‘I’m just saying, I did pretty good there.’
Eva dithered. ‘Yeah. You did. Idiot.’
I was basking in the half-compliment I’d managed to drag, kicking and screaming, out of Eva, when a front door opening caught my eye. Not so much the door, as the person opening it and stepping out of the house.
‘Wait a minute, that’s him! That’s Paul Travers!’
Eva spun on her heels and squinted at him. ‘I thought you said his whole head was covered in mouths?’
‘He must’ve changed back. Come on!’
We scooted on over, intercepting Mr Travers as he stepped beyond his front garden gate.
‘Paul!’ I said, because it was his name. He looked up, startled, clearly having been caught up in his own thoughts.
‘Yes?’
‘Paul, it’s me.’
‘Is it?’ he replied, edging away.
‘Are you a monster?’ asked Eva, taking a more direct route. ‘Only this guy says you’re a monster, so if you are one you’d better own up or God will be angry.’
‘I’m sorry, what are you babbling about?’
‘Paul, it’s me, Joseph Lake. You sought me out, twice. And then you tried to kill me.’
‘You’re mad,’ he said, his eyes darting around nervously.
‘If you’re secretly a monster, blink three times,’ tried Eva.
‘I’ve never sought you out, never met you, and I have no idea who either of you are.’
One of Paul’s neighbours opened their door; a man in his fifties with a big, bushy moustache. He stepped out and began to slowly move towards us.
‘You know that talk we had when we first arrived?’ said Eva.
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, I’m getting a really weird vibe now.’
‘Yeah, I think I’m picking up on that, too.’
‘Look,’ said Paul, ‘I don’t know what this is all about, but I do not know you.’
‘Paul’, I said, ‘it’s okay, something’s clearly wrong. I’m not mad you attacked me, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘You’re a pair of raving lunatics!’
‘Yes,’ agreed the neighbour, stood behind his gate, looking passively over at us. ‘They must be mad.’
‘Quite, quite mad,’ said Dot and Arthur, who’d completed their circuit of the village green and were passing us once again.
‘You came to my flat,’ I said. ‘You know you—’
—Eva grabbed me by the shoulder. ‘Whoa there, drunky,’ she said, pulling me back and laughing. ‘Sorry about him, had a little too much of the old voddy,’ she said waggling her half-empty bottle.
‘I’m not drunk,’ I insisted, ‘something strange is going on here.’
Eva pulled me away, smiling at the Combe residents, ‘Ignore this fella, he has issues, we’re having an intervention this weekend. You can all come, I’ll email out invites.’ Eva turned me around and guided me back to the Uncanny Wagon. ‘Just shut up and keep walking like everything’s okay.’
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Something very, very bad is happening in Combe, and your friend Paul Travers back there is right. The whole place is in on it. Him and all his robot neighbours.’
‘Robots?’
‘Metaphorical robots.’
‘Oh. Aw. So why are we heading off with our tails between our legs?’
‘Because we don’t want them to see us coming. We need to come back at night and do a little sneaking around, see if we can shake out what we’re dealing with here.’
As I got behind the wheel of the Uncanny Wagon, I gave a quick glance back in the direction we’d just hustled from. Paul and his three neighbours were stood, stock still, eyes boring into us.
What Paul Travers had said when he came to my flat was right; something was wrong with the whole place.
14
We had a few hours before nightfall, so I decided what better way to spend the time than by doing something horrible, awkward, and entirely unpleasant?
Eva’s crushing pep talk earlier had only solidified my own thoughts regarding myself and Annie, or romantic situations generally. Maybe one day I’d be able to explore girl-boy stuff, but right now it was just too dangerous. I couldn’t guarantee I’d still be alive from one day to the next, so what good was it pulling someone else into my world of monsters and horror?
No, this was the right thing to do. Even if it broke my heart to do it.
I was the eye of a tornado, and I needed to protect Annie and her daughter from the chaos swirling around me. On the bright side, I was used to being single, alone, and wading through a world of frustrated, empty longing. Same shit, different day, for good ol’ Mr Lake.
‘Hey, Joe!’ chirped Annie, waving as I approached.
I waved back, and even managed a smile, but I felt my insides clench as I realised she wasn’t alone. She’d said she was feeding the ducks by Mulgrave Pond when I called, and I’d said I’d drop by. It hadn’t crossed my mind to ask if she was feeding the ducks alone, because of course she wouldn’t be. People don’t generally go and feed ducks on their own unless they’re a bit old and dotty, they take their children. And so this was where I met Mille for the first time.
Millie had a riot of thick blonde curls, a hundred watt smile, and was rocking blue dungarees with an elephant picture on the front. She was enthusiastically launching fists full of bread chunks towards the eager ducks, who flapped to get away from the shards of stale bread tossed at speed towards their heads, before turning back to gobble them up as they bobbed around on the pond’s surface. Mille was obviously adorable, and seeing her only strengthened my resolve. Someone so young, so innocent, definitely had no place in my world.
‘Hi,’ I replied, feeling more than a little awkward.
Annie leaned in smiling and kissed me on the cheek. Damn, damn, and double damn. My knees quivered and I felt a sudden hollow thud in my stomach as I realised I’d never actually get to kiss Annie properly. And she had the sort of mouth I’d very much liked to have mushed my own against.
‘Millie, come here, this is mummy’s friend, Joe.’
Millie came waddling over, mittened hand clutching her half-full bread bag.
‘I’m feeding ducks,’ she proclaimed proudly.
‘That’s great,’ I said. ‘The poor things are terrible at shopping. Send them to the supermarket and they’ll come back to the pond with toilet paper and shoe polish, and not a crumb of food.’
Millie wrinkled her nose and tilted her head, clearly a little confused at my poor attempt at humour. ‘You’re silly.’ She lifted her bag. ‘This is duck bread.’
She turned, apparently done with the conversation, and made her way back to the birds.
‘I think she likes you,’ said Annie.
‘Well we both like ducks, so we have that in common.’
Annie laughed and I felt like a bastard.
‘I’m glad you called,’ she said. ‘I wanted you to meet Millie before, you know, things go anywhere with us.’
‘Oh? Things are going somewhere?’
She slipped her hand in mine. ‘I was hoping so.’
Bugger and balls and also bums. I should have gotten it over with right there and then. Torn off the plaster and had it all over and done with. It was for her own good. For her daughter’s own good. I wasn’t being horrible, I was protecting them. I was being the good guy!
So, of course I crumpled and listened to the cowardly part of me instead. ‘Me too,’ I said, smiling on the outside but calling myself a variety of colourful names on the inside.
We spent the next hour together. Me, a lovely woman I was pretending had a future with me, and her awesome little daughter. We walked round and round the pond, named all the ducks and described the workings of their duck society. Their relationships, politics, double-crosses, scandals. Oh, you wouldn’t believe the number of juicy scandals in duck world. At one point, I even found Millie holding my hand as we strolled.
> I really am a rotten bastard at times.
I waved goodbye, with promises to call and set up a date a.s.a.p, then drove away, furious at myself.
It had been a lovely, normal hour or so. An hour that, even whilst I ignored the part of my brain trying to shame me for dragging things out, had made me feel ordinary. For that hour I wasn’t the Magic Eater, I was a man on the cusp of a wonderful new relationship, someone who might become a father figure to a cool little girl. But it was make-believe and it was cruel. All I’d done was shift the bad news a little further down the road. But there it was, sat there still, not even far enough ahead to be out of view. And by spending an hour playing family man, meeting Annie’s daughter and pretending like we had a future beyond the next few days, I’d only made the oncoming bombshell all the more destructive.
Or perhaps I was inflating things out of proportion. It’s possible. We’d barely begun anything, really. It’s just as possible that Annie would be disappointed, but shrug it off and move on.
As I churned this all around in my head, I drove without really paying attention to where I was headed. I took country road after country road, green fields and dry stone walls whipping past, half-seen. It was muscle memory, taking me back to the same place I often found myself when I was at a low ebb.
Derwentwater Lake.
The place I’d been found ten years previously.
I killed the Uncanny Wagon’s engine, then got out and trudged towards the water, flopping heavily onto the grass.
‘Fuck. Fuckity fuck balls!’ I launched a stone in the water’s direction and watched it land with a deep splash and disappear from view.
I lay back on the grass, hands behind my head, and looked up at the sky. It was still light, but I could already see the moon.
‘Swim down.’
I sat bolt upright as the words floated over me.
‘Hello? Lyna, Melodia?’
‘Swim down, Janto.’
I pushed myself up and walked towards the lake’s edge, the water lapping gently at my boots.
‘Swim down.’
The air hazed in the distance as I looked out over Derwentwater, and there, indistinct and stood impossibly on the surface of the water, were two figures.
My dead witches.
‘Swim down, Janto.’
‘Can you , perhaps, elaborate a wee bit?’ I asked.
‘Swim down.’
‘I’ll take that as a no.’
For a mad moment I considered stripping off and jumping into the lake. Swimming over to the dead phantoms to try and talk to them properly. But then I felt my hand being yanked and I looked down to see a furry paw tugging at me. I sat up sharply, eyes blinking, realising I’d fallen fast asleep, flat out on the grass.
‘Fox?’
‘You were talking in your sleep, Magic Eater.’
I peered past the Fox, out over the lake, but there was no sign of the witches, hazy or otherwise. Just water, and past that the hills and mountains of Cumbria.
‘Does something trouble you?’ asked the Fox.
‘Oh, you know how it is. Women.’
‘Ah,’ he replied, sadly. ‘I know of such sorrows.’
The Fox had lost his own partner, he’d told me that. What had happened to him is exactly what I feared would happen to me. I’d fall for someone, they’d fall for me, I’d pull them into my life, and then my life would stick the knife in.
‘I think I might have to be alone forever,’ I said. ‘An eternal bachelor boy.’
‘It is not so terrible,’ replied the Fox, sitting down beside me and resting his axe across his little legs.
‘Isn’t it?’
He looked to the ground. ‘I lied to make you feel better. It is very bad. Very awful and tragic and also heartbreaking.’
I patted the Fox’s Roman helmet, then the two of us sat in silence, looking out over the calm lake waters. For a few moments I could pretend we were the only two around for miles. Just me and a talking fox. No romantic woes, no monsters, and no people in mortal peril.
This serenity was interrupted by the ringing of my phone.
‘Big Marge, to what do I owe this rare call?’
‘It’s about your detective friend.’
I straightened up, turning suddenly serious. ‘Detective Myers? What’s wrong?’
15
I ran so fast into the hospital’s reception area that the automatic doors didn’t have time to fully open, forcing me to wriggle through them sideways and almost careen into an old man being pushed along in a wheelchair.
‘Slow down, Joe,’ said Big Marge from the reception desk.
‘Maya, is she okay? Is she talking?
‘Oh, she’s done more than that. She’s fucked off.’
‘What? Do you mean she’s really angry or she’s gone?’
‘She was awake when I called you, but then she went and checked herself out. Doctors tried to stop her but she shoved them out of the way and just walked out.’
‘Did she say where she was going?’
‘Nope. She wasn’t in the mood for conversation, she was in the mood for getting the hell out of this building.’
I stepped out of the hospital and made my way to the Uncanny Wagon, dialling Myers’ number as I walked.
‘This is Detective Myers. I’m not available. Leave a message.’
Her voicemail message was certainly on brand.
‘Hey, Myers. What’s with the walkabout, you silly goose? Call me back.’
I didn’t like the idea of Myers wandering around in her condition. Whatever that condition was. Yes, she was a kick arse police officer who could tie me in knots, but she’d been unconscious for hours and laid up in a hospital bed. Who knew what might happen to her while she was out there?
I tried the police station she worked out of, but as far as they knew, she was still at the hospital.
I decided to drop by her home and see if she’d found her way back. I pulled up in front; it was your standard terraced house, a three up two down. The sort of house that had sprung up in a lot of northern towns, to house factory workers close to work a hundred or more years back. No front garden, just a step and a front door. When I arrived, it looked as though I might have gotten lucky. That front door was slightly ajar.
‘Hey, Myers, you in there?’ I tapped at the door with my knuckles and it swung open with a creepy creak.
There was no reply from inside.
‘Maya, it’s Joe, are you in?’
Still nothing.
Worry nibbled at me. Perhaps Myers had managed to stumble home, only to collapse the moment she got in, and was lying unconscious on the hallway floor, bleeding from the brain.
Now was no time for caution or following rules, so I stepped across the threshold and trespassed on a police officer’s home.
‘Maya?’
No sign of her on the bare wooden boards of the corridor. That was a good sign. I poked my head into the downstairs rooms, the living room and kitchen, but there was no sign of her there either. I looked out onto the small back yard area, just a narrow rectangle with paving slabs rather than grass, but spied only a ginger cat, stalking something invisible to my eyes.
There was a photo stuck to the front of the fridge. It was Maya, smiling hugely, arm around some man, whose smile was equally as large. I’d never seen Myers looking so happy. I wondered who the man was; her dead ex-partner from London, the man whose death at the claws of some monster had lead to her being transferred here, away from the city she’d called home her whole life? Or perhaps a brother she’d never mentioned, or an ex-boyfriend. I realised I didn’t know that much about Myers’ personal life, despite the fact we’d shared so much time together recently. Myers was not exactly the sort of person who delved into personal matters without a good reason to.
I made my way upstairs.
I tried the two bedrooms first. They were, like the rest of the house, extremely neat, minimal, and ordered. Detective Myers ran a tight ship. I looked to se
e if there were any further photos displayed in her room, more evidence of a personal life I knew little to nothing about, but there were no pictures to be seen.
Finally the bathroom, which is where my imagination decided to place a potential, shower-dwelling monster. I stepped into the room, its white tiles gleaming, and eyed the shower curtain suspiciously.
‘If there’s a monster behind there, I’m warning you, I taste terrible.’
I reached out, and the world seemed to hold its breath…
...and then my phone’s ringtone screamed out, eliciting a similarly high-pitched noise out of myself, and almost bringing about my death by heart attack.
Myers’ name flashed up on the phone’s screen.
‘Maya?’
‘Hi.’
‘Thank god,’ I sighed, ‘you scared me, running off like that.’
‘I didn’t run off,’ she replied. ‘I just discharged myself.’
‘Right, You don’t think it might have been wiser to at least stay in overnight? For observation and things of that nature?’
‘No, I just… I woke and I needed to get out. Can’t stand hospitals. I don’t like laying around when there’s work to do.’
‘Okay, but you did fall mysteriously unconscious for quite a lot of hours.’
‘And now I’m conscious.’
‘It’s just, I have this flimsy but perhaps accurate theory that what happened is linked directly to the crime scenes. Like it tainted the air and it affected you for some reason.’
‘Why would it just affect me?’
‘Well, I dunno, that’s the million dollar question isn’t it. Promise you’ll just rest up? At home? I’ll get Eva to give you some sort of magical once over after we get back from snooping on monsters in Combe.’
There was a heavy sigh on the other end of the line.
‘Please? Pretty please?’
‘Fine. I’ll rest this once, but you two aren’t cutting me out of the investigation.’
‘Scouts honour,’ I replied.
‘Okay. I expect to see you at my house in a few hours.’
I glanced around, but thought it best not to mention where I currently was.
‘Absolutely.’
Uncanny Kingdom: An Eleven Book Urban Fantasy Collection (Uncanny Kingdom Omnibus 1) Page 118
