It was certainly starting to look that way. I had one last chance to get myself out of this before I wound up deader than Sean Bean. ‘My life for hers!’ I croaked, my eyes shooting to Stronge.
The rib of the scythe punched through the last book of the bible and into my throat, pressing down on my windpipe hard. I got one hand under it, but that would only buy me a few extra seconds. I swatted at the Hooded Man’s leg with my other hand, but the best I could manage was to ruffle his robes.
‘What are you doing?’ he mocked, as I clawed desperately at the hem of his raiment. ‘Do you really think you can kill death?’
‘No,’ I squeaked. ‘But he can…’
The Hooded Man turned to see a celestial glow shooting out from the church’s confession booth, and then its curtain open in one swift swipe.
I'd chosen this arena for a reason.
21
Adonael the angel stood there in his bleach white suit, shoulders thrown back, looking genuinely fierce. By his side he held a sword, polished to a mirror finish. It was the seraphim sword, the one I’d apparently allowed to be burned up by witchfire during my tangle with the soul feaster. The same one he was holding over my head like the, well... sword of Damocles, adding its “destruction” to my already lengthy list of sins.
‘You little shit,’ I cried, seeing the sword intact, and in mint condition no less.
‘Next time don’t play with things that don’t belong to you,’ he replied.
The Hooded Man watched Adonael as he ascended the altar steps and approached Stronge, who stood there zombified still, eyes dead as a halibut’s.
Adonael turned to me. ‘I can return her from the brink, Mister Fletcher, but know this: my intervention here—an intervention that you have called upon—breaks the conditions of our bargain. Once this is done, I am taking you Upstairs. Do we understand one another?’
‘It’s a fair cop,’ I said.
It was worth it. I’d had my life and then some. My raggedy soul for Stronge’s was about an equitable deal as I could imagine.
With an agreement settled, Adonael placed a hand on Stronge’s shoulder and immediately her face flushed pink. She gasped and sucked down about five minutes of unbreathed air, then collapsed to the floor like a puppet cut from her strings. She coughed, spluttered, and fouled the air with some choice profanities.
‘Kat, are you okay? Speak to me!’
‘I can’t believe you smashed the antidote, you prick,’ she wheezed.
I smiled. She was back.
During all of this, the Hooded Man simply stood by and watched, his expressionless, skull face making it impossible to tell what he made of Adonael’s intrusion. Was he angry? Scared? Gently amused?
Adonael looked to the Hooded Man, then to me. ‘I’m going to dispatch this wretch now,’ he said.
And with that, the angel pounced at the Reaper, his sword singing a high, swift tune as it cleaved the air. The Hooded Man stalled Adonael’s attack with his scythe and the curved blade shivered and rang like a tolled bell. The two of them fought, sword to sickle, metal clashing, sparks flying.
It was a hell of a sight to see.
The Reaper and the angel, black against white, yin and yang, circling each other like a swirl of squid ink in a butter churn.
The two of them continued to lock horns, raining down on one another with their blades, each of them giving as good as they got.
‘I’m going to clip your wings, angel!’ hollered the Hooded Man, swinging his scythe and drawing a swatch of white cloth from the angel’s suit jacket.
‘I don’t have any wings, you freak!’ Adonael replied, cracking the Hooded Man in the skull with the pommel of his sword and sending him reeling.
It turned out the angel was a bit tasty after all. This was no traffic warden. This was no parole officer. This was a gladiator.
The pair of them continued to give each other a proper drubbing. Standing there, watching them go at it, I started to feel like a bit of a third wheel. I considered grabbing Stronge and doing a runner, but I knew that would only end up compounding my problems. I couldn’t keep running forever. Soon enough I was going to run out of road.
Adonael dealt the Hooded Man a crushing blow that sent him staggering into the baptismal. The Reaper looked down at the ragged cleft in his robes and arranged his skull into a grimace. He was hurting. The angel took a step forward to deliver the death blow, but didn’t reckon on the Grim Reaper being a bit of a wrong ‘un.
‘Watch out for that—’ I shouted, but I was too late.
The Hooded Man reached into a pocket of his robe, scooped out a handful of grave dust and blew it into the angel’s eyes.
It was a move straight out of the Big Book of Dirty Tricks, but Adonael, being an apple-polishing boy scout, didn’t see it coming. Instead, he coughed and clawed at his eyes as though he’d been pepper sprayed, his sword ringing from the marble altar as it slipped from his hands. While he was busy with that, the Hooded Man swept his legs from under him, dropped to one knee, and hooked the blade of his scythe under the angel’s chin, drawing a bead of blood.
The Reaper let out a slithery laugh. ‘If this doesn’t get His attention I don’t know what will…’
He went to yank back the blade and crop off Adonael’s head, but just as his arm tensed a shot rang out, quickly followed by five more.
Stronge.
She stood beside me, smoking gun in her grip, hands steady as a rock.
Not that her efforts amounted to anything. The bullets rattled around the Hooded Man’s ribs and shot out of the other side, leaving him completely unharmed. He was as indestructible as Tom Cruise's confidence. All Stronge managed to succeed at was lightly aerating the dread spectre of death.
Wait a minute...
Spectre.
A spectre is a ghost.
And I know how to hurt ghosts.
The Hooded Man shook off Stronge's distraction and returned to the matter at hand, raising his blade to lop off Adonael’s big, dumb head.
I had one more roll of the dice. One more chance to make this right. Moving quickly, I yanked the baptismal font off its pedestal, heaved it over my head and dumped it onto the Reaper like an ice bucket challenge.
He screamed. Screamed like a Munch painting. Screamed like a hog being tied for market.
Ghosts hate holy water, or at least the ones with faith do. It has no effect on me because I’m not devout, but the Reaper… he was right out of Revelations.
The water dissolved the Hooded Man’s skull like an Alka-Seltzer dropped into a glass of drink. I saw right through the top of his cranium to a pulsing black brain, which fizzed and popped as the holy water continued its acid burn through the remains of his head.
He wasn’t done yet though.
With a final gasp, the Hooded Man thrust out a hand and slipped it, phantom-like, through my chest. Now it was my turn to gasp as his bony fingers closed around my heart.
‘Die,’ wheezed the Hooded Man, as the holy water burned through to the hinge of his jaw and left it swinging like a pendulum.
The old hand around the heart trick was one I’d played on countless bastards. It didn’t feel good to wear the shoe on the other foot though. It didn’t feel good at all.
I felt my knees buckle and the world begin to turn to black soup.
I looked to Adonael, but he lay there clutching his neck and coughing.
I looked for Stronge but my eyelids were too heavy to find her.
Sleep fell on me like a guillotine.
Then, CRASH.
The giant, free-standing crucifix came toppling down, striking the Hooded Man and pinning him beneath its weight. I was delighted to feel his hand withdraw from my chest, and even more delighted to see it lay flat on the altar, fingers splayed and still at last.
I looked up to see the cross-toppler looming over me. ‘The power of Christ compels thee,’ said DCI Stronge.
22
The way Adonael saw it, it was unclear whether
it was really the Grim Reaper we’d banished. Was the Hooded Man who he said he was, or was he just some demonic entity with a screw loose and a penchant for waxing poetic? Me, I’m going with the former. Looks better on my CV.
Either way, the job was done and I was riding high. There was one thing bugging me though...
‘I can’t believe you lied to me about the sword,’ I said.
Adonael made slits of his eyes. We were sat on the front steps of the church, invisible to the world, watching an ambulance drive away with Stronge in the back. She’d wanted to walk home if you can believe that, but I insisted she get herself properly checked out. It’s not every day you die and come back to life. I’ve been around the block a few times, and even I’ve only had it happen the once.
I looked back to the sword on Adonael’s hip. ‘I’m just saying it’s not very godly is all.’
‘What would you know about godly?’ he grunted.
‘Well, let me see,’ I said, stroking my chin. ‘I saved the souls of the Hooded Man’s victims… oh, and I saved your life too.’
Rescuing an angel from the jaws of death. That had to be worth a few Brownie points.
‘The way I see it,’ he replied, ‘it was your detective friend that saved my life when she toppled that cross. And the only reason that happened was because I loosened it from its moorings the first time we came here.’
‘—And the only reason that happened was because I shackled you to the cross in the first place.’
His nostrils flared at the memory. I had him over a barrel, we both knew it. After all, if he was really going to cart me off to the afterlife, we’d already be well on our way by this point.
‘In any case,’ he grumbled, ‘you still have a lot of work to do before your account is anywhere near the black. A lot of work.’
I grinned. ‘Who's keeping track of my finances anyway? The Big Man?’
‘I keep the tally, Mister Fletcher. The Lord Almighty barely knows you exist. You really think He has time to keep track of the likes of you? You're my job, and one of these days I’m going to close the books on you. Rest assured, this is merely a stay of execution.’
‘What good’s an execution when I'm already dead?’
‘A reprieve then. But if you put one foot wrong…’
‘Yeah yeah, helter skelter to Hades, I get it.’ I stood up. ‘Oh, one last thing before you go, just a quick one... what does God look like?
‘That is not for you to know,’ he replied.
I chuckled. ‘You’ve never even met him, have you?’
‘Of course I have!’ he barked.
‘You’re lying, Adonael. A lying angel. No wonder you got the shitty stick and wound up with me on your books.’
I visited DCI Stronge first thing next morning. It was the second time I’d seen her laid up in a hospital bed, and I very much hoped the last.
A doctor had diagnosed her symptoms and checked her in with that most perennial of Hollywood afflictions; exhaustion. Little did she know her patient had been pumped full of magical poison and brought back from the brink of death by an avenging angel. To be fair though, even House M.D. wouldn’t have figured that one out.
Stronge tried to check herself out of the place, but her doctor insisted on keeping her in for observation. Just as well really, or I’d have wasted a trip.
‘Are those the same flowers you gave me before?’ she said, looking at the bunch in my hand. We had a private room to ourselves, so no one was there to see Stronge talking to her invisible friend.
‘What do you expect?’ I said, acting hurt. ‘It’s not like I can just pop into the local florist and pick up a bunch of posies.’
Stronge took the flowers and tried to hide a smile. It meant everything to me to see that. She’d been out of it for too long back at that church; how she hadn’t wound up with brain damage was anyone’s guess. ‘They look different,’ she remarked, setting the flowers in a vase. ‘Bigger.’
‘Probably the coffee you dropped them in back at the station,’ I replied.
She smiled properly this time. ‘You twat,’ she said.
And we laughed like the end of a Thundercats.
As a thank you for her help, I elected to pay Stronge’s friend from college a visit; the one with the patchy morals and the busy hands. I gave that fucker the haunting of a lifetime. The full suite. I’m talking slamming doors in the middle of the night, threatening messages in the condensation of his bathroom mirror, levitating bed, the works. Trust me, that guy’s never going to get a boner again, let alone put it where it’s not invited. It was the least I could do, really. After all, I owe Stronge my life now. Or at least I would do if I had one.
I closed my office door behind me and hung my jacket from its peg. Home sweet home. I slumped into my office chair and heard air escape from its cushion like a contented sigh, a harsh reminder that even my furniture is more alive than I am. I kicked up my heels and put my feet on the desk, taking a load off. I’d been running around town like a blue-arsed fly for days now, but there it was, finally, another job jobbed.
I was with Adonael when he rounded up the ghosts of my clients, Fergal, Mike, and the pensioners at the old folks’ home. They thanked me enthusiastically for my assistance, then I watched them step into a big gold elevator and ride up to the Promised Land. I have to confess, I got a bit maudlin seeing them go. Must be nice, I thought, passing to the other side with a clean slate. Death isn't so bad really, it's getting stuck on the way there that's the real tragedy.
But I didn’t stay blue for long. I’d done what I set out to do. Thanks to me, my clients weren’t stuck in limbo anymore, and were free to receive their final reward. I’d done some questionable things in my time for sure, but I was tipping the scales the other way now, even if I had only succeeded by the skin of my teeth. This case was a close one, no doubt about it, but I’d done it. I’d survived. Once again I’d managed to beat death, only this time it was Death with a capital D.
The End.
Twice Damned
1
Camden Town can’t die, it’s been dead for years. I don’t care how many craft breweries or yoga studios or artisanal coffee shops they paint over this place, they’re putting lipstick on a corpse. They can gussy it up all they like, but it’s a lost cause. Camden is rotten. A leaky, bloated carcass that should have been put in the dirt a long time ago. You can call me a pessimist if you like, you can fold your arms and tell me I’m seeing things through dirty glasses, but I see Camden for what it really is. I have to, it’s my job. Picking the scabs off of this town’s dirty little secrets is what I do.
Twilight stole away the day’s colours until the world looked like an old black and white movie. Only once the curtain of night had dropped completely did I make my way to Camden Cemetery. I passed through the graveyard’s spiked black gates and beneath a couple of sycamore trees to cut across the neat lawn of the memorial garden. Rows of tombstones stood left and right of me, some of them hundreds of years old, others smooth as bathroom tiles and inscribed with fresh etchings, black and crisp.
I joined a gravel path leading to a nondescript, stone-clad building and made my way inside. I’d arrived in the cemetery’s crematorium. A corridor stretched out before me, thick with darkness. I heard a steady drip-drop of water, and when my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw its source: rain water, piddling through a crack in the ceiling into a parked janitor’s bucket. The concrete walls were slick with black mould that looked as though it might, at any given moment, evolve into a higher life form.
I spotted a rusted gas pipe running along the corridor’s right-hand wall and followed it quietly, deeper into the building, then down a flight of stairs and into the basement. The pipe lead to a sooty, low-ceilinged room no bigger than a snooker table. On the far wall was an arched hatch enclosed by a sturdy iron door and a brick surround.
The furnace.
Lifting a heavy latch from its receiver, I tugged open the furnace door. I’d only pulled it an
inch wide when it squealed noisily on its hinges, sending a sound like a wounded animal echoing through the building. I spun about, checking to make sure I hadn't alerted anyone to my presence, and only once a minute had passed did I return to the job at hand.
I flung the furnace door open in one swift action and instinctively pulled back from the hot blast that sprung from within. The oven blazed like a tiny sun, roaring boisterously and throwing long shadows about the small room. I glanced over my shoulder again to make sure I was alone, then I went to work.
Using the hooked end of a nearby poker, I dug around the fire, scraping aside ashes and fragments of blackened bone. As I rooted deeper, the hook snagged on something caught in the far end of the oven’s grill, and I carefully lifted it free, fishing it out from the hungry flames.
A scrap of charred white cotton decorated with small pink hearts. A fragment of women’s underwear. Evidence yet to be disposed of.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ demanded a gruff voice.
I turned to see a brawny janitor with a wooden rounders bat in his fist. He was tall; so tall he had to tilt his head to stop the room’s ceiling from giving him a bald patch.
I cleared my throat. ‘You’re working late,’ I said.
‘You’re trespassing,’ he barked. ‘This is private property.’
I stood up and straightened the lapels of my crisp black suit. ‘Private, is it?’ I asked. ‘Like this?’ I held up the poker, presenting the janitor with the scrap of singed underwear. A tic played on the corner of his mouth. ‘You’ve been a naughty boy,’ I tutted. ‘A very naughty boy.’
His eyes flicked involuntarily to the furnace, then back to me, sizing me up. ‘You ain’t with the nick, are you?’ he said, noting my evening suit and my distinct lack of a badge.
‘No, I’m not,’ I replied.
‘Then why d’you break in here?’ he asked, squeezing the rounders bat in his meaty paw. ‘Sniffing around for a dead body to play with, eh, you pervert?’
Uncanny Kingdom: An Eleven Book Urban Fantasy Collection (Uncanny Kingdom Omnibus 1) Page 66
