I was still thinking of myself.
What if, instead of worrying about my eternal soul, I worried about someone else’s for a change? People die every day, and too many of those deaths ain’t the natural kind. There had to be millions of lost spirits wandering this plane, scared and lonely, desperate to find their way home. I’d seen them, the ghosts of the dead, trapped where they didn’t belong. I’d seen them in King’s Cross Station when they called to me, begging for my help. I’d seen them on the streets, dead from hypothermia. What about the rest? The suicides, the overdoses, the murder victims. Who was looking after their welfare? Who was helping them find the light?
Then a thought, hot and sharp—
What about me?
I’d found my light. I’d found my stairway to heaven… well, elevator. I was standing in the thing. What if I could do for others what I’d already done for myself? Bring them peace. Bring them justice. Put their murderers behind bars. I don’t know, kind of like a... ghost detective. Yeah, I liked the sound of that. I liked the sound of that a lot.
I took the stairs out of the station. The regular stairs.
The End.
Fresh Hell
1
It was half past midnight when the screaming started.
It came from the east bank of Regent’s Canal, not far from Camden Lock. The person who called it in said they heard a commotion outside their narrow boat and pulled back a curtain to find a figure running along the towpath, screeching at the top of their lungs. The witness said they couldn’t understand why the screamer was making such a racket, not until they slammed their palm against the boat’s porthole and painted it with a big, red handprint.
The victim didn’t have any skin.
They’d been flayed alive from head to toe, peeled like a prawn, yet somehow they still had it in them to be running barefoot—literally barefoot—alongside the canal.
The victim ran some more after that, but didn’t make it much farther before they took a tumble over the bank and toppled face-first into the water. It probably won’t shock you to learn that they were pronounced dead on arrival.
When I picked up the message from DCI Stronge that the Marine Policing Unit had fished a skinned corpse out of the drink, I took an interest right away. Things like that—bizarre, gruesome murders—they’re right in my wheelhouse. All my life I’ve had a preoccupation with the macabre: the creatures in the shadows, the lurkers beneath the floorboards, the monsters in the closet. Believe it or not, back in a past life I used to be an exorcist (although obviously I’d prefer if you did take my word for it, otherwise this story is going to be a really tough sell).
I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Jake Fletcher. I’m six-feet tall, I fill out a suit real nice and I’ve been told by more than one woman that I have—and I quote—“nice teeth.” Oh, and I’m dead. Dead as a doornail.
Now, don’t start giving me any of that, “Ghosts aren’t real, Jake”, bollocks, alright? You’re just going to have to go with me on this. I’m dead, ghosts are kosher, and Two Broke Girls is the nadir of human accomplishment. These are the facts. Deal with them.
Where was I again? Oh, right, me being an ex-exorcist…
You’re probably wondering how I wound up being one of those in the first place, right? I mean, it’s not exactly your run of the mill, garden variety profession. My school careers advisor had me pegged as a newspaper reporter or an English teacher, but I guess I was always destined to work with the dead. I was born with The Sight, you see, a special sensitivity to the Uncanny. No one knows how it works exactly—whether it’s a sixth sense, an overactive pineal gland, or just plain bad luck—but I have an ability to see the spirits of the dead. Ghosts, phantoms, spectres, whatever you want to call them, I can see the lot, and more besides. If I was to show you some of the “besides” that I’ve seen, you’d lock yourself in your house and soil yourself for seven days straight. It made for a challenging childhood—Jesus, it did—but it set me up just right for a career evicting spooks.
I spent a good few years doing the exorcist thing: screaming bible passages, waving burning sage about, cleansing haunted properties. That was until I died and became a spook myself. Yeah, I’m not blind to the irony. And don’t worry, I’m not the bad kind of ghost who makes the walls bleed and writes threatening messages in the condensation on your bathroom mirror. Honestly, I wouldn’t say boo to a goose, nor can I think of a single good reason for doing so.
Anyway, since I croaked, I’ve taken a bit of a U-turn on the whole “ghost rights” thing. Matter of fact, I’ve become something of an undead activist. Rights not rites, that’s what I say. Because I learned the truth. The real truth about the consequences of what I was doing as an exorcist. But we’ll get back to that later.
So… ghosts. Most of them end up marooned on the physical plane because they died a traumatic death and need closure to move on. Not me. I solved my murder – had my chance at the afterlife and passed it up. Well, that’s not entirely true. The truth is, I did a runner from the pearly gates. I didn’t feel I was ready to face the Big Man at that juncture. Not after the life I’d led. Not after the things I’d done. I had a feeling he wouldn’t be too quick to hand me a gold card to the exec lounge, at least until I’d cancelled out the stuff I’d been up to while I was still alive. Of course, I hadn’t known then that I was up to no good, but something told me ignorance wasn’t going to earn me a pass with Him Upstairs.
So, I found my way back here, back to the physical realm, back to London. Now I live somewhere between the two worlds, tucked in the middle and out of sight, like a g-string up an arse crack. I move invisibly in this realm, a rumour drifting through a world of facts. Tell you what, let’s stick with that last one—the rumour/facts line—it’s got a bit more poetry to it than the arse crack thing.
So, you probably want to know how I wound up dead in the first place, right? Well, you know that expression, “Die young and leave a good-looking corpse”? I managed to get the “young” part right. The “good-looking corpse” part, that’s a whole other story. The quick version: I succeeded in pissing off the wrong person and ended up cut into four chunks, so... not exactly good-looking. Unless a horribly mashed up corpse gets your motor running, in which case, hey, I won’t judge you (actually, what am I talking about? Of course I will, that’s messed up).
Anyway, my death’s a story for another time – we’ve already got one sliced-up corpse bobbing in a canal, so let’s not muddy the waters with another. The reason I mention it is to remind you that, as a bona-fide “goner,” I don’t have a body. Most of the time I do just fine without one, but seeing as I was about to meet with the police and they wouldn’t be able to see me in my spook state, something needed doing. If I wanted to talk with DCI Stronge, I was going to have to make a quick stop-off.
2
I found him sat in the booth of a late-night bar with his arm around a woman. She was presenting enough chest to be charged with indecent exposure. He was ordering table service. Of course he was, he’d always been a wanker. His name was Mark Ryan and I’d known him since we were eleven years old. Since we were at school together. Since he left me with a scar that never healed.
Mark and me didn’t run in the same circles back then. His circle was all sports trophies and Duke of Edinburgh Awards and hand jobs behind the bike sheds, while mine—thanks to him—was the kind of circle Dante wrote about. Fucking Mark Ryan. No matter what I did to avoid the guy, he’d always find a way to seek me out and give me shit: barging me into my locker, kicking footballs at me, tripping me over in the corridor. Boosting his ego at my expense. I tell you, Mark Ryan was the first person to really make my life hell, and I’ve been closer to the place than most.
One time, Mark bought a pair of handcuffs into Science class, and when the teacher went out of the room to fetch some lab equipment, he manacled me to a radiator. I know what you’re thinking: that doesn’t sound so bad, right? There are people who pay good money f
or that kind of treatment. Thing is, Mark wasn’t in it for the kink, he just wanted to hurt someone. The first thing he did was over-ratchet my cuff, making it too tight, cutting off the circulation to my hand. But that wasn’t what really hurt. The real hurt came when the heat from the radiator—which was set to warm a large room in the coldest part of winter—conducted through the metal cuff and into the bracelet I was wearing. That was a new kind of pain. Naturally, Mark and his crew did nothing to help me – just stood back and laughed like jackals, waggling the key at me as I thrashed around, howling in agony.
Even as a ghost, I still wear a scar on my wrist.
So yeah, Mark Ryan’s not exactly top of my friends list, which is why I had zero qualms about making him my designated meat puppet; the physical form I use whenever I need to pass for living. At least this way he serves a useful function in life. Think of him as my toupee, except instead of hiding a bald spot, he hides the fact that I don’t have a blood and guts body.
I looked over to Mark’s booth and saw him peck his side-piece on the cheek.
‘Back in a minute,’ he said. ‘Just going to siphon the python.’
He squeezed past the girl and headed to the Gents for a slash. Meanwhile, I breezed by the rest of the bar’s punters unseen and phased through the bathroom wall to follow Mark inside.
When I got there, I found him stood at a urinal, phone in one hand, cock in the other. In case you were wondering, no, his downstairs department is anything to write home about. The guy might act like a swinging dick, but he has a knob like an outie belly button.
I sidled up and prepared to stake a pitch in Mark’s body. Believe me when I tell you that it’s no mean feat, possessing someone. It took me a long time to get the knack of that trick. For a while there I was just jumping into people and going arse over tit through the other side as they stood there oblivious. Meat is a very tricky medium. Most ghosts never get a handle on it to be honest, but eventually I figured out a way. If you asked me how, I’d tell you that my work as an exorcist gave me a qualified understanding of ghosts and their unique metaphysical properties. I’d be shitting you though. All I know for certain is that after a lot of trial and error, I finally sussed out how to inhabit the living. Well, at least for a little while. An hour, two at most, and a living body rejects me like an unwanted kidney. That’s just the way things are, don’t ask me to explain the science of it.
I invisibly manoeuvred behind Mark and smiled. It’s funny, he used to get a big kick out of telling the kids at school that I was a “gay boy”, but only one of us was getting a man inside of him that night.
I stepped into Mark’s body and felt him jolt and recoil. Someone had flushed the toilet on his nice, hot shower, and he wasn’t liking it one bit.
He went into spasms, fighting me, doing what he could to resist my intrusion. He needn’t have bothered. A couple of seconds more and I was all moved in, boxes unpacked and making myself good and comfy.
Mark’s body was mine. I sniffed the air and sighed. It smelled like piss and urinal cake, but the simple act of breathing was reward enough. I’m telling you, it’s the little things you miss when you don’t have a body.
I zipped Mark up, washed his hands—a habit of mine, not his—and checked my reflection in the mirror above the bathroom sink. He was a handsome bastard, I’ll give him that; a swimmer’s chest and the kind of face that gets you places in life. Too bad for him that his body was a timeshare property.
I headed through the bathroom door and back to the bar. I saw Mark’s bit of fluff there, tucked up in her booth, sipping something tall and pink. Now, a more unscrupulous ghost might, when such an opportunity was presented to them, use Mark’s body to take his chesty young bint to pleasure town. Well, not me. I may, in many ways, be a bit of a bastard, but I’m not an utter bastard.
I strolled by her and made for the exit.
‘Where are you going?’ she screeched.
‘Out,’ I told her, and carried on walking.
Mark was going to have some explaining to do after I was done with him, that was sure. He wouldn’t have much info to go on though. He has no recollection of what I get up to while I’m wearing him, I make sure of that. All he has is guesswork. Did he have too much to drink? Did he take a spill, knock his head and black out? Did the light from a full moon turn him into a werewolf? (those are real by the way, plus vampires, trolls and witches. No such thing as mermaids though. Mermaids are for chumps).
And look, in case you're left with some lingering wisp of sympathy for poor old Mark—some moulded by a bad upbringing guff—you should know this: on top of being a bully, a womaniser, and an all-round subhuman piece of shit, Mark Ryan is a hedge fund manager.
Yup.
So, I headed for the canal to meet DCI Stronge, my conscience clean and my spirit cosy inside of my meat puppet. A dead woman needed my help. A dead woman with a curious lack of skin.
3
I call myself a P.I.
The “P” can stand for “Private” or “Paranormal”, that’s up to you. Here’s the main thing you need to know: I’m basically Magnum in that old TV show, except I wouldn’t be seen dead in one of his shirts, and I mean that literally (full disclosure: I did attempt the moustache once but ended up looking like the type of bloke who hangs around school playgrounds. That ‘tache was sparse).
As a P.I., I help tortured spirits find peace by solving the mystery of their untimely ends. Why do I do it? Well, I figure if I do enough good deeds in the time that I have left on Earth, I’ll earn a spot in the Good Place. Thing is, right now I’m not so sure I’m on the guest list. Matter of fact, I’m more than pretty sure I’m not. If the Man Upstairs has a shit list, I expect I rank pretty high on the thing. Like I said before, I’ll come back to that. It’s a whole saga.
For now, let’s get back to the task at hand.
Wearing Mark’s body, I arrived at the crime scene at a little after one in the morning. The old bill had set up a secure perimeter around the canal, guarded by a couple of uniforms in reflective jackets and pointy hats. I flashed my ID at the constables and they nodded and let me duck the crime scene tape.
I made a beeline for Detective Chief Inspector Stronge, who was heading up the investigation. Kat, as she occasionally lets me call her, is a hell of an officer. A no-nonsense, workhorse of a woman with a sharp mind and the cheekbones to match. She’s also the detective responsible for locking up my killer—with a little help from yours truly—but again, that’s a story for another time.
Since putting my murderer behind bars, Stronge’s been promoted to the rank of DCI and the pair of us have struck up a professional friendship. Of course, she has no idea that I’m a ghost inhabiting another man’s body, or that I’m the same guy whose murder she solved five years ago. Reckon I’ll keep that to myself for a bit. Maybe save it for our third date.
I work for DCI Stronge as a “psychic consultant”. She took me for a piss-taker when we first met, but it didn’t take me long to prove my value. Turns out I have an eerie knack for solving murders – finding clues, unearthing motives, fingering suspects (not literally). Of course, these things are easy to come by when you have the luxury of consulting the victim’s ghost. Eighty percent of the victims I talk to already know who it was that killed them. I mean, it’s usually someone they know. A friend. A spurned lover. A business associate. A rival. A lot of the time I just have to ask, Who did it? then find the best way to steer the law at them.
I saw Stronge across the way, illuminated by a tripod floodlight. She was dressed in a black quilted jacket and an entirely sensible pair of trousers. A huddle of forensics officers in boiler suits crowded around her, making her look like a black sheep among a flock of white.
I met Stronge in the doorway of an evidence tent, which had been set up to conceal the vic’s dead body.
‘Morning,’ I said, and handed her a coffee I’d picked up on the way.
She gave it a sniff. ‘It’s not that castrated, decaff shit,
is it?’
‘Nope. Cup of lightning, just the way you like it.’
She took a sip and nodded a thank you. ‘I was starting to think you weren’t going to show.’
I widened my eyes theatrically. ‘And miss all this?’
The faintest glimpse of a smile quirked her lips. God, I loved that smile. It was the hard-won type, the kind you had to chisel from stone.
She coughed and the smile was gone. ‘Let’s get to work.’
She nodded to the forensics officer inside the tent, who bent down and peeled back a tarp.
There it was, the corpse, female and naked—extremely naked—not even wearing her birthday suit. The woman’s dermis had been expertly removed, stripped from the body like the skin from a rabbit. The blood on her exposed muscles shone slick and glossy under the LEDs of the surrounding lamps. It looked as though she’d been hung upside down and dipped in blood, like tallow into red wax.
‘Jesus,’ I muttered. ‘She’s going to need a hell of a dermatologist.’
Call me callous if you like, but someone had to let the air out of the room.
‘Any news to share yet?’ I asked.
Stronge shook her head. ‘Early days. She has no ID on her, well, no anything on her.’
‘She have her teeth still?’
‘Yeah, but IDing her dentals is going to take time, and there’s no saying we’ll get anything anyway.’ Stronge raked a hand through her bob. ‘Well, what do you make of it?’
‘Not sure yet. I’m going to need to do my thing – the ‘ol psychic bit, just me and the body.’ I bent down to examine the corpse. ‘Alone.’
A second plainclothes officer barged into the frame wearing a thick camel overcoat. ‘Oh, you’d love that, wouldn’t you?’ he barked, spittle flying.
Ladies and Gentlemen, meet DI Maddox, Detective Stronge’s partner and a royal pain in my dead arse. While his colleague is something of a paranormal sceptic, Maddox is a straight up heretic.
Uncanny Kingdom: An Eleven Book Urban Fantasy Collection (Uncanny Kingdom Omnibus 1) Page 43
