Urban Occult Read online

  ‘We’re taking you to your car,’ repeated the second man, who was now driving. ‘And also to see the Minister. He likes to deal with these things personally.’

  The man in the passenger seat turned to Terry. ‘I do hope you’re not going to do something awkward, sir,’ he said. Terry looked down, and from his angle could see into the front of the man’s jacket, where something squat and gun-shaped nestled. He subsided. ‘Mind you,’ the man added, ‘I wouldn’t blame you. If I were you I’d be bricking myself.’

  They drove him out into the countryside, along darkened roads so narrow that the bare trees arched overhead in a skeletal tunnel and overgrown hedgerows swiped both sides of the wide Beemer. He gradually became aware of a growing nimbus of orange light up ahead, and in gaps between the trees caught glimpses of motorway floodlights stretching away along a high embankment across the night-shrouded fields. By his reckoning it was the M40, which ran from the Midlands all the way to London. If he could somehow break free and make it up onto the hard shoulder, he might be able to flag down a rescuer.

  The car stopped briefly at a chain-link gate which blocked the road. A sign on it read: Motorway Construction: Authorised Access Only. The muscle in the passenger seat got out, unfastened a padlock, and they continued into a deserted construction site.

  ‘As I said, sir,’ said the driver. ‘Quite a secure location.’

  They followed a gravel service road past trenches and pits and great ziggurats of road-surfacing material, guarded by the slumbering forms of earth-moving equipment. Security floodlights cast long, sharp-edged shadows in all directions. Closer now, and above them, an unfinished slip-road curved up to the motorway, braced with scaffolding and half-poured concrete buttresses.

  ‘Here we are.’

  Finally, parked seemingly at random in the middle of all this, was his car. It was attended by a well-dressed man in a long coat and shoes which were much too shiny for a place like this.

  ‘Mr Grainger?’ He smiled, and shook Terry’s hand.

  ‘You must be the Minister.’

  ‘Well, a Minister. Quite junior, really. So very good to see you at last. I understand you’ve had something of a busy evening. Do you mind if I just check that everything’s in order?’

  ‘God yes,’ Terry handed over the paperwork with heartfelt relief. ‘Just take it. All I want is my car.’

  ‘Mm,’ the other man replied distantly, reading. ‘Yes, this is all fine.’ He produced another reassuring smile. ‘I know how you feel; I can’t pretend that I enjoy coming out in weather like this, but still, we’ve all got our particular greasy pole to climb, haven’t we?’

  ‘Yes,’ Terry agreed. The fellow seemed friendly enough. Maybe there was, after all, a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything. ‘I suppose we’ve all got to make sacrifices.’

  One of the guards made a choking noise, as if fighting back a sudden urge to laugh.

  The Minister seemed taken aback. ‘Well I must admit I am surprised to find you so, how shall we say, reasonable about the matter.’

  Terry frowned. ‘What matter would that be?’

  It was then that he saw the long knife in the Minister’s hand.

  And something huge moved in the shadows beneath the slip-road—something which might have had limbs like pistons, and a hide of scabrous bitumen. Something with breath that stank of diesel and the ages-old reek of human blood. It stared out at him with slitted headlight eyes, and he felt the heat of its naked hunger.

  This time he ran.

  He screamed for help until he was hoarse, until he found that he needed what little breath he could draw to keep running. Close behind, the guards pursued him with the easy, loping strides of men who were used to doing this sort of thing for hour on end with heavy packs across terrain much more demanding than this.

  Heart pounding, lungs burning, legs quivering, he fled without thought into the surrounding maze of concrete and steel, taking turns at random, utterly lost, not even trying to find his way out because he had no idea where ‘out’ was, just heading as directly as he could to the bright lights of the motorway and the traffic where somebody—surely somebody—must see him. He fell several times, tearing the knees out of his trousers and the flesh from beneath, skinning his knuckles, and gasping as the liquid pain of a runner’s stitch finally cramped him double.

  Strong hands grasped him under the armpits and dragged him, struggling feebly, back to the Minister.

  ‘… why?… ’ he managed, as they held him, arms spread, face-down over the bonnet of his own car. Its otherwise sky blue colour was grey under the sodium light.

  ‘Why?’ echoed the Minister. ‘Commerce and trade, man, why else? Because since the first motorway opened in 1958, over one thousand, six hundred miles of motorway have been built, and even though that is only one percent of the road length in the UK, it accounts for two thirds of all heavy freight traffic. You don’t honestly think anything as valuable as that is going to be left in the hands of the engineers, do you? There are much older, much more tried and tested methods of keeping the country’s lifeblood running.’

  The bite of the knife across his throat was so swift and deep that for moment there was no pain at all—just a sudden, shocking torrent of blackness in front of him like an oil slick spreading across the car bonnet in which his face was reflected: eyes wide and white with terror. Then the pain struck and he realised that it was his own blood, black in the unnatural light, and he tried to scream.

  They placed him in his vehicle with his hands on the steering wheel, his briefcase behind his head, and the spare wheel beneath his feet, and they arrayed about his body such talismans as would aid him in his journey: his bus ticket, his keys, and his shoes. Then they removed his car to a deep pit specially prepared at the heart of the new construction-the expanded junction of the M42 and M40—and buried him beneath several dozen tons of hardcore rubble and cement, there to sleep forever, and keep the roads open.

  The elements in his hands; the Remover of Obstacles.

  When it was done, the Minister of State for Transport consulted his BlackBerry. He had an important ten o’clock which he couldn’t afford to miss, but he had a feeling that the roads would be quite clear tonight.

  The End

  Wonderland

  K T Davies

  “Oi! Shit fer brains—watch this.”

  Rabbit looked up to see Jack drop a stone in the Black Widow catapult;, draw, aim, and fire. Fast and smooth, the bird was a ball of exploding feathers quicker than Rabbit could say—

  “Fuck me, nice shot.”

  Jack gave the younger man a nicotine-stained grin and stuffed the ‘cat in the pinned up pocket of his coat. “Dinner time,” he said, and slapped Rabbit on the back before jogging over to retrieve the pigeon.

  “Couldn’t we just get some chips?” said Rabbit. He didn’t fancy ‘free food’ today. He had a couple of quid, he wanted a bag of chips and maybe a burger; something he didn’t have to cook on a hexi. They were in the middle of Clapham, not Helmand; he wanted proper, shop bought junk food.

  “Nooo,” Jack drawled. “We have to eat this beady-eyed, little bastard ‘cos—”

  “I saw what you did!” The girl’s voice cut in, as sharp as an ice-cream headache.

  Rabbit immediately felt on edge, suddenly conscious that he was filthy, that he hadn’t shaved for over a week, and that he stank of sweat and too many ciggies. Despite a couple of months living rough he wasn’t totally down and out. He still felt the sting of dirty looks, the contempt of passers-by still burned. His shame was more acute because the blonde jogger who’d shouted was pretty, really fucking pretty. He hunched into his jacket and avoided making eye contact.

  She planted her hands on her hips. “Why did you do that? What the fuck is wrong with you?” She shouted at Jack.

  The sight of her, the smell of her, made Rabbit’s balls tighten. He couldn’t remember how long it had been since he’d held a woman, since he’d held Rosie.

/>   The older man picked up the dead pigeon. Its smashed head lolled, blood dripped from the tip of its beak and onto his greasy parka. The spidery trail looked like Arabic script. Maybe it was some kind of warding spell, like those that Jack had told him about… or maybe it was just the way the blood was dripping. Rabbit didn’t know anymore. He’d fallen through a hole into another world the day he’d met Jack, a world where nothing was quite what it seemed, but that somehow made sense of every fucked-up thing that had happened to him.

  “Don’t blame me, darlin’,” Jack shouted at the blonde. “I’m a product of the Big Society. Big. Fackin’. So. Ciety, innit?” His smoker’s voice had a ragged burr, low and dangerous, the warning growl of a rabid dog.

  She stepped back and fumbled her phone out of her pocket. “I’m filming you… you fucking freak!” she shrilled and pointed the iPhone at Jack like it was a crucifix and he was Dracula’s skankier cousin.

  “Film this darlin’,” said Jack, and bit through the pigeon’s neck. The blood ran crimson fingers through his straggly beard. He spit the head at her. The girl squealed and dropped her phone.

  Rabbit stepped forward and put himself between the girl and his cackling oppo. He picked up the phone, but before he had chance to say “sorry” she snatched it from him and ran back the way she’d come, yelling incoherently at the men.

  Rabbit wanted to go after her; tell her it wasn’t Jack’s fault, that he was just a bit special needs—tell her it wasn’t his fault that Jack had killed the pigeon. He was hungry to talk to her, to talk to anyone who wasn’t fucking hat-stand, high or pissed out of their heads.

  Jack slapped him on the back. “Daft cow almost got herself killed, and do I get a word of thanks for savin’ her? Ungrateful cunt!” he bellowed after her. She stopped running and shrieked something at them before sprinting across the park and out of sight.

  “Right between the shoulder blades! Did you fucking see that, Rabbit?” Jones lowered the SA80, a shitkicker grin spread across his face. The billow of clothing fluttered, dark against the pale sand. She didn’t get up…

  The anger from the past welled up in the present. “That was totally bone, man!” he shouted at Jack. “What d’you mean, “she almost got herself killed?” What were you gonna do?” Rabbit gave Jack a two-handed shove in the chest. He was old and skinny, but absorbed the blow with just a half-step back. “For fuck’s sake.” Rabbit ran a calloused hand through his, not so short back and sides. He wanted to punch the old twat.

  Jack wiped the pigeon’s blood from his mouth. “See them up there?” He pointed the bird carcass at the tree. The branches were crowded with pigeons, all sizes and colours, all looking down at them with their bright, raptor eyes. “Anything strike you as funny?”

  Rabbit was tired of Jack’s madman-prophet shtick. “Other than you? No, Obi Fucking Wan, I don’t. They’re just fucking pigeons.”

  “No they ain’t. They’re a Harbinger. Little was about to sign her death warrant by running underneath it. That bastard would have latched onto her and sucked her as dry as my cock.” Jack shivered and pulled the two woolly hats he was wearing over his ears. “It would have ridden her until her life was in the toilet—humped the fucking soul out of her. And when there was nothing left, no love, no job, no friends, it would have made her jump under a fackin’ tube or take a bath with a razorblade and a bottle of painkillers. I broke that spell, saved the bitch, but that was a close one. Now, watch me finish it.” Jack tipped the decapitated bird to his lips and squeezed the last drops of blood into his mouth like it was an ice pop.

  Rabbit wasn’t fazed; he’d seen worse—unlike the dog walkers, who ran, horrified and disgusted as Jack spat a fine mist of blood at the birds and followed it up with a rapid-fire tirade in fluent Madspeak. A couple of kids were laughing nervously as they filmed the soon-to-be YouTube classic.

  Rabbit was about to remind Jack just how boned he thought all this was when the flock of birds took flight.

  Just for a second, Rabbit thought the tight clump of their ascending mass looked startlingly like a giant face that had been carved from feathers. It twisted in the air at such an angle that it created the illusion the face was opening its mouth and screaming. Rabbit felt the world tilt. He staggered and reached for a gun that wasn’t there. The bird face exploded. Pigeons scattered across the grey Clapham sky, their wings flashing silver.

  “Job done,” said Jack. “Now they’re just pigeons again.”

  “Again? How did they become this Harbinger thing in the first place?” Rabbit knew he sounded like a twat, but he was in now—in Jack’s world. He either accepted it or went back to his own fucked-up reality, and that wasn’t an option.

  Jack shrugged. “I don’t think it was a deliberate sending—Harbingers are hard to control, they’re a mindless, random evil—a cancer of the shadows.” He coughed, hawked up a gob of phlegm. “The flock probably pecked seeds off a fresh grave and got infected that way. A Harbinger’ll snuggle up with the corpse of its last human victim like a tick waiting for its next animal carrier to come close. That thing about black cats crossing your path?” Jack grinned. “That’s because of Harbingers.”

  Rabbit nodded. He was suddenly struck by how easy it was to forget the reason learned over a lifetime in favour of believing the words of a lunatic who drank White Lightning by the litre, and wore at least two hats at all times.

  That Rabbit was going bat-shit crazy had occurred to him more than once over the last few weeks. It seemed the more time he spent with Jack, the more plausible the insane sounded. It felt like a disease was slowly fucking him over, eating away at his sanity, but then the memory of what happened to Jonesy exploded in his mind. That was real. That had happened.

  Jack stuffed the bird inside his coat and triumphantly plucked a half-smoked rollie from behind his ear. He shoved it between his bloodied lips and clicked his fingers. A flame sprang from the tip of his thumb. Rabbit knew he’d lit a match, he’d seen him do it before, but if you didn’t know, it looked like the old tramp had just used his thumb as a lighter. It was a neat trick… probably. Rabbit wasn’t sure. When it came to Jack it was impossible to tell what was a con and what was… Rabbit shook his head. He still couldn’t bring himself to say or even think the ‘M’ word.

  “D’you want to know how I knew?” Jack nudged Rabbit towards the path. The two men started walking.

  “Go on then, Gandalf, how did you know?”

  “I heard the dog howling—that chocolate lab with the Frisbee? It knew something was up, that’s why it was barking like that. Some animals are like us.”

  “What? Fucking lunatics?”

  “No, you prick. Sensitive! You’ll need to look out for that.” Jack slapped his thigh. “I fackin’ knew it was a Harbinger, fackin’ chancer; not on my patch! Taking out one of the flock disrupted its essence. Did you notice how none of the others flew off when I whacked this one?” He patted his pocket. “Did you notice that not one so much as twitched?”

  Rabbit went cold. Jack was right. Normal birds would have flown away as soon as he’d fired the stone into the branches. But they hadn’t, they’d just sat there… watching. “Fuck me.”

  “Not today, darlin’, you ain’t shaved. Now come on, let’s go cook up Tweetie Pie, I’m starvin’.”

  On the way back to the squat, Jack picked up a lone glove and draped it on a nearby wall. He told Rabbit that dropped gloves were a good luck charm—a Khamsa or something. The cracked old goat also poured a pint of stale beer and dog-ends over the doorstep of a pub they’d been in once or twice. He said it was a libation to the establishment’s hearth spirit. A half mile down the road he took a slash in a doorway.

  “What’s this for then?” Rabbit asked while he waited.

  “What the fack?—what d’ you think it’s for?” said Jack as he continued to hose the door. “I need a piss. You’re a facking nutter you, I swear.”

  Rosie had said he was a nutter, had screamed it in his face and that he was a fucki
ng psycho and a lunatic. He’d ignored her, ignored her nails ripping into his face and neck as she tried to drag him off the little shit who he’d found in his bed. He hadn’t told Rosie he was coming home on early leave. It was supposed to be a surprise, and it was—just not the one he’d planned.

  His ex-girlfriend’s banshee wail still haunted him, still filled his ears with the shrieking poison that killed his love for her. “You fucking madman! I hate you, I hate you!” She’d screamed when he threw her lover through the patio door… without opening it. He’d have to call her when the MPs finally tracked him down. She could bear witness to his insanity; get him some time in the nuthouse instead of the glasshouse.

  “Boned. Everything’s fucking boned.” Rabbit groaned.

  “What you doin’ over there, Action Man?” Jack called. He was roasting the pigeon over a fire he’d made in a bucket. His raspy voice echoed around the gloomy warehouse.

  “Egyptian PT. “ Rabbit yawned and cursed when he checked his wrist and saw only a pale strip of skin where his watch used to be. “What time is it?”

  Jack shrugged. “Normal time?” He tugged his hats down. “S’food time… or rest time: Nearly dark-sleepy-bye-byes time. I dunno.”

  Rabbit had pawned his watch a few hours before he’d met Jack. He used the money to buy a bottle of Russian Standard and a packet of fags. His Dad’s fucking Omega. It was his lucky charm; he’d worn it since he was sixteen and for two tours, and had never got as much as a scratch on it or him. It was worth way more than the fifty quid he’d got from the pawn shop, but that night—without a penny in his pocket and no way back to the world he knew, he realised he’d come to a place where watches were an irrelevance, no matter how precious.

  He’d almost done the full litre when they finally caught up with him. Too pissed to move, he’d sat there, sobbing beneath the flickering lights as the mist rolled into the deserted underpass.

  He’d run from the mist ever since they’d killed Jonesy. Every time the thick, milky haze had gathered, he’d run. He’d run from Afghanistan, from Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham, but it didn’t matter. Wherever he went the mist followed. They followed. He finally stopped running in Clapham, out of money and out of hope.