В мрачном английском замке на севере страны жестокий убийца оставляет позади следы своего злого шарта. Призрак-убийца извлекает душу жертвы в собственное тело, чтобы продолжить кровавые игры. В мире, где мертвых поднимается с могилы, чудовищный убийца приходит за новым жертвоприношением....
Find yourself a fresh corpse to nest in or a dog to redecorate. Come back as a zombie or a loup-garou and live to fight another day. If you opt for two I can even give you some pointers. I’ve been around the track a few times when it comes to borrowed flesh.
‘But then there’s three. Are you ready for three?’
Runcie had his head buried in his hands and he didn’t give any sign of hearing me, but I knew he was listening.
‘Three is this. You piss me off, and I play you a short, merry tune. And then it’s all over, Jack.
I stood up. ‘Your choice. And because I’m in a bright, bubbly, expansive mood today, I’m going to give you until I reach the door.’
28
That counted as a happy ending, in my book. It was a case I was able to walk away from, which put me among the front runners if you look at the statistics.
The righteous will get their reward in the Kingdom of Heaven. The rest of us poor sons of bitches have to content ourselves with what we can scrape together here on Earth.
I think back, in idle moments, to when I was a kid in Walton, Liverpool. Sometimes in summer, on really hot days, we’d go down to a place called the Sisters. It was a series of bomb craters, on a huge expanse of waste ground next to a closed-down railway track. The bigger craters had filled up with water over time and become ponds.
Even on the hottest day the water would be freezing cold. You’d stick your foot in, then swear a lot and back off, and get jeered at both by kids who’d already gone in and by kids who had no intention of trying. So you’d wade in a bit deeper, and a bit deeper – foot, to calf, to knee, to hip – and the cold would be biting into your legs and it would be agony. Then it was lapping at your stomach and it was worse.
