The Spirit Box (The Freelancers Book 1)

by Lee Isserow

  He looked up at the dark bedroom ahead of him: the rough outline of raw brick walls, texture flecked by scant moonlight through the window, the fireplace a shadowy hollow that seemed to suck in all illumination that dare rest upon it. A handful of relics he had left from another time, another life, sat on the mantle above it. They were there as a reminder of what happens when he screws up, as if the scars threaded across his body were not enough to jog his memory.

  Huffing, he forced the thoughts out, and forced himself out of bed, his feet landing on something warm and soft. It was the robe he wore the night before, or the night before that, he couldn't be sure which. They were all starting to blur together. He picked it up and threw it on, as if to protect his modesty from the night itself.

  Walking across to the door, he raised his right hand, middle finger dancing through the air, tracing out a symbol. As he walked through to the living room, he pulled the finger in, extending his thumb and little finger to seal the sigil, picturing a face in his mind's eye, the person he was trying to reach.

  “What is it?” asked a young female voice, very British, with a tone that was not pleased to hear from him. The words sounded as if they were coming from somewhere in his periphery. They were, of course, not. The speaker was miles upon miles away, far from his sanctuary, in a place he was no longer allowed entry.

  “Hey Tali,” he said, the words grating against his vocal chords, a guttural Australian twang that he hadn't heard out loud for some time. Confining himself to living a solitary life had meant conversations were far and few between. “How d'ya feel about doing me a favour?”

  “Don't feel like it at all.”

  “Oh, come on. . .” he said, as he threw the last remnants of dust from a bag of coffee into a percolator and set it on the stove. “Just need to know what you've got in the files about a box.”

  “Is this one of your cases?” She scoffed, he could almost hear the roll of her eyes. “Gods, Rafe, are you still private dicking around? How many times do I have to tell you, I am not your bloody secretary! Do your own legwork.”

  “It's not like that, Tali, I've come to a dead end. . . literally.” The last word came out on a sigh, he hated himself for being so droll about the old woman's death. Steam started to rise from the mouth of the percolator. He watched it snaking up into the air and dissipating into nothingness.

  She paused for thought. He could picture her, the cogs turning behind bright green eyes that shone out from under a thick black fringe. He heard her exhale slowly, as she realised he wasn't being glib, understanding that someone had actually died in the course of his investigation. “Rafe, I appreciate you're not having fun with whatever your new case is, but like I keep telling you, I have actual work to be getting on with. . . I can send you a door every now and then, but I don't have time to do your damn Googling.”

  “This isn't like that, it's not something that's just going to pop up in search results. . . this is old magick, damn thing should be locked in a vault somewhere.”

  “Well you know where to go for 'old damn things'. . .” She trailed off, letting him put the pieces together.

  He sighed. The answer was obvious, but he didn't want to admit it, let alone step foot there. “The Market.”

  “Ring-a-ding-ding, give the man a prize.”

  “They really don't like me there.”

  “I don't like you here,” she grunted, with wry intent.

  He stifled a laugh. Tali was one of the few friends he had left. She was as brash and as much of an arsehole as people thought he was, which is probably why they got on. Even though she'd obviously never admit it.

  “You know there's as much chance I'll get stabbed or cursed as I will find anything useful.”

  “Hoping for the former. Good luck.” She sounded far too cheery for his liking, and killed the call before he could respond.

  He took the coffee off the stove and poured a cup. It was thin and weak, there were barely enough grounds to muddy the water, let alone turn it strong and black. He tasted it, and spat it out almost instantly. Nothing but hot water with a hint of coffee on the scent. Looking around the apartment, he headed to the laundry bag for something that looked and smelled vaguely clean, trying to remember how the hell to get into the Market. He would have rather had to go anywhere else, would have gladly jumped into the city dump, or swim through a sewer if that would have got him a lead. But neither would.

  This was a desperate time. There was no other choice but to go to the one place in which 75% of people hated him, and the other 25% probably wanted him dead. . .

  Chapter 4

  Preparation for burial

  Pretty much every item of clothing from the closet and drawers was strewn across the floor and every surface of what was otherwise a spotless bedroom. Ana had always been fastidious when it came to keeping her house neat and tidy, something she had learned from her grandmother. The kindly old woman had lived by the mantra of “Clean house, clear head,” and it had stuck with Ana through to her adult life. It was a daily routine―some might say close to obsessively compulsive―to insure that not a single particle of dust was visible. Even the windows were spotless, not a raindrop left to dry and leave a mark upon them. But overcome by the emotion and the loss, her bedroom was transformed into a state of what she considered organised chaos, minus the organisation.

  This was something she had never prepared herself for. Sure, she knew that her grandmother was old, in her nineties, but for some reason the idea of her passing had never occurred to Ana. Although she was elderly, she was nowhere close to infirm, could do more yoga stretches and inversions than Ana could even begin to dream of: the perfect picture of health. Which is perhaps why her death was such a shock, beyond it being by way of some random violent sociopath. She couldn't even believe that that kind of thing could happen in real life, that someone would do those awful things to a sweet old woman―let alone any woman.

  Ana had made the mistake of eavesdropping at the police station after her mother made her statement, hearing the call between the coroner and the detective, seeing his reaction to the gory details, and then shared them with his partner. They were the stuff of nightmares.

  That train of thought wasn't helping. She went to the bathroom and looked at herself―Clarice's face staring back. A smile came to her lips, as she recalled her grandmother's reaction when she tried to explain what she was going to be doing for a living. Ana had never seen the elderly woman laugh so hard in all her life. She loved the idea of earning money by just talking to men, occasionally teasing them with a scant bit of flesh, to the point of literally asking where she could sign up. “Bet they'd love to see an old woman who can stick her legs behind her head!” she said, which made Ana snort on her tea, sending it spattering across the table.

  But Clarice's face wasn't appropriate, for the trip to the police station, let alone the funeral. She wiped the make up off, and looked at herself again. Ana staring back. Better, she thought, as she returned to the bedroom to sort through the clothes yet again, for what must have been the twentieth time. It wasn't that she even had that many clothes, compared to the other women she knew, let alone the ones she worked alongside. They seemed to have more shoes than Ana had ever owned in her entire life. Another unhelpful gift from her grandmother: a frugal mindset, making do with what one had, rather than splurging on things she didn't need. That one she could trace back to the old woman's roots in the Communist party, however long ago it was. Even to this day, she had been staunchly anti-capitalist and anti-materialist. Even to the end, Ana corrected the thought, to the last night of her life.

  It still hadn't really sunk in, especially given how quickly the funeral had been arranged. That was her grandmother's doing, setting all the plates spinning for whenever this day came. She had specific instructions for those carrying out the funeral, and for Ana and her mother.

  They had sat with the body all night, and come dawn, it had been taken away in preparation for burial. A weird thing, she
had thought, as she held her mother close, and they shed every tear their body could produce. She remembered something one of the guys in the chatroom had said, about Jewish funerals working like that―but she wasn't Jewish, her grandmother wasn't either. She didn't understand why there was such a rush to get her in the ground, let alone why the old woman had insisted that they monitor the body all night. Just another checkbox on the list of kooky things grandma did. . .

  Finally, she forced herself to pick some things out and try them on. A black pencil skirt that hung a little below the knee, that was okay, certainly better than the dresses she owned, which would have made it look as though she was just stopping off at the funeral on the way to a club. Then a black jacket that was a little faded, didn't quite go with the skirt, but the old woman never cared about such trivialities, so why should she?

  She needed something to go under the jacket, of course. Just buttoning it up with her breasts hanging behind the thin black polyester was something Clarice might wear in the room, but it wasn't even close to appropriate. She had blouses, but feared that they might look a little too office-like, once again picturing judgement from others, that she had just taken her lunch break from a desk to drop by. . . Not that she knew who might be there. Her grandmother didn't have any friends that she knew of.

  A thought crossed her mind, that there might be enough time to run out and buy something that was 100% funeral material. However, that was shot down instantly by the voice of her grandmother whispering in the back of her mind, reminding her that she didn't need any new clothes, and it certainly wasn't respecting the old woman's memory by turning up in something straight off a rack, bought for just the single occasion.

  The outfit would do. It had to. She slunk out of the blazer and went with one of Clarice's blouses, albeit with a bra, then grabbed the only pair of black shoes she owned, and went down the stairs. Her mother had been sitting patiently at the bottom step for close to a half hour, eyes still red, even though they hadn't been able to shed tears since the sun came up.

  “You look lovely, darling,” she said, as Ana slid her arms back into the blazer. “Granny would have said as much.”

  Ana forced a solemn “Thank you,” over the lump in her throat, and stood by the door.

  “You ready?” her mother asked, attempting to put on a brave face that Ana could see straight through.

  She was not ready. This was something that she could have never truly been ready for. Of course, there was no way to say that, to her mother or anyone else. So she lied. “Yes,” and turned the latch on the door, swinging it open and holding it for her mother to lead the way, to bury a woman neither of them were ready to let go.

  Chapter 5

  The damn ritual

  Rafe walked down Commercial Street, trying to remember the route. He knew the market was close to the church, and as soon as he caught sight of the baroque steeple of the monumental building, headed in its direction. Finding himself outside the spectacular, imposing structure with its massive Tuscan columns holding a giant archway aloft like heavy, muscular shoulders, he took a moment to marvel at it, wondering if anyone bothered putting such effort into houses for 'God' these days, or if that kind of thing was passé. The thought wasn't a normal thing to cross his mind, it was a distraction, intended to delay him from reaching his intended destination just that little bit longer. A sigh left his lips, and he knew he couldn't put it off. One way or another, he was going to have to go through the damn door, and it was better to just get it over with.

  He crossed the road and headed up Brushfield Street, footsteps slow and reluctant as he closed in on the old Punchinello gate. There were other entrances, but this was the closest one that got him where he needed to be.

  Spitalfields Market was always a vibrant hum of activity, as it had been for over three centuries. Taking up the entire block, traders of all shapes and sizes hocked their wares to whoever might pass through, often with witty banter and wry self-deprecating sarcasm. If nothing else, they were being true to the heritage of the East End, where such conversational quirks were commonplace.

  Rafe walked through the aisles between stalls, trying not to let himself dwell and get distracted by admiring the Victorian architecture. A grid of immense cast iron columns held riveted girders high above, triangulated truss running between them, sunlight shining through what must have been hundreds of windows. He never cared this much for architecture, not under normal circumstances, certainly not to the point where a small part of him wanted to stop and count the windows, if only to slow progress further, perhaps take up a full hour or two of the day. However, a better part of him knew that he should stop wasting time. It had been a while since he had last been to this market. The whole place had changed, money poured into it to create steel and glass fronted stores that looked like they belonged in some high-class mall, rather than the slums of Aldgate. But, he reminded himself, the times had changed. This side of London was probably no longer a slum. Once they might have been the streets haunted by a ripper, but that was certainly no longer the case.

  He passed people selling clothes, knock-offs of name brands with what he regarded as unintentional misspellings: “Addads” and “Mike”, “Eves Aint Lauren” and “Tummy Hogfiller”. He came to a stop as he found himself at a set of tables and benches lined up, surrounded by food trucks and stalls. None of this had been there in his time. He couldn't help but wonder how long it had actually been since he was last there―perhaps all the bad blood had been soaked up in his absence. More likely, he feared, the bad blood had been festering, boiling, the owners of the sanguine fluids waiting with bated breath for more blood to be shed.

  Having walked all the way through to the other side of the market, he turned on his heel, just to make sure he had gone the right way. The unfamiliarity of what Spitalfields had become was screwing with his head. Turning back around he found himself in front of a coffee bar, an unconvincing sign assuring passers by that they sold “The best flat whites in town.” Rafe wasn't sure what a flat white was, and despite desperately needing a thousand coffees, knew he couldn't divert from the task at hand. He took a right, past yet another new building-within-the-building. This one looked like a full blown restaurant, with wood panelled floors, bright green metal tables, and a glass roof that seemed entirely pointless―given that it was entirely housed within a much larger building. The whole side of it facing the market was open, with planters full of green sprouts and shoots lined up to stop anyone walking through that 'wall'. Customers were, it seemed, meant to use the door, even though the door was all but indiscernible from the open wall, apart from not being blocked by big boxes full of mud and pound shop plants.

  He continued on, straight ahead, almost done with the unnecessary-yet-integral tour of Spitalfields. At the far end were two doors built into the wall, painted an unattractive grey that looked as though at one point it very much harboured the desire to be green. Taking a deep breath, he picked up speed and walked towards them, counting his footsteps, insuring that they were each in the perfect place. If he had misstepped at any point in the damn ritual, he'd end up with a bloody nose and have to walk round the block to do the whole thing over again.

  Three more steps, a deep breath.

  Two more steps, a quick exhale.

  One more step, he braced for impact..

  Rafe walked straight into the solid wood of the door, and it bent around him, as if he were wading through a pool of water. Emerging on the other side, he found himself in The Market, and compared to Spitalfields, it hadn't changed in the slightest since he was last there.

  The walls were constructed from ancient stone, lovingly hand carved from boulders into massive slabs, not unlike those of Stonehenge. They went up fifty feet or more, disappearing into darkness above. Unlike Spitalfields, it was not limited to the radius of a city block, and went on in all directions for close to a mile. There was no sky there, no windows for sun to shine through, and no grand entrances, just uniform grey doors laid
out at various points around the room. Each translocated back to various markets in the Natural World, from Khan Al-Khalili in Cairo to Pine Place in Seattle, Hong Kong's Temple Street to Istanbul's Grand Bazaar. Every old market had a door, because the magickally inclined came far and wide for the myriad mystical items offered for sale, and there were plenty on offer, from thousands of retailers.

  He had forgotten just how busy the market could get, shouts echoing back and forth across the hall, declaring “The freshest 'thulhu tears this side of R'lyeh,” and “Dried blood of Christ's great great great great great great great great great great great grand niece!” and so on. None of these items interested him in the slightest, and even if they did, he certainly assumed few, if any, were actually selling what they claimed.

  Rafe walked through the stalls, and found himself able to recall the precise route to his destination. Muscle memory acting on behalf of his ailing actual memory. The aisles between stalls were slimmer on this side of the door, some so close he had to breathe in to slip through them. Despite the massive width and breadth of the Market, space was treated as a commodity, and the owners of the stalls spread out as far as they could in their slim allotted squares, lining their ramshackle wooden carts with silk scarves laced with pixie dust, painting them with bioluminescent gandaberunda excrement, or erecting large signs above them enchanted to change slogans based on the mood of the potential customers looking in their direction. It was a mess, pure and simple, but somehow they all made a living from it, and one stall owner rarely murdered their neighbour for crossing over into their territory.