When I saw the button in that lift, the one I poured all my focus into, I just kind of wished it to work. Like I was reverse engineering what I did on the job every day. Instead of sending a ghost to heaven (or wherever it was I’d been sending them), I imagined my own soul going through the veil in the other direction. And now here I was, back on terra firma. Sort of.
I left the station in a daze, staggering along the high street, a fart in a trance. I passed by the mini cab office, over the zebra crossing, past the pigeon-shitted statue of Lord Cobden. The sun was up, but it shone right through me. The suit I was wearing was black as squid ink, not a spot of light on it. It actually looked pretty cool. I mean, what were the chances I’d be done up all spiffy the day I got the chop? If this was the way I was going to stay dressed for all of time, I could think of worse things I could have been wearing. Caught any other day, I’d have ended up wearing skinny jeans and an Iron Maiden t-shirt until the end of eternity. Don’t get me wrong, Maiden rock, but there’s a time and a place.
I was busy contemplating the concept of eternity when a shopper with a pram walked right through me. Like, literally right through me. In one side and out the other. I don’t know if you’ve ever been subjected to two generations entering your body (easy, now) and transforming before your eyes into a pair of Dr. Gunther Body Worlds sculptures, but it’s a sensation that kind of sticks with you. Quite possibly for eternity.
I recoiled, reeling backwards, right into the path of a pillar box. Instead of passing harmlessly through it though, I smashed the back of my head upon it and almost knocked myself out. What the hell? Was I intangible or not? Someone needed to write down some goddamned rules.
This was my first clue that certain, rare ghosts—me included—were able to interact with the physical world. In fact, most of the time, what the living call poltergeist hauntings aren't really hauntings at all, just phantoms tripping over things and making a mess of the place. Most ghosts aren’t scary at all, you see, just clumsy.
As I stood up, shaking the birdies circling my head, I heard a cackle. It came from a homeless guy sprawled out on the pavement beneath an ATM.
He pointed at me and yelled through the hole in his nasty beard. ‘Boo!’ he cried, throwing back his head and laughing like a good ‘un.
It wasn’t just the characteristic “Boo” that keyed me in, I had my suspicions from the off that he was something other than alive. A closer look confirmed it: the bloke was glowing around the edges and nowhere near as opaque as he should be. There were icicles in his beard too, I noticed. In fact, his whole body seemed frozen through like an ice lolly. It was a warm day—far as I could see, I certainly couldn’t feel it—yet he was covered in an unseasonal frost that glued him to the pavement.
‘Fresh meat!’ he boomed, leering at me like a bodysnatcher.
I’m telling you, pal, this bloody day...
7
Being as I didn’t have much else going on in my diary, I decided I’d quite like to know who murdered me.
My starting point was the morgue. Yeah, I know, too much C.S.I. What do you want, it’s not like I investigated murders for a living. Not yet anyway.
I let myself into the St Pancras Mortuary without leaving my name at the front desk. I’d had enough of receptionists for one day, thank you very much. I had a feeling I’d be able to walk through the building’s walls to find the room I was looking for, but since I didn’t have a complete handle on my ghost powers just yet, I decided to follow the signs like a normal human being. The last thing I needed was to get lodged in the brickwork and stuck wailing helplessly at passers-by for the rest of my life. Well, unlife.
I arrived in a room with white tiled walls, gutters on the floor and polished metal sinks. I didn’t have a sense of smell anymore, but if I did, I’m certain I’d have sniffed disinfectant. The place gave me the willies, right down to my core. I shivered, which was daft, because I didn’t have any nerve endings. I suppose it must have been a phantom sensation (Jesus, I just heard myself). Anyway, regardless of the physics of it all, the room was hardly the thing I ought to have been trembling at. The thing I should have been having a tizz over was the great, fleshy mess scattered across the ceramic slab in the middle of the room. The mess that used to be my body, now laid out in four big pieces: two legs, the bottom half of my torso and the upper part too, complete with head.
It’s funny the things you notice when you’re having a literal out of body experience. Despite the fact that I was lying there in chunks of marbled fat and muscle—which you might imagine I’d find quite distracting—the thing that most caught my eye was a patch of fuzzy, dark hair at the base of my spine. Apparently, my whole adult life I’d been walking around with this thing. Why did no one tell me? Honestly, it looked like I was wearing a merkin down there.
The door swung open and a dumpy Indian woman in a blue, plastic apron entered the room, followed by a woman wearing a charcoal grey suit and a lanyard that identified her as Detective Sergeant Stronge. I instinctively ducked behind the mortuary slab as they came in, but I needn’t have bothered, they couldn’t see me. That got me thinking—me, invisible, in a room with a couple of unsuspecting ladies—maybe being a ghost wasn’t going to be such a downer after all. I shook my head. No, not my style. I might be the kind of bloke who forgets to declare some earnings here and there, but I’m no peeping Tom.
DS Stronge approached the slab and ran a wry over what was left of me. ‘I’d say the cause of death was pretty conclusive,’ she noted, her expression unblinking.
The coroner in the apron nodded. ‘What’s his story then? He get bladdered and take a tumble off the platform?’
‘Doesn’t look like it. Street CCTV has him walking into the station in a straight line.’
‘So, what are you thinking? Suicide?’
I suppose that was to be expected. Suicides on the Underground are so common nowadays that they use an automated “Sorry for the inconvenience, there’s a person under the train” announcement to warn commuters that their journeys are going to be held up. A sad commentary on the modern age if ever there was one.
‘Unlikely,’ Stronge replied, raking a hand through her jaw-level bob. ‘No history of depression or drug use.’ She picked up a clipboard from a nearby aluminium counter, scanned the front page and flipped over to the second. ‘See there?’ she said, jabbing a finger at something in my record. ‘Because of that we’re having to consider foul play.’
I tried to get behind her to take a look at what she was pointing at, but by the time I got there she’d flipped the page back and tossed the clipboard onto the counter
The coroner sucked some air through her teeth. ‘Witnesses?’
‘Unfortunately not. Middle of the work day – no one around.’
‘What about platform cameras? Anything there?’
‘Negative. Turns out the one lens pointing his way was on the blink.’
‘Typical. Any suspects then? Jilted girlfriend maybe?’
‘He’s married.’ replied Stronge, then corrected herself. ‘Was married.’
The coroner stroked her chin. ‘In that case I’ll lay money the wife offed him. It’s always the wife with these things.’
Stronge offered her a condescending smile, the kind a parent who finds her kid with a mouthful of Play-Doh might give. ‘We’re looking into it,’ she said, ‘but it doesn’t seem like he had any enemies. Far as we can tell, the guy was a real nobody.’
I won’t lie, I did not love hearing that.
DS Stronge and the coroner made some parting small-talk, then each took off their separate ways, leaving me alone with my thoughts (and corpse).
The moment they were gone I made a beeline for the clipboard. The page attached to the front had my name on it, along with a list of my identifying attributes: the birthmark on my left thigh, the scar on my foot I got from stepping on broken glass at Scout camp, a burn on my wrist, the regrettable tattoo just above my right nipple (a story for another time). It w
as all boilerplate stuff really – but I knew from what I’d earwigged that the real juice was on Page Two.
I reached across to flick to the next sheet, only my hand went straight through the countertop. I stared at the clipboard in frustration, at the tantalising PTO that begged me to flip to the following page and learn some clues about my killer. I tried turning the page again, but my hand passed through the clipboard like it was made of water. I was so angry I punched the wall, but I couldn’t even manage that. Son of a bitch. It’s true what they say: being dead will put a real crimp in your day.
I knew I could touch stuff though. Knew it. The back of my head was still ringing from the collision with that pillar box earlier, so it was obvious that me and the material world could still tango. I just had to act like a man of substance for once in my life (well, death). I concentrated hard on the back of my hand, which it turns out I didn’t know half as well as the old saying goes.
‘Get solid,’ I ordered it, like an impotent man screaming at his genitals.
I imagined it filling up with cement, then I imagined the cement setting to form a hard, statue hand, like the type I’d seen on Lord Cobden’s monument earlier.
Nothing changed. Or nothing much anyway.
My mitt looked just the same, but it felt more solid somehow. Denser. Heavy even. Reaching out, I dashed a finger across the top of the clipboard and the front page tore free, revealing the one underneath. I allowed myself a little jig. I was crushing being a ghost. Eat my dick, Bruce Willis.
I scanned the second page of the autopsy report. There was plenty to read under Wounds, but nothing under Fingerprints and bugger all under DNA. I arrived at a section marked Fibres. I was hoping for a hair sample maybe, something that might have fallen off the killer when they shoved me. According to the coroner’s notes though, the only item of note was a length of thread found clutched in my right hand that wasn’t a match for any of my garments. It must have come from the thing I grabbed right before I fell under the train. I read on. The thread was a sheep’s wool/polyester mix, red in colour.
Red.
Same colour as the scarf worn by the crazy lady who accosted me on the high street, right before I had my “accident.”
Seemed like I had a visit to make.
8
So, that was who knocked me off the twig: the nutbar at the magic shop with the bee in her bonnet about exorcists. Guess she must have decided my soul was worth less than the ones I was supposedly obliterating. As if she knew the first thing about the supernatural, selling fake guillotines to stage magicians.
I decided to drop in on her at her place of work, the magic shop in King’s Cross. They’ve renovated most of the area since that part of London went international, but there are still some unsanitised backstreets if you knew where to look. Streets that seem to go out of their way to avoid foot traffic.
It was down one such dingy, piss-smelling alleyway that I found the place I was looking for, a dusty little shop squatting between a jewellers that looked like something from the Fifties and a book store (London slang for “porn hole”). Hanging from the magic shop’s wall was a battered sign, upon which, written in peeling paint, was the word Legerdomain.
Clever clever.
I didn’t want the bell above the door to tip the owner I was coming, so I dodged the obvious entrance and Caspered through the shop-front like I was walking through a beaded curtain. It has to be said, there are some definite benefits to being a nonentity. No hunger, no more aches and pains, and that weird thing I had with my back that made it hard to tie my shoelaces sometimes? Gone.
I arrived inside. The shop bell tinkled despite the fact that I’d avoided the door—which was strange—but I paid it no mind.
The decor of the shop was liver-red: walls, ceiling and carpet. Glossy black shelves heaved under all kinds of kooky crap: crystal balls, juggling pins, coin tricks, parasols, a ceramic hand holding a fan of playing cards that looked normal enough. But I hadn’t come to shop for props. I’d come to bring my killer to justice, and there she was, sat behind the counter with her nose in a dog-eared magazine.
I launched myself at her. ‘Boo!’ I shouted, waving my hands around and giving her a big, fat dose of the old ooga-booga.
Much to my surprise, her arse stayed glued to her stool. She didn’t even flinch.
Annoyed, I walked over to a display of balls and cups, and—after a couple of failed attempts—managed to knock them flying from their countertop and bouncing across the floor.
Still she stayed schtum, as if things went jumping around her store for no reason all the time. Instead of freaking out, she simply hummed a ditty and carried on reading her magazine.
I was beginning to lose my rag. I found a shelf of creepy ventriloquist dummies and succeeded in plucking one from its shelf and “floating” it towards her.
‘Wooooooo!’ I moaned, using the trigger inside its back to work the dummy’s mouth. ‘Wooooooo!’ I repeated, when I got no response.
She huffed and calmly placed her magazine on her lap, then—
—‘Hello,’ she said, looking me straight in the eye.
I would have pissed myself if I had any. The dummy went flying as I parted from the floor by a good couple of inches. Pretty shameful behaviour on my part. If I had any ghost friends at this point, I’m sure I’d never have lived it down.
The lady reached under the counter and came up with a candle. She placed it on the counter and lit its wick with a match. It immediately gave off this weird, purple vapour, which filled the shop from top to bottom. I was just about to ask her what she was playing at, when from out of the corner of my eye, I caught my reflection in the metallic surface of a guillotine blade. There I was, plain to see. Large as life, or something like it.
‘So you’re the one messing up my shop?’ she said, peering over her spectacles. ‘What happened to you then?’
Being as she clearly didn’t give one toss that I was an apparition, I cut to the chase. ‘As if you didn’t know!’ I told her. ‘You’re the one who pushed me under the train!’
‘What are you babbling about?’ she replied. ‘I didn’t push anyone under anything.’
‘Oh yeah? Then explain how a thread on my dead body is a perfect match for your scarf?’
I jabbed a finger at her. There it was, hard evidence, wrapped around her neck still. The audacity of this woman. As if wearing a scarf indoors wasn’t bad enough.
Her forehead became a concertina. ‘I don’t know what faulty logic led you here, but I’m a magician, not a murderer.’
‘Sorry to break it to you, love, but working in a magic shop doesn’t make you Gandalf the bleedin’ Grey.’
She sighed. ‘That’s the over-the-counter stuff. It’s what I keep under the counter that makes me a magician.’
She pointed to the candle that had somehow made me visible to her naked eye.
‘Okay, I’ll bite,’ I said, ‘so you’re a real-life sorceress? Does that give you the right to go around killing people?’
‘For the last time, I’m not a killer.’
‘You’ve got motive up to your eyeballs, sweetheart – cornering me on the street and making threats on my life.’
‘I did no such thing. I don’t approve of what you do and I’m not afraid to say so, but I came to you yesterday to dissuade you, not to murder you.’ I folded my arms and let her go on. ‘I make it my business to oversee the Uncanny goings-on in this borough, and after I’d learned you were an exorcist, I felt the need to confront you about your shoddy business practices.’
‘A likely story.’
‘In any case,’ she sighed, ‘if I really wanted you dead, why would I accost you in broad daylight?’
She had a point there. If she really wanted to top me, why the warning? What she was telling me was beginning to sound annoyingly like the truth.
I threw up my hands, causing purple smoke to waft about the room. ‘Well, if you’re not the one who killed me, who is?’
&nbs
p; ‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Isn’t it usually the wife with these things?’
I shook my head, exasperated. ‘Is that really the best you can do?’
‘I’m a magician, not a fortune teller,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘But I can tell you this much: if you’re hoping to bring your killer to justice before you flutter off to heaven, you’d better keep your head down.’
I laughed. ‘What do I have to be worried about? I’m already dead.’
‘There are powers in this world that can affect even the departed,’ she replied. ‘You of all people should know that.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘You owe a great debt, Jake Fletcher. All of those souls you thought you were sending to the Great Beyond are gone now, destroyed by your ignorance, and one of these days you’ll be asked to account for them. For each and every one of them. If I were you, I’d make sure I laid low and did all the good I could before that day came.’
As if I didn’t have enough on my plate. She was right though. I’d been reckless, fumbling around in the dark, making it up as I went along. I thought I was being kind. I thought I was helping those spirits cross over gracefully, but I’d bleached them away like grease stains.
It was too much. Too much to take in. Too much to accept.
I turned to leave, but before I could, the woman caught the sorry expression I was wearing.
‘Look after yourself, Jake,’ I heard her say over my shoulder.
I turned back. ‘I just realised, I never asked you your name.’
She swished her hands and traced a line through the candle’s purple haze, spelling out the words MADAME OLENA.
I regarded her signature. ‘Bit of a mouthful,’ I told her, forcing a smile. ‘I reckon I’m gonna call you... Jazz Hands.’
I left through the front door this time.
9
It didn’t take me long to finger my next suspect. Vic Lords. Had to be. I got so hung up on that business with the red thread that I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. Vic Lords. A shady businessman with underworld dealings and a really good reason to want me dead. Those pics I saw on his monitor were enough to put him in jail for a long time. Of course he’d be the one to bump me under a train, or one of his cronies anyway.
Uncanny Kingdom: An Eleven Book Urban Fantasy Collection (Uncanny Kingdom Omnibus 1) Page 41
