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

by David Bussell

  ‘Hm,’ he replied. ‘I think it was the film Dragnet, with Tom Hanks and Dan Ackroyd. My favourite scene, if I had to pick one, would probably be the bit with the massive snake.’

  Detective Myers gave him a long, hooded look, then turned back to me. ‘Continue.’

  ‘Right, yes, so, I sort of, put my head down, fists up, ready to, you know, box the fiend, and he turned tail and legged it.’

  ‘Through a second story window?’

  ‘Yup. Straight through, Superman style. And off he went.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, sounding as though she hadn’t swallowed a word of it. ‘Tell me, Mr Lake, would you have any reason to be lying to us?’

  I sat back, eyes wide, feigning shock like a pro. Believe it or not, I’ve had no formal acting training. ‘Every word is the truth, I swear it on my mother’s grave.’

  ‘You don’t know who your mother is.’

  ‘No, but I’m sure she’s a lovely woman and I wouldn’t want to say untruths around her burial plot. Assuming she’s dead that is.’

  ‘Can you give us a description of the attacker?’ asked Detective Samm.

  ‘Ah, well, no. A bit. Some. Not much.’

  ‘To the best of your recollection.’

  ‘A person. A human person,’ I replied.

  ‘A human person,’ said Detective Myers.

  ‘Yep, I’m very clear on that point.’

  ‘Great,’ said Detective Samm, ‘you’re being really helpful.’

  ‘Anything beyond “human person,” sir?’ asked Maya.

  ‘Well, dark. Dark clothing. Dark hair.’

  ‘Dark skin?’ said Detective Samm.

  ‘Pretty dark.’ Of course he was entirely black, but the last thing I wanted was for the police to start harassing the area’s very limited stock of non-white people, so I fudged a bit. ‘Let’s say they had in-between skin. Average skin. A bit tan.’

  Detective Myers sighed and wrote “In-between skin” in her neat, efficient handwriting. Got to appreciate handsome penmanship – my own shaky scrawl makes Guy Fawkes’ post-torture confession signature look neat.

  ‘Did you get a look at their face at all?’ asked Detective Samm. ‘Because that would be really useful.’

  ‘Ooh, ah, well, only a very quick flash. It was all so fast. Sudden. Speedy. Over in a heartbeat. But I’d say.... beaky. A beaky nose.’

  Detective Myers flipped her notebook closed and slid it into the pocket of her red leather jacket. ‘Thanks, that’s all been very helpful.’

  Now that was definitely sarcasm.

  ‘Okay, Detective Samm, go grab the surveillance tape. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the assailant shows up on the security cams.’

  ‘Good thinking. That’s London thinking, that is. I’d never have thought of that.’

  ‘The bit at the end of the film,” I said, ‘where Dan Aykroyd says, “Twice,” then raises an eyebrow and Hanks reacts… that’s my favourite part of Dragnet.’

  ‘Ha! Yes. That is funny. He means sex. Nice to meet you.’ Detective Samm waved at me and headed off on his merry way.

  ‘He’s nice,’ I said.

  ‘Want to tell me why you think you can feed me a bunch of shit, Mr Lake?’

  ‘What? No shit, no shit. All very non-shitty.’

  Detective Myers stepped forward and looked down at me. ‘I know when I’m being lied to. Normally that’s a gift in this job, that sort of keen perceptive skill, but in this case the truth is bleeding obvious.’

  ‘I promise you, on my maybe-dead mother’s grave, I have told you all that I can.’

  I shrank back as her eyes bored into me.

  ‘I’ll find out the truth, Mr Lake.’

  ‘I believe it.’

  She nodded. ‘You still need to come in the station to make this and the previous statement official. Don’t make me come and get you.’

  ‘Understood,’ I replied, my voice barely audible.

  And with that, she turned smartly and headed out the door.

  8

  As my car headed towards Oldstone, the village from which all the cats I’d been hired to locate had absconded, I felt a mixture of unease and relief. Relief that Mary Taylor now lay safe in her hospital bed, with two burly armed officers stood outside of the door, and unease about, well, basically everything else.

  A monstrous murderer with octopus limbs and a face only a mother could love was on the loose. A creature that may or may not also be the homeless woman who was stalking me. Occult symbols daubed in blood. My lying to the police about the truth of what I’d witnessed. All in all, it was adding up to the sort of episode that made the whole world feel as though it had been shoved off-kilter.

  Whatever was happening, I was unwittingly involved somehow, that much I was sure of. The homeless woman, whether she was the monster or not, was clearly part of this, and she’d been keeping her eye on me for a while. How these things connected I hadn’t a clue, but it certainly made me feel as though I was swimming in less than safe waters.

  At some point, confessing everything to Detective Myers might be my only option, but for now, I’d only sound like a lunatic. Which was a real pain because I’d have liked nothing more than to pass this all over to the proper authorities and keep my head down. But then who are the proper authorities where octopus monsters are concerned?

  It was all a little unnerving, so I decided to distract myself with thoughts of what might be waiting at Chloe’s flat for our maybe-date. Twenty minutes later, as I completed my second full-throttle rendition of I Wanna Sex You Up by Color Me Badd (tell no one of this), I pulled to a stop on a leafy, pleasant street in Oldstone and unfolded myself from my little car, locking the door and patting her on the roof.

  Yes, I am the sort of person who gives their car a name. Deal with it.

  I turned from the Uncanny Wagon and looked around Oldstone’s main square. A patch of grass with a single, giant tree in its belly sat at the centre of Oldstone, around which were situated the usual village fare: a church with a little steeple and a ‘Jesus Created Adam & Eve, Not Adam & Steve’ poster on the announcement board strapped to the gate. Obviously a very enlightened vicar ran the place. Then there was the village pub, named The Oldstone Arms, a post office, greengrocers, and lastly a general newsagents. All very normal, all what you’d expect of a small, northern village, right down to the backwards cleric.

  Still, there was something strange about this little town. Something off in the air. Something that made me shiver. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it made me feel uncomfortable. Imagine brushing your teeth, reaching for the water and swigging down a glass of fresh orange juice. That would taste very weird. This was like that. Sort of.

  I found the first MISSING poster shortly after, taped to a lamppost along with seven more. Each of them were the same; a black and white picture of some moggy with a name and contact details underneath, a plaintive request for anyone who might have seen their beloved pet to get in contact.

  The posters were everywhere.

  There wasn’t a lamppost, telegraph pole, or car windscreen that hadn’t been plastered. Whoever owned the photocopier around here was making a killing.

  Mrs Coates had not been exaggerating when she hired me. Cats were becoming decidedly scarce around here.

  ‘Hi there,’ I said in as non-threatening a manner as I could muster to a girl, aged around seven with a pile of warm-from-the-copier posters under her arm. ‘I wonder if I might ask you a question or two?’

  ‘Depends,’ she replied, stapling the poster for poor, beloved Nemo Bananapants directly over one asking for information regarding the retrieval of Mittens, who was new to the house, but still very much missed.

  ‘Depends on what?’ I asked.

  ‘Whether you’re one of them perverts me mam talks about.’

  ‘I can assure you that I’m not. My name is Joseph and I’m a… detective. Of sorts.’

  ‘Detectives can be perverts.’

  ‘True, but not in
this case.’

  ‘What do you want? Come near me and I’ll scream and gob on you.’

  Charming.

  ‘I see you’re missing a cat. In fact, judging by the small forest of paper coating this village, it seems a lot of people are missing their cat.’

  The girl sniffed wetly, than ran the back of her sleeve across her nose. ‘Yeah, s’right. All the cats have buggered off.’

  ‘All?’

  She nodded, ‘Nemo was the last one to go. After everyone else's went, I tried to keep him inside and safe, but he ran out when me dad set off for work yesterday and hasn’t come back. Nemo never stays out for longer than half an hour.’

  ‘And what do you think’s happened to him?’

  She shrugged. ‘You’re the detective, you tell me.’

  ‘Do you feel… strange?’

  She looked at me oddly. ‘Well, I do need to wee a bit.’

  ‘No, no, I mean, the air around here. Does it make you itchy?’

  ‘I’m going to go now.’

  The girl slid a poster under the wiper of the nearest car then headed off.

  There was definitely something odd going on around here, and it wasn’t just the tall guy in the hat and long coat talking to underage girls. Cats were going missing en masse and the air was tinged with menace. It was clear there was a mystery at play here worthy of my time. Had someone killed the cats? Someone with a cat grudge? Was that a thing? Or perhaps the odd sensation I felt had caused the cats to go missing. It’s said that felines are sensitive to all sorts of different spectrums of reality, to the paranormal even. To things that us humans have no connection to. Perhaps the cats of Oldstone knew something bad was about to happen and made their escape early, like rats from a sinking ship.

  For now, all I had were questions, it was my job now to try and find an answer or two.

  I turned, intending to head back to my car to mull things over, when something small and black caught my eye. It was sat watching me from several metres aways, its eyes wide and unblinking.

  A cat!

  I began to slowly move towards it, one foot gently in front of the other, as though I was on a tightrope between two tall buildings and one false move would send me falling to my doom.

  ‘Hey there, puss-puss,’ I said, clucking my tongue. ‘Where’ve you been, then, eh? Where’ve you been, little guy?’

  I began to crouch as I approached, ready to grab hold of the thing, when it turned and bolted.

  Coat flapping behind me, I sprinted as best I could after the fleeing cat, my boots slapping noisily against the cobbled road.

  ‘I just want to talk!’ I yelled after the fleeing moggy, as though that would convince it to reconsider its escape plan.

  The thing about cats is, they’re fast. The thing about me is, I’m not. Soon enough I found myself stood on a small road on the village’s outskirts, hand against a wall, panting for breath. The cat had given me the slip, but it let me know one thing: the cats, or at least some of them, were still around here somewhere. Maybe they’d run from home, but they had yet, perhaps, to abandon the village completely.

  It was just then I saw the fox stood upon a dry stone wall on its hind legs; a small, almost Roman looking helmet upon its head and an axe in its paw.

  Yes, this came as quite a surprise to me, too.

  It was a toy of some sort, it must be. A model left on the wall by some child who forgot to take it home with them.

  The fox thrust its axe into the air, ‘All hail the Magic Eater! All hail the saviour!’

  The fox hopped off the wall and into the field beyond as I approached, a mixture of confusion and fear dampening my brow. When I reached the wall and looked over, the creature was gone.

  I yelped and jumped to one side as something brushed against me, only to find the young girl placing yet another poster under someone’s windscreen wiper.

  ‘Did you see it?’ I asked.

  ‘See what?’

  ‘The fox. The talking fox!’

  ‘You’re a bloody weirdo, you are.’

  Given the circumstances, I found that difficult to argue with.

  9

  The sky was just starting to bruise as Chloe opened her front door with a grin.

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘I brought wine!’ I said as I thrust out the bottle my sweaty hand was gripping tight enough to almost break the neck.

  ‘Come in then,’ she said, and with a quick, calming breath, I followed her inside.

  We ate bowls of chilli slumped on her couch, the TV showing some old Cary Grant movie. Is it a date if you sit on a couch with a bowl of leftover chilli on your lap? Difficult to say, but whatever it was, I’ll take it.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

  ‘Hm? Yes. Yep! Tip-top and ready to rock.’

  Christ...

  ‘Cool. You just seem a little off tonight.’

  Well, Chloe, I was chasing a cat earlier when an axe-wielding fox spoke to me.

  ‘I am? Sorry, probably just all the, you know, bad stuff lately. The murders. Poor Mary Taylor. Lot of stuff on my mind and not much room up there to hold it.’

  She laughed and my stomach released a box full of butterflies that it had been saving for just such an occasion.

  ‘You always make me laugh, Joe.’

  It took all my willpower not to fall to my knees and declare my undying love for her. Or, at the very least, my undying I-really-want-to-kiss-your-lovely-mouth.

  ‘So,’ I said, clearing my throat, ‘I take it no further attempts were made on Mary’s life by… the person. The murderer.’

  Chloe dabbed up the remaining chilli with a slice of bread and shook her head, ‘Nope. And there won’t be, as long as the police do the right thing and leave those officers at her door. If you ask me, they should have been there from the start.’

  To be fair to the police, they had no idea some sort of hellish octopus person was looking to tie up loose ends.

  Chloe curled her legs up onto the couch, the ends of her toes touching my outer thigh. I griped the arm of the couch and did my best not to let loose a plaintive whimper.

  She placed her now empty bowl on the floor and began toying with her hair. ‘So, what d’you want to do now?’

  A jumble of indecent answers arrived fully formed in my mind, barging their way to the front and causing my mouth to flap silently for a few seconds.

  ‘Are you okay? You’ve gone all red.’

  ‘Yep, just… toilet. Need a wee.’

  ‘Right. No need to ask, you know where it is.’

  I lurched up from the couch, feeling a fool, and headed towards the bathroom. Had that been flirting? What Chloe had been doing, did that constitute a flirt? The hair teasing between her fingers, the bare feet touching my leg, the invitation to take control of what happened next? It definitely seemed like flirting. Then again, it could also have been a tired person passing the time innocently with someone she looked at as a friend.

  I locked the bathroom door and sat on the toilet, the seat still down and my trousers still up. I didn’t actually need the loo, but this gave me at least a moment or two’s respite from the idiot I was making of myself. A few deep breaths, that’s all I needed.

  If anything’s going to happen, just let it happen, and if it doesn’t happen, don’t sulk about it.

  It was then I felt a prickle dance across my scalp.

  I was suddenly very sure that I was not alone in the bathroom.

  I looked to my right, to the bath, with its shower curtain pulled across.

  My head told me to get out of that small room sharply, my body, ever the traitor, reached out a hand and pulled back the shower curtain.

  The axe-wielding fox, Roman helmet still upon its head, was stood on its hind legs in the bath tub.

  ‘All hail the saviour of the Dark Lakes!’ it said in its small, Cumbrian voice, waving its axe aloft.

  I replied by yelling, ‘Argh! Oh Christ, argh!’ in a strangulated voice and falling off the toi
let, landing on the tiles with a thump, my left elbow jarring painfully.

  ‘She waits for you upon her throne of skulls, saviour!’ cheered the fox.

  I was closer than last time, and I could see the fox’s fur was thick and messy, and its large, bushy tail cut short, the end missing. It was proportioned like a regular fox that had somehow learned to walk on its hind legs; it stood upright with confidence and poise.

  A knock at the door. ‘Are you okay in there?’ asked Chloe. ‘I heard noises.’

  ‘Yes! Yep! I’m…’ I looked back to the bath to find the fox had disappeared again.

  ‘Are you sure? It sounded like you yelled oh Christ! in a high pitched voice.’

  I crawled over to the bath and looked for any sign of the bizarre fox but didn’t find so much a muddy foot print staining the white porcelain.

  ‘Should I be worried?’ asked Chloe.

  I pulled myself up and opened the door, legs a little unsteady, ‘Nope! No worry, just, thought I saw a… spider.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘A big spider.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And then fell I off the toilet.’

  ‘Right. You’re acting a little oddly, even for you, Joe.’

  I stepped out of the bathroom and headed back through to the front room.

  ‘Yeah, sorry, just, blah, head all over the place.’

  ‘Don’t worry, me too.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Today’s the anniversary of my mum’s death.’

  I was very much not expecting that.

  ‘What? Really?’

  Chloe nodded.

  ‘Right. Shit. Jesus. I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.’

  Chloe had mentioned her mum a few times. Usually after a few too many glasses of wine. Mentioned how she’d died when Chloe was only very young. How it was the entire reason behind her becoming a doctor. Every time she worked on someone, she was trying to save her mum.

  ‘Joe?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you want to do a bit of kissing?’

  At least three silent seconds passed.

  ‘I’m sorry? Come again?’

  ‘Kissing. I’m sad, and I like you, and I thought I’d invite you over so we could try out a kiss or two to cheer me up.’