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

by David Bussell

  As I stood there, gun raised and shaking in my hand, Big Blue nodded to his underlings, who came to a halt either side of me. Don’t ask me how a guy with an eyeball for a head managed to look smug, but somehow he pulled it off.

  After a short, satisfied pause, Big Blue looked back to me and drew a thumb briskly across his throat.

  I saw the irises of his brown-eyed subordinates widen, ready to blast me with their death rays, but as I turned to the side, unable to face death head-on, my own eyes fell on something in the wings—

  —a lever.

  And that’s when I realised where I was standing.

  Right on the stage trapdoor.

  Using the scant moments I had left, I swung my pistol to the lever and took aim.

  Was this the lever that activated the hatch leading to the theatre’s underground tunnel?

  Only one way to find out.

  I uttered a quick prayer and squeezed the trigger.

  You probably want to hear that the bullet struck home and everything came up smelling of roses, right? I know I did.

  It didn’t.

  Instead, the shot fell short of the lever and rang off a metal pipe with a sharp whine.

  Thankfully for me though, the bullet—escalating from a thousand-to-one shot to a million-to-one shot—ricocheted off the pipe and hit the handle of the lever.

  I couldn’t have pulled that trick off again if I had all the bullets in Texas.

  The trapdoor under my feet swung open and I dropped out of my executioners’ crosshairs.

  I caught the briefest flash of two Eyes exploding, caught in their own lines of fire, then smashed into a pile of padding beneath the stage.

  I saw it as I rolled onto my feet, the tunnel, the way through the wall. Before I took off though, I couldn’t help but cast one last look back up at the way I came.

  I saw Big Blue there, peering over the edge of the trapdoor, his giant eyeball gazing down at me with unholy malice.

  I ran, but not before flicking the boggle-eyed prick two fingers.

  Elvis has left the building.

  17

  I emerged from the mouth of the tunnel and made good on my toes, barrelling through the graveyard streets, no longer needing the bearings of my compass. The Castle was in my sights. Not far now, a mile, two at most.

  There was one thing I hadn’t accounted for though, and that was the Thames River, or more accurately, the lack of any way across it.

  London Bridge, Westminster Bridge, Waterloo Bridge, even Tower Bridge; all of them, disintegrated, caved in, collapsed.

  The other thing I hadn’t accounted for was the Thames itself, which—rather than flowing with liquid pollution as it usually did—gushed with red hot lava.

  A giant, endless, red snake, slithering off into the horizon, blocking my path from east to west.

  I stood there on the riverbank, hands on my hips, considering the impassable body of lava as it steamed by me, its heat evaporating the moisture from my eyeballs. I’d come all this way, trekked across the dusty wastes of Hell, just to be foiled by this? A river I could pass right over back home, only here in Hell presented the same insurmountable challenge as it did to a North London cab driver.

  Fucksake.

  Talk about falling at the last hurdle. I’d beaten killer maggots, deadly teddy bears, stone sphinxes, demonic cage fighters, murderous eyeball monsters, and now, inches from the finish line, I’d been defeated by a bit of lairy geology.

  Prudence’s kid brother was locked up in that prison—the one I was looking right at, just a stone’s throw away—and there was no way I could get to him. It was over. All my efforts, scuttled to fuck. No choice now but to pack it in and go home.

  I plucked the envelope containing my return ticket from the inside pocket of my jacket. There was a wax seal on the back of it, suggesting that opening the thing was a one-way street. I traced my thumb along the flap and tucked a nail beneath it, ready to lever it up and break the seal, when I heard a familiar, booming voice.

  ‘The hour has struck, Jake Fletcher! The bell tolls for thee!’

  I turned to see a figure pulling up beside me, riding the red river, kept afloat on the lava by a raft of human bones. He wore a long, black robe and had a skull for a face. Great, just what I needed. The Grim bloody Reaper.

  The two of us were already acquainted. Very much so, in fact. Not from the time I’d died—which you’d be forgiven for thinking—but from the time I got into a barney with him as a ghost and, well, there’s no easy way to put this… killed the bloke.

  I know, I know, how does one go about killing Death?

  Well, it’s a long and incredibly exciting story.

  Suffice to say, I probably wasn’t number one on his friends list.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, backing away, ‘I’m not in the mood for this, mate, so how about we forget we bumped into each other and you paddle off that way?’

  The Reaper stared at me with his hollow eye sockets, head thrown back, finger pointed at me like his hand was made of metal and I was a great big magnet.

  Then he laughed.

  A great big, thigh-slapper of a laugh.

  ‘Chill out, dude,’ he roared, ‘it’s all good!’

  That was unexpected. Bantz with the Grim Reaper? Last time we’d had words, he was all, “I am Charon! Death incarnate! The Rider of the Pale Horse!” Now he sounded like some surf bum sucking on a doobie.

  ‘Who put the smile on your skull?’ I asked.

  ‘You did!’ he cried, clapping his bony fingers together, ‘when you did me in and packed me off to this place!’

  I was confused to say the least. Hell was no one’s idea of a holiday hotspot. Not even the Grim Reaper could make a beano out of this place, surely?

  ‘What’s your game, ferryman?’ I asked, eyes narrowed.

  ‘You said it yourself, bud; I ferry people! That’s my game.’

  ‘So… you punt souls across this river all day, do you?’

  ‘Too right I do, and I never would have gotten the gig if it wasn’t for you!’

  How about that? There was me thinking I was trying the destroy the guy, when all along I was setting him up with a job promotion. ‘Well, I’m glad you’re happy,’ I said, actually meaning it.

  ‘Never been happier, dude. I’m back to my roots. Back to the way it was before everything went all modern. Now I’m old school! I’m telling you, man, me and this place are like that...’ he said, crossing the bones of his middle and index fingers.

  ‘I have to say, you do look the part,’ I replied, admiring his ensemble.

  ‘I know, right? I should never have been working for Him Upstairs in the first place. I don’t know what I was thinking there. This is much more my speed, and the new boss is a real mensch.’

  ‘You get a lot of work out this way then, do you?’

  ‘Business is a bit slower, I won’t lie, but it's the quality, not the quantity, isn't it?’

  I nodded appreciatively. Always good to see a man taking pride in his work. Which reminded me, I had a job of my own to be getting on with.

  ‘Couldn’t trouble you for a lift, could I?’ I asked. ‘Got a bit of business that needs taking care of on the other side there.’

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ Death trilled. ‘I'd never have ended up here if it wasn't for you.’ He stepped aside and gestured for me to join him on the raft. ‘All aboard, buddy! Anchors aweigh!’

  And with that, Death became my life raft.

  18

  As if breaking into Hell wasn’t stupid enough, now I had to breach damnation’s own slammer.

  I thanked the Reaper for the boat ride and bid him farewell, apologising that I had nothing to tip him with. Story of my life, I told him, as I turned out my trouser pockets and shrugged.

  As I stood on the south bank, drenched in The Castle’s foreboding shadow, I considered giving the Reaper a holler and hailing a return trip, but stayed firm. There was no turning back now. I’d come here to do a job, an
d I refused to let Prudence down now. Words are just wallpaper, after all, actions are the bricks and mortar of a man.

  I surveyed the area, expecting to see a watchtower of some kind, but as far as I could tell, I wasn’t being spied on. I approached the prison warily until I arrived at a chain link fence surrounding the structure. I’d expected to have to finagle my way in using a spot of kleptomancy, but bypassing the fence was as simple as finding a rusted-out hole and squeezing through the gap. What was up with the security in this place? No guards, no locks? No wonder the South Souls had managed to go AWOL.

  The no man’s land between the fence and the Castle was overgrown with a tall, red grass that swayed gently in the chill, night breeze. I dropped to a crawl and cut a path through the scarlet pasture, only to find myself streaked red from head to toe as the grass painted me in blood. If ever I met the Devil, I’d be sticking him with a hell of a dry cleaning bill.

  I reached the outer wall of the prison and stopped. The entrance to the building was wide open, and yet I still couldn’t make out any guards. Crawling across the yard had been a waste of time I realised, No one was keeping watch on the place. Perhaps the Eyes I’d encountered were the Castle’s sole custodians: a skeleton crew, forced to divide their attention between keeping prisoners in line and rounding up escapees. I wouldn't be surprised, knowing the amount of demons that had crossed over to the city since the London Coven’s shields came down. Who’d stick around this place knowing they could be ripping it up in the Big Smoke?

  Seeing as there was nothing to stop me walking right into the Castle, I stood up, wiped the blood from my face, and strolled through the front door. As suspected, no one stopped me. Getting into Hell's prison turned out to be about as challenging as getting into Hell itself. After all, who else but me would choose to do such a thing?

  The inside of the Castle was like the TARDIS, if the TARDIS was a gigantic lockup for jailbirds. A vast honeycomb of cells housing thousands of doomed souls reached impossibly into the sky, higher than any building ought to go. Though the Castle was certainly a prison, the building was more a mausoleum than a penitentiary. Yes, the inmates were alive—or as alive as they could be in Hell, anyway—but they were kept interred in barred alcoves that looked less like prison cells than tombs; tiny nooks, not much bigger than the hunched bodies they contained.

  As I drew closer to the colossal wall of prisoners, I began to understand how the Castle was able to operate without guards. Not only did the inmates require zero maintenance—a soul trapped in Hell needed neither food nor water—they were caged behind thick bars and clapped in irons, their ankles attached to weighty balls and chains, presumably until the place froze over. These men were going nowhere. This was a Daily Mail reader’s idea of prison; not some cushy little playground where cells were called “rooms”, and came with the latest PlayStation. No, these were medieval dungeons, where offenders served out forever sentences and the word “rehabilitation” was the stuff of a madman’s dream.

  Seeing me walking the halls, the lags came to life as one, rattling their chains against the bars of their cages and screaming at the top of their lungs.

  ‘Save me!’

  ‘Please, you have to help!’

  ‘Get me out of here!’

  ‘I’ll give you anything!’

  It sounded like Hell’s karaoke. I wanted to cover my ears to shield them from the racket, but I needed my hands to make one last check of my compass.

  The needle was twitching like mad now. It showed me which direction my target’s cell was in, but not the elevation. The kid could be down on the ground or a mile in the air; there was no way to know for sure.

  ‘Where are you, kid?’ I mumbled, then shouted, ‘Prudence sent me!’

  The racket suddenly went from a cacophony to the front row of an Iron Maiden concert. I thought my eardrums were going to blow from the din.

  ‘Me! Me!’

  ‘I’m the one you’re looking for!’

  ‘Get this thing open!’

  ‘I’m with Prudent!’

  The prisoners were going berserk; wailing in desperation, crying uncontrollably, bashing their heads bloody.

  All except for one.

  Nine storeys up, a cell remained silent, its prisoner still and calm. I couldn’t make him out at this distance, but I knew it instinctively.

  I had my man.

  When you go to the pound to choose a new pet, you don’t take home the dog that howls and barks and foams at the mouth. No. The one you want is the quiet one. The one that sits obediently on its haunches, wet-eyed and willing you to give him a good home.

  Doing my best to ignore the screaming inmates, I climbed nine flights of stairs to reach my target’s cell (again, murder on the old hammies). Inside, I saw a bearded prisoner, kneeling, and dressed in a grubby, cotton smock. His head was hung low, his hair draped in front of his face like a greasy waterfall. The time he’d spent in Hell had not been kind to him. What little I could see of his body was ravaged, like he'd aged twenty years. For a moment I wondered if I had the right cell after all, but then the prisoner looked so utterly pitiful, I almost didn’t care.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I’ll have you out of there in a jiffy.’

  I popped the lock on his cell door with a simple bit of kleptomancy and flung it open so I could get inside and release him from his bonds.

  The moment I entered, it was like someone had turned down the world’s volume knob. I was inside a bubble of silence that cut off the noise of the other prisoners, muting them completely. It was a relief, but at the same time, deeply disconcerting. Even though my ears appreciated a rest from the cacophony, it brought home the true horror of these prisoners’ isolation. In here, brought to their knees and shackled for eternity, each inmate was completely alone. Hell wasn't red hot pokers, or bamboo shoots under the fingernails, or an eternity spent correcting spelling mistakes on YouTube videos. Hell wasn’t torture, Hell wasn’t other people. Hell was yourself, forever.

  ‘Show me your cuff,’ I said, and the prisoner obliged, presenting me with his ankle.

  I magicked it open.

  The iron hadn’t even struck the ground before I realised what I’d done.

  ‘Howya, Fletcher,’ said the prisoner.

  I knew that voice.

  It felt as though the floor beneath me had begin to tilt.

  It was Father Damon O’Meara.

  My murderer.

  My former partner in the exorcist business; the Irish bastard who stole my woman and shoved me under a moving train. Father Damon O’Meara, stripped of his white collar and banged up in blazes.

  Pardon the pun, but what the hell was going on here? Damon was meant to be doing time in Wormwood Scrubs; how did he manage to find himself shacked up in this place? And more to the point, out of the thousands of cells I could have chosen, why had I wound up at his one? Had some quirk of fate led me to Damon’s door? To opening it up? To liberating my own killer?

  Of course not.

  This had all happened by design.

  As I backed away from Damon, emotionally concussed, I began to piece it together.

  The return ticket.

  The Coyote had told me that the envelope it was sealed in smelled of my client’s perfume. I hadn’t been able to smell it as a ghost, but since I was corporeal here, I could get a whiff of it now.

  I didn’t need to take the envelope out of my pocket to know who the perfume belonged to, but I put it to my nose anyway.

  Sarah.

  My ex-wife.

  The woman who talked Damon O’Meara into putting me under the 11:45 to High Barnet, and disguised somehow—disguised by magic—hired me, her widowed husband, to rescue her dead beau from the jaws of Hell.

  Prudence didn't just remind me of my ex-wife, she was my ex-wife.

  It only made sense. Why would a sister dab perfume on an envelope meant for her brother? It could only be for a lover. Why hadn’t I seen that in the first place?


  I saw Damon’s nostrils twitch as he caught the scent of Sarah’s perfume.

  ‘Always knew she’d come for me,’ he said, chuckling, ‘but Jaysis, I never expected she’d send you.’ He laughed so hard he folded at the midriff, like he'd been gut-shot.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I stammered.

  ‘Came for a shiatsu massage and a pedicure,’ he replied. ‘What do ya think, ya eejit?’

  There was really only one answer to my question: that he’d died in the clink and been re-sentenced in damnation. Life in the afterlife. Agony eternal. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.

  ‘Got myself shanked in prison, didn’t I?’ he said, as if reading my mind. ‘But then ya’d know that if ya paid attention ta the land of the living.’

  ‘I pay plenty of attention.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ He pointed at the photo paperclipped to the envelope I was holding. ‘Even I can tell ya that's yer man... whassisname... Justin Bieber.’

  ‘Who the fuck is Justin Bieber?’

  ‘Ya see what I mean?’ he replied. ‘You're divorced from humanity, Fletcher.’

  ‘What would you know about humanity?’ I spat.

  ‘A feck sight more than you’re about to,’ he replied with a wink.

  He lunged forward, grabbed me by the lapels and landed me with a head butt that put me flat on my back.

  ‘Thanks for making the trip, Fletcher, but I’m gunna head on.’

  The last thing I saw before I passed out was Damon reaching down to collect his ticket home.

  19

  Well, bugger me with a blowtorch.

  When I finally woke up, I found myself alone in Damon’s locked cell, face down on the ground and shackled to his ball and chain. I’d really gone and done it this time. Fallen for the old bait and switch. What a mug. Suckered by my ex-wife… again. This did not reflect well on my detective skills. Not one bit.

  I gritted my teeth and felt my anger spike like a witch's hat. Father O’Meara never did play by the book—least of all the Good Book—but this was a new low, even for him. He hadn’t even had the decency to kill me while I was unconscious, instead he’d chained me up and left me to rot here in his place. Jesus Christ, if I knew I’d end up eating this much shit, I’d have packed some breath mints.