Past Sins

by Matthew Stott

  15

  I ran so fast into the hospital’s reception area that the automatic doors didn’t have time to fully open, forcing me to wriggle through them sideways and almost careen into an old man being pushed along in a wheelchair.

  ‘Slow down, Joe,’ said Big Marge from the reception desk.

  ‘Maya, is she okay? Is she talking?

  ‘Oh, she’s done more than that. She’s fucked off.’

  ‘What? Do you mean she’s really angry or she’s gone?’

  ‘She was awake when I called you, but then she went and checked herself out. Doctors tried to stop her but she shoved them out of the way and just walked out.’

  ‘Did she say where she was going?’

  ‘Nope. She wasn’t in the mood for conversation, she was in the mood for getting the hell out of this building.’

  I stepped out of the hospital and made my way to the Uncanny Wagon, dialling Myers’ number as I walked.

  ‘This is Detective Myers. I’m not available. Leave a message.’

  Her voicemail message was certainly on brand.

  ‘Hey, Myers. What’s with the walkabout, you silly goose? Call me back.’

  I didn’t like the idea of Myers wandering around in her condition. Whatever that condition was. Yes, she was a kick arse police officer who could tie me in knots, but she’d been unconscious for hours and laid up in a hospital bed. Who knew what might happen to her while she was out there?

  I tried the police station she worked out of, but as far as they knew, she was still at the hospital.

  I decided to drop by her home and see if she’d found her way back. I pulled up in front; it was your standard terraced house, a three up two down. The sort of house that had sprung up in a lot of northern towns, to house factory workers close to work a hundred or more years back. No front garden, just a step and a front door. When I arrived, it looked as though I might have gotten lucky. That front door was slightly ajar.

  ‘Hey, Myers, you in there?’ I tapped at the door with my knuckles and it swung open with a creepy creak.

  There was no reply from inside.

  ‘Maya, it’s Joe, are you in?’

  Still nothing.

  Worry nibbled at me. Perhaps Myers had managed to stumble home, only to collapse the moment she got in, and was lying unconscious on the hallway floor, bleeding from the brain.

  Now was no time for caution or following rules, so I stepped across the threshold and trespassed on a police officer’s home.

  ‘Maya?’

  No sign of her on the bare wooden boards of the corridor. That was a good sign. I poked my head into the downstairs rooms, the living room and kitchen, but there was no sign of her there either. I looked out onto the small back yard area, just a narrow rectangle with paving slabs rather than grass, but spied only a ginger cat, stalking something invisible to my eyes.

  There was a photo stuck to the front of the fridge. It was Maya, smiling hugely, arm around some man, whose smile was equally as large. I’d never seen Myers looking so happy. I wondered who the man was; her dead ex-partner from London, the man whose death at the claws of some monster had lead to her being transferred here, away from the city she’d called home her whole life? Or perhaps a brother she’d never mentioned, or an ex-boyfriend. I realised I didn’t know that much about Myers’ personal life, despite the fact we’d shared so much time together recently. Myers was not exactly the sort of person who delved into personal matters without a good reason to.

  I made my way upstairs.

  I tried the two bedrooms first. They were, like the rest of the house, extremely neat, minimal, and ordered. Detective Myers ran a tight ship. I looked to see if there were any further photos displayed in her room, more evidence of a personal life I knew little to nothing about, but there were no pictures to be seen.

  Finally the bathroom, which is where my imagination decided to place a potential, shower-dwelling monster. I stepped into the room, its white tiles gleaming, and eyed the shower curtain suspiciously.

  ‘If there’s a monster behind there, I’m warning you, I taste terrible.’

  I reached out, and the world seemed to hold its breath…

  ...and then my phone’s ringtone screamed out, eliciting a similarly high-pitched noise out of myself, and almost bringing about my death by heart attack.

  Myers’ name flashed up on the phone’s screen.

  ‘Maya?’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Thank god,’ I sighed, ‘you scared me, running off like that.’

  ‘I didn’t run off,’ she replied. ‘I just discharged myself.’

  ‘Right, You don’t think it might have been wiser to at least stay in overnight? For observation and things of that nature?’

  ‘No, I just… I woke and I needed to get out. Can’t stand hospitals. I don’t like laying around when there’s work to do.’

  ‘Okay, but you did fall mysteriously unconscious for quite a lot of hours.’

  ‘And now I’m conscious.’

  ‘It’s just, I have this flimsy but perhaps accurate theory that what happened is linked directly to the crime scenes. Like it tainted the air and it affected you for some reason.’

  ‘Why would it just affect me?’

  ‘Well, I dunno, that’s the million dollar question isn’t it. Promise you’ll just rest up? At home? I’ll get Eva to give you some sort of magical once over after we get back from snooping on monsters in Combe.’

  There was a heavy sigh on the other end of the line.

  ‘Please? Pretty please?’

  ‘Fine. I’ll rest this once, but you two aren’t cutting me out of the investigation.’

  ‘Scouts honour,’ I replied.

  ‘Okay. I expect to see you at my house in a few hours.’

  I glanced around, but thought it best not to mention where I currently was.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll see you later.’

  I hung up and sighed in relief. She’d been a pig-headed swine about spending a few extra hours under a doctor’s care, but at least she was okay.

  I checked behind the shower curtain, just to be safe, then headed downstairs, pausing halfway as I saw a figure framed in the doorway.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said Detective Martins, his words squeezing past his clenched teeth.

  ‘I know it may appear like I’m trespassing, Detective, but I’m actually not. Honest.’

  ‘Where is Detective Myers?’

  ‘Not sure, but she’s okay.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I just spoke to her on the phone. She’s being stubborn about the hospital stay, but she sounds fine.’

  Martins seemed to sag a little. Was that relief?

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be touched to know you care, Detective Martins.’

  He stepped towards me, jabbing a finger in my direction. ‘She might be annoying, but she’s a good copper, and she’s my partner. We might not see eye-to-eye ninety percent of the time, but that doesn’t alter the facts.’

  I nodded, finding myself slightly warming to this total shit. ‘She does engender trust and loyalty for someone so stand-offish, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah. And she’s too good for this place. I’ll never understand why she asked for a transfer up here.’

  I thought about correcting Detective Martins. Telling him that Myers had been forcibly moved up here after the murder of her partner by an Uncanny monster caused her to have a bit of a breakdown. But Martins didn’t strike me as the sort of person who enjoyed being corrected.

  In any case, night was creeping in, and I had a date to keep with Eva.

  16

  I parked the Uncanny Wagon a few hundred metres before the turn that funnelled drivers into Combe.

  ‘I told you,’ said Eva, after I’d finished filling her in about Maya absconding from the hospital, ‘they need to offer a decent selection of alcoholic drinks.’

  ‘I’ll bring it up when I put in for a new
mop.’

  Keeping low, we skirted a tall hedgerow, crouching as the first building hoved into view.

  ‘What’s the plan of attack here, exactly?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not really a plan in advance sort of woman.’

  ‘This is shocking news. Behold my face of shockedness.’

  I winced as Eva’s finger jabbed me in the ribs.

  ‘I was thinking we’d wander around, maybe break into a house or two, poke around a bit, and see if we can find some clues that tell us what’s going on with this place, and why the twats have been dropping in on isolated farms and talking out the inhabitants.’

  We shuffled forward, reaching the edge of Combe’s village green. There was no street lighting, and none of the houses had light glowing from behind closed curtains, everyone long since in bed. Combe was slumbering, and the dark was all that there was to greet us.

  ‘Okay, which house should we try?’

  Eva licked her finger and held it in the air, then spun and pointed at Paul Travers’ home. ‘Might as well start there.’

  We began hustling across the green toward the house.

  ‘What happens if we’re caught?’ I asked. ‘This may come as a surprise, but I have little, and by little I mean no, experience of breaking and entering a person’s home while they sleep upstairs.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ve done this a million times.’

  ‘Bit worrying, but keep going.’

  ‘We’ll be in and out like ghosts,’ said Eva. ‘No one will even realise we’ve been here. Trust me, love, I’ve got this.’

  And that’s when the lights in every house turned on and we froze like escaped prisoners bathed in a spotlight.

  ‘Bugger,’ said Eva.

  The front door to each house opened, and the occupants stepped out in unison.

  ‘I’ll take your bugger and raise you a bollocks,’ I said.

  Eva straightened up, somehow regaining her nonchalant composure as I spun in little, panicked circles, attempting to keep all the residents of Combe in view at the same time.

  ‘Hey, freaky, possessed people of Combe,’ said Eva, giving them all a hearty wave. ‘Me and this lanky twat have rumbled you.’

  The residents said nothing, their faces hidden by the bright glow from their homes backlighting them. Which was more than a little unnerving.

  ‘The silent treatment’s wasted on us,’ said Eva, pulling out her tobacco tin and retrieving a pre-rolled smoke from inside. She lit it with a click of her fingers and popped it between her lips. ‘I’m Eva Familiar, and that’s Janto the warlock, maybe you’ve heard of us. Or whoever’s in control of you has.’

  ‘There’s someone in control?’ I said.

  ‘There’s always someone in control. An original piece of shit who enslaved this backwards lot. Am I right? Stay ominously silent and still if I am.’

  The residents of Combe stayed ominously silent and still.

  ‘Told you.’

  ‘That could be a coincidence,’ I said.

  ‘We represent the Cumbrian Coven,’ said Eva. ‘We don’t like what you’ve got going here, and if you don’t bugger off, me and him are going to fuck you the fuck up, understand?’ No reply, no movement. She turned to me. ‘Okay, I’m done with the silent treatment.’

  To be fair, I preferred it infinitely to what happened next.

  As one, the villagers spoke: ‘When Mr Many Mouths comes to town, the town becomes Mr Many Mouths.’

  ‘Fuck’s that supposed to mean?’ inquired Eva.

  ‘I think it means we should maybe consider a hasty retreat,’ I suggested.

  ‘Eva Familiar doesn’t run, unless the shop’s about to shut and I’ve drank the last of the lager.’

  ‘The town becomes Mr Many Mouths,’ the residents of Combe repeated, and then they began to scream and thrash as their heads bulged and quivered and cracked.

  ‘That is not pretty,’ said Eva, flicking the ash off the end of her smoke.

  The residents fell silent again and straightened up, stepping away from their homes, down their garden paths, and out of their gates towards us. Each of them, like Paul Travers when he’d visited my flat, sported heads covered in multiple, jabbering mouths.

  ‘Jesus, imagine the amount of lipstick the women get through,’ said Eva, taking another drag on her cigarette.

  We backed away as the people of Combe stalked across the green towards us. Eva raised her hand and a ball of fire appeared, ready to be unleashed.

  ‘No!’ I said.

  ‘You’re right, let’s just sit here and wait for them to kiss us to death.’

  ‘They’re not monsters.’

  ‘Well, they sure as fuck aren’t beauty queens.’

  ‘You said someone is controlling them, so this is against their will. If you kill them, you’re not killing monsters, you’re killing people who need our help.’

  Eva raised an eyebrow, then turned to look at the nightmare folk that were approaching us with no doubt ill intentions.

  ‘Shit, you’re right,’ said Eva. ‘Second time today. That really pisses me off.’

  We stood, back to back, watching as the residents of Combe slowly moved towards us. Truth be told, I didn’t see a way out of this that didn’t involve Eva at least physically assaulting several of them.

  ‘You two, over here!’ said a voice, yelling out from the side. I recognised the voice;

  it was Detective Maya Myers.

  Yes, that was quite an unexpected appearance.

  ‘That is quite an unexpected appearance,’ said Eva.

  See, told you.

  Myers was stood by the open door to the church, waving frantically.

  ‘Come on.’ I grabbed Eva by the wrist and yanked her away, towards the only gap in the constricting circle, directly towards the entrance of the small church where Myers waved us in. We dashed inside; I laid my back against the door and it slammed shut, the noise reverberating around the nave.

  I peered into the gloom of the church and pulled the building’s magic into me and my hand ignited.

  We stepped deeper into the church, our feet scraping across the stone floor.

  I thought about the last time I’d been in a place like this. The appearing disappearing cathedral where I’d had a nice chat with a skeleton and the Red Woman. She’d said something was happening, something was coming, and it would cause me to finally fulfil my stupid destiny. And now here I was, in another house of the holy, quite possibly about to meet some sort of Uncanny monster with the power to enslave people. Coincidence?

  Christ, I really hoped so.

  As we crept forward I was happy to discover that the stained glass windows of this place pictured more standard religious fare than the Dark Lakes cathedral. No skeleton, either. Always a bonus in any building.

  ‘So, detective,’ said Eva, ‘wanna fill us in on what you’re doing here?’

  ‘Joe told me what you two were up to.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but Joe also said to go home, rest up, and wait for us.’

  ‘This is my case, I’m not being shoved behind a desk. So to speak.’

  ‘You really are a reckless, stubborn sod,’ said Eva. ‘And I mean that as a compliment.’

  A heavy bang on the church doors made us all jump and turn.

  ‘Sounds like the natives are getting restless,’ said Eva.

  ‘Those things outside, that’s what you described attacking you, right?’ asked Myers.

  ‘Yep. Look like it’s the whole place is affected, not just Paul Travers. Something very, very weird is happening in Combe.’

  ‘What exactly?’ asked Myers. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘I am happening,’ came a booming voice from behind us. I turned to see a hulking figure just about visible in the shadows.

  ‘Have you been hiding back there listening in this whole time?’ asked Eva. ‘Not cool, fuck-face.’

  ‘All will be me,’ said the thing, and oh, it was most definitely a thing, not a person.
Even though it was still mostly shrouded by gloom, the creature talking to us twitched and quivered and didn’t have the shape of a person, not at all.

  ‘So what are you?’ asked Eva. ‘Another turned resident? Or are we talking with the boss man at last?’

  The church doors burst open and the monstrous residents stepped inside, tongues flicking in and out of their multiple, gummy mouths.

  ‘Right, enough of this drama,’ said Eva. She raised both hands, clicking her fingers to ignite the many candles that were dotted around the place.

  To be honest, I really wish she hadn’t, because what she revealed was, at best, a puke-inducing nightmare of epic proportions.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Eva. ‘You are one ugly mother fucker.’

  And no one would argue with her.

  ‘I am Mr Many Mouths,’ said the thing from one of the numerous mouths that covered not only the giant lump of pummelled, grey flesh that passed for its head, but the entire extent of its jittering, damp, slug-like body. Tongues darted from each mouth, lapping at the moisture oozing from its own flesh.

  ‘You look like something that Jabba the Hutt shat out,’ said Eva.

  Again, who could argue?

  ‘Your words mean nothing, Familiar,’ replied Mr Many Mouths.

  ‘What’s your deal then?’ asked Eva. ‘You’re from the Dark Lakes, aren’t you?’

  I glanced a little uneasily at Eva as she mentioned that place, but her eyes were fixed on the creature. Was this connected to the Red Woman? Was this the thing she mentioned that would push me towards the throne after all? Because right now it was doing nothing to sell me on the idea.

  ‘You might as well fill us in,’ said Eva, leaning against a pew and rolling a fresh smoke. ‘I mean, I assume you’re going to kill us, or turn us, so now’s the time for a little gloating.’

  The creature laughed, a laugh multiplied by its many mouths, and then the transformed residents crowded within the church entrance joined in too. The noise echoed horribly around the church’s stone interior. It fair put the willies up me, I don’t mind telling you.

  ‘I am Mr Many Mouths. When I come to town, the whole town becomes Mr Many Mouths.’