The Spirit Box (The Freelancers Book 1)

by Lee Isserow

  The thoughts went round and round, she desperately tried to think of anything else. But every time another notion popped up, it was swiftly clouded by the dark despair of the grim discovery of someone―something―having penetrated her at some point in the night. She wondered if this was what victims of assault felt like, when men, whether they be police officers or judges or whatever, didn't believe their horrific stories.

  She had to remind herself, this situation was the opposite of that. She hadn't had any sexual contact, and the doctor was saying that she had.

  Ana couldn't imagine how that was possible―it was a dream, the thing entering her wasn't real. And yet somehow, the most terrifying thing about that night was that it felt more real than anything she had experienced in a long time. . .

  As if she had been sleepwalking through life, and the repulsive and nauseating debasement she experienced in the dream was her finally waking up. Except the world she woke up in was that of a living nightmare.

  Chapter 14

  An accord

  Losing his magickal money pocket was the worst thing that could have happened to Rafe. Literally every penny he had earned was stored in the damn thing. Mundane banks didn't exactly take kindly to people turning up with obscure and ancient currency from the past, let alone other realms, and they certainly didn't have exchange rates for such things. Every now and then he'd sell a couple of coins on eBay to pay off his apartment and the relevant and boring taxes, but he still relied on gold to cover his day to day operations.

  The investigation into the box, the old woman's death, he could still keep looking into it, but without coins to hand, it was going to be challenging. He went back and forth through his shelves, looking for something old and valuable that he could bear to part with. All the artefacts he had were there for a reason, they were too dangerous to let loose in the world―not dangerous enough for the big boys to give a damn about―but dangerous enough for him to be cautious about letting anyone else get their hands on them.

  He had plenty of objects in his own archive―or more accurately, closet―that might have value to very specifically minded collectors. But that kind of thing would take a while to set up, and he was all too aware that there are only so many people that would be interested in possessed mirrors, haunted paintings, and so on.

  He could take some books down to the market, try not to get killed as he flogged arcane texts or grimoires that these days―given his condition―he hardly had any for. But if Rafe was honest with himself, he could never part with any of the tomes in his library. They might not be of real use to him any longer, but they reminded him of who he used to be. The man, that he hoped with all his heart, he could be again some day.

  Going back and forth between rooms, he found himself picking things up, putting them back down again, round in circles, over and over. He couldn't do it. Couldn't part with anything he owned. If he wanted to keep at the damn investigation, get to the bottom of where the box was and who was sending it out to dispatch with the recipients, he needed to pick up another job to refill the coffers.

  His stomach growled loudly, as if in agreement of the decision, but in disagreement of being left empty for the best part of two days. Rafe raised an eyebrow at the source of the rumblings, sighed long and hard.

  “Fine,” he said, addressing his stomach. “I'll find a quick job, then breakfast, then continue the investigation―you happy?”

  His gut gurgled with approval.

  Rafe might had come to an accord with his empty belly, but that left him with a less than appetising choice ahead of him. There was only one place to guarantee a quick and hopefully easy job. But he wasn't looking forward to whose door he was going to have to knock on to get that gig.

  Chapter 15

  Change on a dime

  As she walked into the Factory, her angry, heavy footsteps warned all others she passed that Ana was not in the mood for conversation, whether it be polite chitchat, or the vapid rumour and gossip that the other women were often keen to discuss. Heading to the door of her room, she was all too aware of Dean's eyes on her, the stink of his cigarette smoke hanging in the air around the kitchenette.

  “You're late,” he grunted.

  “I know, I'm sorry.”

  “Can't be having girls turning up late, got schedules, fappers expect you to be in the room when you say you're gonna be in the room.”

  “I said I'm sorry―” She stopped herself from apologising further, knowing exactly how to shut down his line of questioning then and there. “I was at my gynaecologist.”

  Dean opened his mouth, as if to continue his tirade of admonishing her, then thought better of himself. “Don't let it happen again,” he grumbled.

  She turned back to the door to her room, and let a small smile creep up her cheeks. A little normality restored, with how dumb some men can be, terrified even, at the thought of anything a woman has going on 'south of the border', which is what anything pelvis-side seemed to be called―instantly de-sexualised―as soon as there was anything medical involved. Unless, of course, the man being told of the procedure was into that kind of thing. Fortunately, Dean was not. He was as black and white and boringly vanilla as they came.

  Ana dropped her bag in the corner, draped her coat over it and sat down in front of the camera. She caught her reflection in the mirror behind it, and shuddered, the memory of the dream coming back yet again. She shook it off, another five and a half hours and she'd be able to get home, get a good night's sleep, and leave this whole nightmare behind her.

  Logging into the chat, the feed was already full of her regulars talking to one another, back and forth, asking after her, each wondering if she was okay, given that she ran out on them two days previous. As soon as the camera came to life, they were relieved to see her in the room―although many of them noted that she didn't “look like herself.”

  A glance to the mirror revealed why: Ana wasn't wearing the mask of Clarice, she didn't have any make up on at all. She thought about saying something, or excusing herself to log out and ply her face with product until she looked as they thought she should. But she didn't. She couldn't bring herself to pretend to be someone else, not then and there. If they didn't like her as she was, then they could go to another room, tip some other girl, that would probably do a hell of a lot more for those tips than she was willing to do.

  “Changed my hair,” she said, assuming they were too busy staring at her legs or cleavage in the past to notice it hadn't changed at all. “You like?”

  They all did.

  *

  The day passed as quickly as any other day at the Factory had. Ana was grateful to have mundane conversation with the screennames to take her mind off everything else that was going on. Delving into her memory was handy for distraction, pulling from the myriad facts she knew about the guys in the chat.

  She excused herself from the room for a moment, and slipped out through to the kitchenette to grab a coffee. As the kettle boiled, she sighed, staring down at the instant granules sitting in the mug, She longed for a proper coffee, more so as fatigue from the sleepless night was starting to sink in. The kettle clicked, steam licking from its mouth, catching on the lid and returning some of the escaping moisture to liquid form, dripping back down into its core. For a moment, the briefest of moments, she felt something close to jealousy for water, its ability to change on a dime―or more accurately, change as its temperature rose or fell.

  She scoffed at herself for harbouring such dumb envy, and filled the cup, stirring the granules as they turned the water a muddy brown.

  Returning to the room, sixteen different conversations had continued in her absence, and she scrolled back through them, catching up on what she had missed as she sipped at the coffee.

  The same chitchat, nothing new, certainly no information she needed to retain. Glancing into the camera's lens, she smiled. Nothing that had been said really required a response, and she was curiously short on the filler-repartee she usually relied on
.

  As she lifted the coffee to her lips again, there was movement on the surface. Her eyes darted into the cup, and from the inky murk of the water, a hideous face stared up at her, ghastly and gnarled with deep, hollow eye sockets.

  She gasped. The mug slipped from her fingers, hurtling towards the floor, shattering on the thin fabric that pretended to be carpet, just a few millimetres thick on top of solid concrete. As the shards of the mug dispersed, the coffee lurched out towards her. She backed away and fell from her chair to the floor.

  The beeps of messages coming through seemed to mock her crash landing, despite the words themselves being kind and concerned.

  'Are you OK?'

  'Wat happnd?'

  'u arite bb?'

  Her eyes darted through all the shards of the mug, the coffee hanging on top of the carpet, slowly sinking into it, staining it dark and brown.

  “I'm fine,” she said, picking herself up. “It was. . . hotter than I thought it would be.” A lousy excuse, she knew, but also didn't care. She put the chair back into place, and stuck the pillow back on top of it. She looked at the shards, scattered exactly where her feet would go when she sat down, and huffed, trying to picture whether there was a dust pan and brush somewhere in the kitchenette, almost certain that there was not.

  “Just give me a second, got to tidy up after my clumsiness!” She gave the camera a knowing look, as if this was just a silly occurrence that she was more than used to.

  With a muted grumble, she got down to her knees and grabbed hold of the largest piece, using it to hold the smaller shards as she picked them up one by one. As soon as all the pieces were in the mug, she took it out to the kitchenette, where Dean was sitting again, behind an overflowing ashtray.

  “You break it, you bought it,” he chuckled.

  “Time of the month,” she spat, silencing him instantly.

  She returned to the room, retook her seat, and smiled at the lens. “So, where were we?”

  A flurry of messages began propagating, but she wasn't paying attention, her shoes were sitting in the patch of coffee, and she was all too aware of how wet and squelchy they were beginning to feel.

  Her eyes fell, and right by the computer she saw a shard of the mug that she must have missed. The messages continued to come through on the screen as she leaned down to pick it up, their beeps begging for her attention. She could feel the smooth edge of the porcelain with her fingertips and grabbed hold of it, a short, sharp pain shooting across her middle finger.

  She pulled her hand back, a two-inch long, razor thin cut all the way along her finger, beads of blood staring to form intermittently along it. “Ow,” she said, sucking at the cut, looking up at the camera. “Sorry guys, I'm clumsy as hell today.” she sucked at it again, then looked at her injury.

  The cut was thick with blood, and the edges of the slit looked like they were engorged, throbbing, a warmth radiating out. She brought it closer to her eyes, checking that there weren't any splinters of the mug stuck in there―the last thing she needed was an infection that was going to lose her a digit. . .

  The cut burst open. Inside it was no muscle of her finger, or phalanx bone. It was a dark chasm, the edges covered with a thousand tiny, razor sharp teeth, each contorted and twisted, coloured a sickly yellow. From the darkness, a sharp, crooked tongue lapped out towards her face. She leaned back to get the hell away from it, threw her hand as far away from her face as possible, and toppled all the way back over her chair.

  A loud crack rang out as her head hit the side of the bed. Ana looked down to her hand, woozily. The cut was just a cut. There were no teeth, was no tongue. It was all in her imagination, and she was getting increasingly sick and tired of her imagination. . .

  Unsteadily, she rose to her feet, and left the room without an excuse to wash her bleeding finger in the sink.

  “What you done now?” Dean grunted.

  Ana didn't have an answer for him. Didn't have any answers. All she knew was that she wasn't going to be able to keep working, not while she felt like this, on a knife's edge, one wrong step away from a damn psychotic break.

  Chapter 16

  As long as it's legal

  The one place that Rafe could always count on for a quick job―albeit a job that was generally in a moral grey area―was The Randy Dowager pub.

  The establishment itself was full of upstanding citizens, or at the very least up-sitting citizens. The vast majority of them were in their sixties and seventies, and could barely walk more than the block from their houses to the pub in the morning. More often than not, by closing time they had drunk so much they had to hail a cab to make it back home.

  It was not the old men of the pub that were of interest to Rafe, as he walked through the saloon-style doors, giving polite nods and smiles to drunks that forgot his face almost as soon as they laid eyes on him. His interest was the door by the bar that led through to a small, very private parlour in the back. It was there, in a den cloaked in shadows, with walls plastered in fading and unloved flock wallpaper, that he would find work. He walked over the tiles, formerly white diamonds that were scuffed and cracked, interconnected by black lines intricately constructed to form a sigil that made eavesdropping impossible. A wooden booth had been constructed to take up most of the free space in the room, with heavily worn leather upholstery, a table at the centre at which Gryph Slugtrough held court and conducted business.

  Gryph, as with most magickians, had chosen his own name, and Slugtrough summed up his personality more than it did his physical appearance. He was skeletal, skin tight on the bone, making those that met him for the first time often wonder whether he had any body fat at all. He was always moving, a constant snaking back and forth of his upper body, as if bobbing to some dirge that played only in his head. Even in the dim light of the back room of the pub, his skin and hair was slick and shiny, as if every pore of his body exuded an unfortunate amount of oil―not that he cared, it was those who had to touch him in any capacity that suffered the misfortune.

  Slugtrough had the thinnest lips and largest gums Rafe had ever seen on a person, the smallest teeth buried inside them, a mouth full of tiny squat yellow tombstones each barely a few millimetres tall. A bushy, shiny moustache lived above on his top lip that wriggled with every word he spoke, as if someone had stapled a caterpillar to him a long time ago, and he liked the way it tickled under his short, crooked nose too much to bother removing it.

  Whether his name matching his character was nominative determinism, or whether he named himself after his manner was a matter for debate. Not that anyone Gryph dealt with cared enough to debate such a thing.

  “How you doin', Ralph?” Slugtrough asked, extending a hand.

  “It's Rafe, you know it's Rafe,” he said, shaking the slimy hand whilst trying to hide the reluctance of doing such a thing, all too aware that the greasy texture would come off from the shake and seem to stay there for the best part of a day.

  “Rafe ain't a name, someone still needs to tell that Fiennes boy his name is Ralph.”

  “His is actually spelled Ralph, mine is spelled―” Rafe tried to explain, giving up fairly quickly as he saw a glint in Slugtrough's eye. The little man was screwing with him.

  “Hear you're in a bit of bother?”

  “What d'ya mean 'hear'? Who'd you hear it from?”

  “Grapevine.”

  “I've never been further from the grapevine.”

  “Don't mean it don't talk 'bout you.”

  “Great, I'll try not to feel incredibly paranoid that I'm being discussed.”

  “Wouldn't worry 'bout it.”

  Rafe tried to ignore that the caterpillar moustache above Gryph's lip looked as though it was desperately trying to crawl away. “So, given my situation and all, any chance you can hook me up with a job?”

  “So happens, got something you might be perfect for.”

  “As long as it's legal, sure.”

  “Depends on your definition of legal. . .”<
br />
  “I think my definition of legal is everyone's definition of legal: not against the law.”

  “Oh, well, who's to say what 'the law' is, eh?”

  Rafe sighed, he was not looking forward to the details of the job on offer, but also didn't have much in the way of an alternative.

  “Go on then. . .“

  “Know the Earl of Chichester?”

  “Not personally.”

  “Good. Best he don't know you neither. Bloody aristo' has got himself a trinket―”

  “Define trinket.”

  “Artefact. Been handed down in the family for generations since they got the title and land and all that.”

  “So it's his. Legally speaking. . .“

  “Nah, his great great grand-whatever stole it from a gypo or something.”

  “I think they prefer to be called traveller, or Romani.”

  “Not back then, they were bloody gypos!” Slugtrough laughed. With every guffaw it sounded as though a mound of phlegm was working its way up his gullet, never quite managing to make its way out.

  “So, what is it, enchanted?”

  “Naturally.”

  “To do what?”

  “None of your concern, boy-o.”

  “It is if it's going to hurt someone. . .”

  “Ain't gonna hurt no one.”

  “So what does it do?”

  “It's a. . . lucky charm.”

  Rafe rolled his eyes, trying hard not to scoff. “Seriously? You're hocking charms now?”

  “This is bona fide.”

  “What, did some amorous leprechaun have its way with a rabbit's foot?”

  “No. . . It had its way with a rabbit.”

  Rafe stared at the slimy man with wide, incredulous eyes. “I really can't tell if you're kidding.”