‘Not good,’ said Carlisle.
‘He might be strong, but we have the prison I built all ready and waiting, we just need to push him back inside.’
‘What if he doesn’t want to be pushed?’ said Waterson. ‘What if he legs it away from the entrance.’
‘It’s not fixed. It doesn’t exist in the same way the actual gate we’re looking at now is. I can use the magic, with the axe, to position the door anywhere. All we need to do is place the gate to the dreamscape directly behind Jenner and throw everything we can at him so that he takes a single step back.’
‘One step,’ asked Waterson.
‘One step. That’s all we need to do. Easy, right?’
Carlisle raised an eyebrow. ‘Delusion is a most comforting disorder, Detective.’
‘Shut up, it’ll work. It’ll probably work. It has to work.’
Carlisle looked at the axe Rita was wielding. His artefact. A thing he had longed to possess again for so very long. He felt the urge to reach out and snatch it from her, as pointless as he knew that idea to be. It would not accept him, not unless she willingly gave it. This was something Carlisle was doubtful, at this point, would ever occur. Not without killing the Angel of Blackpool, and it seemed as thought that was impossible.
He wanted the artefact. Craved it.
‘Oi, stretched-out Johnny Depp,’ said Rita, clicking her fingers.
Carlisle grimaced and turned his attention back to the gate. ‘Get on with it then, I am eager to toss myself with reckless abandon towards certain death.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ replied Rita and lifted up the axe, ready.
‘Well, look what we have here, brother,’ said an all-too-familiar voice.
The group turned to find themselves flanked by Mr. Cotton and Mr. Spike.
‘Hello, you two,’ said Carlisle. ‘Apologies for taking my leave without a goodbye, but I was desperate to stretch my legs.’
‘Never fear, Carlisle, perhaps my brother will stretch them and stretch them until they are torn from your body altogether. What say you, Mr. Spike?’
Spike gurgled and grunted and nodded his hedgehog mask.
Rita swung at the air. ‘Stay back unless you want an axe to the neck, you murderous pieces of shit.’
‘Poor, poor doggy. I do believe he whimpered and begged as my brother showed him his true face. Such delicious fear, such ripe torment. Yummy.’
Rita nodded to Carlisle.
Carlisle nodded back.
They moved as one. Rita sprinted forward, axe raised, ready to strike a point in reality and open the dream realm wide, while Carlisle pulled charms from his coat and threw them in the direction of Cotton and Spike.
There was an explosion of light as each charm struck home, causing Cotton and Spike to warp like images in a funhouse mirror.
Rita swung the axe, only for a tree to burst from the ground and seize it in one of its limbs. Rita whirled around to find she was no longer in front of the Night Fair’s gate, but in a forest. She could see movement between the trees in the distance. Wolves stalking.
‘Fuck-shit,’ cried Rita, yanking the axe from the tree. ‘Carlisle?’ she yelled as she warily looked at the wolves in the dreamscape she’d been swallowed by. No reply.
She gripped the axe and willed the dreamscape’s magic into it, then swung again and created an exit. She stepped through the opening and found herself on top of a building this time. Another dreamscape.
She turned as something thudded down behind her. It was Ben Turner.
‘Why?’ he asked, blood streaming from his eyes. ‘Why did you let me die, Rita?’
‘Oh shut it,’ she snarled, magic erupting from the axe-head and turning the pretend Ben to ash. She swung the weapon again and stepped through the opening into a third dreamscape.
‘Carlisle! A little help here!’
She was in an abandoned factory, rats the size of dogs scampering across the grimy concrete floor.
Mr. Cotton sprouted up from the floor, the ears of his rabbit mask waggling. ‘Why do you struggle so?’ he asked. ‘Fear is natural. Death inevitable. And both are so very, very delicious.
‘You’re going to lose, you know that?’ said Rita, brandishing the axe. ‘Fear never wins. Not ever. It might seem overwhelming for a time, but in the end it’s beaten.’
Mr. Cotton clapped. ‘Did you get that from a greeting card?’
A wheezing sound from behind. Rita turned to see Mr. Spike, his shoulders shaking from laughter. She began to back off, trying to keep both brothers in her eye-line as they watched her retreat.
‘You know, Rita, I do believe it might be time for you to finally leave the game. What say you, brother?’
Mr. Spike clapped his hands together.
‘We were holding something of a grudge. Childish, I know.’
‘Well, I didn’t want to be the first to say it,’ replied Rita, heart hammering.
‘You bested us once and we wished to draw out your pain. We did not want to shoot you in the head, we wanted you to bleed out, ever so slowly. We wanted the same for your wicked friend, Carlisle, but it is a fool who allows danger to remain while there is work to be done.’
Mr. Spike grunted and ran at Rita. She swung the axe but missed, slicing the air and tearing open a fresh hole. Meanwhile, Spike crashed into Rita and brought her to the ground.
‘Carlisle!’
Mr. Spike sat on her chest and Rita swung her fists, trying to dislodge him, but her blows had no effect. He grabbed her face with one filthy glove, a centipede squirming from the sleeve of his jacket and skittering across her wild-eyed face.
‘You called?’ Rita looked up to see Carlisle poking his head through the door the axe had created. He peeled the hole open further, stepped through, and clapped his hands together, unleashing an explosion of light and a deafening boom. The dreamscape, and Cotton and Spike, melted away, and Rita found herself back before the gates of the Night Fair.
‘Rita!’ cried Waterson, rushing over to her as she grabbed the axe and climbed shakily to her feet. ‘Is that it? Did you stop them?’
‘No,’ replied Carlisle. ‘That is beyond either of us at this point.’
‘Well,’ said Waterson, ‘ hurry up and open the bloody prison thing!’
Rita didn’t need telling twice. Axe in hand, she stood and turned to the gate.
Mr. Cotton stepped out of nothing to block her way. ‘So that is your plan, is it? A calculated risk? I applaud you, really I do.’
Rita swung the axe, burying the head in Cotton’s rabbit mask as Spike bundled into her side, knocking her from her feet and the axe from her grip.
‘The power is ours,’ said Cotton, pulling the axe from his mask and tossing it aside.
Carlisle darted towards it. Mr. Cotton swept a hand across and the ground beneath Carlisle’s feet, causing it to jut out and propel him through the air. Carlisle’s journey was soon halted by a wall that sent fists of white static blooming into his vision.
Rita struggled as Mr. Spike planted himself atop her chest again and giggled.
‘Get the fuck off me!’
‘Such bad language. Have you ever heard the like, brother mine?’
The mouth of Mr. Spike’s hedgehog mask opened wider and wider and wider still, though of course it did not as it was just a mask. Great strings of thick drool seeped from within, making Rita recoil with revulsion as they struck her face.
‘This magic, the Angel’s magic, belongs to us now,’ said Mr. Cotton, hands clasped behind his back as he danced towards Carlisle. ‘It will not be taken away. We will use it in Blackpool. When this small place is drained of fear, of terror, of life itself, we shall move on. We shall wander this Earth bringing the gift of anguish with us.’
Carlisle stumbled up, blood dripping down his face, into his eyes. He wiped the sleeve of his coat across his face and staggered towards the axe, only to find himself spinning wildly through the air again, the Night Fair’s wrought iron gate stopping his jo
urney this time.
Waterson edged his way towards the fallen axe, a forgotten man. It seemed Mr. Cotton and Mr. Spike were so concerned with Rita and Carlisle that they saw no threat from him. Which was fair, he wasn’t sure there was anything he could do to threaten them. But his best friend needed him, so he was going to try.
He knelt before the axe and reached for the handle.
His hand passed through.
‘Can you feel our power now, Carlisle?’ said Mr. Cotton, as a groggy Carlisle used the bars of the gate to haul himself to his feet.
‘You really do… enjoy the sound of your own voice,’ replied Carlisle, spitting a glob of blood on the dirt.
Mr. Cotton laughed and clicked his fingers. Vines sprouted from the ground and wrapped around Carlisle’s arms, his legs, his neck, strapping him to the metal gate.
‘Come on, concentrate,’ hissed Waterson, reached for the axe. The handle shifted, ever so slightly, before his hand passed through it once again.
Rita kicked out, bucked, fought, as Mr. Spike giggled, a tongue snaking out of the mask and licking her cheek.
‘Oh, you dirty prick,’ she yelled, twisting her head away.
Waterson tried again. The axe did not budge.
‘Hm,’ said Mr. Cotton, rubbing at the chin of his rabbit mask with one hand, ‘I wonder how to make this worse.’
‘You could just keep on talking, that’s torture enough,’ replied Carlisle, straining to push his right hand into his coat pocket.
Mr. Cotton clicked his fingers. ‘Aha! Thorns! Of course.’
Carlisle grunted as vicious thorns grew from the vines that pinned him, sinking into his flesh and causing crimson to leak from his chalk-white skin. All the same, he carried on straining for his pocket, trying to ignore how moving his arm only caused the thorns to drag and tear at his flesh.
Cotton and Spike were beyond powerful now, their dreamscape magic a thought away, able to do as they pleased. Able to make the ground shake and vines sprout at a moment’s notice, all built from the stuff of dreams, the substance of nightmares.
Waterson’s hand passed through the axe handle again and he almost cried out in frustration.
‘Do you know,’ said Mr. Cotton, turning his attention to Rita, ‘I do believe it is finally time for my brother to show you his true face.’
‘That’s okay,’ replied Rita, ‘let’s do it another time.’
Mr. Spike raised his hands up to his hedgehog mask and Rita writhed and kicked and struggled, terror overwhelming her.
‘There it is,’ said Mr. Cotton, delighting in her fear, ‘delicious anguish, fresh from the oven.’
Carlisle’s hand reached the object he was after. A fire charm.
‘Oh, this is going to hurt,’ he said to himself.
Mr. Spike’s mask edged up—slowly, slowly—he and his brother delighting in the anticipation. Rita tried to close her eyes but found that she couldn’t. Tried to turn her head away, but Spike’s hand locked it in place.
She didn’t want to see.
Didn’t want to see.
Rita realised she was screaming.
And she wasn’t the only one. Waterson yelled in anger, in frustration, in hopelessness at how useless he was, and swiped with one, last, futile attempt at the axe. He almost fell back in surprise. He could feel the axe handle. He looked down, wide-eyed, as he lifted the weapon.
‘I did it… I fucking did it!’ he screamed.
Mr. Cotton turned to see Waterson standing, axe in hand. ‘Oh, naughty, naughty ghost. Ours, I think.’
He stepped towards Waterson.
Rita could taste blood in her throat.
Carlisle put the right words together, ancient words, and the charm reacted. It was created to throw at an enemy, to engulf them in flames. Carlisle would not be throwing it. Fire rushed up around his coat, raced along the vines, eating away at them until Carlisle stumbled forward, free of their grip, and struggled out of the blazing coat.
He’d had that coat for over a hundred years. Now he was angry.
The magic rushed into him and he punched out a fist, sweeping Mr. Cotton from his feet, halting his advance towards Waterson. Carlisle spun on his heel and yelled out an oath, swinging his fist again and knocking Mr. Spike from his position on top of Rita.
‘Detective!’ he said.
Rita rolled and stumbled to her feet, body trembling. ‘Waters!’
Waterson threw her the axe.
‘No!’ yelled Mr. Cotton, reaching out, vines bursting from the ground, following the path of the axe as it span, head over handle, towards Rita’s hand. Carlisle was ready and swept a hand across, unleashing a spell that turned the vines to ribbons.
The axe found Rita’s hand.
No time for relief, no time for a snappy remark, with the sound of Mr. Spike’s wet, furious grunts at her back, Rita swung the axe at the Night Fair’s gate. It stuck in nothing, stuck in reality, and Rita shoved the handle, opening a bright, white gap.
A door.
An exit.
‘It’s okay, it’s okay, everything is going to be fine, fine, fine,’ said Mr. Cotton, as the smoky fingers of the Angel’s magic that stretched from the Angel’s prison and wound around Mr. Cotton and Mr. Spike broke away and rushed into the door Rita had created. It was like a black hole gobbling up all available light.
‘I think it’s fair to say,’ said Rita, as Cotton and Spike stepped back, ‘that you pair are royally fucked.’
A figure stepped out of the door Rita had created, his eyes blazing with a furious white light.
‘I am very upset,’ said Alexander Jenner with the voice of the Angel of Blackpool.
As Mr. Cotton and Mr. Spike attempted to get away, to escape into a maze of dreamscapes, Jenner reached out a hand. ‘No, no. Stay.’
Cotton and Spike fell to their knees.
‘We still have similar desires,’ said Mr. Cotton. ‘Errors of judgement have been made, but I believe we can come to a new understanding and put this sorry business behind us.’
Mr. Spike gurgled and grunted and nodded.
‘Is that so?’ said the Angel. Jenner’s fingers clicked and the masks that Mr. Cotton and Mr. Spike wore burst into flames. They screamed and struggled, but the Angel would not let them fall or run or roll. Would not let them throw off their masks.
Rita thought about all the terror they’d been responsible for. She thought of the women’s souls inside her axe, trapped still. She thought about Ben Turner, dead on the basement floor.
The flames edged down their bodies, and before long, they were nothing but twin piles of ash, blown by the wind.
Rita stepped back as Carlisle and Waterson joined her.
‘Yay for teamwork?’ she said as Jenner—as the Angel—turned Its gaze to her.
‘Thank you, Rita Hobbes,’ said the Angel.
‘Did you see me?’ Waterson asked Rita. ‘I only bloody picked something up!’
‘Still in a shitload of danger here, Waters, let’s put a hold on any celebrations for a bit.’
‘I do not suppose you would like to step back inside of your prison of your own free will?’ asked Carlisle, as Jenner’s body began to rise into the air in a ball of crackling, bright white magic.
‘Okay,’ said Rita, axe in her hands, ‘the door to the nightscape is behind Jenner; all we have to do is make him fall back, just an inch or two.’
‘Oh, is that all?’ replied Carlisle.
‘We can do this,’ said Rita. ‘Ready?’
Carlisle sighed and drew strength from the magic in the air around him. ‘Ready.’
‘Then let’s do this.’
Rita and Carlisle ran at Jenner.
And then things went very, very bad.
21
Carlisle was not in a good way. For one thing, his coat was a smouldering heap, all the charms within it lost, all the bits of protection stitched into it, ash. He felt almost naked without it.
He ran his fingers gently along one of the tree ro
ots that snaked down the walls of the cave to feast upon the thick layer of blood that coated the ground. It pulsed under his touch. Writhed.
Carlisle felt weak, which was not something he was used to. Both magically and physically, he was beaten down. He had not recovered from the torture Mr. Cotton and Mr. Spike had inflicted upon him, nor the damage done by his astral jaunt and exorcism.
Punishment on top of pain on top of punishment. And then there were the beatings he had just suffered in the battle against Cotton and Spike, and then in a fruitless attempt to move the Angel possessed Jenner so much as an inch. They had been no more capable of moving it back than a bug was capable of winning a fight against an oncoming truck.
Carlisle stumbled, faltered, wrapping his hand around one of the roots to stop himself from collapsing to the bloody cave floor.
He wondered if the detective was dead already. Wondered what she had thought as he ran from the battlefield and she screamed after him. Had she felt betrayal? Thought him a coward? A part of the dark showing its true colours at last? It annoyed him that he cared.
‘You called?’ asked a figure, rising from his twitching throne of flesh and bone.
‘Unfortunately so,’ replied Carlisle with a smile, turning his attention from the hundreds of roots, to the nonchalant demon who claimed this place as his realm.
The Yellow Man.
The demon smiled, his golden skin glowing, his antlers scraping against the roof of the cave as he stepped forward.
‘I see you have made friends with your body again. Good for you.’
Carlisle bowed a little, wincing in pain as he did so. ‘Thank you, I find I am able to squirm out of even the most hopeless of situations.’
‘That’s one of the things I’ve always liked about you, Carlisle. You’re a scrappy son of a gun.’
Carlisle was not sure he liked being referred to in such a cutesy way, but he was not so stupid as to argue with a demon. Or with this demon anyway.
‘So you would now like to take me up on my kind offer, is that right?’
Carlisle frowned and nodded. ‘Unfortunately, I appear to have temporarily taken leave of my senses, yes.’
Night Terrors: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (Hexed Detective Book 3) Page 15