There went the hairs on the back of Waterson’s neck again.
A rabbit swung precariously from the metal claw, the scarf it had around its neck snagged on one of the fingers.
Rabbit ears.
‘They all had the same nightmare,’ Waterson said to himself. He wasn’t sure why, but as he said it, he knew it was true.
He turned from the machine, from the toy rabbit, and followed his feet. Somehow, they seemed to know where they were going.
The stockroom.
This was where he’d had that feeling the last time he was here. That sense of missing something.
The door swung shut and the sound of the arcade became muffled.
He ran his hands over the giant plastic bags stuffed full of toys. A pair of rabbit ears poked out of a hole in one of the bags. Waterson reached out and stroked them.
‘What? What is it?’ he said, hitting the heel of his hand against his temple, trying to dislodge a blockage he felt sure was there.
He sagged and turned to leave, but stopped as something caught his eye.
It was a door.
The door had not been there the last time he was here, he was sure of it. Hadn’t been there when he entered the stockroom this time, either. Perhaps it could have been hidden by stock bags the first time, and he just hadn’t seen it, but not this time. This time it had been clear and the wall had been a wall, solid, no windows, no doors.
And now there was a door.
Waterson tried the handle; locked.
He ran from the stockroom and found the manager, pulling the befuddled man behind him and into the stockroom.
‘What are you talking about?’ asked the manager, as he was bundled into the room, almost piled into a bag of toys.
‘Do you have a key for the door?’ asked Waterson.
‘What door?’
‘That one!’ Waterson pointed at the door, the air catching in his throat.
No door.
He raced over to it and began to frantically run his hands over the brickwork.
‘Hey, are you… okay?’ asked the manager.
Waterson turned to him, eyes wide, and didn’t know what to say.
23
Despite his advanced age, Formby had the strength of a bull.
Rita watched in surprise as, with seemingly little effort, the ancient eaves grabbed the dead weight of Carlisle and tossed him over one shoulder.
‘Follow me,’ he said, hurrying past the gawping faces of Big Pins’ regulars, and heading behind the bar. Despite the terrible circumstances, Rita still found herself giggling at the absurd sight of this short mole-man carrying Carlisle’s long, narrow corpse, the knuckles of his white, elegant hands dragging a grim trail along the carpet.
Linton, the hulking proprietor of the Uncanny gathering spot, ushered Formby and Rita to a door behind the bar.
‘Dead, is he?’ asked Linton. ‘Shame.’
Rita followed Formby and the late Carlisle into the back room, a small, shabby office stacked high with boxes containing bar snacks and bowling shoes. Linton yanked a cord and a bare bulb spluttered into life, casting a sickly yellow glow around the faded room. Formby headed for the sole item of furniture, a shabby couch, foam bursting from rips in its upholstery, and dumped Carlisle’s body unceremoniously onto it.
‘He better not leak any bodily juices and what-not on my couch,’ said Linton, before leaving them to it, closing the door as he left.
‘Is he dead?’ asked Rita. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he? I mean, I couldn’t feel a pulse or anything, so that means he’s dead, right?’
Formby prised open one of Carlisle’s eyes and peered at it.
‘Did he ever even have a pulse?’ Rita asked. ‘He looked sort of like a vampire, like from a film—not Twilight shit, but a good one—so maybe he didn’t have a pulse anyway.’ Rita realised she was pacing in a little circle and flapping her hands as she spoke, so decided to stop doing that.
‘Where was he?’ asked Formby, levering Carlisle’s jaw open with a knife and shining a small torch down his exposed throat.
‘In a house. A creepy house. The creepiest.’
‘He paid Mr. Cotton and Mr. Spike a visit?’ asked Formby, turning to Rita as he asked, his eyes wide with surprise.
‘Yeah. He said he wanted to ask them a question, about the case we’re on. Wouldn’t let me go with him.’
‘Huh,’ said Formby. ‘Put himself in danger, did he? Not like him to go and do a thing like that for someone else.’
‘Look, is he dead or not, because he seems pretty dead to me.’
Formby straightened up and turned off the torch, slipping it in the inside pocket of his dirty, grey coat. ‘Oh yes. Dead as a dead person, that’s what he is. The spark of life has spluttered its last.’
‘Oh, Jesus,’ said Rita, dropping to her haunches and scraping her fingers through her thick, red hair.
‘Must trust you, then,’ said Formby.
‘What?’
‘Trust you. He put his life in your hands.’
‘Well, he’s dead, so that looks like a bit of a mistake, doesn’t it?’
Formby began to laugh. ‘No, no, no, I’m talking literally. Life in your hands.’
Rita stood, feeling suddenly very tired indeed. Tired and now alone on a case that had erased her from normal life, and that now, without Carlisle at her side, she saw no way of solving.
‘Stop talking in riddles, mole-face. I’m knackered, I’m angry, I’m sad, and I don’t mind hitting you with this axe, okay?’
‘Did he give you it?’
Rita sighed, ‘Give me what?’
‘His life?’
Rita was about to reply with a string of expletives when she remembered the terracotta domino with its elaborately carved patterns. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled it out. The thing glowed still, throbbing rhythmically.
‘Oh. This is his life, isn’t it?’ asked Rita, holding the item close to her face, the light it cast warming her skin.
Formby nodded. ‘That’s right. Good bit of magic that, if you’ve got the knowledge of it.’
‘He said it was an insurance policy.’
Formby clapped his hands together then reached to her. ‘Give it over, then. The longer he’s dead, the more painful it’ll be when he’s not dead.’
Rita moved to pass the piece to Formby, then hesitated. ‘Wait, how do I know I can trust you? That you’re not just gonna, I dunno, snap this thing in two? It’s not as though you and Carlisle are best mates.’
Formby grinned, ‘You do not know you can trust me, true. That is the Uncanny world you’re in now. More often than not, you trust the untrustworthy.’
‘Well, that’s my mind put at ease.’
Rita handed the piece to Formby, who took it gingerly between thumb and forefinger.
‘Right. Right then. I think I remember how you do this.’
Formby pulled the knife he’d used to open Carlisle’s mouth back out of its sheath, raised it high above his head, then brought it down with a grunt of effort. The blade slid into Carlisle’s chest like it were made of sponge, not flesh and bone.
‘Jesus!’ cried Rita, stepping back, as Formby waggled the blade back and forth, opening a small cavity in Carlisle’s chest.
‘There we go, fella,’ he said, the glowing domino now slowly writhing back and forth like a fat slug. Formby lowered it into the gap he’d created in Carlisle’s chest, then let it go. The terracotta domino wriggled its way into the hole and disappeared from view.
Then nothing happened.
‘He still seems very dead to me,’ said Rita.
Formby frowned and peered at the corpse on the couch. ‘Yeah. He does a bit. Wait a minute.’
Formby spat on his hand, balled it into a fist, then bashed it against Carlisle’s chest like he was the Fonz jolting a jukebox into life.
Carlisle was a corpse no more.
His eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright, gasping for air, clutching his woun
ded chest.
‘All right, all right,’ said Formby, ‘don’t go fussing just because you’ve been dead for a bit.’ He guided the twitching Carlisle into a foetal position on the couch and patted him on the head.
‘Carlisle?’ said Rita, stepping towards him.
‘No, no,’ said Formby, shooing her away. ‘Wait out there a while, he’ll need a bit of a sleep yet. You can’t expect a man who’s just been dead to be at his best right off.’
‘He’s alive. I mean, he was dead, now he’s alive!’
‘There’s those keen detection skills again,’ said Carlisle, his voice an arid whisper.
‘Oi, you, hush,’ said Formby, ‘sleep now, rudeness later.’
Rita laughed in disbelief. She’d done it. She’d saved him.
Rita thanked Linton as he placed a second pint of ale in front of her.
‘You know, you could’ve just left him for dead,’ he said.
‘Yes, you’ve already said that,’ replied Rita, as Linton frowned and made his way back to the bar, where a patron was waiting to swap his dirty boots for a pair of bowling alley shoes.
It had been almost an hour since Carlisle had stopped being a corpse, and neither he nor Formby had emerged from the back room. Rita was itching to know what he’d found out. If he’d managed to get anything useful out of the terrifying masked pair before they’d murdered him.
She shook her head and took a gulp of her pint. A weird man had gone to a nightmare house to talk to monsters who had killed him. Only the death didn’t stick because of some sort of magic nonsense. It was a wonder she hadn’t gone mad yet.
She reached down and took out the axe, placing it on the table before her. It had saved her life again. It was weird, the effect it had. The way it seemed to connect her to the magic of whatever she went up against. How it seemed to make her understand it. See it. Know just how to wrangle it for her own needs. For as long as she needed it—for as long as she held the axe and it translated the spell—she wasn’t a stranger to this bizarre world of magic. No, for a few brief moments, she was part of it. Connected to it. The master of it.
She stroked the blunt-looking blade with the tips of her fingers and felt a shiver of something run up her hand. Potential, that’s what it was. There was magic still inside it. She’d hit both of them after all, hadn’t she? Mr. Cotton and Mr. Spike. She’d used Cotton’s magic to create an escape point, but Spike’s magic still lurked, unused, inside of it.
Rita wrapped her hands around the handle and lifted the axe. It reacted to her touch. She felt as though the axe itself knew that the magic dwelled within it, and was waiting for her to tell it how to use it.
‘Talking to you, is it?’
Rita pulled her hands away from the axe, her concentration broken by Formby, who sat down and availed himself of her partially-drunk pint of ale.
‘There’s magic in it. Right now,’ said Rita.
‘That so?’ replied Formby, smacking his lips, foam from the ale spackling his rough beard.
‘I hit them with it. Both of them, Cotton and Spike. Took some of their magic and used it, somehow, to come here.’
‘That’s handy,’ said Formby, waving his hand at the bar to catch Linton’s attention. Linton nodded and began to pull two fresh drinks.
‘How is he? Carlisle?’
‘Oh, he’s been better, I expect. Though he’s been dead before, of course.’
‘He’s what?’
‘Got to expect it, the life he leads. Why he makes sure he has insurance when he needs it. He’s not stupid. Nasty, untrustworthy, ruthless, murderous, but no, not stupid.’
Linton placed the fresh pints on the table and Formby licked his lips, reaching out with both hands to grasp his glass.
‘He’s not shat himself in there, has he?’ said Linton. ‘I’ve heard they do that, after being dead for a bit.’
‘No, no, nothing wet has left his body,’ replied Formby.
‘Hm.’ Linton turned and headed back to his bar once again.
‘Apart from being alive, how actually is he?’
Formby frowned and considered the question. ‘Well, tired, and weak, which is to be expected of course. Does nothing for your get-up-and-go, a bit of being dead, oh no. He’s trying to put a brave face on it, but I seen it in his eyes.’
‘What?’
‘Well, they show you things, Mr. Cotton and Mr. Spike. Things to turn the sanest man mad. Kill you with the madness, they do. They showed Carlisle something, all right. Something that stopped his heart stone dead. I saw down his throat; red-raw from screaming in there.’ Formby shivered and gulped his drink.
‘But he’ll be okay?’
Formby shrugged. ‘Okay enough. In a while. Never quite the same I’d imagine, but alive.’
Rita sighed with relief and sat back. She’d rescued him, saved a life, even if she wasn’t entirely sure how. That’s what you did in the force, you had your partner’s back. She thought about all the times she’d pulled Waterson’s arse out of the fire and smiled.
‘Suppose it’s time I told you a thing or two,’ said Formby.
‘Hm? Sorry, what did you say?’
‘Whilst his nibs is incapacitated out back, thought you might like to hear a thing or two I’ve heard whispered on the wind about you,’ he said flicking his pointed ears and grinning, displaying his twin set of higgledy-piggledy piranha teeth.
Rita sat forward, wrapping her hands around the handle to her axe. ‘There’s whispers about me?’
‘Whispers and words, and here’s me, an old eaves with the ear-lugs to hear it and all that knowledge safe and sound in my brain meat.’
Rita wasn’t sure she liked the idea of people talking about her. People in this Uncanny world, at least. What was there to whisper about, anyway?
‘Well? Go on then.’
‘An eaves requires payment to share, you know.’
‘Payment?’
‘Fair’s fair. Got to make a living, haven’t we?’
‘Okay, how much?’
‘A promise of magic to feast upon. You have it coming your way.’
‘Right, fine, whatever, just tell me.’
Formby clapped his fingerless-gloved hands together, the nails on each finger sharp and yellow.
‘Then the transaction is fair,’ he said. ‘I did some digging. Went to the right places. Lurked and listened. No person living had anything of worth to say, but I found a few old ghosts in Friar’s Cemetery, swapping stories, and up came your name.’
Rita blinked slowly as she took this in. ‘I’m sorry, did you say ghosts? That there are ghosts, and that they’re talking about me?’
Formby grinned and nodded.
‘Good. Good to know. Not creepy at all, that. On you go then.’
‘Carlisle wondered why his artefact, the axe, came to be yours without the wielder’s consent, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s simple, see? It is a thing of Heaven.’
‘Yeah, you said that already, so what?’
‘So, it is inclined to buddy up with other things of Heaven, understand?’
‘Not at all, no.’
‘Other things of Heaven, such as you.’
Rita nodded slowly. ‘I’m sorry, come again?’
‘Well, you are part angel, aren’t you?’
Rita was quiet for quite a long time after that.
The Magician stood within his chamber, hands flat against the sacrifice stone, the giant lump of grey rock on to which each woman had been chained, ready for the axe.
He could not sense Mr. Cotton, nor his brother, Mr. Spike.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked.
‘I do not know,’ replied the Angel of Blackpool, and this sent a shiver through the Magician.
‘How can you not know? You always know.’
‘They are… hidden from me, should they choose to be, whilst in their own dream realm. They do not allow me into their house. Something must have happened to them.’
> ‘I need them,’ said the Magician, feeling weak and foolish.
‘No,’ replied the Angel, ‘all that we require is each other, and we will always have that. Their job was done, anyway. The important part.’
The Magician straightened up, feeling a little better. ‘If they’re missing, then it’s up to me.’
‘Yes,’ replied the Angel. ‘Mr. Cotton and Mr. Spike have served us well, but have failed to retrieve what we need.’
‘The axe.’
‘The artefact that will break down the doors to Heaven and allow us to take revenge on our cold, indifferent creator.’
The Magician knew what he had to do. It was time to step out of the shadows and take what was his.
For his dad.
For his mum.
For every single person who’d ever walked the face of the planet.
24
It was past midnight and DS Dan Waterson should have been in bed.
He’d tried to go home once he was off the clock, but had instead found himself driving around Blackpool aimlessly, unable to go home and climb into bed while the world was crumbling around him.
The door, in the arcade stockroom, it had been there, he was sure of it. He’d gripped the bloody handle and shook it, for God’s sake. But then it hadn’t been there before it had been. It had just been a wall, like it was again now. He leaned his forehead against the steering wheel of his car and scrunched his eyes shut.
A sharp tap at the driver’s side window made him jerk upright.
‘You okay there, mate?’
Waterson turned to see a familiar uniformed officer bent over and looking through the window. Chris Farmer.
‘Yup, fine, just… past my bedtime,’ replied Waterson, pulling the key out of the ignition and stepping out into the police station car park to join Chris.
‘On lates, too, eh?’ asked Chris. ‘Hard lines.’
‘Yeah. Actually, I’m off duty, strictly speaking, but you know how it is with some cases. They rattle around in there and won’t let you rest.’ He tapped at his skull.
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