The Spirit Box (The Freelancers Book 1)

by Lee Isserow

Diagon Alley this is not, Rafe reflected, on his vague memory of one of the movies. Not that he could recall which one it might be. That was quite tame and beautiful in comparison. A genteel Ye Old English street full of Ye Olde Shoppes that obeyed adorable magickal laws and sold exactly what people needed. The reality was a lot more grungy, closer to a flea market or expansive yard sale. It also took great effort to find anything close to what one was looking for, let alone find a legitimate version.

  Fortunately, Rafe was not there for an item. He was there to blend in and not get noticed by the wrong people, whilst he got information from the right people.

  He had a list in mind of the stalls he would visit. Starting at the most easily shaken down for information. His first stop was one of the larger retail spaces, above which hung a massive sign, lovingly carved from a solid slab of oak with ornate swirls and intricate lettering declaring it “Pierre Flashparc's Curious Cabinets”. Pierre had put effort into his stall, it wasn't just a table covered with objects or a cart that looked like it had been cobbled together from driftwood. His area was marked out with large wardrobes and closets making up three walls. Between them lay a Persian rug that was as old as the objects that surrounded it, and on top of it, various boxes and cabinets and trunks were sat on top one another in stacks, a feng shui to the arrangement that was intended to have the psychic effect of encouraging purchase. Whether that worked was another matter entirely―those that browsed were magickally inclined, and hardly likely to fall for such clunky enchantments.

  Rafe watched the stall intently as he took slow, purposeful steps towards it. Pierre hadn't changed a bit since he last saw him, still a pint-sized five foot, with a quiff of jet black hair that towered above his head to give him a further five inches. He had tiny black eyes with the slightest sliver of green iris, that looked like marbles popped into miniscule bag-laden sockets. There was a permanent grin on his lips that revealed large grey teeth, a cigarette stuck to his bottom lip that was bewitched to never go out and never shrink. As he came closer, it was clear that Pierre was too busy buffing his wares to notice him, and that meant he would have the advantage.

  Rafe sidestepped into the stall, back to the wardrobe walls as he circled around towards his theoretical informant.

  “How's it going, Pierre?”

  “Monsieur Clarke!” Pierre gasped, his eyes wide and terrified. “What a lovely surprise my old friend! I did not expect to see you here. . .” He retained the smile, but took small, nervous footsteps back, attempting to distance himself from Rafe, who could see the little Frenchman was intending to burst into a run as soon as he got the chance.

  “C'mon Pierre, there's no point running. You and I both know that between the tar in your lungs and those little legs of yours, you won't get far.”

  “Run? Why would I run! It is a good thing to see you!” He patted Rafe on the arm nervously, withdrawing the sweaty hand quickly, trying in vain to stop his eyes from darting around to the other traders near him. Being seen talking to Rafe would reflect badly on him if they were to gossip.

  “Need to know about a box.”

  “Oh, I have all the boxes.” Pierre moved to the corner of his cubicle, throwing his arms wide like the mute models on 1980's game shows that showed off the prizes. “How about a nice oak chest, enchanted to store items of every size?”

  “I'm not here for a Mary Poppins bag. . .”

  “What about a pine jewellery box that borrows only the most exquisite jewellery from the royal family of Denmark?”

  “Borrows?”

  “Assuming you give it back. . .” Pierre said with a shrug. “What about a mahogany chest once coveted by the dragon of Dumfries?” He wrenched the lid open to display the bright red lining, that looked an awful lot like it was made of human skin.

  “Scotland never had dragons,” Rafe huffed, grabbing the lid and slamming the chest shut. “I'm not here to buy anything, need to know if you've had something pass through. Old wine box, Aramaic carved across the outer panels, doesn't open without the right words.”

  “I have never heard of such a thing.”

  “Don't play dumb, everyone's heard about it. Damn thing was on eBay a while back before the right people got hold of it, put it under lock and key.”

  “Perhaps you should speak to these 'right people'?”

  “They're the ones that sent me after it, damn thing got stolen, shipped around, accruing casualties en route. And if anyone knows about a thing like that, reckon it'd be the finest box-man in all the lands, don't y'think?”

  “Box man?” Pierre said, backing away from Rafe yet again. “I am a purveyor of the finest storage, not mere boxes.”

  “Don't get precious. It was meant as a compliment. . . You gotta know something, this thing's pretty damn famous, grapevine's got to be all over it, right?”

  “Let me think,” Pierre said, his hands slowly shifting behind him as he put on an expression of deep concentration. His fingers scrambled to find the handle of the closest wardrobe, and with a swift movement, the door was swung open, Pierre pirouetting on his heel and squireling away inside, slamming it shut behind him.

  Rafe reached for the handle and tugged. It was stuck fast. “Pierre, so help me, all I want is a name. Don't make me kick this door down...”

  The door swung open in an instant, and he peeked inside. The wardrobe was completely empty. Pierre had pulled a damn C.S. Lewis.

  Slamming the door shut, Rafe grunted as he stomped back through the aisles towards the second stall on his list, making a mental note to not let the storekeepers go anywhere near their merchandise whilst he was firing questions at them.

  As he wound and weaved his way between the stalls, Rafe became all too aware that he was being followed. His pursuers were careful, subtle, or at least as careful and subtle as giant, grey-skinned homunclui could be. They didn't shadow him directly, walking parallel routes alongside or behind him. When he glanced over his shoulder, they never made eye contact, using their peripheral vision to keep track of him. He tried to convince himself it could have just been a coincidence, some lazy magickian sending the creatures out to do their shopping rather than go themselves. Perhaps they just happened to be walking in the same direction.

  Rafe took sharp turns, doubled back on himself just to be certain that they were indeed after him. Coming to the far wall of the market, he readied himself, took a breath, and turned on his heel to face the gigantic desaturated behemoths. Three of them emerged from the aisles, looming over him with black, expressionless eyes, no wrinkles on their clay-like skin. Their hair was slicked back―or at least looked slicked back―in fact they were born with their hair in that glossy viscosity. Their thick, square jaws were filled with uniform rows of gleaming white bone that had slim dents between them rather than the gaps of normal teeth, as the upper and lower jaws were in fact comprised of a single, dimpled horseshoe sized tooth each, made to look as though they were human teeth.

  “Now, is it worth asking who sent you?” he inquired with a shrug. The closest elephantine creature responded by sending a fist flying at his face.

  A quick sidestep on Rafe's part had the knuckles slamming into the ancient brickwork, sending dust flying and an echo across the entire market.

  “Should I take that as a no. . ?” he dodged another fist by ducking under the first, still embedded in the wall, and launched into a run. Obviously his presence had been noted by the wrong people.

  As his feet hit the hard patchwork of stones, he decided that the market probably wasn't going to yield any information, even less so whilst he was running as fast as his legs could carry him. It would be best to change tack, see if he can follow the box to its next location, rather than work out where it came from. First, however, he would have to work out the direction of the door back to London.

  As his heart pounded angrily in his chest, he realised this was probably the best result he could have hoped for. Running for one's life was certainly more favourable an outcome than ending up on the
wrong side of a blade.

  Chapter 6

  Buff and white willow

  The car pulled off the road on to a slim gravel path that was only just about wide enough for it to traverse, without destroying the well maintained lawn on either side. Ana had never been to a funeral before, certainly not one like this. Her grandmother had been very specific with the instruction of how she was to be buried, going into as much detail as her preferred funeral director and which of his staff were to act as pallbearers. She wanted no music played, nor words to welcome everyone who attended. There were to be no poems or prose read that related to her, nor a moment of silence.

  Ana always knew that the old woman was particular about how she wanted things, but never expected that she would be quite so specific about how she was laid to rest.

  The path opened out ahead of them to a parking lot,and as they got out of the car, Ana understood why her grandmother picked this place so far from the hustle and bustle of London-proper. There were rolling fields as far as the eye could see, dotted with black, white and grey stones that gleamed in the sun, a thick treeline surrounding it. The place was well looked after by the groundskeepers, graves kept free from leaves and detritus that might blow by on the wind. She wondered if they cared for each of the gravestones individually, cleaned and polished them. She could imagine her grandmother having been very strict with them in advance that there should never be a single mark on her headstone, as spotlessly clean as her house had been.

  A short, stout man walked towards them to a beat of gravel crunches with each footstep. He had curiously long, thin legs that looked as though they had been borrowed from someone much taller, hefting a compact, bulbous upper body, like an overstuffed holdall―the likes of which seemed to defy the laws of physics, given the broomsticks he walked on. Above the heavy gut, petite shoulders gave way to elongated gangly arms with long, skeletal fingers at the ends, that might well have reached all the way to his knees if he stretched them. His head sat motionless on a short, thick neck, as if it were not moving with the rest of his body, and what little hair he had left was slick and plastered across the top of his head in a frail attempt to hide his balding. Thick, round spectacles made his eyes seem larger and further apart than they probably were, but also magnified the empathy in them. They barely balanced atop a tiny nose, that would have more suited a reptile, thin slits for nostrils that almost pointed directly ahead of him, flaring with every breath. He stopped in front of Ana and her mother, his wide, thin lips approaching something close to a polite smile, the wide eyes looking glassy beneath the actual glass.

  “I'm sorry,” he said, attempting the smile again. “For your loss. She was beautiful human being, and a dear friend to us all.”

  Ana's mother's nodded. “Thank you, Mister Bunkle,” she whimpered, beginning to tear up again. Ana took her hand and squeezed it tightly, reminding her that she wasn't going through this alone.

  “Wilfred, please,” he said, in a calm and caring tone, trying that smile one more time. “You know it's Wilfred.” he seemed perturbed by the crying, and didn't appear to know if it was appropriate to reach for her with his long, spindly fingers and attempt to rest a hand on her arm in consolation. He chose not to.

  “If you'll follow me.” The weak smile withdrew as he turned on his long legs, gravel sputtering across the parking lot with the swift rotation, before marching off to the location of the burial.

  A frog, that was what he reminded Ana of. Or maybe a toad. The former seemed more accurate, she recalled watching a nature programme when she was a child explaining the difference between the two. The easiest way to tell them apart was the skin. His skin, like a frog, looked moist and slimy, whilst toads had dry and bumpy skin. She let out a long, slow sigh, punishing herself for getting so easily distracted in her memories. She was there to mourn the loss of a woman she loved, and support her mother who was suffering the greater loss of having her only surviving parent taken from her. Now was not the time to be rude about her grandmother's friends, let alone use her gifted memory to hide from the present moment. She gave her mother's hand another squeeze as they followed the frog man along a path dug in the grass, covered over with gravel that looked as spotless as the graves that began to appear on either side of them.

  Arriving at the freshly dug hole, they stopped. Thick ropes had been slung across it, the coffin resting atop, as if part of some magic trick. The box containing her grandmother was unlike any coffin Ana had seen on television or in movies. It wasn't a glossy sarcophagus of dark wood, it looked more like the big wicker chair her grandmother had in her living room. She recalled what her grandmother's wishes had entailed: “A coffin made from buff and white willow, beeswax polished, handles of woven hemp.” It wasn't until that she saw it with her own eyes that Ana realised that willow was not anywhere close to the look of the sleek dark mahogany ones that she had seen in the past. It looked―she hated to admit―like a long laundry basket.

  But that was what her grandmother wanted, a natural burial, with natural materials that would biodegrade, so she could swiftly be returned to nature. Ana liked that sentiment, not that she could imagine telling her mother for a long time after the funeral. It was a beautiful idea, one that she thought she might like for her own burial too.

  There were only five of them there around the coffin. Two had been waiting on either side, and looked official. As if one was the funeral director and the other his assistant. Ana wondered if more would be joining them, if her grandmother had more friends besides Bunkle the frog man. She supposed that they had all passed. The woman was in her nineties, there was no reason to expect her to have that many friends left at that age. Despite that thought, her grandmother was never lonely, or at least never appeared lonely, that was something else Ana decided she could take from her: right up to the very end, the old woman seemed happy with her life, satisfied in having loved and been loved in return. It comforted her, that thought, and Ana hoped that she might be so lucky as to experience that herself.

  After a minute of Bunkle looking back and forth between all present, he nodded to the funeral director. Between him and his assistant, he lowered the wicker basket all the way down into the hole, and then they pulled the rope back up, stepping away for the family to have a moment. Ana's eyes were rheumy once again, her mother's flowing with tears. She held her as they looked down at the casket, sitting so lonely at the bottom of the hole.

  At least, she thought, even though she didn't get to finish her life out to a natural end, if nothing else, she got to be buried the way she wanted.

  When her mother could cry no more, they stepped away from the grave, and the funeral director began shovelling earth atop it. Their walk back to the parking lot was scored by the asynchronous muted clangs of aluminium on mud, followed moments later by the gruff thumps of mud on wood.

  “Would you like to. . . discuss the will?” Bunkle asked sheepishly.

  Ana answered for her mother. “I think we're going to find somewhere to sit down and just. . . absorb it all.”

  “Of course,” the frog man said, leading them to a building off to the side of the parking lot.

  He held the door open for them, and toed off to find someone who worked there. Ana heard his muffled whispers as he asked overly politely if he could have a pot of tea for 'the bereaved'.

  Ana didn't like to hear herself being referred to as 'bereaved'. It cast her mind back to a YouTube video she watched about the origin of the word. Bereaved came from old English, meaning to deprive, and 'reave' went back even further to Dutch and German, meaning to rob. Her grandmother had been robbed of her life, and she in turn had been robbed of her grandmother.

  Based on the muffled responses, the groundskeeper sitting deeper in the building appeared to be more than understanding at Bunkle's request, and the frog man returned minutes later with a pot, three cups and a selection of biscuits. Ana couldn't imagine how they thought biscuits would be appropriate, but thanked the man nonetheless.

&nbs
p; A crack of daylight arced across the room as the door opened. A shadow appearing at its centre. Ana glanced over and saw a man standing in the doorway, closing the door behind him. He was tall, slender, two days worth of stubble that she reckoned was pruned to that exact length intentionally. He was dressed in a manner that she thought of as “hobo formal”, an unironed wine red shirt, dark blue jeans that had seen better days, a full length coat that looked almost Victorian in its cut, pulled in at the waist as women's coats tended to do. The buttons were on the wrong side―wrong side for a man's coat, at least―it was a woman's coat. At the foot of his jeans he wore tan boots that had long lost their sheen, covered in scuffs and marks from many days wear without a polish, let alone repair.

  His gaze was on her mother, fixed, with faint recognition and something approaching compassion. There was also something in his stare that Ana read as hesitancy, as if he knew that his presence was an imposition. The eyes rose slowly to meet hers, emeralds meeting jade. She found it curious, the similarity in their eye colour, given how rare she had always been told it was, and more so for the contrast with his dark skin. She knew it was a trick of the light, but it felt as though the hue seemed to shine out in the dull ambience, as if they provided their own subtle illumination. He froze for a moment, as an urban fox might when caught by a passer by.

  She patted her mother's back and rose to her feet, whispering “I'll just be a second,” as she walked towards him. He made no attempt to move, calm and confident in his posture, but she observed it as a facade. He wasn't an urban fox, he was rabbit caught in headlights, guilt hiding behind his eyes.

  “Hi,” he said, in a gravelly Australian drawl. Ana didn't know accents well enough to place it to a part of the country, but something about sounded diluted, as if he had lived in European countries for a while, lost some of his dialect's natural swagger in the process. “I'm here for the Wallace funeral, Mary Wallace.”