by M. V. Stott
1
It was half past midnight when the screaming started.
The cry 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 the curtain to find a figure running along the towpath, screaming 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 from head to toe, peeled like a prawn, yet somehow they still had it in them to flee—literally barefoot—from the scene of their suffering.
The victim carried on running after that, but didn’t make it far before they took a tumble and toppled face-first into the canal. It won’t shock you to hear that they were pronounced dead on arrival.
When I picked up the message from DCI Stronge that the Marine Policing Unit had fished a flayed corpse out of the drink, I took an interest right away. Things like this—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 I’d prefer if you did take my word for it, otherwise this story is going to be a real tough sell).
So, why an exorcist? Fact is, I was born with The Sight: an ability to see the spirits of the dead that stay walking the Earth. Ghosts, phantoms, spectres, whatever you want to call them. It made for a pretty challenging childhood, but it set me up great for a career evicting spooks. It’s a job I did for a good few years, waving burning sage about and cleansing haunted properties, at least before I died and became a spook myself. Yeah, I’m not blind to the irony. Since I croaked, I’ve taken a bit of a U-turn on the whole issue of ghosts and their rights. Matter of fact, I’ve become something of an undead activist. Live and let live, I say.
Well, to a fashion.
Most ghosts find themselves 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 but 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 lead. Not after the things I’ve done.
So, I found my way back here, back to the physical realm. 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, it’s got more of a ring to it than the arse crack thing.
You’re probably wondering how I wound up dead in the first place. 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.
Anyway, my death’s a story for another time – we’ve already got one sliced-up corpse bobbing in a canal, 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 stop first.
2
I found him sat in the booth of a late-night bar with his arm around a woman he wasn’t married to. 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. We didn’t run in the same circles. His circle was all sports trophies and hand jobs behind the bike sheds, while mine—thanks to him—was the kind Dante wrote about. 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. Mark Ryan was the first person to really make my life hell, and I’ve been closer to the place than most.
One time he bought a pair of handcuffs into class and manacled me to a radiator while the teacher was out of the room. Doesn’t sound so bad, right? Some people pay good money for that. Yeah, he over-tightened the things, but that was too be expected. Besides, that wasn’t what really hurt. The real pain came when the heat conducted by the cuff made its way to my bracelet. That was a new kind of pain. Mark and his crew did nothing to help me – just stood back and laughed as I thrashed around, helpless, howling in agony.
Even as a ghost, I still have the scar.
So yeah, Mark’s not exactly top of my friends list, which is why I decided to make him my designated meat puppet; the body I use whenever I need to pass for living. He’s like my toupee, except instead of hiding my bald spot, he hides the fact that I don’t have a body.
Mark pecked his side piece on the cheek, squeezed past her and headed to the Gents for a slash. I breezed by the rest of the punters unseen and phased through the bathroom wall to follow him inside. When I got there, I found him stood at a urinal, phone in one hand, cock in the other. It was nothing to write home about. The guy might act like a swinging dick, but he has a knob like an outie belly button.
I prepared to stake a pitch in Mark’s body. It took me a long time to get the knack of possession. Meat is a tricky medium to work with. Most ghosts never get a handle on it, but somehow I figured out a way. If you asked me how I pull it off, I’d tell you that my work as an exorcist gave me a unique understanding of ghosts and their ways. I’d be shitting you though. All I know is, that after a lot of practice, I learned to inhabit the living. At least for a little while. An hour, two hours at most, and a living body rejects me like an unwanted kidney. That’s just the way things are, don’t ask me to break down the science of it.
I maneuvered behind Mark invisibly and smiled, just like I always did. He used to tell the kids at school that I was gay, but only one of us was getting a man inside of him tonight. I climbed into Mark’s body and felt it jolt and recoil, as though someone had flushed the toilet on his nice, hot shower. He went into spasm, fighting me, doing what he could to resist. He needn’t have bothered. A couple of seconds later I was all moved in; boxes unpacked and making myself comfortable.
I snuffed the air and sighed. It tasted like piss and urinal cake, but the simple act of breathing was reward enough. 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 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 Mark that his life was a timeshare property now.
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 pink. I breezed right by her and made for the exit.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Out,’ I told her, and carried on walking.
Mark was going to have some explaining to do after I was done, only he wouldn’t have much to go on. He has no recollection of what I get up to while I’m wearing him, I make sure of that. All he’d have was guesswork. Did he have too much to drink? Did he black out? Did the light from a full moon turn him into a werewolf? (those are real by the way, plus vampires, ghouls 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 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.
Cosy inside my meat puppet, I headed for the canal. A dead woman needed my help. A dead woman with a curious lack of skin.
End of Extract.
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FRESH HELL
DARK LAKES: MAGIC EATER
Here’s a SNEAK PEEK at the first Dark Lakes book, another series set in the Uncanny Kingdom universe…
“My name's Joseph Lake, or at least that's what I've decided to call myself. By day I scrub toilets and fix broken light fittings, by night I look into weird stuff. Local hauntings, unexplained disappearances, satanic cabals dancing naked around ancient stone circles; the usual. The Uncanny calls to me like a beacon, and I follow its signal wherever it leads, hoping that one day it will shine a light on who I really am…”
1
I suppose this all started when I woke up without a single clue as to who I was, where I was, or why I was bleeding from so many different and interesting places.
My name’s Joseph Lake, or at the very least that’s what I’ve decided to call myself. Not the most inspiring of choices, I know, but I couldn’t find anything that felt comfortable, so Joseph Lake it was. The fact it stuck had made me wonder if the name meant something; like maybe it was a family member’s name, or a good friend’s, or even a good enemy’s, but I Googled that thing down to a nub and ended up with nothing. Just one of many deader-than-dead ends I’ve chased aimlessly since I woke up next to that lake.
That was ten years ago. Right now I now found myself stalking the streets of Carlisle in the middle of the night, dressed entirely in black. This may have been my first time following a stranger from a discreet distance, but I’d seen enough movies to know the best colour for a stalking outfit. At first I’d even worn a pair of black shades, though it quickly became apparent that this was not my brightest idea. What with it being the whole night time thing. Yeah, I didn’t feel too smart as I pulled those off and pocketed them, I can tell you.
The stranger I was following was a homeless woman who looked like a charity shop puked up over a passing Helena Bonham Carter. Or, in other words, like Helena Bonham Carter. She’d been throwing up red flags in my head for the last two months, so a good follow seemed in order, and not the friendly Twitter kind.
Anyway, back to my origin story: I was found by a fisherman called Joseph (hence the forename), face down and very, completely naked, beside Derwent Water, which is one of several bodies of water that make up an area known as the Lake District in the far north of England. Yup, you got it, from thence derives my surname.
Actually, that’s a lie, I wasn’t completely naked, I had one sock on. I still have that sock. It’s the only physical evidence I have of my past life and who I really am, though it is difficult to extrapolate much from a sock, other than “I wore socks.” Even Sherlock Holmes would want more to go on than that, unless I skipped Sherlock Holmes and the One-Socked Man.
It was chilly out and I pulled my long coat tight around myself as I did my best to keep a discreet distance from the tramp, who seemed to be aimlessly wandering here, there, and nowhere in particular. The tramp had been showing up a lot recently; not just hanging out by the cash machine I always passed, or pushing a trolley around town full of tin cans. I hadn’t just happened across her on my way to work. No, she’d been turning up all over, almost as though there was some design to it. I’d look out of my window, she’d be sat across the street. I’d get to work, she’d be in the car park, going through the bins. It felt a lot like she was following me. So I thought, well, two can play at that game.
So, here I was, following a homeless woman around the streets of Carlisle, Cumbria’s only city, in the middle of the night. No, you have too much time on your hands.
I’m sure most would brush it her appearance off as coincidence, but when you have my kind of strange (and stunted) history, you tend to see the weird shining out from the ordinary. No, this wasn’t one of those situations where you buy a pair of red trousers and suddenly start noticing people wearing those self-same red trousers everywhere. This woman was following me. I was sure of it. Keeping tabs. For… for reasons yet to be ascertained.
A little part of me even hoped it was because she recognised me. Maybe I’d been a tramp too, before… well… before whatever happened happened and I wound up unconscious by a lake wearing nothing but a sock and a fully-body bruise. Maybe that’s why it was so difficult to find anything out about my past; perhaps I’d been on the streets for years.
The tramp stopped and turned, and I ducked into the doorway of a betting shop that stank sharply of piss. For a moment or two it looked like she was going to walk back the way she’d come—that she was going to walk right past me in my not too discreet hidey-hole—but then her head twitched to the left and she darted off down an alley. I counted to five then sprinted after her, coat tails flapping, heart pounding, grinning a lot more than I should have been.
I didn’t want to bust out of the alleyway and find myself smacking into the back of my quarry, so I slowed down to a walking pace, one hand trailing along the old, crumbling brickwork that lined either side of the narrow crack between two shops.
And that’s when the first strange thing happened.
As my fingers trailed across the old bricks, a weird mood dropped over me like a heavy blanket. It was… fear. No, not just fear, fear mixed with hunger, mixed with pain, mixed with desire. Oh God! It felt like it was washing over me again and again, like I was pegged to a beach and the sea waves were battering against me over and over and if I didn’t get away I might just drown in all the intoxicating, terrible feelings of dread and—
—A scream.
My hand snapped away from the old bricks of the alleyway and my head dropped back into the here and now.
There had been a scream; not in my head, not in whatever weird thing that was I’d just experienced, but out here, in the night. Not a fun scream, not a people playing around and being young and boisterous drunk scream. No, this was a blood-curdler. A for-God’s-sake-won’t-someone-please-help-me scream.
I ran towards the sound.
As I burst out of the dark of the alley into the comparatively bright square, my foot kicked something heavy and I found myself sprawling and tumbling at speed into the cobbles, my head bouncing painfully as it connected briefly with the ground.
I lay for a few seconds, getting my breathing under control and trying to decide whether to throw up or not. I went with not. I pushed myself into a sitting position, the world tilting, and gingerly fingered my throbbing temple. I could already feel a lump rising like I was a cartoon cat who’d just been bashed over the head with a frying pan.
Feeling stupid for not looking where I was going, I peered over to see what I’d tripped over. I was expecting to see a bag of rubbish, or perhaps a tree root pushing up from a crack in the cobbles. What I wasn’t expecting to see was the body of a woman with her throat torn out.
No, I wasn’t expecting that at all.
2
Pain in my head forgotten, I shuffled on my knees to the prone body laid out flat on her back before me. I swallowed, throat dry, a metallic tang invading my mouth that made me want to gag.
‘Hey…’ my voice emerged an arid whisper. ‘Are you… are you… okay…?’
Yes, it was a stupid question, but if I might be forgiven in the circumstances, it’s not every day one trips over a violently murdered woman.
She looked to be in her late thirties, her eyes still wide and staring blankly up into nothing. What was the last thing those eyes saw? At what point had she realised her life was about to be given a violent, painful full stop? I felt a fist of anger clench in my stomach.
Now I was closer I could see that not all of the blood on the ground was random splashes and sprays, some of it had been placed in deliberate patterns. Shapes that looked almost occult in nature and made me feel strange to look at.
Had the tramp done this to her? She’d come this way,
but surely she hadn’t had enough time; but then where was she? Would she really just run away after stumbling across a dead body?
Hand shaking, I reached out and tried for a pulse just in case I was wrong. I wasn’t wrong. I shivered, not because of the cold of the night, but because her flesh was already cold, which was, well, wrong. This had happened recently. The blood was still wet, recently spilled. She should still be warm to the touch, or warmer than she was at least. I looked at the ragged tear in her throat, blood still pooling out onto the ground, soaking her long, red hair that was splayed out around her. What could do that? A knife? Or—
—Another scream.
Okay, okay, this was too much. This was all much too much. Someone had just been murdered and the killer was somewhere close. This was dark and scary and dangerous and it was stupid to even think about going forward rather than back. I’m no hero, I should have been getting as far away as possible and calling the police so they could get their arses over there to sort things out. So why were my stupid feet carrying me towards the danger?
Stupid, stupid feet.
I crossed the little square in record-breaking time and raced down another alleyway. This time it didn’t open up, but turned left, then right, before I finally emerged onto a back street behind a row of shops. As I stepped out I had the forethought to look at the ground, to make sure I didn’t go tumbling over another dead body.
No dead body. That was a good start.
I looked around, eyes and ears straining for any indication of danger, my every nerve ending feeling like it was tingling, achingly alive. There were large overflowing bins and metal skips. Gates leading into shop backyards. Another alley in the distance, leading the way out. Plenty of places to hide. To lurk. To pounce on anyone foolhardy enough to investigate.
Everything sounded quiet. It was like the back alley was holding its breath to see what happened next. I hoped it was something nice and not at all deathy.
‘Okay, Joe, get a hold of yourse—’
