Dark Lakes, Volume One: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (A Dark Lakes Collection Book 1)

by Matthew Stott

  ‘How did you…? I mean, magic, I get that. Stupid question.’

  ‘That was nothing,’ replied Eva, lighting up a fresh ciggie, ‘but it’s still more than your sorry, good for nothing arse is capable of right now.’

  ‘Well excuse me, but my mind is still pretty much a blank about all this magicky, warlocky stuff.’

  ‘Exactly, and there are people out there who are going to need our help. It’s the whole reason I came back here. We’ve been out of business for too long and this whole area has gone to ruin. It’s time you learned a few basics.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I said, curling up on the couch, hugging my knees to my chest.

  Another beer can, this time not quite so empty, bounced off my head.

  ‘Fine!’ I cried.

  I stood, turned off the TV, and followed Eva to the door.

  ‘You know that was my only duvet. I’m going to be freezing tonight.’

  2

  Eva stretched out across the back seat of my battered little car, the Uncanny Wagon, as we left Keswick behind and the scenic Lake District opened up around us.

  ‘Wake me when we get there,’ said Eva, then instantly fell into a deep sleep, a rather enviable skill that I hoped she would teach me one day. I’d always had a bit of trouble with insomnia. Well, “always” meaning the last ten years, since I woke up without a memory, naked, and laying next to lake Derwentwater.

  Recent events and revelations hadn’t made it any easier to drift comfortably off to sleep either. When I closed my eyes, my mind played tricks on me now. Projected phantom voices into the black. Screams. Monster sounds. Chloe calling my name.

  Oh, there was a lot of Chloe rattling around in there.

  Stupid bloody subconscious.

  I was so lost in my thoughts as I steered the Uncanny Wagon toward the Cumbrian Coven, that it took me several seconds to register that I now had two passengers in my car.

  ‘All hail the saviour!’ said the fox, stood on the front passenger seat, Roman helmet on his head, battle-axe gripped tightly in its front paws.

  The car swerved back and forth two or three times as surprise momentarily overtook me.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said in a low hiss, looking back over my shoulder to find Eva somehow still sound asleep. I really, really needed to know her secret.

  ‘You haven’t yet returned,’ replied the fox. ‘To the Dark Lakes, I mean. Been days, it has.’

  Ah, the Dark Lakes. The strange, blood-soaked counterpart to the land I was currently driving through. A place a woman with the fiercest of red hair claimed I had a throne to accept, an army to lead, a title to take up.

  Magic Eater.

  I was pretty sure that whole business had something to do with why the other witches were dead, and why I couldn’t remember a bloody thing.

  ‘What if she wakes up and sees you?’ I said, gesturing for the fox to sit down, to hide, to not be there at all.

  ‘Make no difference. Awake. Asleep. Eyes open. Eyes closed. She won’t see ears nor tail of me. Not me.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because I don’t wants her to, now do I? No one sees me but who I wants. It’s only manners.’

  Eva had made it very clear, in no uncertain (and violent) terms that if I saw this strange walking, talking fox again, that I was to let her know. But then… Eva seemed perfectly comfortable keeping secrets from me. What harm could it do? Until they both told me all the things I needed to know, anyway.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked the fox.

  ‘Just a quick hello,’ he replied, waving his axe.

  ‘Yes. Hello. Now if you wouldn’t mind sodding off, I’m not in the mood for you or your red-haired master’s crap right now, okay?’

  ‘I lost my better half too, you know.’

  I blinked, then looked to the fox, confused.

  ‘Oh yes. You lost you a lady, I lost mine. Two of us were the fiercest team you ever did set eyes upon. She must’ve slain a thousand with her axe, an’ me at her side, doing likewise.’

  ‘What happened?’

  The fox shrugged. ‘Death has everyone’s number. Hers was called and now here I am, alone and ready to go meet her.’

  ‘The Red Woman, she won’t let you die.’

  ‘As is her right. Can’t complain. Mustn’t grumble. I serve my time, and then my time comes, sure enough.’

  ‘What did you do, fox?’

  ‘What’s that?’ came Eva’s sleep-bleary voice from behind, causing me to once again take the car on a sudden, s-shaped path. ‘Who you jabbering at?’

  I looked back to the passenger seat, but the fox was gone.

  ‘No one. Nope. Just me, having a one-sided chat. Keeping myself company, ha!’

  ‘Idiot,’ she said, before settling back down to sleep.

  ‘Right. Yes. Sorry.’

  I drove on, to the coven.

  The Cumbrian Coven—the place I apparently used to call home—is an old, stone building situated down something called a blind alley. Blind alleys are secret streets, hidden from the sight of most people. The coven basically sits in the middle of nowhere, so there are no buildings either side of this “alley”. Instead, it was secreted at the end of a sort of wrinkle in reality. An impossible fissure down which a building lurked, like a bug behind a skirting board.

  Which is a bit weird, yes.

  But then almost everything about my life was weird now. I refer you to my recent conversation with a chatty fox.

  I parked up, shook Eva for close to ten minutes until she woke up and almost throttled me to death, then followed her as she weaved her way drowsily into the coven.

  ‘Okay, right, now the lessons can begin,’ said Eva, as we stood in the coven’s shambolic library, sat just off the main room. There were large, wooden book cases, and giant, ancient looking grimoires scattered all over the place. It looked as though someone had thrown a fit and trashed the place, but then it always looked like that.

  ‘One question,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why are you holding that large stick?’

  To answer my question, Eva struck me across the legs with it, and I screamed high and sharp as I hopped around the room.

  ‘Any more questions?’ she asked.

  ‘No, no, I’m good.’

  ‘Then let’s get started.’

  During the past week I had proven myself able to perform some aspects of magic, though always by chance. Which is to say I had no idea how I’d accessed that part of me, and no clue as to how I might recreate the effect once I had done it.

  ‘We’ll start with something so simple a brain-dead idiot could do it,’ said Eva. ‘So, just do your best, love.’

  ‘Great pep talk.’

  I yelped as the stick connected with my legs again. ‘Ever hear the phrase, “You catch more flies with honey”?’

  ‘Ever hear the phrase, “I’m going to twat you with this stick if you don’t shut your gob”?’

  I shut my gob.

  ‘Right,’ continued Eva. ‘Hold out your hand, palm up.’

  I did so with some trepidation, expecting the sting of the stick across my mitt at any moment.

  ‘We’re going to try fire first. Piece of piss, fire, look...’

  Eva held out her hand and a flame blazed into life, hovering in a perfect sphere about an inch above her palm.

  ‘Okay, so, how do I do that then?’ I asked. ‘I mean, I’ve sort of done it before, but I’ve no idea how, and when I try to think “hot thoughts”, nothing happens.’

  ‘Hot thoughts,’ repeated Eva.

  I nodded.

  ‘Jesus Christ…’

  I thought it best to move on, for fear of another stick incident. ‘So, are there magic words, like in Harry Potter? Perhaps in Latin, or ancient Greek, or ancient, I don’t know, Welsh?’

  The ball of fire flew past my head, singeing the left side of my hair. My perfect hair.

  ‘I think I’d just prefer the stick
from now on,’ I said.

  Eva obliged.

  I yelped.

  3

  I arrived at Carlisle Hospital some hours later, legs throbbing from multiple blunt force traumas, and still no closer to becoming a magic whizz.

  I’d strained and strained until it felt as though I was going to pop a vein in my temple, but try as I might, fire refused to appear from my hand. I’d tried to be cheery about the whole affair. It was only my first lesson, after all. Things were bound to improve, I said. Practice would make perfect. Eva had been less sanguine about it, grunting as she’d walked out, and launching her stick in my direction as she did so.

  So, I was a witch without magic.

  Or at least without magic that I could properly access.

  It was as though whatever had happened ten years ago—whatever it was that wiped my memory—had shoved all of my special talents into a room in my mind and locked the door. There was just no getting to it, at least until I found the key.

  As the doors to the hospital’s reception area slid closed behind me, Big Marge— manning the desk as usual—looked up from her magazine and waved me over.

  ‘Hi, Big Marge. Have you done something different with your hair, because you are looking particularly striking today.’

  ‘Washed it,’ she replied. ’Police are here again.’

  Ah, yes. It turns out that when someone vanishes into thin air, as Chloe Palmer had, the police take a bit of an interest.

  ‘Oh? Have they, um… heard from her?’

  ‘No. Word on the ward is, she’s been kidnapped. Or moved to Birmingham.’

  ‘I don’t know which is worse,’ I joshed.

  Marge grunted. ‘Hasn’t been in contact with you, has she?’

  ‘Nope.’

  But part of me really, really wished that she had. That somehow it was possible for her not to be dead. Just for me. Just for a little while. There was magic in this world, I knew that for a fact. Was it too much to ask that Chloe come back to life? Okay, sure, she’d gone a bit loopy at the end there, but we all have our off days, don’t we?

  ‘Have the police said anything?’ I asked.

  ‘Just the usual. Say they have a number of leads they’re looking into, all the usual crap. Say they’re sure they’ll find her.’

  They’re never going to find her, I thought. There’s nothing to find.

  Big Marge crossed herself, then slapped her meaty hands together in prayer.

  ‘I hope they find something. Chloe used to bring me a doughnut every Tuesday. I liked her.’

  I didn’t feel much like continuing the small talk, so I made my way sullenly to my locker and slipped into my overalls, hoping that a few hours of manual toil would distract me from my woes.

  ‘Joseph Lake.’

  Detective Maya Myers was stood behind me. Now, Maya not only knew who I really was, but she knew the truth about what had happened to Chloe. She’d been there when it had happened. She was still a detective though, which meant having to go through the motions of an investigation into Chloe’s disappearance.

  ‘Hello, Detective. Detectives.’

  Maya’s new partner was stood next to her. Tall, broad, head like a tombstone, hair-cut severe, pleasantries absent. Detective Martins. Maya had been teamed up with him since the sad death of Detective Sam Samm, her previous partner, who’d been murdered by the soul vampires Chloe had been in charge of.

  Seeing Maya, and the lack of Detective Samm—nice, not especially smart, Detective Sam Samm—reminded me that Chloe no longer being around was, on the whole, probably not such a bad thing. No matter how much it knotted my stomach, people had died. Good people. Because of her.

  ‘Has Dr Chloe Palmer been in contact with you?’ asked Detective Martins; or rather, grunted Detective Martins. Unlike the lovely Sam Samm, Detective Martins was, and I’m thinking of the best way to put this, a complete and utter bastard.

  ‘No. Nope. At least not since yesterday.’

  Detective Martins stepped forward. ‘What do you mean? Did she contact you yesterday?’

  I backed up until my shoulders bashed against the metal of my locker, Detective Martins’ sour breath savaging my nostrils.

  ‘No! No, no! Just, since you asked me yesterday. You asked me the same thing then and she still hasn’t been in contact. Believe me, detectives, the moment Chloe Palmer contacts me, you two will be the first to know. Oh yes.’

  I looked to Maya, who widened her eyes momentarily at me in a, Get your shit together, for fuck’s sake, sort of a way.

  ‘Make sure you do, Mr Lake’ said Maya.

  ‘And you’re sure she will contact you?’ asked Martins.

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘Oh, so you think she’s dead?’

  I knew what he was doing. He was trying to bombard me with questions, to throw me off centre, make me inadvertently say something I might be hiding.

  Luckily, Maya also knew what he was up to.

  ‘Just be sure we’re the first people you tell if you hear anything,’ said Maya. ‘Do we understand each other, Mr Lake?’

  I nodded vigorously in the affirmative.

  ‘You better,’ said Detective Martins, ‘because if I find out that you’re keeping anything from me, I’ll make balloon animals out of your intestines.’ He prodded me hard enough in the gut to leave a bruise by way of punctuation.

  ‘Consider it fully got.’

  He sniffed dismissively, then turned and walked away. Maya gave me a quick smile before she made her exit too.

  At a time like this, it was good to know I had an inside woman on the case. And someone, like Maya Myers, who had first-hand experience of the Uncanny side of the country.

  I grabbed my mop and set off for the first job of my shift, cleaning up some vomit from the first floor bathrooms. It was a job I looked forward to more than my next encounter with Detective Martins.

  I suppose you could say that the three of us were something of a team now; that is, me, Eva Familiar, and Detective Maya Myers.

  Maya was a London detective, transferred up to the sticks of Cumbria after seeing another partner of hers murdered horribly by... well, something. Something not normal and altogether monstrous. Now, since stumbling into the strange case of Chloe Palmer and the army of soul vampires, she’d made it clear that she expected to be part of any future paranormal investigations, which was fine by me. I liked her, and I hoped she might act as something of a buffer between me and my violently-inclined familiar.

  Plus, like me, she was new to all of this Uncanny stuff. Okay, I wasn’t exactly “new”, but I may as well have been, thanks to my secretive swine of a brain.

  ‘I know, you know,’ came a voice, distracting me from my musing.

  A thin, grating voice. The voice of one Dr Neil.

  ‘Good to see you as always, Dr Neil.’

  Dr Neil didn’t like me. There didn’t seem to be any one incident behind the dislike, I think it was just my personality, which I have it on good authority can be annoying.

  ‘It’s Dr Smith! Call me Dr Smith, you lowbrow shit-mopper!’

  ‘You know, name-calling isn’t very nice, Dr Neil.’

  He glared at me, pacing back and forth across the bathroom like a pasty tiger, wondering whether or not to pounce on the majestic antelope stood proudly before it.

  ‘Where is she, shit-mopper? Where’s Chloe?’

  ‘As I’ve already said, I don’t know. I wish I did.’

  I felt guilty lying about that to most people, but with this particular specimen, oh, it felt good.

  ‘Everyone knows you mooned after her,’ said Dr Neil. ‘Following her around like a little puppy. She was a doctor, she was one of us, the last thing she would have done was touch a little scrote like you.’

  Every part of me wanted to say, “Hey, I’ll have you know she fancied me and we mushed our chew-holes together just a few days ago, before I discovered the whole murder thing, but still! Mouth mushing!”

  I did not say that
.

  Admitting to Dr Neil, or any police other than Maya, that myself and Chloe had recently become more than just friends, would very likely put me under a very sharp microscope. Woman goes missing? Keep an eye on the boyfriend and see how he reacts.

  Well, almost boyfriend.

  More or less boyfriend.

  I already mentioned the mouth mushing, yes?

  ‘Listen, Dr Neil, I’ve no idea where Chloe is, or what happened to her. If I did I would tell you. We were friends. Good friends.’

  ‘I’ll never know what she saw in you.’

  Hm. Did Dr Neil have a crush on Chloe? I’d never really considered that before. I liked to spend as little time as possible thinking about Dr Neil, generally speaking, but he seemed genuinely upset. Angry even. Had he been nurturing a little unrequited love for Chloe at the same time as me? That would explain the obvious animosity he had for yours truly.

  ‘I’m sure the police will find her,’ I told him. ‘Safe and sound, you’ll see.’

  Doctor Neil grunted, then turned on his heel and stormed out of the bathroom. That must be it. A secret love that had festered inside of him for years. Now, a more unpleasant person might use that revelation to try and shift attention onto that other person. To drop a little anonymous tip that perhaps years of jealousy had finally gotten too much for old, frustrated Dr Neil, until finally he’d snapped and done something rash.

  Tempting.

  But no.

  No matter the pressure I was under, that wasn’t me. Even if Dr Neil was an epic wanker.

  It was about three seconds after this thought that I looked up at the bathroom mirror to see Chloe reflected back at me.

  Yes, the same Chloe who I had killed just a few days previously.

  Which, all things considered, was a bit of a bloody shock.

  4

  Of course, there’s no way that had actually been Chloe in the bathroom mirror.

  No way.

  The explanation was simple: I hadn’t been sleeping, I felt a huge amount of guilt over Chloe’s death, and, well, I just plain missed the girl I’d known. Loved even. And so hello momentary delusion.