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

by David Bussell

  I looked over the rooftops of Camden Town, thinking back to what Damon had said about me having no humanity. About losing touch with the living world. He was right. Him and Sarah. The only reason they’d been able to sucker me the way they did was because I’d been so neglectful of the mortal realm. I’d spent so long trying to save the dead, that I’d forgotten what I am. Who I am. I’m Jake Fletcher, ghost detective, the busiest dead man since Tupac Shakur. I may be deceased, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a heart. This isn’t Hell. This isn’t some corrupted version of the world I know. This is home. This is now. This is life, and I intend to live it.

  I sat down in my office chair, put my feet up on the desk, and thought back to the last time I’d been here. When work was in short supply and life felt baggy and uncomplicated. A lot had changed since then. I’d kicked in the doors of Hell, clawed my way out again, and brought down my killers, once and for all. Well, twice and for all, in Damon’s case. For Sarah, this was a delayed sentence.

  As I thought of my ex-wife, I felt my finger itch and went to twist at my wedding ring.

  It was gone.

  I looked down incredulously at my finger, which looked so naked now, so untarnished, and felt a sweet relief, like a bad tooth had finally come loose.

  The End.

  Dark Lakes

  Magic Eater

  Blood Stones

  Past Sins

  Magic Eater

  1

  I suppose this all started when I woke up without a single clue as to who I was, where I was, or why I was bleeding from so many different and interesting places.

  My name is Joseph Lake, or at least that’s what I’ve decided to call myself. Not the most inspiring of choices, I know, but I couldn’t find anything else that felt comfortable, so Joseph Lake it was. The fact that it stuck made me wonder if the name meant something; like maybe it was a family member’s name, or a good friend’s, or even a good enemy’s, but I Googled that thing down to a nub and ended up with nothing. Just one of many deader than dead ends I’ve chased aimlessly ever since I woke up next to that lake.

  That was ten years ago. At the point this story kicks off proper I was stalking the streets of Carlisle in the middle of the night, dressed head-to-toe in black. This was my first time following a stranger at a discreet distance, but I’d seen enough movies to know the best colour outfit to wear for a good stalk. To begin with I’d even been wearing matching black shades, but it soon became apparent that this was not my brightest idea. What with the whole nighttime thing. Yeah, I didn’t feel too smart as I shoved those in my pocket, I can tell you.

  The stranger I was following was a homeless woman who looked like a charity shop threw up over a passing Helena Bonham Carter. Or in other words, like Helena Bonham Carter. She’d been tossing up red flags in my head for the last two months, so a bit of following seemed in order.

  Anyway, back to my mysterious origin story. I was found by a fisherman named Joseph (hence the forename), face-down, and very, completely naked, beside Derwentwater, which is one of several bodies of water that make up an area known as the Lake District in the far north of England. Yup, you got it, from thence derives my surname.

  Wait, that’s a lie, I wasn’t completely naked, I still had one sock on. I still have that sock, it’s the only physical evidence I have of my past life and who I really am. Though it’s difficult to extrapolate much from a sock, other than “I wore socks.” Even Sherlock Holmes would need more to go on than that; unless I’ve skipped over Sherlock Holmes and the Man Who Wore Socks.

  It was chilly out. I pulled my long coat tight around myself as I did my best to keep a discreet distance from the tramp, who seemed to be aimlessly wandering here, there, and nowhere in particular. She’d been showing up a lot recently. Not just hanging out by the cash machine I passed on my way to work, or pushing a trolley full of tin cans past me on the high street. No, she’d been turning up all over. I’d look out my bedroom window and she’d be sat across the street. I’d get to work and she’d be lurking in the car park, going through the bins. It felt a lot like she was following me. In the end I thought, well, two can play at that game.

  So, there I was. Following a homeless woman around the streets of Carlisle—Cumbria’s only city—in the middle of the night. No, you have too much time on your hands.

  I’m sure most would brush it all off as coincidence, but when you have my kind of strange and stunted history, you tend to see the weird shining out from the ordinary and coincidental. No, this wasn’t one of those situations where you buy a pair of red trousers and suddenly you start noticing people wearing red trousers everywhere you look. This woman was following me, I was sure of it. Keeping tabs on me, for reasons yet to be ascertained.

  A little part of me even hoped it was because she recognised me. Maybe I’d been a tramp too before… well… before whatever happened happened and I wound up unconscious by a lake wearing nothing but a sock and an all-over bruise. Maybe that’s why it had been so difficult to find anything out about my past; perhaps I’d been on the streets for years, away from polite society, living off the grid.

  The tramp stopped and turned, so I ducked into the doorway of a betting shop that stank sharply of piss. For a moment it looked as though she was going to walk back the way she came and discover me lurking in my not-too-discreet, urine-scented hidey-hole, but then her head twitched to the left and she darted off down an alley. I counted to five then sprinted after her, coat tails flapping, heart pounding, grinning a lot more than I should have.

  I didn’t want to bust out of the alleyway and find myself smacking into the back of my quarry, so I slowed down to a walking pace, one hand trailing along the old, crumbling brickwork that lined the narrow crack between two shops.

  And that’s when the first strange thing happened.

  As my fingers traced the old bricks, a strange mood descended on me like a heavy blanket. It was… fear. No. Not just fear, fear mixed with hunger, mixed with pain, mixed with desire. It felt like it was washing over me again and again, a multitude of disparate emotions and memories, like I was pegged to a beach and the sea’s waves were battering against me, over and over, and if I didn’t get away quickly I might just drown in all the intoxicating, terrible feelings of dread and—

  —A scream.

  My hand snapped away from the bricks of the alleyway and my head dropped back into the here and now.

  There had been a scream, not in my head, not in whatever weird thing it was that I’d just experienced, but out there, in the night. Not a fun scream. Not a playing around and being young and boisterous and drunk scream. No, this was a blood-curdler. A real, “For God’s sake, won’t somebody help me?” scream.

  I ran at the sound.

  As I burst out of the dark of the alley into the comparatively bright square, my foot kicked something heavy and I found myself sprawling over the obstruction and tumbling to the cobbles, my head bouncing painfully as it connected with the ground.

  I lay there for a few seconds, getting my breathing under control and trying to decide whether to throw up or not. I went with not. I pushed myself into a sitting position, the world tilting, and gingerly fingered my throbbing temple. I could already feel a lump rising like I was a cartoon cat who’d been struck over the head with a frying pan.

  Feeling stupid for not looking where I was going, I peered behind me to see what I’d tripped over. I was expecting to see a bag of rubbish, or perhaps a tree root pushing up from a crack in the cobbles. What I was not expecting to see was the body of a woman with her throat torn out.

  No, I wasn’t expecting that at all.

  2

  The pain in my head forgotten, I shuffled over to the prone body laid out flat on her back. I swallowed, throat dry, a metallic tang in my mouth that made me want to gag.

  ‘Hey…’ I said, my voice emerging as an arid whisper. ‘Are you… are you okay…?’

  Yes, it was a stupid question, but I think I can be forgiven f
or it, bearing in mind the circumstances. After all, it’s not every day one happens across a violently murdered woman.

  She looked to be in her early thirties, her eyes still wide and staring blankly up at nothing. What was the last thing those eyes saw, I wondered. At what point had she realised her life was about to be given a savage, painful full stop? I felt a fist of anger clench in my stomach.

  Now I was closer, I could see that not all of the blood on the ground was made up of random splashes and sprays. Some of it looked as though it been arranged in patterns. Deliberate shapes. Symbols written in an occult-looking language that made me feel strange to look at. It was almost like the shapes quivered. Like they buzzed with a dark energy. Impossible though, surely? I concentrated again on the blood and found it static this time. I must have been imagining things. A product of bashing my skull on those cobbles no doubt.

  Had the tramp murdered this woman? She’d come this way, but surely she couldn’t have had time to do this. But then where was she? Who carries on running after stumbling across a dead body?

  Hand shaking, I reached out and tried for a pulse just in case I was wrong. I was not wrong. I shivered; not because of the cold of the night, but because her flesh was already cool to the touch, which was, well, wrong. This had happened recently. The blood was still wet, recently spilled. I looked at the ragged tear in her throat. At the blood pooling out onto the ground, mingling with her long, red hair. What could do that? A knife? Or—

  Another scream.

  Okay, this was too much. This was all much too much. It was dark and scary and dangerous, and it was stupid to even think about going anywhere near that scream. I’m no hero. I should have been getting as far away as possible and calling the police so they could get their arses into gear and sort this out. So why were my stupid feet carrying me smack bang into danger?

  ‘Stupid, stupid feet.’

  I crossed the little square in record-breaking time and raced down another alleyway. This time it didn’t open up, but turned left, then right, before finally emerging onto a back street behind a row of shops. As I stepped out I had the forethought to look at the ground to make sure I didn’t go tumbling over another dead body.

  No dead body. That was a good start.

  I looked around, eyes and ears straining for any indication of danger, my every nerve ending feeling like it was tingling, achingly alive. There were large, overflowing bins and big metal skips. Gates leading into shop backyards. Another alley in the distance, leading the way out. Plenty of places to hide. To lurk. To coil up and pounce on anyone foolhardy enough to investigate.

  Everything was quiet, like the back alley was holding its breath to see what would happen next. I hoped it was something nice and not at all deathy.

  Okay, Joe, get a hold of yourself.

  Something moved: a shape, a dark patch of the world, something my eyes wanted to ignore.

  It leapt from the shadows and barged into me, knocking me down. As I headed for the ground I reached out to grab hold of something—some clothing, a limb, anything—and my fingers brushed against something wet and cold and—

  Hunger, Hunger, Hunger.

  So many screams, so much blood, and Christ, the need, the need, it never stops, never ceases, it’s just there-there-there, demanding more, and they scream as I approach and I like that, I exist for that moment, and then the feast! The feast! I can gorge on their fear and their… the fox waved, I could see his face smiling back at me. The fox wore a little helmet and seemed over the moon that I was—

  It cut out as quick as it started, the terrible hunger, the taste in my mouth, the overpowering need to gorge on… on awful things, was pulled away and I was on my knees, teeth bared, fingers digging painfully into my chest. Wincing, I pulled my hands away and sagged, panting, glad that whatever had just happened was over.

  But of course it wasn’t over. There was more horror to come.

  I looked to where the… the thing, the dark shape, had emerged from… and saw two feet sticking out. Another woman. Another corpse. What the hell was happening? All I’d been doing was a little light stalking and I’d stepped into a nightmare.

  ‘Help… help…’

  She was alive. Holy buggering shit, she was still alive!

  I scrabbled over on my hands and knees to find her curled up, bloodied, but still breathing.

  ‘Ha ha! Fuck you, you murdering twat!’

  I must have surprised the attacker; spooked them before they finished the job.

  ‘Please… please…’

  ‘Hey, hi, it’s okay, don’t worry, it’s okay.’ I burbled these and other words at the woman, relief washing over me as my hands fluttered over her, trying to make sure she didn’t have anything immediately life-threatening, like a cleaver sticking out of her neck. She flinched away at first, or at least tried to.

  ‘I’m still in me. I’m still in me,’ she croaked.

  ‘What? What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t take it, please, please, it’s mine, it’s…’

  ‘It’s okay, don’t panic, you’re going to be okay. What’s your name?’

  But that’s all she managed to squeeze out before she shuddered and passed out. I yanked out my phone and dialled for an ambulance, praying to God, Buddha, and whatever those alien ghost things are Tom Cruise believes in, that she’d hang on until they arrived.

  3

  The chairs in hospital waiting rooms always seem to have been chosen with your discomfort in mind.

  I sat, dog-tired and wide awake, in one such object of torture as the strip lighting overhead coughed and spluttered and did its best to tease out a fresh migraine.

  ‘Chloe will be out in a minute, love,’ said Big Marge from behind her reception desk. Big Marge was in her late fifties, with enormous barmaid hair and a neck that, through some optical quirk, appeared to be thicker than the head perched on top.

  ‘Thanks, Marge.’ I dragged myself up, headed over to the coffee machine, and got myself a disgusting styrofoam cupful.

  ‘What exactly were you doing out there in the middle of the night, anyway?’

  ‘Just, you know… exercise. General walky exercise. Leg stuff. Circulation is important. You don’t want to clot. Never want to clot. Clots are killers.’

  Big Marge looked me up and down, ‘Mm-hmm…’ There was a rumour in the hospital that Marge used to earn money traveling around unsavoury pub backrooms and beating all comers in arm wrestling bouts. Knowing her the way I did, I saw no reason to doubt that.

  I was no stranger to Carlisle Hospital, or to Big Marge. I work at the hospital as a caretaker, cleaner, and all round handyman. It pays terribly, and the canteen lunches do nothing for my figure, but it pays the bills and allows me plenty of freedom. I used to wonder what job I’d had before I woke up with my life missing, but nothing sparked any sense of recognition, and I couldn’t for the life of me find a stand-out aptitude in myself that helped narrow things down. As far as I could make out, I wasn’t that great at most things. The idea that perhaps I was a homeless person, a drifter, like my mysterious lady friend, was starting to make a lot of sense

  ‘You Joseph Lake?’

  I jumped at the unexpected intrusion, causing piping-hot coffee to spill over my fingers. I swore and waggled my hand around like I was trying to fling off a piece of sticky tape. A woman in a sensible suit and a dark red leather jacket stood before me, screaming “police” from every pore. She was also black, which is a rare sight indeed in Cumbria. Around here you are about as likely to stumble across a troll under a bridge as you are an individual not sporting a pasty white face.

  ‘Hi!’ I said. ‘Sorry, I didn’t hear you sneaking up on me.’ I held up my burnt fingers, which were already turning a nice shade of rouge. ‘Good job we’re in a hospital, eh? Efficient.’

  ‘I didn’t sneak up on you, I walked up on you.’ Her voice was clipped and to the point. She seemed like the kind of person who didn’t like to waste ten words when six would do the job
just fine.

  ‘Well, that is one light-footed walk you have there. You’d make a great thief, you could walk right into a sleeping person’s bedroom and clear the place out without making a peep.’

  ‘I’m not a thief.’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’

  ‘Nor a murderer.’

  ‘Great, me neither. Messy business; plus not a huge fan of blood. I mean, I’m a big fan of it when it stays inside our bodies, in its proper, you know, “venue,” but not when it gets out and about.’

  ‘You Joseph Lake?’

  ‘Of course, I do come across blood quite a lot, as you can probably imagine,’ I said, gesturing around my place of work, ‘I think that’s actually helped me master the distaste a little. Otherwise, stumbling across the kind of thing I did tonight would have sent me into a puke frenzy.’ I mimed puking. ‘Which actually is great for another reason as I have a weird phobia about throwing up outdoors.’

  ‘Please answer the question.’

  ‘I am Joseph Lake,’ I said quickly. ‘Well, not really. Joseph Lake is what I decided to call myself. Sorry, long story.’

  ‘Woke up by a lake, memory loss, I’ve already heard it.’

  ‘Oh, okay.’

  ‘So, you’re Joseph Lake?’

  ‘Yes ma’am.’

  She looked at me with disdain, sniffed, and pulled out her regulation notepad. She had a natural, scary authority to her that was at once terrifying and deeply attractive. I was pretty sure she could beat the crap out of me with little to no effort.

  ‘Are you new? I asked. ‘I’ve not seen you around here before.’

  ‘Been here a couple of months. Transferred from London.’