Bad Soul

by David Bussell

  ‘I’d prefer not to answer that,’ the driver replied, creeping along beside me and eying up my Friday night outfit, the top half of which was, to be fair, a bit on the skimpy side. ‘Now are you going to get in the car or do I have to make you get in?’

  That got my attention.

  I spun on my heel. ‘The fuck did you say to me?’

  Four simultaneous pops as each of the car doors sprang open at once. Four heavies stepped out and joined me on the pavement, black suits, skin the colour of bacon rashers, two eyebrows between them. One was bigger than the rest, tall enough to eat off the top of my head. He wore the kind of muscles that suggested he spent his free time punching sides of beef and flipping tractor tyres. And the bloke was ugly. I’m talking Gary Busey’s stuntman ugly.

  ‘Why don’t you be a good girl and take a seat in the back there?’ he growled, pointing into the rear of the limo, his voice a tin can full of gravel.

  ‘Why don’t you suck my dick?’ I replied. Not the greatest comeback, but as I think I’ve already mentioned: seven pints deep.

  Busey’s Stuntman grinned like a Halloween pumpkin. ‘They said you wouldn’t come easy.’

  ‘What would you know about making a girl come, ugly?’ Seven pints or not, that was a pretty sick burn, right? Right…? Suit yourself.

  The grin slipped off his face, replaced by a scowl that ought to have come with a trigger warning. ‘You’re going to wish you hadn’t said that.’

  He cracked his knuckles and took a step forward, the rest of his goons in tow.

  I smiled. I always liked this bit. The bit before I felt the buckle of bones under my fists, saw the blur of blood before my eyes, heard the sound of begging and the pitter-patter of piss raining from trouser legs. Ah, booze, a boogie, and a fight; a classic Friday night.

  The tattoos on my arms and shoulders pulsed, glowing as the Uncanny magic that washed around me—washed around everything—flowed into them. Flowed into me. They blazed hot, sending a tsunami of blood surging to my heart that sliced through my inebriated glaze.

  Bring it the fuck on.

  Busey’s Stuntman reached out to grab me and I leapt at him like a cat on a ball of yarn. I came down on him hard, driving an elbow into the centre of his face.

  It was a real attitude adjuster.

  One second he was ready to bundle a defenceless, scantily-dressed young lady into the back of a car, the next he was sat on his arse, sneezing blood and cartilage. I laughed, fists clenched, biceps bulging, tattoos still burning hot.

  The other three goons jumped me, fists flailing. I spiked the first one in the face with my knee then ripped a punch into his spleen that sent him reeling backwards. He went to ground like he’d been involved in a low-speed collision.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ I heard the third goon shout, ‘it’s like fighting a bag of cats!’

  I went at the bloke, blood sizzling, ready to kick seven shades out of him, ready to pimp-slap him into a lamp post and bounce his head off the floor. ‘Buckle up, buttercup,’ I hissed, ‘this is going to get nasty.’

  My tattoos electrified my bones and fired up my synapses as magic rushed into me, making me strong, fast, lethal. Keep them coming and I’d knock them down, again, and again. I’d break their bones and tear their flesh. I’d rip out throats and stomp genitals to paste. Pretty big talk, huh? Unfortunately for me, my stupid brain was too booze-addled to notice the guy sneaking up on me from behind.

  Basic stuff, Erin. Basic stuff.

  Busey’s Stuntman launched a donkey punch into the back of my cranium that unhinged my legs and planted my face in the pavement.

  ‘That’s what you get, bitch,’ he spat.

  I tried to get up but my legs weren’t taking requests.

  Busey’s Stuntman drove a patent leather shoe into my ribs. ‘Stay down.’

  I tried to grab a breath so I could tell him to get fucked, but my lungs refused to pull air. I did manage to lift a middle finger and wave it in his direction, though. That’s when the rest of the goon squad started putting the boot in, pummelling me from all sides, going at me like a riverdancing hippo.

  As the blows rained down, the floor slewed and became a slide, tipping me into unconsciousness. I felt rough hands hook under my knees, under the crooks of my elbows, then I became weightless. No one came to help me. No sirens, no siege of flashing lights, no nothing. No one lifted a finger.

  This fucking town.

  End of Extract.

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  Detective Rita Hobbes’ life has been mysteriously erased, and her day isn’t about to get any better.

  All Rita wants is to abandon dreary Blackpool and start over somewhere new. But when she triggers a magical hex that renders her invisible and traps her in her hometown, escape seems impossible.

  Thrust into a world she doesn’t understand, Rita finds herself trying to solve a case that by any sane measure is unsolvable.

  1

  Neil Stevenson was about to die.

  It would not be a natural death but would be treated as such. Only Neil would know the strange truth of it; only Neil would know about the voice and what it made him do.

  Many people thought Neil to be odd, his own wife among them. He would iron his socks, and sing lesser-known Billy Joel songs to break an awkward silence. Then there was his morning routine. He’d get up at the crack of dawn, whether it was baking with summer sun outside or freezing with winter cold, and out he’d go with a whistle on his lips and a towel in hand.

  He’d walk the short distance from his house to the beach, putting on his swimming goggles as he did so, ready to wade into the sea.

  ‘A dip in the big blue,’ he’d say to anyone who’d listen, ‘twenty minutes splashing around in the sea and you’ll be astonished how it jump starts your mental faculties.’

  It was one of the main reasons Neil had lived in Blackpool his whole life; that faded tourist trap on the North West coast of England that had, most agreed, seen far better days. Now the tourists were smaller in number and the crime rates were reaching record highs. Cars rusted as the salt air nibbled at them day after day, and people walked with their heads down as whip-crack winds struck out from across the water.

  But the sea.

  Being so close to that seemingly endless expanse of water.

  It made Neil Stevenson’s heart sing.

  Unfortunately, on this particular morning, it would also make his heart stop.

&nbs
p; Neil took off his shoes and placed them on the sand, tucking his house keys into the toe of one of the loafers, then placing his towel on top. He breathed in forcefully through his nose, then did some vigorous squat thrusts, the half-wetsuit he was wearing squeaking each time he rose.

  ‘Right then,’ he said to himself, running his hands through his thick, black hair and striding towards the water.

  The sea that met him was cold; it was always cold. Neil didn’t mind. The cold was the point of it all.

  He was halfway to the buoy, which bobbed 100 metres from shore, when he first heard the voice.

  ‘Neil.’

  At first he only half heard it. A whisper on the breeze; a sound he dismissed as the water sloshed past his ears and he felt his brain crackling to life.

  ‘Neil.’

  I mean, it was absurd. There was no one within earshot, no one else mad enough to be in the sea that early on a weekday. So of course, no one could be speaking to him in such a soothing, deep voice.

  ‘You are Neil Stevenson.’

  He heard it for sure that time. Four words, clear and true, that he could no longer ignore. He stopped, still some distance from the buoy, his target every morning for years. His legs slowly bicycled, arms washing snake-like, as he turned in a circle trying to find the source of the voice.

  ‘Hello?’ said Neil.

  ‘You are Neil Stevenson, your parents are Arthur and Judith Stevenson.’

  There was something disquieting about the voice. Something other than it being disembodied and impossible. Something that made his skin crawl.

  ‘Who is that?’ Neil asked. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Stop moving your legs, Neil.’

  His legs ceased their kicking and he momentarily ducked below the water. He emerged, coughing and gasping seconds later. Why had he done that? He hadn’t meant to, his legs had just stopped.

  ‘Neil Stevenson.’

  He was scared now. He turned back to the beach, kicking his legs out and driving forward, his little shoe and towel pile visible in the distance.

  He would not make it that far.

  ‘Stop.’

  He stopped swimming and began treading water again.

  ‘Please,’ Neil begged.

  ‘You are going to drown.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I say so.’

  Neil tried to fight the voice, but he was a passenger in his own body. He thought about his wife as his limbs stopped kicking and he slipped below the water, lungs burning, brain screaming. Soon enough he gave in and opened his mouth, filling him with water, turning his body into an anchor. As he sank to the depths, Neil was sure he saw the ghost of something terrible beneath the water. A great dark shape, insubstantial, unreal, monstrous.

  It smiled at him.

  And then Neil died.

  As she dressed that Tuesday morning, Detective Rita Hobbes had no idea she was about to take a tumble down the rabbit hole. That life as she knew it would soon slip away and be replaced by a hidden, dangerous world. A world that lived in the shadows and tip-toed behind the known; that skulked down secret streets and lurked within whispered rooms.

  No, all Rita knew when she got up that morning was that she’d drank far too much the previous night, and now her head felt like the Incredible Hulk was using it as a stress toy.

  ‘Christ on a bike,’ she groaned as she surveyed her face in the mirror. Her eyes looked as though someone had used her face as a coffee table and left behind two dark rings. ‘Never again,’ she said, knowing there was every chance she’d break that vow before the day was done.

  She didn’t have time for a shower. Instead, she sniffed at her dark red hair, then her armpits, and grimaced before grabbing a can of deodorant and spraying herself from head to toe. Having half-arsed her ablutions, she padded out of the bedroom in desperate need of about two gallons of water and a bacon sandwich.

  Rita was thirty-one years of age and liked to pretend she was much happier in her thirties than she had been in her twenties. She’d lived in Blackpool her whole life, and very much hoped she didn’t die there. Rita was an orphan, passed from orphanage, to foster family, and back again, multiple times. The most oft-cited reason for the termination of her foster family placements had been the biting. She had bitten so many people so many times. Not just a nibble, no, she’d sunk her teeth in right up to the gums.

  And that had not been the end of her youthful rap sheet. There had also been the fires. And the stealing. And that time she’d poisoned Jason Cooper, a fellow orphan, with pellets meant for rat traps. She’d done that after he’d grassed on her for drawing a penis on Maggie Karen’s forehead while she took a nap.

  Rita Hobbes had been marked down as a ‘bad egg.’

  Many had feared that all that lay ahead for young Rita was a life of crime, or perhaps a spell on the women’s wrestling circuit, but instead she’d surprised them all by ending up on the other side of the law. Grown-up Rita hadn’t wound up in jail, or face-down on the wrestling mat, instead she’d become a Detective Sergeant for the Blackpool Police.

  Rita was stood in the kitchen of her house, gulping down her third glass of water, when she realised she wasn’t home alone.

  ‘Oh, you’re still here,’ she said as she turned to the kitchen table and discovered a man sat there in his underpants, eyes half-shut, hair a thick, dark, bird’s nest.

  ‘Yup, still here,’ agreed Chris Farmer, Rita’s sort of, but not really at all, boyfriend. She’d been quite clear on the terms of their relationship: they could go to the pictures to watch a film and then talk about the film over beer and pizza afterwards. They could also have sex, should they both feel so inclined. And that was as far is it went. No emotions. No sharing. No obligations. No sleeping over. But there he was. It was morning and there he was.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, gnawing at a piece of toast that had clearly been left in the toaster a minute too long, ‘meant to go, but I fell asleep after we had the sex. And now here we are.’

  ‘Looks like it, yeah.’

  ‘Don’t mind, do you?’

  Rita really, really did mind. Like, a lot. A more subtle soul would have put this across gently, or even pretended it was no big deal. But this was Rita Hobbes he was dealing with.

  ‘Of course I bloody care, Chris, you know the rules. I told you to print off the list I emailed and pin it to your fridge so you wouldn’t forget.’ She sat opposite him and swiped a slice of toast from his plate. ‘You’ll remember to go home next time though, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘It’s not like we’re bloody married.’

  ‘Heaven forbid.’

  Rita munched on the pilfered toast and spat crumbs as she spoke. ‘Exactly. This is a very casual pleasure thing. As agreed. No point rocking the boat now.’

  ‘We are on the same page,’ he replied.

  Rita chewed on the burnt toast as she eyeballed him. She wasn’t entirely convinced that they were on the same page, or that they were in fact reading the same book.

  ‘It’s just, we are both very good at the sexy times business, right?’ said Rita.

  ‘No complaints here.’

  ‘Good, so why ruin it by adding all the relationship stuff? The pretending to care about how each other’s day went, the holding hands and throwing bread at stupid ducks, the his and her matching pyjamas and the simmering resentment. All that crap.’

  ‘Those are your best examples of relationship things?’

  ‘I’m telling you, a loving relationship is the best way to ruin a casual shag.’

  Chris stood and took his empty plate over to the sink. ‘Okay, okay, I get the message. I will never sleep over again, scout’s honour.’ He checked his watch. ‘Shit. Shit it. I’m going to be late. The Guv will have my balls.’

  Rita watched him scamper off to retrieve his clothes from upstairs.

  Rita lived in a small, two-bedroom house on a street of identical looking houses. The rent was incredibly cheap as the place wa
s riddled with damp and the electrics were, at best, massively dangerous.

  Still. Cheap.

  People had asked why she didn’t just buy a place, but buying a place meant staying in Blackpool, and that was the last thing Rita wanted.

  A car horn blared outside.

  ‘Shit.’ She knew who that was. ‘Chris, stay out of sight, yeah?’ she called upstairs.

  ‘I’m the phantom shagger, got it. So, are we gonna meet tonight? Rita? Hey?’

  Chris poked his head over the banister and looked down just in time to see the front door closing behind Rita.

  ‘Good idea,’ he said, ‘let’s play it by ear.’

  Rita waved a middle finger in the direction of the car parked on the opposite side of the road. The smartly-dressed man with neat, sandy hair sat behind the steering wheel gave his horn a further, very annoying blast. This was DS Dan Waterson, Rita’s partner, and ride to work that morning. She had a car of her own, but more often than not it stayed in the station car park, due to her habit of drinking too much to drive home after work.

  ‘When you’re ready,’ said Waterson, before inhaling from his e-cig and blowing a cloud of vapour out of the window.

  ‘Why do you always have to be in on time, Waters?’ asked Rita, as she yanked open the passenger seat door and collapsed into her seat, rocking the car.

  ‘Because that’s what time we’re paid to start.’

  ‘Teacher’s pet.’

  ‘Man hands.’

  ‘Coffee?’

  Waterson smiled and reached down, grabbing a styrofoam cup of overpriced coffee and handing it over. It was as she sipped the coffee that she noticed the front door to her house open, and saw Chris Farmer emerge, blinking into the morning light.