Hexed Detective

by Matthew Stott

  She gripped the axe tightly and made her way towards the closed bedroom door. She turned the brass handle and the door opened with a sharp cry that made Rita gasp. She stopped and counted to ten, listening for any movement outside of the room, for any sign that the door had alerted someone in a rabbit or hedgehog mask that they had an unwanted guest.

  All was silent.

  Trying to control her breathing, Rita spoke to herself. ‘Be brave, Detective.’

  A man, if he was even a man, was in trouble, and this was her job. Protect. Take down the bad guys. No time for fear when duty called.

  ‘Bad-ass. Bad-ass bitch.’ Rita nodded and slipped out of the open door into the corridor beyond. It was, like the child’s bedroom she’d entered through, brown and rotten. It was lined with paintings of figures in grand frames. Each painting depicted one or both of Mr. Cotton and Mr. Spike.

  Carlisle had said that the pair were literally the stuff of nightmares, and if the stuff of nightmares lived anywhere, it would be a house like this.

  Rita began to edge along the corridor, half-expecting the eyes in the paintings to follow her. For a hand to reach out of one of them and grip her shoulder with a dirty white glove.

  Each footfall was greeted by the complaint of a rotten floorboard, and the corridor seemed to twist and sway as she made her way along it.

  ‘How do I know where you are?’ Rita whispered into the still-pulsing domino, its carved shaped blazing brilliantly.

  She tried the first door she passed. It opened on another bedroom, though this one was not empty. Hundreds of tiny yellow eyes turned to regard her, every inch of the room swamped with large, black rats, their rotten teeth chattering at her.

  ‘Sorry, wrong room,’ said Rita, and made sure the door was very firmly closed as she hurried away.

  At the end of the corridor was a rather grand staircase leading down to the ground floor.

  ‘Carlisle?’ she said, her voice a hiss, but there was no response. ‘Carlisle, if you’re close, make this domino throb hard twice.’

  It did not throb hard twice.

  Rita made her way down the staircase. The house stank of decay, and the air was thick with dust, making it hard to breathe.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Rita took a right, only for the domino to stop pulsing.

  ‘Okay, hot or cold?’ She turned left instead and took a few steps, and the thing began its heartbeat pulse once again. ‘Right, hot.’

  She stopped in front of a door, waving the domino in front of it. It shone so brightly she couldn’t look at it.

  ‘Bingo.’

  Rita opened the door.

  Inside was a grand ballroom, far too large for what the house could realistically contain. A giant chandelier hung from the vaulted ceiling, every crystal contained within it cracked, or broken in two, or missing entirely. Long tables with yellowed table cloths crowded the room. Thick, grey cobwebs were strung from one silver candelabra to the next, and spiders lazily roamed the piles of rotten food, picking up fat flies that gorged on the oozing, rotten mess.

  The stench was like a punch to the face, and it took everything Rita had not to stumble out of the room and vomit. She’d have liked to have done that, but something else was in the room. Someone else.

  Carlisle.

  He was laid on his side on the floor, roped to a chair.

  Blood was soaked into the dirty carpet in a halo around his head, and dried tributaries of red ran from his mouth, his nose, his ears, even his eyes.

  ‘Carlisle!’ She ran to him, kneeling, patting his face. ‘Hey, I’m here, your thingy worked, wake up!’

  She hit him harder, shook him. He didn’t wake, didn’t make a sound. Didn’t even twitch.

  ‘Shit, shit, shit,’ said Rita, feeling for a pulse.

  No pulse.

  Did he ever have a pulse? He must have done. And then something sparked in Rita’s mind and she looked down at the terracotta domino in her hand, slowly pulsing away, one heartbeat after another.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding me…’

  It had only started to glow, to pulse, when he needed help. When he’d died…? Rita was starting to put two and two together when something tapped against her foot. She looked down to a rat staring up at her, sat back on its rear legs, its front legs rubbing together.

  ‘Sod off,’ she said, and kicked the squealing rodent across the room.

  Pocketing the domino, Rita hacked at the ropes binding Carlisle, and freed his body—his corpse—from the chair.

  ‘Carlisle, mate, you’re going to have to help me out here.’

  He had always looked alabaster white, as pale as a ghost, but now his skin looked grey.

  ‘How did you get here?’ came a voice.

  Rita spun around, but there was nobody there. She brandished the axe warily.

  ‘Oi, who’s there, then? Hey?’

  A floorboard squeaked in a shadowed corner. Rita turned and swung the axe impotently.

  ‘Stop messing around, okay? You don’t scare me, I’ve faced worse on the job!’ Worse than some nightmare monster who lurked in a house built from fear and rot who could apparently kill Carlisle with little effort? Yeah, she may have been bluffing just a little there.

  ‘I asked you a question,’ said the voice.

  Rita turned again to see the carpet in one corner of the room ripple and bulge. The carpet tore, and up sprouted a pair of rabbit ears.

  ‘Shit!’ Rita grabbed Carlisle, sitting him up. ‘Come on, you dead idiot, we’ve gotta move!’

  ‘They always run and run and run but there’s never anywhere to go.’

  With a cry, Rita managed to lever the chair holding Carlisle back into an upright position.

  Mr. Cotton rose fully into the room, a rat on his shoulder. ‘You kicked Reginald. Reginald is not happy.’ The rat squeaked furiously at Rita, then hopped down into Mr. Cotton’s gloved hand. ‘Sleepy time, Reginald.’ The rabbit mask’s mouth stretched wide into a Edvard Munch scream, and Reginald the oily, fat-tailed rat, hopped inside. The mouth closed behind him.

  The exit, the tear Rita had stepped into this house from, that she could still hopefully escape through, was all the way upstairs. There was no way she’d make it, at least not carrying Carlisle’s dead weight. That’s if the thing was still even open.

  Nope, Rita realised she was pretty much screwed.

  Deciding she had no intention of going out on the back foot, Rita took a step forward and shook the axe at Mr. Cotton. ‘Stay back, all right, or I’ll twat you with this thing, you murdering, weird, bastarding bastard!’

  ‘Oh, Reginald is not dead, I would never kill a rat.’

  ‘I’m talking about Carlisle!’

  Mr. Cotton’s masked head tilted, ‘Oh yes. That was fun. So brave to come here. In the end he screamed though. Screamed as my brother showed him true terror and his brain hubbled and bubbled and turned to naught but mush. A skull full of mashed potato.’

  A gurgling, hacking sound alerted Rita to the fact that Mr. Spike had joined them. She swung around to see him stood behind her, shoulders juddering as the awful noise dribbled and rattled from beneath his hedgehog mask.

  ‘Oh, that’s funny is it?’ asked Rita.

  ‘My brother, Mr. Spike, does enjoy the lighter side of life, it is true. And now, the axe. I believe you shall give it to me so the work can resume, yes?’

  Mr. Cotton reached out with one hand and began to move calmly towards Rita.

  ‘Yeah, not bloody likely, you big freak,’ Rita stepped back, swinging the axe to ward Mr. Cotton off, but Mr. Cotton did not pause.

  ‘For shame. Such rude manners for one so fair,’ he said.

  Rita, heart smashing against her chest, looked back to see Mr. Spike guarding the door as his brother continued to advance.

  ‘Stay back!’ Rita demanded, swinging again.

  ‘No, no, and no again. The axe is ours and nothing but nightmares upon nightmares shall be yours. I will show you everything that makes y
ou shout and scream, over and over, and then my brother will show you what lurks beneath his mask. It will be delicious,’ said Mr. Cotton, as Reginald the rat poked his snout out of one of the rabbit mask’s eye hole and chittered his yellow, broken teeth together.

  No way back without stumbling into Mr. Spike, and Mr. Cotton was almost upon her. Rita was out of options. She took a breath, stepped forward, and, with a war cry, swung the axe, missing Mr. Cotton completely and sending her tumbling to the floor.

  ‘Tut-tut,’ said Mr. Cotton. ‘A swing and a miss.’ He clicked his thumb and forefinger together and a tentacle burst from the rotten food piled upon the table. It wrapped itself around the struggling Rita’s leg and began to drag her towards the table.

  ‘Let me go!’ she yelled.

  ‘It looks like the food wants to play with you,’ replied Mr. Cotton, and Mr. Spike gurgle-laughed once more.

  Rita rolled on to her back to see what she was being dragged towards, the rotten food now a writhing, alive, thing. The spiders that crawled upon it were growing, and growing, their twitching, fang-like mouthparts dripping with blood.

  Rita was terrified, but even in her terror, realised that this was what Mr. Cotton wanted. He wanted her fear.

  ‘What dreadful delights we shall show to you, what scares shall we conjure.’

  ‘Up yours!’ screamed Rita, and swung the axe at the tentacle, severing it. The rotten food bucked and screamed, the tentacle thrashing, spraying the room with viscous black blood.

  ‘Naughty,’ said Mr. Cotton. ‘You shall be punished.’

  But Rita wasn’t listening. As she struck the tentacle, she did not just sever the limb that was pulling her towards a horrific death, no: she connected to the magic.

  To the nightmare power of Mr. Cotton, of Mr. Spike, of their horror house.

  She felt it coursing through the axe.

  It was just like with Mister Nolan, the gropey ex-teacher. The axe had connected to something Uncanny and was giving Rita access to its magic. Letting her understand it. Sense it. Control it.

  She raised the axe in wonder, its head raging with sorcery, black and purple and deep red coiling around and through.

  Mr. Cotton was rushing towards her, but she had nothing to fear. She felt the dark magic embolden her as she turned from him and struck out at the tables, at the rotting food, and made a demand.

  Tentacles burst from the gross mass and rushed at Mr. Cotton, gripping his ankles, his wrists, his neck.

  ‘You are a very bad house guest,’ said Mr. Cotton, and then the tentacles tore him into pieces and pulled the wiggling bits into the disgusting mass of food and out of sight.

  ‘Ha!’ said Rita, staring gleefully at the axe. She turned to see Mr. Spike, his shoulders heaving, for the first time seemingly unsure about what to do.

  ‘That’s right, mate, think twice before rushing this bad-ass bitch!’

  She felt elated, but not enough to get cocky. She had taken Mr. Cotton by surprise, but now Mr. Spike knew what she could do, it might not be the smartest thing to rush him. No, the best course of action was still to escape this place, but the portal was still all the way upstairs, and, furthermore, past Mr. Spike.

  But then Mr. Cotton and Mr. Spike had control over this house. Over this dreamscape. Could create exit points. And Rita had access to that power. To instinctively understand it.

  She swung the axe and buried the head into the floor, soaking up the Uncanny that made up the nightmare abode.

  ‘Somewhere safe,’ said Rita.

  Rita looked down at the axe in her hands, to the blade that glowed fiercely, every colour imaginable strobing and coiling around it.

  The colours of magic.

  ‘Somewhere safe,’ she said again, and then pulled the axe head from the floor and swung it until it connected with the fabric of the nightmare place’s reality, and sliced open a gap. A way out.

  Senses sharp, she heard ragged, angry breath and whirled around in time to see Mr. Spike, his hedgehog mask twisted into a furious snarl, his gloved hands reaching for her. Without thinking, the axe found its new target, sinking into Mr. Spike’s head.

  A sound like twisting metal erupted from Mr. Spike’s mask as his body spasmed, and for a few seconds, Rita felt herself connected to his magic. Dark, horrible magic that soaked into the axe. Became part of it, ready to be unleashed.

  She pulled the axe free, and Mr. Spike fell to the floor, his body exploding into a hundred screeching, writhing rats.

  ‘Well that was… unexpected,’ said Rita, as the rats scurried in every direction but hers.

  Rita threw Carlisle’s lifeless arm over her shoulder and dragged him to the exit she’d created in the room, her body crying out with pain as she bore his weight. She stumbled through the exit point in the dreamscape and fell to the floor beyond. As she collapsed to the ground, Rita rolled on to her back and found the exit point was already gone.

  She’d done it.

  She’d made it out.

  She sagged back, the laughter of disbelief pouring out of her.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, is it? How’s the case going, eh?’

  Rita saw Formby, the ancient eaves, stood over her. She was back in Big Pins.

  ‘Help me,’ said Rita. ‘Carlisle’s dead.’

  22

  Waterson pulled to a stop on Blackpool’s seafront and looked out at the water beyond the beach.

  Watching the waves rush in and out always soothed him. Took his mind off his problems, at least as long as he just followed the water, like a metronome, in and out, steady as she goes, lulling him, calming him down.

  Today it wasn’t working.

  He got out of his car and walked closer to the water, listening to the waves washing in and out, trying to force his mind to empty itself, just for a minute or two.

  No good.

  Maybe it was the pressure of the job finally overwhelming him. His mum had always been worried about him going into such a dangerous job. Into a job with such heavy expectations, mixing with the worst of the worst. He’d dismissed it though, he’d always known he was meant to be a copper, ever since he was five and had became obsessed with old black and white Sherlock Holmes films. The ones with Basil Rathbone.

  Okay, he might not exactly be a modern day Holmes, but he was good at his job. Most of the time, anyway. And he felt good about the difference he was able to make to this place, his home town, but now…

  The case was unusual for the area. Three women kidnapped, three women connected by age, by school, by… something else. Rabbit ears. Waterson shook his head and looked out to sea once again.

  Out to sea.

  Well, that hit the nail on the head. The case was unusual for sure, but it wasn’t just the specifics of the case.

  It wasn’t just the mysterious rescue of the third abductee, who couldn’t remember who had deposited her, unconscious, into a wheelchair in Blackpool Hospital. Someone who no one in the busy reception area had seen. Someone who wasn’t picked up on the CCTV at all. No, one moment Gemma Wheeler wasn’t present, then there was a momentary burst of static, and there she was, slumped in a wheelchair. Ta-da! A magic trick, minus the magician. Sure, that part of the whole thing was seriously off, and Waterson had no idea how to process it, how to account for it at all.

  But then there was the other thing.

  The forgotten thing.

  The thing that churned his stomach and made the day feel like a foggy dream.

  Waterson turned from the sea, frustrated, and looked over to the noise and riot of lights across the road. Archer’s Old Arcade. The last place Gemma Wheeler remembered before waking up in a hospital room. Not that she remembered much, or why it was or wasn’t significant. All she knew was that, at some point, she was there. She had the image of the machines, the claw games, the lights streaked across her mind’s eye, like she’d rushed through, semi-conscious, her slurred memory taking an indistinct snapshot.

  Or perhaps it meant nothing at all. A trick of a trauma
tised brain.

  Well, it was all he had to go on. Gemma Wheeler had given them nothing else that he could try to gain a toehold in.

  Waterson sighed and ran across the road towards the arcade, skipping past oncoming traffic, an angry food delivery driver honking the horn of their moped as they swerved past.

  Of course, officers had already been here to question staff, managers, frequent visitors, anyone who spent more time than they should hanging out in the place. They brandished pictures of Gemma Wheeler and were greeted with head-shaking and shoulder shrugs. No one had seen her in the place. That did not mean, of course, that she hadn’t been there. A lot of people crowded into that arcade on a daily basis, and no one was taking in faces – they were focused on screens, on grasping claws, on penny shove machines. Easy for someone to pass in and out unnoticed.

  They’d searched the place, Waterson included, and found nothing. So why was he back?

  Because the hairs on the back of his neck insisted he’d missed something. He liked to think he had good instincts as a cop, it was one of the things that gave him such a solid arrest record.

  He’d missed something. They all had. But what? And would he recognise it even if he saw it?

  He weaved slowly around the floor of Archer’s Old Arcade, letting his eyes drift over every person, every machine, every surface, waiting for something to leap out at him.

  He stopped by a claw machine. A young girl, no older than seven or eight, long blonde hair in bunches, tongue sticking out, was studiously maneuvering the grasping, metal claw over a pile of plush toys. These things were always rigged. It was almost impossible to win. The claw never closed enough for whatever toy it grabbed to make it all the way to the exit chute.

  Down went the claw and the metal fingers closed, just enough to raise one of the soft toys away from the others. It just cleared the rest of the toys, swung back and forth, then tumbled out of the claw’s grasp. The girl stomped her foot then fed another coin into the hungry machine. Out went the claw again, the girl steering its progress with the small joystick. Left, then right, then back, then the girl smacked the red button and the claw plunged again into the abundance of toys, grasping one, pulling it up into view.