, it wasn’t due to the courtesies of your inadequate signage, that’s for sure,” is the dry but chipper reply. She speaks so loosely, so freely despite the obvious danger, that I have to wonder if she’s drunk. Or high.

  “As a matter of fact, a friend of mine tipped me off when I let slip I was a tad bored and looking for a new activity to broaden my horizons,” the petite woman continues, in the same spirited tone and against the finger on her lips. “Apparently, the cult thing is back in, and nobody even thought to let me know! Can you believe it?”

  Tee whips his head around, possibly checking for a signal from Kay. The weight of the man behind me has recently shifted as he changed his stance. My heart suddenly pounds a much faster rhythm, thrashing against my ribcage, as he readjusts his grip on me to sustain it one-handed.