A Three-Book Collection

by M. V. Stott

  ‘Rita,’ said Magda, ‘don’t fight us anymore. We are beautiful. To be so in touch with nature, with your own glorious, animal nature. We can change the world. All will be like me.’

  ‘Okay, you’re going full insane baddie now, so no thanks.’ Rita dodged another volley, the spell scorching her heels.

  ‘Another thought occurs,’ said Waterson.

  ‘Is it as foolproof as the last one?’

  ‘The werewolves, they’re not like her, right? Not as mentally strong?’

  ‘They’re pretty simple, instinctive, yeah. Why?’

  ‘Well, then this horrible thing I’m about to do might work then.’

  ‘What horrible thing?’

  Waterson turned to the flames and sprinted through them.

  ‘Waters, what are you doing?’

  What he was doing was leaping into the body of one of the werewolves. He didn’t have a fantastic grasp on the particulars of possession, not enough to control and subdue Magda, but these were just simple beasts. These he could probably do. The werewolf thrashed and bucked only for a moment, then paused, a look of surprise on its face.

  It then leapt through the dying flames to stand at Rita’s side.

  ‘Waters, you could use a breath mint.’

  ‘Get out of him,’ roared Magda. ‘Get out of him!’

  ‘So what exactly was the end-point of this thought, Waters?’ asked Rita.

  The werewolf Waterson was inside of grunted in reply, then bolted forward, galloping towards Magda. She threw up her hands in defence, magic bursting forward, but the werewolf was big and heavy and hurtling forward at pace. It met Magda, wrapped its arms around her, and over the side of Blackpool Tower they tumbled, through the broken railings, and down, down, down to the ground below.

  Rita darted forward and looked down to find Magda and the werewolf a dot on the ground. She turned, the flames she had created now dead, to see the other werewolves staggering from side to side in a state of confusion. Was Magda dead? Dying? Was the curse lifting?

  She ran, dodging past the werewolves as they stumbled and lashed out wildly, and jumped into the elevator, making sure not to fall straight through the hole in the floor. She hit the button to go down.

  Waterson met her at the bottom.

  ‘Holy shit, was that a big boy move,’ said Rita.

  ‘Yeah, it was a bit heroic, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I mean, you are already dead, so you were basically safe as houses, but still.’

  ‘Okay. Don’t lessen it. I’m very brave, let’s leave it there.’

  Rita walked over to the two bodies stretched out on the ground. A werewolf and a master werewolf. Normal people would have died instantly upon impact, but lycanthropy magic was powerful, it fought to save, to cure, to fix. Already, the werewolves’ legs were moving and Magda groaned, rubbing at her face.

  Rita stood over her, axe raised, as Magda’s eyes flickered open.

  ‘Please,’ said Rita, ‘just stop. Cure these people and just… just go.’

  Magda smiled, but there was no mirth there, only sadness. ‘You cannot understand. None of you can. They murdered my family.’

  ‘So you kill them all?’

  ‘They… they are all… guilty. Will not hide. Not again. Never…’

  Every second that passed, Magda was growing in strength again. At any moment it was going to be too late. Rita looked to the werewolf on the ground; the person made monstrous by Magda. Cursed to turn every full moon, agonised and terrified. Cursed to murder and to feast upon the flesh of the living. She couldn’t let it go on. She’d tasted what they had to go through and she couldn’t allow it to continue and live with herself.

  She had no choice.

  ‘Damn you for making me do this,’ said Rita. ‘Really. Just fuck you.’

  Magda reached up, magic starting to flicker around her hand. Rita raised the axe high. This time, she did not will magic into it. Did not talk to it and command it create the spell she needed. This time the axe was just an axe, and with a cry, she brought the blade down with all the strength she had, and buried it in Magda’s skull.

  Magda’s limbs twitched for a second or two, and then the life left her body.

  Rita pulled the axe free and turned away. Her hands were shaking, her stomach sick.

  ‘Hey,’ said Waterson, putting a phantom arm around her, ‘you didn’t have a choice.’

  Rita knew that. It didn’t make her feel any better. She’d been made a killer.

  Then something that Rita did not expect happened.

  A tree began to sprout from the ground next to Magda’s body.

  Not a young sapling, but a giant oak tree thrust from the earth and stretched up and up, its roots arching from the soil like spiders’ legs. Once it had settled, an opening appeared in the trunk, and a plump old lady in an apron stepped out.

  ‘Is there any point in asking what the hell is going on?’ said Waterson.

  ‘Probably not,’ replied Rita, stepping back, the axe in her hands.

  The old woman did not pay them any attention, she made her way towards Magda, chuckling happily to herself.

  ‘Out you come then,’ she said, and Magda’s soul sat up out of her body.

  ‘Please,’ she said, ‘another chance, put me back. Put me back and let me try again.’

  The old woman laughed good-naturedly as she pulled an empty jam jar out of her apron and unscrewed the lid. ‘Now then, dear, a deal is a deal.’

  Magda screamed and struggled, but it didn’t phase the old woman. She took hold of Magda’s soul and folded it down and down until it fit into the empty jar. She then screwed on the lid, and made her way back into the giant oak tree, which shrank back down and disappeared under the ground.

  ‘Well,’ said Rita.

  ‘Pretty much,’ replied Waterson. ‘Hey, look,’ he said, pointing to the werewolf he’d jumped inside of. Only now it wasn’t a werewolf, now it was a naked man, sitting up, hair wild, wondering just what in the hell was going on.

  ‘Hey, Ben,’ said Rita.

  ‘Hi,’ said Ben. ‘I feel like I missed something. He turned to see Magda’s corpse beside him. ‘Shit.’ Ben scrambled to his feet, hiding his man-bits behind his hands. ‘Is she…? She’s dead, isn’t she?’

  ‘It’s over,’ said Rita. ‘This is Dan Waterson, he’s a ghost and he was inside of you a little earlier.’

  ‘Right. Hello. Sorry, did you say “inside of”, there?’

  As Rita handed Ben her coat, more of the people who Magda had bitten began to emerge, confused and shaky, from Blackpool Tower.

  ‘You do realise that no one else will be able to see that coat,’ said Waterson, ‘meaning your man there is still, basically, stark bollock naked.’

  ‘Nope,’ said Rita.

  ‘Thought not.’

  33

  A week had passed since Magda fell from the top of Blackpool Tower, and Rita was still waiting for Carlisle to show up again.

  Every day she tried getting people to notice her, or to step past the town’s boundary, only to find that the hex still had its grip of her.

  She’d asked Formby to search for any news of what might have happened, of where Carlisle might be, but every time she saw him, he frowned and shook his head. No news.

  Well, no news was good news, isn’t that what they say?

  Yeah, no news was bloody awful news when your friend went to try and kill a monster. Carlisle had the biggest head, the largest seam of aggrandising self-regard, that Rita had ever come across. If he was able to come back, to lord some victory over her, he would.

  All sorts of stories trying to explain the previous week’s events had been thrown up in the news, from someone dosing the local water supply with a mystery hallucinogenic, to a strange case of mass hysteria. No one believed that the moon had actually been full for days longer than it should have been, or that werewolves had stalked the streets of Blackpool, because that was insane, impossible.

  Rita touched a hand
to the axe that hung from her belt. Every night, as she tried to drift off to sleep, she’d pictured the blade splitting Magda’s skull. She felt the shockwave of the impact travelling up her arms. She saw Magda’s limbs twitching their last. She hadn’t had any other choice—Waterson kept telling her as much—and she knew it was true. She’d saved all those people, Ben Turner included, from a living hell.

  She’d done the right thing. Sometimes the only choices available were bad ones, but you still had to make a choice.

  She leaned back on the bench, smelling the salt air, looking out to sea as the sun dipped into the water like a molten coin. Soon the moon would be up. A natural moon. A natural moon in a world that was anything but.

  ‘Hey,’ said a voice behind her. She turned to see Ben Turner. He’d started to grow a beard and was wearing glasses with non-prescription lenses in, a baseball cap clamped on his head.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Thought I’d wear clothes today,’ he said, gesturing at his not-naked body.

  ‘Pity. I’d grown accustomed to looking at that tight little arse.’

  Ben smiled. ‘Waterson said you’d probably be down here.’

  ‘Yup. Just me and my guilty conscience. How are you getting used to living in hiding, then?’

  ‘It’s not great. Though there are some perks.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Like, I don’t suppose you fancy grabbing a drink at all? With me?’

  Rita looked out at the ocean. Somewhere out there an angel was imprisoned.

  ‘Okay, but only if you’re paying,’ she said, then turned her back on the ocean and walked towards the road, Ben falling in step beside her.

  The End.

  1

  Tap-Tap-Tap.

  Liam squeezed his eyes tight, turning everything black and pink. He pulled his covers close.

  Tap-Tap-Tap.

  It was just a tree branch tapping against the window pane.

  That’s all it was.

  That’s all it always was.

  Tap-Tap-Tap.

  The wind whipping against the big tree in the back garden. That one, long, gnarled branch that reached out from the trunk like a witch’s finger, flicking forward and hitting the glass. At least, that’s all it was in the day. In the day, it was just a tree in the wind with a branch that needed to be cut, but at night, when he should be asleep, it was anything but.

  Tap-Tap-Tap.

  Liam was eight years old, and like all eight-year-olds, knew that monsters and ghosts and bogeymen of every stripe were very real and knew where he lived.

  Where he slept.

  Most grown-ups didn’t seem to believe in the things that hid in the inky black, which was really stupid as far as Liam was concerned. If he, a child, knew monsters were real, then an ancient grown-up should know for sure.

  ‘Just go back to your own bed, Liam,’ Mum would say when he appeared at his parents’ bedroom door, wide-eyed and knees trembling.

  ‘You’re too old to be such a scaredy cat,’ Dad would chime. ‘The dark can’t hurt you.’

  Liam knew Dad was wrong about that. For as long as he could remember, Liam had been aware of the things in the dark that others couldn’t see. There was no question in his mind; he’d known for sure that there were strange things lurking in the shadows. One evening, back when he was six, he’d pointed out of the top deck of a bus at a man with horns walking down the street, but his mum had acted like she wasn’t able to see him. Told him to stop playing up or he’d get no chocolate. And Liam had shut up, because he really wanted that chocolate.

  Tap-Tap-Tap.

  Liam believed in all sorts of stuff, but especially ghosts. He’d seen them his whole life, not that he was aware of it at first. He’d be yammering away to someone as a toddler, only for Dad to ask him who he was talking to. Wasn’t it obvious there was a girl in weird-looking old clothes sat cross-legged with him on the carpet, telling him to do bad things? Liam would point at her but Dad would just frown and sigh and chuckle and shake his head.

  Yes, Liam saw things. These days he’d learned to keep most of it to himself for fear of being called a liar, of being punished.

  Tap-Tap-Tap.

  It was no good, he was going to have to get out of bed and check, otherwise he’d never be able to sleep. Yes, it was just a tree branch, but also maybe not, and what then?

  He slowly sat up and pushed his covers aside, toes wriggling as they met the carpet.

  ‘I know you’re just a stupid branch,’ he said, the words sounding hollow in the darkness.

  Liam edged across the room until the heavy, blue curtains were within reach. He took a breath or two, his heart fluttering like a butterfly’s wings, then grabbed hold of the curtain and pulled it open.

  He could see the tree outside, the branch reaching towards the window. The wind wound a ribbon around the branch once again and it Tap-Tap-Tap-ed at the glass.

  ‘See, told you,’ said Liam.

  He let the curtain fall back down. He was thirsty. Liam walked over to his bedside cabinet but the glass perched there was empty of water. He didn’t remember drinking any of it, but he supposed he must have done. He picked up the glass and headed for the door. It was always strange walking through the house at night, when the whole place seemed like it was holding its breath, eyes closed. It felt wrong, like he was a burglar sneaking around, looking for the best bits and bobs to steal.

  Or perhaps he was a murderer. A killer with a knife ready to cut. Liam waggled his eyebrows and bared his teeth.

  Stupid tree, waking him up.

  He walked past his parents’ bedroom; the door was closed but he could hear both of them inside, asleep. Dad’s low snore-drone, Mum’s higher pitched. He wondered how either of them could sleep next to the other when they were making such a racket.

  Liam yawned and scratched at the mass of dark blonde curls that reached almost to his shoulders. Mum had begged him to agree to a haircut, but Liam liked having so much fat, wild hair. It was like he had a lion’s mane.

  He reached the bottom of the stairs and began to tiptoe in an exaggerated manner towards the kitchen, glass in hand. He was a robber, and if he made too much noise the house would open its eyes and see him.

  Liam shivered a little in his Batman pyjamas as his bare feet met the cold tiles of the kitchen floor. He could see the tree dimly through the window, its wide trunk like an elephant’s leg. Sometimes demons lived in trees, Liam had read that somewhere. Or heard it. Or watched it on TV, or something. He wasn’t exactly sure where he’d learned that fact now that he came to think about it, but it was true. Demons could live in trees. If you found the way in you’d see a winding staircase, and up and up you’d go, until you found the demon squatting all evil and damp-skinned at the top, smelling like bad breath and old socks. You could sell your soul for stuff then, if you wanted. Liam wasn’t sure why you’d ever sell your soul. Even if he wanted something really, really, super badly, he would never let no stupid demon have his soul. Not for all the chocolate in the world.

  He carefully turned the cold tap so the water wouldn’t burst out all noisy, and filled his glass.

  There was someone sitting at the kitchen table.

  Liam turned round sharply, almost spilling his water.

  He hadn’t noticed anyone there when he walked in, but then, as he’d been filling his glass with water, he’d just sort of known that someone was sat there, watching.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Liam, voice a whisper, toes clenching.

  At first, the shape sat at the table was too shrouded in dark to make out.

  ‘Don’t you recognise your old dad, son?’ replied the shape.

  Liam could feel the sink pressing against his shoulders.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘That’s right. Do you want to sit on my knee? I’ll tell you a story. A really good story.’

  It did sort of sound like Liam’s Dad, but the words were empty, like they weren’t even real. Like they were pretend. Like he could s
wat them away with the back of his hand and see that no one had said anything at all.

  ‘I heard you snoring in bed,’ replied Liam.

  ‘Oh. I must be sleepwalking then,’ he replied, and then the dark seemed to melt away a little and Liam could see it was his dad after all. ‘See? Here I am. Your loving dad. Your mother and I love you very much, despite everything.’

  Something didn’t seem right. ‘Are you okay?’ asked Liam, wishing the door wasn’t quite so far away.

  ‘Of course,’ replied Dad, ‘everything is fine, fine, fine.’

  The silence crushed down for a long time, and Liam wondered how long it had been since he’d taken a breath. Finally he gasped and gulped and then began to walk towards the door.

  ‘Don’t you want to hear my story?’ asked Dad.

  ‘I’m tired,’ replied Liam, stopping and turning and wishing he’d just kept on going.

  ‘Are you sure? It’s a good story.’

  Liam noticed for the first time that his dad’s eyes seemed to be too close together. It wasn’t his dad at all. He wondered what it was and what it wanted.

  ‘Maybe another night, Dad,’ said Liam. ‘I’ve got school.’

  ‘Oh,’ replied Not Dad. ‘I was going to tell you about all the birds in my head.’ He reached out a hand, upon the palm of which was a wet clod of mud, fat worms wiggling. ‘Don’t you want to feed my birds, Liam?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Liam, wondering how he was even managing to talk with his throat being so tight and his heart now not a butterfly but a pot full of exploding popcorn. ‘Good night.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Not Dad, ‘that’s fine. Everything is fine, fine, fine.’

  Liam walked quickly from the kitchen and headed up the stairs, gripping his glass still, the water inside spilling down his pyjamas and splashing his bare feet. He heard his dad’s snore as he passed his parents’ bedroom.

  He closed his own bedroom door and pushed a chair under the handle so no one could get in.

  2

  It was only midday, but the sky was black as tar.