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

by David Bussell

  I leaned across the body to set the wand down where I found it—

  —When something lashed out and seized me by the wrist.

  A hand, gripping me like a vice.

  I almost jumped out of my skin… literally.

  Mustachio was still alive!

  The guy was opened up from navel to neck and I was ankle-deep in his blood. Bright, red arterial blood. How could he possibly still be kicking?

  ‘I tried…’ he choked, blood bubbling from his mouth as he pointed to the scorched silhouette on the wall. ‘Tried... to kill it.’

  ‘Easy,’ I said, shushing him and making a face like everything was going to be alright, despite the wealth of facts indicating the opposite.

  I could see his heart now, in his chest still and beating like a jackrabbit’s. He must have blasted the soul feaster before it had a chance to chow down on him. Chased the thing off.

  ‘You did well, mate,’ I told him. ‘Played a blinder.’

  He managed to croak out some more words. ‘...Has to be stopped…. promise… promise me you’ll stop it.’

  His bony grip relaxed and I took him by the hand. ‘I’ll stop it,’ I told him. ‘I promise I will.’

  He smiled. His eyelids fluttered. And his heart stopped beating.

  I set his hand down on the floor and bowed my head.

  All was silent.

  Until a sharp yell came from behind me.

  ‘Put down the gun!’ barked a voice I knew all too well.

  Detective Inspector Maddox.

  I looked at the revolver in my hand. At this point I’d forgotten I was even holding it.

  ‘This isn’t what it looks like, Maddox,’ I said, pathetically, like a teenage boy trying to explain away some questionable items in his browser history.

  ‘I said put down the gun!’ Maddox repeated.

  I did as I was asked and placed the pistol gently on the rug. The blood-sodden rug that had soaked right through my trousers already. Into my hands, under my fingernails, pretty much all over me. I was marinated in murder.

  I turned around slowly with my hands held high.

  ‘Stay where you are! Down on the ground!’ It was DCI Stronge issuing the orders this time. She looked as angry as she did disappointed.

  A pair of laser sights dotted my torso. Both officers were armed with Taser guns.

  Maddox grinned like the cat that got the cream. ‘You’ve been a busy boy, Fletcher.’

  Stronge remained the more professional of the two. ‘Put your hands behind your head and lace your fingers,’ she ordered.

  ‘I didn’t kill this guy, Kat. You must know that.’

  ‘Is that right?’ chuckled Maddox. ‘What are you doing here then, reading the old man’s entrails? ‘Cause if it’s the future you’re after, I can tell you yours, Fletcher: life at her Majesty’s Pleasure with no parole.’

  ‘We don’t have time for this! You're letting him get away!’

  ‘Who?’ said Stronge. ‘Who are we letting get away?’

  At that point I heard a new voice. ‘What’s happening?’ pleaded the ghost of the dead magician, who was sat up from his corpse and looking down at the giant pool of blood surrounding him.

  ‘Tell them,’ I said, forgetting myself. ‘Tell them this wasn’t me!’

  ‘Who are you talking to?’ asked Stronge, following my eye-line but oblivious to the old man’s apparition.

  ‘Going for an insanity plea, are you?’ said Maddox. ‘Good luck with that.’

  He started walking towards me with a pair of handcuffs.

  ‘I can’t go with you,’ I told him.

  ‘Oh, yeah? What are you gonna do, Fletcher?’

  I froze.

  ‘Yeah, I thought so,’ he said, and started to robotically read off my rights.

  He was inches from me, about to slap on the bracelets, when I sprang to my feet and kicked him square in the nuts.

  He went down like a bag of hammers, but I was quick to follow as a dart hit me in the chest, chased by about 50,000 volts.

  My muscles convulsed and my teeth clamped shut as Stronge’s Taser lit me up and dropped me hard.

  As I lay on the ground, drooling onto the teakwood floor, a thought occured.

  Two electrocutions in this place in one day.

  And they say lightning doesn't strike twice.

  16

  I was taken to the station and shoved into a cell. The cops were holding me on breaking and entering, assaulting an officer, perverting the course of justice, and possession of an unlicensed firearm. Oh, and there was that pesky multiple murder charge too.

  They weren’t just writing me up for the last batch of murders either. On top of Ingrid and the three dead magicians, they were trying to pin me with five years of homicides. Every case I’d assisted them on, every bad guy I’d steered towards the slammer, was being treated like a fit-up. As though I’d done the killing, planted false evidence, and served the police a patsy.

  No doubt about it, things weren’t looking great for old Jake.

  Apparently, Stronge and her trained monkey had arrived at Mustachio’s house following an anonymous tip. I was beginning to get the distinct impression that I’d been set up; taken out of the picture by the real culprit, the rogue magician. Was he working with Frosty? Had he paid that old lush off to feed me false intel? To speed up my trip to the noose?

  ‘You really had me going,’ said Stronge, as she locked the door to my cell. ‘You really did.’

  It broke my heart to see her so betrayed. So utterly beaten. ‘I had nothing to do with this,’ I told her. ‘You really think I’m a murderer? Come on, Kat, you know me better than that.’

  ‘I only know one thing about you, Fletcher: you’re not a psychic, you’re fucking a psychopath.’

  I was ready to plead my case but she cut me short.

  ‘A lawyer will be along shortly. If you’ve got anything more to say, you can tell it to them.’

  And she left.

  My ex-wife, Ingrid, Jazz Hands, and now Stronge. I was getting to make a real habit of disappointing women.

  A short while later, Maddox arrived on the other side of my bars wearing the kind of smile that belonged on the face of a Disney villain.

  ‘You must have been laughing your arse off, Fletcher. Killing all those people and getting a pay cheque from us to play Nostradamus.’ He slammed his hand against the bars of my cell. ‘Not laughing now, are you?’

  He was shaving with Occam’s razor and making a proper meal of it.

  I stayed schtum while he went on. No sense incriminating myself any more than I already had.

  ‘We found the one you left at the nightclub,’ he leered. ‘That your scene is it, Fletcher? Getting tugged off by leather daddies with nipple rings?’

  ‘You haven’t got a clue,’ I spat.

  Shite. Here I was, banged up inside someone else’s body and about to be done for multiple counts of murder. I'd really dropped Mark in it this time. You could almost feel sorry for the guy… well, you could.

  I had to get out of there. If I could just get to the rogue magician in time, if I could get some answers from him before he set his dog on the last man standing and dropped off the map, maybe then I could find out what had happened to Ingrid. There was still a chance for her, and I wasn’t quitting until I had the facts.

  ‘Maddox,’ I whispered.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, leaning in close enough that I could see the network of veins on his eyeballs, but not so close I could grab him through the bars. ‘What can I do for you, Fletcher?’

  ‘Just one thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You can bite down hard... ‘cause I’m coming in dry...’

  ‘Wha—’ was about as far as he got before I made my move.

  Jettisoning from my meat puppet, I shot through the prison bars and right into Maddox. He flailed about like he’d been set on fire, jerking around, bouncing off the walls, clawing at his skin. He put up a fight, I’
ll give him that, but he was no prize bronco, and this wasn’t my first rodeo. I took hold of his body, breaking him in, seeping into his bones and clamping down on his mind.

  ‘Possession… for men,’ I whispered, using Maddox’s lips.

  He was mine.

  I ran a quick diagnostic to see what I had. I saw some things rattling around in that peanut he called a brain. Things Maddox wouldn’t let me near with a barge pole: memories, passions, secrets, the whole kit and caboodle. No wonder he put up such a fight. I mean, for a card-carrying homophobe, he sure thought a lot about butt stuff.

  There was one particular memory in there that flashed like a beacon. It came from his twenties, back when he was at university. To join the rugby team, he’d taken part in an initiation that involved him taking to the field and running from one try line to the other, buck naked and with a hotdog up his arse. Every time the thing fell out he’d have to pick it up, take a bite and put it back where he found it. By the time he made it to the other end of the field, that hotdog was a stub.

  Yeah, Maddox had some things to work through, but then so did I. The first thing I had to deal with was Mark, who had come out of his stupor and started freaking out over his situation. It’s not every day you wake up stone cold sober in a prison cell, and Mark had a lot to say on the subject. Before he could make too much of a fuss about it, I thought it prudent to shut him up. I did that by using Maddox’s key get into his cell, then using my spirit arm to reach into his chest and give his heart the required squeeze to put him out for a few hours. He’d wake up feeling like he’d taken the ice bucket challenge in Antarctica, but he’d live.

  Now to continue my investigation. Since I had access to Maddox’s memories, I sifted past the butt stuff and had a root around for any info pertaining to the Vallens case. Anything the cops might not have shared with me. I found something noteworthy pretty quickly, from right back at the start of the investigation. It turned out the warehouse Ingrid was skinned in belonged to a local businessman. Maddox had questioned him to find out if he was connected to the crime in any way, but the businessman had claimed his property had been broken into, despite not showing any signs of forced entry. Since the police couldn’t prove any connection to the crime, the suspect was discharged and the matter considered an investigative dead end.

  Here’s the thing though, I know that businessman. He goes by the name of Vic Lords—an employer of mine from back in the day—and I can tell you this for nothing: Vic Lords is innocent of bugger all. The man’s a gangster and an all-round bad guy, and on top of that, he’s a closet Satanist. No surprise he’d be wrapped up in an occult ritual. Vic Lords and shady shit? The Venn diagram of the two is practically an eclipse.

  17

  It was early evening by the time I reached Lords’ office, and a gentle breeze yanked low, grey clouds across the dimming skyline. It was getting on for day six of my investigation. After that I’d have 24 hours to make good on my promise or I was toast.

  I hadn’t had the displeasure of Lords’ company in a while, not since I’d died in fact. Before then I used to do house clearings for him. He’d buy haunted properties on the cheap then bring me in to purge the place so he could sell them on for a tidy profit. There weren’t all that many gigs available to a freelance exorcist, so I tended to take whatever I could get my hands on. Of course I’d always known Vic was dodgy, but I hadn’t known the half of it back then. Or maybe I’d just chosen to ignore it. The prospect of ready money can play tricks on a man.

  Since I became a ghost I’ve become intimately acquainted with Vic’s shadowy business practices: the illegal gambling dens, the drug smuggling operations, the sex trafficking rings, all of them nourished by his experiments in the black arts. Ever since he committed himself to mastering the occult, his power and notoriety have grown like a fungus, spawning in London’s darkest, sweatiest corners.

  I stood across the road from Lords’ office and cracked my new knuckles. I’d been wanting to put that sack of shit away for years, but the bloke’s like Teflon. Pin whatever you like on him, he’d always have an alibi. Failing that, he’d grease some palms, or have his goons apply pressure to the arresting officer until he changed his statement. The cops could bring Lords in with a sawn-off head in one hand and a confession note in the other and he’d still be back on the streets in the time it took to boil a brew.

  I wasn’t there to bring Vic to justice though, I was there for answers, and I was getting them with or without his cooperation. I marched across the road and arrived at the office’s entrance, a nondescript door stood next to a set of battered steel shutters that hadn’t been rolled up in years. I rapped on the door with Maddox’s knuckle and a moment later a hatch slid open. The eyeballs peering out from the other side caught the flash of my badge, and I heard a series of bolts slide open. The door swung inwards to reveal Vic’s doorman, a giant slab of gristle in a too-small tank top.

  ‘Here to see the boss man,’ I told him.

  The pituitary job flared his nostrils and reluctantly stepped aside. I brushed past him, maintaining eye-contact, then headed up the sticky staircase leading to Lords’ den.

  I didn’t knock, but then I didn’t need to announce myself. Vic had already seen me coming on the black and white security monitor he kept on his desk.

  ‘Detective Inspector Maddox,’ he said, in the sleazy, phlegmy voice of a Carry On milkman. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’

  Vic Lords looked like a pile of spoiled luncheon meat with a layer of black mould on top; pallid skin and fish lips topped off with a head of greasy, coal-coloured hair and matching mutton chops. He sat sunk into a duct-taped, vinyl chair under a ceiling turned brown by decades of nicotine. His surroundings were the kind you didn’t want to touch, even with the soles of your shoes. I got the feeling that if someone were to shine a forensics blacklight about the place it would flare up like a crowded constellation.

  ‘Vic,’ I said, and watched his lip curl. No one called Vic Lords “Vic.” I expect his own mother called him “Mr Lords.”

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked, stubbing out a cigarette.

  ‘I need you to answer some questions,’ I told him, pacing around his desk like a gestapo officer, arms behind my back.

  Vic refused to be intimidated. ‘Anything I can do to assist your enquiries, officer,’ he replied, with the oily smarm of a practiced toastmaster.

  I thought it best I establish my intentions, so a grabbed a fistful of hair from the nape of his neck and ploughed his face into his desk. He landed hard enough to loosen a few letters on his keyboard, not to mention a couple of teeth.

  ‘Tell me what you know about Ingrid Vallens!’ I demanded.

  Vic’s doorman was on the scene in seconds, crashing through the door, baseball bat in hand. He charged across the room and wound it up, ready to cave my head in, but Lords put up a hand.

  ‘Stop,’ he told him, wiping a dribble of claret from his chin. ‘No need to be alarmed, Kojo. Me and the officer were just having a little conversation, that’s all.’

  Kojo lowered his weapon and looked me up and down. ‘If you’re sure,’ he said.

  The bouncer took his leave and headed back downstairs to his post.

  Vic grinned with bloody teeth. ‘It’s good to see you again, Jake.’

  I’ll admit it, that shook me. I knew Lords was tapped into the Uncanny but I hadn’t realised he could see me inside of my meat suit.

  ‘An exorcist turned ghost, eh?’ he went on, ‘If I were comedian I’d be feeling some real pressure to make a joke right now.’

  I composed myself and took control of the situation. ‘If you know what I am, you know what I can do to you.’

  I allowed my ghost hand to leave Maddox’s body and rested my fingertips on Vic’s chest. He flinched at the chill and held up his hands in surrender.

  ‘No need to get nasty, Fletcher, I’m happy to talk.’ He tutted. ‘You know, I liked you much more when you were alive.’

  I ignore
d him. ‘You own a property by the canal. A warehouse—’

  ‘—Yes, an officer already questioned me about it – the one you’re squatting in right now as a matter of fact.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I’m going to tell you what I told him; I don’t know anything about what happened there. Not a single thing.’

  ‘You better not be lying to me, Vic.’

  He flinched as I held out the back of my hand, but I wasn’t about to strike him, I was about to use the magic mood ring Jazz Hands had given me.

  I put the stone to him. Sure enough, it turned red. The man was talking out of his arse.

  Putting my hand between his flabby teats, I reached inside his chest and closed my fingers about the black lump he called a heart. He gasped like he’d fallen through an iced-over lake and seized stock still, his eyes the size of dinner plates.

  ‘I loaned it out,’ he hissed, his lips moving like he was trying to throw his voice. ‘Gave them a key.’

  ‘Gave who a key?’

  ‘I don’t know—’

  ‘Give me name!’

  ‘I don’t bleedin’ have one!’

  My voodoo truth detector turned blue this time. He was on the level.

  I plucked my ghost hand from Vic’s chest and he let out a great sigh of relief. He sunk back into his chair, panting like he’d run a marathon.

  ‘This guy, the one that rented the key, what did he look like?’

  ‘Not a guy. A girl.’

  True again. How about that? This whole time I’d been on the tail of an elusive, rogue magician I’d assumed I was chasing a man, but no, apparently there was a woman under that balaclava. A woman stripping Ingrid Vallens of her skin. A woman working in league with a demon.

  So, the Order of the Eternal flame had accepted a female member, had they? Pretty progressive for an old boys’ club.