Uncanny Kingdom: An Eleven Book Urban Fantasy Collection (Uncanny Kingdom Omnibus 1)

by David Bussell

  Well, help was on its way.

  At least I hoped it was.

  23

  David had started to talk a lot, even more than usual, and his usual level was like a six-year-old on a sugar high.

  ‘Easily the best Carpenter film, that. The Thing. How can you not have seen The Thing?’

  ‘My witches weren’t really big on movie nights.’

  ‘Well, we’re getting that watched. And then we can get on to the others. You’ll love They Live. It’s about this bloke who gets to see the world as it really is, all covered in monsters and that. Remind you of anyone you know?’ he said, jabbing a thumb at himself.

  I nodded. I knew what this was; David was trying to distract himself. To dampen his nerves as we got off the tube and drew closer to that cursed place.

  He stopped as we stood before the mouth of the alley.

  ‘You can stay out here while I do my thing if you want,’ I told him.

  ‘No, I’m going in there. You never know, you might need me to help you if, well, if shit goes down and stuff.’

  ‘And stuff?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Okay.’ I walked forward, David following a pace or two behind. On my third or fourth step into the space I felt the atmosphere around me darken, just like the last time. The shadow of the incident, of what had happened to Alice as she had ran in there eighty years ago, the devil at her heels.

  ‘You feel that?’ asked David, breathing in short, shallow breaths.

  ‘Yeah. It still lives here. Stamped into our reality. Alice’s murder at the hands of her school bullies.’

  ‘You realise none of those sentences make me feel even the tiniest bit better, right?’

  The first time we came here David hadn’t noticed the way the past had tainted this alley, not until it infected him. This time, it was like he was more tuned into the alley’s darkness. It had taken him once and left its mark on him.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, and made my way deeper into the alley, taking the leather pouch out of my pocket.

  ‘So what are you going to do, exactly?’

  ‘I’m going to try and summon the past. The incident is still happening, even as we stand here. It’s happening again and again, a never-ending repeat. We can use Alice to try and bring it fully into our realm so we can see it.’

  ‘And if you can do that?’

  ‘If I can do that, maybe the big bad will show up too.’

  ‘Well, there’s nothing I like more than terrifying hell beasts, so get cracking, magic lady.’

  I poured the ground remains of Alice’s skull into the palm of my right hand. Felt its coarseness between my fingers.

  ‘Wake no more,’ I said, then threw the skull dust into the air. Rather than fall to the ground or get caught by the wind and whisked away, the remains hung in front of us, like someone had pressed pause on the passing of time.

  ‘Is that you doing that?’ whispered David.

  ‘Shh.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  The remains were caught in the heavy, bleak magic that washed up and down the alley. The skull was part of this alley’s story. It wanted it. Wanted to claim it. I closed my eyes and became a focal point for the magic, willing it to flow towards me, to enter me.

  ‘Wake no more, said nobody’s child, kicked and beaten, turned mean and wild.’

  The alley darkened. It knew the words. Recognised the power they held.

  The skull cloud began to swirl and dance in front of me.

  ‘Do you hear that?’ asked David, looking around. ‘I think I heard a kid.’

  I ignored him. Couldn’t let him break my concentration. Couldn’t let anything break my connection to the magic in the alley, to Alice’s remains, to the rhyme.

  ‘Wake no more, said the fearful small, for now I am here, to punish you all.’

  I threw my arms out and inhaled, my mouth a vortex, inescapable, the cloud of ground skull entering me, filling my lungs.

  ‘Stella? Stella, are you okay? Talk to me.’

  For a moment I was Alice. I saw everything she ever saw, felt everything she’d ever felt. Her whole life opened up to me, every smell, every pain, every half-asleep dawn. It rushed through me, intoxicating. If I wasn’t careful I could get lost in it. Could become submerged and lose myself in the confusion. I couldn’t let it. If I did I might never escape.

  ‘Wake no more!’

  I bent double, screaming, and the cloud of Alice’s skull was expelled, exploding out, tearing through what we saw of the alley like shrapnel through flesh. The alley as we knew it, in our time, was peeling away and being replaced by something that looked similar, but not quite. An older version. The version of eighty years ago.

  I realised I was on my knees, coughing, with David patting my back.

  ‘You know smoking is bad for you, right? Especially smoking the ground up skull of a long dead child. Seriously, ask any doctor.’

  I grunted and stood, ‘It worked.’

  ‘Yeah? So, did we travel back in time? Is that’s what’s happened here?’

  ‘No. Well, not exactly. We’re still in the same alley, we haven’t gone anywhere, or any-when. I just used the magic in the alley, the memory of what happened here with Alice as the connection. Used it to pull the past version forward so we could see it.’

  ‘Okay, tell me you heard it this time,’ said David, looking around.

  I did. It was a child. A girl. She was screaming.

  ‘Look,’ I said, David following the dart of my eyes.

  There was something behind the bins. Two small legs poking out and into view.

  ‘Is it her?’ asked David.

  We stepped forward and there she was. Alice Travers, her chest rising spasmodically to drag in a desperate last breath or two. Her face a mess, her teeth in her hair like macabre jewels, blood the pillow her head rested upon.

  She looked up to us through the one eye still open, and then she died.

  24

  I blinked and Alice was gone, melted away in a heartbeat.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said David, quietly. ‘The report said… well, it didn’t go into detail about Alice’s injuries. Kids did that?’

  I nodded, ‘Two little kids. Cruel and savage and bloodthirsty.’

  ‘Where’s she going, Jack?’

  ‘Nowhere after this, Tilly.’

  Voices at the entrance to the alley. We turned to see Alice, wild-eyed, racing towards us, her two attackers slowing as they entered, knowing their quarry had nowhere to go.

  A dead end.

  ‘Hey, it’s okay,’ said David, trying to get Alice’s attention. But of course she wasn’t really there. This was a repeat. I shivered as the cold memory of her brushed past us, prickling my skin.

  ‘Is she a ghost? Are they all ghosts?’ asked David.

  ‘No. Not exactly. Ghosts still have their own mind, their own personality. Most of them anyway.’

  ‘Like Jake, from The Beehive?’

  ‘Right. This is different. This is a snapshot that the magic in this alley has claimed as its own.’

  Alice was backed up against the wall now as the two kids, Jack and Tilly, walked past us.

  ‘They look so normal,’ said David.

  It was true. They didn’t look like murderers. But then what would that look like anyway?

  ‘Don’t come near me, I’ll tell. I’ll tell a copper.’ Alice’s voice was small and thin. She knew it didn’t matter what she said, Jack and Tilly were going to hurt her anyway.

  Tilly’s knuckles connected with Alice’s jaw and she fell to the ground.

  ‘Christ, can’t you do anything?’ blurted David.

  ‘Please,’ said Alice. It turned out that “please” was the last coherent word Alice Travers ever said.

  Things moved fast then as a sort of mania overtook her attackers. Maybe it was the creature, or the idea of the creature, urging them on. Overwhelming them. Pushing them to go further than they’d intended.

  Do it, go on, do
it.

  I realised with horror that the two attackers were grinning as they went about their work. David tried to intervene but it was pointless, this wasn’t really happening. Not now. It was in the past, an imprint of history.

  Then came a blast of wind that almost blew the two kids off their feet, halting their savage attack. They turned, shielding their eyes as a bright light illuminated the alley. The brick walls and cobbled ground seemed to warp. A ripple, like a throat swallowing, flowing down towards us.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked David.

  ‘Something has just been born,’ I replied.

  ‘Wake no more, wake no more, no more, no more.’

  The words fluttered around us like feathers, tickling at our ears.

  ‘For now I am here, to punish you all.’

  Jack and Tilly were the ones that looked scared now. They raced for a way out, sprinting from the broken body they’d left in a bloodied, undignified heap behind the bins.

  This was it.

  This was the moment.

  I raised my hands above my head and willed the magic towards me. Alice’s skull was still in the surrounding air, and I inhaled some of it back into my lungs.

  ‘Please, Please, Please—’

  A foot stamping down and down and I know suddenly I’m going to die and I worry about my Mum crying when she finds out and—

  ‘Wake no more,’ I said, placing demands in my mind as I said the opening line again. I placed together ancient words that insisted the hidden Uncanny show itself.

  ‘Please, Please, Please—’

  The magic around me crackled and popped. Screeched like twisting metal. Something was coming.

  ‘Wake no more, wake no more, wake no more—’

  ‘Stella, look!’ said David, tugging at my jacket and pointing all around us.

  Shapes were beginning to emerge into this realm. Small shadows, one by one, fading up into view.

  ‘It’s… are they children?’ asked David.

  They were. More and more appeared, crowding around us. All the children laid up in comas in Ealing hospital. In hospitals all over London. In my coven.

  ‘Amy!’

  David ran to one of the shadows. Somehow we both knew it was her.

  ‘Amy, can you hear me? Come on Ames, it’s Uncle David, I’ve come to get you.’

  The spell had only partially worked. I hadn’t been strong enough to completely pull the creature’s realm into our own, only to give us a glimpse of it. An afterimage.

  ‘Stella, come on, do something! She’s right here! Save her!’

  I closed my eyes and willed the magic into me.

  It filled me, made my skin itch, my heart dance, my breath quicken. More and more I soaked in.

  ‘Show me, show me, show me—’

  For now I have come, for now I have come, for now I have come to punish you all.

  Screams.

  The children, the shadows of all the children it had taken, were terrified. They scattered, running in and out of view, like they were blinking in and out of reality.

  ‘Amy? Stop, come back Amy!’

  She was lost, it was impossible to know which of the shadows was hers now as they merged, ran, panicked, a mass of screaming horror.

  ‘What are they running from?’ asked David. ‘What can they see?’

  A shiver ran up my spine.

  ‘Him,’ I replied.

  There was a man stood before the brick wall, before the alley’s dead end.

  ‘They’re running from him,’ I said.

  ‘Wake no more, said the fearful small, for now I am here, to punish you all.’

  25

  The man, the creature, stood quite still.

  He was tall, taller than any normal man, and thin besides. The suit he wore clung to him like a second skin. Perhaps it was his skin. His skin forming the idea of clothes. He had hair, brown, a simple short, neat cut, but below the hair there were no features. No face at all, just blank, white skin.

  ‘Is that it? Is that him?’ said David, backing up a step.

  ‘That’s the monster,’ I said.

  ‘Children? Why do you run from me?’ asked the man, somehow speaking even though he didn’t have a mouth. His voice was level, calm, soothing, and yet terrifying.

  ‘Children, I’m here. There is nowhere for you to go now. Only I exist. Me and my desires. And I desire to punish you all. All the wicked and small.’

  The man stepped forward. Well, I assume he did. I didn’t actually see him move, didn’t see him place one foot in front of the other and actually step anywhere. It’s just that he was suddenly one step forward.

  ‘Why do you hide from me, children? I only want what’s worst for you.’

  ‘Stella, I don’t… I don’t feel good, I…’

  David was backing up against the wall, his hair sticking to the sweat on his forehead.

  He began to slide down the wall, lifting up his hands to protect himself.

  ‘Don’t let them touch me! Please, don’t let them touch me!’

  The creature had moved again, another two unseen steps forward.

  ‘Cruel, cruel, cruel. So small yet so full of hate. I would cry and weep, and sob a river of tears, believe me; if only I had eyes of my own. Poor me. Poor, poor me.’

  I ran to David, trying to keep the creature in my field of vision.

  ‘David, you’re okay, they aren’t here. Those kids are just in your mind.’

  ‘They climbed over the fence. He’s got a knife. I saw it! He’s going to cut me!’

  ‘Interesting,’ said the creature, now crouched at my side, staring with the eyes it didn’t have at the cowering David.

  Its sudden appearance made me jerk away in surprise, falling onto my side.

  ‘Please, they’re pushing the blade too hard, it’s going to cut me. Going to cut me open!’

  ‘Let me see.’

  ‘Get away from him!’ I yelled, scrabbling to get up and onto my feet as the faceless man reached forward and sank his hand into David’s chest, as though his arm and hand were made of smoke.

  David’s eyes opened wide. I wondered what he was seeing. Did he feel the creature’s hand on his heart?

  ‘Oh yes,’ said the creature. ‘Such pain. Sad, sad, sad. What is it you would wish to do to those boys?’

  ‘Hurt them. Hurt them badly,’ replied David, through gritted teeth.

  ‘Now I have come, to punish you all.’

  ‘Oi, monster, over here!’ I shouted, waved my hands and stamped my feet, but the faceless man didn’t pay me any attention. It’s like I wasn’t even there. I wanted to attack the thing. To throw balls of fire at its featureless head, but I couldn’t risk doing anything while it had its hand inside David’s chest.

  ‘Monstrous children. That is what they are, you know. All and all and all. The victim. The guilty. Interchangeable. One and the same. Anger and violence. Pain and shame.’

  David whimpered, curled up on the dirty cobbles, the creature looming over him, its hand still inside his chest.

  ‘I didn’t do anything to them. Why did they do that?’ he asked, his voice smaller than I’d ever heard it. ‘They took my hair.’ That wasn’t David the grown man speaking, it was David the young boy. Scared and powerless. The creature was attuned to children, and to childhood trauma in particular. David may not have been a child, but the creature could sniff out his past. His pain. I didn’t have a childhood. Nothing for it to pay attention to. So it didn’t. I wondered if it even knew I was there.

  ‘I knew a child who killed dogs for kicks,’ said the creature. ‘She would tempt them with a tasty treat then lead them out to a field and stove their heads in with a brick, safely out of sight, for she knew what she was up to was wicked and rotten and worse besides. She would collect the bloody mess and throw it into the river, the water rushing the corpse away to bye-bye. Then she started taking schoolmates who ticked her off most thoroughly. In went their heads, the cracking of skulls, and hey-ho, into
the river they go. I took her in the end. She said the rhyme and so she was mine.’

  Finally, it removed its hand from David’s chest and stood.

  ‘David? David, are you okay? Can you hear me?’

  He looked up at me, eyes red, mouth quivering and silent.

  The creature looked about. ‘Children? Where did you go? D’you know, I don’t think we’re altogether where we should be. Whatever can the matter be?’

  It wasn’t going to work, I knew that before I tried. I pulled the magic of the alley towards me and, with a scream of effort, punched my hands towards the creature, one after the other, again and again, molten cords of energy arcing from my glowing knuckles to whiplash against the creature.

  It didn’t even flinch.

  It looked solid, more solid than the shadow children, but really it was barely any more substantial. Just a piece of the other realm made visible to us by the spell I’d cast.

  David was crying on the ground, and the creature turned to him again.

  ‘Ah, the music of tears. I know this tune well. This is my song.’

  I ran at the faceless man as he moved towards David again. Screaming, I tried to tackle him, willed myself to make contact, but I passed through him and tumbled painfully to the ground.

  ‘Perhaps we could sing a duet?’ said the creature, and lifted David to his feet, before plunging both phantom hands into his chest. David gasped, his head snapping back, eyes wide.

  ‘David!’

  The sound of children screaming began to swirl around us, growing in volume, almost physically assaulting me, beating me down. I pulled the magic into me in a panic, unleashed it in an unfocussed rage, trying to kill the spell. Send this version of the alley, the creature and the children, back to their own realm.

  ‘So sad,’ said the creature, ‘I feel your pain. I am your pain. I am your urge and retribution.’

  David stopped crying and started screaming.

  My hands burned hot. I didn’t have a choice. It was either pointless or dangerous, but this thing was harming David. Perhaps even killing him. I had to throw whatever I had at the thing and hope for—