A Three-Book Collection

by M. V. Stott

  Mum had screamed and Dad had sprinted into the water, sunglasses flying off his head as he ran splashing past Marie, diving and swimming towards the face-down body floating on the surface.

  Marie hadn’t stepped into the sea since her little sister had died. Hadn’t even gone to a beach. And now here she was. Her dead little sister, looking just as she had before she drowned, stood in an alleyway, waving Marie forward.

  Marie didn’t believe in ghosts, but maybe ghosts didn’t care if you believed in them or not.

  ‘Help me, Muzzy,’ said Laura, using Marie’s pet name.

  ‘Laura, you’re dead.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Laura, as though this was the first she’d heard about it. ‘Step in the alleyway, Muzzy, and give me a hug.’

  Marie shivered as the shock began to recede, replaced by fear, by the certainty that she should start running. Unfortunately, the realisation came too late.

  Laura laughed as limbs shot from her body and wrapped around Marie, pulling her off her feet and into the alleyway.

  The street was empty, but the stars saw it all.

  Tap-Tap-Tap.

  Liam sighed.

  Tap-Tap-Tap.

  He was going to try and ignore it this time. Ignore the stupid tree branch slapping his window and ignore the image of his dead uncle’s empty corpse that had decided night time was the right time to pay Liam a house call.

  Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap.

  Liam got out of bed and made his way to the curtains.

  He’d asked his dad about cutting the branch off, but his dad looked tired, his eyes dark, cheeks unshaven. Mum had been looking frazzled recently, too. They weren’t alone, of course. Everyone seemed on edge these days. Tired and ready to jump at the slightest noise.

  Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap-Tap.

  Liam lifted the curtain. The corpse of his dead Uncle Waterson leered at him through the window. Liam yelped and stumbled backwards, the curtain dropping down to hide the ghastly sight.

  ‘Are you afraid?’ asked a voice.

  Liam turned to see who was talking, but couldn’t find the source. ‘Where are you?’ he asked. It had not been his dead uncle’s voice. Was this another ghost come to haunt him?

  His blankets began to pull back, then a white-gloved hand reached up from behind the bed and waved at him.

  Liam ran to his bedroom door and flung it open, only to find his dad stood waiting outside.

  ‘Do you want to feed my birds now?’ asked Not Dad, holding out a clump of mud squirming with fat worms. Not Dad no longer had eyes, and snapping bird beaks thrust out of the empty sockets.

  Liam moved back as Not Dad stepped into his bedroom.

  ‘I’m not scared,’ said Liam.

  ‘Oh?’ said the voice from behind. ‘That will not do at all.’

  Liam’s heart beat-beat-beat as two large rabbit ears rose into view from behind his bed.

  ‘Oh, it’s Mr. Cotton,’ said Not Dad. ‘He told me I’d see much better without my eyes, so he tore them from my head with a corkscrew. Now I see the dark much more clearly.’

  Not Dad lifted a worm to one of the vicious beaks, and it ripped it hungrily from his hand and pulled it back inside Not Dad’s skull.

  Marie sat up.

  She was not in the alleyway, she was on a sandy, golden beach, the sun beating down on her sweating brow.

  She struggled to her feet, brushing the sand from her clothes, trying to work out what in the hell was going on. She was asleep, that must be it. She didn’t actually remember getting home from her date with Carl Cooper. Getting into bed and closing her eyes, any of that. But she must have done, because all of this, and seeing her dead little sister in the street, that wasn’t normal. None of this was possible, it all seemed like a nightmare, so that’s what it must be.

  Marie felt almost happy for a moment as she convinced herself that she’d cracked it. If she just ignored the fact that she was sure she never got home and never went to bed, then she didn’t have to be scared anymore, and everything made sense.

  There were bodies in the sea. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Little corpses of little girls, face-down, bobbing on the tide as the lazy waves rolled towards shore.

  ‘It’s okay, I’m just having a nightmare, that’s all. I’m fast asleep and in the morning I’ll think about that kiss and I’ll see Carl Cooper on my way to work when I go into Blaffee for my morning pick-me-up.’

  As each dead Laura was washed on to the sand it slowly rose to its feet. It looked at Marie and giggled. Giggled and walked towards her.

  ‘I know this is a nightmare, and I’d like to wake up now.’

  ‘Your fault,’ said the dead Lauras. ‘Let me die, your fault your fault your fault your—’

  Marie turned away. Her dad was stood before her. She was grown up but her dad towered over her like he had when she was little. He grabbed her arm painfully.

  ‘How could you let that happen to your little sister?’ he yelled through rabid dog teeth. ‘Your fault! Your fault!’

  Marie screamed and pulled her arm free. She ran from the beach, through the scrub of grass, and the dead Lauras ran at her heels, laughing and screaming and accusing and begging.

  ‘Wake up!’ said Marie, eyes almost blind with tears. ‘Wake up, wake up, wake up!’

  She ran into something solid and landed hard on the ground. She looked around wildly, wiping tears from her eyes. She was no longer on that beach in Devon, and the many dead Lauras were nowhere to be seen. She was back on the street in Blackpool she had been on before she stepped into the alley. She looked behind her, at the alleyway’s black maw, and shivered.

  ‘Are you quite all right?’ asked the person Marie had run into.

  ‘I’m not sleeping, am I?’ Marie asked as she looked up.

  The blank glass eyes of a rabbit mask looked down at her. Marie stood up, trembling.

  ‘My name is Mr. Cotton, and that is my fine brother, Mr. Spike.’ He pointed a white-gloved hand behind her, and Marie turned to see a second figure dressed in an old-fashioned suit, its material dusty, faded, frayed. Marie could hear Mr. Spike’s breath rasping against the inside of his hedgehog mask.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Connoisseurs of terror,’ replied Mr. Cotton, and the rabbit mask smiled, though of course it did not as it was just a mask.

  ‘This is a nightmare, please tell me that’s true.’

  ‘Oh, that is very true. But you don’t need to sleep to experience our gift. Soon, every waking moment shall be a nightmare, and we shall have very full bellies indeed. Is that not so, brother of mine?’

  Mr. Spike nodded and made a horrid gurgling sound.

  ‘As a special treat,’ said Mr. Cotton, ‘how about my brother takes off his mask and shows you the true face of terror? Would you like that?’

  Marie ran.

  ‘I do not believe she desires said treat, Mr. Spike. But not to worry, they will all see your face, given time.’

  Marie spent the rest of the night wide awake, TV blaring to fill the silence, checking and re-checking that all the doors and windows were locked.

  All across Blackpool, people were having bad dreams, whether they were asleep or not.

  Rita Hobbes was no different. She was in the void again. In whatever formless, empty space inside the artefact—the axe—that the sacrificed souls of Jane Bowan and Ellie Mason were trapped within.

  ‘Hello? You two playing hide-and-seek?’ asked Rita, now used to her regular sleep trips. She couldn’t say she enjoyed them, as each time she spoke to the souls of the trapped women it just reminded her that the axe she wielded was essentially their prison. No, it wasn’t her fault they were trapped inside, but she was a police detective—or had been—and failing to provide help where help was needed was the kind of thing that gnawed at her.

  ‘Come out, come out wherever you are, girls,’ she said, kicking at a stone that wasn’t there.

  A shape began to emerge from
the grey fog.

  ‘Ellie, is that you?’

  It was not Ellie.

  ‘Hello, Rita Hobbes,’ said the Angel of Blackpool.

  Rita made to grab her axe, then remembered she was inside the axe. Or her unconscious, sleeping mind was inside it at least. Somehow.

  ‘Where’s Carlisle?’ she demanded, trying not to look nervous.

  ‘Why so nervous?’ asked the Angel.

  Damn.

  ‘I said, where is Carlisle?’

  ‘In a Parisian cafe within his mind, at least he was the last we spoke.’

  ‘Right.’ Rita rolled that one around in her head for a few seconds. ‘I’m sorry, what? Are you saying he’s alive or not alive?’

  ‘I have not harmed him.’

  ‘Well, that’s good.’

  ‘Others have.’

  ‘Not so good.’

  ‘I… request your help.’

  Rita attempted to reply in at least three different ways, before simply giving in and laughing. Loudly.

  The Angel waited for her to finish. ‘Release Alexander Jenner from the dreamscape you fashioned to imprison him.’

  ‘Yeah, unlikely.’

  ‘Release him and the power shall be his again.’

  ‘Sort of why I won’t be doing that.’

  The Angel began to flicker and fade, Its mouth moving but the words missing.

  ‘What? What is it?’ asked Rita. ‘Why in the name of my arse would I ever help you, or release the guv? You’re off your angelic rocker.’

  ‘...power… his… will flow… away from… to him…’ Its voice came through like a detuned radio, slipping in and out.

  ‘Sounds like we’re about to lose our connection, so let me make this clear before you get cut off. I’ve only got one thing I’m going to offer you, you big twat.’ Rita held up her middle finger. ‘That’s all yours. Now go with God.’

  The Angel of Blackpool’s face creased in silent fury, and then It was gone.

  ‘What a total arsehole,’ said Rita. But she found herself smiling. Carlisle was alive.

  Probably.

  The wind roared in Carlisle’s ears, only it wasn’t actually the wind as he didn’t actually have ears.

  He was not exactly sure how much time had passed since his astral form had vacated his body. It could have been seconds. Or hours. Or years. Time was a nebulous concept when one was traversing the astral plane.

  Reality shook and rushed and warped around him, a kaleidoscope of images, sounds, times, realms, realities, all jammed together and behind and on top of each other. Noisy, disorienting chaos. No up, no down, no here, no there, no clear sense of anything to get a grip on.

  Carlisle was in big trouble.

  He opened his mouth to say “Shit” but had no idea whether he had a mouth or how to use it, forcing him to think the word “Shit” instead. It was a rather understated way of expressing how deeply in trouble he was.

  He tried to ignore the madness surrounding him, and reached out to get hold of one true thing. One real, alive, solid thing that might anchor him as he tried to get to grips with reality as it bucked and raged and tried to shake him off.

  Patience.

  That’s all it would take.

  Don’t get overwhelmed. Don’t let that seed of panic take hold and bloom.

  The sound of everything assaulting him at once began to fade as he willed himself into a state of calm.

  He was Carlisle. He could find his way through anything, and do it with style.

  He was Carlisle.

  ...so scared, is he following…?

  There! An Uncanny voice in the madness.

  He wasn’t sure if he had hands, but he reached out as the beacon wafted in and out.

  ‘...ears and the birds in Not Dad’s…’

  Almost there. Reality scratched at him, tried to shred him, but the beacon was shining bright and clear. A lighthouse beaming into the fog to lead his ship to safety.

  ‘...so dark, I shouldn’t be out here so late at…’

  Carlisle screamed, though of course he didn’t scream at all, and the whirl of chaos shuddered to a stop.

  A small boy on Blackpool beach. He was in his pyjamas, his feet were bare, his cheeks red, eyes too. He was shaking and crying in the cold, and he was worried about going home because of the terrors, the terrors, the terrors, even though he was brave, really, and knew that the dark hid secrets that others couldn’t see. Knew about the Uncanny without really knowing about it at all. Was the Uncanny.

  ‘Who’s there?’ asked the boy, asked Liam, aware of something holding on to him. ‘Are you going to try and hurt me, too?’

  Liam felt as though he could almost see a person. Tall and pale, with a long, dark coat and a wicked grin spreading across his face.

  ‘Many thanks,’ said the almost-there person with a slight bow, and then he was gone.

  Liam rubbed the last of the tears from his eyes, his toes curling in the damp sand. He’d run from home, scared by the rabbit mask and Not Dad with his head full of birds, but he’d have to go back.

  They were only nightmares, probably. Nightmares in the awake world. He thought that lots of people were seeing these thing now, too.

  He looked out to sea and saw things reaching out from the horizon. Things he had not been able to see just moments before. They looked like smoke trails, the kind a plane left as it passed overhead, only these were black. They reached out from the sea and arced high across the water, over Liam’s head and then down into Blackpool. Thousands of them, writhing like snakes.

  Yes, Liam thought a lot of people in Blackpool were having bad dreams that night. Perhaps even worse than bad dreams. Liam thought the nightmares meant them all harm.

  He wrapped his arms around himself and tried not to shiver.

  8

  Joan looked down at the dead bird that had been deposited on her kitchen floor. Its neck had been torn open and a wing was missing. She clucked her tongue with annoyance and retrieved a plastic bag from the cupboard, dropping the poor creature inside and placing it into one of the outside bins. She wasn’t squeamish about it, she’d had more than one grisly present left for her over the years.

  ‘Birds, rabbits, even had a bat, once. Lord alone knows how they caught that bloody thing,’ Joan had told her young neighbour just a few days earlier. ‘It’s not down to my cats, you understand, Mandy. No, no, no. Jackson, Mr. Tabby and Ginger would never dream of killing anything. They’re very cultured cats, you see. I’ve brought them up from newborns to act in a respectable manner. Plus they’re very well-fed; they’ve no need to go trawling the garden like common animals.’

  Well-fed was certainly one way of putting it. All three of Joan’s cats were more than a little on the chunky side. She couldn’t help but lavish attention and treats upon the trio. There came a point when they struggled to squeeze in and out of the cat flap into the back garden, but instead of putting the chubby threesome on a diet, Joan had had a larger cat flap installed.

  ‘No, no, no, not my cats. They would never leave such things in my kitchen. That’s the thing with cat flaps, you see. It helps my cats get out and about, but it lets other things get inside.’

  Joan’s neighbour, Mandy, was a single mum who had left the father of her child to bring up little Ashton alone. Not that Joan held that against her, it was a modern world after all. You have to move with the times. Would’ve been a scandal if Joan had done the same in her time of course. Just imagine the horror if she’d bundled up baby Celia and done a midnight flit from Frank! Her mum would have disowned her, and that was just for starters!

  But no, that wasn’t what happened nowadays, and who was she to look down upon it? Truth was, she admired Mandy in a way. Being strong enough to go it alone with a little kiddie. They’d had a cake and pop party for his second birthday only the other week. Cute as a button, he was.

  Joan’s daughter, Celia, had never had kids of course, and it was too late for that now. Celia wasn’t a young woman a
nymore. She could maybe adopt, though. Joan had mentioned that once or twice, read up about it down at the library even, but Celia wasn’t interested. ‘I’m not the nurturing sort, Mum,’ she’d said, over and over again.

  Joan knew it, and she wanted her own daughter to live the life that felt right for her, but a part of her, in the pit of her stomach, hadn’t stopped longing for grandchildren. She supposed a head-shrink type might say that’s why she doted on her cats the way she did, and had taken such an active interest in little Ashton.

  Well, maybe it was, but then who else was she going to dote on? Celia was all the way down in London, Frank dead for almost twenty years, no grandchildren; should she just sit there alone and let the cold creep in? A loving heart was a healthy heart. That’s what Joan always said, when people stopped to listen.

  ‘You know, one time, after getting that bigger flap fitted, I actually came home to find a fox asleep in my kitchen. Not a small one either; a big ol’ boy! Chased it round the place with my broom before I managed to shepherd it back through the flap. Cheeky thing! So regal though, foxes, don’t you think? Make a riot of your rubbish bins, of course. That’s the thing you see, that’s the thing with these cat flaps: other things can get inside. Things that aren’t supposed to. That’s why I know it isn’t my cats leaving these presents. It’s that big, black moggy from across the road, oh, I’ve no doubt about that. I see him skulking across my back fence when I’m washing the dishes. I’ve been over there to tell Mr. Wright about it more than once, but you know that grumpy old codger. Not interested. Ah, well. What’s the harm though? Probably wants a little extra love and food, that’s why he comes round my kitchen. Can’t see Mr. Wright offering much in that department.’