Bad Soul

by David Bussell

  ‘Okay. Where’s he at? Maybe we could do lunch.’

  ‘He is inside of me,’ he replied.

  ‘Ah. Oh. Christ.’

  Demons tend to occupy little realms of their own, separate from the everyday world but connected to it via hidden portals. Well, hidden unless you know where to look. It might be a crack in reality at the bottom of an ancient well or a hollow in a tree that leads to another place. Or the door might be a living thing, in this case a really tall, wide man named Gerald.

  ‘You’re sure he wouldn’t just like to do this over the phone?’ I asked as I followed him across the pebble beach and into a small beach hut.

  ‘Face-to-face,’ said Gerald as he began to undress, carefully folding each item of clothing and placing it aside as he did so.

  Then came the horrible bit.

  Well, the sight of Gerald stark bollock naked wasn’t exactly a delight, but what he did next was grimmer still.

  He took the knife he was holding, turned it upon himself, and jabbed it into his throat. He didn’t flinch, didn’t scream, he barely even blinked. He dragged the knife down his neck, down his chest and stomach, until he reached his groin. The whole time he cut away at himself, not a drop of blood was spilled. Finally, when he was done, he kneeled down and used his fingers to dig into the long gash he’d fashioned, then he began to peel himself open until there was a gap large enough for me to crawl through.

  ‘You know, you’d go down a storm on Britain’s Got Talent,’ I said.

  He didn’t laugh, which was fair enough. Crap joke.

  ‘The Long Man is waiting,’ he said.

  ‘Right. Just gonna crawl inside you now, Gerald. Nothing weird about that.’

  I got down on my hands and knees and began to creep into the opening. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, exactly. Would I be fighting my way through organs? Apparently not. Instead, it was like I was making my way through a gap in a fence, and I found myself crawling across a carpet of brown, fallen leaves and twigs. I turned to see a gap in reality. A hole through which I could still see the beach hut I was in just moments ago.

  ‘Okay. Right. Cool.’

  I stood, brushed the clinging sticks and leaves from my jeans, and took in my surroundings. They were, in a word, bleak. The colour scheme was shades of grey and black, the surrounding landscape mostly barren rock. A light breeze toyed with loose stones and twigs, stirring up the parched earth. It wasn’t the kind of place tourists go mad for, put it that way.

  There was a single building a little way in the distance, an ancient, crumbling cathedral, made from large blocks of stone blacker than Hitler’s heart. Its spire was broken in two, most of it laid out on the ground like a fallen tree. A twin pair of stained glass windows looked down at me depicting jagged flames licking at the bodies of anguished sinners. A wide-open set of wooden double doors formed the mouth of the building.

  ‘Time to stick my head into the lion’s gob,’ I said to myself, and walked towards the entrance.

  As I passed across the threshold of the black cathedral, the temperature dropped by at least ten degrees, turning my breath into gunsmoke. The smell of sulphur was almost overwhelming. I shivered and coughed and pulled my leather jacket tight.

  I took in the view of the black cathedral’s belly. Giant, fat marble columns reached up and spread wide at the top, holding up the building’s shadow-drenched ceiling. Spiralling up the columns, finely etched, were all kinds of ancient words I couldn’t read, but made me feel queasy all the same. Made my face prickle with sweat despite the cathedral’s icy chill.

  Twin rows of wooden pews crafted from dark wood stretched out towards a giant, stone altar. The altar was carved into the shape of a goat with large horns that curved back from the front of its head. It had been carved in pale stone, but was stained with splashes of dark. Something that looked like blood.

  Dominating the wall behind the altar was another stained glass window, large as the side of a house. The window depicted smiling, horned creatures on their knees, gazing up at a strange-looking beast. Clusters of thick tentacles burst from the beast’s hulking mass, and a golden crown floated above its monstrous head.

  ‘Hello?’ I said, my voice echoing around the building’s vaulted innards.

  ‘You’re late,’ said a voice to the side of me that separated my feet from the floor by a good two inches.

  I turned to see an old woman sat on one of the pews. She stood and turned to me, her hands clasped together. No, not clasped together, thick wire had been pushed through the skin, binding her two hands together. I saw with a shudder that the wire was also threaded through her eyelids, holding them closed.

  ‘Sorry, I was in prison,’ I said.

  ‘Not for hours you haven’t been,’ tutted the woman, her sour face covered in wrinkles, her thin hair tied back into a ghost-white bun.

  ‘Are you the Long Man?’

  The old woman threw her head back and did a little jig as she cackled, her old shoes clattering against the black stone slabs of the cathedral floor as she pulled her heavy dress up. ‘Me? Do I even look like him? I’m the old woman, ain’t I? I sit here and I say hello and I see nothing but the bad in you, and there’s so much bad in you, ain’t there, hm?’

  A pointed tongue darted out of her thin lipped mouth, followed by a beetle, which went crawling across her face.

  ‘So what, are you his… receptionist?’

  ‘Already told you! I’m the old woman! I sit here and I say hello and I see nothing but the bad in you! You don’t listen, do you? That’s your problem.’

  ‘Look, I make it a rule not to punch old women in the face, but if you carry on I’ll be happy to make an exception.’

  The old woman frowned, then began laughing again, her shoes beating a frantic tattoo against the stone floor.

  A wind rushed through the cathedral, a hurricane of dust, blowing the old woman to the floor and almost sending me down with her. I ducked behind one of the pillars to ride it out, the wind dropping as suddenly as it had appeared. I peered around the column to see the old woman struggling to her feet, muttering and complaining. We’d been joined by a third person, though “person” was a bit of a stretch.

  ‘Hello, Erin Banks,’ said the Long Man, the demon whose realm I’d entered.

  ‘Hi there, you’re… big,’ I replied, stepping out from behind the marble column, shaking dirt and cobwebs from my hair.

  The Long Man was more than big, he was enormous, almost as tall as the cathedral itself, with giant, thick horns atop his head that matched the ones on the altar. His face was a leering skull, his body exposed, glistening muscle, his hands huge claws. If you were asked to draw a demon, he was exactly what you’d come up with, only nastier.

  ‘You heard of knocking?’ grumbled the old woman, coated in a layer of brown dirt, beetles rushing from her mouth, her nose, her hair.

  ‘Be gone now, old woman, seer of the dark. Ms Banks and I have things to discuss.’

  ‘Was going anyway,’ said the old woman, turning and heading for the exit, her shoes clacking against the floor as she went. ‘Look, see? Going anyway. Like I was even interested. Got better things to do, ain’t I?’

  Only once the old woman had stepped from the cathedral did the giant demon turn his attention back to me.

  ‘I am called the Long Man,’ he said, his voice a low rumble. ‘I facilitated your release from incarceration.’

  I bowed a little. ‘Thanks. Much appreciated. I take it that wasn’t just a random act of kindness on your part?’

  ‘Kindness? I do not possess such a quality.’

  ‘Right, because of the demon thing. Makes sense.’

  The Long Man’s skull somehow twisted into a grin, and he let loose a chuckle that shook the whole cathedral, causing a shower of dust to tumble down.

  ‘I want you to find something that belongs to me.’

  He turned, and the cathedral rippled in a way that made me feel queasy. When he stepped forward, we were no
longer in the cathedral, we were in a forest of large, twisted trees with bark the colour of charcoaled skin.

  ‘That’s a good trick,’ I said, gazing around as the Long Man brushed his long, sharp fingers through the leaves around him.

  ‘This is my Forest of Souls.’

  ‘Right. You ever think of running a rake through this place?’ I asked, trying not to get too close to any of the trees, which I felt sure were reaching out to touch me with their crooked branches. ‘So what is it you want me to get for you? Maybe a chainsaw to prune this lot back a little?’

  ‘Each of these trees is a soul that was promised to me,’ he replied, slowly moving from tree to tree, touching them tenderly. ‘I plant the soul in the dirt and they grow.’

  There was a sort of dark beauty in that. ‘Cool,’ I found myself saying.

  ‘At night, when the moon is high, the trees are given voice, and they scream in eternal, orgasmic torment.’

  ‘Less cool.’

  The Long Man stopped at a gap in the trees and gestured to the soil, ‘I am owed a soul, Erin Banks. I have the spot all ready and waiting. Mr Brian Teller promised me his soul in good faith. He agreed to my terms, he signed the contract in his own blood. The deadline has passed, and the soul is not here. I want you to find Mr Brian Teller and bring his soul back to me, where it rightfully belongs.’

  Demons are real hoarders when it comes to souls. They can’t get enough of them. You’d think people wouldn’t be so stupid as to hand their souls over to one, but then you’d be giving people far more credit than me. People are greedy, more often than not, and stupid with it. Eternal torment? Why worry about that now when you can get your heart’s desire?

  ‘Why should I help you, exactly?’ I asked. ‘Seems to me that this Brian Teller pulled a fast one on a demon. Good on him.’

  The Long Man turned to me and the darkness seemed to thicken around him.

  ‘The soul is mine,’ he said. ‘The contract is unbreakable. Undeniable. By not relinquishing his soul on the agreed date, a schism has been created.’

  ‘A schism. Right. Sounds bad. Quick question: what’s a schism?’

  ‘An error in reality. A wound in the actual. A fault in time. This will spread. Infect. The longer the soul is not mine, the worse the schism will get, the more people it will harm.’

  Okay, that did sound pretty bad. ‘So you want it to stop others getting hurt? Doesn’t sound very demony.’

  The Long Man looked at me for several seconds, then threw his huge head back and laughed, the trees shaking and the dirt beneath my feet cracking and almost throwing me to the ground.

  ‘I want what is mine.’

  ‘Okay, easy there, big man.’

  ‘Here.’ A dagger appeared, suspended in the air before me. It had a simple, wooden handle, and a five-inch, black crystal blade.

  ‘You will take this dagger and slide it into Mr Brian Teller’s heart. It will absorb his soul. After that, you will bring it back to me. You will do this because I have asked you to.’

  I reached out and tentatively took hold of the dagger. The blade strobed with black light. ‘Cool knife.’

  ‘Mr Teller was recently in a place called Highstaff. That was where his soul was to be taken. You will start there.’

  I should point out here that it wasn’t often I worked for actual demons. In fact, this was the first time, a real “Dear diary” moment. Sure, I’ve worked for some real bottom-of-the-barrel pieces of shit in my time, but never a thing from Hell. Still, work was work and money was money. Speaking of which: ‘So what’s the bunce, big guy?’

  The Long Man looked at me with the endless dark hollows of his eyes. ‘I see a wound in you, Erin Banks. A festering pain.’

  The old woman with the sewn-shut eyes peered from around a tree at the Long Man’s side. ‘She’s done wrong in her life,’ she said. ‘So many bad and wicked things to those that didn’t deserve it. She’s betrayed and she’s murdered. Blood on her hands! Blood on her soul. Blood for cash, blood for revenge. But wrong’s been done to her, too. Wrong was done to her many years back. Secret wrong. Hidden wrong. Shh! Can’t know. No one can know, they made sure of that. The wrong, it cut her open and it aches and it rots in her. It wriggles and squiggles with maggots, chewing at all the decay!’

  The Long Man swatted his hand and the old woman turned to smoke, disappearing into the canopy of the forest.

  ‘Do you suffer, Erin Banks?’

  ‘If it’s all the same with you, I’ll take cash over therapy.’

  I blinked and the Long Man was stood over me, his huge, icy claws gripping my skull.

  ‘What are you—?’

  I was in a secret street, a street that shouldn’t—that didn’t—exist, and yet I recognised it. I recognised it from the night James was taken.

  ‘James!’

  I spun around and found a tall shape looking down at me in a long coat. I squinted my eyes, trying to clear the picture, to see the shape’s face, but—

  The picture was broken and I staggered away from the demon’s cold grasp, gasping for air.

  ‘What was that? What did you do?’

  ‘A piece of the puzzle that drives you,’ he replied. ‘A face, a name, a witness to that night – that shall be your prize.’

  I was trembling, my heart beating like I’d just ran a hundred metre sprint. I bunched my fists, snarling. ‘Tell me now! Who was that?’

  ‘When the knife is returned to me with Brian Teller’s soul inside, then you will know. Not before. Now do as I ask.’

  I stepped forward, wanting to argue, wanting to demand more, but the Long Man turned from me and the Forest of Souls was pulled away like a magician’s tablecloth.

  Next thing I knew I was stood before a gap in reality, peering into a beach hut. I turned to look for the black cathedral with its broken spire, but it wasn’t there anymore. I looked down at the dagger the demon had given me, the one with the polished black blade. A new memory. A new piece of the night James was taken. I would find Brian Teller, I would take his soul and deliver it to the demon. I had to. I had to know who the person hidden in my memories was, had to find out what they knew about my brother’s kidnap.

  I slid the dagger into the inside pocket of my jacket and crawled out of the demon’s realm.

  5

  Magic is everywhere. It surrounds you, washes through you, permeates your world. And yet you never see it. You’re like a fish in water, living in a substance you can’t perceive. It’s everywhere you look, but you don’t even know it exists. It’s only when you tune into the Uncanny that you begin to see it.

  The impossible.

  Down every street, beneath every bridge, within every living thing. Only when your eyes are really open do you start to notice things you never saw before, crazy things that your attention would have glided over, would have glimpsed in the corner of your eye and dismissed.

  After James went missing—was taken from me—my parents weren’t the only ones who thought I was spouting gibberish. Even I thought I might have been losing it, especially when I began seeing crazy things. Street entrances that hadn’t been there before, people with horns on their heads huddled in doorways, creatures that didn’t exist outside of movies hunched on rooftops, leering down at me. I knew I wanted to be part of it. No, had to be part of it. No one believed me about what I remembered, the scattered remains of the kidnap, which meant if there was any hope of James being found, any hope of justice, of revenge, then it would be up to me to make myself part of this new world. A world that existed side-by-side with my own, but that I couldn’t make my parents see.

  Parker was one of the first people to help me.

  I was fifteen years old and he’d seen me hanging around outside his tattoo parlour, Black Cat Ink. The place had been on my radar after I’d been following what was clearly a vampire, only to see him enter the shop. I’d started keeping an eye on the place, watching all sorts of Uncanny weirdos wandering in and out for fresh ink. Eventually, P
arker—only a few years older than me—had strolled out of the shop, wandered over, and sat on a wall beside me.

  ‘You ever gonna come in, girl?’ he’d asked. Parker was skinny, with skin so dark it absorbed light like a black hole. The back and sides of his head were shaved, leaving a cluster of short dreadlocks to sprout from the top.

  ‘What’s wrong with your eyes, mate?’ I’d asked, looking at his entirely white eyeballs.

  ‘I’m blind.’

  ‘A blind tattoo artist?’

  ‘I can see what I need to in other ways. Like I can see that you’re looking for someone. Someone you lost.’

  Two weeks later he was giving me my first tattoo. See, Parker has a very unique talent: the ability to graft magic onto people’s skin. He didn’t do it for everyone, mind you. Nine times out of ten he’d send you packing, shake his head and point you to the door. But if he liked you and you were ready to work with him—to work for him—then he’d pull out his needle and get to work. That was the arrangement we had, the same arrangement we’d had since the day we met: Parker gave me the muscle I needed to survive in this world, and for that he got a cut of any profits I made. It was a fair trade. Without him, I’d never have been able to cross over into the Uncanny world. Never been given my invitation to the private party.

  The shop bell rang as I pushed my way through the door of Parker’s shop and headed downstairs to the parlour. The walls were covered in a mish-mash of clashing designs, and Polaroid photos of customers proudly showing off fresh ink were tacked around the frame of a floor-length mirror.

  I didn’t announce it was me, I just stood grinning as Parker looked up from the couch he was slouched on, earbuds in, no doubt listening to one of the hundreds of audiobooks he chewed through every year. He sat up, pulling the earbuds out, a grin spreading across his polished onyx face.

  ‘Who broke you out then, girl?’

  He knew it was me. Somehow, without the use of his eyes, he still knew exactly who it was that had entered his place of business.