Short Story – Spring-Heel’d Jack

April 1838 – The Devil’s Tavern Public House, Wapping, London.

Two men sit in the corner of the crowded tavern, one of the oldest in London. The fug of tobacco smoke and working men’s sweat perfumed the air, overlaying the malty aroma of spilled beer and the foul tang of the Thames wafting in from the waterfront below the Pelican Stairs. One man is well put together, somewhat out of place in a crowd of seamen, dockworkers and labourers. His dark frockcoat displays the trimness of his figure in a way that suggested he is overly enamoured of the fashion plates.

His companion had once been equally well attired, but the front of his teal vest and darker blue frockcoat have recently experienced a collision with the dirty ground. The man’s sandy hair is dishevelled, his hat a casualty of whatever tragedy has befallen him and his boots are alarmingly scuffed. His cheeks are ruddy with exertion. His looks portray the wildness of a spooked animal. His eyes dart from side to side, the whites clearly visible.

The first man spoke, his manner brisk, but with a hint of true concern lurking in the timbre of his words. ‘Jim, what’s all this about? Are you quite well? You look shaken.’

‘Stanley,’ the second man’s utterance is an exclamation released on a rush of breath that looses from his lungs in a stream of speech, ‘I’ve seen him. Our Jack. He’s real. Millbank is not our man. Spring Heeled Jack is no man at all. He’s a devil, sure as I’m sitting here now. By God, but I need a drink.’

Stanley Hopgood has known Jim Brite since their schoolboy days. They have worked many a year for old Thomas Barnes at The Times. Jim’s behaviour is alarming. ‘You’re shaking, man. Slow down. Tell me what this is all about. Where have you been? You have mud on your coat and you stink of the Thames. Have you been out with the mudlarks?’

‘I’ve been running for my life, is what. Never you mind the larks,’ growls Jim. ‘Now buy me a drink and let me tell you my tale.’

This at least, is more familiar ground. Stanley relaxes. He is wrong to do so. But all lessons must be learnt at their proper time. ‘I fear I see the shape of this jape,’ smiles Stanley. ‘I’ll shout you a dram this once because you look such a state. But only one, mind. I’m on to your game.’

‘No game, Stanley.’ Jim is insistent. He has had a remarkable experience. One he will not soon forget, even as the trivial details begin to fade at the edges, subsumed by the terror that still makes his heart beat at double time. ‘What I have to tell you is God’s honest truth, I’ll swear to it. I’ve seen Spring Heeled Jack with my own eyes. Right on Cannon Street Road. He leapt higher than I am tall and scampered up a wall, cackling all the way across the warehouse roof.’

‘What did he look like?’ A note of boredom slips into Stanley’s tone. He and Jim have been chasing stories of the infamous Spring Heeled Jack since the turn of the new year and the Lord Mayor’s public session.

A newspaperman’s heart is a hardened organ at the best of times, but after running around the villages surrounding old London Town from Clapham Common to Limehouse and Kensington to Ealing and back south again, his appetite for tales of red-eyed devils has dwindled. His hawkish mind seeks a new angle. Not another penny dreadful fright, but a real scandal. Meat to add to Spring Heeled Jack’s demonic bones. Hope is, paradoxically, the constant companion of the newspaperman on the hunt for a new angle on an old story, but Stanley has little faith in Jim substantiating it.

‘A horror,’ says Jim, predictably. ‘A terror of flame and spite. His eyes were red balls of fire. His breath fouler than the winds of hell.’ Jim stinks of gutter filth and fear – and perhaps a faint whiff of brimstone – but the whiskey on his breath comes from the glass in his hand. He does not look like a man who has been to the dens in Limehouse either, which means he is in earnest when he repeats back to Stanley the same hoary tale that Mary Stevens, Jane Alsop and Lucy Scales have told before. 

Stanley’s patience for old news has never been great. Irritably he asks, ‘Do I need to get the smelling salts? Should I call for a doctor? These hysterics are hardly fitting for a newspaperman.’

Jim has had years to grow inured to the less pleasant aspects of Stanley’s character, of which a sharp tongue is but one. He skewers his friend with a hard stare. ‘Mock me if you want, but you’d be laughing out the other side of your face had you seen him.’ Compelled to honesty, Jim shook his head, wonderingly. ‘I have never known such fright and I’m not ashamed to say as much. I thought my time had come.’

‘What happened?’ Stanley demanded for the second of time of asking. ‘You know old man Barnes will want more than the usual fiend from hell story. The penny dreadfuls have been full of that tosh for weeks.’ Stanley’s mind is on column inches. The craggy face of his editor fixed forefront in his thoughts. The Times is a respectable newspaper with a growing readership, which means that while his editor is more than willing devout time and page space to tales of fiendish menace, he wants a certain decorum to be maintained in the doing. An illusion of genuine investigative inquiry almost as ludicrous as Spring Heeled Jack himself must be upheld at all times. A newspaperman losing his wits will not please old Tom Barnes, who has been at this game longer than Stanley has walked this Earth.

Stanley has thought more than once that Jim, with his enthusiasm and tendency to be taken in by the tearful hysterics of housemaids, might be better suited to Figaro in London or the dreaded Satirist, the readership of which demand a steady diet of salacious scandal, the veracity of which is purely optional. Of course, Stanley’s feeling on the matter could hardly be called unbiased. Neither the Figaro nor the Satirist had been willing to carry his articles.

Jim slammed his empty glass down on the table. ‘Careful there, don’t drink so fast,’ Stanley warned his friend, adding absently, ‘I shalt buy you another.’

‘Forget Barnes, forget the bloody Times,’ Jim admonished, voice rising in pitch and volume. ‘I’ve seen something I can scarce explain. You’ll not convince me this is the Mad Marquess’ doing,’ he said angrily. ‘Let ruddy Lord Henry paint Melton red if the drunken fool wishes, but this is no hoax. I have seen a man breathe fire.’

‘As have I, in many a travelling circus. You are in a state, my friend,’ soothed Stanley, ‘You need to calm down. You may not care for your livelihood, but I do. I’d like to beat the Thunderer at his own game. Discovering Spring Heeled Jack’s identity could make our reputations.’

The Times had been doing well of late. In both readership and esteem, but unfortunately for Stanley, despite giving the publication four years of his labours, that success had very little to do with him or Jim. There were newspapermen making names for themselves in town, but Stanley wasn’t one of them.

‘I’ve told you who Jack is,’ said Jim, becoming mulish. ‘He is the very devil.’

‘The very devil is cavorting around Wapping? I don’t believe it,’ Stanley snapped. ‘One assumes the Prince of Hell has better things to do with his time. My money is on Beresford. The man is a clear maniac and the Norwegian’s should have done for him last summer. He likely as not has paid a new man to perform his cruel joke after Millbank was caught.’

‘And acquitted. Millbank does not breathe fire.’

‘Not in Lambeth Street dock, no. The man has a modicum of sense. Which is more than can be said for the witness. That Alsop girl is clearly addled in her wits. She should not have been allowed to testify.’

‘She was the only witness, and I am telling you, Jack breathes fire, just as she said.’

‘Did he tear at you with his metal claws, too? I see a rip in your coat sleeve.’

‘You’ve all the heart of the devil, himself, Stanley. How long have we been friends? Would it kill you to show some care?’ Jim complained.

‘Would it kill you to show some backbone?’ retorted Stanley. ‘We need a story, not the gibbering of another hysteric. Our readers are sick of stories of red-eyed monsters lurking in alleys,’ he lied. ‘They want something more than fire and brimstone. What was Jack wearing? How tall a man is he? Did he speak to you?’

‘He wore a great coat, as the witnesses have said, and his face was hard to see. The smoulder from his eyes drew me in like mesmerism. All I could see was the burn. It scorched my soul. Held my wits to ransom. Hang it, but I can scarce remember anything save my own terror,’ Jim admitted, averting his eyes and hanging his head.

Stanley shook his head in reproach. ‘You are a terrible newspaperman.’

‘And you are a terrible friend,’ Jim fired back, regaining his spirit. ‘Our man was of average height and build, I think. He wore riding boots; I remember that much. Nothing whatsoever unusual about them. But the way he moved, it was like something out of the jungle deep. More beast than man. He vaulted a wall with one leap and had scaled the side of the building in less time than it takes to tell it. What man could do that?’

‘A circus man.’

‘You are fixated.’

‘And you are overwrought. Go on.’

‘There is little else to say. He wore no topper and if he had hair, I cannot recall its colour. His trousers were light. His coat dark.’

‘Cravat?’

‘Could not see one. Nor collar, but as I have said, his eyes exerted such power over me they are still all I can remember with any clarity.’

‘Red burning eyes.’

‘Like coals.’

‘What did he do, aside from astound you with his acrobatics?’

‘Nothing. Our man does not have a taste for gentlemen. Had he claws, he kept them to himself.’

‘You are telling me, a man in riding boots and open collar simply breathed fire on the Cannon Street Road?’ His frustration cresting, Stanley itched for his pipe, but he’d left it behind at his lodgings when Jim had summoned him to Wapping, of all places.

‘Your scepticism credits neither of us, Stanley,’ Jim chastised him. He cleared his throat, taking on the tone and cadence of a storyteller, no doubt trialling his words aloud before he later put pen to paper. ‘I spied the villain loitering by the mouth of a cut between two walled store houses. He did not have quite the look of a dockworker about him, but nor was he a labourer – and his deshabille was too gauche for any gentleman. I was drawn to the strange fellow from the off. He did nothing untoward until I was almost before him. Then he turned about to face me directly. In a heartbeat I was pierced by his hideous gaze. It was then he sent a great breath of fire straight toward me.’

‘He seems to have singed your eyebrows,’ Stanley remarked drily, finishing off his drink.

Jim’s remaining brows crashed together in an ominous bunch. ‘You are not amusing, Stanley.’ He cleared his throat and continued, ‘I dropped to the ground immediately, fearing for my life. The filth is from the gutter I landed in.’

‘Charming.’

‘This is news, Stanley,’ Jim pressed. ‘Thomas Millbank is innocent. He did not attack Jane Alsop. He couldn’t have. The bounder is human and Jack is not.’

‘Jack is a clever actor. This is all circus pageantry performed without scruple. Nothing more,’ Stanley insisted.

Jim shook his head at him. ‘You are a cold fish. After all these months. The attacks. The sightings. You still believe Spring Heeled Jack is nothing more than a hoax?’

‘I do.’

Jim’s smile was not the kindest, a hint of anticipatory smugness thrumming through it. ‘Then, my old friend, you must prove it. Find the terror of London for yourself and unmask him if you can.’ Jim saluted him with his empty glass, ‘I wish you good hunting.’

Stanley’s hunting had not been good so far. He had been on a trajectory of failure this January when serendipity saw him covering the public session at the Mansion House. Sir John Cowan, Lord Mayor of London, and an old friend of Stanley’s father, presided over proceedings in his usual droll manner, barely giving credence to the letter he read out from a concerned “resident of Peckham.” But Stanley had scented a story, especially when a gentleman in the meeting had taken it upon himself to corroborate the story that certain individuals of the highest rank had taken it upon themselves to pay some far lowlier soul to maraud the villages near London in the guise of a bear, a ghost and a devil to terrorise the good citizens.

‘It is preposterous, of course,’ said Sir John. ‘These missives arrive from time to time. Nothing more than nonsense. A prank on my time.’

‘I have heard a story about a serving girl attacked by a fiend on Clapham Common this last October,’ Stanley told him. ‘Her attacker was said to be demonic in appearance and attributes, capable of feats of astounding strength. There is also the account of the carriage driver who overturned not too far from the site of the attack. He said a man leapt in front of him, startling the horses, and then vaulted a wall nine feet high, escaping in one bound.’

‘Balderdash.’

More than likely. But balderdash sold papers. Stanley wrote the article on the 9^th January and by the next day the nationals had run with it. He liked to think that the public’s current interest in “Spring Heeled Jack” was very much his doing. Even if he could not take credit for the name. If only he could unmask the villain. Now that would be a story. One that would cement his reputation in the public mind. His profession, and the fact that he had a trade, made the ton inaccessible to Stanley, but should he reveal the fraud behind London’s great terror, he would gain invite to the best soirees, and rub shoulders with the highest in rank. His list of contacts would grow and bloody Barnes would have little choice but to elevate him to the political beat.  

Spring Heeled Jack proved a bounder in more ways than one, thwarting his ambition at every turn. It did not take long for stories to erupt across London and her environs of a prancing, menacing, fiend with a taste for molesting young girls, savaging their clothes and giving them such a fright, many were left in fits for days after.

Such fits were hardly conducive to a good interview alas. But there were many individuals, adjacent to crime and its victim, who were happy to tell their stories. Stanley lent his ear to one and all, well aware that beggars could not be choosers.

‘His laugh will chill your bones to the marrow.’

‘A man bounded right over my carriage. I heard him laughing all the way to Vauxhall.’

‘His eyes are like fire. His breath stinks of sulphur.’

‘He had claws, he did. Shap as a barber’s razor. He had a reek of brimstone about him.’

‘His boots must be spring loaded. No man can leap like he does. Cleared that wall over there in one bound.’

‘Horns on his head, a devil’s horns. And a curling tail, with a spaded end.’

Slowly a consistent story emerged. An inhuman man with strength and agility enough to leap clear over carriages and high walls. A laughing imp who attacked young girls, delighting in their fear until they screamed and he cowardly ran away. In some stories the monster forced unwanted kisses on the unlucky victim. In others he slashed and tore at their clothes. Yet, the one thing that alluded Stanley was any clue to the true identity of the villain.

A gentleman of Stanley’s scant acquaintance, a client of his father’s accountancy firm, summoned Stanley to his club in late January, as the ton went mad for tales of Jack. Over cigars and good brandy, Sir Reginald Forstein slowly divulged the first truly exciting titbit to the story.

‘I’ve seen your byline in the Times, writing about that tedious Spring Heeled Jack nonsense. I had words with your father about the matter. You shouldn’t waste your time on the japery of that buffoon, Beresford.’ Sir Reginald reclined in the high-backed armchair at the back of the billiards room, swilling a glass of brandy. A rotund man, straining against the confines of his waistcoat, Sir Reginald’s cravat was dusted with crumbs. He smelled like the insides of a steak and ale pie.

Ignoring the unpleasant aroma of wealth that did not care for cleanliness, Stanley sat forward on the edge of his own chair. ‘Lord Henry Beresford, Marquess of Waterford?’ he asked eagerly.

There were few in the trade who had not heard of Lord Henry. His exploits had sold many a copy of the Satirist and Figaro, the Marquess’s palpable guilt saving Barnard Gregory yet another lawsuit for libel when the Satirist printed the details of Lord Henry’s mishap in Bergen with a girl, a pleasure cruise turned rancorous and tap on the head from a Norwegian guard’s nightstick in full, salacious detail. Waterford had escaped prison for that one, but everyone knew about his rampage through Melton Mowbray in the spring of ’37. His act of wanton destruction to the toll booth, the guard house, Melton’s high street and Bridewell Prison made him a very attractive candidate for Spring Heeled Jack.

‘Who else?’ scoffed Sir Reginald. ‘Brunswick isn’t part of this. He’s still hung up on his chess.’

Stanley had been tantalised, dazzled by the prospect of exposing one of the ton as a common villain, a man who would pay other men to terrorise innocent, young women for sport. But he was no Barnard Gregory to cheerfully accuse a man of good breeding of such a thing, and old Barnes refused to print the allegation. The Times was a respectable publication, after all.

On February 19^th, a young woman, Jane Alsop, was all but abducted from her father’s doorstep by a man pretending to be an officer of the law. The man had enticed young Jane into the lane with a request for light and a story that he and others had caught Spring Heeled Jack. When the foolish girl had ventured out into the dark with only a candle to guard her, the man had set upon her. Throwing off his great coat, he had presented such a hideous and frightful appearance, Miss Alsop had been rendered as incapable of remembering the details as Jim. The man had breathed blue-white fire from his mouth and torn at her clothes with metal claws. Screaming and running for home, Miss Alsop had been saved from Jack’s embrace by her sisters. Or so she had claimed.

‘It was awful,’ said the girl, bundled up in linen and lace like a swaddled babe, lying prone on a daybed in the parlour, her hair prettily arranged in a manner dear Ophelia would admire. She was attended by her sister and her dear mama. The centre of a great deal of attention, Miss Jane Alsop had conducted the interview in the manner of one born for the stage, for shame. ‘His eyes were balls of fire,’ she insisted. ‘He wore white oilskin. His hands were cold and clammy as if those of a corpse.’

Stanley had pressed for details. Did the man speak? Did he have an accent? ‘No. He just breathed fire.’

‘Did he burn you?’

‘No.’

‘Cut you?’

‘My clothes.’

‘But not your flesh?’

‘No.’

‘Do you still have the clothes you were wearing?’

‘No. Mama burned them. They were ungodly soiled by the touch of that devil.’

A most disagreeable witness. She had swooned three times in the span of a half hour. Twice when her mama’s needling inquiries into his person revealed that Stanley was unmarried, his father was Samuel Hopgood, of Hopgood, Braithwaite and Lyle, and Stanley could expect to inherit a rather fine house in Paddington, upon the advent of his father’s death. He had left the Alsop abode entirely unconvinced of Miss Alsop’s story in its entirety.

His excitement had grown, however, when a man was arrested for claiming to be Spring Heeled Jack. Confessions made in taverns were never to be taken on face value, but Thomas Millbank had worn white overalls and a great coat. Stanley had attended the trial, hopeful for an exclusive interview after the man was convicted. Jane Alsop’s ludicrous claims had destroyed the case against Millbank, who had refused to speak after.

‘But you confessed.’

‘I was drunk, weren’t I? Can’t be held accountable for what I said.’

‘Your clothes conformed to the description the witness provided.’

‘And she’s the one that said I didn’t do it. Leave off, already. I ain’t your man.’

In mid-April, Barnes sent Stanley to Sussex. Spring Heeled Jack had decided to take a sojourn to the coast to terrorise a gardener in Rosehill. Stanley viewed the assignment as a punishment. The Alsop’s had made a formal complaint about his behaviour to his editor when Stanley had refused Mrs. Alsop’s dinner invitation. For the fifth time.

The old man he met in bucolic Sussex had clearly breathed in too much country air. Not only was his story preposterous in the extreme, it was also immediately apparent his attacker was not Jack.

‘A bear attacked you in the garden?’

The old man nodded, his vaguely pointed skull emerging from a balding circle tonsure of white hair, much as a mountain rises from cloud banks. ‘It was a fearsome beast and raced across that wall on all four feet.’

‘Did the beast breath fire?’

‘What? No. It chased me around the potting shed and right up the garden path.’

‘Did it slash you with steel claws?’

‘No, it scarpered up that wall and away.’

‘A bear walked along that wall? It’s barely four inches across.’

‘It was a small but nimble bear.’

‘Or a cat.’

‘It growled at me, it did.’

‘The Times thanks you for your time, sir.’

Was it not for the newspaperman’s undying hope and the public’s thirst for tales of devilry, Stanley would be glad to be shot of the story. He left the Devil’s Tavern in a lather. His bearing that of a man who would be trouble. The cutthroats and whores loitering outside the waterfront taverns lining the tidal curve of the Thames stayed out of his way.

Wapping had become a world apart as the London Docks rose around the old waterside, clearing away entire neighbourhoods and the gibbet where Captain Kidd had once swung, but leaving behind the flotsam of humanity, shoved together in increasingly tight confines as modernity closed in on all sides. Stanley drew his coat snugly around his shoulders and set them to his path. Passing a set of old, worn waterman’s stairs, a spark of luminous caught Stanley’s eye. A flash of red from the shoreline. Stanley stopped. The shoreline was cast in darkness, the soft hush of the tide caressing pebble beach a whisper in his ears.

‘I say, is there anyone down there?’

Two small points of red, standing at head height gleamed back at him steadily. Transfixed, Stanley moved to the stairs. His right foot hovered over the second step when he heard a faint chuckle – it had something of the tenor of a cackle. Stanley froze and then swiftly drew back. He dared a swift glance behind him to make sure no man with a cosh lurked at his back before retreating from the stair. He would not be lured in by murderous mudlarks.

Stanley turned away, moving off swiftly in the direction of Ratcliff Highway. A whoosh of sound and heat spun him about again. The darkness smoked, a foul-smelling haze hanging in the air.  ‘Who is there,’ demanded Stanley.

A cackle answered him, coming from the sloped roof of the dilapidated inn beside the stairs, but when Stanley looked, he saw nothing but the dark night sky. Stanley quickened his pace, the hairs on the back of his neck on end. He felt that he was being watched, the victim of some prank perpetrated by the reprobates who loitered in Wapping after dark. Or perhaps by Jim, angered by Stanley’s lack of sympathy and looking to give him a scare.

He was crossing in the shadow of one of the newer warehouses, its high, solid brick wall rising straight and keen high above him, when he heard the scrabble of metal on brick. A horrendous sound, at once alien and unmistakable. Stanley stepped into the gutter, shielding his eyes to look up. There. For but a moment he thought he spied a dark figure, silhouetted against the darker light, hunched on a high wall above him. Crouched like a gargoyle, its eyes were lurid red. It leapt clear of the wall and vanished down to the other side in the time it took Stanley to make sense of what he’d seen.

‘You there,’ he shouted. ‘Spring Heeled Jack! Show yourself this instant.’

The crash of shattered glass spun Stanley on his heels to face the street. A sailor staggered away from the wall of a building, bent double with drink and tripping over his own feet. He vomited into the gutter. Stanley started walking. Wapping was hardly a safe place for a man of reasonable birth to loiter at this time. There were more here than phantoms to tangle him in the rigs and the reels.

Ratcliff Highway was a road lined with vice. Brothels were strung like pearls along the street, mixed with taverns, shady dens and flop houses ready to entice seamen on shore leave to part with coin, virtue and health alike. Stanley would normally abhor such places – this was more Jim’s scene than his – but he could not deny the sense of relief he felt to see the lights of the highway ahead of him.

Cackling rattled the air. Stanley pivoted on his heels, throwing up his arm to ward off a darker shadow as it leapt from the high, imposing wall surrounding the Tobacco Docks and sailed clear over Stanley’s head. He heard the thud of strong boots hitting the road and dropped his arm, wheeling to face his quarry. A gout of frosted flame melted the air, racing toward him. Stanley dropped to the gutter. Cackling, like the bitter crunch of thin glass, rang in his ears. Sharp, shallow lines of pain tore across his back. He heard ripping as his coat, waistcoat and shirt were torn.

Stanley rolled away, his back stitched with pain. He scrambled to his feet and saw a figure bound across the road ahead of him, the paleness of his trousers contrasting with the dark flare of his great coat. The man turned sharply at the mouth of a narrow alley between a lumber yard and sunk roofed old building, whose bricked up windows peered out at the street like blind eyes. Stanley saw the gleam of red eyes wink at him before another gout of hellish flame ignited the air.

Seized by the madness of obsession, which did away with the distraction of fear, Stanley gave chase. Cackling madly, Spring Heeled Jack cavorted down the alley, spider walking, with one foot braced on either side of the narrow passage, he powered his way ahead with the use of his arms. A figure at once thin and spindly, yet tall like a length of twine, Spring Heeled Jack moved with impossible grace, easily outpacing Stanley.

‘Stop!’ Stanley shouted as his prey burst from the alley onto the street and capered away over the wall on the other side of the narrow old lane. He tore his palms on scattered glass left atop the wall to deter burglars and ripped holes in the knees of his trousers, scrambling over the wall after Jack.

In the dark, Spring Heeled Jack’s laughter acted as his guide. Stanley smelled the river long before he saw the serpentine dark bend of the Thames lit by the fractured light of gas lamps and hanging lanterns along the opposite bank. Stanley near plummeted to the bottom of the waterman’s stairs, stumbling and scraping his abused knees over the pebbles of the beach.

‘Come back here, madman. I will catch you!’ Hollering like a man better suited to Bedlam, Stanley flew across the uneven ground, chasing the haunting echo of Spring Heeled Jack’s laughter. The foul tang of the Thames filled his nose, carrying its own aroma of hell.

Close to the shoreline, Jack stopped. He turned to face Stanley. His face in darkness, the blaze of his inhuman eyes the only feature Stanley could make out. Even at rest, nothing about Spring Heeled Jack was still. His coat seemed to swirl about his legs, which were strong and thick thighed, his breeches tight. His coat swaddled his frame, and it seemed to Stanley as he approached that Jack had something of the posture of a hunchback. His shoulders sloped forward, rounding his frame and giving the impression that his arms were longer than they ought be. His twitching fingers glinted metallic in the questionable light.

Stanley stopped several feet away, wary of the man’s combustible breath. ‘I have caught you,’ he wheezed, his own breath escaping him in bellow’s bursts of air. ‘You can’t leap from one bank of the Thames to the other, I wager.’ Boldly, Stanley ordered, ‘Tell me your name.’

‘I am Jack.’ The fiend’s voice was hoarse, roughened as if by coalsmoke, but without doubt, that of a man. All the same, rafts of smoke escaped him with each exhale, as if he had clenched between his teeth and invisible pipe. The air between swiftly became polluted by the reek of hellfire.

‘What is your true name?’ Stanley demanded. He would not be diverted by cheap theatrics at this late stage of the hunt.  

‘I am Spring Heeled Jack,’ said Jack. ‘I am so named, thus that is what I am.’ Through the smoke that writhed around him, Jack’s eyes glowed like banked coals. ‘You have served me well, Stanley Hopgood. But you do not hop as good as me.’ He cackled.

Stanley was unimpressed. ‘Who do you work for?’

‘None save my own amusement. I am Spring Heeled Jack.’

‘You are a man,’ Stanley argued. ‘A criminal terrorising young girls.’

‘I will take the terror of men as my due just as well,’ said Jack.

‘Why?’

‘Because I am Spring Heeled Jack: terror of London. So I am named, so I shall be.’ The red eyes blinked. ‘You have served me, Stanley Hopgood. You have spread my tale, fanned the embers I left in my wake and together we have created a legend. This is your reward, to stand before me now.’ Sparks glittered in the air as he breathed, falling toward the pebbles.

‘I want your name,’ Stanley repeated. ‘I want to know your face.’

‘You wish to unmake a legend?’ Spring Heeled Jack blinked. ‘That cannot be.’

‘I will expose you,’ said Stanley. He was not afraid. That was his mistake. His mind was full of fanciful notions, visions of futures ne’er to come. His name on front page bylines, his name spoken on the lips of the ton, his career stretching toward him, a glittering road of success and journalist exploit – until one day, he succeeded old man Barnes as editor of the Times. So dazzled was he by his own ambition he did not see Spring Heeled Jack make one huge leap, several feet into the air and clear over Stanley’s head to land at his back.

He did, however, feel the cold pressure of metal claws close around his neck. That he felt, clear and true. ‘A mystery is greater than a man, Stanley Hopgood,’ said Spring Heeled Jack. ‘A legend outlives all mortal men. Terror needs not a face to thrive. I am Spring Heeled Jack: terror of London – and I will be remembered long after the river swallows your burnt bones.’

Stanley opened his mouth to make riposte. It was the last thing he ever did. His words failed him in the end.

(All images used are Pixabay stock or free to use internet images except cover image (created by me on Canva))

Short Story – Collier Lads Forevermore

You that breathe the upper air don’t know this but what we have here is what us lads in the trade call a tight situation. Well, gentle sirs and ladies fair, in all honesty, the lads around me are calling it lot of other things, none of which I’d repeat to a minister, if you catch my meaning? And begging your pardon for the vulgarity. But the situation is a mite precarious. You see the Davy Lamp’s a-flickering blue but the blasted trapper’s only gone and jammed the trap, ain’t he? That’s us done for, most likely. Stuck in this shaft when the fire-damp burns us all up. Then its kingdom come and an appointment at the Pearly Gates.

How little you know, walking o’er my head, how we get on below. We are all here, trapped in the dark. The drawers, the cutters, and the blasted mule. Up the shaft a ways, I can hear the trapper bleating. He’d better not waste his breath on complaints or by God, my last act on this Earth shall be walloping the little blighter. One job he’s got. Open the trap for the loads and seal it up again while we work. The lad’s only gone and fouled it up. Samuel’s youngest, the nipper’s all of ten now and should be used to the pit ways.

Sam’s elder boys, Jim and Georgey, took to the life well. Least ways they did ‘til the Pit did for them last year. Explosion took my John, too. God rest his sweet soul. You’ve no mind for what our toil costs us, sirs. Your copper warming pan has my boy’s blood on it. Now Sam’s missus draws for us, though lord knows how long that’ll last with the way Sam clouts her about. She’s slow, he says, and I reckon rightly that he’s speaking truth, but she’ll get no faster after a knock to the noggin. 

I can tell you’re wondering about our situation. You’ll be wanting the specifics, I wager. Well, if you hadn’t clocked already, I reckon Sam and his boys and the missus will soon be a family altogether again. I’ll be seeing my John once the mine-damp’s blown through. It’s always hot as hell down here and black as the grave, but the Davy Lamp’s done its job. It warned us of the foul gasses massing, but that’s precious little use if we’re sealed away down here like the already dead.

A blast of air might dissipate the mass, like clearing out the shaft’s humours, if you will, but air we don’t have and the tiniest spark could spring the mine-fire on us.

Do me a favour, good sirs and gentlewomen, and think of our Sam and my John next you take your coffee from that shiny pot or set to asking the servants to polish that there brass candlestick. That shiny stuff came from some deep mine, much like this one. A miner does what he can, you see, to get you stuff for your tea kettle, your pots and your pans. Deep as the sea, the shiny was got by me and mine. Remember that next you take your repast. I dare say you’ll think no more of me elsewise.  

I worry about my Molly, I must confess. I forbid her to come down the pit, you see, and glad I am for that bit of foresight, but what’s to come of her and the girls when I’m gone? The pit’s done well for me, I’ll not lie. Twenty years of toil and before it all I had scant two clean shirts to call my own. Now we’ve a roof o’er head and food for the table. That’ll end not long ‘ere I’m gone. Sirs, you’d not countenance to see your pretty girls lining up for soup, but if I don’t work, they don’t eat and if I don’t live, well, let’s just say my prayers in this tight spot, ain’t for me.

Collier lads forevermore. If I had a penny now, I’d make a wish, and it wouldn’t be for another gill. Or perhaps it would. No sense in sobriety in this tight spot, one might say. There’s some lads here, the old heads who’ve breathed in the miasma of the pit a mite too long, who keep to working. Spark what may. Doing what they can, with might and skill, as the song tells it.

What difference does it make to us what we do, good sirs and gracious ladies? We’ll either live to breathe upper air or we’ll know paradise, sure enough. Me, I’d sooner take the rest for my aching back. The preacher’s say I’ll eat pie in the sky when I die, but me? I’d sooner make sure I’ve got some strength in case Heaven demands more of me than I can give.

One of the drawers has scuttled up the shaft to see what can be done. Though how she thinks she’ll get around the cart lodged there, I don’t know. Still, Ellie, she’s a sharp lass. Edward Scanlon’s girl. She took up the girdle when his heart gave out. Someone’s got to put food on the family’s table and her brother only went to war. You’ll forgive me for saying this, but what’s the use of dying to French musket fire if your sister’s left drawing for men like us?

Ellie might have made a good marriage, lived to see her hands go soft and smooth. Now she’s complaining she’s gone bald where her head knocks against the loads. But that’s the price the pit asks. Hauling’s not light work and the toil takes its toll. We’re working close to hell here. And don’t we know it.

Gert Scanlon will be in bind just like my Mol, ‘ere this is all over. No sons to pick up the slack. Gert’s health is not so good. She’ll not long last, I reckon. Begging your pardon for my frankness, but as a man about to die, I find my patience near its end. The newspapers will be all over another fire down here. They had a picture of the last emblazoned across the Gazette’s front page. Sam’s missus weren’t none too impressed when they got her boy’s names wrong. But that’s the way of the world, ain’t it? You that walk above only notice us below when the ground goes boom and shakes to all Heaven. You only care when the bodies come up instead of the shiny you want.

I was working during the last blow out. Down another shaft. Scarpered as soon as one of the trapper’s gave a warning yelp. We sealed up the deuced shaft as quick as we could. Them that were down there were already dead. The air turns to fire, you see. Like drowning in flame, it is. The fire-damp earns its name. Nasty stuff. You can’t smell it as everything stinks down here. We men sweat. We relieve ourselves as we must. Apologies to the ladies, I’m sorry for speaking coarse, but its true. If it weren’t for the Davy Lamp, the flame dancing high, its heart flickering blue, we’d have no warning at all that the air, what little there is, has turned on us.

The devil take young Sam Jnr. I’d grown to hope I might see forty. I had a dream of working my way up to overman one day. We all hate the overman we got, mind, but he gets five and sixpence just for riding up and down all day, and what man who works his muscles to wasting cutting don’t want that? I’ve given the best years of my life to the pit and, yes, gentle sirs and madams, she’s given me back a fair deal, it’s true, but I’ve a family to think of. I’d soon as not give the pit my life as well.

We’ve doused the lamps. We know what’s lurking in the dark with us. There’s no need to feed it. The air we breathe is rancid. If them up the shaft don’t get the trap open, we’ll all smother, fire-damp or no. Ah, but if I’d had another penny last week, I’d have saved it for my girls. Should I live, good sirs, kind ladies, hand on heart, with God my witness, I’ll go Temperance League and no word of a lie. I’ll put my pennies to use paying our way out of this life.

But, sirs, I’ll surely miss the lads. Collier lads forevermore. The dust gets in your veins, it speckles the skin, digging deeper than dirt; it turns a man’s heart to lead, to copper, or coal. The poison may change, but the truth does not. A collier is a collier and you that walk o’er our heads can’t know what it is to brave hard knocks to rend stubborn rocks. Or tempt the fate of a hellish roasting.

The mule is getting antsy. Things will go poorly if the creature bolts. We’re in a tight enough situation here, without the mule bucking. There’s not enough room to swing a cat and us lads are here with the mule, the cart, the chains and our picks, breathing in the air in lusty mouthfuls, as if we can swig it all down and starve the mine-fire out of it.

The Stinson lad is breathing too quick. He’s new to the mine and the dark’s yet to seep into his being. He don’t know our ways. He’ll swoon right out. I can hear the clank and slither of the cart chains, hooking on the ground, like the rattling of old ghosts. Is that you, John? Come home at last.

Somewhere above us is a cart, stuck halfway. The drawers won’t hold it up long. Today’s yield was a good one. The cart is heavy. That’s why we called for the mule to drag up the next one. When it drops, we’ll be crushed. Ah, sirs, an embarrassment of riches has befallen us poor collier lads. It seems death has come to us three ways: fire, suffocation or crushed by the weight of our labours. A very tight situation, you might say.

Interested in reading more of my weird and creepy stories? The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear a collection of ten horror-fantasy tales is available on Amazon

The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear – Extract

The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear is a collection of ten horror/urban fantasy stories available on Amazon. Below is an extract from the title story.

The Innocent Have Nothing to
Fear

On the way to Debenhams Department store Lorraine saw the billboard. The Innocent Have
Nothing To Fear it screamed all in bold black and white as the bus rounded the
corner into the terminal. Lorraine shivered and tried not to notice the
scrabbling sounds coming from her handbag as Manicure made herself comfortable.

You are entering a Zero Tolerance Zone, public notices warned her as she walked
through the shopping centre. Shoplifters will be prosecuted to the full extent
of the law, another sign in a shop window proclaimed proudly. Underneath the
warning the image of a hand, palm front and fingers slightly spread in the
universal halt sign blazed a haunting red. In the depths of her handbag
Manicure curled into a tight fist.

Tammy noticed that Lorraine had stopped dead in front of the sign.
‘You alright love?’ She asked reaching out to give her friend a quick
shoulder squeeze and trying not to notice that Lorraine felt like granite under
her hand. ‘Not to worry, eh?’ She persevered. ‘It’s just criminals, yeah? It’s
like the sign says. We’re innocent so we got nothing to worry about.’

On the way to Bianca’s Café for tea and cake both women tried to ignore the
handless beggar in the doorway of an abandoned shopfront.

Lorraine had never cared much for politics or current events so it was a bit
odd when she started religiously watching the news and following several online
commentaries about Zero Tolerance, the new initiative to improve British Values
(deliberate capitalisation. These were the sort of values that demanded
respect, not like your common garden variety decency).

‘We need to cut crime dead in the early stages,’ a spokeswoman said. ‘Crime
is an addiction. A sickness that takes the mind one small misdemeanour at a
time. It’s just a stone throw from shoplifting to rape.’

‘We’ve gone back to the Dark Ages,’ an anti-Zeroer on Newsnight shouted to
be heard over the audience booing. ‘What the government is doing is a Human
Rights violation. They are the real criminals we need to root out and expose.’

‘Turn that off would yer?’ Mark muttered. ‘I get enough of them bleeding heart
liberals at work. You know them protesters are using drones to drop red paint
on us now? Don’t know why the police don’t arrest ‘em. I’d sure like to see ‘em
in the chop room that’s for sure.’

Mark smirked but the smirk swiftly
died on his face when Lorraine swivelled
her head around to stare at him with dark ringed eyes. That was all she did.
Just bloody stared.

Read more in…. The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear Amazon

Short Story – The Night Storyteller

You heard of the Bleckker Estate? You must’ve done. Everyone knows it. Mind, not many talk about it, but that’s the Bleckker for you. It’s known. There’s a language of silence, see. A knowledge that transmits without words. You know the Bleckker. You know it the way you know when the creak on the stairs isn’t just the house settling or when you walk into an empty room that’s not so empty. Lizard brain stuff this is. Creeps and chills wisdom. You know the Bleckker. Everyone does.

Big ugly concrete tower block it is. Slab-like and ridged with these outer walkway’s that run on each floor like runnels of shadow. There’s this square patch of scrubland in front of it. Was meant to be a play park when there were plans to fling up more towers on the other three sides of the patch. But after Bleckker One went up no one dared build another. They knew, you see, even them hoity-toity architect types. They knew what they’d done and they ran from it.

Bleckker casts a long shadow. Bleeds them it does. The grass grows on the patch, certainly. It grows high enough to whisper in the shadows. Grows high enough to swallow the trollies and fridges tossed in there. It grows green and grey. It grows thistles and blackberries. Nasty, sour little bunches of berries that splat on the concrete siding like dollops of blood. The birds don’t eat them. The magpies and blackbirds fly right on passed. There was on owl once, someone told me. It didn’t last long.

I suppose you could call Bleckker an oasis. Sitting out there all on its own at the arse end of Creekstone Road. Just a tower and its green. Lots of space to spread its shadow. There’s no graffiti on the walls of Bleckker. And what with the grass hiding so much, it could almost be called tidy. Mind, you’d have to be pretty stupid to call Bleckker anything ‘cept evil. But it takes all sorts to make a world, don’t it?

You’re probably thinking, alright that’s all fine and spooky-like, excellent scene-setting and all that, but what’s actually going on there? Why get all het up about some Sixties tower block and an overgrown green, eh? There’s real problems happening in the world, you might say. Give us the tea or shut up already.

That’s fair. That is. No one’s making you listen to me. Evil comes in lots of different shapes and sizes. Some are flashier than others. But predation, see. That’s subtle. The predator needs to lie down with the lamb in this day and age. The parasite needs a certain symbiosis with its host to survive. For a while at least. What does symbiosis mean? Look it up. It’ll improve your mind. Where was I? Yes. I was talking about the subtle predator, nibbling at life’s edges, wasn’t I? Well, there was none better at people-nibbling than Mr. Armand. Him what lived – in a fashion – on the Bleckker’s thirteenth floor. Kept his curtains drawn during the day and only slunk out his door at night. Don’t know him? You will when I’m done. Trust me. The lizard brain knows when the hunter is near. Got a shiver, there? Well, it’s a cold, dark night.

Anyway. I’m not telling you about Mr. Armand, yet. He can wait his turn. They were all like him anyway. Them that lived on the Bleckker Estate. And those that weren’t were damned. You see, Bleckker’s a place for the damned. They don’t know it. The damned never do. That’s sort of the point. Lying down with the lion never works well for the lamb.

Anywhoo. You’re distracting me. I’m trying to explain something important. The thing you’ve got to understand about Bleckker is that there’s no understanding Bleckker. Bleckker’s an instinct. It’s a reaction. The shiver when someone walks over your grave. Bleckker’s the reason you throw a pinch of spilled salt over your shoulder. Bleckker’s the reminder that you don’t own the night.

You’re probably thinking Bleckker don’t sound like a good place to raise a family. You’d be right. But there were some that grew up there. The Bleckker kids. Well. There’s all sorts in a world, aren’t there, and some of them are monsters. Bleckker bred them. With twists in their brains and fey light in their eyes. You’ve probably seen the Bleckker kids ‘round town. They’re the ones you cross the street to avoid while trying to act like you wanted to do that anyway. I know what you’re thinking. You’re very transparent. You’re thinking, big deal, more anti-social yobbos. Whoop-de-do. You get them everywhere. Nothing special about that.

Well, no, there isn’t. But where are you getting the idea evil’s special? Evil’s a disease. It’s boredom gone toxic. It’s rage corkscrewed into despair and spat out as some oik gobbing in your face. But other times, it’s something else. Sometimes it’s the Bleckker kids. They’re all shadows; hollow spaces where hope and promise should be. Silhouette people who breathe entropy. The rot that eats society. Bleckker kids will eat your souls.

Think I’m making this up? Standing under a streetlamp watching the world go by, it’s easy to think you know what’s what. You don’t. You’ve forgotten what the old timers knew. You’ve forgotten who owns the night. It’s a lot, I know. Easy to get lost in it. That’s the point. That’s Bleckker’s thing. The creeping shadow throws you in shade. Blinds you. I’ll give you an example. Have you ever seen Lacy Annie?

She hangs out at the bus stop on the corner of Creekstone around midnight. If you’ve ever driven by, you’ll have seen her. I know you’re not the sort, because you’re still alive, but there are those that stop for her, if you know what I mean? Not a good idea. Lacy Annie? She’s one of the lost ones. Who knows where she was going, once. All I know was that one night, Mr. Armand found her. 

She’s missing a shoe, is our Annie. Her tights are laddered and not in an artful, pay-through-the-nose-for-the-distressed-look way. Her head hangs wrong, but her hairs still pretty. Blonde. Glows like phosphor in the dark. Some people think she’s goth because she wears a choker round her neck. She isn’t and that’s not jewellery. Get close enough and you’ll see. Bits of it flake and when she whips her head around to stare at you with her saucer eyes bright as streetlamps. Then you’ll understand why her head flops like that. Of course, then you’ll be dead. So, probably, you should just take my word for it.

Actually, I should have mentioned Lacy Annie when I was talking about people-nibbling at the estate. Sorry about that. Bleckker’s a black hole. A despair sink. Difficult to separate out all the ways it will suck you dry. 

So anyway, between Lacy Annie and the Bleckker kids, the estate started to get a reputation. Got bad enough that they sent a special constable over there. You know the sort; they wear a sash but aren’t real police. Or maybe they are? Who can tell these days. It’s not like you see police on the beat anymore. You know they don’t even come out for burglaries? Well, that’s probably because they keep losing all their constables in Bleckker’s long grass.

Figured you’d heard about that one. It made the news. Very flashy. Yeah. Without his head and missing his feet. Stuffed in an old fridge. ‘Course I know what happened. I know everything, don’t I? Be pointless telling you this stuff if I didn’t, wouldn’t? I mean, what kind of storyteller goes to this much trouble to be like “Oi, you know about Bleckker?” all mysterious and then doesn’t know anything himself?

What? No. I’m not going to tell you what happened to the special constable. Why? Because you don’t need to know. Some things gain power in the telling and the knowing will leave a hole in your spirit like a cigarette burn. Eat right through you, it will. Just take it from me, losing a head and a pair of feet was the least of what that poor sod had to fear before he died.

Right. Glad we got that settled. So, after the special constable them that are in charge – or think they are – took note. Things had all got a bit much, yeah? Certain people who like to think they know shadows decided that things needed sorting out. Questions were asked, answers demanded. Decisions made.

They started by rounding up the Bleckker kids. Well, how do you think it went? These are walking pits of soulless hunger. ‘Course it went badly. You hear about that children’s home, Greenacre? They sent two of the estate kids there. Yeah. Exactly. Best not to think too hard about it. I know. Like I said. Thinking about it lets the shadows in.

Lacy Annie. Well, they made a good fist of bringing her in. Still botched it badly, mind. But that weren’t all their fault and they did get her to the Crematorium in the end. Burning’s good. Burning works. They’d learn that in the end. But they made one fatal mistake. Them that decide wanted Bleckker dealt with all quiet and hush-hush.

Silly idea. You don’t fight silence with silence and you don’t fight shadows in the dark. Anyone with common sense knows that. Thing is though, you need uncommon sense to fight a shadow and them that have it, they learn to keep to the silence too. Survival reflex. There are them that will burn a witch to please a demon, after all.

So, what do you think they did then? You’re right. That’s exactly what the plonkers did. Went in mob handed, didn’t they? Stormed Bleckker. ‘Course, by that point there weren’t too many people living – and I use the term lightly –on the Bleckker Estate. There was Mr. Ashborn on the ground floor. You may not believe it, but he was almost normal. Ate a lot of rats, which did him no favours, and you don’t want to know what he painted his walls with, but honestly, he weren’t that bad.

You don’t want to know about Celia on the seventh floor. No, really, you don’t. There was a reason she was the only one living on that floor by the end of it all. I imagine it was hard to cope with all that shrieking and wailing. Still, she didn’t go easy. I heard the officers sent to round her up all went deaf. Ruptured eardrums. They were the lucky ones. She spoke to one poor soul. And she spoke true. Grief claimed that one. Dead by her own hand two days later.

Oh, now look. You made me go and talk about Celia, didn’t you? I said I wouldn’t too. Oh well. Celia wasn’t so bad. I’m definitely not telling you about Dave on floor eleven. He had a neighbour for dinner. Hadn’t quite finished by the time the squad charged in. Yes. Chew on that one. Probably should have mentioned him along with Mr. Armand and dear old Lacy Annie, shouldn’t I?

Floors ten and twelve were just sad. See, you got to have prey to have predators, don’t you? That’s how the ecosystem works. The squad didn’t find much trouble there. Didn’t find nothing left to save either. Poor little lambs.

Why am I jumping all about and not telling you everything floor to floor, you ask? Well, who are you to tell me how to tell my own story, eh? Truth is, I forgot what goings on they had on floor four. I know there was something grim. Oh, I remember! That was Philip’s floor. He didn’t have a flat number. Why? Well, strictly speaking he didn’t live in Bleckker. Ghosts don’t, you see. Still, I heard he hurled a fire extinguisher the length of the corridor and smashed the head of a takeaway deliveryman so, clearly, he was a bit territorial all the same. 

Oh, I know. I agree totally. You’d think a fraction of these stories should have raised an eyebrow before now, right? Murder. Cannibalism. Fly-tipping on the patch. Terrible stuff. But that was Bleckker’s magic, see. It kept things neat and contained and anyone drawn into its orbit was damned already. The rest just didn’t care to notice. Why? ‘Cause that’s what you do, isn’t it? In the dark you blind yourself with light. You listen with your ears, but you don’t hear your instincts screaming. Shivering again, mate? Not to worry. I’m sure it’s nothing but night chills.

Floor five had Gary. Gary was a bit much. Messy. Growled a lot. Didn’t like puddles and had awfully hairy hands. Prone to sudden violent outbursts. Especially when he had his teeth embedded in that bloke’s neck. Why didn’t I count Gary among the people-nibblers, you ask? Well, I’d hardly call him a nibbler, would you? More of a gobbler. A render. Tearer. Gnasher, even. Always hungry, our Gary. No surprise there. The squad was lucky with him. I heard they burned Gary right there on the patch. Stuffed him in a fridge and lit the whole thing up. Oh, how Celia screamed. They had a bit of a thing going on, see.

Anyway, that blaze was a precursor, you could say. An omen of things to come if that’s your fancy. But you’re not interested in omens, are you? If you were you’d have asked me about Audrey on the second floor. She liked dolls. Made them herself. You really don’t want to know what she used to stuff them. She could do things with a chicken that ran the gamut from the wondrous to the profane. Thank you, yes. Gamut is a fancy word. I’m cultured as well as all-knowing. I’m just slumming it this evening. Had a bit of bother at home. That’s why I’m here chatting with you.

Now where was I? Yes. Good old Audrey. She didn’t take much effort to take down but they had trouble with her after. Caused a lot of unexpected misfortune, did Audrey. Then she did a bunk when the armoured van taking her who-knows-where crashed into a tree after jumping two lanes of traffic. But that was Audrey in a nutshell. Stuff like that happened a lot when she was around. I suspect it still does. Misery migrates see, and sometimes a lone spark flies free of a fire. Evil’s right hard to catch, but real easy to spread.

But you’re not interested in the nature of evil, are you? You’ve had about enough of my lyrical waxing, I bet. You want me to talk about Mr. Armand, don’t you, now? You’re fiercely interested, am I right? I’ve whetted your appetite with these other tender morsels and now you’re all but salivating for the main course. What’s that? You think I’m going a bit heavy on the metaphors, do you? Well, never you mind. I just believe in being sporting, is all. You could consider this your final warning. Also, I’m getting thirsty. But no matter. We’ve reached the nub of the issue; the deepest darkness at Bleckker’s beating heart.

Mr. Armand’s thirteenth floor.

Now, Mr. Armand, he was one of the very first to move into the Bleckker Estate, back when the developer still had plans to build a happy little concrete community around the patch. If you’ve been paying attention this should tell you all you need to know about Mr. Armand, but as this is my story, I’m going to tell you more anyway.

Mr. Armand could be described as a reclusive gentleman, but still very much a gentlemen. He preferred the nightlife and did not fraternise with the neighbours. He preferred to bring company home with him. Like our Lacy Annie. Or Lovely Amita who lurked in the stairwell between the sixth and seventh floors. Or Pale Luke who was more of a drifter until he fell off the roof. There are some of the opinion that Philip was once a companion of Mr. Armand. For the record, he was not. Mr. Ashborn on the ground floor, however, was. That one was a bit of an embarrassment, honestly. Lacy Annie, Pale Luke and Lovely Amita? They had some class to their bloodless existence right ‘til the end. But there’s no class in eating rats, is there?

Anyway, the squad – what was left of it – all handpicked by those shadow draped decision makers who kept well back from the action – thought they were ready for Mr. Armand. They’d come in daylight. They had silver crucifixes, delicate Stars of David backed with millennia of faith, copies of the Qu’ran in handy dandy fanny packs and canteens of holy water. And of course, ash wood stakes. A lot of them, as it happened. Enough to build a fence. Or kill a vampire a good few times over. They were locked, stocked and ready to rumble, in other words.

They kicked in the door. They ripped down the blood red drapes. They knocked over the Ficus in the corner and found Lacy Annie’s missing shoe under the sofa. They picked the lock on the bedroom door. They trampled native earth into the carpet. They went about looting the wardrobe. One of Mr. Armand’s Italian leather loafers was shot for no discernible reason. Such a waste.

What was that? You detect a distinct shift in my diction, you say? I don’t quite sound myself, you say? Well, how would you know? I’ve yet to introduce myself. Still, well done to you. There’s some sharpness to you after all. It just so happens I’m a long way from my native lands. I’ve picked up a bit of lingo along the way. Helps me fit in. But where was I? Yes. The bedroom.

You need to understand, Mr. Armand’s bedroom was important. Even if it didn’t, in fact, have a bed in it. The room was Mr. Armand’s refuge from the harsh light of day. His inner sanctum. It was where he placed his coffin. I bet you can guess what those jack-booted sods did to that fine bit of craftmanship, can’t you? Too right they smashed it. And they threw the violet pillow out of the window, which, mind you, was no easy feat. Those windows had been nailed shut for years.

Now if you’re clever, you may be thinking so far, so Stoker, but where was Mr. Armand? Was he lurking in the depths of the wardrobe clutching an armadillo? Was he casting a wicked shadow along the walls, while plucking his thumbs? Was he clinging to the ceiling like a giant bat? Or was he forming a body from an assortment of local rodents mind controlled for the purpose so he could fall upon the home invaders in an orgy of bloodshed? Or was he flowing away to safety under the door as a cloud of blood-tinged mist?

The answer to all of that is no. Be sensible. Mr. Armand had done what any sane fellow would do while his neighbours were rounded up and carted away without a warrant and burned to death on the patch below without a by-your-leave. He’d scarpered down the hall as soon as he’d heard boots on the stairs and was hiding in the utility closet.

How do I know all this, you ask, being as I am in fact just an old storyteller standing around in the dark outside a soup kitchen? Well might you ask. See if you can figure out an answer. Give it a good think. Chew on it, as it were, maybe you’ll get a flavour of the truth.

I asked you a question at the beginning of my story. Do you remember? I asked you if you’d heard about the Bleckker. You hadn’t. But what about now? Do you hear that? Sirens. Lots of them. The Bleckker Estate is burning down, you see. That’s what the squad did when they couldn’t find Mr. Armand in his coffin.

Bit anticlimactic, isn’t it? I’m sure you were hoping for a tale of valiant carnage. A battle between good and evil, or at least a good staking. I’m sure those squad members were too. Still, they got over it quickly enough. Especially when they discovered all the fire exits locked and their way out cut off. Ah, you’re saying, but what about those outer walkways, all nicely covered by a concrete portico?

And you’d be right. Our plucky squad of home invaders did make it out of a neighbour’s window onto the walkway. Sadly for them it’s been a murky day. Barely any sun, and the overhang from the roof provides an excellent light block. Still, they might have made it if it wasn’t for the gas explosion in the neighbour’s flat. They really should have cut the gas before storming the place.

Terrible oversight and a great big boom. And of course, what with all the illegal neighbour murdering the squad had got up to on the patch, and it being February – silly-silly – the afternoon had worn into evening by that point. Too bad, such a shame. The flames were pretty though, from a safe distance at the bus stop, mind, and Bleckker One had been a horrible eyesore. Not too many people will be sorry to see it go.

What happened to Mr. Armand, you say? Do you really need to ask? He got away, of course. He always does. I believe I warned you that happens. An errant spark flies free. Disease always spreads. Shadows will run. The night will win. The lambs don’t recognise the lions anymore.

But where are my manners. Allow me to introduce myself, I’m Armand. Mr. Armand. But from the look on your face, you already knew that. I knew you’d get it in the end. And it is, of course, the end. But for now, won’t you join me for a drink?

The Rabbit Hole Volume 5: Just…Plain…Weird

My short story Sweet Summer Swimming is featured in the writers co-op latest anthology, The Rabbit Hole Vol. 5, now available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble in ebook and print. Below is an extract from Sweet Summer Swimming, a tale of murderous jellyfish on the hunt!

There is no purpose, no will. No mind. The jellies float. They beach. They burn and they flounder. They feed and they sink back into the surf. They wait to be called home again. Some have fallen, some have multiplied. It matters not. They are jellyfish. There is no will. No mind. No wonder why.

There is only the tide, the spasm of sensation. The hook and the cry and the flail and the catch. There is the pulse and the propulsion, the sudden arrest, the split and the shatter. The sink and the swim.

They are come, they are go, they know not which. They are the jellies and they are here and they are gone. Time is immaterial when there is only the float.

The tide comes in and the jellies rise to meet it.

Interested in reading more of my weird and creepy stories? The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear a collection of ten horror-fantasy tales is available on Amazon

Short Story – The Unforgotten Queen

I come hither not to die, nor to live. This journey I take is neither penance nor punishment. The destination no more fitting a place to wile away eternity than any other, but far better than that place that all souls, sinner or saint, fear most. If you have come to meddle in my case, I pray that you judge for the best. There is little point in anything else. This journey will go on, no matter.

We go to Blickling Hall, Norfolk this dusky eve, for it is nineteenth of May and what must be, has come to pass long since. The coachman drives hard, it’s true, but we will make good time, the winds of hell at our back. A good thing too, as my father has need of this same carriage. He and I pass every year on this date. I to return to the place of my birth, even if the brick and mortar are younger than I, and he to leave its shelter to chase the night and outrun the cockcrow dawn. There are many bridges to cross between Aylsham and Wroxham and cross them all he must, though only the good Lord knows why. He and I are long beyond pushing against the tiller of fate.

Do not look out of the window, my dear friend. The night will show you naught but horrors. There are wild hunters out this night, and the dead are always in need of company. I will not share you with the shadows. Do not avert your eyes from me either. It has been too long since I’ve anyone to talk to. Your mind shies from the sight of me as I am, I fear. But I am as death has made of me. No more and no less. What are any of us, I ask of you, if not greater than our constituent parts? My fate was to be sundered; my life chopped short according to the law, and by the law I was judged, my youth made forfeit. My head may no longer ride upon my shoulders, but I assure you I have kept my wits. 

You know me, even if my true face has been forgotten, stricken from the record. But let us not stand on ceremony. My name has ridden the centuries to reach your ear. I was fated to marry my cousin and reside as a lady of Ireland, but ambition led me on a merry path to higher and lower places. I set my eye on a duke and fell far short before a crown sat upon my head. I kept that not long. Alas, my little neck could not take the weight. Soon crown and head both toppled. I ask that you not judge me ill that I could keep neither. When the toll of fate is asked, we all must pay up.

Do not fear the jostle of the carriage. We ride the night with the wild things. This is my eve. I return to a place I never lived to walk galleries and linger within libraries that pretend to remember me. I am history’s bride now. On this day I was, and will be, put to death, in an endless parade of once and forevermore. I travel in haste to nowhere for no purpose. I march to history’s tune. I am here and there and nowhere. Is this fate, I ask, or merely what happens to those of us whom fate has used for sport?

HA. HA. You flinch at laughter, do you? Would it surprise you to know I once proudly proclaimed myself the most happy? There were many who derided me. HA. HA. Initials that begged ridicule. In the jeers of the common folk lurked the whispers of my fate. I claimed much, but delivered little and according to the law, and by the law, I was judged to die.

Now I am to be neither judged nor offered reprieve. I ride the night, a passenger on a pointless journey. I wander the halls of Blickling and I wait for the dawn of the day I died as if waiting for life anew. Yet like Tantalus, resurrection dangles before me, just out of reach. My father will cross twelve bridges, racing for absolution that will never come for he or I, but I am resigned to ride toward lost home, my wins and losses all in the past.

You know me, I am Anne. I held the heart of a king and then I lost my head. I hold that now in my lap, but of my fate, I never had control. I once thought that I did. I who charmed rival kings under canopies of gold and danced in yellow to celebrate death. I made enemies, but it was my lover who killed me. I will speak nothing against that. The Frenchmen’s blade has silenced my tongue on that tale. History has never cared for truth, and my fate was not cast in innocence so let those dark deeds be unremarked upon in this place. Our mad journey shall be all the more pleasant for it.

I wonder when I will take my leave of this world. Every May nineteenth should be my last, but never is. This carriage and its headless horseman always find me and carry me forth to Blickling Hall. The horses run heedless through eternal night, taking me to a home that was never mine, to walls that never sheltered my swaddled self, to memories that lay claim to my legacy all the same. Anna Bolena hic 1507. Or was it 1501? It matters not, I have been dead more years than I could ever have hoped to live. The queen is dead, long live the queen, indeed. I have ever been Fortuna’s puppet.

You ride with me to witness fate’s long reach, I suspect. Destiny wants to display her handiwork. This is what happens when memories do not die, when the reach of time stretches too far. When that which is done, is not allowed to be over. O lord have mercy upon me, would that God have pity on my soul. This is a tiresome fate, to exist enshrined in the minds of distant strangers. I was once a pariah queen, now I am ascended to myth and mystery. This carriage, this night, the coachman and his headless steads, we are all prisoners of time out of joint. We are stories undying. Fragments of a greater truth that alludes even me.

I keep my head, regardless. I was taught deportment in the court of Queen Claude. I learned my letters in France, where style ruled even kings. You will note how well I carry my head, neat and tidy, in the crook of my arm. You will note the finery of my carriage – and it is mine, no matter what my father uses it for. The headless horse man always comes for me first.

HA. HA. Initials entwined, a joke that was made in earnest. A union that in these confines cannot be sundered. That which was, remains here. I have become a constant, in the way that all things past are. It could be said that in death I have learned my place. Unlike my father, who runs too late. History remembers him far more poorly than I. His fate is to race from his home as if time might favour him, but all know that he hid as two of his children lost their heads.

My death has been gentler, I must admit. I travel. I am rarely tormented, as once I was in life. Sometimes I go to Marwell Hall, where I preamble upon lawns that once my husband trod with she who would replace me, while in life, I waited to die. Because even in death I am not without a sense of humour. There is some merit in roaming those paths, when his and her footsteps are stilled forever. Ambition failed me, but history has become my friend. It has written me into stories not mine, long after my own was severed.

Hever was my home, where Blickling was not. I reside there at Christmas, where my oak waits for my return. We two relics of history reunite from time to time. History keeps my memories now, and time shares them freely with strange new friends like you.

The tower was my prison and my doom, I prefer to travel far from its chapel and its sombre stone keep. But sometimes, I will linger in the quiet places where my prayers did not ascend. Do not ask me of the green. The scaffold. The coin for the French swordsman. The blindfold. The crowd who watched me lose more than my crown. I took my leave of that moment at least, and while Jesu has yet to receive my soul, I must still give praise for small mercies. Should you look upon the green, you will not find me there.

We are past Aylsham now. Soon we will arrive at Blickling Hall. The grip of time is a strange thing, is it not? How fast it runs and yet, like a dry riverbed, it can also leave no mark upon the land. It clutches tight to me, I confess, but its imprint can be light as the syllables of old place names. Meaningless and trite.

This land is ancient, but its roads are unfamiliar. I was born here, and yet I will always be a stranger abroad. There is no help for it, alas. This coach races its own course. The headless horseman knows his path. The vagaries of a changing world mean nothing to one who is fated to roam. Not that we speak of such things, of course. He has no head for conversation.

I used to like to talk, to laugh, to enjoy good company and fine entertainment. Some may say this was my undoing. They would be wrong. Life runs as it will and death claims all, even if, in my case, I have been forced to take a meandering path toward eternal rest. We are none of us masters of our fate, and the great wheel is always turning. It raises us high and drops us low.

It is a shame you did not join me at Hever, we could have been merry there. It is good you did not meet me in the corridors of Windsor. I am quite the terror there. I have a temper, you see. I quite lose my head at times. O, do laugh. I may be a headless horror but that is no reason to be so dour. This ride will not last forever and one must always laugh while one may. None of us know what tomorrow brings, and some are fated to never see the dawn.

Here we come. Blickling Hall. We shall make quite the entrance, as is only proper. The coachman may not be pleasant to look upon, but he leaves an impression. Here comes my father, running from his sins, racing against the dawn. I require you not to judge him too harshly. It matters not, for he and I, for good or ill, are beyond your prayers or your condemnation.

I leave you now with these words only, if you would meddle in my case, I require you to judge the best, for fate is uncaring, and history relentless. All too quick, can one be lost in fortune’s merciless hands. I heartily desire that you, kind soul, shall never know what it is to rise too high, to blaze too bright, lest you too suffer the fate of the unforgotten.

(All images public domain. Cover image created with Canva free to use images)

Haunt Anthology – Out Now

My short story One-Eyed Queens and Crocodile Teeth is featured in Haunt anthology from Dragon Soul Press available on Amazon. Below is an extract from One-Eyed Queens and Crocodile teeth.

They say that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. But you say bollocks to that, don’t you Cheryl? You’ve never had much time for kings. Nor men, for that matter. And seeing? Well, the blind don’t know how lucky they are.

Your problem’s always been the same. You’ve always seen too much. You see it all. The twisted bodies of the sprites that jump from tree branch to tree branch in a storm. The faces in the wind and the shadows at the periphery of the brightest day. You see the darkness and the darkness sees you.

But you managed. For years, you managed. You were nimble, you were tough; you saw it all and you asked no questions. Monkey sees, but Monkey don’t talk. You survived. You thrived. You were the one-eyed queen in the dark.

You cleaned house for the monsters, learning the lesson of every soul that’s ever been weak amid the strong and the mean; when you can’t fight and you can’t run, be useful. And you were. When wicked old Mr. Watkins guilt came for him, you were there, wiping the tiny finger trails off the windowpanes and ignoring the way the condensation ran like tears.

You spritzed and you squirted, you wiped it all away, but the fingers lingered, scraping invisible patterns over the pane as you turned your back.

When the shadows in the room sniffled and pawed at the smudgy walls, when the reek of ammonia and terror clogged your nose, you whipped out the polish until the room smelled like an orange grove in Andalucía. You scrubbed the walls until they shone like ivory. You swept trapped sobs from between the slats of the Venetian blinds and let them drift as dust to the carpet before you got the Dyson out.

When the cupboard doors rattled in the toy maker’s workshop, you kept your head down and never opened the doors. You never looked into the weeping eyes of all those little wind-up boys and girls with their too life-like faces. ‘Cuz you knew what you’d see.  But nothing gets the stink of evil out of the air, does it, Cheryl? Nor stops fear from leaking into the floorboards or terror from rising up the walls like black rot.

Though you surely tried, didn’t you?

If you would like to read more of my work you can find my horror-fantasy short story collection The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear on Amazon

Short Story: The Attic at the End of the World

There comes a point in every apocalypse when everyone must ask themselves what the real price of survival is and whether it’s worth it. That point arrived for me about five minutes in. Crammed into my attic with the spiders, my cats and more bottled water than an environmentalist would approve of – which I admit, was not a masterpiece of planning on my part – I had nothing much to do but contemplate existence. I’d already gone through the blind panic stage, you see. That’s how I ended up in the attic with my cats and the water. And the perishables from my fridge. And some pot noodles. Which I can’t boil up.

Anyway, it was in those first four minutes in the dark of the attic breathing in the strange smells of a part of my house I’d never been in, all stale air and strange drafts and resin-y, woody oddness that I learned that true terror waxes and wanes. Like a moon. Or human existence on the planet. Although with that last one we didn’t so much wane as…well. You know.

The signs were all there. We even noticed them too. There was lots of chatter online. Articles were written; some of them were even true. Pundits talked. Argued. Issued apologies. Retracted apologies. Officials made statements. Press conferences were held daily. Influencers sold branded survival kits. It was all going on. But the slow slide toward Armageddon was a little on the quiet side.

A lot of whimpers, not so many bangs. Everyone had been expecting the bangs, see. What with the war. The epidemics. The state of the economy. Everyone knew we were headed for the skids. But when it happened it was so much like everything else people just got on with their lives. We’d all learned to live around the edges of disaster. We’d been doing it so long by that point.

Thinking about it, the big problem was that no one could imagine that this would be it. The real, proper end. We’d gotten used to living on the edge of destruction; I think we thought we’d always scrape on by. Still. We probably should have reacted faster to the ooze. And that thing with the eyeballs. In fact, definitely that thing with the eyeballs. That was just weird. And awful. I saw it happen in the supermarket. The eyeball thing. In the fruit aisle. Pop-squish, just like that all over the bananas.

It is frankly amazing how quickly you can get used to exploding eyeballs. I’d say it was horrifying, and probably, the internet’s fault. Most things are, after all. But the truth is I think it’s human nature. We survive, we adapt, we conquer, we multiply. Until we don’t.

No one was really surprised that the big finish for mankind was manmade. Who else was going to do us in, aliens? No, humanity was always going to be our own ruin. But it wasn’t the icecaps melting or the rainforests burning that did for us. That’s why we didn’t quite see the danger in front of us. I mean, how could we? It was all so unlikely.

At least that was the conclusion I came to in the final minute of the first five minutes of the apocalypse. Or, my personal apocalypse anyway. I don’t know what’s going on outside. I don’t know if there’s been a proper announcement. An “abandon all hope” sort of thing. There’s stuff going on below me, in the streets. I can hear that well enough. It might be ooze related. It had got into the waterworks last I heard. But it might not be. The apocalypse is multifaceted. Like an unholy amorphous squid of death and destruction. I mean that literally. That’s what happened in Liverpool.

The cats aren’t happy, but then neither am I. I’m afraid to die but the thought of facing what’s out there’s worse. I’ve come up here to die. I can admit it. A slow, isolated death is what I thought I wanted when I scrambled up the ladder, flailing about and whacking my knees and funny bone. It seemed like a good exit at the time.

My cats will probably eat me once I’ve starved or dehydrated to death. I should probably let them out. I think if any creature could survive this to inherit the Earth it’s the domestic shorthair. But I’m too afraid to move. Things make noises in here. I don’t know what they are. Some of it is pipework, I think. I didn’t think to cut off any of the utilities before scurrying up here. Didn’t see the point. There might be ooze in the pipes. There probably is. It’s everywhere else, after all.

What was that? Shattered glass. It sounded close. There’s a lot of shouting. It sounds really bad. Even the cats have shut up. I’m scared. The terror’s back, full wax. I don’t want to die. I liked my stupid little life. I like my eyeballs. I like the world. My thoughts are splintered. I’ve gone all Walt Whitman in fear. My brain contains endless contradictions. There’s no one going to come and save me and that makes me want to chew my own fingers off. But I’m equally petrified that someone will come. That I’ll be found, hiding here in the big empty dark of my attic. I forgot to bring the cat food and that – of all things – makes me cry.

I do it silently. I’ve seen the news. I’m afraid of what’s out there. Because the end was people, you see. And not even in the obvious way. This isn’t war. At least, not any sort that the army could deal with. They got outplayed, see. They didn’t know the rules of engagement. Well, the squaddies probably did. The higher ups not so much.

Oh, please. Oh, no. The broken glass. It was the back door. The glass one leading to the postage stamp patio and the cat-run I call a garden. I can hear movement in my house. I live alone. They’re here. At least someone is. More than one someone. Impossible to say if they’ve got their eyeballs.

Oh, No. No. No. No. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’ve been a coward all my life. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I spook easily. My imagination’s too quick; it’s the most active part of me and it’s showing me everything now. The intruders in my house, going room to room downstairs. My house isn’t big. Just a two-up, two-down and a single bathroom. And the attic with its completely obvious hatch in the ceiling. A hatch that even one of the Popped could see, I reckon, because I made a complete hash of getting up here. Least I had the sense to haul the ladder up with me and lay it across the hatch.

I wish I could just die, right now, explode my own heart with stress and check out early. I don’t want to be here. I’m scared. What am I supposed to do? There’s nothing to do is there? This is the end. It’s meant to be the end. It should be the end. But that’s the problem with the end. It’s not finished. Not yet. I want it over. I don’t want to be here. I’m scared. But I’m so afraid of it ending. Of me ending.

I’ve seen all the horrible ways the end has come for others. The internet was full of it. So many people filmed it. Hash-tag “Game Over” was everywhere, like it was some joke. Or a horrifying new trend that would die down along with its followers. No one really believed it would come for the rest of us.

There are definitely people in my house. They’re making noise. The floorboards beneath me are creaking. Someone just went in my bathroom. There’s this particularly creaky floorboard in there where the floor dips and groans a bit. I don’t hear voices. But I wouldn’t if its some of them. The Gamers. The helmets eat their voices. Only those in the ‘Zone’ can hear each other talk.

What will they do when they find me? And find me they will. Gamers know how to clear a level. They know how to find you out in every nook and cranny. Oh, sweet mercy. Shut up, cat! Don’t meow at the hatch. Please. Shut. Up. I’ll let you out once they’re gone, I promise. Don’t get me killed, Tom.

When everything was still just a crisis and everyone thought we’d limp through it like we had all the other crises, the news broadcast stories about Game Overs. Sometimes they filmed special forces going after the Gamers. I heard there was footage online of a few of them getting de-helmeted. I didn’t watch. I’d already seen a Pop-Squish. I didn’t want to see anymore. The helmets, once on, don’t come off, see. Gamers are all in the Zone. The ooze sustains them. No one figured out how in time to do anything about it. The developers were the first victims, see. A case of the ‘Author is Dead’ we really should have been more worried about. Because the game went on. And it got bigger.

I think they’re in the spare bedroom. I don’t know what they’re doing in there. It’s not an interesting room. I doubt there are any power ups to be had. Maybe that will be my salvation? My house is too boring to have any loot drops. The Gamers will leave. I’ll let the cats out, sneak downstairs and drink some bleach or something. Or find some medicine that will kill me gently. I don’t know.

I wish this was over. I wish someone would save me. I wish I could just turn off and let go and vanish without a thought. I’m scared. I’m so scared. I don’t know how to fight back. I don’t want to fight back. I want to go downstairs with my cats. I want the real world back with all its ignorable problems. But that’s all gone now. Only the Game remains.

There’s a lot of noise below me. They’re dragging furniture over the carpet into the hall under the hatch. The cats flee to the far corners of the attic. I’m sorry Tom. I’m sorry Molly. I should have let you run when you had the chance. But I wanted to cling on, see. I wanted to hold on tight to the old world. The real world. I wanted to keep it alive the way it’s supposed to be until the end. That was selfish of me. Now I’ve killed them too.

I can’t see anything but dancing spots of gloom in the dark. My eyesight is like snow on an old analogue TV. It breaks up and nothing is there. But my ears and imagination fill in for my eyes. The ladder in the middle of the floor is juddering. The trapdoor is rattling. Someone is pushing it from below. This is it. The end.

I wish I wasn’t so afraid. I wish I could say I’d tried. But I wasn’t built for survival horror. I wasn’t designed for this. Goodbye Tom. Goodbye Molly. I love you and I’m sorry.

The ladder judders again, once, twice, thrice. It bounces away. The trapdoor pops open. I see the bright red laser-pointer guiding light on top of a helmet. It skewers me right between the eyes. I huddle against the wall. I duck my head and cover my face. I hear two words:

“Game Over.”

The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear – Available Now

The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear and Other Stories of Chilling Modern Horror Fantasy is a collection of ten Urban Fantasy/Horror short stories. It is available to buy on Amazon here

In a dystopian Britain, Lorraine has a severed hand problem. A trip to the woods turns to tragedy for Bethany and a deal with a love-struck demon goes awry for Chris. This is just a taste of the ten short stories of urban fantasy and horror gathered here. Spotlighting a strange and twisted suburban world, where a P.A’s unrequited love for the new girl in the office attracts a nightclub genie, vampires contract with the local cleaning service for discreet stain removal and everything and nothing is as it seems. Each self-contained story provides humour with a bite and chills with a smile focusing on the lives of normal people in an abnormal world where no one is entirely innocent and everyone has something to fear.

Short Story – The Manchurian Sacrifice

Outside the bedroom window the doppler-wail of sirens screamed pass and brakes screeched as unmarked police cars careened around the corner. Mathilde heard the heavy, air-cutting whop-whop of a police chopper’s rotor blades from somewhere above her fourth floor safe house and paused in the process of applying her foundation.

The lights were low in the flat, the heavy curtain pulled almost closed, allowing only a hint of the chaos outside to seep in with the muggy, mid-summer air. Ninety minutes ago, the ambassador was murdered at a diamond tiara and black tux affair in the political heart of the city. The perpetrator was still at large.

But not for long. Mathilde looked down at the array of make-up spread out before her in disgust. All of it was department brand only, in a myriad shades of bland with the occasional splash of humdrum thrown in for added spice. The make-up belonged to Melanie. So too did the off-the rack party dress hanging from its hanger on the back of the wardrobe. A hideous thing, it looked like someone had beheaded and plucked the top half of an ostrich, while leaving the bottom fully feathered before applying silver sequins to the torso. Mathilde would sooner slit her own throat than wear it.

She clenched her fists. That was the point though, wasn’t it? Mathilde wouldn’t be wearing it. Melanie would. Stupid, bubble-head Melanie stumbling home from a work’s party with her hair in last season’s style, her face spattered in department store beauty and her backside waggling in feathered delight. God damn Melanie Tumbridge, orthodontic nurse, depressed singleton; a woman who had never travelled further than a trip to Sharm El Sheikh. A woman who spoke only English, and only just. A woman who could barely raise a hand to a spider let alone swat a diplomat straight off the mortal coil.

Melanie was her antithesis. Her nemesis. She was everything Mathilde despised in this world. And yet they had never met. Nor would they ever meet. It was impossible. Like a couple of cursed Gemini twins, she and Melanie were two minds trapped in one body, doomed to exist as nothing more than distorted reflections of the other.

According to the Division, this was the best way to protect operatives and prevent exposure. How could anyone hope to catch a killer who could cease to exist? No polygraph could catch out Melanie. Facial recognition technology could not account for two women with one face who shared not a single facial expression in common. Mathilde left not fingerprints, no traces, but even if she had it wouldn’t matter. DNA might be all but infallible, but the human mind was not. It was easy to fool a mind to disbelieve the eyes when confronted by a pudding like Melanie Tumbridge. Melanie would never crack under interrogation; never slip up. Because she could not slip. As far as she knew she had a full life of blah-blah-blah, don’t-forget-to-floss to account for every hour of her day.

Slowly, Mathilde breathed out, unclenching her balled fists. She flexed her fingers, encouraging blood flow. It did no good to get upset. Reaching up to unclasp the elegant tear-drop diamond necklace from around her neck she pooled the platinum chain in her palm, stroking a fingertip over the cool stone.

This was her seventeenth successful liquidation for the Division. She’d gouged out her legend from Barcelona to Bila Tservka, Phnom Penh to Perth, and criss-crossed the globe back again. She was the best. The diamond of the Division.

And yet, they thought nothing of erasing her.

Restless, Mathilde stood. The bedroom of the safe house was made up to look lived-in and was used by any operative who needed a bolthole in the city. It looked like a room someone could live in and maybe even like it. But not Mathilde. She had no home. She’d lived out of a suitcase since she was eighteen. A creature of purest utility, the Division had taken her and whittled down her softer edges until all that remained was something flat and hard and sharp enough to cut.

Was that why they’d made Melanie so fluffy? Melanie who wore a purple feather boa to a friend’s party unironically. Melanie who had a tasselled counterpane on her bed in her alarmingly aquamarine bedroom with its flat-pack white painted dressing table and backlit mirror covered in failed selfies. Melanie with her love of sour cream and onion flavour crisps and freezer aisle lasagne. Melanie. Melanie. Melanie. Why was it that her life with all its clutter and needless distractions filled Mathilde’s head even before the switch?

Mathilde paced between the bed and the door, on the far side from the window. She beat her right fist into her left palm, the diamond chain still around her wrist. If only she could pulp Melanie’s memory so easily.

It wasn’t supposed to work this way. Melanie was supposed to be the airhead armour that kept Mathilde safe. Melanie was meant to be the cipher. The pretender to the air they both breathed, and the life Mathilde owned. So why was it growing harder to escape her fluffy clutches every time Mathilde emerged from the Deep Sleep? 

‘It could be that increased duration increases the risk of false memory saturation,’ Jose had suggested the one and only time Mathilde had mentioned it after the job in Taipei. She’d had to go under as Melanie for nine months that time. Her revival had felt like a bad birth; she’d emerged into the light blinking Melanie out of her eyes, the memory of the bubble-head’s terrified pleading still ringing in her ears.

‘Why are you doing this to me? Let me go. I don’t want to die.’

Stupid Melanie. She couldn’t die. She wasn’t real. And yet…she felt real.

‘Naturally,’ Jose replied. ‘Deep Covers are meant to provide a fully immersive experience, or what’s the point?’ The technician had tossed the spent hypodermic into the medical waste bin.

Mathilde had watched him do it, thinking that everything she was had been condensed into that syringe. What did it say about Mathilde that she was the toxic agent that needed to be inserted to be brought back? Exactly who was the cover and who was the real person; the woman who died after every successful mission or the woman who lived in-between? 

Mathilde glanced at the digital radio on the bedside table –an old-fashioned thing without a connection to Wi-Fi. She was running out of time. She was expected at the rendezvous point in forty minutes. From there she’d be taken to one of the Deep Sites dotted around the city. Jose or another almost identical lab drone would sit her down, swab her arm and prepare to put her under. Another job done. Another small death as a reward.

What if she ran? Like a bullet from a gun, the thought tore a path through her mind. What if she ran and never stopped running? What if this time she didn’t consent to lie down and die to protect the Division? What if this time she lived and used what they’d taught her to spring from one hotel room to another, to dance across borders, to hew too close to enemy lines? She was the Division’s diamond, but to their enemies she was more precious than that.

Ridiculous. The Division was everywhere. It had its fingers in everything. Mathilde knew how it was. She’d seen behind the curtain. There was no escaping. And why would she want to? What life was out there for her, if not this one? A life like Melanie’s, full of banal pleasures and friendships with people who had no idea she was an empty vessel? Mathilde might have no one, but she had herself and her skills; her peephole into the world behind the curtain. Why would she give that up and risk death?

To live, a little voice whispered in her head. It wasn’t Melanie. The Happy Tooth Fairy wasn’t astute enough to realise Mathilde existed. The treacherous voice belonged to Mathilde, which only made it worse. Like a diamond, she was in danger of fracturing. Her fatal flaw exposed.

She twirled around the room, Melanie’s stupid dress fluttering around her backside. The tote bag with the needle mocked her from the dresser. The bag was Melanie’s. It had a pattern of cherries on it. Mathilde scraped the blunt nails of her hand over her palm, nipping her bottom lip hard enough to bleed. The weak, salt tang of blood was sour on her tongue.

Mathilde had her orders. Inject the contents of the syringe, head to the rendezvous; go to the Deep Site. Die so Melanie could live. Wait until the next time the Division needed its diamond agent.

Rinse and repeat.

Mathilde reached down to brush her fingers through the poofy feathers of Melanie’s dress. The other woman’s thoughts were seeping into her brain. Gemma would be at the party; she could ask her about Layla and Collette’s new baby and coo and ooh over pictures of tiny, wrinkled walnut people to her heart’s content.

She might call Iain; try and patch things up. Explain her odd disappearing acts. Maybe she and her friends would talk about the tailbacks and roadblocks caused by the assassination? Or maybe Melanie wouldn’t care about trivial matters of international espionage. Because Melanie had a life. A life that didn’t start and end with murder.

Mathilde frowned, swiftly reaching up to brush wetness from her face. Tears? Mathilde hadn’t cried for real since completing basic training. What was this? Had the Melanie-rot spread so far, so fast? She shivered, breathing through the hitch in her throat. There must be a glitch in the programming. She’d tell Jose and— The burner phone on the bed rang exactly twice. Mathilde flinched. It was time. She had to go. She was already late.

She swept up the tote bag, dug out the needle, prepped it with practiced, sure hands –and set about performing her second murder of the night. The drug hitting her blood stream was cool, soothing, washing away all regret and leaving only clarity.

It was almost a relief. Death was easy, after all. Mathilde understood it. It was all she understood. She’d leave the living to her enemy. Melanie was better at it. And then, after yet another bloody birth, she might finally have the strength to fix her broken whole.