by K Childs
The
Nightmare
Detective
Book One - Myth and Magic Series
K. Childs
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
Copyright © 2019 by K. Childs
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.
K. Childs/Filles Vertes Publishing
PO Box 1075
Coeur d’Alene, ID 83814
www.fillesvertespublishing.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Book Layout © 2019 Filles Vertes Publishing
The Nightmare Detective/ K. Childs. -- 1st ed.
ISBN 978-1-946802-46-0
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Title 2
Lexicon
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
About the Author
More from FVP
Agency of Oneironautic Crimes: The AOC is a special branch of Scotland Yard that deals with crimes pertaining to Oneironautic magic.
Animancy: (Latin) The magical study of primal energy in a body. An Animancer can heal the sick, cure diseases and rejuvenate the body by manipulating the Anima.
Ether: Pure magic, unfettered subconscious fabric of reality that makes up the stuff of dreams.
Tenebrology: (Latin) The study of cloaking magic. A Tenebrologist can vanish in shadow, muffle sound and become unnoticed by manipulating shadow.
Oneirology: (Latin) The study of dream magic. An Oneironaut can enter the Dreamscape and harness the Ether to create objects in both the Dreamscape and real world.
Once upon a time, the London Dreamscape would gobble up the unwary dreamer. Sleeping, you might catch a glimpse of her beneath the veil. As beguiling as she is treacherous, the demi monde is fickle. Here, a lowly policeman can be a god. A king, a lost lamb. And a monster can make a deal with any fool.
There is a sweet allure to the Dreamscape. Especially on Mondays. Monday morning came with the promise of trouble and objection. The best solution was to stay abed and ignore. Unfortunately, you can’t sleep forever.
* * *
Something cold and liquid touched my toes. I stepped forward, fingers grasping for the old brass doorknob. Claret? No, blood pooled under the door between my room and the suite next door.
“Charlie, it’s Rose, I’m going down to breakfast,” I called. Charlotte, my cousin, got off her shift an hour ago. Charlie didn’t answer.
“Mrs. Davies!” I shouted, but didn’t wait for the housekeeper. I cast the joiner wide. The old door slammed against the wall, shaking the frames.
Ether had shredded reality in Charlie’s room. The fabric of the London Dreamscape was tattered and torn, fluttering around the ceiling; a hole between the world of the living and the world of monsters. It was not for waking eyes to see, these eons that languished in dreams. Folk would go insane staring into that place.
I gathered the Ether up and flung it outward as though it were the flapping canvas of a tent. The effort drained me, and I caught my breath. The Dreamscape melted away into a ceiling as plain as any other.
My gaze fell to the bed and Charlotte. Her skin was white, eyes open. Blood dripped from the bedsheets and spread across the beechwood floor. Blue eyes, sightless. Pale blonde curls now a cherry red. Horror cut my chest as surely as any knife.
“Dear God in Heaven, Miss Beaumont is she…” Mrs. Davies drew her cross from under her smock, stopped dead in the doorway. She held the door frame for support. Her eyes showed too much white.
“Dead. Charlotte is dead.” It was not easy to say. My mouth trembled around the words. I stepped between Mrs. Davies’ horrified gaze and the old iron bed.
“Mrs. Davies, please telephone the Yard.”
She shivered, gaze flickering between myself and the unmentionable terror behind me. I placed a hand on the door, my knuckles tightening to white.
“Mrs. Davies.”
The old woman squared her shoulders, tears brimming in her rheumy eyes. “Of course, Inspector.”
Good. I needed her to hold it together. Mrs. Davies turned in a flurry of skirts, hurrying downstairs. Half the damn hotel would know before the Yard did. Mechanically, I closed Charlotte’s door and locked it. I didn’t want anyone else entering before the police arrived.
I walked back into my room. An iron ball in my gut, the whirling floundering of a lost kite in my mind. I used an old rag to wash the blood off my feet and slipped into my work trousers and dress coat. I pinned my hair up and washed my face. Such mundane tasks, ones I might perform any other day. Water clung to my fingertips, clammy and dull. I adjusted my socks, tightening my belt when a commotion downstairs caught my ears.
The murmur of women’s voices came fluttering in from the hall. For good measure, I locked my door and went back into Charlotte’s room via the joiner. I wanted to see Charlie before anyone else from the Yard did… before the coroner sliced her open, or the constables removed her from her bed.
Charlie was as I had left her. Dead. Eyes open. One hand outstretched. Blood had dripped down her arm and fingertips, creating the puddle that had run under the door. Charlotte’s bed was right next to the joining door; she’d moved the bed there for space years ago. The wounds in her sternum were elongated, five large gashes. Deep cuts hooked and tore her pale flesh open, exposing muscle and bone.
Based on the dried blood and the timing, my early estimation of death lay in the last three hours. Her nightdress was ruined. I tugged it to cover her exposed body. I didn’t want the men to see her naked. Such a small detail, but it bothered me.
I closed my eyes, forcing the emotions that caught my throat into a tight vice. I had to see Charlie as a victim of a murder, not as my cousin. I needed to compose myself. This was not the time for sobbing and tears. Charlie would want me to catch whatever had come out of the Dreamscape and killed her. She wouldn’t approve of me sitting beside her bed, struggling to hold back tears.
I followed my training. The droll voice of the old Sergeants instructed me, the repeated instructions of my own Inspectors. I let procedure and evidence bind themselves into my mind until I was calm enough to examine her room as a crime scene.
The wards around her bed were blasted to kingdom come. The break in the Ether, the dried flakes of burned wards, indicated something from the Dreamscape had broken through those wards. A nightmare had crawled out and killed her. Things crawl out of the Dreamscape all the time… I needed to work out what could do this. I found my tape-measure and scrawled a note in my book. The wards around her bed ought to have protected her from this. The dream catcher hanging in the window was dissolved into nothing.
My shoulders shook with emotion and I took a long, deep breath, steadying myself. It wouldn’t do to let any of my emotions out.
The door rattled.
“Police. Open up.”
I opened the door and stepped aside. “Come in,
Constables.”
Mrs. Davies’ call must have been redirected to the local box. I wanted my own team, I didn’t want to see the two men in front of me. These men were local, and both of them froze at the look on my face and the badge pinned to my collar. The first recovered and tipped his hat, greeting me. “Good morning, Detective Inspector Beaumont.”
“Constable Charlotte Beaumont is deceased.” I motioned at the bed. “This will be handled by the Oneirology department. Secure the scene until the AOC gets here,” I said, referring to the Agency for Oneironautic Crimes. We specialized in the arcane branch of dream-magic. Protecting London’s Dreamscape as any regular beat. Standard procedure is that any bodies found dead in bed were examined by one of our officers. Most of the time, your nightmares won’t kill you. The Agency exists because sometimes they do.
“Murder, Inspector?” The first man was an older gentleman, his hair thinned under a cap to that of a baby’s first tufts. His beard contrasted substantially and hid most of his face and neck. “I mean, in her sleep?”
“Undoubtedly.”
His partner, a man as past his prime but with twice the girth on his stomach, crossed himself. “Understood, Inspector.”
I fled downstairs to the kitchen. Standing in the room with Charlie’s lifeless form and the whirl of my own emotions was becoming too much. I could be allowed a little leeway to hide from reality. At least a few minutes.
Mrs. Davies was not alone in the kitchen—three of the other women from different floors of the hotel crowded the small room, their hushed whispers halted as I strode in. Mrs. Davies snapped her mouth shut and filled the teapot. She cut some toast and a small cake, placing them on plates in front of me as she set down a teacup. She shooed her friends out. “Girls, away with you. Now, sit, Inspector.”
I sat, numb. Buttering the toast was automatic, and I stared at it for a long while before I finally worked my nerve up to bite into it. I didn’t feel like eating. The thought of food made my insides churn. I might well be trying to digest a lump of lead. I poured milk and spooned two sugar cubes into my tea.
I watched the food that I should have been starving for. After a long patrol, I needed to eat. Charlie would tell me to eat. My hands shook. It was just hunger. The sick feeling in my stomach, the shaking I couldn’t stop, and the misty edge of my eyes would go away, once I ate.
Three days asleep was debilitating on the body. A long shift on duty with no end in sight. One of the other Inspectors was out of the city and I’d pulled a long weekend shift. The Dreamscape is as big as the waking world and keeping London safe means one small department was left to navigate the landscape that the rest of the force might otherwise guard.
Shock, that critical part of my mind told me. I was in shock. The shock would break through and all the emotion I chained down would spill out.
The sunlight streaming through the kitchen curtain indicated it was later in the morning than appropriate for breakfast. Mrs. Davies did not comment on my bad manners.
I ate methodically but could not bring myself to finish the second piece of toast. Instead I held my tea in two hands and sipped it. I couldn’t taste anything. My mind returned to the splash of cold blood on the floor. The swirling mess of Dreamscape, an open maw above Charlie’s bed.
The sounds of steam echoing from car blast-pipes and children cavorting drifted through my window. Sunlight peeked through the London smog and I spotted a dirigible descending—probably over Heathrow where most were wont to ascend from the public stops.
I put the mostly undrunk tea down and went to the telephone in the foyer. Mrs. Davies did not follow.
“Agency for Oneironautic Crimes.” The Desk Sergeant answered on the third ring. Allan spent most of his time archiving, not sitting at his desk. Dream magic means sleep, mostly. We didn’t get much use out of the phone in the office.
I cut him off before he got into his welcome spiel. “It’s Rose Beaumont. Constable Charlotte Beaumont is dead. Send Sergeant Wallace and some of the feet over to my home address. The locals are here but they aren’t equipped for this sort of thing.” Sergeant Ben Wallace, my partner, would handle Charlotte’s death respectfully. I needed that.
The Desk Sergeant sucked in air through his lips. “Inspector, I was just about to ring you. The Superintendent wants you in his office before noon.”
Sharp pain laced through my forehead, the start of a headache. I gave him the few details I could muster to speak out loud, my throat squeezing the words out into a squeak after as I tried to cut down to the basics. He didn’t comment on the waver in my tone or the pause. Good man.
I swallowed and turned to the housekeeper. “Mrs. Davies, the two constables in Charlie’s room will be here until Sergeant Wallace arrives. Please see him in. I’m afraid I must go to the Yard.”
“But Miss—Inspector Beaumont, you’ve only just woken up, and Charlotte…” Her voice lost its passion at the end of her objection. The topic of death left an unsavoury taste in civilian mouths.
I adjusted my cuffs and secured a cloche on my head.
“I am afraid I must answer when the Superintendent calls.”
“But it’s not decent, Ma’am.”
“No, I fear not.” I left, still adjusting the cloche on my head and hailed a cab out the front. The Beaumont hotel stood on a main street and it didn’t take long for someone to pull in front of me. I slid into the backseat. The driver turned, waiting for directions.
“Scotland Yard, driver.” Charlotte’s lifeless gaze waited for me upstairs, and I was fleeing to the office.
The driver pulled a lever and wound a bobbin in the panels in front of him and the small cab lurched forward. One of the steam clankers, not a gas pedal which were faster but more expensive to run. I preferred the gas. Less blaring shrieks when the steam escaped the valves and less mucking about.
We hurtled along the streets of London and managed not to run over any innocent civilians. I considered it a successful trip when I wasn’t prying chimney sweeps out of the grates of cars. The daylight, muted behind clouds, was like nails on my sensitive eyes and I was blinking back spots within minutes.
London, outside of the Dreamscape, inhabited a very different place to me. At all times, the Dreamscape and our world lay as layers of the same reality—like an onion, one might peel the skin just a little and reveal the peculiar below. I rarely glimpsed a land covered in soot and hungry-faced beggars following folk for a loaf of bread. Dreams turned these people beautiful, clean, and happy. I had very clear villains in dreams. Rarely did they look like a pimp on a corner cleaning his teeth or a cutthroat in a dark alley. I had no fear of a gang of young men loitering on a corner in my patrol routes.
Creatures from the Dreamscape wear human skins when they cross the border into our realm. The Sidhe and the strange animals who walk as men during the day shed their skin come night-time. Undead beasts hungering for human flesh might hide in pockets of the Dreamscape, drawing the Ether around them, biding their time for a sudden grab upon unsuspecting victims. A beautiful woman from Russia might smile at you today and perch upon your chest while you sleep, sucking the life from your helpless lungs. Some were quite amicable. Others… others stole babies and ate eyeballs. After the War, we had enough problems. Now I had something from a place of darkest dreams and unfathomable horror to find.
I didn’t know what it was. But the claw marks… I closed my eyes, recalling the pattern still fresh in my mind. Five raking marks, hooking, long curved indentations. A large bird, perhaps. The first and last marks were shorter, made by a taloned hand. The list wasn’t that long. I would consult the recent arrivals with the office of foreign affairs. Greek harpy, perhaps? Maybe a violent Succubus. We had a constant problem with succubi in London. I tapped my notes pensively. I would wait to see what Ben saw after examining the crime scene. I
might have easily missed a vital clue in my distressed state.
The cab rolled to a stop at the side entrance to the Yard. Reporters crowded the front gate, snapping photographs and blinding the constables, keeping them away from those going about their business. Voices echoed in a cacophony and I couldn’t make out their clamour. The crowd was three deep; a few young photographers had set down the mobile cameras the press were so fond of.
“Must be important to have ‘em out fer blood so early,” the cabbie muttered as I handed him his coins.
“I expect so.” I had bigger concerns than the swarm of reporters. Superintendent Pearceson had barely spoken to me since I’d made Detective Inspector. A woman making DI put a nasty taste in his mouth, no doubt. If he thought he could prevent me from investigating Charlie’s murder, he was dead wrong.
I swept my coat over one arm as I alighted to the muck-covered cobblestone and the Constable at the side gate opened it from his side, closing it with a clang behind me. No one paid attention to this entrance.
I walked into the main hall and nodded at faces I barely saw, mounting the steps two at a time. Puffed, but running out of time according to the clock mounted in the central hall. One didn’t keep a Superintendent waiting no matter the circumstance.
The Agency for Oneironautic Crimes possessed a small office on the second floor of the building, in a hidden back wing of two departments that divorced years ago but never fully gave up the office relationship. Superintendent Alfred Pearceson’s office was squeezed between Violent Crimes and Magical Mismanagement.
The offices I passed to get to the AOC bustled with activity; banter and shouting between crooks and the bobbies was everyday here. It quieted as I got closer to the Agency’s den.
The pit where the constables held court was walled off by a large glass door. Someone, long before my time, had carved the Greek gods who governed dreams—Morpheus, Phobetor, and Phantasos—into the door.