A Three-Book Collection

by M. V. Stott

  He was naked and covered in dried blood. Great washes of it painted his entire body. It caked his hair, it soaked the covers and the mattress. It led across the wooden floorboards towards the bed in big red footprints.

  Ben leapt out of bed and turned again and again in sharp circles, examining his body for any sign of where the blood might have come from. He couldn’t find anything, not even a paper cut. He ran to the wall switch and turned the light on, darting towards the full-length mirror on the wardrobe, trying to find a wound, a gash, that he hadn’t been able to see.

  Nothing. The blood in his bed, the blood on his body, the blood in his mouth. It wasn’t his blood.

  Ben staggered backwards and flopped down on the edge of the mattress as his calves hit the bed base. He realised he couldn’t remember getting home. Just like the night before, when he’d gone to the pub and met Magda. He remembered how awful and long the working day had felt. How sick and sore and out of sorts he’d been, wishing he’d called in sick. He had a vague memory of Steve, talking to him at the end of the day, perched on the end of his desk. And then…

  And then…

  Morning and the taste of blood in his mouth.

  Somebody else’s blood.

  ‘Shit. Oh shit, shit, shit…’

  Could whatever had been put in his drink at the pub the other night have still been in his bloodstream? Could it have affected him again? Drugs can stay in your bloodstream a long time, he knew that.

  But so what? Even if that was true, it didn’t tell him who all the dried blood belonged to and why he was painted in the stuff.

  Psychotic break.

  Sally, his ex, had always said he was moody. That she wouldn’t be surprised if he had a breakdown at some point, just like her dad had. Could that explain things? He had been depressed a lot, ever since the break-up. Maybe this was how it was expressing itself. Finally, too much to take. Blackouts. Blackouts and what? Had he attacked someone?

  ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.’

  The police might be after him. He should check the news, see if there was anything on there about someone being attacked. He looked at all the blood again and wondered if someone lost so much blood, would they survive? How many pints of the stuff was slopped around his bedroom?

  ‘Jesus.’

  He’d killed someone. Had he? He must have done.

  ‘Maybe it’s a cat’s. Maybe I just killed a cat.’ He laughed, a single, high-pitched laugh that shot out, only for him to cover his mouth to stop any further eruptions.

  That could be it though. Maybe. A poor family cat, out for a midnight stroll.

  ‘Just a cat. A cat, a cat, a cat. Please let it be a cat. Holy shit and please, please God, let it just be a cat, or a dog, or a fucking fox, even!’

  ‘Hello again.’

  Ben let out a scream and fell off the bed. There was a woman in the doorway to his bedroom. He recognised the woman. She’d bitten his neck two nights previously. In his imagination. Right?

  ‘Magda?’ he blurted.

  She smiled and nodded.

  Ben was suddenly very aware that he was naked, and pulled the bedcovers over his crotch.

  ‘How did…? Did we meet again last night?’

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Not entirely amazing.’

  ‘The first time is always confusing once you’ve been turned. But you have been made beautiful.’

  She walked towards him, her hips swaying, and Ben found himself once again captured by her piercing blue eyes.

  ‘I dreamed that you bit my neck. Like a vampire.’

  ‘I am not a vampire, Ben,’ she replied, stroking his matted hair.

  ‘No. Of course not. I know. No such thing as vampires.’

  ‘Oh?’ she replied, and leaned down to kiss him on the lips. ‘You taste… delicious.’

  ‘Whose blood is this?’ he asked. ‘It’s not a dog’s, is it?’

  Magda smiled and shook her head.

  Rita looked up at the dull concrete facade of Briers & Travers. It was the building’s security guard who’d discovered the scene. A Mr. Jeff Saunders. Right now he was sat in the open doors of an ambulance parked up in front of the building. He had a foil sheet over his slumped shoulders and a shocked look on his face.

  Formby nudged Rita. ‘See, told you. I heard it sharpish. Another one.’

  ‘Stay here while I take a peek,’ replied Rita, and Formby shuffled off down an alley to keep out of sight.

  Rita walked to Jeff in the ambulance, who was being attended to by a plain clothes officer she knew well, DI Collins; a lump of a man with a moustache that should have been removed with extreme prejudice several decades ago.

  ‘Here you go, pal,’ said Collins, handing Jeff a Styrofoam cup of coffee.

  He accepted it gratefully with shaking hands. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘No bother. What you stumbled on in there, give anyone the flaming heebie-jeebies.’

  Jeff nodded and sipped the coffee, then swore as the scalding, dark liquid burnt his top lip.

  ‘Morning, Collins,’ said Rita. ‘Blocked the bogs back at the station lately?’

  Collins didn’t hear her, of course.

  Jeff’s legs dangled pathetically from the back of the ambulance. ‘I knew something was up, you know? Alan, he always texted me when I was on after him. Especially if he were on nights. I’d wake up and turn me phone on and there’d be five or six messages. Usually a link to a video or two he’d found online, you know? Filling the night hours. But today… nothing. Not a single message.’

  Collins nodded but wasn’t paying attention, instead he was scrolling through pictures on his phone.

  ‘Top work, Collins,’ said Rita. ‘And to think you used to wonder why the Guv overlooked you for promotion. Idiot.’

  ‘I messaged him myself, I did, Jeff continued. ‘On the way in. No reply. I knocked on the doors for him to let me in, but no sign of him. So I let myself in, and he weren’t at the desk. Couldn’t find him anywhere. And then…’

  Jeff stammered to a stop and blew on his coffee.

  ‘And then…?’ said Rita waving her hands at him to carry on. But of course he couldn’t see her hands. Or hear her voice. So that was a bit pointless.

  ‘Oi, Collins, help a woman out,’ she said, and shoved Collins, causing him to fumble his mobile and drop it on the ground.

  ‘Shit it!’ he barked, and bent over to retrieve his phone.

  It was weird, how the ‘normal’ people she interacted with, those that couldn’t see past the hex, didn’t seem to notice her even when she did something as blatant as pushing them. They feel it, because they move, and in this case, drop their phone, but the hex must cause their brain to ignore the cause. She wondered what would happen if she hit Collins in the stomach with her axe; would his mind try to shrug it off even as his intestines unravelled at his feet?

  It seemed as though Jeff was done with talking, so Rita left them to it and passed a second ambulance and a huddle of police cars to make her way into the building. Most of the officers were in the reception area, chatting, letting the forensics mob do their bit, so Rita tagged along behind a woman with blue plastic gloves on and baggies over her shoes.

  The crime scene was on the third floor. All over the third floor.

  ‘Well, shit in my mouth…’ said Rita, slowly taking in the gross tableau before her. Much of the office furniture had been destroyed. The chairs, the computers, the tables. It looked as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to the lot.

  And then there was the blood.

  And the chunks of Alan Crowther’s body.

  It would not have surprised Rita if she found out that he’d gone up there, stuck a stick of dynamite up his rear end, then lit it. Such was the explosive distribution of his body.

  The forensics woman crouched and began taking pictures of Alan Crowther’s decapitated head, his eyes still wide open.

  ‘Jesus…’ said Rita. The wizard in the morgue, this was the same. Well, this was e
ven more… extreme than that, but it was clearly connected. Something savage, something evil, was killing people in Blackpool.

  A second forensics officer took pictures of a section of the wall. Rita made her way over to see several large gouges had been ripped through it. It looked, to Rita, like a claw mark. And there was a footprint on the carpet beneath it. A bloody footprint.

  Rita took out her phone and snapped a picture of the footprint. It looked like an animal’s, but it was huge.

  Minutes later, Rita hustled out of the office and across the road to the alley where Formby was still waiting.

  ‘So what’s to see?’ he asked.

  ‘A lot. Take a look at this.’ Rita showed him the picture of the bloody paw print.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Is he a wizard?’ asked Rita. ‘Was Alan Crowther a wizard?’ That would add to the pattern, if true.

  ‘Hm? Oh, no. Not him.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘Right. Damn.’ Okay, so perhaps whatever was doing this wasn’t just miffed at wizards.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So what?’ replied Formby.

  ‘The picture! The bloody, massive paw print. I’m taking it that it’s bad news, right?’

  ‘Oh aye,’ replied Formby, sucking in some air. ‘Very, very awfully bad.’

  14

  The employees of Briers & Travers each had a little card that they swiped across a small, wall-mounted scanner on their way in and out of work each day. When doing her rounds of the crime scene, Rita had decided to check the records for the previous day, and it turned out two people had scanned in, and failed to scan out. One was the murdered security guard, the other was an employee named Ben Turner. Ben Turner also, it turned out, worked on the third floor. The same floor that the security guard’s insides and outsides were now slopped liberally around.

  Rita had found Ben Turner’s address in the system and decided his house would be her next port of call. She pulled to a stop across the road from his home, a small, terraced house on a nondescript Blackpool street. She killed the ignition, double-checked the house number, then headed over.

  She did not head directly for the front door, instead she made her way down an alley, vaulted the fence, and kicked the back door in. She might be invisible, but booting in a back door would still draw less attention than forcing the front door. Rita was there to snoop, to see if Ben Turner had anything to hide. It didn’t matter if he was home, or if he heard the forcing of the door, as the hex meant he wouldn’t notice her.

  That was the idea anyway.

  As she passed through the kitchen and into the corridor, a flash of something caught her eye as it swung towards her head.

  Rita ducked down, the object crashing against the stair bannister. Rita dived forward and rolled to create some distance between herself and her attacker, then spun, still crouching, to face her assailant. What she found before her was a wide-eyed man, his hair a mess, gripping a cricket bat with white-knuckled fingers.

  Without waiting for him to take a second swing, Rita yelled and rushed the man. He suddenly wasn’t as brave as he had been when her back was turned, and cowered as she charged. Rita grabbed his arm, twisted it up behind his back, and shoved him face-first into the wall. ‘Drop the bat!’ she screamed.

  ‘Dropping the bat!’

  ‘Drop it!’

  ‘Dropping it!’

  The cricket bat clattered to the floor and Rita back-heeled it out of reach.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Ben. Ben Turner. You’re hurting my arm.’

  ‘Count yourself lucky it’s not broken, mate. Yet.’

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘Okay, I’m going to step away from you now and I want you to stay facing the wall.’

  ‘Fine, fine.’

  ‘If I think you’re going to do anything I’m not okay with, I’ll twat you with my magic axe, understood?’

  ‘Sorry, your magic what?’

  ‘I said, understood?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  Rita took a step back and released Ben Turner before taking a further three steps and pulling the axe from her belt.

  ‘See, not turning,’ said Ben. ‘I am not turning.’

  ‘Good, because I don’t like getting blood on my—’ it was at this precise juncture that Rita realised something she’d been missing. Ben Turner could see her. Hear her. Everything her.

  ‘Okay then, what are you?’ she asked.

  ‘I… how do you mean?’ asked Ben, craning his neck to look at her, confused.

  ‘Don’t mess about, I know about all the Uncanny crap now, I’m tits deep in it, okay?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘So you can see me, despite the hex, which means you’re something. Some Uncanny thing. So what is it? Are you magic? A wizard?’

  Ben was a bit quiet then.

  ‘Answer me!’

  ‘Yes! Sorry, I will. Do you mind if I, sort of, turn around? Just a bit?’

  ‘Go for it, but remember, magic axe.’

  ‘Right. Yes.’ Ben Turner—very slowly, arms raised—turned to face Rita.

  ‘So?’ she said. ‘Are you going to go ahead and tell me what you are?’

  ‘I’m… well, I’m an accountant. Mostly.’

  Rita narrowed her eyes and took a step towards him, and was pleased to see Ben shrink back against the wall. He was a pretty big bloke, handsome too, in a very conservative sort of a way.

  ‘A man was murdered at your office.’

  Rita saw the information land. The body language, his change of expression. He was either a damn fine actor, or this was the first he was hearing about it.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Security guard. Alan Crowther.’

  ‘Shit. Oh, shit.’

  He wasn’t acting. When you’d been a detective for as long as Rita had, you got a feel for it. For knowing when someone was play-acting.

  ‘So you don’t know anything about it?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I don’t. Why would I?’

  Rita could see he looked on edge. ‘Why didn’t you clock out of work yesterday?’

  ‘Well…’ Confusion rippled across Ben’s face. ‘I don’t… I don’t actually remember leaving, to be honest. I was sick and…’

  Rita peered closer at Ben, there were dark red stains up his arm. Blood. She pointed the axe at the stains.

  ‘What’s that then? Tomato ketchup?’

  Ben looked at his arm, then at Rita. He shook his head. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked. ‘What’s happening to me?’

  Rita slid the axe back into her belt. ‘Sorry, mate, but it’s not good news.’

  ‘How not good?’

  Well,’ Rita sighed, ‘I think there’s a good to very good chance that you’re a werewolf. That or a wild bear escaped from the circus and went on a rampage around your office.’

  Ben cycled through six or seven silent facial expressions.

  ‘Oh, I hear you, Benny boy.’

  It wouldn’t take long for the police to find their way to Ben Turner’s house and ask questions, so Rita thought it best that she got him out of there, and fast. After he showed her the state of his bedroom though—the blood-stained sheets—she paused just long enough to black-bag anything gory and stuff it into the boot of her car, and to scrub the carpet and flip the mattress. It would only pass a cursory investigation, there wasn’t enough time to linger and do a thorough job.

  ‘A werewolf?’ said Ben for the sixth time as the pair exited his home.

  ‘I know. Mad, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t even like dogs,’ said Ben. ‘More of a budgie person.’

  ‘Funny, you don’t look like a mad old lady.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I did mention the fact that you probably murdered a man, right?’

  Ben flushed red and frowned. ‘I don’t... maybe it wasn’t me. You don’t know. I’m not even sure I believe you, anyway. Werewolves aren’t real. Generally.’


  ‘Neither are magical hexes, but it didn’t stop me triggering one. And don’t forget all the blood in my car boot, none of it yours.’

  Ben frowned, nodded, and slid into the passenger seat.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Bowling,’ replied Rita.

  Ben nodded again. At this point, he thought it best not to ask more. Rita started the car and pulled away.

  ‘So,’ said Rita, ‘the cricket bat. Why did you attack me?’

  ‘I thought… I thought you might be her.’

  ‘And who is “her” when she’s at home?’

  ‘Magda. She’s called Magda.’

  ‘An ex?’

  ‘No. I sort of chatted her up two nights back. Or she chatted me up. Things have been weird ever since then.’

  ‘So you thought you’d cave her skull in?’

  ‘No! Well, maybe just knock her out.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She bit me. Bit my neck. Or I dreamed that she did. I think maybe my drink was spiked, because I don’t have any bite marks, look...’

  Ben leaned over, yanking at the collar of his jumper. Rita scanned his neck, but there were no wounds.

  ‘I was starting to think I’d made her up, but then… I woke up this morning and I couldn’t remember getting back, and there was all that blood and she was just… there.’

  Rita had seen enough movies to put the pieces together. Assuming real life functioned the same way as the movies. Not that this was real life as she knew it, of course. Christ, it made Rita’s head spin trying to rationalise this stuff.

  ‘So she turned you. If you’re a werewolf, she must have been the one that turned you. Bit you, right?’

  ‘I’d quite like to wake up now,’ said Ben. ‘I don’t like this dream at all.’

  Rita laughed. ‘Yeah, you get used to it. Well, not used to it, just not as bewildered. Actually, that’s not true either. So this woman, Magda, what did she say when you saw her again?’

  ‘Just, random stuff. That she’d made me beautiful. That we were bonded now. That our time was coming.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then she left.’

  Okay, things weren’t going too badly. If you ignored the dead wizard and the dead security guard. Here she was, Rita bloody Hobbes, Uncanny newbie, with no assistance from that unhelpful bastard Carlisle, and she’d already nabbed a werewolf and gained a lead on some nutty woman turning people into werewolves. Policing the Uncanny world? Piece of piss.