Hexed Detective: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy by Matthew Stott & David Bussell

Author:Matthew Stott & David Bussell [Stott, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Genre Reader
Published: 2018-03-07T22:00:00+00:00

16

The Magician hated hospitals.

He was now twenty years old, and had spent more than enough time over the last few years sat within the walls of places like this. Pale corridors and tired chairs, disinfectant stink and the beep-beep of sad machines.

He shivered, or more accurately, he trembled. A tremor that turned his hands blurry.

‘Be brave,’ said the constant voice at his ear. Said the Angel of Blackpool.

His mother was dying.

He remembered the first time he’d heard the Angel’s voice, knelt down on the beach, digging a hole in the sand, trying to ignore his mother as she cried. He’d give just about anything for there to be enough life left in her for tears.

The door to her room opened and a doctor stepped out. The Magician thought he looked like a bird. A pinched face and hook nose.

‘She’s not long left now,’ said the doctor, and the Magician dug his nails into the palms of his hands to stop himself from smashing this bird in the face.

‘Be brave,’ said the Angel.

He smiled and nodded and the doctor walked off down the corridor, the Magician’s cold eyes watching him until he turned out of view.

‘I could kill him,’ he said.

‘Yes. You could kill everyone in this hospital,’ replied the Angel.

He smiled at that.

‘Yes. I could send them one by one by one into the sea, just like Nelson. Someone would walk along the beach, with a metal detector maybe, some sad, useless old man full of life he’s no use for, and he’d see them all. See all the bodies floating on the water’s surface like grim lily pads.’

He walked to the open door of his mother’s hospital room and paused, fingertips brushing against the door handle.

‘Why don’t I do that? Just send them all to sea and not go in this room at all.’

‘Because that would be the end and you know we have much more important work. A destiny, you and I. We’re meant for great things.’

The Magician nodded, then stepped inside the hospital room. His mother was laid out in the single bed, a thin cotton sheet over her. Her face was thin, cheeks shallow. She’d lost so much weight over the last few months that she barely looked like his mother at all. This was a stranger. A thing. Trying to think of her like that helped him not to scream.

He pulled a chair over to her bedside. He didn’t look at her, instead he looked at the window in the far wall. He could see the sky through it; the brightest blue with barely a wisp of cotton floating through.

‘Where is Heaven?’ he asked.

‘Not there,’ replied the Angel. ‘Not in the bright blue sky. Not beyond it either. Heaven exists elsewhere. Other. Aside from. Apart.’

His mother gurgled, a wet rattle in her throat.

First his dad, and now his mum, taken cruelly and before their time.

‘God cares not for your tears. Cares not about the pain He has caused. An indifferent monster, that is what God is.

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