‘The perfect cover, at least until I’m seen chumming it up with a fairy prince and a couple of deadites, so if you don’t mind, would you kindly vamoose? My break’s almost over and there’s a spreadsheet upstairs with Alan’s name all over it.’
‘We didn’t come here for shits and giggles,’ I said. ‘We’re here for information, and seeing as The Beehive has ears these days, we thought we’d go straight to the wellspring.’
I saw a flutter in Alan’s physog as anger made Shift’s mask slip for a moment, then he quickly transformed back to the doughy office drone. ‘How did you even find out about this place?’ he demanded.
‘I did some checking around.’
‘You spied on me.’
‘Hey, if I’m going to put my limited life on the line based on someone else’s information, I need to be sure I can trust the source of that information. You get that, right?’
Shift ground his teeth. ‘Fine. Say what you came here to say and leave me alone.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ I said, giving him finger guns.
So I explained. I explained about the misunderstanding with my client and the hiring of a supernaturally-enhanced assassin named Erin Banks who was out to do us a serious mischief.
Shift put a hand to his mouth. ‘The Erin Banks? Dark hair, filthy mouth, so much scribble on her that she looks like an old school desk?’
‘That’s her,’ said the fae.
‘Oh no. Oh no no no. You don’t mess with Erin Banks. Demon or angel, sinner or saint, if the price is right, that woman will take you down.’
‘Jesus, what are you, the president of her fan club?’ I said.
‘No. I just take an interest in people who excel at what they do, and Erin Banks is the best of the best.’
‘How is she, though? I need to find a chink in her armour, some place to stick in the knife. Come on, tell me, what’s her secret? Where’s she getting all that juice from?’
‘You mean you don’t know? She gets it from a demon.’
I might have known. ‘Which one?’
‘An old friend of yours,’ he replied, a faint smile playing upon his lips. ‘Or did you forget about the Long Man?’
Chapter Forty-Six: Fiends with Benefits
Much like the duck-lipped receptionist haunting the front desk of Citytex Solutions, the Long Man also presided over his own little fiefdom. While most chthonic entities lurked in the Nether—Hell as you might know it—some of the more potent varieties have been known to create their own private pocket dimensions. As you might expect, travelling to such places is no mean feat, that is unless the demon who calls one home is open to receiving visitors. Just as well the Long Man was known to accept house calls, welcome them even. Whether he let his guests return home after they stopped by… that was a whole other story.
I’d been to the Long Man’s realm once before but had help getting there that time. Vic Lords’ magic allowed me to bridge the great divide, but since he was dead now—his tortured soul marooned in the very place I was trying to get to—I needed to find another way. Thankfully, Shift knew something Vic didn’t: that gaining access to the Long Man’s realm was as simple as voicing your request out loud and asking it of the demon using his true name. After that, all you had to do was be patient and an emissary would turn up and show the way.
But the Long Man didn’t do Groupon deals. You went to him alone or you didn’t go at all, so I told Frank I was flying solo and asked him to escort the Arcadian to the office for safekeeping. Understandably, he dragged his feet on this (metaphorically, I mean. Literally speaking, Frank always drags his feet). It took some convincing, but I finally convinced the big lug that there was no other way. Bless his cotton socks, he was only looking out for me. For a bloke who gave the kind of handshakes that could put a man in hospital, he was a soppy old sod.
Having said my goodbyes, I took to the streets and made my request of the Long Man. I paid no attention to where I was going. I roamed the highways and byways, speaking my intent out loud, again and again and again. I scattered appeals like markers in my wake, taking it on faith that the emissary meant to hear my voice would respond soon and be compelled to heed my words.
Just as I was beginning to get the distinct impression that I was talking to myself, I saw a man. The sun was still up, but the backstreet he was squatting in—the one my restless feet had unconsciously led me to—seemed to bleed shadows. The man was sat on a milk crate and surrounded by torn bin bags that spewed their contents across the tarmac like gutshot soldiers leaking entrails across a battlefield.
‘Frosty?’ I said, squinting my eyes.
I knew it couldn’t be him, but his name left my mouth anyway. Frost was long gone. Another lost soul I was responsible for. Another black mark next to my name.
The stranger stood up. ‘Greetings, Mister Fletcher,’ said the stranger, his voice devoid of emotion. ‘I am Gerald and I will take you to the Long Man.’
Gerald was a rhino in a pinstripe suit. The Long Man’s emissary was on his way to seven-feet tall and as wide as two regular fellers. He wasn’t fat, but covered in a thick overcoat of muscle, and had the kind of arms that could bench press a Volvo. His head was a bowling ball, his eyes devoid of sparkle, his nose so button-small that it looked as if it had been selected from the wrong box of body parts and slapped on as an afterthought.
‘So what’s your deal?’ I asked. ‘You just sit here all day waiting for clients to show up?’
‘I appear where I am required. Wherever there are desperate men willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, the Long Man guides me.’
While most hellspawn lurked in the Nether ready to lunge into our world and claim their victims like demonic trapdoor spiders, Gerald’s master preferred a more formal approach. The Long Man didn’t dirty his claws by visiting our plane, he sent an envoy in his stead. An envoy and, as it turned out, a gateway.
‘Are you ready to leave?’ asked Gerald.
‘I am.’
He nodded and removed a dull grey Stanley knife from the pocket of his pinstriped suit. With a flick of his thumb he extended the blade, turned it on himself, and thrust it into his neck. This came, as you might expect, as something of a surprise. Perhaps even more surprising was the fact that the stabbing wasn’t accompanied by a great arterial gush. Not a drop was spilt; no blood, no tears. As Gerald dragged the blade down from his throat, through his torso, and right the way down to his undercarriage, he didn’t so much as wince. Didn’t even blink.
When he’d finished mutilating himself, Gerald sat back down on his milk crate and dug his sausage-link fingers into the vertical slice he’d carved through his body. As easily as parting a pair of lace curtains, he peeled back the two great flaps of his trunk and nodded to the opening he’d created.
‘Get in.’
‘You what, mate?’
Gerald sighed. ‘This is the way.’
‘Through there? Through your guts?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because I don’t mind taking the scenic route.’
‘There is no other way.’
Right then. Crawling through a bloke’s slashed-open torso it was. Never a dull day in this job.
‘Before I go, do I tip you or what?’ I asked.
Gerald stayed mute.
Right then.
I reached a phantom hand into Gerald’s chassis then held my breath (force of habit) and poked in a head. At first I was looking at the inside of his gargantuan body, up to my eyeballs in gristle and guts, but by the time I’d crawled forward far enough that my first foot was in, the anatomy lesson had ended and I was someplace else. Now I was crawling across a carpet of black sand sprawled beneath a hellish nightscape.
‘Okay. Right. Cool.’
I took to my feet and brushed the clinging sticks from my trousers. This had been, generally speaking, more dimension-hopping than I liked to do on a murder case—especially one that had turned out not to have been a murder at all. And yet here I was, in the
cursed hidey-hole of a wretched monster, ready to cut a deal that no sane man would dare entertain.
I stopped to take in my surroundings. The colour palette of the Long Man’s realm was shades of charcoal with parched earth and barren rock all the way to the horizon. There was an eerie peace to the place, but I felt certain it wouldn’t be seeing rave reviews from Lonely Planet any time soon. Personally, I’d have given a better write-up to Wormwood Scrubs.
It was time to find the horned blasphemy who called this place home. I trekked across the desolate wastes for miles until I found the Long Man’s Forest of Souls, by luck or by the demon’s hand, I couldn’t be sure. Within the blighted forest, among cadaverous trees whose withered branches curled up like dead insects’ legs, I found the Long Man.
He was the size of a cathedral, with thick ram horns sprouting from his giant leering skull of a head. His lanky body was a web of exposed, glistening muscle, his huge hands terminating in claws the size of samurai swords. In short, he was a monstrosity. A nightmare. A creature willed from the pages of a Lovecraft novel and made flesh.
When I came across the Long Man, he was busy in his orchard, deadheading ink-black blooms from the skeletal arm of one of his twisted trees. Each of the demon’s many trophies was a soul he had collected over the centuries, planted in the forest’s black earth and transformed into a grotesque addition to the forest. Some of the trees were saplings, some were full-grown, but all were doomed, paralysed, cursed to live in a state of eternal anguish.
‘You need a new hobby, son,’ I told the towering demon. ‘Every time I come here, you’re doing the gardening. It’s murder on your back, you know? Take up yoga before it’s too late, mate.’
My introduction was maybe a bit lairy, particularly seeing as the last time I was here I only narrowly avoided extinction, but it's important to be yourself, even if you’re standing in the shadow of a baleful behemoth with claws that could shred a tank.
The Long Man didn’t acknowledge me. Without turning from his work he moved on to a new tree and tended to its branches, snipping away a few unruly blossoms.
I cupped a hand to my mouth. ‘Hello? Didn’t come here for my health, chief. You gonna talk business or should I head?’
‘Mister Fletcher,’ said the Long Man, speaking in a voice that sounded like a mangled foghorn aimed into a rusty metal drum.
‘There you are. How you doing, matey? Did you miss me?’
The demon considered the question. ‘Why would I ever miss you, Mister Fletcher? You are nothing. A speck of dust upon a speck of dust.’
I shrugged. ‘I’ve heard worse.’
The Long Man took a sideways step and focused his attention on a new tree. This one was even scrawnier than the rest, a pathetic specimen, gaunt and malnourished.
‘I didn’t realise Posh Spice snuffed it,’ I said, gesturing to the tortured soul turned topiary. Yes, my references aren’t very up to date. No, I don’t particularly care.
‘You do not recognise this one?’ asked the Long Man. ’But this soul you brought to me. A greedy fool by the name of Victor Lords.’
At the mention of his name, the tree’s gnarled knothole screamed in anguish. It was a noise so awful that it made me want to stab out my eardrums.
The Long Man turned to the night sky and quivered orgasmically at the pitiful sound. After a moment of deep absorption he returned his hollow-eyed gaze to me and spoke in a post-coital growl. ‘Why did you come here, Mister Fletcher?’
‘Why else? To strike a bargain.’
‘Oh yes? And what is it you seek?’
I was conscious of him studying me intently with his empty, lidless eyes. I made my pitch quickly.
‘It’s about a woman.’
The Long Man’s grin seemed to stretch, even though he had no lips to make that possible. ‘Isn’t it always?’
‘Not like that. This woman’s a minion of yours. Erin Banks.’
The Long Man grew still. ‘Ms Banks is known to perform certain tasks for me, yes.’
‘Well, she’s stepping on my toes right now, and I need you to bench her.’
The demon chuckled. It was hideous and loaded with mucus. ‘Whatever task Ms Banks is performing right now, it has nothing to do with me. She is a free agent. I have no say in her actions.’
‘You’re a thirty-foot tall demon, mate. You can at least ask nicely.’
‘And why would I do that?’
‘Because I’m prepared to make you a very generous offer.’
The Long man crouched down—way, way down—until we were eye-to-eye. ‘You are willing to trade your soul?’
‘My soul? Actually, I was thinking of something with a bit more shine to it. How does the soul of a fae king sound? Or a queen if you’re that way inclined.’
‘You possess such a thing?’
‘Sort of. I mean, I could definitely point you in the general direction of one.’
‘You offer a thing you do not own. You test my patience.’
‘Okay, easy, tiger. How about this: you can have my soul, but not right away. We put it on layaway for now and you take it, oh I don’t know, a thousand years from now?’
‘A thousand years?’
‘What’s it to you? You’re eternal, right?’
‘No deal.’
I was running out of options. It was time to do something drastic. I adjusted my tie.
‘Okay. If my soul’s the thing you need to make this happen, you can have it. Now.’
I had his interest.
‘You are prepared to be planted in my garden? To live for eternity in the Forest of Souls?’ He stroked the trunk of Vic’s tree and it shrank from his touch.
‘Why not?’ I replied. ‘Do you know what I spend my excuse of a life doing? I spend every waking hour—and there are a lot of them—trying to get back into His good graces. Trying to pay off a bunch of sins I didn’t even know I was making.’
The demon stared at me, his empty eye sockets somehow even more vacant than before. ‘Is this senseless chatter leading somewhere?’
I changed tack. ‘You’re a gardener. Do you know what forced rhubarb is?’
The Long Man cocked his head and said nothing. I carried on.
‘It’s this farming technique where they lure rhubarb out of its winter hibernation by tricking it with warmth and darkness. Makes it grow quicker. It sprouts up, reaching for the light, thinking it’s summertime, but the summer never comes.’
‘Let me guess. You are the rhubarb.’
‘I am. And I am so tired of waiting for my day in the sun. But you know what I’m tired of most of all? The guilt. Because it doesn’t matter that my sins were an accident. Ignorance won’t bring back the souls I destroyed. Nothing will. So why should my soul have it any better? The truth is, I don’t deserve the summer.’
‘Your guilt is so great that you would consign your spirit to an eternal winter in this place?’
My head sank into a nod. ‘Yeah, I would. So long as you tell your assassin to pack it in, I’m all yours.’
The Arcadian was good. He was pure. Trading my soul for his seemed more than fair.
‘So what do you say, Twiggy? Do we have a deal?’
The Long Man scraped a claw along his bony jaw as he considered my proposition.
‘No.’
‘What?’
‘I do not desire your soul, Mister Fletcher. It is damaged goods.’
‘What are you chatting about, pal? I’m offering you my immortal essence here. Handing it to you on a plate, skin removed. All of the fruit, none of the peel.’
‘There is no point arguing. I have made up my mind. Your terms are unacceptable.’
‘Listen to me, you bootleg Skeletor, a soul’s a soul, surely—’
‘No, you listen to me,’ the demon replied in a deep, guttural snarl. ‘Your soul is out of date. It has expired. It will bear no fruit. Now take your raggedy remains home and do not come here again.’
Some words were clawing their way up my
throat—the kind of words they won’t let you say on the radio—when the Long Man waved his hand dismissively and the world was whipped away like a magician’s tablecloth.
The demon’s Forest of Souls was gone. I was back in the alleyway, back among the bags of rubbish and the empty milk crate. Gerald was gone, no sign of the big lad. Just me on my lonesome, empty-handed.
The Long Man left me in the lurch.
The bargain wasn’t struck.
I tried to sell my soul to the Devil, but the cheque bounced.
Chapter Forty-Seven: Park Life
I thought I was taking a big risk wandering into an arch-demon’s lair, but the Long Man’s interest in me was so lacking that he couldn’t even summon up the contempt required to destroy me. It was hard not to take that personally, but wallowing in self-pity wasn’t going to help the Arcadian out of his mess, so I put the slight behind me as best I could and moved on.
It was daytime still when I returned from my extra-dimensional trip. The clouds had broken and were tipping rain over the city with a roar. I had to get back to the office, back to Frank and the kid, and figure out our next best move. Unfortunately, I was some distance away and without the ability to translocate, which meant taking public transport or burning some spectral shoe leather. I chose to go by foot. A walk would give me a chance to get my think on, and hopefully scrape together something resembling a workable plan.
I ducked into Hyde Park, a short cut. The rain was lashing down still, turning the going soupy. I was halfway across the park when a shiver tickled the back of my neck; the hairs getting up and shaking it like they were having a fit. I stopped and glanced around, expecting to see a vampire’s blood slave heading in my direction with malice in his eyes, or maybe a blue-skinned thug looking to bust a ghost’s skull. Instead I saw nothing.
Putting it down to the residual effect of having just returned from a demonic hellscape, I turned back in the direction I was headed and got moving. It didn’t take long for that weird feeling to return. Someone, or something, was following me, I was sure of it. I looked around again. Still nothing. Just trees and bushes and more trees. Except one of the trees was behaving in a most peculiar way.
Deadly Departed: A Supernatural Thriller (Fletcher & Fletcher, Paranormal Investigators Book 2) Page 27