by EH Walter
Paranormal Investigations 1
No Situation Too Strange
By
EH Walter
Copyright 2011 EH Walter
This edition copyright 2015 EH Walter
Cover by Tirz at http://acleverwhatever.blogspot.co.uk/
License notes
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This book was originally written in November 2011 for Nanowrimo. I never expected Leo’s world to take over mine in the way it has. It goes without saying that I am eternally grateful to all of you who have been on this journey with me.
My original 2011 thanks go to: everyone at EJS who read along and chatted with me about it in the staffroom; Colleen and Ellie who made me feel I had something worth reading; Mary who gave me a thrill as PI went transatlantic; Karen who I made late for work; Michael for the fantastic Nanowrimo original cover which inspired how to do away with 'Bertha'; my brother; Benjamin for reading and reviewing; Sean for being the e publishing guru and whooping my word count; everyone who suggested silly names and ideas (the silliest coming from Robin Chuffmonkey Longley): Sian, Jackie, Anita, Katie Delaney, Katie Brown, Patrick, Will Dyson, Misti, Carl, Liam, Lee, Jamie, Kneller, Tarryn, Steve, Angela, Atilio, Bob (the non-faun version), Kate, Rick, Gail and of course the greatest lobster of them all - Harold Parkinson.
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CHAPTER ONE
Bloody Men are like Bloody Buses
My life changed with an acorn. An acorn thrown with some force at my bedroom window. I jolted out of sleep. Begrudgingly, after acorn number three, I thought I ought to have a look. I am, after all, meant to be an investigator.
You may think it’s really cool to be proprietor and lead investigator of what amounts to a detective agency, it’s not. I wish I could make it sound glamorous, but normally I’m too busy hocking bits of old jewellery to pay the rent. Truth be told, this was not the life I had envisaged for myself. I went to drama school, dammit. I was meant to be treading the boards at The Globe as Lady M, Titania - even fairy at the back would’ve done. No, I get lumped with Great Aunt Mildred’s legacy.
Great Aunt Mildred’s legacy was a dilapidated office building in Cockfosters with ‘Paranormal Investigations’ written on the door in drippy gold paint. I’m not sure how I even ended up working for her. You see - I just couldn’t believe in the paranormal. No sir. Not ghosts, ghouls, demons, aliens or anything else that might be described as paranormal or supernatural.
I rubbed my eyes, yawned and peeked through the curtain. I didn't see anything at first and then, as another acorn thudded on the window in front of me, I saw a small figure retreat back into the shadows.
As I opened the window, he crept forward, looking sideways furtively. His movement triggered the security light again and I was able to take my first proper look. He wore a red cable knit jumper, a green kerchief around the neck and baggy black trousers. He had a curious face, his twitching nose drew most of my attention - it was as if he was constantly sniffing the air. His face was a pale brown under the light and held a shiny glow. But what really drew my attention was the pair of small horns or antlers that sat atop of his head. Didn't he know Halloween was two weeks away? In his hands he held a paper bag, he dipped a hand in and was about to throw the contents at my window when he spotted me leaning out. The contents of the bag he then deposited into his mouth and crunched loudly.
He chewed like a goat - sideways.
"Are you Morgan LE Fey?" he asked in between mouthfuls of acorn.
"Leo, I never use my first name."
"Leo," he repeated.
"I haven't had a boy throw something at my window since I was thirteen so make it good."
He looked around cautiously. "I need you," he said.
No witty response came to hand - it was the middle of the night. "Uh-ha," I yawned.
"I need you to sort out the fairies for me," he said between crunches of acorn, "they're really mean."
I blinked. A cold breeze coming through the window reassured me I was awake. I clung on to the windowsill to steady myself. I may have been conscious, but my head wasn't quite one hundred per cent yet. Especially since someone had just asked for my help in dealing with fairies. Fairies.
A car blared past and the strange little man jumped and skittered into the shadows again. A moment later his head peered out into the light. There were those strange little horns on his head again - they looked like those devil horns on a headband that you could buy in costume shops at this time of year.
"Can I come in?" he bleated, "the fairies, they have people everywhere. It's not safe."
"Hold on," I said, "What kind of fairies are we talking about? The ‘I am a bigot and call non heterosexual men fairies’ or the ‘I drank too much absinthe and now a green Kylie is flying around my head’ kind of fairies?"
"Huh?"
"What do you mean?"
"Yes they are mean. Very mean. Can I come in? If I stay out here any longer one of them will get me. They have informants everywhere."
"Oh yeah, I'm gonna let some random stranger into my flat."
His shoulders curved in and he nibbled at his finger nails. "I was told you help people."
"Who told you that?"
"Your dad."
Bugger. Typical dad, trying to interfere in my life again. Through the years I had been the unwilling recipient of many of his projects. "What did he tell you?"
"He said you were the one I need, the one who could help me." His eyes grew wide.
There was no doubting this guy was terrified.
I sighed. "Okay, I'll buzz you in. But I’m warning you - any funny business and I will have no hesitation in using lethal force." Not being skilled in hand to hand combat, lethal force would entail my ramming a fork in his eye.
"What?" his eyebrows arched into a triangle.
I shook my head in despair. "Come to the door and I'll open it."
I threw on a dressing gown and a pair of slippers. My flat was on the first floor, so I made my way downstairs to the front door. As soon as I opened the door the man ran in. He didn’t look any more normal now he was stood in the brighter light of a communal hallway. I closed the door.
“This way,” I said and led him upstairs.
As we walked, he kept looking around, inclining his head to every small corner with a shadow.
As soon as I turned the key in my flat door the man pushed in.
“Lock it, lock it!” he said, “Close the threshold.”
I locked the door. “Welcome to my palatial residence,” I said as I led him down the short hallway to my kitchen slash living room.
He looked from one side to the other. “Where’s the rest of it?”
“This is it. Bathroom, bedroom and this.”
I gestured to the sofa for him to sit down, but he was too busy peering into every nook and cranny, handling all my photographs, books and knick knacks. Looking behind everything.
"This is it?" he asked, "I expected something... roomier."
"What did you expect - the Ritz?" I responded as I wrenched my mother's photograph out of his hands and reset it on the book shelf so she could look down at me again.
"Where am I going to sleep?"
"Sleep? You don’t get to sl
eep here. You get to tell me your story and I decide whether to take you on as a client. I haven't agreed to anything. I'm still not sure what you want."
"Protection. I need protection."
"Look, you're going to have to sit down and explain this properly. It's the middle of the night and my brain is not exactly functioning at full capacity here."
He sat on the sofa closest to the window and bounced on it as if it was a new experience to him. A smile lit up his face and the anxiety disappeared for the first time. Then he sat back, folded his hands and put his hooves up on the coffee table. Yes - hooves.
I marched straight to the kitchen end of the room and reached under the sink for the Christmas bottle of Bailey's and an old bottle of Polish wine from a client whose parrot I had found. I poured myself a mug full of Baileys before sitting on the other sofa and placed the two bottles within grasping distance.
The little man looked at me for a second, as if about to ask me if I was going to share and then he saw the frown on my face and thought again.
"Start from the beginning." I commanded in my don't-give-me-any-shit voice.
He drummed his fingers together in thought. "I was born in..."
"No! The beginning of your trouble with... with the fairies." I almost choked on the word I felt so foolish saying it.
He pursed his lips together. Under the light of the living room I could see him much more clearly. His skin was the colour of London clay, his eyes a startling green and it looked like he had ringed them with black eyeliner. On his chin and above his lip was the faintest trace of a fluffy goatee beard. I hate goatee beards, I just don't get them - I mean, either grow a beard or don't.
"I... I'm in deep," he said, his voice wobbled, "and I didn't know where to turn. You see - it started with small things, stealing food and reclaiming teeth that hadn't been put under pillows - small stuff. They know your weaknesses those fairies - they know everything - they're everywhere!"
I smiled in what I hoped was a soothing don't-knife-me-you-weirdo way. The warmth of the Bailey's flooding my system helped. I was definitely beginning to feel a little mellower. "Okay," I said, "you were what - a flunky?"
"I don't know what a flunky is. I was their servant - that was a mistake, I didn't mean to enter indenture - but the Fae are tricky, I always heard never enter into a bargain with a fairy and I should've listened! They get you on the smallest technicality."
"They sound like lawyers."
He twisted his fingers together. "I kept getting asked to do more and more complicated jobs, stuff I wasn't happy with but there was no way I could refuse, I was getting in deeper and deeper. I'm scared."
My throat produced something halfway between a cough and a laugh. I spoke very slowly. "You're scared of fairies."
His green eyes met mine and I was shocked by the terror within them. It almost shocked me sober. Almost.
"You don't understand," he went on, "if you want something done in my world, anything, you go to the fairies. They are the... fixers. They can get anything done. Except they don't like getting their hands dirty so they out-source the jobs. That and they have a few problems with modern technology."
Oh great, a fairy mafia.
"You did a job for them?" I asked shaking the last drops of Baileys into my mug.
"Many jobs, but never before one so - dangerous. Of course, I didn’t know that then. It was just another job. You see they've never had a client as powerful as this man. He scares all of them, although they try not to show it, and I don’t want to meet anything that scares a fairy. I didn't want to do it but I had no choice, they had me by the horns."
I glanced up at the aforementioned horns. Oh yes, they did seem to be attached to his head after all. I took another swig. I was beginning to feel very mellow. Who cared if the guy had horns and hooves - we weren't all perfect after all! I had dated worse in my time - you wouldn't believe how much photos lie on Internet dating sites.
"Go on."
The Baileys was gone, so I cracked open the Polish wine and generously slugged it into the same mug.
"I did this job - I had no choice and... and it's all gone wrong. I wasn't meant to live. And now there's a hit out on me."
*
I'm not sure when I fell unconscious, but that was the last I remembered. I woke up on the sofa when the early morning sunshine fell across my face. I was twisted in on myself, my head resting on my hand and a pool of drool had puddled on the arm of the sofa. Attractive. I blinked and tried to get up. I regretted it instantly - someone was playing a set of steel drums inside my head. The weird dreams of the night before tried to edge their way into my consciousness, but I wasn't really interested. I closed my eyes until a smell began to tickle my nose. I sniffed. Eggs. Eggs and something...
Blearily, I turned to the kitchen area of the living room slash kitchen and saw the man from my dream dressed in a cat apron holding a frying pan. My frying pan. My cat apron.
"Oh f..." I muttered.
"Breakfast" he said holding up the frying pan. Some kind of eggs had been made into an omelette. My basil and chilli plants had been left untouched but my peace lily looked as if it had gone ten rounds with an untamed kitten. Bits of the peace lily were now infused into the egg mixture.
My stomach felt like a swirling pit of cream curdled in cheap alcohol. Ah yes, that would be right.
Memories of the previous night began to dribble back into my brain. If the subject of those memories had not been standing in my kitchen, wearing my apron and holding my frying pan aloft, I would have thought last night to have been a rather odd dream.
My bloody father. It was his fault. He'd found me another of his projects. Except this one was a man with goat hooves, horns popping out between tufts of his wavy brown hair and who seemed to think peace lilies were one of your five a day.
"Do you want breakfast?" the goat man asked.
I shook my head as I didn’t trust my mouth to open until there was something flushable beneath it. I ran to the bathroom to evacuate the alcoholic poison from my guts. Stomach empty, I peeled off my clothes and climbed gingerly into the shower. The steam and hot water began to wake me up.
Wrapped in a large towel, I went to the bedroom only to find the goat man had found somewhere to sleep last night after all - my bed. My lovely bed looked like a dog had slept in it, the sheets were trodden into an oval and littered with hair. The room even smelt like a stable. With an angry groan I pulled off the sheets, threw them onto the floor and bundled them up. When dressed, I took the bed linen through to the living room slash kitchen to see the man sitting on my sofa, hooves up on my coffee table and eating a peace lily omelette. The television remote was in his hand and he was flicking through the channels before settling on Jeremy Kyle.
"This is too much," I said, throwing the linen down by the washing machine and reaching for my car keys. “I’m going out.”
"Whilst you're out," the goat man said without turning his head from Jeremy Kyle and the toothless man he was interrogating, "could you buy salt? I notice you don't have any."
"It's not healthy!" I muttered angrily before storming out and slamming the door behind me.
I wanted to give my father a piece of my mind. Unfortunately, my father did not possess a mobile phone so I couldn't call him and shout at him. I didn't even know where he lived - he turned up in my life when he felt like it. Damn him!
I drove like a typical Londoner the short distance to Cockfosters, I wouldn't let anyone in and I sat right behind the other traffic. I was in a foul mood and needed space. Since my personal space, ie my flat, had been invaded my only other option was my office.
My mood didn’t improve when I found myself stuck in traffic alongside a bus. It wasn't the bus that was the problem, it was what was on it. A large poster was pasted across the side - a new film release, the second movie in an action trilogy. On the poster was a man in a white shirt, ripped to show his gleaming and muscular chest, holding a gun as if shooting at some bad guys attack
ing the bus. A size zero blonde was curled up against his side, pouting out at all of London, her figure airbrushed into Barbie perfection. I hated her instantly and felt a jealousy that was irrational and no longer mine to feel.
It's a bit weird seeing your ex-boyfriend go past on the side of a red double-decker bus. He didn't need airbrushing to look good, although it looked like they'd had a go anyway.
Jeremy Flynt, my erstwhile boyfriend and now Hollywood star. Jeremy Flynt. Jez to me. Jiz to his friends when drunk. You could say Jez was the one person in my drama school cohort who really made it, although Sabrine did quite well with that recurring role as a druggie on Casualty. It really wasn't fair that you couldn't get over an ex because his face, gorgeous as it was, happened to be plastered everywhere. I hadn't dared watch the first film for the feelings it might dredge up, although there had been a period of one fortnight where it seemed like Film 4 was conspiring to make me watch it by showing it repeatedly in different time slots.
I parked in the empty car park behind my office building, slammed the door and marched off. Then I realised I hadn't locked it and marched back to do so, although it was doubtful anyone would want to steal a rusty, faded red Astra.
The Paranormal Investigations office building, on a busy road leading up to the M25, was a typical seventies office gulag. Although built on a curve it was no Royal Crescent.
Inside the building, the lifts had long ceased to work so I had to head to the stairwell in order to climb to the seventh floor. In the ground floor reception area, a familiar figure was working his way across the floor.
"Alright Reggie?" I asked of the man operating the floor polisher. He ignored me. As usual. I never got one single word out of him and I'd never seen him do anything other than hoover and polish the floors. I tell you - we have the shiniest surfaces this side of the Strictly Come Dancing set.
Our offices were off the main corridor on the seventh floor. The lock on the door had been broken as long as I’d worked there, but no one came into the building anyway. The door was one of those with a half glass panel, on which ‘Paranormal Investigations’ was daubed in gold paint. Great Aunt Mildred had done it herself and it showed – the long letters had drips clinging to them that had long since hardened.
