The Neverloving Dead (Haunted Hearts)

CHAPTER 2

TO SOLVE A MURDER

GETHIN

G ethin couldn’t tell if he was dreaming or not. He might be. The room had that grainy, offbeat quality dreams sometimes had – but ghosts didn’t sleep, did they? And he felt pretty lucid. A bit of a sore throat, but that was always there. Ever since he’d got stabbed in it.

Right now, he was looking out at the city, forearms folded, glad it was summer and the sun was out, spilling fuzzy light around the flat. It made bugger all difference to what he had to do but he’d always loved the sun, so it was a morale boost. Something in him wanted to move ‘on’ all the time. Let go and float away. Let it all be, you know? Same as he had in life. He had to not do that, though. He’d made a commitment – the first one he’d ever made, as a matter of fact – and he’d stick to it.

He was here out of sheer, pig-headed determination.

All his life, people had said he was a stubborn bastard. After his parents had disowned him for the usual reasons, he’d run off – first for Cardiff, then Brighton, then here, to London. Sixteen, he’d been, when he’d first left. A kid! He marvelled at it now. At how bloody confident he’d been, how determined that everything he’d wanted existed in abundance anywhere that wasn’t the wet, grey hills of Wales. And he hadn’t been wrong, necessarily. Over the next twenty years, he’d done all sorts: lots of clubbing and getting laid, probably too much molly and way too much booze, but he’d been footloose and fancy free. He’d worked too: labouring, mostly, but he’d also modelled, painted, DJ’d, done a bit of escort work, been a terrible mime artist, even had a day role as ‘Welshman in the pub’ in Eastenders once, for which he’d had two lines: “There we go, boyo, buy yourself a beer,” and, “Alright, back to mine, is it?”

Hundred and thirty quid, he’d got for that. Amazing.

Every now and then, someone had said he should do something ‘worthwhile’ – settle down, they’d meant – but he’d mostly ignored them. Even now, dead, he couldn’t see what hadn’t been worthwhile about his life. Like, fair play, he hadn’t ‘achieved’ anything – and ‘settling down’ had always made him think of his parents: stifling and brooding back in the hills, the end of the road, ultimate stagnation – but he’d had fun, hadn’t he? Enjoyed himself. It was more than some folk seemed to do.

The hundred and thirty quid appeared on the windowsill in front of him, all warm and lit by sunshine. He glanced at it, then back at the city. The hotchpotch of buildings. The glassy glint of the Thames just over a mile away.

And now look. Here he was. In bloody limbo.

Trying to stay, unbelievably.

He’d never had less fun. Or not since leaving home. The place was a horrible hellhole of a half-world. He’d been here three years now and couldn’t wait to leave. He’d always been one for trying new things. He’d no idea what came ‘next’, but anything had to be better than this going-round-in-circles malarkey, getting nowhere with the same sodding thing.

The wad of cash thickened, morphing into five hundred quid. His stomach tightened, nausea creeping in, as it always did when he thought about that ‘thing’. A second later, the money began browning with old blood – his blood – then curling, rolling itself into a tube, tighter and tighter until it looked like a turd. The sun went in. The city went grey.

He turned, gaze drawn like a magnet to the strip of floor by the bed, where the thing – his murder – had happened. The nausea strengthened as he remembered himself lying there: at the time and for two days afterwards, which was how long it had taken anyone to find him. He’d watched enough Most Haunted to think he’d be able to leave when he’d solved it – only he couldn’t see how the fuck he was meant to find out anything new, given he could barely leave this flat, or how he’d let anyone know if he did. What could he do – ring the police station? He couldn’t press bloody buttons, could he? Or speak. Not to the living, anyway. And there wasn’t an art cupboard in ghost-world – there wasn’t anything – so it wasn’t like he could appear to them with a portrait he’d painted. A big title daubed across the top: My Murderer .

And anyway he knew crap all about his killer. He’d called himself Mike, which might’ve been true or not, but he’d looked totally generic: dark-greyish hair, brown eyes, a tidy beard, a bit taller than Gethin, maybe five eleven, medium build. Apart from a whiff of damp stone, he’d smelled clean. ‘Middling Mike’ could be any of about forty thousand men in London alone. When Gethin had first seen him, he’d thought it was Jonno, the guy who ran the bar he worked in.

He huffed – ghosts didn’t breathe, but it helped his sore throat. Made him feel less like it was still bleeding out. He just had to keep trying, didn’t he? Keep rehashing it and looking for something, anything he’d missed.

The room flickered between the one he’d had and the one that was there now, redecorated. The blood-spattered magnolia walls had been painted a peaceful sage green. The cheap, death-soaked carpet had been replaced with polished oak floorboards, and there was a different arrangement of furniture: a shiny walnut dressing table where Gethin had had a clothes rail, a chest of drawers where he’d had a chair, staid shelves of books on things like valuing ecclesiastical furniture where Gethin had had a sex swing. The bed was in the same place, the natural spot for it, though this one was posher than his had been and the duvet wasn’t anywhere near as colourful. The new tenant, some sort of auctioneer named Stuart, seemed to like all his fabrics a kind of ambassadorial grey. Everything a bit businesslike.

The turd appeared where Gethin had lain on the floor, dead. It wasn’t subtle. His killer had literally called him a foul pile of faeces . Weirdly formal insult. Gethin remembered him spitting after he’d said it, all red in the face. Sure enough, the turd began to glisten with spit.

Definitely a dream then – though not an especially profound one. He wondered what had happened, why he was dreaming when ghosts didn’t sleep. He had an inkling it wasn’t the first time. That it had something to do with getting angry and dying. Or dying more.

Vaguely, he remembered seeing a pallid, lanky... priest, was it? In his flat... towering over Stuart’s sleeping body... raising a hand politely: Let’s calm down, shall we?

The thought both annoyed him and returned him to the patch of floor: to his murderer. Gethin hadn’t spent long with him beforehand, but he’d seemed educated, polite, respectful. He’d told Gethin to calm down too.

Absolute gall of him. To murder someone while complaining they were being bloody difficult.

As if portalled there by the thought, he found himself standing at the edge of the bed, exactly where the priest had stood, looking hard at the murder-patch. Like he hadn’t looked at it a million times already. It darkened.

He couldn’t seem to look away.

The turd uncurled, flattening, morphing back into the flat stack of twenties: the five hundred quid. It was the amount the killer had given him – half a grand for one flippin’ night! Even better money than Eastenders , he’d thought at the time.

The paid-for part hadn’t bothered him, not after his time as an escort: some people liked to pay just so everyone was clear there were no strings attached, and flats didn’t rent themselves, did they? Plus, while Gethin wasn’t tall – just shy of five nine – he’d been raised on a farm, so he was sturdy and strong. He could take care of himself. Or so he’d thought. He’d thought he was bringing the guy back for a bit of Daddy Fun, actually. Or some other kink. Considering the amount of cash.

He looked harder at it. There was still blood on it. Redder now. Fresher. He rubbed his throat.

What had bothered him was that ‘Mike’ had picked it out of his pocket afterwards, saying Gethin hadn’t been worth it. It sounded stupid – utterly bull-headed – but that had stuck to him almost as much as the sodding murder.

‘Worth’, eh?

Like it hadn’t been enough to hear it from his parents and a hundred other people. He saw that five hundred quid all over the bloody place. Felt the killer’s jibe all over again. Decided, all over again, that he wasn’t going to let the bastard get away with murdering him. Not just murdering him, but telling him afterwards that he hadn’t even been worth killing. Like victims were a selection box and Gethin hadn’t met basic product requirements.

So maybe that was why he was dreaming about the money, he thought. Maybe he had nearly died again. Maybe the five hundred quid was to focus him on staying here – not just to remind him of the belly-crawling lowlife he’d sworn to track down and bring to justice, but to remind him his life had mattered. That he had.

After all, he had nothing else to remind him, did he? No knick-knacks to look at. No people missing him – not that he’d know, would he?

He thought of the police tipping up and not really helping with the whole ‘mattering’ thing. By then, Gethin had missed a party night and his bar shift round the corner and, fair play, at first they had taken it seriously: his body lying on the floor, wrists tied, jeans round his ankles, held there by his favourite red cowboy boots. Their urgency had seemed to fade when they’d found his PrEP in the bathroom – like maybe they thought it was less of a rape in that case. One of them had even said, “These guys.” Like, what guys? Murder victims? Gay ones? Ones who thought ahead?

Whatever they’d felt, they’d examined the room well enough. Missed a spot of blood on the ceiling from where Gethin had headbutted the guy’s nose. The blood had gone other places, though – they’d definitely got a sample.

Honestly, he’d have moved on at that point. They’d found his body, hadn’t they? He hadn’t needed to stay here, wafting about his old flat like a fart in a jam jar. Only then he’d remembered something else the killer had said. Growled actually. Right when Gethin had been fighting and yelling like fuck, and the man had grabbed his hair, pulled his head back and rammed a car key – a car key of all things – into his throat to stop him shouting. Over and over.

“The other one wasn’t this much trouble.”

The other one.

If it hadn’t been for that, he wouldn’t be here now. He was sure of it. What the guy had done to his body as he’d died had been absolutely bloody gross and Gethin never wanted to think about it again. But the second he’d heard those words again, they’d pinned him here: Middling Mike had killed before. Gethin wasn’t his first.

And that had begged the thought, hadn’t it...

What if he wasn’t the last?

The five hundred quid vanished from the murder-patch.

He knelt, crawling across it till he was lying flat where his old body had been, rolling over to look at the ceiling – at the fleck of blood still up there – wishing he had more clues. He knew the murderer had done it again, twice actually, because the whole ‘getting killed’ thing had left some kind of skin-crawling link between them. Not enough to find out useful stuff, mind, like whether he really was called Mike or what his address was. Just enough to feel it when the man started getting the urge to kill again, then as it grew, then when it peaked.

Both times, Gethin had heard the news later: the murder of a gay man. One suffocated, one choked. All in their own homes, in different parts of the city. Neither report mentioned the other killings. Which wasn’t as mad as it sounded: London had a pretty large gay population and, after the DNA bounty he’d left at Gethin’s, the killer had cleaned both bodies. Plus, the murders had been spaced out. No more stabbings either, let alone with a flipping car key. He guessed the man had neater ways of quieting his victims now.

Anyway, Gethin knew that made it four. He felt like chucking up just thinking about it.

Not that he could.

He glared at the little black spot. It began to grow. Spreading across the ceiling. A mirror for the blood he’d had to watch pour from his own neck. It’d start dripping on him in a minute.

Jesus. He had to think of something: a lead. A way to get a lead.

But how the fuck did you solve a murder in limbo?

The blackness on the ceiling just kept expanding, surface starting to shine wetly as it went. He shut his eyes, going over what little he did have. The first murder after his – eighteen months ago now – had been on the city’s outskirts, so Gethin hadn’t been able to get there. Stuart’s flat was in Elephant and Castle, which was pretty central, but Gethin got weaker the further he was from it, so all he knew was the standard gubbins he’d seen on the news. The second one had happened nearly six months ago, in a tiny one-room flat only about a mile away, which was about his maximum. He'd gone, obviously, but only managed it for about forty minutes. The police had left by then, but the victim had still been there, gnawing his thumbs, sobbing and shivering, poor bugger.

Matt.

Twenty-three, he’d been. Picked up from another bar, though he said he knew the place Gethin had worked, which had felt like a better sort of bonding than being murdered. After his body had been taken away, his sister had come to pick up his things. That was all he’d been waiting for. To see her again, one last time.

Gethin had asked questions while they’d watched her pack. He’d known it was the same killer – he’d felt it. He hadn’t needed Matt’s description: the neat beard, the soapy, stony smell, everything the same, but with a mashed nose now. As with Gethin, he’d raped Matt as he’d died. Kept going.

The main differences were the cleaning afterwards and the fact the man had said something else to Matt: not the thing about worth, more like a prayer or something, though Matt had said his memory of the night was a mess. Something about the ‘frailty of flesh’ being ‘wiped away by forgiveness’. A religious nut, trying to get himself off the hook with God, they’d speculated.

It was a clue, sure. But not a massive one. There were religious nuts everywhere, weren’t there? Look at Stuart’s books. And Gethin’s own parents, disowning him and calling him “godless filth”. His mam, who could get a bit far-out with her insults, had screamed from the front door, as Gethin had finally walked away with one finger in the air, that judgement would find him and, when it did, he’d “deserve the devil”. All cos she’d caught him blowing his friend Gwyn in the wool shed. The rubbish some people thought was important.

Gethin had given Matt a hug. Then the sister had left in floods of tears, Matt had faded from existence and Gethin had come back here to his old flat, disappearing through the walls into the dusty quiet beyond – away from the world and away from Stuart. Living people seemed to weaken you in this place, especially if you were already upset.

It had taken months to recover, but he’d come out of those months certain: he wasn’t going to let another person die like that. The commitment he’d made to stop his killer was now set in stone.

He wasn’t going anywhere.

There wouldn’t be another Matt.

So, here he was. After all that time spent wondering if he’d ever be strong enough to go round a few local churches on Sundays. looking for his super-religious murderer in the congregation, Gethin had wandered into the bedroom and found a priest , of all people, standing over Stuart.

Anger welled again. The devil, he’d looked like. Like something out of an exorcism movie. And as for the Let’s calm down . Un-bloody-believable. Of course he’d felt angry. Of course he was angry now . A religious predator, in his home, standing where his murderer had stood. Molesting Stuart.

Like, he wasn’t blind. He’d known it wasn’t his murderer, but that wasn’t the point, was it? Stuart had been unconscious . Unable to say no. Like Gethin. Like Matt. Obviously Gethin had lost his shit.

And what had the priest said?

I have better things to do with my time.

Just like the bloody killer.

Gethin opened his eyes.

The black spot had grown enormous, filling the entire ceiling by now, making it so dark it didn’t look like Stuart’s ceiling at all. Memories began to play out on it – the priest’s cold smile, himself running through the priest, trying to stop him, losing energy with every bit of contact, watching bits of himself start to leave, to disintegrate...

“Shit, this is why I’m bloody dreaming,” he said out loud. He was dreaming because he had nearly died again. Or maybe it wasn’t out loud. And maybe he wasn’t in Stuart’s flat...

From somewhere, he distinctly heard the turning of a page.

He looked around.

Stuart wasn’t here.

No one was.

His mind skipped oddly, like it was beginning to knit its way back out of the dream, helped by the sound. After seeing both the wad of money and the priest attacking Stuart, his purpose felt clearer again anyway: pull himself together, get strong, find a way to stop ‘Mike’ before he killed someone else. Even though he’d already failed at it twice.

His eyes opened. His real eyes.

The black dot was gone.

The ceiling was different to Stuart’s. Unplastered. Dark. Everything was dark.

He recognised it. Not his old flat, exactly, but the space behind the walls: the cwtch , he called it, mostly for irony, cos a cwtch was a cosy room back in Wales – what some folks called a ‘snug’ – and this was about as cosy as a bed of nails. A narrow, dust-clagged corridor that could have been made of stone, wood or cold hard iron. Totally empty.

Just like the rest of bloody limbo.

He blinked, pushing himself up onto one elbow, vision slowly making its way through the gloom to his feet, then to a tall, spindly, dark-haired man sitting just past them, reading. Turning another page. He looked like he was in a low chair, only Gethin knew there weren’t any chairs back here. The man was hovering.

And it wasn’t a ‘man’.

It was a priest. The priest . Or demon, or whatever he was.

Gethin froze.

He hadn’t made a noise, but the priest looked up, grey eyes positively chilling. He had an archaic, black-and-white look to him. Very, well... very dead , actually. After a few seconds, he returned to his book. Gethin had no idea where, in all the green valleys, he’d managed to get a book in this place. Then again, it seemed Gethin had had no idea quite a few things were possible. How had the priest got near enough to a living person to do... that?

At the memory, panic grew. The idea he’d been unconscious around...

He dragged himself into a sitting position, setting his knees in front of him in case the priest tried anything. “What the hell are you doing here?” He hoped he didn’t sound as exhausted as he felt. As defenceless.

The priest lifted an eyebrow. “Here in an existential sense? Here with you? Or here?” He gestured around them, at bugger all.

“Fantastic,” Gethin muttered. “A rapist and a comedian.” Surreptitiously, he checked his body. He didn’t know for what, since it was only spirit so the priest couldn’t have done anything to it, could he? It appeared undamaged. The priest didn’t reply. He had an impassive, holier-than-thou air. It needled Gethin. “So, what are you? A vampire? A monster? A succubus?”

“I don’t drink blood. And succubi are female.” The priest looked patronisingly down at his book, like he thought Gethin was simple.

Gethin noticed he hadn’t answered about the ‘monster’ bit. “Succubi and incubi are both straight,” he countered, making sure to load his tone with plenty of ‘stay the fuck away from me’. “ Succ ubi suck and in cubi go in. You were sucking.”

The priest turned another page. His fingers were long, bony and bleached-looking. They reminded Gethin of things you’d find in museum jars. “I am an incubus,” he replied tightly. “And I do not ‘go in’. However, since you made your lack of knowledge about limbo abundantly clear the first time we met, I’ll overlook your mistake.”

Gethin wondered if he could be any more condescending. “Gosh, diolch yn fawr , thank you. So you’re a demon , then? A cum-stealing, person-molesting priest-demon.” And for some reason, he was in his bloody cwtch .

“Not a demon, no. Demons don’t exist,” he said to his book, as if it were a child. “I’m a ghost, like you. And I already told you I’m not a priest. I was a priest, now I’m not. I avoid anything to do with the Church, actually. Alas,” he glanced up, expression bland, “I expired in my cassock.”

“Brilliant,” Gethin nodded. “And now you prey on men while they can’t do anything about it.”

The priest-demon closed the book in an annoyingly composed sort of way. “If you were hoping to impart a sermon on morality, I’m the wrong audience. Believe me,” he widened his eyes. “It’s better if my meals are asleep.”

Gethin rubbed his face, since he still hadn’t kicked about ninety percent of his human habits. “ What the grassy green fuck do you mean by meals ?” Dear God, it wasn’t even worse than it had looked, was it? “You don’t... Please tell me you weren’t eat –”

“Of course I wasn’t,” the priest snapped. “I’m not a kill–” His jaw tightened and he broke off, standing. “You were the one who tried to murder me, remember? I saved your life. Such as it is.” He wafted a hand, like whatever Gethin’s life was, it definitely wasn’t all that special. “However, since you now appear fully reinvigorated, I consider my conscience expunged. Excuse me.”

He made for the wall above the open street – a weird, efficient-looking glide Gethin had no idea how to do. He wondered suddenly how long the priest had been here. Like, who said expunged ? And if he was a ghost, as he claimed, and he was local, how come Gethin had never seen him before? Not once in three long years...

“Wait.” The word was out of his mouth before he remembered he wanted the demon-priest to leave.

The ghost stopped, turning the icy grey eyes on him.

“If you weren’t trying to kill Stuart and you weren’t trying to, you know...” he nodded pointedly, in lieu of saying: Bite his dick off . “How was he a ‘meal’?”

“Stuart?” After a few seconds, he smirked. “Ah, I see. You live here. You don’t leave. You’ve formed an attachment to ‘Stuart’.”

“You fucking superior bastard.”

“Really? ‘Perverted bastard’. ‘Superior bastard’. ‘ Monster’ . Any more names before I leave?”

“Are you feeding off come ?” He couldn’t be. Nobody was that weird.

The priest-demon just rolled his eyes and started gliding again, tricky as a sodding magpie.

“What were you doing ?”

The priest turned at the wall, utterly indifferent. “Getting my body back. Now, you’ve wasted more than enough of my time and energy and, since I don’t intend to let you cost me more of either,” the metallic eyes glinted coldly, “I shan’t intrude upon your personal domain with – was it ‘Stuart’? – again. I have the whole city and beyond. Bon mort .”

And he disappeared through the bloody wall.

“Bangin’!” Gethin shouted after him, for no good reason. What he should’ve said was bon mort back, just to prove he knew what it meant. Arrogant arse-twat.

He rubbed his face again. Anger was thudding through him as if he still had a heart. He couldn’t believe the nerve of the guy. He’d come here , into Gethin’s private space, violating Stuart in his sleep, doing the-buggering-hell-knew-what to Gethin as he’d lain there, helpless, talking about people as ‘meals’; then looking down his nose at him . After all that .

Just like every other fucker.

He folded his arms and shut his eyes, telling himself to calm down – that none of it mattered since he’d never have to see him again. He’d gone. That was good.

Gethin was surprised how relieved he felt.

The minutes passed, all the empty space just hanging there above him like a sword.

He couldn’t help it.

He thought about the practised way the incubus glided about. His odd, archaic manner of speaking. Him saying he could visit ‘the whole city and beyond’. And then the final thing: Getting my body back . What the buggering blue had that meant? He was a ghost, like Gethin, and he’d been able to touch people. Blow them, for fuck’s sake. Gethin had never been able to get within a foot without his energy starting to pull apart. He could touch things , sure. He’d kicked over that chair, hadn’t he? Knocked over the stuff on the dresser. But only cos he’d been so bloody furious. The incubus had been calm as an iced pond the entire time.

And he actually gained something from the living, he’d said. His body ...

Like, how?

The thought floated around in his head for a while. Stubborn.

Could there be another way?

Not the way the incubus did it, obviously, but some way. A way for Gethin to touch things, be around the living, travel further. If he could figure it out somehow, could he actually find his killer?

The idea seemed to shimmer like a tiny sun: the first bit of hope he’d had in months. He thought of ‘Mike’ spitting on his body. The five hundred quid. Matt, shivering in his crappy room. The copper saying, “These guys.” The three years he’d spent stuck in this flat, more or less. Weak as a chick.

Gethin wouldn’t go after him to ask – he hoped never to be anywhere near him again – but if he could work out how the incubus had done it... if he could do it himself... then maybe he could prevent another Matt. He could stop his murderer and bring him to justice.

And after that...

Well, his vow would be fulfilled, wouldn’t it?

So after that, he could finally leave bloody limbo.