Bad Soul

by David Bussell

  11

  I drove back to Alisha’s caravan and handed over the syringe of wizard blood. It was going to take her a few hours to set up and execute the rite that would point me in Brian’s direction, so I tootled back to Brighton to get a few hours of kip in before going on a soul hunt.

  The smell of stale piss filled my nostrils as I arrived at the steps leading down to my basement flat. As well as attracting people caught short for the loo, the porch area also acted as a wind trap, and was piled high with litter. I stepped through a carpet of fast food containers and chicken bones, and stuck my key in the front door.

  ‘Home sweet home,’ I sighed.

  ‘Erin…’

  A voice mumbled from the dark.

  Was it another drunk, come to use my door as a urinal? A junkie looking for somewhere to jack up?

  A familiar figure stepped uncertainly from the shadows, using one wall for support.

  ‘Kirklander?’

  He looked like he’d lost a fight with a lawnmower. His shirt was shredded and bloodstained, his face bruised, one eye swollen shut.

  ‘Jesus,’ I jumped forward and caught him just as his knees gave way, my tattoos glowing, helping me support his weight.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Found… found me…’

  ‘Who found you?’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘Come on, you idiot.’ I pushed open the door and levered the two of us inside.

  For an hour, all I got out of Kirklander were winces, yelps of pain, and assorted swear words as I tended to his wounds. I removed what remained of his shirt and used a wet cloth to dab at the wounds across his chest and his stomach,

  ‘So are you going to tell me what happened or not?’ I asked, applying bandages, not at all happy to be playing Florence Nightingale.

  Kirklander sighed, and I swear to God he blushed.

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘I got jumped. Must have been about six of them. Maybe ten.’

  I raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Okay, there were two of them, are you happy?’

  ‘A little,’ I replied with a smile. Kirklander began to laugh, then winced and held a hand to his jaw.

  ‘So what did you do this time?’ I asked.

  ‘The usual.’

  ‘Being a cheating, lying, untrustworthy scumbag?’

  ‘Who knew that would ever backfire?’

  ‘It’s a crazy world all right. So, are you okay?’

  ‘Better now I’m here with you.’

  We locked eyes and the room fell silent for three seconds that felt like three hours.

  ‘Well,’ I said, coughing.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Are they still after you?’

  ‘Probably. They weren’t happy they didn’t get to break my legs before I took off. That’s why I came to you instead of going home, they’ll be watching my place.’

  ‘So you came to me for help?’

  ‘I can take care of myself.’

  ‘So you came to me for help?’ I repeated.

  Kirklander frowned, then nodded reluctantly. My eyes scanned his bare torso and I did my best not to lick my lips. ‘I’ll get you a t-shirt.’

  I went to head off, but Kirklander grabbed my wrist.

  ‘Thanks. Thank you, Erin.’

  Yup, bad case of butterflies at that point. ‘Shut up, you big Jessie, they hardly touched you.’ I pulled away and hurried through to my bedroom to find a top.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind a t-shirt that says Daddy’s Lil’ Whore across the chest.’

  ‘You know me so well,’ said Kirklander, propping himself up with the bedroom doorway.

  ‘Too well,’ I replied.

  ‘So how long has it been?’

  ‘You know how long,’ I replied, quietly.

  Kirklander’s eyes drifted to the unmade bed, then back to me.

  ‘No chance,’ I said.

  Kirklander began to walk slowly towards me, his eyes fixed on mine. The stale bedroom air was now alive with electricity, all its colour drained but for the green of Kirklander’s eyes.

  ‘Okay, some chance.’

  I know it was stupid. That he was a bastard. A bastard that had let me down more times than I could count. A bastard that had left me behind as the police sirens wailed. In my defence, you haven’t seen him with his top off.

  I’m only human, all right?

  His mouth met mine, my hands met his arse, then our bodies met the bed.

  Heartfelt apologies to my upstairs neighbours.

  ‘And just what do we have here, wandering these hidden streets?’ asked the tall, indistinct shape that slipped from the doorway.

  ‘What do they want with my brother?’

  The tall shape was talking but I couldn’t hear him. Him? I was sure it was a him but I didn’t know why. I tried to make out any detail, in the figure’s appearance, in their voice, but it was all grey, all static. All hidden.

  I was standing in the back garden of the council estate again and I wasn’t sure what had happened. I could see my mum sat in the kitchen, head in her hands. There were two police officers sat with her. My dad was pacing back and forth talking, and I knew my mum was crying, and it was all because I’d fallen asleep.

  It was all my fault.

  My fault.

  My fault.

  I jerked awake, my head full of cotton wool, mouth dry, heart beating like I’d run a hundred metre sprint in nine seconds.

  I flopped back, the pillow cushioning my head, eyes stung with the tears. The room smelled like sex. Then I remembered.

  ‘Kirk?’ I turned and reached out, but the other side of the bed was empty. Maybe he went to the toilet? But the bed was cold. He hadn’t been there for a while.

  ‘Kirklander?’

  I sat up and pushed the covers away. There was no response. Worry started to flutter. I got up, naked, and pulled on some underwear and a t-shirt from the pile of clothes on the floor. I noticed there weren’t any clothes of his on the carpet.

  A bad feeling started to overtake me. Maybe whoever was after Kirklander had broken in somehow. Silently. Taken him as I slept and dreamed about hidden streets and a man I couldn’t quite see. I hoped it was that. That would be something. Come on, wasn’t I due something? Something besides being skipped out on in the middle of the night?

  ‘Kirklander?’ I said, not expecting a response anymore as I walked to the front room and found it empty.

  He hadn’t gone for a walk. Hadn’t been snatched by whoever beat him. No. I knew what he’d done. I was trying to ignore the truth for as long as possible, but my eyes settled on my leather jacket, hung on the back of a chair. I didn’t leave it there, I’d deposited it on the floor when I shrugged it off to tend to Kirklander’s wounds.

  ‘You didn’t. Tell me you didn’t...’

  I picked up the jacket. It was light. The Soul Dagger was gone.

  I felt woozy for a second, like I was still in a dream and I’d wake and find him curled up next to me, one arm draped over my torso, holding me.

  Then anger booted down the door and shoved that cosy picture down a hole.

  I screamed and kicked the wall, toes popping as bones cracked in two.

  I screamed again and tumbled to the floor, clenching my foot. ‘Kirklander, you fucking bastard!’

  How could I have fallen for that? How big did a blind spot have to be for someone to drop their guard around the man who turned tail and ran when the heat came calling? A man who left them behind to take the fall in their place? I knew Kirklander was interested in the job, in the Soul Dagger, and I’d walked him into my house anyway. I liked to think of myself as a cynical, take-no-shit woman, and yet I’d fallen into bed with a guy I knew had no qualms about betraying me. If this makes you think less of me just imagine how I feel, I actually have to be me. Don’t hold me up as a role model, kids. I’ve got flaws running through me thicker than your leg.

  Parker was right. I was disappointing.
<
br />   There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Go away!’

  Another knock.

  ‘What did I just yell?’

  A third knock.

  ‘Jesus, just wait a minute!’

  I pulled in the magic around me and within a minute—a minute punctuated by lots of annoying door knocking—my foot was good as new. After yet another knock, I stomped to the door and threw it open.

  ‘What?’ I screamed

  A huge man in an expensive pinstripe suit was stood at the door.

  ‘The Long Man wants you,’ said Gerald.

  Aw, shit.

  12

  The Long Man was waiting for me in his Forest of Souls.

  ‘Hey there, big man.’

  The demon was pruning branches from a particularly tall, gnarled tree.

  ‘This was the very first soul that was promised to me,’ said the Long Man without turning to look at me.

  ‘Great. Cool.’ I thought it best at this point not to bring up the fact that I was missing the Soul Dagger he’d given me to use on Brian Teller. To stab him in the heart with and retrieve his soul. I’m not keen on disappointing demons, they tend to be a short-tempered, vindictive lot, and I didn’t fancy becoming the newest feature in his goth forest. There was also the risk that I might get cut out of the deal. With Kirklander now in possession of the Soul Dagger, the Long Man would likely be willing to push me aside and turn to him, so long as he got what he wanted.

  I couldn’t let that happen.

  I needed to give him Brian Teller’s soul and earn my bounty. I needed to know who the man in my dreams was. I needed his face, his name, where I could find him. A new piece of the puzzle, after all these years, that was all that mattered.

  ‘Her name was Ulana,’ said the Long Man, cutting in on my train of thought.

  ‘Sorry?’

  He gestured to the tree he was tending. ‘She lived in a realm you now call Sweden, though they did not have a name for it then. She wished to live in another time. A time where she would be free of the world she had found herself in. The pain and hardships. The long, brutal days laid out, one after the other, until death came calling at too young an age. One day she found her way to my realm. To my black cathedral.’

  ‘How did she do that, then?’

  ‘The desperate find a way,’ replied the Long Man. ‘They always do.’ He turned his leering skull towards me and fixed me with his hollow eyes.

  ‘Pray, continue,’ I said, with a little flourish of my hand.

  ‘She found me, she asked, and I accepted. I always accept. When she stepped from my realm she found herself in the Nineteen-Nineties.’

  ‘Spice Girls era. Girl power. Awesome.’

  ‘She was more of a Nirvana fan, as it turned out.’

  Bantering with a demon. And to think Lana wanted me to hang up my tits and get a job at an architecture firm.

  ‘She lived in this new world for five happy years,’ said the Long Man, ‘the best deal I could offer her. After that, she was returned to her own time and I called in the debt, as agreed. She did not run. Did not beg or try to bargain. She knew the terms and she was happy to give me what was owed. She even thanked me before the Soul Dagger was thrust into her heart. Thanked me for filling her short life with so much wonder.’

  ‘Well that’s… sort of beautiful…?’ It was and wasn’t, really. Mostly wasn’t. Was five happy years of fun worth eternal torment? Seemed a bit of a shitty deal to me.

  The Long Man stroked the bark of the ancient, twisted tree, and it seemed to writhe under his touch, as though in agony.

  ‘How much longer will I wait before I have a new tree to join Ulana and all the others?’

  ‘Ooh, well, there’s a question.’

  ‘And what is the answer?’

  ‘Soon. Definitely soon. Maybe sooner than that, if you’re lucky.’

  The Long Man stepped forward and crouched down on his haunches so that his horned head was level with my own. The stench of sulphur was dizzying. I tried to hold his empty gaze, not wanting to show fear.

  ‘You would not deceive me, would you?’ he asked.

  ‘As if I even could,’ I replied, hoping the sweat prickling my forehead wasn’t too obvious.

  The Long Man’s mouth opened and for a moment I thought he was going to bite my head clean off. It opened wider and wider, and in it I could hear voices, I could hear cries, I could taste despair. I could see the hopeless and the desperate bowing before him, begging him, asking him for things regardless of the consequences. An endless sea of faces, of greed, of desire, of hunger, of entitlement. Men, women, children, and creatures that were none of those things, all stepping through the doors of his black cathedral, ready to give up the thing they should hold most dear. Flies willingly walking into the web.

  ‘What would tempt you, Erin Banks?’

  I thought about my brother.

  ‘Nothing.’

  He grinned. ‘You all have a price. I could talk you into it. Could whisper in your ear each night as you slept. Talk to you in your dreams. Tell you what it is that you’re missing. That you need. That you would endure the worst of Hell to hold on to for even the briefest of moments.’

  I gripped my hands together to stop them from shaking. ‘I’d rather you didn’t. If it’s all the same.’

  The Long Man tilted his head, his eyes ablaze. ‘Bring me my soul and you need not worry.’

  He stood, turning back to his trees. I stepped back, relief washing over me. It shouldn’t really need pointing out, what with him being a massive, terrifying demon, but the Long Man was one scary piece of work.

  ‘If you fail me, you will not receive your reward,’ he said. ‘But that will be the least of that unfortunate outcome.’

  ‘I’ll also feel a sense of professional disappointment at how badly I’ve performed? Please don’t leave me a bad review, I need to stay four stars or higher.’

  The Long Man chuckled; a deep rumble that shook the soil beneath my feet.

  ‘Listen to how she rambles with stuff and nonsense,’ said the old woman with the sewn-shut eyes. I looked around for any sight of her in the forest, but couldn’t find her. ‘She is all rhubarb and silliness because the deep-down dark, the never-ending self-hate and fury, is too, too much and it might swallow her whole. Might look at it too long and down, down, down she’ll fall, never hitting bottom. Never, ever, ever.’ She began to cackle and I could hear her shoes tap-tapping against a stone floor, even though the black cathedral was nowhere in sight.

  ‘She’s fun, your mate,’ I said to the demon. ‘Bet she goes down a storm at children’s parties.’

  ‘Bring me my soul, Erin Banks. It is my property and I desire it.’

  ‘You can trust me,’ I said, once again failing to mention the missing Soul Dagger. ‘I’m on your man’s tail. I’ll soon get you that soul.’

  The Long Man nodded as the moon rose high and the forest began to scream.

  All in all, I was in a bit of a shitty situation. Something that Parker was only too happy to rub in as his I-told-you-so’s tap-danced all over my face.

  ‘Look, it’s not all entirely my own fault you know?’ I replied petulantly over the phone as I drove out of Brighton, heading towards Alisha’s Conspiracy Caravan (a great name for a band if ever there was one).

  ‘Never trust a demon,’ said Parker. ‘I told you that, girl.’

  ‘You also reckon the royal family are extra-terrestrial lizard people, so…’

  ‘I’m telling you, they’re not human!’

  ‘Just because they’re inbred, doesn’t mean they’re space aliens.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Mature. Like it.’

  There was a short pause while Parker collected himself, then: ‘You should come in. Top up your strength.’

  ‘Nah, I’m good.’

  I could have used a top-up after my run-ins with the wraiths and the wizard, but I didn’t have time to go to Parker’s parlour and sit around
for an hour. Kirklander was out there with the Soul Dagger, and he could find Brian Teller any time. He was good, and had different methods, different sources, to me. For all I knew, he already had Teller’s location, and was even now stabbing the fucker in the heart.

  No.

  I needed to get Teller’s whereabouts from Alisha and get over to him as soon as possible, if not sooner. Every second wasted was, well… a second wasted. If he got to Brian first, if he cut me out of the deal, there’s no telling what the demon might do to me, even if he had got his hands on the soul he was owed. Maybe he’d take my soul out of spite for clearly having lied to him, for failing him. Worst of all, the new piece of the puzzle about the night James was kidnapped would remain out of my reach. Just a fuzzy nothing squatting in my mind’s eye, tormenting me.

  ‘I can’t believe you let Kirklander play you again,’ tutted Parker.

  ‘Oi, thanks. Kick a bitch when she’s down.’

  Parker sighed. ‘Why do you think I never send any work his way?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I shrugged, ‘you tell me.’

  ‘Because he can’t be trusted, that’s why. How many times are you going to have to learn that lesson?’

  ‘It’ll stick one of these years, promise.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking that for a long time now, but it never does.’

  ‘I’m not back with him or anything. It was only a momentary lapse.’

  ‘How long a moment?’ asked Parker.

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Have I ever told you how disappointing you are?’

  ‘Yeah, once or twice. Feels great every time.’

  Parker kissed his teeth. ‘Be good, girl. Don’t think for a second he won’t hurt you if he thinks he has to.’

  He already had hurt me. Not that I hadn’t hurt him in the past, too. We seemed to do this destructive dance whenever we were around each other. Maybe, in our hearts, we both thought that’s all we deserved. We were two people who would always let each other down. Two people who would always disappoint. There was a kind of perverse, cosy safety in knowing it was all going to blow to pieces at any moment. If only it wouldn’t keep reassembling just so it could blow up all over again.