A Three-Book Collection

by M. V. Stott

  ‘Okay, that sounds bad. How bad is it?’

  ‘Oh, it could hardly get much worse.’

  ‘Right. Good. And what do we do?’

  ‘If you would stop interrupting me, you would see that I’m doing it.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  Carlisle sighed, then opened one eye. ‘I am concentrating. All being well, I can persuade this place to create an exit point, and we can escape.’

  ‘And if you can’t?’

  ‘Then we die horrendously, possibly several times over.’

  ‘Awesome.’

  Rita peered around the side of the tent again as Carlisle closed his eye. The many Mr. Spikes and Mr. Cottons were almost upon them.

  ‘Not to rush you, but you have about eight seconds.’

  ‘Then run,’ Carlisle insisted. ‘It is you they are after. Hopefully they will chase you and ignore me entirely.’

  ‘Hopefully?’

  ‘Run!’

  ‘Fuck. Fuck, fuckity, fuck!’

  And with that string of expletives, Rita burst from behind the tent and ran, only for the hundreds of rabbit and hedgehog mask-wearing people to charge after her, screaming.

  ‘Shit! Shit, shit, shit!’

  They were everywhere, and more were arriving all the time, arms bursting from the dirt like zombies crawling from the grave.

  ‘Keep going, keep going,’ said Rita, as the world around her leaned heavier and heavier into a terrifying horror movie. It felt like the whole Night Fair was pressing in on her; like the place itself was now alive, like she could feel the dirt throbbing with its heartbeat, and it was hungry to swallow her.

  As Rita zagged a corner she found herself looking into the shiny glass eyes of a rabbit mask, and in her haste to stop, stumbled and fell to the dirt.

  ‘Detective Rita Hobbes,’ said Mr. Cotton, as Mr. Spike, in his hedgehog mask, appeared at his side, ‘would you like to see beneath my brother’s mask?’

  ‘No thanks,’ Rita replied, scrabbling backwards, yanking the hand axe from her belt and shaking it at the pair.

  ‘Naughty, naughty, that does not belong to you,’ said Mr. Cotton, reaching a white-gloved hand towards the axe.

  ‘Then come get some, fuck face,’ screamed Rita, swiping at his grasping fingers, staggering to her feet, and bolting once again.

  ‘Come back, don’t run. My brother Mr. Spike wishes to play.’

  Every way Rita looked was blocked. There was only straight ahead, a rickety shack that proclaimed itself to be a WORLD OF MIRRORS.

  ‘Oh crap,’ she said, fingers white-knuckling the axe. ‘Any moment now would be great, Carlisle!’

  Rita ran, brushed aside the strings of hanging beads that hung over the House of Mirrors’ entrance, and rushed inside. Both hands gripping the axe, she backed into the place, ready to swing the blade at the first Mr. Cotton or Mr. Spike to enter, as all around mirrors of every shape and size, some whole, some horribly cracked, reflected her image back at herself.

  ‘Well?’ she said. ‘What are you waiting for? Come and get some, you masked dicks!’

  Rita really, really hoped she sounded braver than she felt.

  No one answered her challenge. Was it over? Had Carlisle done, well, whatever it was he was doing?

  Rita soon got her answer as one of her reflections turned to face her. The reflection now wore a rabbit mask.

  Rita reflexively lashed out with the axe, smashing the mirror, causing hundreds of shards to shower the ground.

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘Mirror, mirror,’ came Mr. Cotton’s voice. ‘When you were six, you used to dream about a thing that lived in the walls of the room in which you slept, Rita. Do you remember?’

  Rita did remember. Remembered tucking the blanket tightly around herself so no flesh was exposed as she shook in the dark and something scritch-scratched in the walls of her orphanage room.

  ‘You do recall, and now your skin crawls. That is me, that is us. My brother and I within each shiver, within each goose-fleshed midnight.’

  Another reflection turned, this one wearing the hedgehog mask. Rita swung, smashed, stumbled back.

  ‘Scritch-scratch, and shiver shake, do you recall the nightmares we make?’

  Now it wasn’t just one reflection in one mirror, it was all of them. Every reflected Rita turned to face her, all wearing the hedgehog mask of Mr. Spike.

  ‘Let my brother dear show you what hides beneath,’ said Mr Cotton, and each of the hedgehog mask-wearing Ritas began to slowly reach up to their heads.

  ‘Stop it!’ Rita screeched, swinging wildly at each mirror, breaking as many as she could, but the shards now refused to remain as such, and began to run into each other, creating new mirrors, new reflections, and each was slowly removing a mask.

  Rita ran for the exit, but now the shack seemed impossibly large, expanding and expanding, hiding the way out.

  ‘Just look, Detective Rita Hobbes, look at my brother, he has a special smile for you.’

  Rita dropped to the ground and tried to cover her eyes, but found she couldn’t close them, couldn’t place her hands over them.

  ‘He wants you to see, he wants you to. Perhaps you will see the true face of the scritch-scratch creature within your bedroom walls at last?’

  The hedgehog masks, all of them, hundreds of them, began to slowly inch up, and Rita’s heart bang-bang-banged in her chest. Any moment, any second, she was going to see the face beneath the mask and she knew with a crystal clear certainty that when she did, she would lose her mind forever.

  ‘Stop! Please, stop!’

  A hand gripped her forearm.

  ‘Exit,’ said Carlisle, and the House of Mirrors cut to black.

  15

  Detective Sergeant Dan Waterson was trying to remember the thing he’d forgotten.

  That’s not what should have been at the forefront of his mind. He was sat in the front room of a woman named Allison Mackey, a classmate of the women who had already gone missing, hoping to tease out some information that might help with the case. But there it was. The forgotten whatever-it-was, itching at his brain like a creature trying to burrow its way out.

  ‘Are you all right, love?’ asked Allison, who had been sat in an uncomfortable silence for the last thirty seconds as Waterson starred glassy-eyed at the wall.

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘It’s just, you sort of went properly quiet there for, you know, like just ages. Bit weird.’

  ‘Right, sorry, just,’ he tapped his temple with his pen, ‘police brain, thinking things through. Making connections, you know.’

  ‘Oh, like Columbo.’

  ‘Right. Just like him. I’ve got a nicer coat, though.’

  Allison laughed at that, and the sound of it made Waterson momentarily forget about the thing he’d forgotten.

  ‘So, you can’t think of anything that might connect the three women?’

  Allison frowned and shook her head. ‘No, sorry, nothing’s popping up.’

  ‘No enemies they might have? Someone they might have crossed in some way?’

  ‘Sorry, love, it’s a total blank. I didn’t really know them that well. Only by name and sight, you know?’

  Waterson nodded and handed Allison his card. ‘If anything does occur to you, please don’t hesitate to call me, okay?’

  ‘Will do,’ Allison replied, dropping the card on to the mantelpiece.

  ‘Thanks for your time.’ He stood and headed for the exit.

  ‘Sorry I couldn’t be any help.’

  ‘That’s okay.’ Waterson paused as he reached the door and turned back to Allison, ‘One more thing.’

  ‘Yes, Officer Columbo?’ said Allison, smiling.

  ‘Have you been experiencing any bad dreams recently?’

  ‘Bad dreams?’

  ‘Yeah, nightmares. Any?’

  Allison frowned and shook her head. ‘Nope. It’s all rainbows and unicorns up here.’

  Waterson nodded. ‘Right, thanks for your help, M
iss Mackey.’

  As Waterson drove away, he wondered why he’d asked his final question. What did bad dreams have to do with anything? But then asking himself that brought back the fact he’d forgotten something. As he pondered the forgotten thing once again, he realised he’d parked outside of a house. He looked at the ordinary terraced house, and wondered why he’d driven to that street, to that house, and parked. He’d intended to head back to the station to type up everything he knew about the case so far. But here he was, staring at a house he was pretty sure was somehow familiar to him.

  Did a friend of his live there once, maybe?

  That could be it, though for the life of him he couldn’t seem to match a name or even a face with the place.

  Waterson shook his head, turned up the radio, and drove away.

  Rita was annoyed to see her hands were still trembling as she sat behind the wheel of her car.

  She turned to Carlisle, sat in the passenger seat. ‘What the bloody hell are those two freaks about?’

  ‘I believe I already told you, Detective, they are the literal stuff of nightmares.’

  ‘And they’re working with the magician?’

  Carlisle tapped a long, white finger against his chin and pursed his lips. ‘Possibly. They are certainly on the same side at least. But Mr. Cotton and Mr. Spike are freelancers, the magician’s aims are only their aims as that is the job they have been hired for. They are a selective pair though, they do not work for just anyone. If they are doing the bidding of this magician, he must be higher up the totem pole than I’d suspected.’

  Carlisle looked to Rita, who tried to hide her shaking hands.

  ‘Come,’ he said, ‘let us go and get a drink.’

  ‘Best idea you’ve had so far,’ replied Rita, and started the engine.

  Big Pins was secreted down a blind alley, a side street hidden from the eyes of non-Uncanny folk, but now that Rita was of their stripe, she could see the narrow passage that had not existed to her the previous day.

  ‘So, hidden alleyways. Cool,’ she said.

  ‘Hardly,’ replied Carlisle, and strode into the blind alley towards the blinking neon sign of the tired bowling alley.

  Rita followed cautiously. ‘Okay, so hidden streets, bowling alleys that shouldn’t be there, fairs that exist in the same place as another fair somehow; anything else?’

  ‘Oh, lots and lots. For example, there’s the Dark Lakes, or the City of the Dead underneath the streets of Manchester, ooh, and a rather nice bakery in Newcastle hidden down a nook that only eight people can see.’

  ‘Okay, how much of that is real and how much is you taking the piss?’

  ‘Well, where would the fun be if I told you the answer to that, Detective?’

  Carlisle pushed open the door to Big Pins and stepped within. As Rita followed, she felt as though she had just stepped through a soap bubble.

  ‘Uh, what was that?’

  ‘These sort of places—gathering spots for the Uncanny—are often situated within magic dampening bubbles. It’s to stop the patrons from doing anything too dreadful to each other whilst on the premises.’

  ‘Huh, you know that might be useful, well... anywhere booze is sold, really. We could take the idea on Dragons’ Den, make a mint.’

  ‘Must you prattle continuously?’

  ‘Afraid so, Pasty Pete.’

  Carlisle huffed and headed for the bar, Rita taking in the sights as she followed. As with the Night Fair, Big Pins seemed to be frequented by an eclectic bunch of people. Some looked positively regal, others would pass for homeless. In fact, she was sure she’d seen the ragged-looking man doing a little jig having bowled a strike. Hadn’t she moved him along for begging in front of the cashpoint around the corner from the blind alley?

  ‘So everyone in here is like you?’ asked Rita, as she joined Carlisle at the bar.

  ‘No need to insult me, Detective, there is nobody here quite like myself. But yes, all are of one Uncanny stripe or other. On my way through I spotted a vampire, three low-level magicians, a troll, and three dispossessed witches’ familiars.’

  ‘I’m sorry, did you just say vampire? Shouldn’t we, I don’t know, stab him in the heart with a stake or something?’

  ‘Oh wonderful, a racist as well as a simpleton.’

  The conversation was brought to a premature end by the giant of a barman who appeared behind the counter, eyeing Carlisle with what looked to Rita very much like undisguised hostility.

  ‘Back so soon?’ he asked.

  ‘Couldn’t keep away, Linton, the rare ambience of this place drew me back in like an angler’s lure.’

  Linton snorted and began pouring drinks.

  ‘First the fortune teller and now this guy,’ said Rita. ‘Something tells me you make more enemies than friends.’

  ‘You can always appreciate a man by the number of people who would call him their enemy.’

  Rita accepted her drink from Linton and sipped as she nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, that sounds like bullshit to me, Pasty.’

  ‘Please stop calling me Pasty.’

  ‘Nope. Let’s get a table.’

  Rita headed for the nearest empty table as Carlisle tried to ignore the grin now plastered across Linton’s face.

  ‘Who’s your friend? I like her.’

  ‘She’s a means to an end, nothing more.’ Carlisle slid some cash across the bar and stalked over to Rita, his shoulders bunching as he heard Linton chuckling.

  ‘I’ve got a question,’ said Rita as Carlisle swept the tail of his coat aside and lowered himself on to a stool.

  ‘Oh? You do surprise me.’

  ‘If rabbit and hedgehog man can create these dream-wotsits-’

  ‘Dreamscapes.’

  ‘Right, those wotsits, how do we know we’re not in one right now? Dreamscape inside a dreamscape. You know, Inception shit.’

  ‘Inception?’

  ‘What? Get stuffed, you must have seen Inception!’

  ‘I will not get stuffed.’

  ‘Dreamscape inside a dreamscape, how’d you know we’re not?’

  ‘We’re not.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Is anyone sporting a rancid old animal mask attempting to do anything awful to us?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There you go then,’ said Carlisle.

  They sat in silence for a few seconds as Rita peered around Big Pins, looking to see if any familiar rabbit ears were poking into view.

  ‘Aha! There’s the very fellow,’ said Carlisle, waving at a man who had just entered Big Pins and, by the looks of things, was trying to slip right back out again before Carlisle spotted him.

  The man, if it was a man—Rita was wary to jump to such conclusions now—shuffled over. He wore distressed-looking clothes and fingerless gloves, and his face looked a little, well, moley. If you were on the bus and he got on, you’d have everything crossed that he wouldn’t take the seat next to you.

  ‘Carlisle,’ said Formby, his sharp front teeth yellowed and jutting out.

  ‘You’ve got, like, Spock ears,’ said Rita, peering at Formby’s pointed protuberances.

  ‘You must forgive the woman,’ said Carlisle, ‘her keen detective eyes never sleep when faced with the blindingly obvious.’

  Formby smiled a sharp-toothed smile at Rita and bowed his head a little. ‘Detective Rita Hobbes, I am your servant.’

  ‘Hey, how did you know my name?’

  ‘I am an eaves, it is my business to know, well, everyone’s business.’

  Formby shuffled on to a spare stool and began to drink Carlisle’s pint.

  ‘This is Formby,’ said Carlisle, ‘his sorry ilk sell secrets for a sniff of magic. They have little loyalty and are, as you can see, quite uncommonly hideous to look at. Think of him as that rarest of things, a useful junkie.’

  ‘As far as introductions go, that was about as rude as it gets,’ said Rita.

  ‘No, I refrained from mentioning his rancid odour.
’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘So, did you find your magician?’ asked Formby.

  ‘Not yet, though I did make the acquaintance of a couple of friends of his. You failed to mention the presence of Mr. Cotton and Mr. Spike in your fair town, eaves. A regretful oversight on your part, I’m sure.’

  Formby shrank into himself a little. ‘I don’t like to say their names. If you speak of them too often they appear in your dreams.’

  ‘Superstitious nonsense.’

  ‘It’s true!’

  ‘If you know all the secrets of Blackpool,’ said Rita, ‘how come you don’t know who this magician bastard is?’

  ‘I don’t know everything, I just know a lot, is all. Something must be spoken and shared from person to person for it to pass my ears, and no one who I mix with, pass by, or lurk close to has spoken anything of use.’

  ‘Did I say a “useful junkie”?’ said Carlisle. ‘My mistake. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must make use of the little boys’ room.’ He rose and strode across Big Pins towards the bathrooms.

  ‘Carlisle,’ said Rita, leaning over to Formby, ‘what is he? I mean, he’s not really a person, is he?’

  Formby glanced over his shoulder to make sure Carlisle was gone, ‘No, not a man. No one knows quite what he is, but he’s not to be trusted. Never trust. Never never.’

  ‘Unfortunately for me, I don’t have much choice. Not until this hex bullshit is gone and the murderer’s stopped, anyway. Then he can have his stupid axe back and I can get on with my normal, boring, awesome life.’

  ‘Can I… can I see it?’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘The artefact. The thing he craves. The axe.’

  Rita shrugged. ‘Yeah, suppose so.’

  Formby chittered his teeth together and clapped in excitement, his pointed ears twitching as Rita reached beneath her coat and discovered that she didn’t actually have the axe anymore.

  ‘Bastard... Bastard!’ Rita sprinted to the mens’ toilets, startling a man with three eyes as he relieved himself at the urinal. Carlisle was nowhere to be seen.