The novelty of our union soon wore off. When the hoo-ha died down, the trust fund dried up, and the reality of the situation kicked in, Sarah came to realise that she’d ended up the butt of her own joke. Gone was the risqué, anarchic affair with the unschooled bit of rough, replaced by a loveless marriage to a guy who called himself an exorcist and made less than minimum wage.
Standing by the coffin filled with my cadaver, I felt my ring finger itch and fidgeted with my wedding band. Somehow that always seemed to happen when Sarah popped into my head. I’d have gotten rid of the thing, but since I died under that train wearing it, I’m stuck with it forever now. On the plus side, I was wearing a nice suit too when I curled up my toes, which means, as a ghost, I’m always dressed in my Sunday best. Then again, looking spiffy at your own funeral is kind of a mixed bag, emotionally speaking.
But where was I? Oh right, yes, my untimely end.
Like I said, Sarah put her lover, my ex-partner in the exorcist trade, up to killing me. She did it partly for financial reasons—to stop me getting my hands on her family's considerable wealth, despite the fact that I had no interest whatsoever in milking the Godfrey fortune—but most of all, I think she did it out of pride. Divorcing me would have been an admission of defeat, and Sarah didn’t like to lose. The woman’s a real ice queen like that.
A new song came on the funeral playlist; some generic, grinding bit of organ music from a royalty free hymn catalogue. It wasn’t for me. My playlist would have been wall-to-wall Maiden, maybe with some Judas Priest thrown in, since this was a religious occasion. As I suffered through the gloomy dirge, asking myself who put this shitshow together, the likely culprit appeared.
My older sister, Janet, long estranged. She was there with a young boy, hers presumably, and a middle-aged man with a head so bald and shiny that I felt confident I could have seen my reflection in it, were I not invisible. The years had not been kind to Janet, whose naturally hawkish features were now at odds with the rest of her body, which had turned into a sort of reverse hourglass.
Janet and I had fallen out a long time ago, back when we were teenagers. I’d put an ultimatum to her then, demanding she pick a side. It was either me or Mum. Who’s it going to be? I demanded: Your brother of fourteen, who looks up to you like a surrogate mother, or our actual mother, a cruel, resentful alcoholic who knocks me about on a daily basis.
She chose Mum.
According to Janet, our mother didn’t mean it, she was just “sick” and needed “help.” Never mind that her little brother was catching a beating every day just for the sin of looking like the dad that ran out on us. Never mind that she once punched me in the face so hard she managed to dislodge a retina. Never mind all that.
So I went it alone. I waited until I was legally an adult, then I moved out, got a job, saved a little money, and enrolled in college on a hard luck scholarship. Once I was out of that house, I never looked back. I went to uni, I made some new friends, and I started studying the occult between art classes. That lead me to becoming an exorcist, which in turn, led to me getting pushed under a train and wearing a pine overcoat.
I looked to the coffin. My life had amounted to little more than a pile of mistakes, one bad decision stacked on top of another. A ladder to failure, and eventually, to death at the hands of my own wife. I felt my ring finger itch again and struggled to pull my wedding band off, knowing full well that it was going nowhere.
I watched my sister pay her respects to my gussied-up corpse and wondered where the rest of my family had gotten to. I was totally out of the loop about that lot these days. I’d hear things on the grapevine from time to time: Granny Rice won a sum at the bingo, Dad died of a heart attack, Mum was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver. That last one came as no surprise; she was probably at home drinking right now. She'd been a boozer forever, since before I arrived on the scene even. It's a wonder I wasn't born pickled, really.
I caught sight of a stray funeral programme and saw my sister’s name listed under the credits, confirming that she was, as suspected, the person who’d arranged this sorry little shindig. Trust a member of my own family to know the least about me. If Janet knew anything about her kid brother, she’d never have seen him buried on church ground, she’d have dumped his old bones off the nearest cliff instead of wasting her money on this pantomime. Not that she'd spent much on what was, at best, the minimum viable product of a funeral. At least she’d made the effort though, even if it was the very definition of too little too late.
The whole affair had made me feel rather miserable, but from the looks of things, I was the only one. Scanning the rest of the “mourners”, I saw expressions ranging from bored, to tired, to downright indifferent. Even my own sister remained offensively stoic. There truly wasn’t a wet eye in the house. What a shower of bastards, I thought. Is it asking too much to expect some crying at your funeral? Some heartfelt sobs, a dab of the eye, a bit of smeared mascara? Holy shit, was that kid of Janet’s playing Candy Crush on his iPhone?
I had to get out of there. I took one last look at my lifeless body, then left the building with glide in my stride, marching through the exterior wall and arriving outside to an ashtray sky. The weather had turned miserable fast. The air was heavy and primed for a storm, but the elements were no threat to me now. As I headed off, taking the shortest route out of there, I passed through the church cemetery. Row upon row of white marble tombstones sprouted from the manicured grass, each of them perfectly polished and identical to the rest, except for the inscription it bore. I noticed that one of the burial plots was open and freshly-dug, and inspected its headstone to discover a familiar title.
JAKE FLETCHER.
There was no middle name written on the tombstone, because I don't have one. There’s a reason for that. Just like my mother, my errant father was also a boozer. He never beat me (as far as I can remember), but his drinking left a mark on me all the same. He left the biggest one the day I was born.
The story goes that he was so drunk when my mum delivered me, that when the midwife handed him a birth certificate to write the newborn’s name, he scribbled his own down instead. Apparently, he got confused and thought he was signing for a package.
Yup.
So, that’s the story of how I became Jake Fletcher, a dead man with his deadbeat dad’s name.
Yeah, go ahead and laugh.
3
That all went down five years ago.
Since then, I've seen some pretty big changes in my kind-of life. I managed to get a handle on the whole being a ghost thing, I made some spooky new friends, and I even found a vocation as a detective (with a pretty decent client roster, I might add).
As for the people that turned me into a ghost in the first place, their fate has been a mixed bag. Father Damon O’Meara was found guilty of murder and given a life sentence, currently serving time at Her Majesty’s Wormwood Scrubs Prison. And Sarah? Well, despite her role in my homicide, my treacherous wife is the only one of us whose situation stayed the same. Instead of being indicted, Sarah kept out of jail on account of her family being filthy rich. The wealthy don't suffer for their misdeeds, at least not for long. Sarah didn't so much as catch a slap on the wrist for plotting my downfall. Thanks to the services of her high-priced team of lawyers, she sidestepped a conspiracy to murder charge and never saw a day in court. That's how it is in the land of the living, the guilty get off scot-free. The real judgment... that comes later. In Hell.
Oh yeah, Hell is the real deal. It's not a place for your common or garden sins. It's not for drunks and over-eaters and adulterers. It's not for parents who lose their rag and give the kid a clip around the ear. Hell is for people who know what they’re doing is wrong and get on with it regardless. Hell is for people who take pleasure in the pain of others. Who revel in taking what isn’t theirs. Hell is the place where killers and bankers stand shoulder to shoulder. Hell is the place Damon and Sarah are headed, and there’s nothing they can do to avoid it.
; Not that I'm bitter. Really. It's not healthy for a ghost to obsess about things that happened to them pre-death. You've got to move on. Look to the future. Tomorrow's a new day and all that. Yes, I still live among the breathers, stuck between their world and the next, but I try not to get caught up in all their to-do. I've got bigger fish to fry. I have a soul of my own to save.
My conscience is far from squeaky clean. Since I died and became a phantom, I’ve become aware of some black marks on my record. Black marks that I’ll need to expunge in order to save my immortal soul and gain entry to the Good Place. Right now I’m blackballed from that little club, at least until I earn my VIP pass, which may be a long time coming. See, after I took a trip to slab city, I learned a few things about my former life, chief of which was the fact that I was a serial killer.
Yeah, I was surprised too.
Apparently, I’d been spree-killing with gay abandon, not because I wanted to, but because I had no idea I was doing it in the first place.
I should clarify what I mean before I lose you completely.
Like I said earlier, back when I was alive, I plied my trade as an exorcist. My specialism was house cleanses. Let me be clear here; I didn’t cleanse properties of their residents (which would be counterproductive, seeing as they paid my bills), no, I cleansed properties of infernal invaders. Poltergeists and demonic entities. Got a case of the bleeding walls and mysterious chills? Call Jake (no middle name) Fletcher. Get yourself in trouble mucking around with a ouija board? Give me a bell. Little Timmy chucking up pea soup and doing the spinny head thing? I'm your huckleberry.
I was good at my job. Too good, I realise now. See, it turns out that exorcism isn’t a one-stop shop. What’s good for the goose isn’t good for the gander, by which I mean exorcisms are for demons, not for ghosts. Common consensus in the exorcism community (not a booming community, I’ll grant you) is that cleanses send demons back to Hell, and transport lingering spirits to their final reward. It’s certainly the understanding I was operating on, but having learned the truth of the matter, it seems I was off.
Way off.
Here’s what I know now: when you perform the ritual of exorcism on a human spirit, you destroy that spirit. You’re not showing it the way home, you’re not releasing it into the wild like some freed animal, you’re destroying it, once and for all. Which means I had personally overseen the obliteration of hundreds, possibly thousands, of innocent souls. A spook slaughter, if you will. As far as I knew, I was just doing a job, but in truth, I was going from house to house, exterminating human souls like the Rentokil man exterminates cockroaches.
So yeah, like I say, I’m a long way from having a spotless record.
I work hard to right my wrongs though. Since I earned a stay of execution for my sins, I’ve made it my personal mission to do things properly this time. I can’t undo the damage I’ve done, but I have enough knowledge of the way things work now to be able to send spirits off the right way. Instead of going at the problem like I’m swatting at a piñata, I make contact with a spirit, ghost-to-ghost, and detach them from their locality by healing the trauma that trapped them there in the first place. More often than not, that means solving their murder. Once the person responsible for killing them is brought to justice, they get to go Upstairs, and I earn some much-needed karma, bringing me one step closer to entering the pearly gates myself.
It’s a win win.
So far it’s proved a tough gig. Since I started in this line of work, I've come up against demons, fought vampires, and even bumped fists with the Grim Reaper himself. And yet, despite it all, I persist. I get the job done. I gather the clues, I collar the bad guys, and I give my clients what they need to pass on to the Great Beyond.
When I have any clients, that is.
Work's been a bit slow lately, and when I say “slow”, I mean practically nonexistent. For the past two weeks I’d been sat in my office with my thumb up my arse, staring at my telephone and begging it to ring. Instead, it just sat there, quiet as a nun.
My office is based on the top floor of a five-storey warehouse in Chalk Farm. As well as being my place of business, it also serves as a general hangout spot; somewhere I can kick my heels and while away the hours between jobs. My one-man agency—Fletcher Investigations (don’t bother looking for it on the Companies House website)—operates out of the primo, south-west corner office, and offers a grand, panoramic view of the surrounding Camden area. The inside is a lot less impressive. There’s little to look at there except for a knackered desk, some dented filing cabinets, and an outmoded TV/DVD player combo that I use to watch old ghost movies (mainly so I can rail on them for their factual inconsistencies).
Before I moved in, the building was an old gin distillery, about to be converted into luxury flats at the whim of an Israeli billionaire. Sadly, the refurbishment was put on hold due to the building being—would you believe it?—haunted. It started with cold spots, flickering lights, and mysterious creaking sounds, until finally the place went full-on Amityville Horror and the property’s investors went running for the hills. Awful business. If I ever get my hands on the disruptive, malicious, and no doubt rakishly handsome phantom responsible for that poor billionaire’s misfortune, well, I just don’t know what I’ll do.
Since the developers abandoned the place and construction ground to a halt, the building has fallen into a state of disrepair. Cobwebs lace the walls, the dust lies undisturbed, and a damp patch has appeared on the ceiling above my desk that’s so severe it looks as though somebody drew a bath of gravy upstairs and forgot to turn off the tap.
I sighed and felt my eyes go to the phone again. Time moves at a crawl when there’s nothing to occupy an idling brain, particularly when sleep isn’t on the cards. As a ghost, I don’t get tired, which means I’m fully cognizant from dusk till dawn. Don’t get me wrong, not sleeping has its advantages, particularly when it comes to working night shifts and sitting endless stakeouts, but the tradeoff is that I have to find things to do with myself while the rest of the world sleeps off its day.
This evening, I was all out of ideas. I was bored, bored, bored, and lonely with it. Maybe it was time I went legit and employed an assistant for a bit of company. A smart-mouth secretary I could enjoy some sassy repartee with, like in those old film noirs. But then what would I pay her with? It’s not like I make any money in this game, seeing as I basically take my fee in good vibes.
I went to look out of the window to stare out at the night, but the moment I took my eye off the phone, it rang, sending it skittering across my desk.
Surprised, I checked my wrist watch for the time. It had gone midnight already. Who’d be calling at this hour?
I caught the phone on the second ring, scooped it up and flipped it over. The Caller ID displayed a familiar name.
Jazz Hands.
Jazz is a spellbinder I know, the proprietor of a magic shop in King’s Cross that sells stage magic to regular punters, while providing bona fide enchantments to me, your friendly neighbourhood spectre-man.
The last thing I expected was to see Jazzer’s name on my phone. Sure, she was the one who’d made the phone usable to me in the first place, but in all the time I’d known her, she’d never once called up for a chat. There it was though, right there, plain as day: CALLING: JAZZ HANDS. It didn't look right. Seeing her name on my phone’s display felt like finding a shopping trolley on the moon. All wrong.
I swiped the answer button and put the phone to my ear. ‘You’ve reached the spook house, who’s calling?’
Jazzer’s voice arrived as a sharp whisper. ‘Fletcher, I need you at the shop right now. There’s been a break-in.’
It struck me as a bit late for house calls, and much as I’d been yearning for some company, being around Jazz is way too much like hard work. Don’t get me wrong, I love the woman to bits, but she’s got this nagging, motherly affection for me that makes me want to slam doors and scream at her like a disaffected teenager.
‘I’m
a bit tied up at the moment,’ I lied. ‘Why don’t you nail a bit of chipboard over the broken window, and I’ll be over first thing in the morning.’
‘Don’t bullshit me,’ she said in a snakelike hiss. ‘You get your undead arse over here right now!’
Like I say, the woman can be a bit of an alarmist. ‘Don't have a spaz, Jazz,’ I told her. ‘Get some kip and I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘I swear to God, Fletcher—’ she started, her anger still strangely muted.
‘What are you whispering for, Jazz?’ I asked, wondering why she was keeping the volume down. ‘Have you got someone there you don’t want to wake up? Is that it? You dog!’
I heard her teeth grinding on the end of the line. ‘I’m whispering because the burglar is still on the premises, you gobshite! Now get here this minute or I swear to God I will beat you where it doesn't show.’
4
I was there in an instant, and I mean that literally.
Among my practically endless list of talents, is the ability to translocate, by which I mean I’m able to transfer myself instantaneously from the place I’m occupying to anywhere within a certain locale. One of the limitations of this power is that my destination point has to be somewhere I’ve visited previously, but Jazz Hands’ magic boutique, Legerdomain, is a place I’m more than familiar with.
I opened my eyes to find myself on the shop floor. It was too dark to make out much, particularly with all the dust that was floating about. Jazz Hands isn’t known for keeping the place particularly tidy, but tonight, the shop was more than just a bit disorganised. Tonight, the shop was plundered.
The door leading into the establishment was ajar, and from the looks of things, someone had tossed the shop’s contents with some enthusiasm. I was busy surveying the carnage when I heard the creak of a floorboard and caught sight of a silhouette at the far end of the shop. The hairs on the nape of my neck snapped to attention. Someone was stood behind the shop counter with their hands dipped in the wall safe, emptying its contents into a rucksack.
Twice Damned: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (Ghosted Book 3) Page 2