Night Terrors: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (Hexed Detective Book 3) Read online

  ‘Just come on,’ he said, ‘we’re going to be late.’

  Rita followed, remembering how Waterson had always complained about her timekeeping.

  ‘You’ll be late to your own funeral,’ he’d say.

  ‘Oh…’ Rita stopped as she remembered the forgotten thing. ‘Balls.’

  3

  The sky was bright blue with barely a wisp of cloud to break it up. This, to dead detective Dan Waterson, felt disrespectful. Funerals were meant to be sombre affairs. Grey skies, heavy rain, black umbrellas. Not this. This was holiday weather. Sunbathing weather.

  Dan had mentioned his funeral to Rita about eighty times, and forced her to add it to her phone so she wouldn’t forget. And yet still—somehow—she had failed to do so, and now the pair had arrived as the service was already underway.

  ‘Made it,’ said Rita, gasping for breath outside the entrance to the church, its large wooden double doors open, a picture of Waterson propped up on an easel in the foyer.

  ‘Made it?’ replied Waterson. ‘We’re ten minutes late.’

  ‘Po-tay-to, pa-tah-to,’ she replied, brushing his annoyance aside.

  Leaving the bright day behind, they stepped inside the church. Rita felt the temperature inside, cool and crisp upon her skin.

  ‘You look like a right twat in that picture,’ she said.

  Waterson frowned. It was a blown-up picture of the one his mum kept in a frame on her mantelpiece. It had been taken years back, when he’d first been accepted into the force. Back then he’d thought a moustache suited him. He had been mistaken.

  They joined the other mourners, who were sat before a vicar with desperate hair fastidiously teased over his bald head. Waterson’s coffin sat off to one side.

  His coffin.

  That was weird.

  Yes, he’d seen his dead body after his murder—in fact he’d spent several miserable hours with it at the morgue—but since he’d last seen it, he’d come to think of his ghostly form as him. Whatever that was—that length of flesh and bones and hair and teeth—that wasn’t him. How could it be? That thing was dead.

  ‘...a respected officer, who always put others before himself,’ droned the vicar, as though he had known Waterson in life.

  Okay, so he was dead. Sure. No getting around that. He was dead and his rotting body was packed into a box that was about to be trundled through a sheet of flames and burned to a handful of ash. And yet here he was, still talking and thinking. It was all a bit weird, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever quite get used to it.

  ‘Your mum looks good,’ said Rita, pointing out the woman with tight, white hair, dressed in a form-fitting black dress and red high heels.

  ‘She always did like a funeral,’ replied Waterson, trying not to let his mind slip into thoughts of how she must be feeling. How she must have felt when she got the news of his death. Things were bad enough without picturing that.

  ‘You know, I never thought your mum liked me much,’ said Rita.

  ‘That’s because she didn’t.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘She once referred to you as, “That flame-haired, mouthy trollop who bounces from man to man like a shameless hussy”. So.’

  Rita laughed. ‘She says that like it’s a bad thing.’

  The two spoke at normal speaking volume as, of course, no one else at the funeral could see or hear them.

  ‘Pretty decent turnout,’ said Rita, nodding appreciatively.

  It was true, there were more people there than Waterson had expected. Family, friends, work colleagues. Waterson almost found himself welling up a little. Almost.

  Waterson didn’t like being a ghost.

  He couldn’t touch, couldn’t taste, and worst of all, he couldn’t sleep. He had no idea how slowly time moved until he was unable to miss large chunks of it by sleeping. Whilst Rita, and Ben Turner, and his mum, and everyone else snoozed away for hours on end, Waterson wandered and paced and grew increasingly agitated at the relentlessness of consciousness.

  At first he thought he’d give anything to taste a cold pint of beer again. Now all he wanted to do was sleep. Just for a few minutes. Just close his eyes and not be there. Not be anywhere.

  He wondered if souls got to sleep when they found heaven. Somehow, he’d missed his opportunity to ascend after dying. Formby, the mole-man looking eaves who Rita was now friends with, said it was because he’d been murdered, but eventually his time would come.

  Waterson was already tired of waiting.

  ‘You’re thinking about leaving me again, aren’t you?’ said Rita, reading his expression.

  ‘Oh, always.’

  ‘You bastard.’

  Waterson smiled despite himself. ‘It’s not easy, you know. Being this.’ He passed his hand through the wooden pew in front of them. ‘Being nothing. Just fog with a memory.’

  ‘Oh, very poetic.’

  ‘Shut your face.’

  Waterson noticed a little girl with hair so blonde it was almost white, sat a few rows in front of them. She was wearing a hairband with bunny ears attached to the top. He couldn’t for the life of him think who she was, nor why someone would take a child to a funeral wearing bunny ears. Who did that?

  ‘Okay, so you’re dead,’ said Rita, ‘but would you really rather be dead-dead? Just nothing and gone?’

  ‘No, of course not, but… you wouldn’t understand. You don’t know how this feels. I just... I want to know my options, that’s all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How long is this going to last? Me wandering around and not going to Heaven? Is there a way for me to speed things up so I can get there quicker?’ He wiped a hand down his face. ‘Christ, I don’t even believe in God, let alone an afterlife. This is completely ridiculous.’

  Rita reached out a hand to place over Waterson’s, which did not go well, what with it passed right through him.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Waterson, sarcastically.

  ‘Waters, there’s something I really want you to know,’ said Rita, her eyes wide.

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘You looked really, really shit with that child-molester moustache.’

  Waterson blinked, frowned, went to say something mean back, then burst into giggles. Rita joined him, and after almost a full minute, they just about managed to regain control of themselves. That was the moment Rita realised someone was watching them.

  ‘Uh, who is that?’ she asked, pointing to a small boy on the front row with a mass of curly blonde hair. The boy was looking back over his shoulder in their direction.

  ‘That’s Liam, my cousin Carol’s kid.’

  ‘Right. Am I crazy or is he looking right at us?’

  ‘Don’t be daft, he can’t be.’

  Rita waved a hand at Liam, and he waved back.

  ‘Holy shit,’ said Waterson. ‘Well that’s… weird.’

  But that was not the weirdest thing that was going to happen at Dan Waterson’s funeral.

  The sound of someone knocking on wood caught everyone’s attention. The knocking was loud, insistent. The vicar stopped talking and turned to look.

  ‘Is that…?’ started Waterson.

  ‘...coming from your coffin,’ finished Rita.

  Knock-knock-knock.

  The sound was indeed coming from the coffin. Someone inside was rapping their knuckles against the wood, and as the only person in there was the late Dan Waterson, it was more than a little disconcerting for all present.

  Knock-knock-knock.

  ‘Maybe I’m not dead,’ said Waterson.

  ‘Or you’re a zombie, that can happen.’

  ‘Can it?’

  ‘I dunno, you’re a ghost and I’ve got a magic axe, so I reckon it’s open season for weird shit.’

  The knocking stopped.

  The vicar turned from the coffin and back to the mourners, eyes darting wildly. ‘Well, I… well…’

  The coffin lurched forward and toppled to the stone floor with an almighty cr
ash of splintering wood. As the church echoed with cries of surprise, the coffin lid flipped open and Waterson’s corpse was vomited from within, dressed in a suit that Rita recognised. It had once been his date suit.

  ‘Fuck me,’ said Waterson.

  Rita darted forward as everyone else instinctively backed away.

  ‘Uh, Rita,’ said Waterson, pointing at his dead body.

  The body was twitching and writhing as though something was alive inside.

  ‘What the Hell is goi—’ started Rita, but she hadn’t finished her sentence before the corpse sat up as though jerked into the air on invisible strings.

  There were screams as mourners shot from their pews and charged for the exit. Rita pulled the axe from her belt, fingers flexing around its wooden haft. It tingled against her skin, connecting to the magic that surrounded them, ready to do as she asked.

  ‘Dead, uh, Waterson?’ she said, trying to get the corpse’s attention.

  The corpse—its skin bubbling now—turned its head to her and smiled. ‘Ms. Winters says hello,’ he said, in a voice that scuttled out of his mouth like a spider across a basement floor.

  Rita blinked, lowering the axe. ‘What did you say?’

  Dead Waterson laughed.

  And then exploded.

  Millions of maggots erupted from inside the corpse, smothering Rita.

  ‘Fuck!’

  ‘Jesus!’ said Waterson, as Rita fell back, thrashing wildly at the maggots that seemed to be increasing in size with each heartbeat. Seemed to be growing vicious teeth that bit and bit as they attempted to burrow their way inside of her. They wanted to bite and wiggle their way in. To lay their eggs that would hatch and make Rita explode, too.

  The desire to descend into panic was almost overwhelming, but Rita pushed past it. Pushed past the maggots and their insistent teeth. She levered her way up into a kneeling position and gripped the axe in both hands. The axe, when it made contact with someone’s magic, allowed her to use it as her own. But Carlisle had told her that it could do more than that, because magic was all around her. All around everyone, every second of every day, just waiting to be called upon. If she concentrated, she wouldn’t need to steal someone else’s magic, she could make the axe aware of the magic in the air and draw upon that instead.

  She closed her eyes.

  She could feel it.

  Not the maggots nipping at her flesh.

  No.

  She could feel the magic, old magic, ancient magic, that rolled around the church in great waves.

  ‘You see it too?’ she asked, and the axe twitched in her grip.

  She told the axe to feast, to open wide. It throbbed in her hands as the magic swarmed towards it. The axe was a black hole swallowing all the light in the room.

  The magic asked her what she wanted of it.

  ‘Burn them. Utterly. Completely. Now.’

  The magic wagged its tail.

  Rita opened her eyes, grunted, and slammed the handle of the axe against the stone flagstone in front of her. Magic—great washes of purple and red and yellow—burst from the axe blade. A tsunami that raged around the church, turning every maggot it came in contact with to ash.

  It lasted all of two seconds before the church was maggot-free.

  ‘Well,’ said Waterson, ‘that was… well.....’

  Rita stood, blowing the blade of the axe like she was Dirty Harry and she’d just plugged some guy good.

  ‘All in a day’s work, partner.’

  ‘My body, the maggots… that wasn’t normal.’

  ‘Definitely not normal.’

  Rita nudged at the tattered remains of Dan Waterson’s corpse.

  ‘A coincidence that something like this would happen at my funeral? To my corpse?’

  ‘Unlikely.’

  ‘Yeah. Thought so. What now?’

  Rita spotted something on one of the pews. She walked over and picked it up. It was a hair band with a pair of tatty old rabbit ears attached to it.

  ‘Now we put on our detective trousers.’

  Rita wished Carlisle was around to help.

  4

  Carlisle was and wasn’t sat at a table outside a charming little Parisian cafe, enjoying a cup of black coffee and a croissant. He teased at the flaking pastry as a young couple on a bicycle—the woman in the saddle, the man on the crossbar—rolled past, giggling. Carlisle considered tossing the pastry in their direction with some velocity. But he didn’t. Instead, he sipped the coffee, delighting in its bitterness, then placed the cup down and stretched out in his chair until his long purple coat reached down to the pavement. He closed his eyes and let the sun warm his chalk-white skin,

  Carlisle was in a bad situation.

  He had been in bad situations before. In fact, a high percentage of his long existence had been spent sandwiched between a bad situation and a probable, painful death. A couple of times he’d even toppled right over into death, but he’d always had an ace up his sleeve. A get-out for when the Reaper came a-calling and laid a cold hand upon his shoulder.

  This time he’d been all out of aces.

  This time, unless he thought of something fast, his number was up.

  ‘Is this seat taken?’ asked the Angel of Blackpool.

  Carlisle frowned and opened one eye to see the Angel stood before him, tall, delicate, beautiful, wearing brilliant white robes that seemed to hum they were so bright.

  ‘This is my fantasy,’ Carlisle told the Angel. ‘I do not believe I handed out invites.’

  The Angel pulled out a chair and gracefully lowered Itself on to it. Carlisle grimaced and sat up, tearing off a chunk of croissant and gnawing upon it.

  ‘They shall kill you,’ said the Angel.

  Carlisle sipped his coffee as the young couple on the bicycle looped through the imaginary scene again.

  ‘You know, I’ve never actually been to Paris. But I did stab a man to death somewhere in the south of France one brisk winter’s afternoon a hundred years back. Jacques, I think was his name. Terrible lisp. Missing half an ear on the right side from a bar room brawl. Stank of stale sweat. Funny, the things you remember, wouldn’t you say? When I think of him I could swear I can still smell that rank odour, and yet for the life of me I cannot recall why I sunk my blade into his belly, nor why I cut out his heart and fed it to a sow.’

  ‘Perhaps we might assist each other.’

  Carlisle raised an incredulous eyebrow. ‘Asking for help? From little old me? My, my, you must really be hitting rock bottom.’

  Carlisle had gone looking for a way to kill the Angel of Blackpool, and had been tricked into thinking the answer lay in the City of the Dead, beneath the streets of Manchester. A man named Horse had been that trick.

  ‘What is it like to be the one being used for once, hm?’ asked Carlisle.

  The Angel did not answer, but Its eyes grew darker, just for a moment.

  There had been no man named Horse, it had been Mr. Cotton and his brother, Mr. Spike, in disguise, and Carlisle had smuggled them out of the City of the Dead and back to the Angel of Blackpool’s prison chamber. The plan had been for them to then carry on assisting the Angel, but it seemed as though Mr. Cotton and Mr. Spike had had other ideas.

  ‘Help me and I can help you,’ said the Angel.

  ‘And how would you do that?’

  ‘Escape. Life. Your artefact.’

  Carlisle felt his stomach tighten and his heart jump at the mention of his artefact. The axe that Detective Rita Hobbes currently had in her possession. The craving to hold it, to use it once again, itched at him.

  ‘And I suppose, after I assist in some unspecified manner, I will be permitted to dance off into the sunset? How gullible do you think I am?’

  A hint of a smile teased at the corners of the Angel’s mouth. ‘Gullible enough to be fooled into smuggling Cotton and Spike from the City of the Dead.’

  ‘Well if you’re going to bring that up, it is rather the pot calling the kettle black, wouldn’t you
say?’ Carlisle finished off the pastry and gestured to the waiter to bring him another.

  The Angel opened Its mouth to speak once more, but before It could utter another word, It turned to smoke and was wafted away by the arriving waiter, who placed a plate with a fresh pastry before Carlisle.

  ‘Ah, thank you on two counts,’ said Carlisle, glad the Angel had gone.

  ‘What did It want?’ asked the waiter.

  Carlisle looked up, irritated at the imaginary waiter’s question, only to find himself looking into the fraying, ancient rabbit mask of Mr. Cotton.

  ‘Oh,’ said Carlisle.

  ‘Found you,’ replied Mr. Cotton. ‘Very rude to hide from pain, Carlisle, you know how much my brother enjoys inflicting it.’

  Carlisle sighed and looked around at Paris one last time. ‘My apologies to you and yours, you third-rate cretin.’

  Mr. Cotton’s rabbit mask frowned, though of course it did not, as it was just a mask.

  ‘Get on with it, then.’

  The table in front of Carlisle was tossed aside as Mr. Spike, sporting his dank hedgehog mask, burst from beneath, white-gloved hands reaching for his face.

  And in the time it took to blink, Paris was gone.

  Carlisle was in the Angel of Blackpool’s prison chamber, the ice-cold of the marble floor pressed against his cheek.

  Everything hurt.

  Carlisle wanted to say something smart and condescending—he always wanted to say something smart and condescending—but if he were to open his mouth, he knew the only sound to emerge would be a ragged, blood-flecked scream.

  His eyes fluttered open, the giant, vaulted chamber coming into focus, its huge columns reaching up and up, flickering candles stretching out all around like a wax forest set ablaze.

  Carlisle had been made a pin cushion, only instead of pins, jagged shards of glass punctured his flesh. His stomach, his arms, his legs, his neck; every part of him stung sharply, every nerve end shrieking. He wanted to run, to get up and race away from this chamber, but he had been pinned in place. Mr. Cotton was using some of his newfound power to stop him from creating an exit. He was stuck.