Bad Soul

by David Bussell

  ‘Trust me,’ I said, ‘I can handle Kirklander.’

  I hung up the phone and stomped on the accelerator, ready to get what was mine.

  When I reached Alisha’s she was all set up and ready to track down my errant soul.

  My syringe, the one I’d pricked Elton the wizard with, was stabbed into the wooden floor of the caravan and surrounded by lit candles. Candles made not of wax, but of fat harvested from the bodies of dead angels. Yeah, kind of gross-sounding, but those things gave off a heavenly smell like you wouldn’t believe. If you could only sell them commercially you’d make a mint.

  ‘What should I do?’ I asked.

  ‘Just stay back,’ replied Alisha, full of nervous energy, toying with the end of one of her long dreadlocks. She flicked off the light so the only illumination came from the candles, which threw strange shapes up the walls. I squinted at the dancing shapes, certain I could see figures, wings, mountains. Like I say, you could make a bloody fortune from those things.

  Alisha opened a book and began to murmur words with far too many consonants; words that I couldn’t understand, but that made my flesh crawl.

  A pure white light began to coil around the needle as Alisha’s voice rose in volume, and I was sure I could hear other voices joining hers. They were singing the words. It was a sound so pure, so beautiful, that I found myself tearing up. I brushed at my eyes with the sleeve of my jacket and bit the inside of my cheek to keep my shit together.

  The needle jerked out of the floor and began to float in the air.

  Alisha closed the book and shut her eyes.

  ‘Show,’ she said. ‘Show me. Show us. Where is he? Where can he be found? Show us where the hunter will soon be bound.’

  An image, ghostly, began to appear above the floating syringe. It was hard to make out at first, like an image projected onto a screen in a brightly lit room.

  ‘Show.’

  The image sharpened and came into focus. A face!

  ‘Brian Teller, I presume,’ I whispered.

  A wind blew and the candles died. The needle clattered to the floor as the image drifted from existence.

  All was silent for a moment as Alisha remained unmoving, eyes closed.

  ‘So, uh…. is that it, then?’

  ‘What happened to your ring?’ asked Alisha, grabbing my hand.

  ‘My what? Oh, shit, right.’ I pulled my pretend wedding ring out of my jacket pocket and slid it on my finger. ‘I took it off when I showered, forgot to put it on again. Tammy is always on at me about that. Bad wife number one over here, am I right?’

  Alisha stepped into the circle of candles and retrieved the syringe, holding it out to me.

  ‘So where is he?’ I asked.

  ‘Take the needle.’

  I took it and staggered back a little in surprise as images flooded my mind. Brian Teller’s face, a building, a village, a route. I yelped and opened my hand, the syringe falling and very nearly burying itself in my foot.

  ‘Did it work?’ asked Alisha.

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied, gingerly picking the syringe back up, sliding on its cap, and returning it to my pocket. ‘Thanks, sexy.’ I gave Alisha a hug and headed for the door.

  ‘Visit again soon, won’t you?’

  ‘Hey, you know I can’t stay away from you.’

  Alisha blushed and bit her bottom lip. I gave her a wink and left the caravan.

  Look, I don’t enjoy being the cock tease, but I hope by now you’ll have realised I’m not an altogether wonderful person. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, am I right? Okay, I can feel you judging me, so picture me giving you the finger. Got that? Great.

  13

  Time to find Brian Teller before Kirklander did.

  After touching the syringe, a path had been burned into my mind’s eye. It was like I could see a map in my head with a bright, burning red line leading me along one road and the next, directly to the house that Brian Teller was hiding out in.

  Magic is awesome, right? Especially when it wasn’t being angrily thrown in my direction.

  Brian was holed up on the outskirts of Calden, a village north of Brighton in a part of England called Yorkshire. Even bombing along at full speed in my rickety old car, it was going to take me a good few hours to get there. Enough time to silently brood about Kirklander betraying me yet again.

  Look, you don’t need to tell me I’m a cliché, okay? Lusting over the handsome bad boy. The man who’s no good for me, who’d only break my little heart and smile while he was doing it. And the worst part? I knew, even as I hurtled north along the motorway, my stomach burning with fury, that no matter how this all turned out, at some point soon I was going to end up under him again. And on top of. And bent in front of. And all manner of other things that I won’t go into here as I’m trying to keep this story family friendly.

  Yep, Kirklander was dug in deep, like a tick. But a sexy tick with beautiful eyes and an arse so tight it could solve a Rubik’s Cube.

  So what was I hoping? That at some point he’d change? That I’d tame him? I wasn’t sure I even wanted that. What was Kirklander without the untrustworthy streak that ran through him head to toe? And who said I was the settling down type, anyway? Lana always says that one day I’d get over him. That I’d grow out of my bad boy phase. That I’d move on and start acting like an adult.

  I told her to eat my dick, so I think I won that argument.

  By the time I reached Calden, the day had just begun to clock out as night arrived, ready to take over the graveyard shift. I parked up and left my car on the outskirts of the village, just as I had in Highstaff. For all I knew, Brian Teller was already on the lookout for me. Perhaps Elton had sent him a message telling him to watch his back. I doubted it though. Elton might have refused to lead me to him, but I reckoned that was as far as his sense of loyalty went. He wouldn’t want to risk putting himself on a demon’s radar any more than that, no matter how much he claimed to be able to keep them at bay.

  No. The more pressing concern was that Kirklander might be close, perhaps even at the cottage Brian was hiding out in already. I didn’t want to announce my arrival. Softly, softly was the approach needed. I didn’t want to spook him, and I didn’t want to give Kirklander a chance to swat me aside either. As I proved back at his place, I can more than hold my own against him, but he was still a wizard, of sorts. He still had a control over magic that I lacked. I could punch through brick walls, but Kirklander could attack me from the other side of a room before I got anywhere near him.

  I stopped a short distance from Brian Teller’s cottage. It stood alone, a good two minutes walk from any neighbour. Its roof was thatched and vines crawled up and down its uneven, dark cream exterior. The curtains were pulled closed with only one room still lit up.

  Someone was home.

  Keeping out of view of anyone who might be peeking from a window, I kept low and took a long route to reach the rear of the property. Angling a pocket mirror around a corner, I checked the back garden for guard dogs or motion sensors. Satisfied that there were neither, I continued to the back of the cottage. The building looked dead from the back. All of the curtains were drawn, no lights on. It was time to take a chance.

  I hopped over the fence and moved quickly towards the back door. I tried the handle gently, but the door was locked. I took a knee and pulled out my lock picking kit, and a few seconds later the back door was slowly easing open. I slipped inside and closed the door behind me, pausing for breath, ears straining, eyes adjusting to the gloom.

  A TV was softly burbling in the next room, the room with the light on.

  I moved swiftly across the tiled floor of the kitchen and stepped into the hallway. Staircase to my left, front door directly ahead, door to a living room on the right, slightly ajar. The sound of a TV drama seeped into the dark to meet me.

  I edged towards the living room door, ready to claim my soul. It was quiet. Too quiet. Was this an ambush? Would I find the room empty and be attacked
from behind?

  I nudged the door ever so gently and peered inside. I could see a man sat in an armchair watching the TV, a bottle of imported beer in his hand.

  Brian Teller. I smiled, but as I shifted my stance, a floorboard creaked beneath me.

  Shit.

  Brian Teller stood sharply and turned, eyes wide, his bottle of beer rolling across the hardwood floor, spilling suds. The jig was up and he knew it.

  I pushed the door open and stepped slowly into the room. ‘Sorry for just stopping by, I was in the area.’

  Brian continued to stare at me, eyes like saucers. He was tall and pale, with thinning, closely-cropped red hair and a slightly overgrown beard. He wore green cord trousers and a checked shirt, with large, black-framed glasses. Brian Teller was all of the world’s geography teachers rolled into one.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  It seemed as though I’d arrived before Kirklander had, which was good. Or bad. Would it have been better if he’d already been here? Which scenario gave me the edge?

  ‘Well?’ said Brian.

  I realised I’d been standing in silence, ignoring the man whose home I’d broken into for the best part of thirty seconds.

  ‘You’re in a lot of shit, Brian.’

  ‘I’m not Brian Teller.’

  ‘Wow. Totally believable, especially the way you gave me your full name when I only said your first. Slick.’

  Brian sank into his armchair, not taking his eyes off me.

  ‘You’ve come for me.’

  ‘Yes. Well, no. Yes and no.’

  ‘I don’t understand. You’re here to kill me, right?’

  ‘Kill you? What? No way, Scout’s honour.’

  Okay, a little white lie there.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Brian.

  ‘You made a demon look like a complete and utter prick, Brian. Good on you. Big round of applause. You the man.’

  Brian tried to reply in at least three different ways, before finally managing a, ‘Thanks…?’

  ‘Listen, my name’s Debbie Calahan, and I’m in the business of twatting demons. Your boy, stretch—the tall fucker in the falling-down cathedral—he’s high up on my shit list. When I heard that you’d slipped away and how mad it had made him, well, instant fan over here. Got your poster above my bed and everything, Bri. Problem is, a demon like the Long Man... well, he isn’t going to let the sort of shit you pulled go unpunished.’

  Brian took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, his face blushing red. ‘I did… I had to do…’

  For a moment I thought he was going to burst into tears, so I carried on before he made things uncomfortable.

  ‘Hold the waterworks, Brian. It’s your lucky day, I’m here to help you.’

  Brian looked up at me with big, hopeful eyes. It was enough to give me a twinge of sympathy, but not too much. Whatever happened, at some point, when I’d taken it into my possession again, I was shoving a massive Soul Dagger into his heart. All I had to do was wait for Kirklander to show up—and he would—then take back the dagger by whatever means necessary.

  ‘The big guy has sent a minion to come get you. Doesn’t want to get his own hands dirty, so he’s passed the job on to a paid assassin. That’s why I’m here. That assassin, he’s on his way.’

  ‘Right now?’ asked Brian, standing again, his body ramrod straight.

  ‘Probably. As far as I know he’s yet to find your location, but he’s a wizard, so he’ll be on to you soon enough.’

  ‘Then we should go! My car’s already got packed bags in the boot, ready to go.’ He headed for the door but I stepped in his way, shaking my head.

  ‘You can’t just run, Brian. It’s not a case of he’ll discover this place, he’ll discover you. It’ll be like you’ve got an invisible tracker on you, and his brain’s the GPS.’

  ‘Oh, God. Christ. So what? What do I do?’

  ‘Nothing. We wait for him to turn up and we deal with him here, on home ground. He’s got no clue I’m on the job. He’ll turn up, clueless, and I’ll take care of him. Trust me, Bri, I know this guy. I know how he works. I’m ready for him.’

  I came up with that all on the spot. Not bad, eh? Maybe I should try out for an improv troupe, what do you think?

  ‘Shit. Oh, shit,’ said Brian. ‘I can’t die. I’m needed. She needs me.’ He slumped back into the armchair, head in his hands.

  ‘Don’t worry, everything’s going to be fine.’ It took me a second for what he’d said to sink in. ‘Sorry, who needs you? Who’s she?’

  ‘Daddy, who’s this?’

  I turned to find a girl no older than six standing in the doorway, rubbing her eyes.

  The daughter in all the pictures I saw in Highstaff. I’d forgotten about her.

  Well, shit.

  14

  I’m not always a detail-oriented person, and in this line of work, that can be a problem. If I had a quid for every time Parker had warned me to get all the facts before I walked into a job, I’d be able to afford a fleet of gold-plated jet skis by now.

  ‘Cali, over here, honey,’ Brian told the girl wearing the pink nightie that stretched almost to her ankles.

  The little girl had long, red hair that hung loose over her shoulders. She kept her curious eyes on me as she wandered over to her father and took a seat next to him on the arm of the chair.

  ‘You woke me up,’ she said, yawning. ‘You were talking all loud and I could hear two voices.’

  ‘I’m sorry, honey, just… an unexpected visit. From… a friend.’

  Was this why Brian Teller had sold his soul? Was his daughter what made him run?

  ‘My name’s…’ I paused as I searched for the pretend name I’d made up, a name I’d made up for reasons that were no longer clear. ‘Debbie. My name’s Debbie. How old are you, Cali?’

  ‘I’m six. I’ll be seven soon though, right Dad?’

  ‘That’s right, honey,’ he replied, and hugged her, kissing the top of her head.

  ‘I remember being six, almost seven. An easier time, am I right, Brian?’

  Brian didn’t smile, didn’t take his eyes off his daughter. ‘Let’s get you back to bed, sweetheart.’ He stood, taking her hand, then looked to me. ‘Is that okay?’

  ‘Hey, you’re the dad, go ahead and dad it up.’

  Brian picked Cali up and she latched on to him like a monkey.

  ‘Night night,’ she said, eyes already half-closed as Brian carried her past me and toward the stairs.

  ‘Nighty night, don’t let the bed bugs bite,’ I replied, brightly, then leaned into Brian’s ear. ‘Come right back.’

  He nodded and left the room, the stairs creaking as he carried his girl up and out of view. I sighed and grabbed his abandoned bottle of beer, swigging the dregs and sitting down on the armchair.

  So he had a daughter. A daughter that was here, now, upstairs. Did that matter? Did that make any difference to what I’d been asked to do?

  I thought about Highstaff, about the creatures, the wraiths, killing the residents because of Brian doing a runner. About how the wound he’d created would spread and spread, and that more and more people would die. Even more than that, I thought about the information the Long Man had promised me. The truth about the disappearance of my brother. After all these years of nothing, of the same indistinct flashes over and over, a fresh piece of the puzzle at last.

  Call me cold-hearted if you like, but the fact that he had a daughter didn’t change a damn thing. Come what may, he still needed to be delivered to the Long Man.

  Brian stepped back into the room and closed the door quietly behind him.

  ‘Thanks for the beer,’ I said, saluting him with the empty bottle.

  He frowned. ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘Oh, I have my ways.’

  ‘Magic?’

  ‘Sure, why not?’ I drained the last of the beer. ‘She’s cute, your daughter.’

  A smile teased at his lips, just for a moment. ‘She’s th
e best thing I’ve ever done. I’d do anything for her.’

  ‘Blimey, I wish my parents felt like that. So where’s the mum?’

  Brian shifted, uncomfortable. ‘Gone. Left me when Cali was a baby. Lives abroad now.’

  Another shit mum. Join the club, little lady.

  ‘So why did you do it?’

  ‘Why do you think?’ he replied.

  ‘Not totally sure, I want to hear it from you.’

  Brian sighed and sat back, scratching at his beard. ‘She was dying. Cali. Congenital heart defect. Nothing the doctors could do about it. I wouldn’t accept that. Couldn’t.’

  So he did what he did to save his kid. Admirable, sure. But he’d got what he wanted, his daughter was alive, healthy, it was time to pay the debt. The man sold his soul, he didn’t rent it.

  ‘How did you find the demon?’ I asked. ‘You’re not part of the Uncanny world.’

  ‘He found me. I was… I was in a bar, almost black-out drunk, when a man sat next to me. Huge man in a smart suit.’

  Hello, Gerald.

  ‘Offered to buy me a drink. I didn’t care who he was as long as he kept buying. I passed out, and when I woke up again I was in a cathedral. A huge, crumbling place built out of giant blocks of black stone. The demon’s cathedral. I thought I’d gone mad. Maybe I had. He asked me what I wanted, the demon. I told him.’

  Caught at his lowest point and offered his heart’s desire. Tough thing to turn down.

  ‘Why did you run, Brian?’

  He tensed, stood before me still like a naughty school kid called into the headmaster’s office. ‘Should I just, what? Let myself die? She needs me. A daughter needs her dad. Her mum’s already pissed off, wants nothing to do with her, should I leave her without any parent at all?’

  ‘So not just to save your own hide? You sure about that?’

  Brian frowned, nodded. ‘I won’t run forever. When she’s older… when she can cope better… Maybe then. Maybe I can stop then.’

  I nodded and sat back. Unfortunately for Brian, demons didn’t extend deadlines. His time was already up. He was dead, he just didn’t know it yet. ‘Don’t worry, Brian. I’m here to help,’ I lied