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

by David Bussell

  I stared at the woman in silent astonishment.

  ‘Very rude way to treat a guest, and I should know, I always treat guests terribly.’

  ‘You!’

  She lifted a plastic bag and gave it a shake. ‘I just went on a beer run, d’you want one?’

  She placed the bag next to her on the couch, pulled out a can, cracked it open, and downed it in one.

  ‘You!’ I cried. ‘Here! In my home!’

  She reached into the bag again and retrieved a fresh can of very cheap-looking lager.

  A thought struck: ‘My car. Did you fix my car after the crash?’

  The woman shrugged. ‘Maybe. Needed to get your heavy arse to the hospital and I wasn’t going to carry you the whole bloody way. I’m not as young as I was, you know.’

  ‘How? How did you do that? Because the Uncanny Wagon was wrecked. And now, it’s, well, not!’

  ‘You know,’ she said, before burping and carrying on, ‘I think there’s something I’m forgetting.’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘Oh, yep, got it.’

  That’s when I felt the mad woman’s knuckles connect with my left cheek, followed by the floor connecting with my right cheek.

  ‘Ow.’

  ‘Too fucking right,’ she replied.

  I sat up, clutching my face. ‘I think that’s a first. I don’t think anyone’s ever hit me before.’

  ‘Not true,’ replied the woman, opening her second drink. ‘I’ve hit you before, you piece of shit. Here,’ she tossed a cold can my way. ‘Press it against your cheek. Or drink it. Or both.’ She cast a look about the room. ‘You know, this is a very small flat. You must be doing terribly; I can’t say how much that pleases me. Did I call you a piece of shit already?’

  I nodded. ‘You also punched me.’

  ‘Oh yeah! Ha, good times, you piece of shit.’

  I stood, keeping my distance as I opened the can and took a sip. ’You save me, you attack me, you fix my car. You’re a very confusing person.’

  The woman flopped on the couch then grabbed the remote and turned on the TV.

  ‘So…?’ I said.

  ‘D’you get the wrestling? I like the wrestling. D’you remember Big Daddy? Now there was a fighter. And Giant Haystacks. Of course, these days it’s all about the American wrestling. Sure, they bring a little extra polish and razza-ma-tazz to the thing, but for my money, you can’t beat those classic, Seventies and Eighties British wrestlers. Kendo Nagasaki! I met him once. Odd feller. Had me ejected from his home on account of the fact I’d broken in and shouldn’t have been there.’

  ‘I can empathise with that,’ I replied. ‘Can we please get back on topic though?’

  ‘Ha, that’s me, wandering all over the shop. I’ve yet to meet a tangent I didn’t love, you know. Now Rowdy Roddy Piper—if we’re talking the American wrestling world—there was a man I did have time for...’

  It was more than a little exasperating. I tried my best shot to bring the conversation back on track. ‘Me, Joseph, you…?’

  ‘...A woman fighting an overwhelming urge to squeeze your neck until that head of yours pops like a balloon.’

  A mad homeless woman in my front room and an octopus-person corpse in my bathroom. That mental reboot was looking to be right around the corner.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but there’s a dead monster in my bath – a dead monster that you killed with your fist.’

  She raised her right hand, which was now engulfed in blue flame. ‘Right hand of doom.’

  ‘How… how are you doing that?’

  ‘With ease,’ she said, and winked at me.

  ‘Yup, I’ve gone mad. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘No. Not this time. Not yet, at least. And if you do, I’ll twat you one.’

  ‘What do you mean, “not this time”?’ The woman fell silent. ‘Look, you break into my home, dump a body in my bath, drop all sorts of hints about who I am... I think I’m owed an explanation!’

  The woman gently placed down her can of beer, then stood, fixing me with darkening eyes. ‘Owed? There’s only one thing you’re owed,’ she replied, her left fist igniting with blue flames too now.

  I backed up until the front door pressed against my rear end, ‘Now, come on, let’s not get out of hand here. Hulk Hogan! He’s a wrestler.’

  I yelled in surprise as a sudden, hard knock landed on the front door.

  The woman shook her hands and the fire sputtered our. ‘See who it is.’

  I peeped through the door’s spy hole. It was detectives Maya Myers and Sam Samm.

  ‘Well of course it is,’ I said, then added a, ‘Shit shitting shit,’ for good measure.

  15

  As the door was knocked again I did the dithering from one foot to the other, dancing on the spot thing you only ever see in old, farcical sitcoms.

  ‘Mr Lake?’ came Detective Maya Myers’ voice.

  ‘Maybe if I stay quiet they’ll go away?’ I hissed at the homeless woman.

  ‘I can hear you,’ replied Maya.

  ‘No, you can’t,’ I said. It was worth a shot.

  ‘Yes I can.’

  Damn.

  This was bad. I had two detectives behind one door and a weird corpse behind another. It might have been the corpse of a monster, but a corpse nonetheless.

  ‘Yes, sorry, just a… joke?’

  I heard Detective Samm with two ‘m’s’ laugh, then stop. ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘One moment, just need to make myself decent,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Decent, I’m completely naked, stuff flapping all over the place!’

  I turned to the homeless woman and gestured wildly, unable to find the words to accompany the hands.

  ‘Just don’t let them in the bathroom,’ she said, then shuffled in there, closing the door behind her.

  Right then. Crap.

  I smoothed down my clothes, gave my hair a quick ruffle, and opened the door sporting the largest and fakest of fake grins ever committed to a face.

  ‘Detectives! What a pleasure!’

  ‘Hm,’ replied Maya, walking in, Detective Samm at her heel.

  I closed the door and turned to the two detectives, my eyes involuntarily flicking to the closed bathroom door.

  ‘I like your home,’ said Detective Samm. ‘Cosy.’

  ‘Yes. Thanks. Thank you.’

  ‘I have a really big, four bedroom place in Carlisle. Huge.’

  ‘Well, that must be awful.’

  Detective Samm nodded, sadly.

  Maya was eyeing me. She must have blinked at least once but it didn’t feel like it. Could she sense something was up? Could she smell the corpse on the other side of the bathroom door?

  ‘You seem nervous, Mr Lake,’ she noted.

  ‘Me? Nervous? Am I nervous? I don't feel nervous,’ I replied, nervously.

  ‘Your voice is all high-pitched, you’re sweating, and you’re breathing heavily.’

  ‘Um… yup. That’s because… because of this thing that I am about to say...’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Right, well, it’s because I was just… jogging? Jogging.’

  ‘Jogging?’

  ‘Jogging.’ I performed a little jog on the spot by way of illustration, then stopped as that’s obviously an insane thing to do. She knew what jogging was.

  ‘So you’ve just been jogging, naked, inside your tiny flat?’

  ‘Yep, in here. Forty laps around the front room. I’d jog outside but… all those car fumes, and the hard paving stones are murder on my ankles. My body's a temple, Detective.’

  Maya narrowed her eyes then turned away. I think I’d gotten away with that. Pretty slick, Joe.

  ‘Bullshit,’ barked Myers.

  Pretty, pretty slick.

  ‘Is there a reason for this very welcome visit?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Detective Maya Myers. ‘Firstly, you have yet to come to the station to g
ive an official statement about the incident involving Mary Taylor and Janet Coyle. Any reason for the delay?’

  Monsters, cats, talking foxes.

  ‘Just busy. Work and stuff. Slipped my mind. Sorry.’

  ‘And then we were informed that you were involved in an accident.’

  ‘Oh, yes, that was just… a cat. As I told Chloe. Just swerved to avoid a cat. My own fault.’

  ‘Hm. Well, we’re going to accompany you to the station and get that statement off you now, Mr Lake.’

  Ah, good. Going to the station meant leaving; leaving the mad woman and the monster corpse in my bath tub. This was very, very good.

  ‘Great! Off we go then, can’t wait, a trip to a police station, always a pleasure.’ I slipped my coat on ready to skip out of the door.

  ‘Your bathroom.’

  And there went my heart, diving into my stomach.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I replied.

  ‘Your bathroom, is it through there?’

  ‘Why? Shall we go?’ I said, pointing to the front door.

  Maya headed for the closed bathroom door. ‘I just need to quickly use your toilet, too much coffee.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘No?’ she replied, turning to me, hand on the door handle.

  ‘It’s just, I haven’t bleached it in months. I’m… embarrassed to have a lady use it.’

  ‘I’m not a lady right now, I’m a detective.’

  She turned the handle and stepped in. I darted across the room and joined her inside.

  ‘I can usually handle a piss on my own, Mr Lake.’

  I looked around, bewildered. There was no sign of the homeless woman, and no sign of any monster corpse in the bath tub. There weren’t even any blood stains left on the white plastic. I did a little turn, peering around the tiny bathroom in astonishment.

  ‘Mr Lake?’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Why are you in here?’

  ‘I just… I thought I’d used up the last of the loo roll, but nope. There it is, hung the right way and everything.’

  ‘I see it, Mr Lake.’

  We stood in silence for a few seconds.

  ‘Mr Lake?’

  ‘Yes, Detective Myers?’

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘Yes, Detective Myers.’

  With a final, confused look around the bathroom, I stepped out, the door closing behind me, and re-joined Detective Samm.

  ‘She’s just peeing,’ I said. ‘By herself. No one else in there at all. Which is not strange, or scary, it’s very, very normal.’

  16

  I wasn’t exactly a stranger to police stations, but I can’t say I’d ever felt exactly at ease inside of one.

  For a while there, after first waking with a blank history next to Derwentwater, this station had been a regular haunt. Numerous questions on the part of the police, and numerous visits from myself, desperately hoping for an update on my situation. A crumb of hope I could gobble up.

  I hadn’t visited for several years now due to a terminal lack of movement on my case, which I presumed was still, technically, open. The station looked exactly the same. From the looks of things, they weren’t planning on renovating the place until it started raining down on their heads.

  It was evening now, fast approaching midnight, and I was sat in a small, grim-looking room with Detective Sam Samm sat across a table from me.

  I feigned looking over my written statement, nodding, and hmmming, then nodding some more.

  ‘Does that look about right?’ asked Detective Samm.

  ‘Yup,’ I replied as I grabbed the pen and scribbled my name on the dotted line. ‘That sounds about right.’ Apart from not mentioning monsters with a beak for a face and giant, haunting, yellow eyes the size of teacup saucers.

  ‘Well then, that’s that,’ I said, sliding the signed statement back across the table.

  ‘Great! Very helpful of you.’

  ‘So, any leads yet?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Well, no, not exactly. Just the strange wiggles painted in blood, but we don’t know what those mean. And we’ve put them through the computer and everything.’

  Hm, that was a good idea, I should have done that. If the police computer had found nothing, that meant they weren’t your everyday occult symbols. These were something else. Or just gibberish.

  ‘I’m sure something will turn up,’ I said. ‘I have the utmost faith in you, Detective Samm.’

  ‘Thank you very much. I know I’m not the best detective on the force, but I’m learning a lot working with Detective Myers. She really knows her stuff.’

  ‘Yes, she seems very nice for a scary woman.’

  Detective Samm laughed. ‘Oh, don’t mind that. She likes to put on a front but she doesn’t fool me.’

  ‘Hey, why is she working here, anyway? Why would a detective from London relocate to this backwater station?’

  ‘All I know is her last partner was killed on the job and shortly after, here she was.’

  Well that was interesting. And sad, of course. Sounded like she’d left behind a few ghosts.

  Detective Samm sat forward suddenly, his brow knitted. ‘Wait, I probably shouldn’t have told you that. Oh dear.’

  ‘That’s okay, Detective Samm, I won’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Phew, thanks,’ he replied, relaxing back into his chair. ‘She’s the best partner I’ve ever had. The only one who doesn’t make fun of me. Well, doesn’t make too much fun, anyway. I think she’s making me better.’

  The door to the interrogation room opened and Maya stepped in, a styrofoam cup of coffee in hand. ‘All done?’

  Detective Samm waved the signed statement at her.

  ‘So, am I good to go?’ I asked.

  ‘Good to go. Unless there was something else you wanted to let me know,’ Myers replied.

  ‘Like…?’

  ‘You tell me. It’s obvious you have something on your mind. Something that scares you.’

  She was one perceptive woman.

  ‘Nope. Nothing going on up in this noggin.’

  She placed the coffee cup down on the table and leaned over until our faces were so close I could feel her breath.

  ‘I don’t like it when people lie to my face, Mr Lake, and I don’t like it when people keep things from me. You’re doing both.’

  I went to speak but she cut me off.

  ‘Don’t bother denying it. You have a piece of this thing that you’re not ready to hand over for some reason, but hand it over you will. You want to know why?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Because people are dying, and it’s my job to stop them dying, and that means I will not stop until I have what I need. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Understood.’

  She straightened up, lifting her cup to her lips and taking a sip of vending machine coffee. ‘Well? Are you going to tell me now or are you going to continue to piss me off?’

  I stood and pulled my coat off the back of the chair, sliding it on. ‘I’m really a bit bushed. Need to get home, I’m on an early shift at the hospital.’

  She grimaced at me. ‘Get out of my sight.’

  I nodded and headed for the door.

  ‘Mr Lake?’

  I paused.

  ‘You will tell me. Sooner or later, you’ll tell me. People are dead and I have a bad feeling that more deaths are going to follow.’

  I pulled my coat closed and strode out the door.

  To say I felt like a glob of sputum hawked out of some drunk’s throat was something of an understatement. Maya was right. People had died, maybe more would, and I was keeping my cards under the table. But what else could I do? There was no way she or anyone else in authority was going to believe what I had to say. I wasn’t even sure I believed all of it.

  The dark outside matched my mood as I steered the Uncanny Wagon home. Maybe it was all over. The murders at least. The thing that had attacked Mary Taylor and me, and that had murdered Janet Coyle, was dead. A crazy woman had punch
ed her fist through the thing’s head, and the last time I saw it, its leftovers were curled up in my bath tub, more than a little dead. Maybe that would be it. Maybe it was all over.

  No, I didn’t believe me either, but I was trying to perk up my gloomy spirit, okay?

  The first thing I did upon arriving home was dart into the bathroom and check the tub. It was still empty. No monster corpse, no blood, no nothing. I leaned close, even clambered inside the thing, looking for any trace that it had been there.

  Not a trace. Not a clue.

  This was rapidly returning to the “I’m crazy and about to have a breakdown” idea. Because the only time the body had been there, the only time the homeless woman had been there, was when I was alone. As soon as someone else entered my world, the strange stuff that nobody would believe, disappeared.

  I saw the plastic bag sat on the couch, three cans from the six-pack still inside.

  That didn’t prove anything, I told myself. As part of my delusion, maybe I’d gone out and bought the beer and then, you know, forgotten.

  I sat next to the bag, pulling one out and taking a swig of warm beer, before firing up my laptop and heading to my website. The mysterious reply, and my responses, remained unanswered.

  Again, what did that prove?

  I typed Hey, if you’re real, you left your beer behind.

  I waited for a few minutes to see if the woman would reply, or suddenly stride back into my flat with a few choice swears to toss in my direction, but I sat alone and silent. I closed my laptop and slumped back, slowly working my way through the rest of my drink. I touched the can to my cheek where the woman’s knuckles had connected. There was a bruise there alright, but still, that wasn’t proof of anything. I could have walked into any old door frame.

  I needed to talk to Mary Tyler, if she was up to it. She was the only one besides me that I knew for a fact was real and had been face to face with the killer. Maybe she could settle this, one way or another.

  I worked my way through another can, then went to bed, where I dreamt about the woman with red hair and her throne of skulls.

  17

  Far too early the next morning, I strode into the reception of Carlisle Hospital, ready for another shift of poop and puke mopping, bulb-changing, and general dogsbody work.