Fresh Hell: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (The Ghosted Series Book 1)

by David Bussell

  I sighed and stood, play acting like I was about to walk off. ‘Well, I’d best be off then, Frosty, ol’ pal. Nice seeing you.’

  ‘Alright! I’ve got something, I’ve got something!’

  Bingo bango.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Hold your horses, sunshine. First things first, have you got anything for me?’

  This wasn’t my first time dealing with the cantankerous sod – I knew what he was after. From my jacket pocket I produced a can of Special Brew. This was no ordinary bruiser juice though. Any regular lager would pass right through the wily old lush, but this one had been blessed by Jazz Hands and made ghost-friendly, just like my new ring. I can’t say she was overjoyed at the prospect of blessing cheap beer, but she’s always been a sucker for the old Fletcher charm.

  He snatched the can of beer greedily from my hands and glugged it down in five seconds flat. He wiped the froth from his beard, along with a few icicles. ‘That’s the stuff,’ he gasped.

  The beer wouldn’t actually get Frosty drunk, but he’d get to experience some of the sensation of boozing, and that was enough to make him happy.

  ‘So, what can you tell me about this cult?’

  ‘What, is that it? One measly can?’

  ‘You know the deal, Frosty. I’ve given you a bit of what you want, now you give me what I want. So, this cult, where do they set up shop? I need to pay them a visit.’

  He sulked for another minute or so, then he told me. ‘No way!’ I said. ‘There?’

  ‘Yup.’

  It just seemed so… obvious. ‘You’re serious. You’re not shitting me?’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’

  It was a weak promise coming from a ghost, but he’d yet to steer me wrong. ‘Thanks for the tip, Frosty. I’ll see you around.’

  ‘One can? One? You rotten bastard!’

  I smiled, lifted a second blessed can from my other pocket and rolled it across the ground into his grasping fingers. ‘Don’t drink it all at once.’

  He drank it all at once.

  ‘Mind yourself, Jake. There ain’t many things that can do us ghosts a mischief, but magic’s one of ‘em.’

  He was right about that.

  8

  According to Frosty, the people I needed to pay a visit were operating out of the Magic Circle. Yeah, that Magic Circle. Stage magicians with silk scarves doing card tricks for hen parties. Believe me, I’m as surprised as you are, but according to Frosty, the top hat and tails stuff is all a front. Just like Jazz Hands, the Order of the Everlasting Flame like to hide in plain sight.

  I arrived at the Magic Circle’s HQ by night. It was a nondescript building not far from Euston Station – nondescript so long as you weren’t looking too hard. To the right eye, the place stuck out like a sore thumb. There was a cage around it, a magical field that enclosed the building from top to bottom. The cage throbbed with magical power, the bars strobing, spitting out purple sparks. It’s like the thing was electrified, but electrified with the Uncanny. Being a ghost usually makes it a piece of piss to get inside places—like having an Access All Areas pass to the whole world—but this joint was strictly invite only. Anyone wanting to get in there had better know a thing or two about magic.

  Thankfully, I did.

  Back in the day I studied it all: theurgy, thaumaturgy, tarot, Gnosticism, Enochian chants, the Quabalah, Left Hand occultism, and a healthy dose of Hitchens to balance out all the bollocks. While the rest of my friends were busy chasing skirt, I was reading ancient texts and learning about the pagans. When you’re born with The Sight, with a connection to the Uncanny that no one else around you can see or feel, you make it your business to investigate more. By the time I graduated from art school and my peers were drifting into temp jobs, I’d started to practice magic. Nothing major, just a few cantrips and such. I stuck with it though, learned some new tricks along the way, and one of those tricks was getting into places I shouldn’t be.

  I spoke the words of disenchantment, took a bar in each hand and the felt the cage weaken in my grip, softening like boiled spaghetti. I continued to chant, forcing the purple, strobing bars apart until I had them at a shoulder’s width. Continuing the mantra, I squeezed myself through the gap in the cage until all that stood between me and my intention was a helpless brick wall.

  I Caspered my way through that and arrived in the building's lobby. Stood before me was an impressive spiral staircase planted on an illuminated zodiac symbol. Something sparkly for the tourists to gawp at while the real magic was practiced on the sly behind closed doors.

  I strained my ears and heard a muffled conversation going on upstairs. I headed off in search of it, and at the top of the steps, on the building’s uppermost floor, I found a door marked PRIVATE. Of course, no room is really “private” when you’re a ghost, but it always gives me a thrill to break life’s little rules. I’m only human after all. Well, sort of.

  Passing through the door, I found myself in the Order of the Eternal Flame’s inner sanctum. The windowless clubhouse throbbed with a low, ambient hum that made the motes of dust hanging in the air quiver and dance. Display cabinets piled with all manner of magical oddments lined the walls, and in the centre of the room, throwing light and shadow all around, was a hammered iron brazier containing a large, flickering flame. Surrounding this was an engraved pentacle three metres wide with four men stood at each of its five tips, leaving one spot empty. The men faced one another dressed in cowled robes to preserve their anonymity. I suspect they were going for menacing, but despite the fancy duds and spooky decor, the gathering had the distinct whiff of an AA meeting about it.

  ‘Hello, my name’s Merlin and I have a wizard problem…’

  All that was missing was the smell of stale cigarettes and a half-eaten box of Krispy Kreme.

  Spying on the conclave, I roamed the room invisibly to see if I could get a better look at the four magicians. There wasn’t much to go on; the only facial features I could make out were from the bottom of the nose down, which made the identification process a mite tricky. Still, I paid attention and took note of what I saw.

  One had a waxed moustache.

  Another a weak jaw.

  The third a Ben Affleck chin dimple.

  And the last a cleft lip.

  Chin Dimple broke the silence. ‘Where are they?’ he asked, gesturing to the empty spot of the pentacle.

  ‘We don’t know,’ replied Moustachio, the eldest of the group, with an air of authority that led me to believe he was running the show.

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ said Glass Jaw. ‘We’ve all seen the news.’

  ‘The murder at the canal?’ said cleft lip. ‘You think they were responsible for that?’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘We can’t be certain,’ asserted Moustachio.

  Glass Jaw snorted. ‘Can’t be certain? It’s all they ever talked about!’

  ‘They talked about the theory of it. I made it perfectly clear that the Order wouldn’t stand for one of its elders meddling with demonic forces.’

  There it was. They were in it right up to their exposed chins.

  ‘And you think they listened?’

  ‘Forgive me, Brother,’ said Chin Dimple, raising his hand like a kid in class, ‘but why does the Order continue to enforce this draconian policy on demonic intervention? With the correct wards, the creatures of the Nether are our playthings, to do as we bid them.’

  Why they all spoke like they were playing a game of Dungeons & Dragons was anyone’s guess.

  Moustachio took a calming breath. ‘The reason we don’t practice demonology, Brother, is because not all demons are alike.’

  This time he and Glass Jaw agreed. ‘The demon our colleague wished to strike a bargain with is a creature unlike any other. Forty years ago, the elders of this Order summoned the beast to this realm. Not only did most of them die for their temerity, so too did a string of innocents.’

  Cleft Lip picked up the slack. �
��The authorities were as powerless as they were clueless. They pinned the murders on some nameless cannibal. Spent months chasing their tails.’

  ‘It fell to those of us that survived the demon’s wrath to send the demon back to its realm,’ said Moustachio.

  ‘How?’ asked Chin Dimple.

  Moustachio’s shoulders went slack. ‘With the seraphim sword.’

  ‘The seraphim sword?’ parroted Cleft Lip. ‘The relic we keep in the museum?’ He cast a look to the ground, likely toward the sublevel where the item was kept. ‘I thought that was just a ceremonial piece.’

  Interesting. A magic sword. Pretty sweet. I quite fancied getting a butcher’s at the thing, as soon as I was done earwigging on this little chinwag.

  ‘So,’ said Chin Dimple. ‘Who did it? Who wielded the sword and banished the demon?’

  Glass Jaw turned to Moustachio, who looked as though he was recalling some terrible memory. ‘I did,’ he said, and rolled up his robe’s left sleeve. The arm beneath was plastic from the elbow down. ‘It was a battle hard won.’

  A one-armed magician, eh? Nice gimmick I suppose, but I can’t imagine he booked many kids’ parties.

  I was mulling that over when I came to realise that the magicians had stopped talking. I turned my attention back to the hooded group, only to find all four of them were looking dead at me. I checked my rear, thinking something must be going on behind me, and saw a shadow stretching from my heels all the way across the floor and to the room’s far wall.

  The brazier.

  The eternal flame that burned in the centre of the pentacle must have been witchfire: a magical element that casts shadows on the ethereal and the corporeal alike.

  Bollocks.

  I should have seen it.

  Should have sized up the situation the moment I walked in, but I’d been sloppy. Being a ghost breeds a certain cockiness. Once you get used to moving around invisibly and unobstructed, it’s easy to forget that the world isn’t your personal playground. Easy to forget that there are things out there that can harm even the dead.

  It was Glass Jaw who raised the finger first. ‘There!’ he cried, pointing to my dirty great shadow. ‘We’re not alone!’

  Yup, I’d been rumbled good and proper.

  Moustachio uttered an incantation and made a somatic gesture that flooded the chamber with a blinding, vermillion light. When I opened my eyes I discovered he’d somehow rendered me visible.

  ‘Hey, neat trick, how’d you do that? Because I’ve gotta tell you, that would really come in handy now and again.’

  He threw back his cowl and aimed an accusatory finger at me. ‘What are you doing here?’

  I offered an apologetic shrug. ‘Don’t mind me gents, I’ll be out of your hair in just a second.’

  That was my cue to pull a disappearing trick. I closed my eyes and imagined myself boomeranging to Jazz Hands’ magic shop, but a strange thing happened: I didn’t budge and inch. I felt my body judder, saw it blur, like I was dropping out of focus, only to snap back into sharp, HD clarity. I tried again, same deal. It was a little disconcerting, I don’t mind telling you.

  ‘You’re going nowhere, phantom,’ said Glass Jaw, who had worked his own magic; a bubble of undulating, purple energy that surrounded me completely.

  I guessed that must have been the thing interfering with my hopping out of this place and back into Jazz Hands’ shop. These numpties might have looked like they were playing dress up, but they were no joke. I rapped a knuckle on the side the bubble and found it hard as frozen oak. Seemed I was trapped.

  ‘Explain yourself,’ ordered Moustachio, the words falling from his mouth like a curse. ‘Or suffer the consequences.’

  ‘I came to see some card tricks, fellers, that’s all—maybe a rabbit from a hat if you were in the mood—but I can see you’re busy. If you’ll just drop the old magic forcefield job, I’ll be offski.’ I started to skirt around the room, attempting to find a weak spot in the spell. There’s always a weak spot with these things. Well, usually.

  ‘Halt!’ said Moustachio

  ‘You know you can just say “stop,” right?’ I replied, not pausing, never mind halting.

  The four magicians joined hands, which began to glow as they muttered words under their collective breath. Whatever they were doing was probably not going to be good news for old Jake. I kept moving as the purple prison surrounding me exploded with sparks. I turned to see Mustachio pointing his free hand in my direction, just as a second globe of yellow, sparking energy burst from it and headed in my direction. I ducked just in time and the globe missed me by inches. I hopped up again, my hands out.

  ‘Easy fellas, there’s no need for this to get—’

  Another globe headed in my direction, cutting my sentence short as I rolled, pushed myself up, and kept moving. I tried over and over to jump to Jazz’s place, to anywhere other than this room, but always with the same result. I needed to find the weak point in this spell fast or—

  This time I didn’t even see it coming it was that fast, but holy shit, did I feel it. It felt like I’d run right into a wall. A wall of electricity that had collapsed on top of me. I lay on the floor, twitching, waiting for the spell to wear off. Being dead, it’s not often I feel pain, or much of anything really, but whatever this spell was hurt like a bastard.

  As it began to wear off I pushed myself up slightly, vision hazy, and saw Moustachio nod to his fellow elders. The four of them held their arms in the air, hands splayed, swaying in unison. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like what came next.

  I was right.

  They blasted the outside of the bubble with their combined arcane power and my prison began to shrink until I was the only thing contained within it. Then it shrank some more. And more.

  ‘Guys, I feel like we’ve got off on the wrong foot here. How about we chalk this one up to experience and I’ll be on my way, huh?’

  ‘Tell us why you have invaded our sanctum, ghost,’ roared Mustachio.

  ‘Not until you tell me how you grew that glorious lady tickler, because mine comes in patchier than a fourteen-year-old trying to convince a barman he’s of drinking age.’

  ‘Enough, fool! Tell us the truth or prepare to die for a second time.’

  He wasn’t overstating the facts. While I am immune to most things—bullets, knives, the mystifying appeal of Orlando Bloom—magic can really bugger me up. Lucky for me, the guys working the enchanted trash compactor weren’t the only magicians in the room.

  As I’ve already mentioned, I’ve always dabbled with magic, but it wasn’t until I died that I fully got to grips with the Uncanny. Before then I had a trick or two at my disposal, but since I croaked, I’ve managed to expand my repertoire. When you’ve got nothing but time on your hands, you get to really dedicate yourself to a thing. Being a ghost is kind of like being an alcoholic who ditched the booze; your days suddenly start running very long. If you don’t find something to fill all those extra hours, you’ll go mental in no time.

  ‘Talk!’ screamed Glass Jaw, but I wasn’t about to spill my guts to some crusty old spell-slinger.

  They began to lower their hands, and the bubble shrank further. If I didn’t act fast I was going to end up the same place as all those souls I’d evicted during my pre-dead, exorcist years. Nowhere. Scrubbed from existence. A non-entity.

  There was a way out though. There always is with these things. Like I said, every spell has a weak spot, it’s just a matter of finding it; like picking a lock or turning a frog back into a handsome prince.

  I placed my palms on the inside of the bubble and went in search of it.

  Feeling for a glitch.

  A chink in the amour.

  Any vulnerability I could exploit.

  The bubble pressed against my back and the top of my head, forcing me to crouch into a ball. I had seconds left at best. I began to panic, turning as best I could, searching, searching, searching for the way out. Where was it?

  ‘You were
warned,’ insisted Moustachio, but I wasn’t paying the man much attention.

  I was concentrating on my prison still, hands scrabbling, desperately searching for that sweet spot—

  —when suddenly I felt it.

  There it was...

  A fault.

  A fatal flaw.

  I think I laughed out loud with relief.

  I took aim and pulled back my fist, or at least pulled it back as far as I could – the bubble was so small it was like being zipped up in a sleeping bag.

  I summoned all the strength I had, offered up a silent prayer to a God who probably wanted to send me to hell, and threw my fist forward with a scream of effort.

  There was a crack and my knuckles burst right through to the other side.

  I expected it to pop like a soap bubble, but instead it exploded, shattering like an egg shell and pelting my captors with shards of raw magic.

  The elders howled in protest and prepared to lob a return barrage my way, but they were too late.

  ‘Nice meeting you gents,’ I said, ‘but I’ve got places to be...’

  Abracadabra.

  And like that, I was gone.

  9

  I decided to pay Ingrid Vallens a visit and bring her up to speed on the story so far. I found her pacing the canal towpath near Camden Lock, just where I’d left her. She was very happy to see me, and the feeling was mutual. After what had just happened, I was happy to see anyone. I’d think twice before underestimating that lot again.

  ‘You came back,’ she trilled.

  ‘Of course.’

  She gave me a glowing smile that melted my cold heart.

  ‘It’s been ages, I thought you’d left and that I’d be stuck here, alone. Alone and dead and, oh God, it’s still really strange saying that. I’m dead. I was alive and now I’m dead.’

  ‘Yeah, it takes a minute to get your head around. Well, longer than that. I’m still not completely there. But hey, at least we’re still, you know, “around.”

  Ingrid Vallens, ex-model, and ex-alive person, offered up another glorious smile and I drank it down like nectar.