by M. V. Stott
‘L’Merrier, please—’
‘Begging now? My, my. You come into my shop and make demands. Tut-tut, little one. I should dispatch you for showing such arrogance. Pluck your limbs from their sockets one by one. What say you? Shall we begin with an arm? Left or right, hmm?’
‘L’Merrier, the witches of the London Coven are dead! Murdered in their own seat of power, and it is my duty to get revenge! Do you want their deaths to go unpunished?’
I could see him waver, considering my words.
‘They were good women, ‘tis true. For witches, that is.’
‘My masters did a lot for you, even in the short space of time I had the pleasure of being their Familiar. Do you not want their killer found? If they could take down the London Coven, who’s next? Who’s safe? Maybe they’ll pay this shop a visit!’
He twitched his hand and I fell to the floor, my head jarring as the wooden floorboards caught me. I groaned and rolled onto my back, L’Merrier gliding into view as he leaned over me.
‘What is the animal's name?’
‘His name… his name is Mr. Trick.’
21
L’Merrier was stood in the centre of a pentagram. He had chalked it freshly whilst muttering strange words even I had never heard before.
We were in the basement of L’Merrier’s Antiques; at least that’s where I thought we were. In truth, he hadn’t allowed me to walk there, he’d clapped his hands and suddenly this was where we were. For all I knew, this inner sanctum was at the centre of a mountain in Tibet. Or underneath a betting shop in Ealing.
L’Merrier turned to me, his face drained of colour. ‘Familiar, using a name to find an Uncanny’s location is one of the black arts. I am friends with the black arts, the dark plane, the shadow realm of screams, but you may be…. upset by some of the things you see or hear.’
‘I can take it,’ I replied, trying to ignore the prickle of sweat on my neck.
‘Very well, then we shall begin.’ He clapped his hands together and it sounded like thunder, shaking the room.
‘Ruma-Chk-Ella-Ruma-Chk-Ella—’ His voice rolled out, deep and powerful.
The temperature in the room immediately dropped twenty degrees and I shivered as my breath began to fog in front of me.
‘Hear me. Know what I want. What I demand. Hear me.’
Something skittered across the floor, just out of view. I pressed my back to the wall as my magical sense began to recoil at the unnaturalness flooding into L’Merrier’s sanctum. My first instinct was to pull in the magic surrounding me, ready to defend, to attack, but the room was no longer bathed in ordinary magic. It was flooded with black magic. If I soaked that up, there was no telling what it might do to me. What I might do to other people. Whether I’d be able to walk out of the sanctum alive at all.
‘Chk-Ella! Chk-Ella! I, Giles L’Merrier, the wonder of mankind, have a name for you. A true name!’
There was a shape in the room. It looked almost like a person, but wrong. Stretched out. Bent. Its flesh was crisp and blackened, as though burned and diseased. It didn’t have a face, just a giant mouth, full of teeth; a snake’s tongue lazily slithered out to lick at the air. Two horns curled and wound from its forehead.
‘I am here,’ it said, its voice a harsh whisper that made me wince; fingernails down a chalkboard. It made my stomach a fist, and I felt like I might throw up.
‘I need to know an Uncanny’s place in the world. You will tell me, foul beast.’
The creature wasn’t listening. It was looking at me.
‘I know you, little thing. Yes I do.’
It stepped towards me, its movements twitchy, unnerving, as though watching a film with frames cut out.
‘Beast, I command you!’
My back was coated with sweat. I wanted to run, but as I looked for a place to escape I realised for the first time that the sanctum had no door. No window. No obvious place in or out. I was trapped in there. Trapped with a thing of the dark.
‘You don’t know me,’ I managed, my voice a childish stutter.
‘Do not speak with the thing, Familiar!’
‘Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes, I do. I have. Have yet to. Will. We all will. The dark knows you.’
A sonic boom as L’Merrier clapped his mighty hands together once more. The creature winced and turned from me, its attention caught.
‘Yes, look to me, thing.’
‘The magic man seeks our council once again.’
‘I have a true name in my possession; I demand you show me the Uncanny’s location!’
‘Why should we bend to you?’
‘Do not play games or speak falsely with me, foul creature. You know me. You know this sanctum, the shapes I have drawn, the words I have spoken, the magic that flows through this place is without question. In here, with me, you are bound to tell me answers.’
The creature took one long finger, the nail ragged, and drew it down its cheek. Black, thick blood oozed from the wound and the beast giggled.
‘Go ahead, ask and ask and ask.’
‘The Uncanny’s name is... Mr. Trick.’
‘Ah yes, the one who did slay the witches of London.’
‘Yes! Where is he?’ I cowered as L’Merrier’s eyes blazed at my interruption.
‘Ignore the insect, I am the one who asks, the one who is in control. The one who—with a few well-placed words—could turn you to ash!’
‘Ooh, threats. You would threaten a thing of the dark?’
‘And more besides. You know me. Know what I have done. What I will do again. Do not think that it is beyond me.’
The creature giggled again, and my knees shook.
‘Very well. Look...’
The creature’s hand shot towards L’Merrier, gripping his broad forehead in its filthy hand. He threw open his arms and screamed as the flames erupted around him from the pentagram’s chalk lines.
‘L’Merrier!’
I shielded my face from the heat, from the sudden bright light. Had the thing killed him?
And then the blanket was lifted. The sanctum was free of the dark magic. The flames were dead. And on the floor, still at the centre of the perfectly chalked pentagram, sat L’Merrier, his head in his hands. He was trembling. That might have been the thing that scared me most of all about this whole thing. The mighty Giles L’Merrier, trembling like a little kid.
I stepped slowly towards him.
‘Is it over?’
He looked up to me, his eyes wide, and nodded. ‘I know where the thing is. But… It is like nothing I have ever…’
He stopped, stood, and strode across the room, grabbing a pen and paper and scribbling down the address. ‘Here.’
I took the piece of paper and read it. I knew where it was. Knew where the monster that had murdered my family was hiding. Knew where David, my friend, was being kept.
‘Now get out!’
‘Wait, what if we take on Mr. Trick together? I am only a Familiar, as you seem to like to remind me. Maybe you could—’
He rounded on me, his eyes ablaze with fury: ‘The debt is paid. More than paid. Do not come to me asking favours again.’
‘Wai—-’
—But before I managed a second word, I felt the outdoor chill cool my skin. I was stood outside of L’Merrier’s Antiques again, and something told me I wouldn’t be allowed to walk in a third time. I looked at the address on the piece of paper, then stuffed it in the pocket of my leather jacket.
I knew where the thing was.
The thing that seemed to frighten even Giles L’Merrier…
…and I was going to kill it.
22
I felt my stomach churn as I lowered myself into the sewer, my boots splashing down into something disgusting. It’s amazing how often I find myself sloshing through these underground, waste filled tunnels in my line of work. For some reason, more than one dark Uncanny feels at home in these disgusting places.
I passed my hand in front of my nose—
&
nbsp; ‘Fresh.’
Instantly, the smell of other people’s piss and faeces was hidden by an artificial smell of flowers and meadows. I didn’t usually like to trick one of my senses whilst I was in a place like this, a place—as I’ve already mentioned—that bad things call home, but I was so full of fear, expectation, and anger, that I was worried the stench would overpower me and have me chucking my guts up.
I slid my hand into my jacket and felt the crumpled piece of paper that held Mr. Trick’s address. Who knows how long the thing would remain at that location. I should have gone straight there to confront whatever it was, but what it had been able to do so far, and the look in L’Merrier’s eyes, told me that it would be a mistake to go rushing in head-first. I was a weak Uncanny compared to any of these people, so to even stand a chance I needed to be as powerful as my body could handle. To be topped up with enough magical juice that it was practically leaking it out of my ears. And that meant paying the fairies that lurk in the London sewer system a visit.
I looked back and forth, stretching out my senses as far as they would go. I made a choice, turned to my right, and set off.
One way or another I knew this thing was almost over. Mr. Trick would be where the piece of paper said he was. I felt it, deep in my gut. The way things had been going, I wasn’t just expecting him to be there, but was sure he’d already know I was on my way. That he would have felt L’Merrier stretching out into the dark arts to locate him. He wanted me to find him. Wanted a final confrontation. I felt like I understood the thing, its motives. It wanted to play with me, like a cat with a wounded mouse. But not forever. Letting me know its location meant that it was at last tired of its tricks. It wanted the grand finale; to take me off the board and start a new game elsewhere. Even the most cruel and delicious games can overstay their welcome, and Mr. Trick was ready to have this one be over.
A flicker of light in the distance, a stuttering pinprick of white in the stinking dark. Here we go. I ran towards it, filthy liquid exploding from my heavy footfalls to soak the bottom of my jeans.
Why was I chasing after a fairy, underneath London, in a crap-smeared tunnel? Because real fairies aren’t the creatures of delight they’re portrayed as in kid’s books. They’re like flies, feasting on waste, passing on infection to normals. They’re dumb animals that live only to breed, and the way they do that? By laying their eggs in a host. Generally a human host. They’re not above sneaking into your house and filling you full of their eggs whilst you sleep, but for ease of access they usually venture out after dark and attack a passed-out homeless person. They’ll extend what looks like a stinger from their rear ends and sink it deep into the person’s stomach, injecting hundreds of eggs, thousands sometimes. The infected person might wake up with a bit of a stomach-ache, but they won’t suspect anything. Why would they? Fairies aren’t real, especially the dirty little bastards that they actually are.
In a few short days, the host will find their stomach horribly distended, but they won’t look for help. The infection tricks the brain into seeking out a place to hide. So the sewer. Down here, out of sight, they will wiggle and writhe in agony for up to a week, until finally their flesh will tear, killing them, and out of the fresh corpse will pour a cloud of new fairies, ready to go and do the same to some other poor sod.
We Uncanny people do our best to try and cull their numbers to stop the normal population from plummeting, but the fairies do have their uses. They are chock-full of magic. Magic that can be extracted and devoured. Many use it as a sort of drug. There are dens all over London in which Uncanny people lounge on beds, drinking down the magic from a freshly-dead fairy, getting drunk on the sudden hit of magic coursing through their system.
So that’s why I was here. Stalking through a fairy-infested sewer. I needed to power up for a fight.
The fairy I was following was so fast I was beginning to lose sight of it. As I ran, I reached out a hand-
‘Here—’
I placed the magical words together in my mind and felt energy fly from my palm, catching the fairy like the sticky tongue of a lizard and drawing the thing back and into my grip.
‘Got you, you little shit.’
It wiggled in my hand, squealing in its high-pitched but unintelligible voice.
‘Take me home.’ The creature stopped and blinked rapidly in confusion as the spell took hold. ‘Well?’
The thing nodded and I opened my hand, allowing it to hop into the air on its dirty wings. It flew from me, just slow enough that I could keep up. One fairy holds a nice amount of magical juice, but not enough for where I was going. I needed to find a whole nest of the things and take my fill.
Ten minutes later, the fairy stopped and allowed me to catch up. It pointed eagerly into the gloom. I squinted and saw it: a large nest stuck high to the wall. The thing writhed like a blister full of spiders. Seemed like almost everyone was home.
‘Thanks,’ I said, patting the fairy on the head, then I tore it in two and sucked out its innards. I gasped, my eyes wide as the magic filled me, warming my innards like I’d just downed a double of whiskey.
‘More.’
I threw what was left of the thing to the ground. I was too focused to hear it splash down. I reached up and thrust my hand into the nest, pulling out a fistful of fairies.
‘Stop wiggling,’ I said, and then filled myself so full of magic I thought my body might explode.
Okay.
Nothing else to do.
No reason to put it off any longer.
It was time to go and finish this.
‘I’m coming, David.’
I left fifty fairy corpses swilling around in the watery filth as I made my way to the nearest exit, praying to everything I held dear that David was still alive.
23
It was an ordinary street in Ealing, West London. A nice stretch of three bedroom houses, away from any busy roads. The sort of street that nice families with money lived on. People who went abroad three times a year and left the kids with a live-in nanny.
Ever since I’d read L’Merrier’s scribbled down address, I’d been confused. I’d expected Mr. Trick to be lurking somewhere sinister, somewhere barren. Somewhere he could hide away from prying eyes. But here I was, in a densely populated and well-to-do street, tracking down a monster.
I walked forward, down the centre of the road, my senses on high alert, searching for any sign of attack. Any magical booby traps that might turn me inside out in a heartbeat. I didn’t think for a moment that this monster was going to make things easy for me.
I was so full of bubbling, raging energy from the fairy banquet that it took me a minute to notice something familiar: just like the blind alley and the coven when I’d discovered my witch’s bodies, this street was completely empty of magic. Not even a remnant, not a wisp of smoke twisting in the breeze. Just like earlier, the impossible had happened, and every ounce of the area’s magic had been removed.
I still had no idea how that was even possible. It shouldn’t be. Mr. Trick was not like anything I’d ever taken on before. Maybe not like anything anyone had taken on before; at least no one had ever mentioned a creature capable of such a thing.
Unlike last time, I didn’t feel the withdrawal. I was so hopped up on the fairy juice that I was furiously noisy with magic, and it seemed to be cancelling out the lack of surrounding magic’s effect on me. Good. This was clearly part of Mr. Trick’s M.O., a way to disorient any Uncanny that came its way. Putting them on the back foot before any confrontation, making them even easier pickings. Perhaps it just liked to watch as its victim began to sweat, twitching like a junkie, gasping for magic. It liked to see people suffer.
‘Who are you?’
The voice came from behind me. I whirled on my heels, hands instantly alive with power, ready to unleash. What I found was a small boy, maybe six years old, looking at me from the door to one of the houses. He was smartly dressed with neat hair, like he was about to head off to church on a Sunday.
‘It looks like it might rain,’ said the boy, his voice flat, empty of emotion.
‘Where is he? Where’s David?’
‘If it rains, we shall get wet.’
Was this Mr. Trick? This skinny boy? Could it really be? Or was this just a puppet of some kind? A part of the things game. A fresh piece to throw me, keep me off-kilter and guessing.
‘I said, where is David?’
‘Dead. Or alive. Here or elsewhere. Up or down, a smile or a frown? It’s so hard to keep track in this day and age, don’t you find? And lose? And find again?’’
I began to walk towards the boy. His eyes fixed on mine, an empty smile on his rosy-cheeked face.
‘Don’t think talking in riddles is going to stop me. You’ll either tell me what I need to know, or I’ll beat it out of you.’
The boy laughed, the sound coming out in a multitude of voices at once. I clenched my right fist, the energy burning, desperate to be unleashed.
‘Nice of you to come and visit, Familiar.’ The speaking voice had changed now too, shifting into the style I’d heard before, as though a different person was speaking each word.
‘I know your name, Mr. Trick.’
‘Mr. Trick, will come to town, and all of the Uncanny, shall fall and frown.’
‘Is that what you want? To kill us all?’
‘So many dead and worse besides. Dead fairies, floating in filth under the streets of old London town; oh what a dreadful sight to see. You know when I was last here, the city was nothing but a huddle of wooden buildings. Even then, the stink of magic tainted the place.’
The thing was crazy. Had to be. Some sort of self-hating Uncanny? That was a new one on me.
‘I’m only going to ask you one more time: where is David?’ I threw a line of molten power that exploded from my palm like a lava lasso, scorching the brickwork to the boy’s right.
‘Your temper is a terrible thing, Familiar. It’ll get you killed; or worse. If you want David, just come along inside and find him. Mother said it’s okay, you’re expected.’
