Something Rotten: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (The Ghosted Series Book 2)

by David Bussell

  See, here’s the rub: Just like the rest of my exorcist peers, I used the same methods to send demons packing as I did ghosts. Unfortunately, as it turns out, exorcism is not a one-size-fits-all operation. Instead of sending those ghosts to their final reward—as I assumed I’d been doing—I had in fact been obliterating them. Wiping them off the map. Off any map.

  It wasn’t until I died and became a ghost myself that I realised the truth of it. I was a killer. A serial killer. Sure, I could claim I didn’t understand the consequences of what I was doing, but there had to be a price to pay for rubbing out that many souls. It’s why I busted out of the afterlife and ended up here a ghost; to avoid answering for my misdeeds. At first I was just running scared, but after I landed back on Earth, I decided I wanted to do something to make up for all those people I’d destroyed. To start saving souls the right way, and maybe, just maybe, save my own in the process.

  As I made my way to Detective Stronge I wondered how much dirt I still had to scrape off my hide before I’d be clean. I arrived at Hampstead Heath at just gone one in the morning. A couple of uniforms flanked a ribbon of yellow police tape stretched across the park’s western entrance, but I ghosted by them unseen.

  In darkness, the black grass of the Heath stood revived, unfurling after another day spent crushed beneath the feet of footballers and dog walkers. The sounds of screaming children and picnickers had vanished with the dying light, leaving behind an eerie calm. Trees swayed against the charcoal sky, and leaves scurried to a gentle breeze that might have raised goosebumps were I able to feel its touch.

  I followed the glare of floodlights and the flash of a distant camera across the West Heath to the scene of the crime. The area was attended to by a number of officers and forensics experts, plus constables from the Hampstead Heath Constabulary, whose K-9s had alerted them to the scene. I threaded through the officers invisibly to arrive at a border of tape marked DO NOT CROSS, positioned to ensure that the enclosed area was given a wide berth by anyone whose fat feet didn’t belong there.

  I phased through the cordon and saw the bodies. Two of them, both men, splashed across the grass like they were trying to catch moon tans. Their limbs were posed at awkward angles and their heads positioned in a way that told me they definitely weren’t sleeping. The smaller of the two had a rock in his hand, which was covered in a crust of dried blood and matted hair. The back of the larger one’s skull had been caved in like an egg shell, and one of his eyeballs hung from its socket, dislodged by the force of the blow. A river of congealed blood ran from each of his nostrils.

  Turning to look past the police tape, I saw DCI Stronge. She sat alone on an aged oak bench beside the leg of Mutton Pond. She regarded me coolly as I made my way over and sat down beside her. Unlike the rest of her colleagues, Stronge possesses The Sight, which means she’s able to see ghosts. She acquired it as the result of a run-in we’d had recently with a demonic entity known as a soul feaster. Sometimes, when a regular person is shown the world as it really is, their eyes open to the Uncanny and they become—and I’m sorry to keep throwing these terms your way—what we call an “Insider.”

  ‘What took you so long?’ she asked, blowing on her coffee.

  Stronge works in homicide and serious crimes, and was heading up this investigation. Tonight she wore her immaculate, flat-ironed hair in a neat bob that accentuated her angular cheekbones. The hair was brunette but her eyes were blue as the lights of the police cars I could see flashing in the distance.

  ‘I was finishing up with Stella at the other place,’ I told her.

  ‘Your magic lady?’ she snorted, shaking her head. ‘Sorry to drag you back into the gutter.’

  If I didn’t know better I’d almost think she was jealous.

  Ever since I got into the detective game, DCI Stronge had been invaluable to me. While Stella acts as my link to the realm of the Uncanny—one of them anyway—Stronge's my anchor to the regular world. My counterweight to balance out the crazy. She’s also my go-between to the Metropolitan Police, which I work for in a clandestine, consultancy capacity.

  ‘Where’s your partner tonight?’ I asked Stronge.

  ‘He’s taken temporary leave after… well, you know.’

  Our encounter with the soul feaster. Yeah, I could see why someone might want to take a spell of absence after that business. A bit of work-related stress is to be expected when you’re dealing the fallout of a rampaging demon that skins people alive.

  The Scene of Crime Officer approached in a white boiler suit and pulled down his face mask. ‘The site’s ready for inspection, Ma’am,’ he told Stronge.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she replied, and followed him to the cordon with me tagging along unnoticed.

  ‘I can take it from here, Officer,’ she said, and off he went about his business, allowing Stronge and me to talk.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ she asked.

  I looked at the two bodies laying on the ground; at the rock wrapped in the stiff fingers of one, and at the cratered head of the other.

  ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘I’m thinking it’s probably not a suicide.’

  Stronge harrumphed, took the last swig of her coffee and squeezed the paper cup flat. ‘We’re considering the possibility that it was a lover’s quarrel.’

  That figured. Even in the Grindr age, the West Heath was still a popular night-time cruising ground for gay men. The cops tolerated it so long as they cleaned up after themselves and kept it away from the kiddies.

  ‘Could have been a spat,’ I supposed. ‘What do we know for sure?’

  ‘Just two things. One: the victim is the only one with any wounds – the bludgeoner doesn’t have a mark on him.’

  ‘Could have been a heart attack. Sudden aneurism maybe.’ I stroked my chin. ‘What’s the other thing?’

  ‘The murderer, the man with the rock in his hand, forensics are telling me he’s been dead for at least forty-eight hours.’

  ‘Oh. Well, that’s…’

  ‘Yeah. It complicates things.’

  The crime had to have occurred this evening, so how did a two-day old corpse wind up on the scene? My first thought was that someone must have bashed the one guy’s head in and dumped the other body here hoping to fit him up for the murder, but Stronge soon disavowed me of that notion.

  ‘Doesn’t seem that way,’ she said. ‘The bone and brain fragments on the skinny guy are consistent with him perpetrating a close-quarters bludgeoning.’

  ‘They couldn’t have been sprinkled on after the fact?’ I asked. Sprinkled, I said, like I was talking about decorating a cake.

  ‘I know this is a bit out there,’ supposed Stronge, ‘but could the bludgeoner be a zombie? Assuming those are a thing.’

  ‘They are,’ I replied, ‘but we don’t see too many of them around here.’

  No, this wasn’t voodoo. Wrong continent. Wrong... vibe.

  I looked to the bludgeoner’s body and then back to Stronge. ‘Notice anything else out of the ordinary?’

  She considered the crime scene and narrowed her eyes. After a minute or so of contemplation, she admitted defeat. ‘I don’t see it.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Where’s the ghost?’

  She slapped her forehead. ‘Of course.’ She hadn’t had her gift for long—if you want to call being tuned into a world of phantoms and horrors a “gift”—and was still getting used to seeing the world as it really was. ‘So what are you thinking?’ she asked. ‘Another soul feaster?’

  I pursed my lips and swayed my head. ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Not this time.’

  Call it a hunch, but something seemed different here. This was new, I was sure of it.

  ‘Wait a second…’ said Stronge, pointing to the two bodies. ‘You said “ghost” before. Shouldn’t that be “ghosts,” plural?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ I argued.

  Stronge was a brilliant detective, head and shoulders above me, but she still had a lot to learn about the paranormal
.

  I explained how not all traumatic deaths resulted in a disembodied spirit wandering the Earth. How a real villain’s fate is decided before they die. Like I said before, the Devil claims his due with a bit more ferocity than the Man Upstairs. If someone's an undeniable piece of shit—I’m talking murderers, war criminals, 2 Broke Girls fans—they get a one-way ticket to the Bad Place. No judgment in the afterlife, no paperwork to fill out, just a trapdoor to the fiery pit. I’m surprised I never got sent south for my crimes really. I can only imagine the Big Man wanted to get a proper, close-up look at me before he pulled the lever.

  ‘Let’s suppose the feller with the smashed skull was a bit naughty,’ I said. ‘A real baddie. That’d explain why he isn’t around to say hello.’

  ‘And what about the one with the rock?’ asked Stronge. ‘If you’re saying he wasn’t dragged to Hell, where did he get to?’

  ‘You already told me his body’s two days dead. That means he didn’t die here. Which means his ghost could still be hanging about wherever it is that he did snuff it.’

  Stronge bobbed her head. ‘Alright,’ she said. ‘That gives us something to run with.’

  I bent down to get a better look at the two cadavers. The one with his eye hanging out looked to be in his mid-thirties and was a real lump of a bloke; a bald head, thick rhino neck and biceps like rugby balls. The scrawny one with the skull gavel in his hand couldn’t have been older than twenty; a mangy-looking thing dressed like a rough sleeper. Despite the chill, he was only wearing a t-shirt, and had visible track marks up his left forearm. He also had a tattoo there that read, “What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.”

  ‘Bit ironic,’ I muttered.

  ‘The big lad came with a wallet and driver’s license,’ said Stronge.

  ‘The scag head?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  I nodded. It could never be easy, could it?

  Stronge folded her arms. ‘We should divvy up jobs. I’ll check on one of their backgrounds while you look into the other.’

  ‘So, let me get this right,’ I said, ‘one of us has to rummage around the slums interviewing down-and-outs, while all the other has to do is run an ID through a computer?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Stronge, wearing the thinnest of smiles.

  I’ll give you two goes at guessing which job I got, but you’ll only need the one.

  3

  It was left to me to find out who the kid with the ironic tattoo was, and how his two-day-old corpse wound up dumped on Hampstead Heath with a bloody rock in his paw and a sprinkling of brain bits.

  Just like I always do when I’m in need of answers to tricky questions, I went to see Frosty, my man on the street. And that’s “on the street” in the literal sense. Frosty’s a rough sleeper too, or was at least, before he froze to death begging one winter. These days he’s a ghost, so he doesn’t need sleep or loose change. Instead, he sits frozen to his final resting place, a patch of pavement next to an ATM opposite the square by Mornington Crescent station, draped by the shadow of Lord Cobden’s statue. You’d think he’d get bored, sat there all day and night, but he manages to keep himself amused. He mainly succeeds in this by looking up the skirts of women waiting in line for the cash point, but sometimes he doles out titbits to chancers like me that come to him looking for local lore. For a price anyway.

  ‘Evening, Frost,’ I said as I appeared by his side.

  He flinched at the sudden intrusion. I have that effect on people. Since I’m able to arrive places instantly using my ghost powers, I often save myself the legwork of walking and translocate there instead. It’s a real timesaver, but it does have a habit of upsetting folks who don’t know I’m coming.

  ‘What do you want, Fletcher?’ Frosty growled.

  As usual, he looked as though he’d spent a week trapped in a cold storage unit. Icicles clung to his whiskers and his skin had the pallor of old meat dipped in liquid nitrogen.

  ‘Looking for an ID on a murder suspect,’ I told him.

  ‘Is that all?’ he asked, then cleared his throat, rolled something around his gob and hawked it onto the pavement next to my feet. ‘What’s in it for me?’ he asked as the glob of ectoplasm rolled by my brogues.

  Ever the charmer, old Frost.

  I sighed and reached inside my jacket for his payment. His eyes lit up when he saw it: a can of Carlsberg Special Brew, the alcoholic’s gut-rot of choice. Frosty doesn’t have use for much in this world, but even in death he was not without his vices.

  ‘Give it ‘ere,’ he demanded, fingers twitching for his prize.

  I keep a stock of the brew in reserve in case I’m ever in need of Frosty’s services. Each tin is individually enchanted by my magician friend, Jazz Hands, a process that makes them tankable for ghosts. Without her blessing, Frosty wouldn’t even be able to be wrap a mitt around one, let alone enjoy its contents.

  He snatched the can off me then pulled back the ring pull with a feculent fingernail to suck down the bruiser juice inside.

  ‘Ready to do business?’ I asked.

  ‘Still feeling a bit cloudy,’ he replied, feigning forgetfulness.

  I sighed and handed him a second can, which he took in both hands like a squirrel with a nut.

  ‘Not joining me?’ he asked, popping it open.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘but I’d sooner lick a stripper pole.’

  He shrugged and knocked back the second can as quickly as the first. ‘And a third on completion,’ he told me.

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  Immediately, his attitude took a steep uptick. If he had a tail it would have been wagging.

  ‘What can I do for you, my good man?’ he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of a mittened hand.

  I don’t take pleasure in being Frosty’s enabler, but since this is the only way I can get him to open his trap, he doesn’t leave me much choice. Besides, Jazz Hands assures me that alcohol doesn’t affect ghosts, even with her hocus pocus, so whatever it is Frosty’s getting out of it is purely in his head.

  ‘Looking for a young feller,’ I told him. ‘Possible street kid.’

  ‘Gonna need a bit more than that,’ he replied.

  ‘Early twenties. A user. Has a Nietzsche tattoo here,’ I said, rolling up the sleeve of my jacket to show him the underside of my left forearm.

  Frosty made a face like he’d just seen a hearse blow a tyre. ‘Did it say, “What doesn’t kill you can only make you stronger”?

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied, taken aback. ‘Bloody hell, that was quick.’

  It usually took Frosty a little while to cast out his feelers and get a handle on a person, but apparently he’d nailed this one right out of the gate. Ordinarily, he gathers intel using something I can only describe as ghost ESP. Whereas I have a fairly ordinary complement of ghost powers—invisibility, intangibility, translocation—Frosty has something that’s entirely his own. As if to make up for being rooted to the spot, he’s able to know pretty much anything about his surroundings by reading the minds of those he comes in contact with, and given his permanent pitch by an ATM, that accounts for a whole lot of people. Even more impressively, he’s able to read the minds of people his targets have been in contact with, which makes him something like the Oracle of Camden Town.

  ‘Did you say he was a murder suspect?’ Frosty asked, shocked. ‘Ah, Fergal, what were ya thinking...?’

  Now I had a name. ‘You knew him personally?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah. A runaway he was, fresh-faced thing when I met him a few years back. Came to town from Glasgow after a row with his folks.’ Frosty shook his head. ‘I told him to go back and make good with ‘em before he got himself into trouble down ‘ere. Looks like he didn’t listen.’

  It occurred to me that I hadn’t mentioned Fergal was dead as well as in the frame for a murder, so I put it to Frosty as gently as I knew how.

  He cast a sullen look to the ground. ‘It’s a rotten shame,’ he said. ‘A rotten shame. He was a good ki
d really.’ His voice trailed slowly, like his words were unwilling to take flight.

  ‘Sorry to hear that,’ I said. I may not have a pulse, but I still have a heart. ‘There’s still a chance we can help him though.’

  ‘Help ‘im ‘ow? You said he’d done someone in. That’s a one-way trip to the Bad Place, that is.’

  ‘I said we were looking into the possibility that he’d done someone in,’ I clarified. ‘We don’t know for sure if he did the deed.’

  ‘Then ask his bleedin’ ghost!’ Frosty barked.

  I explained that Fergal’s phantom, if there was one, was likely at the location he’d bitten the dust a couple of days back. ‘That’s where I need to be looking,’ I told Frosty. ‘Except I haven’t got a clue where to start. Maybe if I to talk to someone that’s spent time with him recently I’ll learn something.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ Frosty agreed.

  ‘Right. So what can you tell me about Fergal’s old…’ I almost said “haunts,” ‘...stomping grounds.’

  ‘You’d wanna get yerself to South Ken,’ he replied. ‘Cardboard city in the disused Underground station there. That’s where he used to bunk up.’

  I nodded. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I can work with that.’

  I reached into my jacket pocket for the last can of Special Brew.

  Frosty waved it off. ‘Keep it,’ he sighed. ‘I’m miserable enough without it.’

  4

  So long as I was determined to scurry around the bowels of Camden Town questioning vagrants, I was going to need a body. Don’t get me wrong, being an apparition has its uses in the P.I. game, but when it comes to questioning witnesses, a set of lips is paramount. That’s why I always keep a spare body on stand-by.

  Another of my ghost powers, besides translocation, is being able to possess the living. It’s funny, back when I was a breather there was a sign at my gym that used to say, “Take care of your body, it's the only one you get.” True enough then, but a bag of shite now. My body’s long gone, but that doesn’t mean I can’t borrow a rental from time to time.