Dead City Page 3

  “You're Ash?” the first sister asked.

  “Yeah, you're...”

  “I'm Hannah, she's Anna”

  Ashley was confused.

  “Your name tag said Anna.” she said.

  “Shit.” said Hannah, turning to Anna. “We did it again...”

  “Fucksticks. This shouldn't happen so often. We should sew our names on them or something!”

  The ExorSisters laughed, Ashley smiled politely, not finding her situation funny.

  “This the house?” said Hannah, indicating to the building they had parked up in front of.

  Ashley looked up at the house and nodded. The curtains were drawn at all the windows, and she found herself feeling uncomfortable, trapped outside the home she once loved.

  “Keys?” asked Anna.

  She handed them over and watched as the two dainty women opened up the doors of their van, pulling out flight cases that looked heavier than the two of them put together. Once all the gear was out, they pushed the cases to the door and Anna inserted the key.

  “You coming in with us?” asked Hannah.

  Ashley shook her head, remaining by the van.

  “Here we go...” said Anna, turning the key and pushing the door open.

  A soft squeal whined out as the hinges reticently stretched their mouths wide.

  “Looks good so far...” said Hannah, giving a smile back to Ashley, who still wasn't convinced.

  Anna took a step towards the threshold of the door and was rewarded with it slamming into her face, her nose exploding with blood.

  “Jesus!” shrieked Ashley, as Anna took some steps back, hand at her nose.

  The ExorSister turned, decorating the garden with a rain of bright crimson.

  “S'fine!” said Anna, putting her head back. “Happens all the time.”

  “Told you we should've worn crash helmets on this one.” said Hannah.

  “Little late for that now...” muffled her sister, blood snaking its way down through her fingers as it heeded the call of gravity.

  She reached back for the key and turned it again, the door squealing as it opened inwards, and took a step beyond the threshold. Again, the door came for her, but this time she blocked its path with a steadfast boot.

  “Nice try, Casper.” she said, wiping her hands on her overalls and turning to Hannah. “See, this is why black is a good colour for overalls – clients never see how much you bleed.”

  “Apart from when you're actually bleeding in front of them...” said Hannah.

  “Apart from then, obviously.”

  Anna pushed the door open and held it as Hannah started wheeling the cases inside. When they were all done, Hannah beckoned Ashley to join them as her ExorSister set up the instruments. She refused, but the woman insisted on at least fetching her some clothes and letting her change in the back of their van whilst she waited for them to get the lay of the land inside her former home.

  Half an hour later they were up and running, spectre-scopes and EVP detectors in every room sending signals back to the base-camp they had set up in the hallway.

  Ashley watched from the garden, kicking at the dried blood on the path, wondering if it would stain and lower the price of the house, then wondering if she cared. The ExorSisters walked out and joined her in the garden to give her a summation of their findings thusfar.

  “Well, we have good news and bad news...” said Anna.

  “Both are kinda bad, but there's good sides to one.” added Hannah, swiftly being nudged by her sister to shut up.

  “So what is it?” Ashley asked.

  The ExorSisters looked at one another.

  “It's a poltergeist alright, but not your average poltergeist.” said Anna. “Usually poltergeists are multiform, in a bunch of places around your house at once, like they'll knock every book off your shelf in one go. Usually they're incorporeal but can affect the corporal, our world. Usually you just suck them up into a spirit orb and you're done.”

  “You're saying 'usually' a lot...” noted Ashley, as a sickly feeling started bubbling in her stomach.

  “Yeah...” said Hannah “That's the small problem we're having. Your guy isn't all over one room, he's isolated to one area, then moves to the next. You said he pulled books off the shelf one at a time – that's not how poltergeists roll.”

  “But he is a poltergeist?”

  “Probably.”

  “Yeah.” asserted Anna. “Totally probably. We're just going to need some more time to work out how to deal with this fucker.”

  “How much time?”

  “Can you find somewhere to stay for the rest of the week?” she asked.

  Ashley looked up at the house, the curtains in their bedroom were wide open, and even though there was nobody visibly standing there, she knew she was being watched.

  “Yeah. I'll find somewhere.”

  6

  'He was covered in blood. So much blood. It might not have been his, but that only made him angrier.'

  The narration was also making Jon angrier. He was staring down the three aptrgangrs that had just snatched the kitten from his hands and proceeded to rip the delicate little thing apart in front of his very eyes, showering him with its entrails.

  * * * *

  Aptrgangrs, or 'monoliths' as Jon called them, based on their sheer size and his lack of confidence about the pronunciation of the old Norse word, were one of the largest unliving sub-species. Standing at least seven foot tall, they preferred destruction over sating the hunger-lust that afflicted the corporeal undead.

  Monoliths were often juicers and steroid abusers in their living state, and something in the course of their transition into unlife had accelerated the effect of the drugs coursing through their systems, hulking them out to the size of giant, decaying bears, with the aggressive attitude to match.

  * * * *

  “You shouldn't have done that.” he said to them, hands at his baton holsters, like an old west gun-slinger.

  Jon didn't know the three aptrgangrs by (rotting) face, nor by name, but knew he'd met them before and who they would likely answer to. He recognised them mostly for their sheer size, each of them standing at least two feet taller than him.

  “What'cha gonna do 'bout it, law-man?” scoffed the first monolith “Ain't we all got a fleshparty to be at?”.

  Jon might not have known their names, but decided he'd call them Denty, Legless and Eletrotwat. Withdrawing the two batons from his holsters, he extended them with a flick of his wrists, sparking them to life.

  Denty smiled a decaying grin, his green teeth lined with blackened gums. Before the three giants knew what hit him, Denty was on the floor, spitting out pieces of his smashed cheekbone.

  “Who's next?” asked Jon.

  Legless rushed at him, only to have Jon sidestep, whipping both batons into the front of his kneecaps, one leg cracking as the knee folded forwards, the other ankle detaching completely, left standing straight up on its own, as if posed for a grisly still-life painting. Jon decided the monolith's new name was Hoppy.

  Electrotwat growled a fearsome roar, which swiftly became a girlish scream, as two batons impacted with his microscopic testicles, inflicting tens of thousands of volts on impact.

  Jon walked away from the three corpses left in various states of injury. He had a meatdrop to be at.

  * * * *

  The meatdrops were scheduled twice a week in London's Dead City. They barely lasted a day, let alone two to three, but Jon's request for more regular deliveries were denied on every occasion. He arrived just in time for the crane to swing its beak over the walls, pallets laden with meat in its grasp, donated from every supermarket and butcher within the M25.

  It navigated to the allotted drop-off point, and hung in the air, awaiting instruction to let its cargo loose. Jon checked his watch and stood well back, the unliving all coming out from their shadows in case the package happened to break upon landing, throwing raw meat across the street, allowing them to nab extra flesh
to be had outside of their regular rations.

  As the clock struck one, the package fell, dropping through the air gracefully and landing with a thud in the middle of the road, completely in-tact.

  Jon could see the creatures of the City were ravenous, and got in front of the pallets before they could pounce.

  “Stand back folks, you know the score.”

  A small army of unliving grunted and growled around him, angered by his presence.

  “Come on now, calm down, you're all going to get your share.”

  “We gets a share, but we don't gets equal, do we?” said an unusually eloquent spectre.

  “You don't even have a body...” responded Jon, calmly. “How are you going to digest?”

  “I likes to look at it, push it about a bit.” said the spectre, in a huff.

  “Anyone who can actually eat got a complaint?”

  Hands raised up. More hands than Jon was happy with.

  “Alright then, I'll sort this out. Can I trust you all not to eat this shipment? You won't have a fleshparty whilst I'm gone?”

  The growls and grunts tempered to moans and groans, as Jon went to do some more liaising.

  * * * *

  The Monolith at the door of the casino didn't have a chance to ask if Jon had an appointment, his face hitting the ground before his lips could part to relay a witticism. Jon stormed into the Necromancer's lair, emptying a bag of rotting meat down on his desk, knocking a series of vials of florescent liquid to the floor.

  “For me?” the creature hissed with a sickly smile. “You're too kind.”

  “What have I told you about sharing?” Jon asked, not in the mood for bullshit.

  “Oh Jonathan, you know how things are...”

  “I know there's dead out there who aren't getting enough meat in them, and that's pissing them off some.” said Jon.

  “The boys must have miss-weighed, an accident, I assure you.” insisted the Necromancer.

  “Right, your boys... get those pricks in line.”

  “They barely know basic English, let alone rudimentary two dimensional shapes!” he cackled to himself.

  Jon flicked his coat back and rested his hand on his holster

  “Come now, Jonathan.” the Necromancer said, in a calm tone. “You know that's not how you and I operate.”

  Jon's hand didn't waver as he stared down the creature he was forced to accommodate.

  “You tell them who's boss.” said Jon. “I tell them to back off, lie down, roll over, they better fucking listen.”

  “I'll do what I can.” the Necromancer replied, the decaying smile that accompanied his words didn't even appear slightly genuine.

  “You dropped some shit...” Jon said, bending down to pick up the vials, throwing them on top of the stinking flesh he dumped on the desk.

  “When your bouncer wakes up, tell them he can peel your boys off Borough Road.”

  Jon turned to leave, confident his message had been received. As he left the casino, he felt increasingly more unsure, something in his gut telling him he'd given the message before, maybe more than once, and each time it had been ignored.

  'There was a lot he couldn't remember. But what he did know was that he couldn't trust the Necromancer. When he picked up the vials that cascaded on to the floor, he was sly enough to palm one, and would stop at nothing to work out what was going down behind his back in the shadows of the City.'

  7

  “More wine?” asked Laura, already pouring before Ashley had the chance to decline.

  She had taken sanctuary in her friend's spare room since the ExorSisters started their work. Laura's husband, Steve, was in the kitchen whilst the two women were decompressing with a second bottle of merlot.

  “You'll be back before you know it.” said Laura, emptying the last drops into her already-full glass.

  “Yeah.” said Ashley, unsure whether she actually wanted to go return to the house.

  “Don't be like that.” Laura said, nudging her. “You've loved that house ever since you first laid eyes on it.”

  “Past tense relevant right now...” Ashley said, her words trailing off as she looked away.

  “Um, ladies?” said Steve, backing out of the kitchen slowly.

  “Yes?”

  “Dinner is...” he turned to them, then took another glance at the kitchen counter. “Dinner is dancing on the worktop.”

  The two women poked their heads round the corner and watched with an unfamiliar combination of amusement and terror as a large salmon danced the lambada with a head of broccoli.

  “Have you maybe thought about going to the Spectre Advice Bureau?” asked Steve.

  “I guess that's my next stop.” replied Ashley, watching uncomfortably as the salmon switched the dance up to a tango and leaned over to the dish resting on the stove, returning with a sprig of parsley in its mouth.

  * * * *

  The next morning Ashley walked up the steps to the angular, angry-looking building that had become The Spectre Advice Bureau, a plaque by the entrance proudly stating:

  Established October 15th 1977

  Opened by HRH Queen Elizabeth.

  Ashley walked in, not convinced that the declaration was something the building and its occupants required a plaque to commemorate, even if the Queen did drop by for five minutes to cut a ribbon.

  The inside was as drab as the exterior, as if the seventies had nested, laid eggs, then crawled up and died. She approached the drab off-white reception desk, the clerk interrupting as she opened her mouth, before Ashley could even get a single consonant out.

  “Possession, haunting, reanimation or miscellaneous?” he asked, in a monotone drawl.

  “Haunting.” Ashley replied.

  “Apparition, spook, spectre, poltergeist, ghost or miscellaneous?”

  “Poltergeist.”

  “That's a P-O-6-4-6 you need then.” the clerk said, leafing through a drawer and pulling out the relevant form. He slid it over to her.

  “It's not a normal poltergeist.” she said. “At least, that's what the exorcists said.”

  “Were they government licensed exorcists?”

  “I don't know?”

  “You'll need to see a specialist then.” he said, snatching the form back. “You'll need a P-O-6-4-7.” after a further rummage through the drawer, he slid a new form across the counter.

  Ashley took a seat and filled the form in, taking it back to the clerk and proceeded to wait three hours for her appointment. Everyone else around her who was waiting seemed to get seen almost instantly. Eventually her name was called, and she walked along dull grey corridors, into a dark room with a crystal ball at the centre of the table. A large Caribbean woman was sitting behind it.

  “Am I in the right place?” Ashley asked.

  “Yes y'are.” said the woman. “Got a spirit I see.” she was looking over Ashley's shoulder.

  “Is it here?” she asked, turning and seeing nothing behind her. “Is he here? Is it a he?”

  “It is. But not f'long.” The woman's long, plump fingers waved around the ball, and it started to glow.

  The light shone into the room, and as Ashley turned her head to hide her eyes from the light, she saw a figure standing behind her.

  “Ash!” it said, in a voice like the wind.

  “Yes?” she replied, trying to make out the details of the spirit, who mostly looked like a faceless silhouette in the glare of the light.

  “It's me, Ash. Can you see me?”

  “Who are you?”

  “I was trapped for God knows how long, it was so fucking boring! But I'm back! It's going to be okay no--”

  His words were cut off as the light reached a crescendo, and in an instant, the apparition was gone. The orb at the centre of the table now had a faint glow, indicating that the spirit was trapped within the confines of its spherical glass walls.

  “There we go, deary. All done.” she said, pulling a lever by her chair. A chute opened under the orb and it hurtl
ed down a tube hidden beneath the table, speeding through a network of tunnels deep in the bowels of the city.

  “But wait!” said Ashley, confused at the spectre's swift departure. “Who was haunting me?”

  “Don't cha know, girl?” said the medium, placing a new orb at the centre of the table. “That be y'husband.”

  8

  The Dead City visitor's centre hadn't been invested in since 1993, and it showed. The paint had peeled itself into intricate networks of patterns, that if one was to look at absent-mindedly, might be mistaken for an old map of the London Underground. Damp, rot and various moulds underneath the cracks bled through with the rainbow colours of the different tube lines.

  Jon traced his way from Pimlico to Mornington Crescent as he waited for the Minister to arrive. The old man was late, as always. Jon knew better than to expect him on time, but still insisted on being prompt each and every week.

  'He didn't have much routine in his life, but what little there was he appreciated. The job was hard, the life was harder, but it was the only job he ever knew, and the only life he was ever gonna have.'

  Finally, after trips from Hendon Central to Cheshunt, Mile End to Shadwell and navigating all the way round the Circle Line, the Minister arrived. The two of them were separated by an inch of bullet proof glass with quarter-inch wide holes drilled for sound, and occasionally contraband, to pass through.

  George Grant had been the Minister For Unliving Affairs since the crisis began. Despite changes in parties over the decades, they always insisted on giving him the position. He was there when it started, and if some Members of Parliament had their way, he'd have the job for long after he died. Over forty years on from the day the dead rose, the man was no longer the slender blonde of his formative years, no longer looked as confident and suave as when he was first given the position. The stress was getting to him, hair thinning, gut attempting to burst forth from his shirt, and he knew he wasn't looking his best.