Uncanny Kingdom: An Eleven Book Urban Fantasy Collection (Uncanny Kingdom Omnibus 1)

by David Bussell

  The damage was already done though. By the time I made it to Dizzy’s side, I could see I was too late. His leg was pumping like a burst pipe. I whipped off his beret and used it to put pressure on the wound, but he was bleeding out. Dizzy was done for.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jake,’ he wheezed, his face turning blue.

  ‘Why’d you do it, Dizz?’ I asked, cradling him on the ground.

  ‘Because I’m a coward.’

  ‘You’re not a coward. You’re a serviceman. You fought for your country.’

  He laughed a sick little laugh. ‘Look at the medal...’

  Medal? The one that was missing from his jacket. The one I’d found backstage in that theatre, clutched in the hand of a dead body. I took it from my pocket and inspected it properly.

  ‘It’s tin, isn’t it?’ I said, already knowing the answer.

  Dizzy nodded bitterly. ‘Fancy dress. The whole outfit.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I was at a Halloween party when I died, Jake. I’m not a serviceman.’

  My mind folded like an origami swan. Dizzy wasn’t a WW2 paratrooper, he was just some punk kid from my time. No wonder he’d had modern change to pay Lenny with at The Beehive.

  ‘How though?’ I asked, still not getting it. ‘What about that war story you told me? The Krauts on D-Day...?’

  He looked to the ground and sighed. ‘I was an actor before. That was my audition speech for Band of Brothers.’

  The whole time I’d known Dizzy, he'd been pulling my plonker. Only now, delivering his deathbed confession, was I finally getting the truth.

  ‘I needed you to believe that I could get you where you wanted to go,’ he said, gritting his teeth, ‘so I pretended to be a soldier instead of a drama grad.’

  ‘What about the name?’ I asked, just feeling sorry for him now. ‘I figured you got it from the RAF, but I take it you’re not really called Dizzy?’

  ‘No, that’s my name. My nickname anyway. I didn’t get it from the army though.’

  ‘Then where?’

  ‘Picked it up in college. From being spaced out all the time.’

  ‘But you were so... convincing.’

  He smiled. ‘Tell that to Spielberg’s casting director.’

  He was ashen now. On his way out.

  ‘Tell me how you wound up here,’ I said.

  ‘The Halloween party,’ he gasped, recanting the last of his sins, ‘I was there in this costume… hired it for my audition… never returned it...’

  ‘No wonder you ended up in Hell,’ I joked, and bless him if he didn’t laugh.

  ‘Not the reason,’ he replied, grinning with bloody teeth. ‘I was selling… pills. Needed the money. Not much work going… for someone with a theatre degree. Became a dealer...’

  ‘That can’t be it. You don’t end up here for flogging a few disco biscuits.’

  ‘You do… when they kill people.’

  A dodgy batch, he explained. Six ODs. A half dozen people dead, Dizzy included.

  His eyes were two sunken wells of despair. ‘I didn’t know, Jake. I didn’t mean to… didn’t want to...’

  His body went limp. His eyes floated back into his head, focus lost. He was gone.

  Just a kid. A kid stuck in a costume, pretending to be someone he wasn't, as much a soldier as I was a detective. A kid who’d snuffed out some lives without really meaning to. Without understanding the gravity of what he was doing. Just like I hadn’t understood the consequences of my actions as an exorcist, going at stranded souls like a wrecking ball and smashing them into oblivion.

  I looked down at Dizzy, his body cold to the touch now, his spirit gone forever.

  It’s shit in Hell, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

  20

  I’d only just finished burying Dizzy’s body when I heard a familiar voice over my shoulder.

  ‘Well, well, if it isn't Fletcher the Friendly Ghost.’

  I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. Vic Lords. My old boss. Everything I hated about humanity in one convenient package.

  ‘I thought I’d already told you to piss off back to Camden, Vic.’

  ‘And leave you behind?’ he replied, his voice as rough as his tailoring.

  He was here in his astral form still, checking up on my progress while his body remained safe and sound in London Town.

  ‘I’m not in the mood for this right now,’ I said, staring down at Dizzy’s shallow grave.

  Vic frowned. ‘Hate to say I told you so, but I warned you not to trust that sherpa of yours.’

  ‘You didn’t know shit, you were just trying to put me off my game.’

  ‘Not true, Jake. Not true at all. I knew that little runt was bad news, just like I knew the person you’d been sent here to rescue was our mutual friend.’

  That got my attention. ‘You knew Damon was wrapped up in this and you didn’t tell me?’

  ‘I wanted to,’ he said, his bottom lip puffed out like a child’s, ‘but no matter how hard I try, you never seem to want my help.’

  I gave him a hard stare. ‘Well, I’m a bit beyond help now, aren’t I?’

  He bubbled up a laugh. ‘Oh, I don’t know about that…’

  He held out his hand to show it was empty, then balled it into a moist, hammy fist. When he opened it up again, a small cube had appeared in his palm. He presented it to me like a waiter serving an entrée.

  ‘What’s that supposed to be?’ I asked.

  ‘Your door home,’ Vic replied.

  He took a step closer. I could see now that the cube was made of what looked like bone, and had black spots carved into each of its six faces.

  A dice.

  Okay, a “die” if you want to get technical about it.

  ‘Take it,’ Vic insisted. ‘Roll it on the ground and a portal will open between Hell and Earth. This is it, Jake. Your ticket home.’

  I took the offering from his palm. ‘What’s the catch?’

  ‘You call it a catch, I say it’s a favour,’ he smarmed. ‘Here’s the deal: I get you home and you go back to working for me. Even Stevens.’

  I laughed right in his face. ‘Work for you? I reckon you must have a few of your pages stuck together, mate.’

  ‘Why? Because I’m offering you a chance to make something of yourself instead of running around like some Poundland Sam Spade?’

  He was proud of himself for that one – I could tell by the way his gullet puffed out like a bullfrog's. And who knew, maybe he had a point. I mean, look at the way things had turned out for me so far. Maybe it was time to quit the P.I. game. To hang up my tits for good.

  ‘Go on,’ he said, pointing to the cube in my hand. His dirty little bribe. ‘Give it a roll. Don’t be shy.’

  ‘No dice,’ I quipped, and shoved his offering into the depths of my jacket pocket.

  I sensed the birth of anger in him, but he composed himself and proceeded with calm. ‘Your loss, Fletcher,’ he shrugged.

  ‘Go to hell.’

  ‘If it's all the same to you, I'll be doing the opposite. Going home to my nice, comfy bed in the real Camden Town. Toodle pip, Jake. Enjoy your afterlife.’

  But I was already going, dragging my ball and chain across the dusty ground as I left Vic behind.

  ‘Oh, Jake,’ he called after me, ‘I notice you kept hold of the dice.’ I could feel his smile. ‘It’s only a matter of time, son.’

  I didn’t respond. Just carried on trudging the opposite direction, eyes straight ahead.

  Then I felt a tremor. It came from the ground, like a train rumbling beneath my feet.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ I heard Vic say, ‘that doesn’t sound good…’

  I saw a bulge appear in the earth ahead of me. A bulge that turned into a ridge, forming a line in my direction.

  ‘Looks like your maggot’s back,’ Vic noted, rather unhelpfully.

  Fuck. The crest of loose earth continued to cut my way.

  ‘Anyway, good luck with it,’ h
e chirped. ‘And don’t forget, Jake, if you ever have a change of heart, my offer still stands.’

  And with that, Vic’s astral form dissolved into the night air, just as the oversized grub exploded out of the ground in a fountain of black earth.

  The maggot went to clamp its teeth down on my foot, but I managed to pull it back just in time.

  Snap!

  Undeterred, the creature dived back into the ground and disappeared beneath the surface again, burrowing by me, then coming about for a return attack. I instinctively went to run, but felt the tug of the metal ball laying at my feet. So long as I was hamstrung by that thing, I was a sitting duck.

  I adopted a fight-or-flight crouch just as the maggot burst from the ground again, jaws snapping for the meat of my calf. Diving like a goalie, I managed to avoid it just in time, but the chain I was attached to arrested my momentum, sending me crashing face-first into the soil, hard. I coughed up any dirt that I hadn’t managed to swallow, then quickly clambered back to my feet. If I didn’t find some way of emancipating myself from that leg iron, I was Hovis.

  I watched the maggot come about again, embossing the earth with a semicircle as it bored a shallow path beneath the ground. Its course righted, the maggot straightened out and made another run, bulleting toward me, picking up speed.

  I readied myself for the attack, but just as the maggot reached striking distance, the crest of earth it left in its wake suddenly petered out. I blinked sweat from my eyes. What happened? Why did it stop like that? Did it crash into something buried down there? Did it turn tail and run?

  No.

  It must have tunneled deeper. Must have altered its trajectory and gone into a steep dive. But why?

  I soon found out.

  The ground shook beneath my feet, swiftly followed an eruption as the maggot emerged vertically from a fresh crater. I threw myself to one side again, but the maggot wasn’t aiming for me this time. It was aiming for the metal ball I was attached to.

  The beast closed its mouth around the hunk of iron and sucked on its chain like it was eating spaghetti. Having gobbled it up all the way to my ankle, it then downed periscope and returned to the depths, taking me with it.

  My feet disappeared into the pulverised earth as though I was standing on quicksand. Up to my waist in a manner of seconds, I clawed at the ground like a child being dragged to his doom by the monster that lived under the bed. If I didn’t find something to grab a hold of soon I’d be finished, drawn into the suffocating depths and turned into worm food.

  Flailing, I launched out an arm like a drowning man and brought my hands down on a length of cable: a wire from a collapsed telegraph pole that lay across the market. Wrapping both hands around it, I gritted my teeth and held on tight.

  The chain beneath me sprung taut, halting the maggot’s downward drill. At the same time, my body snapped to full extension as any slack between me and my underground attacker vanished. The maggot fought, thrashing, windmilling its tail in an effort to drive itself deeper into the earth. Meanwhile, I white-knuckled the cable, up to my shoulders in dirt now, desperate to cling on. I felt the bones of my vertebrae begin to separate as the leg manacle bit deep into my ankle, making me cry out in pain.

  Think like Superman.

  My dad’s words, telling me to be strong.

  Think like Superman.

  Useless drunk. What did a man who walked out on his family know about being strong?

  Still, I bit down on my lip and gripped that cable for all I was worth, wrapping it twice around my wrist for extra purchase. The pain was excruciating. I felt like I was going to be torn in half. I held on though. Held on despite everything. Despite the agony, despite the betrayal that had lead me to this point, despite the pure hopelessness of my being here.

  Think like Superman.

  Think like Superman.

  Think like fucking Superman.

  And then, finally, and with a sharp crack, something gave.

  I’m happy to report that it wasn’t me. Instead, one of the chain’s links jawed open, and the maggot—let fly like rubber band—shot into the depths with my anchor in its mouth. Thank Christ. I must have weakened the leg iron with all that bashing I’d given it earlier. Finally, one for the plus column.

  I cried out in triumph as I clawed my way out of the pit. I’m not a religious man, but in that moment I’d have welcomed them all into my heart: Jesus, Odin, Cthulhu, the whole frigging gang.

  I heaved myself onto terra firma, gasping for air, limp as a piece of wet lettuce. There’d be no opportunity for rest though. No time to grab a breather. Not while the maggot was heading back to the surface, jaw snapping, teeth gnashing.

  I just about managed to roll to one side as it erupted from the ground like hot lava, went spiralling into the air, then came raining down on my face.

  I threw my arms up defensively and caught the fleshy sausage in my hands. It was much bigger than I’d given it credit for, about four feet in length and coated in a thick layer of slime, which made it a real bastard to keep hold of. It snapped at my nose with its ring of knife-edged teeth, drooling on me, hot and foul, breath like an unflushed toilet. I dug my fingers into the maggot’s leathery hide and managed to flip the thing over and wrestle it to the ground. Climbing on top of the piss-coloured worm, I bore down on it with all my weight and punched it hard in what I approximated to be its head.

  Wallop.

  ‘Out of your element now, aintcha?’ I hooted, as I landed another blow.

  I was giving that maggot a right old seeing to.

  I swung again and the grub spritzed me with black blood. A couple more like that and I’d have had it, but the sneaky bastard refused to play ball.

  The maggot wriggled free of my grip, sliming its way from under me and digging into the rotten earth to resume its subterranean activities.

  ‘Arsehole!’ I yelled, as it slipped away, back into its element.

  I staggered to my feet, hoping I’d taught the maggot a lesson, but true to form, it did an about-face and redoubled its attack. I really was losing my patience with the thing by this point.

  What now? I could have run I supposed, but I was too tired to have made it very far.

  Time to put on my big boy pants.

  What I needed was a weapon. Scanning my surroundings, my eyes landed on the support pole of a broken-down market stall covered in the cinder-choked remnants of union jack mugs and gas mask bongs. No longer tethered to the ground, I limped over to the stall and wrenched the pole from its moorings.

  The maggot cut through the ground like a shark through water. A train of earth churned in its backwash as it rushed toward me, eager to make its kill. I took up the pole and held it in front of me like a medieval lance.

  Almost on me.

  Almost on me.

  I narrowed my eyes and adopted a sniper-like focus.

  The giant maggot exploded from the ground with a belch of ash and dirt, sailing through the air and opening its mouth like some grotesque flower—

  —And I ran it right through.

  Ran it through from mouth to tail, skewering it on my lance like a sausage on a stick.

  21

  Only once the excitement from the fight had worn off—once the adrenaline had bled fully from my system—did I remember I was trapped. The jaws of Hell had snapped shut. This was it for me. My Hiroshima of the soul.

  Eventually I decided, seeing as I was going to be knocking around this place for the foreseeable, that I might as well make myself comfortable. So I went home, or the Hell equivalent of it anyway. Not to the office in Chalk Farm where I ran my agency from. Not to the place I was at before that, the flat I lived in with Sarah, back when I was alive. No. Where I went back to was my childhood home. The place I’d lived in as a kid, before I emancipated myself from my family and ended up on the path that led to me becoming an exorcist.

  If you asked me why, I still couldn’t tell you. A homing instinct maybe? I certainly didn’t go there for any sen
timental reason. I had no fond memories of the place. No nostalgia. All I got when I thought of that house was the smell of booze and the sting of my mum’s backhand. Still, it was as close to a home as I had now, and honestly, what did it matter where I hung my hat at this point? I was in damnation, never mind the location.

  My heels dragged in the dirt as I slogged across the bleak landscape of Camden Hell. I missed the sun. I missed a sky, clear and blue. But here in Hades, the sky never changed, forever the colour of shite after one too many pints of stout.

  The house was different but the same. Hell had stripped it to the bone and turned it skillet black, but then it had always been a hollow, colourless place. I stepped through the ruined front door and laughed as I caught myself wiping my feet on the welcome mat. Even as a kid it was only something I only did out of habit. The house was so filthy from neglect that you’d have been better off wiping your feet on the way out than in.

  I went to the front room and dumped myself face-down on the settee. The one I used to lay on to watch cartoons as a little kid, the cloth on its arm worn through to the cheap wooden frame beneath. The hole I’d made, despite the repeated thrashings my mum had given me to teach me not to put my feet on the furniture. My first real rebellion.

  ‘Hello, Jake,’ said a man’s voice. ‘You’ve grown.’

  I twisted around to see someone stood in the doorway, his face set in the same signature resting smirk that had become my own. Only I wasn’t smirking now, I was staring at him, bug-eyed, mouth jawing silently.

  ‘Dad?’

  He looked to be about my age—maybe a few years older—the age he’d have been when he died of a heart attack. God, he looked just like me. You’d have thought we were brothers.

  This place. I felt as if I was losing my mind every half hour.

  ‘It’s good to see you again, Son.’

  The feeling was not mutual. Aside from the fact that I straight up despised the bloke, I had doubts that it was even him I was talking to. Yes, he’d died back in the Nineties, and Lord knows he’d earned a place in Hell, but who was to say that this wasn’t just some demon wearing his face? Another of the Devil’s little scams.