Hangman's Pond Read online

  HANGMAN’S POND

  Book Two of The Brackenford Cycle

  Nick Moseley

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Copyright Information

  About The Author

  One

  Typical Monday, Trev Irwin thought. I spilled my breakfast, my car wouldn’t start, and someone’s trying to kill me.

  As he stood there, waiting for his assailant to stop gloating and finish him off, he couldn’t help but reflect on how complicated his life had become, and, perhaps more importantly, how short it was going to be.

  Over the previous couple of months the whole “having a bad day” concept had been taken to a new level for Trev. He accepted that, as an estate agent, he couldn’t expect to be the most popular person on the planet, but the number of beings who seemed to want him dead felt disproportionately high. It was just plain unfair. Why did nobody want to kill his colleague Barry Clark instead? The man’s horrendous foot-odour alone was surely reason enough, and that was before you took his personality – or lack of it – into account.

  Barry’s pasty, smug face had been the sight that greeted Trev when he arrived for work that morning at SmoothMove, the town of Brackenford’s premier estate agency. Trev felt his heart sink. If Barry looked pleased to see him, only bad things could follow.

  ‘Morning Trev, mate,’ said Barry, leaning forward with his elbows on his desk. He was a paunchy, balding man in his fifties, a career estate agent who’d never managed to move higher than the first rung on the ladder. As far as Trev could tell he didn’t aspire to, either. Barry was one of those people who’d given up hope of moving forward and had decided instead to try and hold his colleagues back. It was about the only thing he was any good at.

  ‘Morning,’ said Trev, looking at Barry with a wary expression. He crossed the open-plan office and sat down at his own desk. His car’s refusal to start had forced him to jog to work through the drizzle that had been hanging over the town all through the weekend. As a result he was red-faced and uncomfortably damp.

  At the back of the room Helen Frost, the office’s disciplinarian Sales Manager, looked up from her paperwork and gave Trev a nod. Trev waved back. To Helen’s right was another, smaller desk, occupied by Sarah Teale. Sarah had only been at SmoothMove for two months but already she was threatening to outperform Barry in terms of sales, although it wasn’t as if that was any great achievement. She favoured Trev with a smile.

  ‘Just had an early caller on the phone,’ said Barry, still looking smug. ‘Booked an accompanied viewing for you this morning.’

  Trev sighed. ‘Go on then, what’s the punch line?’

  ‘It’s at Four Lanes,’ Barry replied.

  ‘Now I know why you look so happy,’ said Trev. Four Lanes was Brackenford’s roughest housing estate. Trev could think of many places he’d rather go on a rainy Monday morning, including prison, the dentist, and the seventh level of Hell. ‘Why do I have to go? You took the call.’

  Barry shrugged. ‘Buyer asked for you.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Trev glanced in Helen’s direction, in the hope that she would intervene and make Barry go instead. She remained engrossed in her paperwork.

  ‘It’s going to take me half an hour just to walk there,’ Trev protested. ‘The car’s knackered again.’

  ‘That might be a problem, because the viewing’s in ten minutes,’ said Barry, making no effort to disguise his delight.

  ‘You’ll have to go then. Not even Usain Bolt could get there on foot in ten minutes.’

  Barry shook his head. ‘I told you. The buyer asked for you, by name. It has to be you.’

  ‘Can you make your minds up and one of you go, please,’ said Helen, finally looking up from her desk to give them both a glacial stare. ‘We need to get that bloody flat off the books. If we miss out on selling it because you two were sitting here arguing instead of showing it to the buyer, I’m not going to be pleased.’

  ‘It has to be Trev, the buyer asked for him,’ said Barry again, spreading his hands. ‘If he runs he can still make it.’

  ‘I’ll drive you if you like, Trev,’ piped up Sarah. ‘I haven’t seen the flat yet.’

  Trev gave her a thumb’s-up. ‘Well, everybody should go there at least once just for the experience. You start the car, I’ll get the pepper spray and riot shields.’

  Barry’s smugness evaporated. He was divorced, and in his desperation to stave off the possibility of dying alone he’d fixated on Sarah as a possible new partner, despite the near thirty-year age gap. Needless to say his romantic interest in her was unrequited, leading Barry to become almost comically jealous whenever Sarah and Trev spent time together. He had become convinced that there was something going on between them.

  As it happened Trev was also convinced there was something going on between him and Sarah. He just wasn’t quite sure what the something was. He didn’t think it was a romantic something, necessarily, but there was a bond between them as a result of a harrowing shared experience.

  It’s not that hard to get her attention, Barry, Trev thought as he followed Sarah out to her car. All you have to do is rescue her from a demon, like I did.

  Trev’s life had been a pleasantly dull nine-to-five sort of existence until he hit thirty years of age, at which point he’d developed the ability to see ghosts. Given that Trev was a lifelong sceptic when it came to the supernatural, this came as a surprise. All he’d expected to develop at that age was a receding hairline, a beer belly, and the weary acceptance that he was now old.

  Equally surprising was the discovery that this ability – the Sight, as it was known – was hereditary, and shared by his maternal grandfather. The old man had revealed that he was a member of a group called the Custodians, whose role, he explained, was to act as peacekeepers between the various groups of supernatural beings that lived among humanity in secret, as well as keeping them out of the sight of the world at large.

  Against his better judgment Trev had found himself drawn into this hidden world when he’d inadvertently saved Brackenford’s most famous resident, the KolleyCo supermarket tycoon Alastair Kolley, from a supernatural assassination attempt, marking himself out as a target for the bad guys in doing so. With no way of taking himself out of the firing line, Trev had been forced to track down and face those responsible. He’d emerged more-or-less victorious, but with the feeling that he’d made more enemies than he’d defeated.

  ‘So, good weekend?’ asked Sarah once they were seated in her little blue Ford and on their way.

  ‘It was OK,’ replied Trev, setting the heater vent on full blast to try and get some of the dampness out of his clothes. ‘Just chilled at home. Weather was too crap for much else.’

  ‘No spooky stuff?’ Sarah took her eyes off the road for a quick glance across at Trev.

  ‘No.’ Trev frowned. ‘As far as the spooky stuff is concerned, we’ve come to an agreement – I leave it alone, and it leaves me alone.’

  Kind of, he thought. He’d kept to that agreement until a Sunday near the end of October, when he’d found himself being chased around a graveyard by a malevolent spirit. He hadn’t mentioned that to Sarah, but since then things had been quiet anyway.

  ‘Oh,’ said Sarah, disappointed. She had a keen interest in the supernatural, which had been her reason for moving to Brackenford in the first place. Being a very old town, it had more than the average amount of what she called “spooky stuff”. Having found out about Trev’s abilities and the work of the Custodians she was always full of questions, which Trev did his best to deflect. In part because he liked to keep up a show of being tortured and mysterious, but mostly because he didn’t actually know very much. ‘That’s good, I suppose. But isn’t there still someone out there trying to… you know.’

  ‘Kill me?’ said Trev. ‘Yeah, a bunch of them, probably. Thanks for reminding me.’ He shrugged. ‘Although it’s been a couple of months since Kolley’s cellar and nothing’s happened. Maybe they decided not to bother.’

  Sarah failed to suppress a shudder at the words “Kolley’s cellar”. Trev’s investigation into the attempt on Kolley’s life had uncovered the presence of a demon in Brackenford, a malevolent creature named Kökwimpaal which had a hunger for human souls and the ability to possess people - and other creatures - to do its dirty work.

  This was a shocking discovery, considering that the summoning of demons was rarely attempted. A would-be summo
ner who made a mistake in the complicated rituals necessary to bring a demon through from its own dimension would barely have enough time to cackle and say “Kneel! I am your new mast-” before the indignant creature butchered them and went home. You either got it right first time, or you died. There wasn’t much scope for practice.

  And if the presence of a demon hadn’t been shocking enough, the identity of its summoner was even more so: Alastair Kolley himself.

  ‘I’m still not over that,’ said Sarah. ‘Being trapped in there with that… thing. How could Kolley have thought it would help him?’

  ‘Because he’s an idiot, and he was too used to people telling him what he wanted to hear,’ said Trev. ‘I didn’t believe it when I first found out that Kolley had summoned the demon. Wasn’t long before it made sense though.’

  At first Trev had assumed that Kolley, with his supermarket business in financial trouble, had chosen death by demon as a very unusual way of committing suicide. The truth, however, was more complicated. Kolley’s father had been a serious practitioner of the occult, to the point that he had built a device capable of containing a demon – known as a Funkelay Cage - in the cellar of his mansion. It was an expensive, complex and oddly beautiful structure, but sadly it had all the demon-trapping ability of a plastic carrier bag. Kolley Senior had used it once, and it had killed him.

  The Cage remained unused for years, until a desperate Alastair Kolley had decided to continue his father’s work. Somehow he found an accomplice who could get the apparatus working and show him the correct rituals, and between them they’d been able to summon and contain the demon. Kolley believed that he could use the creature’s power to save KolleyCo. The “assassination attempt” had been a publicity stunt, using a demonically-possessed assailant as a patsy.

  No doubt Kolley had had other plans for the demon’s power, but he never got to put them into action. His accomplice had betrayed him, and the real reason for the demon’s presence was revealed.

  It had been brought to Brackenford to kill Trev. He still didn’t know why.

  ‘Are they still trying to find whoever was helping Kolley?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘The Custodians?’ Trev shrugged. ‘Granddad says they are, but I think they’re working on the theory that Kolley acted on his own. Whoever the accomplice was, he – or she – didn’t leave anything behind to link them to Kolley. And even if the Custodians are still looking, the trail must be stone cold by now.’

  ‘Are they doing anything to protect you?’

  ‘There’s still a clean-up team working here, I’m told. Granddad says that part of the operation is keeping an eye on me, but to be honest I’m trying to stay clear of the Custodians.’

  ‘Why?’ said Sarah with a frown. ‘Shouldn’t you be sticking close to them?’

  Trev puffed out his cheeks. ‘Probably. It’s just that I’m sure that they want to recruit me and I’m not interested. Plus I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hiding behind them.’

  ‘Are you worried?’

  ‘Yes and no. It’s weird. Nothing’s happened for two months, and sometimes I can kind of forget about it all for a bit. Then I remember that there’s someone out there who wants me dead.’ He grinned weakly. ‘Oh yeah, not just dead. Utterly destroyed. Body and soul.’

  ‘But why?’ said Sarah, thumping the steering wheel with her palms. ‘It makes no sense.’

  ‘Granddad thinks it’s not about who I am, but who I might become.’ Trev gave up fiddling with the vent and slumped back in his seat.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It’s the whole “eternal struggle between good and evil” thing,’ Trev replied. ‘Granddad, and his friends, believe that there are two powers overseeing all of this. The Light and the Shadow. They’re manipulating us like playing pieces in a massive game. Granddad thinks I might develop into something more powerful than I am now, so the Shadow’s guys are trying to get rid of me before that happens.’

  ‘You believe that?’

  ‘I just think he’s watched Clash of the Titans too often. You know, the one with Laurence Olivier as Zeus.’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘Never seen it.’

  ‘You see the Greek gods looking down at the mortals from Mount Olympus, and interfering in their lives for sport.’

  ‘And that’s what your Granddad thinks is happening to you?’

  ‘Well, not quite as cliché as that, I don’t think. But he believes there are higher powers involved, of one kind or another.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  Trev drummed his fingers on the armrest. ‘Me? I don’t know. I think there are bad people doing bad things and good people trying to stop them. That’s the bottom line.’

  ‘But do you believe that there are gods, or whatever, working things from behind the scenes?’

  ‘I hope not,’ said Trev. ‘The idea that someone’s manipulating me and that my decisions aren’t my own is kind of creepy.’

  Sarah nodded but didn’t say anything more on the subject, leaving Trev to his morose thoughts. How was he supposed to maintain a normal life with all these things hanging over him? From what Granddad had told him the Custodians were sceptical about the existence of Kolley’s accomplice, which meant they probably weren’t looking all that hard. Trev had to admit that the only proof he had was a verbal confession from Kolley, who was now in a mental hospital drawing pretty pictures with crayons, and the word of the demon itself. Neither counted as hard evidence as neither could be corroborated.

  So what could he do? The way he saw it there were three options: one, to carry on with life as normal and hope everything would somehow sort itself out; two, to run away and hide, possibly somewhere like Tibet or the dark side of the moon; or three, to set aside his misgivings, go to the Custodians and ask to join them in the hope that there was safety in numbers.

  Currently the first option was his favourite, because it required the least effort on his part. He didn’t like the idea of running because it involved, well, running, which was tiring. And he didn’t much fancy throwing himself on the Custodians’ mercy because he wasn’t sure he trusted them. Their history wasn’t the stuff of children’s stories and Disney cartoons, despite Granddad’s attempts to put a positive spin on it.

  Trev looked up as Sarah turned the car into Pitt Close, where the flat was located. He gave himself a mental shake. Time to shelve those thoughts for now and focus on his job. It had to be said that for all his worrying, the last two months had been – that one blip aside – uneventful, and he’d seen nothing to suggest that today would be any different.

  Fate absolutely loves it when people have thoughts like that.

  Two

  Sarah switched off the engine and they climbed out of the car. The drizzle hung unabated in the air. Trev wished that it would make up its mind and either rain properly or stop, but he knew better than to plead with the British climate.

  ‘What’s the buyer’s name?’ Sarah asked him, hooking a strand of long brown hair behind her ear and scrunching up her face at the grey sky.

  Trev stared at her. ‘Not a clue,’ he admitted. ‘Bloody hell. I was so busy arguing with Barry, I didn’t get the details off him.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Sarah. ‘I thought you were supposed to be good at this job.’

  ‘Barry plus Monday equals disaster.’ Trev looked around. Pitt Close was quiet. To his left were a couple of blocks of modern terraced houses, their driveways adorned with a mixture of tired-looking cars, oil stains and wheelie bins. Trev couldn’t see any of the residents. It was only just nine o’clock and he assumed that the people who weren’t at work or taking children to school were probably still in bed. The lucky bastards.

  To his right was an open grassy area that could only be called a park under the most charitable of circumstances. A single set of netless goalposts stood sentinel at one end, the crossbar sagging in the middle. A ragged hedge surrounded the park, with drifts of litter accumulated beneath it.

  ‘This is… welcoming,’ said Sarah, taking in the surroundings. Somewhere on the street the faint beeping of a smoke alarm could be heard as a neglected breakfast started to burn on the hob.

  ‘That must be our mystery buyer,’ Trev said, pointing out a large, dark blue 4x4 with blacked-out windows. It was parked in front of the building at the end of the cul-de-sac, which was a somewhat dilapidated apartment block with a row of garages attached. ‘That Chelsea tractor doesn’t quite belong in this neck of the woods.’