Springing to my feet, I grabbed the intruder roughly, pushed him up against a wall and cocked a fist. ‘Who are you?’ I demanded.
‘I know I was never around much, kiddo, but surely you remember your old man?’
‘Prove it!’
‘How?’ he cried.
‘What’s my middle name?’
He sighed. ‘Trick question: I never gave you one. Are you still pissed off about that?’
It was him alright.
‘Tell me what you’re doing here,’ I insisted, fist still raised, knuckles white.
‘Are you going to punch me, Jake? Is that it?’
‘Why? Worried you'll get hurt, Dad? Don’t worry, just pretend you're Superman, eh?’
Unable to contain my anger, I sent my fist over his shoulder and put a hole in the plasterboard wall.
There was a flatline of silence, then he spoke. ‘You know I only told you the Superman thing to keep you distracted?’
‘Oh yeah?’ I snorted. ‘Distracted from what?’
‘From the spell.’
‘Spell? What did you say? Say that again.’
‘The spell,’ he repeated. ‘When you broke your arm, I used a numbing spell on you. To mask the pain. Picked the trick up from a Sufi I met in India, back in my college days.’
He was talking about magic. Healing magic too, which is a real pig to master, so if he was telling the truth, he must really have known his onions.
‘You’re saying you’re a magician?’
‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘Where do you think you got it from? You know what they say: the apple never falls too far from the tree.’
I was knocked for six. My no-good, errant, bottle-of-Famous-Grouse-a-day dad was an Uncanny?
‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Jake. I’ve always had a talent for magic, ever since I was a boy. I only knew the basics back when you were a lad, but I’ve learned a lot more since. I educated myself in augury for one thing, which is how I knew you’d be stopping by. What about you, Son? Did you master the arts?’
‘Well…’ I said, embarrassed at my relative ineptitude, ‘I can pop a lock like no one’s business.’
‘That’s all?’ He looked disappointed. ‘You never did apply yourself.’
I laughed bitterly. ‘What, like you applied yourself to your marriage? To your kids?’
His shoulders slumped in defeat. ‘I suppose I asked for that.’
‘Too right you did!’ I yelled, feeling my throat go hoarse, watching my spittle hit his face. ‘You walked out on us, Dad! What kind of a man does that?’
He took it like a champ. Didn’t fight back. Didn’t defend himself. Just met my eye and told it like it was.
‘I used to blame everyone else for my problems, Jake. Your mum, you, your sister, the whole wide world. It wasn’t my fault that I drank. Never mine. That was someone else’s crime. It took coming here to make me realise that it was an inside job all along.’ He opened up a cabinet and produced an unopened bottle of single malt. ‘Fancy a tipple?’
‘Are you taking the piss?’
‘For you, not for me. I don’t touch the stuff these days.’
He placed a single tumbler on the sideboard and poured me a generous measure.
‘Where did you get that?’ I asked, eyeing the bottle.
There was that Fletcher grin again. ‘Told you I was magic, didn’t I?’
He handed me the tumbler. I didn’t take it, so he set it back down again, and there it sat on the sideboard, as inert as our conversation.
‘So,’ he said, taking a seat in an armchair and drumming his fingers on the armrest, ‘what shall we talk about, Son?’
Resigned, I laid back down on the settee opposite him and kicked up my heels in another act of dissent. ‘I don’t know, Pops? Why don’t you tell me what you’ve been up to your whole life?’
He laughed. ‘Not much to tell, really. The rest of my life was just as much of a mess after I walked out on your mum.’
‘And what about this?’ I said, gesturing to our surroundings. ‘How did you wind up here?’
His face darkened and he looked to the carpet. ‘They say I ran someone down.’
‘They say?’
He spoke in a reedy whisper. ‘Drunk hit and run. I don’t remember doing it. If you think I was a drinker back when you knew me, you should have seen me after I left.’ His knee jittered as the ball of his foot bounced nervously off the floor. ‘The heart attack came before the trial.’
I refused to let my face betray any sympathy. ‘So, you wound up in the Castle?’
‘Yeah, but I didn’t stay there for long.’ He waggled his fingers, miming casting a spell. ‘Found the hospitality a little lacking.’
Dizzy had mentioned a breakout; maybe Dad had been instrumental in that. He’d certainly proven himself a flight risk in the past. I suppose I could have asked him outright how he’d managed to gain his freedom—I mean, we were hardly pressed for time—but his escape from prison wasn’t uppermost of my thoughts.
‘What made you come here?’ I asked.
‘I reckoned it was about time I came home,’ he replied, ‘even if I am about thirty years too late.’
If he expected me to laugh, he was barking up the wrong tree.
‘I should never have run out on you, Jake. Really. I don’t know what else I can say. But what’s done is done, and I don’t expect forgiveness. Jesus, don’t expect it, don’t want it, don’t deserve it.’
‘Then you’re in luck.’
Is this what I had to look forward to now? Stuck here with my deadbeat dad, listening to his worthless apologies for all eternity? Was this my real Hell? A beware what you wish for punishment for the kid who used to pray for his dad to walk back through the door?
He offered me a wan smile. ‘That's enough about me though. What about you, Son? You look skinny.’
‘Yeah, I died.’
He didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Heard about the ghost thing. Shame. Still, at least you’ve got your health, eh?’ he added with a wink.
He was trying so hard to win me over it made me sick.
‘What are you doing?’ I said, exasperated at the man. ‘You expect me to just sit here and pal around with you now, is that it? A good old bonding sesh?’
‘I don’t expect us to be friends, but—’
‘—Tell me why you did it. Tell me why you buggered off and left us with her.’
‘It wasn’t any one thing,’ he sighed. ‘I was young, had two kids before I was ready, got stuck in a loveless marriage. I couldn’t hold down a job, and had myself a serious drinking problem...’
He went on like that, cliche upon cliche. There were no real revelations. No one big calamity that set him running, just a series of hardships heaping on top of each other, until, finally, something gave. He didn’t leave us because of anything we did. He left because he didn’t know what else to do. Not out of malice, but because he was scared.
I held up a hand. ‘Okay, okay.’
I found it hard to stay angry at the man. Sure, he’d done some horrible things in his time—you didn’t need to tell me that—but the sins of life don't amount to all that much in death. Besides, I’m no angel myself. I’ve done bad things too. Sure, I never walked out on two kids and flattened someone in a hit and run, but hey, he’d already been judged by the Almighty for those evils. My scorn seemed a bit puny by comparison.
I stood and walked over to the sideboard. ‘I think I will have that drink after all,’ I said, picking up the tumbler of whiskey.
What else could I do but raise a glass to this ludicrous situation? Oh, there was one thing, I supposed:
‘I’m tired of being angry at you, Dad,’ I said, as I tipped back the drink. ‘I think I’ll stop now.’
I slumped back onto the settee with my empty glass and saw the corner of his lips begin to turn upwards.
Immediately, I felt strange. My eyelids heavy. My mind in free fall.
‘Did… did you put
something in the whiskey?’ I rasped, as the glass tumbled from my hand and rolled across the carpet.
‘I did.’
‘You… poisoned me?’
‘Not poison. Magic. I gave you a priming potion.’
‘For what?’ I looked down at my hand. It was insubstantial. Only half there.
‘For getting you out of this place,’ he said. ‘I’m going to do one good thing with my life, Jake, even if it is a bit late in the day.’
‘I don’t understand.’ I felt woozy, ready to pass out.
‘You don’t need to understand. You just need to combine your magic with mine. I’ve prepared the spell already, but there’s a missing component that I need you to help me with.
‘What is it?’
‘The magic word,’ he replied, smiling. ‘Your middle name.’
‘I don’t… have a middle name.’
I remembered the story my mum had told me so many times. How my dad had written his own name on my birth certificate, too drunk to realise he wasn’t signing for a package.
‘You do have a middle name,’ he insisted. ‘I just never gave it to you.’
More games. I was so tired of games. ‘Tell me… what it is.’
‘Jake.’
‘What?’
‘No, Jake. That’s your middle name. After mine.’
‘Then... what was... my first name meant to be?’ The fog had returned, smudging the edge of my vision like vaseline on a camera lens. Like a dream sequence from an old yank soap opera.
‘Are you ready?’ Dad asked, and I managed a nod. ‘Your middle name—the magic word—is... Barnaby.’
I coughed up a laugh. ‘You mean… I was almost called BJ?’
Dad laughed too. ‘Yup. Maybe being a no-good drunk wasn’t the worst thing I ever did, eh?’
I giggled drunkenly. ‘Barnaby,’ I said, and as I said it, I felt something change inside of me. I looked down to find my hands had all but vanished.
‘Goodbye, Son.’
‘Wait,’ I slurred, ‘don’t go.’
‘I have to, Jake. I belong here. But you don’t.’
The world smeared like a Polaroid yanked out too early, and then it was gone.
22
Silence rang in my ears. I was floating. Floating in blackness. Twisting aimlessly in the void.
What was this? Where had dad sent me? Was I in purgatory? Was that the only place left for me now? No longer welcome in the land of the living, blackballed from Heaven and Hell. Was this what had happened to all of the ghosts that I’d cleansed? Sentenced to an eternity of personal nothingness. Trapped in a lifeless limbo.
I suppose I deserved it. I’d had my time among the living, I was glad to be out of Hell, and Heaven was a closed shop for someone of my standing. Besides, did I really want to end up in the Good Place anyway? I’d spent years polishing my halo, but really, what was Heaven anyway but a big cloud full of corpses? The zoo where they kept God.
I turned again in the void, the silence comforting now, the pure, unpolluted darkness that surrounded me actually quite tranquilising. I didn’t feel desperate or panicked or claustrophobic. I felt resigned to my fate. I was okay with where I’d ended up. At peace.
Then I saw something peeking through the blackness. A glimpse of something solid in the inky gloom. Was I not alone after all? Was I sharing this purgatory?
All thoughts of eternal quietude gone, I swam toward the something, kicking out my legs, paddling at the murk with the scoops of my hands.
‘Hello?’ I said, but the sound didn’t make it clear of my throat.
Finally I reached the thing, my eyes adjusting to the darkness now, and I saw it for what it really was.
A shopping trolley.
A Sainsbury’s shopping trolley to be exact, slanted to one side and half-embedded in sludge.
I wasn’t in purgatory. I wasn’t in limbo. I was at the bottom of a bloody canal!
Feeling as stupid as I did relieved, I swam away from the trolley, away from the bed of the canal, up, up, up to the surface.
My head broke the water and I instinctively went to gulp down some air, but it was a worthless act. I didn’t need air. I didn’t need food or water or even sleep. I didn’t need anything, I was a ghost again, a shipwrecked soul, coasting invisibly among the living.
The sky was dark and streaked with neon. I was underneath a humpback bridge and facing an old barge inlet. I knew this place. I was floating in the part of Regent’s Canal they call Dead Dog Basin. The area’s been Disneyfied since the developers moved in, but somehow the name stuck, a hangover from the days it used to be associated with the bloated, bobbing carcasses of drowned pets.
I dragged myself to the riverbank and hauled myself out of the filthy water and up onto the towpath. Back to reality. I felt reborn in the most peculiar way. Like I’d been subjected to a backwards baptism; alive to dead, my body dissolved, my spirit loose. A baby drowned in the baptismal font.
I’d escaped Hell. I wasn’t sure how exactly, I wasn’t sure whether I’d lost anything in the transition, whether I was even less of a person now than I was before, but I did know one thing with absolute, burning certainty.
I had a score to settle.
The sign for Legerdomain creaked gently on its gibbet. Where the Magic Happens, its tagline proudly proclaimed, and just for once, I expected there to be some enchantment in the air.
I figured Jazz Hands would be pretty stoked to see me. Ecstatic even. I’d been gone for I don’t know how long. Weeks? Months? I’d said my goodbyes, waltzed blindly into Hell, and maintained radio silence ever since. And now I was back! Surely even a woman as stoic as Jazz Hands had to give it up for that?
Needless to say, it wasn’t the welcome reception I’d hoped for.
I ghosted through the shop door, setting off the bell that warned the proprietor of any Uncanny visitors. Jazz Hands sat in her usual place behind the counter, looking like she was cosplaying a jumble sale, and reading a gossip rag that—much to my annoyance—featured a cover bearing the face of Justin Bieber.
She lifted her chin as I entered and I saw her eyes widen behind her violet spectacles. ‘Jake?’ she croaked.
She never called me Jake. It was always “Fletcher”, or “you”, or sometimes (most of the time) “gobshite”. But never, ever, Jake.
She looked at me as if she’d just seen a ghost, which, yes, she had, but you know what I’m saying. Her eyes turned red. She sniffed, right on the edge of crying. I saw her reach under the counter, produce a hankie, and then—
‘Where’s my inventory, gobshite?’
It wasn’t a hankie, it was a list of items stolen from her safe, none of which I’d been able to recover. She flattened the paper on the counter with the heel of her palm and jabbed a finger at me accusingly. ‘Well?’ she said.
I held up my hands in surrender. ‘It’s okay, Jazz. You don’t have to pretend. I can tell you’re pleased to have me back. If you need to cry, just cry.’
She straightened up defensively, then sniffed again and wiped under her eyes. ‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ she said, ‘it’s this new incense making my allergies play up, that’s all.’
I nodded at her knowingly, unable to keep the Fletcher smirk from my face.
Making my hand corporeal—still got it!—I span Jazz’s shopping list around and drew it toward me. ‘I’ll get your stuff back,’ I assured her, inspecting the inventory. ‘I’ll get you your blasting rod, and your contact lenses, and your Masque, and your magical tattoo kit, and your funky amulet...’ I slid it back to her, ‘now I know who has them.’
‘Who?’ Jazz asked, nostrils flaring. ‘Wait, don’t tell me… was it that miserable succubus at The Den? Surely not the slapheaded bastard who runs L’Merrier’s Antiques?’
‘Nope,’ I said. ‘Believe it or not, my ex-wife.’
I expected her first reaction to be shock, instead it was pedantry. ‘Don't you mean wife?’
She was right I suppose. Sarah had denied
me the satisfaction of a divorce when she’d had me pushed under a train. ‘Thanks for reminding me,’ I told Jazz, and felt my ring finger itch. One of these days I was going to that thing off my digit, even if it meant hacking it off at the knuckle.
‘You’re welcome,’ she replied. ‘So, now you know who has my stock, what are you going to do about it?’
‘Aren’t you at least going to ask me how my job went?’ I asked. ‘You know, the one that literally took me to Hell and back.’
She shrugged. ‘Seeing as you’re in my shop, I assume it went fine.’
‘No, Jazz. It did not go fine. It did not go fine at all.’
‘Sorry to hear that,’ she replied. ‘You know what I think will cheer you up?’
‘What?’
‘Recovering my inventory.’
I sighed, gave her a defeated nod and handed her my revolver. ‘Fill her up then,’ I said.
Jazz Hands grinned like a cheshire cat and located a box of slugs from her side of the till. ‘How are you going to find the bitch?’ she asked.
‘Easy,’ I said, ‘she made one big mistake.’
‘Which was?’
‘She gave me this.’
I slapped the compass down on the counter.
23
Time to pick up the hammer and nail this coffin shut.
The compass Sarah had given me was tuned to Damon, but I was willing to bet my left nut that it would lead me to her too, and to Jazz’s stolen supply.
I followed the needle to the bustling Covent Garden district, all the way to the Savoy, a five-star, luxury hotel overlooking the north bank of the Thames. The two of them were taking care of themselves, apparently. Almost seemed a shame to go busting in there and ruining their honeymoon, I thought, as I slipped the safety off my shooter.
When I arrived at the hotel, I visualised myself sneaking my way into Sarah and Damon’s suite. Slipping by the guy on the front desk, padding stealthily to the floor they were holed up on, dodging room service as I went, then finally magicking open the door to their room. Then I remembered I was a ghost again, and could walk through walls, soundlessly and invisible. So I did that instead.
Uncanny Kingdom: An Eleven Book Urban Fantasy Collection (Uncanny Kingdom Omnibus 1) Page 78
