A Three-Book Collection

by M. V. Stott

  ‘I hear you,’ said the voice again.

  The voice was faint, he could hardly hear it at all, but it was real. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘I am your friend.’

  ‘Why can’t I see you?’

  ‘Because I must hide from something terrible.’

  ‘From who?’

  ‘From the most evil thing imaginable. From God.’

  Years passed, and the voice grew stronger.

  The boy had taken the small axe from the hole he had dug and hidden it in his bag. When his mum had finally stopped crying and decided it was time to go home, the axe had gone with them.

  The axe and the voice.

  He couldn’t always hear it. Sometimes, at first, he’d go weeks without hearing a word. He’d go down to the beach, down to the exact spot where he had dug the hole, and ask the voice to speak to him again. To keep him company. To make him feel less alone. But the voice would say nothing. Then he’d be drifting off to sleep, and there it would be, tickling at his ear.

  ‘I am here.’

  He would sit up in the dark, a smile as big as Christmas, and wrap his arms around himself.

  And as the years passed, the voice grew stronger. Less like a whisper, more like a friend was sat right by his side, speaking to him clearly.

  The voice became more constant, too. No more days or weeks of silence, the voice could always be counted on. If the boy wanted to talk, the voice would reply, and the boy would feel the warmth spread over him.

  But the voice was not just a friend. The voice was a teacher. It told him he was right about God. God was not benevolent. God did not care about the creatures that crawled over this planet. God was petty and cruel, and the idea of a small boy’s father taking his own life in a room where he knew the man’s son would find him, dangling like an abandoned marionette, filled God with glee.

  ‘He laughs at us, at you. He laughs at your father,’ said the voice. And the voice would know, because the voice was that of an Angel. An Angel that had tried to teach God the error of His ways, and had been cast out because of it.

  ‘We are brothers in pain,’ said the Angel, and the boy pulled his covers close to his chin, his face a scowl, mouth a tooth-clenched grimace, and he nodded.

  Yes, the voice, the Angel, was a teacher.

  It did not just tell him about the evil of God’s ways, it opened up a hidden world to the boy. A world of delight. A world of colour. A world of magic.

  It started small—simple card tricks that anyone could do—but soon enough the boy found himself able to do things he could not explain. The Angel told him the secret words, the secret shapes. Showed him the energy that washed all around him, around everyone, that most never saw. Could never understand even if they did. Great multi-coloured washes, like the whole world was sitting at the bottom of an ocean. But instead of salt water, they swam through magic.

  Swam through the Uncanny.

  If you could see the magic—if you could learn to command it using the right words, the right shapes—then anything might be possible.

  It did not always go right. Not at first. There was the time he tried to cheer up his mum, still broken five years after her husband had killed himself. He put on a little top hat he’d made from cardboard and placed a box on the kitchen table. He told his mum he was going to make Nelson, their cat, disappear and then reappear.

  He placed Nelson in the box and put the lid on top. He waved his hands over the box and said the words he’d been taught. Felt the magic in the room begin to move towards him, as though it were metal and he was now the most powerful magnet ever.

  It soaked into him.

  Into his skin, his muscles, his bones.

  He said the right words, over and over, and then he opened the box.

  Nelson was gone.

  His mum had gasped, genuine surprise, genuine wonder. ‘Oh my… how’d you do that, then? You’re a little Houdini!’

  The boy had smiled and laughed and his cheeks had flushed. He’d made her happy. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to make Nelson reappear. He’d tried and he’d tried. He’d forced the magic into himself and said the words for hours and hours, until it felt as though he might sweat blood, but every time he opened the box it was empty.

  His mum had got cross then. Couldn’t understand why he was playing up so badly. Told him to get Nelson back or he’d be grounded, and no supper, and slapped legs. He tried to tell her he didn’t know where things went to when he disappeared them, but she told him to stop playing silly beggars.

  The boy found Nelson the cat a few days later, washed up on Blackpool beach, dead.

  The boy fell to his knees and cried. Cried the tears he’d held back when his dad had died. Great, heaving sobs that shook his entire body. Tears that fell and soaked the very dead Nelson.

  He didn’t blame God.

  Blame was too small a word.

  Too insignificant a word.

  ‘He doesn’t care about you,’ said the voice at his ear. ‘He laughs at you.’

  Yes, blame was too flimsy a word.

  The boy did not blame God.

  The boy hated God.

  Hated Him with a white hot fury that dried up his tears in an instant and threatened to turn his teeth to dust as he clenched his jaw so tight.

  ‘I have a plan,’ said the voice. The Angel of Blackpool.

  ‘Will it hurt Him?’ asked the boy.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Good.’ The boy carried Nelson away from the waves that threatened to reclaim him. Took him over by the groyne, the low barrier built to stop erosion, and began to dig the cat’s final resting place.

  ‘The evil He has done in the name of good,’ said the Angel of Blackpool. ‘The evil to you, to me, to Nelson. To everyone. He must be stopped.’

  The boy nodded as he refilled the hole and hid the cat from his eyes.

  ‘The axe. Sacrifice. We will grow strong. The axe will grow strong. Strong enough to free me. Strong enough to crack open the doors of Heaven itself.

  ‘And what then?’

  ‘And then we will kill God.’

  The boy stood and smiled for the first time since he’d seen his Dad’s purple face.

  13

  Rita ran out of the police station’s reception and into the street beyond, hoping the cool outside air would whip some sense into her.

  It didn’t.

  ‘This is mad. This is mad, this is,’ she said, bending slightly, hands on her thighs, taking great gulps.

  ‘Oh, this isn’t even close to mad, I assure you,’ replied Carlisle, gliding into the street. ‘Why, I once visited a town where the laws of physics no longer applied. A great magician had gone mad with heartbreak and sought to take vengeance upon anything. Upon everything. Up was down. Cold was hot. Rocks had feelings that were easily hurt. All because a very plain woman refused his hand in marriage. Pathetic, really. Still, a knife to the neck put an end to that foolishness.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Rita standing, ‘can you just stop saying words, ‘cause none of the mental things you’re saying are helping me feel any better. Like, at all.’

  Carlisle smiled.

  ‘Would you like to know what has happened to you, Detective?’

  ‘That’d be nice.’

  ‘I’m rather afraid, my flame-haired justice seeker, that you have been hexed.’

  Rita frowned and nodded. ‘Right. Hexed. As in, you know, magic and that.’

  ‘As you say, magic. And that.’

  Rita began to laugh. ‘You’re off your rocker, mate.’

  ‘I do hope so, the entirely sane are entirely boring.’

  ‘You’re serious? A hex? A hex-hex. As in a hex, a magical hex?’

  ‘Please stop saying hex, the word is losing all meaning.’

  ‘But that’s… that’s stories, and stuff. There’s no such bloody thing as magic! There’s chip shops, and there’s dogs, and there’s disappointing men. Actual real things that you can see and touch
.’

  ‘Then how do you explain all of this? Excuse me,’ said Carlisle, stopping a woman who was passing by. ‘What do you make of my young lady friend’s haircut?’

  The woman looked to where Carlisle pointed, his finger inches from Rita’s head.

  ‘She believes it flatters her face shape, whereas I say it drowns her delicate features. What say you, madam?’

  The woman began to edge away. ‘What are you talking about, you nutter, there’s no one there.’ The woman hurried away as Rita rather self-consciously fussed at her hair.

  ‘Okay. Point made,’ she said.

  ‘You found the stone corridor in the arcade. Found the chamber.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You should not have been able to do that. Not someone so… ordinary.’

  ‘Well, aren’t you the charmer?’

  ‘Then again, you shouldn’t have been able to tell I was lying when I presented you with a glamoured I.D. And yet you did. Curiouser and curiouser do you become, Detective Hobbes.’

  Carlisle began to slowly circle Rita, sniffing at her every now and again.

  ‘Um. Rude,’ said Rita.

  ‘You do the impossible, and then you double-down and don’t die when you’re supposed to.’

  ‘Well, sorry about that, I’m always doing what I’m told I shouldn’t.’

  ‘The hex was a booby-trap, to prevent the unwanted stumbling into the magician’s place of sacrifice. It would have reduced much higher beings than you to dust if they so much as put a foot upon it.’

  ‘Well it didn’t. It did whatever this is instead. People can’t see me, or hear me. I can touch them but it’s like they don’t even register it. I’m some sort of like a ghost, but not.’

  ‘It is as though you… short-circuited the hex in some way. Which for someone as insignificant as you are is, of course, impossible. And yet…’

  ‘And yet what?’

  ‘Well, I am not currently conversing with a small pile of ash.’

  ‘Fair point.’

  Carlisle paused in his slow circling and clapped his hands together. ‘Detective, I believe I must now lick your face.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘For purely scientific purposes, you understand.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s a hard pass, but thanks.’

  ‘It’s the only way for me to ascertain just what the hex has done to you, and if it is possible to reverse it.’

  Rita shuffled, then grunted. ‘Look, fine, but if I feel like you’re enjoying it for even a second, you’re getting a knee to your soft bits, got it?’

  ‘Consider it got.’

  Rita shuddered as Carlisle gripped her face between his strong, icy hands, then bowed and licked her cheek.

  ‘Well?’ she asked as he straightened up and let go of her head. Carlisle rolled his tongue around his mouth with a look of disgust.

  ‘Firstly, whatever face cream you are using in a vain and pointless attempt to halt the ageing process tastes horrendous.’

  ‘It’s forty quid a tube. What else?’

  ‘The hex fought. It could not do what it was created for, but a good hex does not give in. The magic wiggled and strained and it did the best it could for its master, to prevent you from hiding. From looking for help.’

  ‘That’s why no one can see me? Or hear me?’

  ‘Anyone ordinary, at least.’

  ‘To stop me getting in his way by getting help?’

  ‘And that is not all.’

  ‘Great, what else?’

  ‘Something beyond awful.’

  ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘I would most likely walk into the sea and drown myself rather than suffer this second thing.’

  ‘What? What is it? I’m dying, aren’t I? Is that it? Am I dying?’

  ‘Worse. I’m afraid… you are confined to Blackpool. You can never leave this stain upon the British Isles. I am so sorry.’

  Rita had to try very hard not to make good on her earlier threat to connect her knee with Carlisle’s genitals.

  Being the sort of person who liked to see evidence before believing something wholeheartedly, Rita got in her car and went looking for proof of Carlisle’s claim. Carlisle folded into the passenger seat, his head pressed against the car roof. Rita fired up the engine and drove to the outskirts of Blackpool.

  ‘Okay. Okay,’ she said.

  ‘You know,’ said Carlisle, ‘your vehicle could really do with a clean. I believe these seats have stains upon their stains.’

  Rita ignored him. ‘Let’s say I believe that magic is real and a magician is murdering women in Blackpool.’

  Carlisle opened the car’s glove box and grimaced at the landslide of crap that spilled out. ‘Good Lord, woman.’

  Rita went on. ‘Whoever was doing it—the magician in the goat mask and the fancy robes—he’s dead.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, I think so. He chucked some magicky rubbish at me, but I twatted it back at him and he disappeared. So… he’s dead, right?’

  ‘No. I can… feel his presence still. It’s like a sour taste at the back of my throat. He lives. He will return. His work is not yet done.’

  ‘Right, great, fantastic. Aha,’ said Rita, pointing at the sign they were about to pass that read YOU ARE NOW LEAVING BLACKPOOL.

  ‘Brace yourself,’ said Carlisle.

  ‘For wh—’

  Rita’s response was cut short as the car slammed to a halt as though she had driven at speed into a brick wall. She was pretty sure she heard Carlisle giggling as she snapped forward and her forehead connected with the steering wheel.

  ‘You’re okay,’ said Carlisle as Rita looked to him woozily.

  ‘Bastard… airbag didn’t work.’

  ‘Again, supreme detective work, Miss Hobbes.’

  Rita stepped out of the car, expecting to see the front end crumpled. Instead, her car looked fine.

  ‘That’s… what…?’

  Carlisle joined her, smiling. ‘You did not crash into anything, the car was just prevented from moving any further.’

  Rita raised her arms and began to edge forward, as though moving through an unfamiliar room in the dark. As she reached the point the front of the car had stopped, she found she was unable to move any further. She could not feel a barrier, it was just suddenly impossible to go forward.

  ‘Okay. Trapped in Blackpool. Crap.’

  ‘Crap indeed. I’ve visited some piles of unmitigated refuse in my many years, but Blackpool is a whole new level of horrid.’

  All Rita had thought about for years was making the big move to London. Running from the town she’d spent her youth, shuffled from orphanage to foster care and back again. A pile of paperwork, not a person. She’d ached to finally leave the place behind and start fresh, but she’d left it too late and now she was trapped. Literally.

  Rita screamed the word ‘fuck’ very loudly until she ran out of breath and slumped down on to the side of the road.

  ‘Eloquence and beauty,’ said Carlisle, pulling an apple from his pocket and taking a bite. ‘What a catch you are.’

  ‘Okay, you seem to know a fair bit about me, so who the shit are you when you’re at home?’

  Carlisle smiled and swallowed, then tossed the half-eaten apple into the air, spun once, pulled open a pocket on his long, dark purple coat, and watched as the apple landed within.

  ‘Allow me to make a proper introduction: my name is Carlisle, thief, liar, charlatan, murderer, and once and future King of Great Britain.’

  Carlisle bowed deeply, then rose again, a grin no one would ever trust stretched across his angular, pale face.

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Bull-true.’

  ‘King?’

  ‘Once and future.’

  ‘Then why aren’t you in any of the history books and that?’

  ‘There is history, and then there is history. We Uncanny sorts do our best to keep off the radar of you… how to put this kindly… you human garbage.’


  ‘I feel like there was a kinder way of saying that.’

  Carlisle chuckled.

  ‘So why are you here? To stop the murders?’

  ‘Oh no, what business is another man’s murders to me?’

  ‘Then what’s with the interest in my case?’

  ‘I have come to reclaim my property. An item that was stolen from me a long, long time ago.’

  ‘What property?’

  Carlisle smiled. ‘An axe.’

  Rita stood, her hand moving instinctively to the small hand axe that was tucked away in her belt, under her coat.

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Carlisle, slowly approaching her.

  ‘It’s evidence.’

  ‘It is mine.’

  ‘It’s been used to murder innocent women,’ said Rita, backing up, but finding she could move no further as she hit the Blackpool boundary.

  ‘Murder innocent women? Are any of us truly innocent, Detective?’

  ‘I don’t care what mad shit is going on, I’m still a detective working a case, and this is the murder weapon.’

  Carlisle stopped and nodded.

  ‘Why d’you want it, anyway? I can point you to three different hardware shops where you can buy a brand new one. This one isn’t even sharp.’

  ‘It is mine. I will have it.’

  ‘Why? Why’s it so important to you?’

  Carlisle paused, then looked Rita in the eyes. ‘I will use it to reclaim my right. My throne. My crown.’

  ‘Okay. How?’

  ‘The axe is of Heaven. It provides certain… gifts.’

  ‘Heaven?’

  Carlisle nodded.

  ‘Okay. Magic, magicians, Heaven. Fine. What kind of gifts?’

  ‘The gift is unique to each person who wields it.’

  Rita began to edge away from the impassable boundary and circle around Carlisle. ‘I’m not going to give it to you. I told you. It’s evidence.’

  ‘Well, that is unfortunate.’

  ‘Are you going to try and take it from me, because I will do you a lot of damage, scarecrow, believe me.’

  ‘Oh, I do believe you,’ he replied, but Rita didn’t think her threat had caused him any concern at all.

  ‘Alas, I cannot just take it from you, which is… irksome.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The axe can only be passed on if the wielder gives their true consent.’