Twice Damned: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (Ghosted Book 3)

by David Bussell

  “Oh, look, Trevor, that man is about to get mutilated by a demonic hedgehog. Do pass the popcorn...”

  It was just as I was busy lamenting mankind’s boundless capacity for shittiness, that Trap Jaw made his move. Faster than a speeding bastard, the demon threw out a fist that almost left me wearing my head backwards.

  Wallop.

  I hit the floor and slid along it on my arse like a dog with worms.

  ‘And stay down…’ I said, spitting blood.

  What was I supposed to do against this thing? I couldn’t fight the demon and I couldn’t run away from it either. I had no way of talking my way out of this mess, or tricking it into killing itself, like I had with the janitor back in that crematorium. I was cornered, unarmed and outmatched. No doubt about it, I was in the soup again, and not a good soup either. This was a back-of-the-cupboard can of lobster bisque that had gone out of date six years ago.

  Bad soup.

  How do I get myself into these situations, I wondered. I'd come here to rescue a kid who sold his soul to play guitar, and ended up getting thunderdomed by my old P.E. teacher. My ship had really blown off course this time. I could only hope that the lad I was looking for was worth all this trouble. That he was a regular young feller who made a bum deal, not some pissy little Lord Faulteroy who deserved his place in Hell.

  Trap Jaw opened its throat slash into a grin and came at me again. Realising that I had no choice but to defend myself, I put up my dukes and went looking for a weak spot. Seeing as the demon’s face was the only part of him not covered in lethal metal spikes, I decided to plug him one in the kisser.

  Pow.

  I stood up to him about as effectively as a butterfly does a chainsaw.

  Trap Jaw’s head flopped back from the punch, settling for a moment on his spine like a hunchback’s hump, then springing right back up again with a twinkle in its eyes.

  Jesus.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’d anticipated that things might get a wee bit challenging in Hell, but this little encounter was taking me way outside of my comfort zone.

  ‘Give him hell, Fletcher!’ I heard.

  It was Dizzy, up in the stands, jaw set defiantly despite being collared and held at Langford’s side. Christ, it pained me to see a veteran treated like some rubber-suited gimp.

  Langford tugged on Dizzy’s chain, making him choke. ‘You’re up next, soldier boy,’ he growled.

  Back in the pit, Trap Jaw laughed and fetched me another blow, opening a cut in my scalp that sprang a gout of cranberry.

  Staggering and woozy, I looked down at the floor and saw it patterned in a Rorschach test of my own blood.

  I’d say things weren’t going to plan at this point, but that would suppose I had a plan in the first place.

  The demon began to circle me, and as I strayed to the left to stay out of his reach, my hand brushed up against something among the pile of junk that made up the arena’s wall.

  A sunburst yellow Stratocaster.

  I snatched it up by the neck and began to swing it in front of me in a bid to stave off Trap Jaw’s next attack. The demon came at me fast, but I had the reach this time, and caught him in the temple with the weighty body of the guitar.

  Wham!

  I’m sorry to report that, aside from producing a hell of a tune (not unlike early Sonic Youth in fact), my efforts had little effect.

  Once again, Trap Jaw chinned me, filling my head with bees.

  I flashed back to my youth.

  To my dad.

  Think like Superman.

  That’s what he used to tell me whenever I got hurt.

  The first time I heard him say it was at the park opposite our house. It was a summer’s day; kids playing frisbee, dogs chasing sticks, me on the swings.

  Dad was pushing me high, and I was egging him to push even higher. I wanted to do a loop-the-loop... at least until I did.

  Any responsible adult would have known better, but Dad had polished off a half bottle of Grouse already, and was only too happy to oblige.

  I broke my radius bone in two separate places.

  Think like Superman, Dad said.

  So I did.

  I thought like Superman.

  I wiped away my tears and pushed down the pain like the last son of Krypton.

  It worked.

  It worked so well that as soon as the plaster cast came off, I wanted to test my superpowers again.

  So I did.

  I tested them by throwing myself out of my bedroom window, convinced that I could fly.

  I broke the other arm that time.

  Now where was I…?

  Oh yes, stuck in a pit and being savaged by a demonic porcupine. Silly me.

  Trap Jaw swung at me again, but I managed to duck him this time. I wasn’t sticking around for another drubbing. Besides, I’d finally dreamed up that plan I’d been searching for.

  Running to the opposite end of the arena, I took to the surrounding wall of speakers and began to scale the edifice to its razor-wired heights.

  ‘You cannot escape your fate, wretch!’ roared my opponent.

  Don’t ask me why demons always emote like first year drama students, it’s just the way they are.

  As I scrabbled for the top of the wall, I managed to dislodge a Marshall amp and send it tumbling down onto the demon. As it struck home, the creature screamed in anguish, making a sound like a mole caught in a lawnmower.

  I’d only succeeded in stunning it though. Before I could climb any higher, Trap Jaw reached up an arm and grabbed me by the ankle.

  ‘I'm going to stir my claw in your eyeball!’ he promised, as he tugged at the hem of my suit trousers.

  I pulled myself loose of his grip though, kicking his hand aside and continuing my ascent. I might be a dead man, but I fight with a mortal determination.

  Almost at the top of the summit, I saw Dizzy, who looked back at me as if to say, “Where do you think you’re going?’

  There was no escape after all. Even if I made it to the top of the wall without losing my footing, there was a ring of razor wire stopping me surmounting it, and a gang of Langford’s men in case I somehow managed to negotiate that.

  I wasn’t climbing the wall to escape though, I was climbing it to fight back the only way I knew how.

  The sneaky way.

  In range of my target now, I summoned a magical flame in the palm of my hand and reached for the sky. Scrabbling up on my tiptoes to bridge the gap, I managed to bring the flame close to a ceiling sensor.

  Close enough to activate the building’s fire protection system.

  Immediately, alarm bells rang and a deluge of pressured water rained down from the overhead sprinklers.

  Good. The system was still operational, just as the lights and sound system were. Just as I’d counted on it being.

  As the place turned soggy, Langford and his men roared in protest, banging their makeshift weapons against the edge of the arena and howling for blood.

  Likewise, Trap Jaw didn’t seem particularly impressed by my efforts. ‘Did you think water would harm me, mortal?’ he brayed.

  ‘Nope,’ I replied. ‘But this will.’

  Remembering my exorcist days, I performed a quick benediction, consecrating the deluge. 'Bless the Lord, all his works in all places of his dominion: bless the Lord, O my soul...'

  ...And so on, and so on. As someone who doesn’t consider himself one of the flock, the prayer was word salad to me. That kumbaya shit means nothing to me, but then I wasn’t reciting it for my benefit.

  ‘No! Stop!’ cried the monster, but his pleas fell on deaf ears.

  I completed the benediction, which purified the sprinkler water, transforming it into the biblical equivalent of demon acid.

  As Langford and his men looked on in horror, the blessed water tore through their champion like he was made of Alka-Seltzer. Trap Jaw’s neck opened up a fresh tear as he thrashed around under the inescapable and deadly rain, the wound growing so wide that the hea
d barely clung onto the rest of the body. The demon wailed in anguish as the holy H2O dissolved the rotten flesh of his host all the way down to the white of his bones, which collapsed on the floor in a sizzling heap before turning into wet mush. Only then did the demon’s voice pinch off suddenly as he was expelled from his host and sent to oblivion.

  Silence.

  Then...

  ‘Jake wins!’ I roared, like the narrator at the end of a Street Fighter bout.

  Everyone loves an underdog, right?

  Wrong.

  Instead of cheering for me as any right-minded audience would, Langford’s men booed and hurled missiles at me until their leader stilled their hands with another blow of his tin whistle.

  Langford climbed down from his seat and vaulted the arena wall to land on the ground by my side.

  ‘Nothing changes, does it, Fletcher?’ he barked. ‘You were a dirty little cheater at school, and you’re a dirty little cheater now.’

  ‘If you’re referring to the time I deflated all the rugby balls and stole the air pump so we had to play ping pong in the heated gym instead, I prefer to think of that as gamesmanship.’

  Langford reached into his jacket and produced my pistol.

  ‘Nice of you to hang onto that for me,’ I said, holding my palm out flat.

  Langford smiled and pointed the shooter at my head. I had a nasty feeling that might happen. Some people are just poor losers.

  I looked up to the stands to see Dizzy, who returned my gaze through the cracks of his fingers. So, this is how it ends, I thought, as I stared down the barrel of my own gun. A shabby little death in a miserable, foreign land.

  I was about to close my eyes and say hello to oblivion, when a ruckus broke out among Langford’s men. Shouting, complaints, screams of terror. It was as though a fire had broken out, only it was way too wet for that.

  ‘What’s going on back there?’ Langford demanded, and he got his answer right away.

  The gate to the arena burst open.

  Stood there, framed impressively in the doorway, was a man dressed like a reject from a Clive Barker movie, his face disguised by a large, black cowl. I recognised him right away as one of the hooded figures that had been tracking me and Dizzy since I arrived in Hell.

  The Eyes.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ said Langford, turning the sight of his gun to the intruder

  The hooded figure reached up for his cowl, then threw it back to reveal not a head, but a single, giant eyeball. The oversized optic sat there on his neck, regarding us through a pupil the size of a salad plate surrounded by a big, nut-brown iris.

  When Dizzy said the Devil’s footmen were called “Eyes”, I figured they’d earned their name from their keen powers of observation. Apparently, the truth was a touch more literal.

  Langford thumbed back the hammer of the pistol, but just as he was about to pull the trigger, the Eye retaliated with a weapon of his own.

  Suddenly, what can only be described as a death ray shot from the Eye’s pupil and hit Langford square in the stomach. The beam ripped through the ex-P.E. teacher’s guts, opening him up like a burst balloon and spilling his intestines on the dusty ground.

  It was basically the absolute opposite of a Care Bear stare.

  The pistol tumbled from Langford’s grip as he looked down dumbly at the fleshy ruins of his stomach. Then, as if catching up to the reality of his situation, he abruptly snatched up two handfuls of spilled intestines and began to stagger toward the exit. Sadly, his coordination was adversely affected by his guts hanging all over the place, and he managed to trip over a loop of his own entrails and face-plant into the floor, where he finally lay still.

  Who's rubbish at jump rope now, eh, teach? I thought, then darted for the discarded gun as fast as I could.

  Thankfully, the hand was quicker than the Eye.

  As the agent of Satan’s death ray sailed over my shoulder, I snatched up the pistol and blasted a cap.

  The gun roared and threw a flash of white light over the arena.

  The shot landed right between the Eye’s… well, eye.

  Like I said before, I’m not much for shooting, but at that range, and with a target that size, I made it work.

  The Eye’s spherical head came apart like a blown dandelion. As he hit the ground, very much dead, I began to consider my next move.

  Through the arena’s open entrance, I saw bedlam. There were four remaining Eyes as far as I could see, blasting Langford’s men with laser beams that made their blood boil out of their ears. Tearing through them like wet teabags.

  I looked for Dizzy among the carnage, but couldn’t find him. I wasn’t too optimistic about his chances. It was ruddy tinted carnage out there – an absolute slaughterhouse. There were enough entrails on the floor to lasso the moon. Still, it was the only escape route I had. I reached into the jacket pocket of Langford’s ruptured corpse, fished out my compass and return tickets, and made for the way out.

  I pushed through the killing floor, barging South Souls aside and dodging red-hot death rays. One of the Eyes got a bead on me, but I managed to put an outlaw between the pair of us, and he took the brunt instead. As the ray struck home, I saw the unfortunate flop to the ground like a pile of jelly as the Eye’s laser beam turned his bones into soup. What a way to go.

  I returned fire on the Eye and scored a shot through his chest that put him down good and proper.

  Just one bullet left now, but three more agents.

  The Eyes have it.

  I pushed on to the exit, struggling to stay upright on the bloody Slip and Slide pooling beneath my feet. I was almost there—just a few feet from the corridor that led out of the building—when I found my path blocked. I instinctively went to chin the bloke standing in my way, until I recognised his uniform under all the blood.

  ‘Dizzy!’

  Against all odds, my companion was still alive, free of his captors and out of his dog collar.

  ‘Come on!’ he yelled over the havoc. ‘Step lively!’

  I didn’t need telling twice.

  As we absconded from the club, I cast one last look over my shoulder and saw an Eye with a piercing blue iris looking right at me. He was bigger than his fellow agents, and stood still and calm amid the chaos and butchery. The white of his eye was veiny, forked by red lightning, his pupil a pinhole.

  I ran, but I ran knowing that however fast I went, however far I travelled, Big Blue would be watching me.

  14

  All this running about was doing my nut in.

  You have to remember that back home, as a ghost, I mostly translocated to get to the places I wanted to be, and even when I did travel by foot, being dead meant that I never wore out. Hoofing it about like this was playing absolute murder on my hammies. If it wasn’t for the added incentive of being chased, I’d have run out of puff a couple of miles back. Dieters out there take note: if you’re looking to shed a few pounds, you could do worse than being hounded by a trio of murderous, sentient eyeballs.

  Only when Dizzy and I were satisfied that we were out of the Eyes’ range, did we duck into a crumbling back alley and collapse onto our backsides.

  My chest felt fit to implode, as though a gorilla had reached through the bars of my rib cage and closed its fat fingers around my heart.

  We sat there for a while, resting under the cloak of Hell’s permanent night, until we had breath enough to talk.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ I wheezed at my companion. ‘We made it out of that one on the bare bones of our arse.’

  Dizzy took a gulp of air and went to answer, then stopped mid-breath as he caught sight of something behind me. For a moment I thought the Eyes had caught up to us, but when I turned to look, I saw his attention was settled on something else.

  A stout wooden door on the alley wall, a little tarnished, but surprisingly intact given the devastation surrounding it.

  ‘What is that?’ asked Dizzy, pointing to a faded painting on the face of the door: a small, nondescript icon,
barely visible under a patina of ash and grime.

  A picture.

  A picture of a beehive.

  ‘Shit the bed,’ I gasped.

  ‘What is it?’

  I put my ear to the door and heard the familiar strains of an ancient jukebox emanating from behind it.

  What the literal hell?

  The Beehive had no business being where it was; not just in Hell, but in this particular locale of Hell. If the dimension we were traversing was a corrupted mirror of the world we knew, what was Lenny’s pub doing all the way out in… well, I’d lost track of where we were exactly, but it definitely wasn’t the right spot. Still, so long as it gave us somewhere to take a pit stop, I didn’t give a monkeys about the flaky geography of the place.

  I pushed open the door. The scene that confronted me defied all comprehension.

  There it was—The Beehive—just as I remembered it, the same place I’d been drinking at a couple of nights back, every stick of furniture the same, every stink and stain where it belonged. For a moment I wondered if I’d walked through a portal and ended up back on Earth somehow, but although the pub was a match for The Beehive I knew, its patrons were not.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying they were a different class of customer. Oh no. I’m just saying they were a different Petri dish of scum. Instead of the usual mix of magicians, witches, and creatures of folklore, there were demons of all shapes and sizes: pit fiends of every colour and creed. Out of habit, I looked to the table where Razor usually sat— the eaves I’d implicated in the Mystery of the Purloined Masque—but he was as absent as the rest of the locals. In his place sat a two-headed demon with hooved feet, a peacock tail, and a name that sounded like something from an IKEA catalogue.

  One fixture was still in place though. The pub’s gargantuan proprietor, Lenny, who stood, arms folded, behind the beer pumps, just as he always did.

  ‘Fletcher,’ he growled as I entered. ‘You’ve got a tab that needs paying.’

  ‘You two know each other?’ asked Dizzy.