‘You are so caring, has anyone ever told you that?’
‘No, but one man did once describe me as, “That fuck who tore off my balls and dropped them down a well,” so maybe watch your mouth.’
‘Okay. Well, I was telling you about her the other day, remember?’
‘Absolutely. Chloe.’
‘No! That was…’ I sighed and felt as though I might get a headache at any second. ‘She’s called Annie.’
‘Oh right, yup.’
‘We may or may not find ourselves in a boy-girl relationship at some point, complete with naked times.’
‘Oh, christ, just the idea of you naked...’
‘Cheers. Anyway, I was sat looking at Myers back there, and thinking about the kind of world we move in, and, well... Annie has a daughter. A little girl.’
‘And you’re wondering if it’s too dangerous to involve them in your life. If there’s any way to keep them safe as you don’t want to be the cause of any pain, or to be the reason they find themselves being torn to pieces by some bastard with giant teeth.’
‘Yes. Basically. I mean, is it even worth me trying to have a relationship, or is it selfish, because I’m putting them in danger?’
Eva clicked her fingers and the end of her fag ignited. I’d seen her do it maybe a thousand times by now, but it still impressed me.
‘Well, I’ve got good news, turd.’
I sat up straighter, a smile on my face. ‘What? What is it?’
‘There is no way to make sure they’re safe, because they won’t be safe, and the best thing you can do is stay the hell away from romantic entanglements and get used to a monastic life of self abuse.’
‘How is that good news?’ I cried.
‘It’s not good news for you, but it is for the female population at large.’
I grumped and fantasised about tossing a little fireball into the back seat. ‘You know, I do possess human feelings?’ I said.
‘Yeah, that’s what makes it so much fun,’ she replied, then stretched out again, a smug look on her face, as I zipped my lips and concentrated on finding my way to Combe.
The village Paul Travers lived in was a slight affair. It was really more of a hamlet than a village in fact, though it did feature a small church at its centre.
I parked up and we stepped out to survey the sleepy-looking place. We were presented with a village green surrounded by a gaggle of old buildings. Little, detached homes with ordered front gardens. Combe was the sort of place that hadn’t seen any redevelopments since the Seventies, not that the few residents who lived there minded. It was a place where time had stood still. A place whose inhabitants were keen to keep out as much of the modern world as possible.
‘Are you sensing anything?’ I asked Eva.
‘Oh yeah, I’m sensing something.’
‘Really? What is it?’
‘That I’m dangerously close to sobering up,’ Eva replied, pulling out a bottle of vodka and taking a hefty slug. ‘Jesus, close one.’
‘Detective Myers is in the hospital, in case you’ve forgotten.’
‘I don’t sense anything, okay? It’s a picture-perfect little shit-hovel, home to a gaggle of people no doubt losing the battle with gravity and father time, that’s all I’m getting so far.’
An elderly woman shuffled past us, smiling. ‘Another beautiful day,’ she said.
‘Case in fucking point,’ said Eva.
I smiled at the old woman, who seemed not to have heard Eva. ‘Hey, could you tell me which house a Mr Paul Travers lives at?’
‘Who?’
‘Paul Travers. He’s a friend of mine but I, uh, forgot where he lives.’
‘Very convincing,’ whispered Eva, giving me a withering thumbs-up. ‘Truly, Oscar worthy.’
‘Let me have a think,’ said the old woman, rubbing at her wispy chin. ‘Paul Travers you say?’
‘Yep, that’s the man.’
‘No. I’m afraid the name doesn’t ring a bell.’
‘Oh. Really?’
‘Though I am getting on a bit.’
‘Really,’ said Eva, ‘you don’t look a day over should-be-dead.’
‘I do have trouble remembering names. Oh,’ she said, waving over another local, a short, bald, portly gentleman with a pug nose.
‘Hey there, Dot,’ he said, patting his stomach.
‘Arthur, these two are after a… who was it again, dear?’
‘Paul Travers. He lives here in Combe.’
‘Does he now?’ replied the man. ‘First I’ve heard of him, and I’ve been here close to forty years.’
‘You’ve both been very, very, massively helpful,’ said Eva.
‘Cheerio,’ said the old woman, and the two of them wandered off.
‘Well, that’s odd,’ I said. ‘He definitely said he was from Combe, what reason would he have to lie?’
‘He wasn’t lying,’ said Eva.
‘What? How do you know?’
‘Because those two were. I could practically taste it. Something very weird is going on in this place.’
I flashed back to when Paul Travers had visited my flat and tried to kill me. Something he’d said before he changed trickled back into my conscious memory. ‘All of them!’ I clapped my hands.
‘What?’ said Eva.
I levered Eva around so our backs were to Dot and Arthur, who’d turned to look at us again.
‘Paul, when he came to see me, he was babbling, but he did say the whole place was part of it.’
‘A conspiracy?’
‘I nodded, ‘Could be, right?’
‘Ooh, I like that. Paranoia. Trust no one. Body Snatchers. The original version, or the 70s one, the other ones not so much. Definitely not the Nicole Kidman one. Nothing against her, but that film really shit the bed.’
‘A cult?’ I asked.
‘It definitely has cult vibes. Potential animal and people sacrifice and everything.’
‘Seems a bit samey,’ I replied. ‘We only took down that undead cult a month ago. And by “we”, I mean “me”, with that brilliant plan I put together and executed myself.’
‘You do the right thing once and look at how your head swells.’
‘I’m just saying, I did pretty good there.’
Eva dithered. ‘Yeah. You did. Idiot.’
I was basking in the half-compliment I’d managed to drag, kicking and screaming, out of Eva, when a front door opening caught my eye. Not so much the door, as the person opening it and stepping out of the house.
‘Wait a minute, that’s him! That’s Paul Travers!’
Eva spun on her heels and squinted at him. ‘I thought you said his whole head was covered in mouths?’
‘He must’ve changed back. Come on!’
We scooted on over, intercepting Mr Travers as he stepped beyond his front garden gate.
‘Paul!’ I said, because it was his name. He looked up, startled, clearly having been caught up in his own thoughts.
‘Yes?’
‘Paul, it’s me.’
‘Is it?’ he replied, edging away.
‘Are you a monster?’ asked Eva, taking a more direct route. ‘Only this guy says you’re a monster, so if you are one you’d better own up or God will be angry.’
‘I’m sorry, what are you babbling about?’
‘Paul, it’s me, Joseph Lake. You sought me out, twice. And then you tried to kill me.’
‘You’re mad,’ he said, his eyes darting around nervously.
‘If you’re secretly a monster, blink three times,’ tried Eva.
‘I’ve never sought you out, never met you, and I have no idea who either of you are.’
One of Paul’s neighbours opened their door; a man in his fifties with a big, bushy moustache. He stepped out and began to slowly move towards us.
‘You know that talk we had when we first arrived?’ said Eva.
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, I’m getting a really weird vibe now.’
�
�Yeah, I think I’m picking up on that, too.’
‘Look,’ said Paul, ‘I don’t know what this is all about, but I do not know you.’
‘Paul’, I said, ‘it’s okay, something’s clearly wrong. I’m not mad you attacked me, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘You’re a pair of raving lunatics!’
‘Yes,’ agreed the neighbour, stood behind his gate, looking passively over at us. ‘They must be mad.’
‘Quite, quite mad,’ said Dot and Arthur, who’d completed their circuit of the village green and were passing us once again.
‘You came to my flat,’ I said. ‘You know you—’
—Eva grabbed me by the shoulder. ‘Whoa there, drunky,’ she said, pulling me back and laughing. ‘Sorry about him, had a little too much of the old voddy,’ she said waggling her half-empty bottle.
‘I’m not drunk,’ I insisted, ‘something strange is going on here.’
Eva pulled me away, smiling at the Combe residents, ‘Ignore this fella, he has issues, we’re having an intervention this weekend. You can all come, I’ll email out invites.’ Eva turned me around and guided me back to the Uncanny Wagon. ‘Just shut up and keep walking like everything’s okay.’
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Something very, very bad is happening in Combe, and your friend Paul Travers back there is right. The whole place is in on it. Him and all his robot neighbours.’
‘Robots?’
‘Metaphorical robots.’
‘Oh. Aw. So why are we heading off with our tails between our legs?’
‘Because we don’t want them to see us coming. We need to come back at night and do a little sneaking around, see if we can shake out what we’re dealing with here.’
As I got behind the wheel of the Uncanny Wagon, I gave a quick glance back in the direction we’d just hustled from. Paul and his three neighbours were stood, stock still, eyes boring into us.
What Paul Travers had said when he came to my flat was right; something was wrong with the whole place.
14
We had a few hours before nightfall, so I decided what better way to spend the time than by doing something horrible, awkward, and entirely unpleasant?
Eva’s crushing pep talk earlier had only solidified my own thoughts regarding myself and Annie, or romantic situations generally. Maybe one day I’d be able to explore girl-boy stuff, but right now it was just too dangerous. I couldn’t guarantee I’d still be alive from one day to the next, so what good was it pulling someone else into my world of monsters and horror?
No, this was the right thing to do. Even if it broke my heart to do it.
I was the eye of a tornado, and I needed to protect Annie and her daughter from the chaos swirling around me. On the bright side, I was used to being single, alone, and wading through a world of frustrated, empty longing. Same shit, different day, for good ol’ Mr Lake.
‘Hey, Joe!’ chirped Annie, waving as I approached.
I waved back, and even managed a smile, but I felt my insides clench as I realised she wasn’t alone. She’d said she was feeding the ducks by Mulgrave Pond when I called, and I’d said I’d drop by. It hadn’t crossed my mind to ask if she was feeding the ducks alone, because of course she wouldn’t be. People don’t generally go and feed ducks on their own unless they’re a bit old and dotty, they take their children. And so this was where I met Mille for the first time.
Millie had a riot of thick blonde curls, a hundred watt smile, and was rocking blue dungarees with an elephant picture on the front. She was enthusiastically launching fists full of bread chunks towards the eager ducks, who flapped to get away from the shards of stale bread tossed at speed towards their heads, before turning back to gobble them up as they bobbed around on the pond’s surface. Mille was obviously adorable, and seeing her only strengthened my resolve. Someone so young, so innocent, definitely had no place in my world.
‘Hi,’ I replied, feeling more than a little awkward.
Annie leaned in smiling and kissed me on the cheek. Damn, damn, and double damn. My knees quivered and I felt a sudden hollow thud in my stomach as I realised I’d never actually get to kiss Annie properly. And she had the sort of mouth I’d very much liked to have mushed my own against.
‘Millie, come here, this is mummy’s friend, Joe.’
Millie came waddling over, mittened hand clutching her half-full bread bag.
‘I’m feeding ducks,’ she proclaimed proudly.
‘That’s great,’ I said. ‘The poor things are terrible at shopping. Send them to the supermarket and they’ll come back to the pond with toilet paper and shoe polish, and not a crumb of food.’
Millie wrinkled her nose and tilted her head, clearly a little confused at my poor attempt at humour. ‘You’re silly.’ She lifted her bag. ‘This is duck bread.’
She turned, apparently done with the conversation, and made her way back to the birds.
‘I think she likes you,’ said Annie.
‘Well we both like ducks, so we have that in common.’
Annie laughed and I felt like a bastard.
‘I’m glad you called,’ she said. ‘I wanted you to meet Millie before, you know, things go anywhere with us.’
‘Oh? Things are going somewhere?’
She slipped her hand in mine. ‘I was hoping so.’
Bugger and balls and also bums. I should have gotten it over with right there and then. Torn off the plaster and had it all over and done with. It was for her own good. For her daughter’s own good. I wasn’t being horrible, I was protecting them. I was being the good guy!
So, of course I crumpled and listened to the cowardly part of me instead. ‘Me too,’ I said, smiling on the outside but calling myself a variety of colourful names on the inside.
We spent the next hour together. Me, a lovely woman I was pretending had a future with me, and her awesome little daughter. We walked round and round the pond, named all the ducks and described the workings of their duck society. Their relationships, politics, double-crosses, scandals. Oh, you wouldn’t believe the number of juicy scandals in duck world. At one point, I even found Millie holding my hand as we strolled.
I really am a rotten bastard at times.
I waved goodbye, with promises to call and set up a date a.s.a.p, then drove away, furious at myself.
It had been a lovely, normal hour or so. An hour that, even whilst I ignored the part of my brain trying to shame me for dragging things out, had made me feel ordinary. For that hour I wasn’t the Magic Eater, I was a man on the cusp of a wonderful new relationship, someone who might become a father figure to a cool little girl. But it was make-believe and it was cruel. All I’d done was shift the bad news a little further down the road. But there it was, sat there still, not even far enough ahead to be out of view. And by spending an hour playing family man, meeting Annie’s daughter and pretending like we had a future beyond the next few days, I’d only made the oncoming bombshell all the more destructive.
Or perhaps I was inflating things out of proportion. It’s possible. We’d barely begun anything, really. It’s just as possible that Annie would be disappointed, but shrug it off and move on.
As I churned this all around in my head, I drove without really paying attention to where I was headed. I took country road after country road, green fields and dry stone walls whipping past, half-seen. It was muscle memory, taking me back to the same place I often found myself when I was at a low ebb.
Derwentwater Lake.
The place I’d been found ten years previously.
I killed the Uncanny Wagon’s engine, then got out and trudged towards the water, flopping heavily onto the grass.
‘Fuck. Fuckity fuck balls!’ I launched a stone in the water’s direction and watched it land with a deep splash and disappear from view.
I lay back on the grass, hands behind my head, and looked up at the sky. It was still light, but I could already see the moon.
‘Swim do
wn.’
I sat bolt upright as the words floated over me.
‘Hello? Lyna, Melodia?’
‘Swim down, Janto.’
I pushed myself up and walked towards the lake’s edge, the water lapping gently at my boots.
‘Swim down.’
The air hazed in the distance as I looked out over Derwentwater, and there, indistinct and stood impossibly on the surface of the water, were two figures.
My dead witches.
‘Swim down, Janto.’
‘Can you , perhaps, elaborate a wee bit?’ I asked.
‘Swim down.’
‘I’ll take that as a no.’
For a mad moment I considered stripping off and jumping into the lake. Swimming over to the dead phantoms to try and talk to them properly. But then I felt my hand being yanked and I looked down to see a furry paw tugging at me. I sat up sharply, eyes blinking, realising I’d fallen fast asleep, flat out on the grass.
‘Fox?’
‘You were talking in your sleep, Magic Eater.’
I peered past the Fox, out over the lake, but there was no sign of the witches, hazy or otherwise. Just water, and past that the hills and mountains of Cumbria.
‘Does something trouble you?’ asked the Fox.
‘Oh, you know how it is. Women.’
‘Ah,’ he replied, sadly. ‘I know of such sorrows.’
The Fox had lost his own partner, he’d told me that. What had happened to him is exactly what I feared would happen to me. I’d fall for someone, they’d fall for me, I’d pull them into my life, and then my life would stick the knife in.
‘I think I might have to be alone forever,’ I said. ‘An eternal bachelor boy.’
‘It is not so terrible,’ replied the Fox, sitting down beside me and resting his axe across his little legs.
‘Isn’t it?’
He looked to the ground. ‘I lied to make you feel better. It is very bad. Very awful and tragic and also heartbreaking.’
I patted the Fox’s Roman helmet, then the two of us sat in silence, looking out over the calm lake waters. For a few moments I could pretend we were the only two around for miles. Just me and a talking fox. No romantic woes, no monsters, and no people in mortal peril.
Past Sins: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (The Dark Lakes Series Book 3) Page 8