by Al K. Line
"Nothing, I suppose," I mumbled. She was right, of course. Everyone else, wizards included, got one chance at life before it was game over. There was nothing special about me. Except...
"But I'm The Hat. I do wacky things and always get another chance."
"Not any more. Just be grateful I came and got you. I saved you." Vicky fumbled in her pocket, pulled out a new hair band, then tied her dark locks back so tight she looked like she'd had a Hollywood facelift.
I stared at her hard, waiting for her to laugh or something, but she was serious.
"It was my idea," I protested.
"But I came and told you what Sasha said, because I knew you'd think of a way to use the information. So I saved you. I died for you. Don't ask me to do it again though."
"I didn't ask you this time. Hey, how am I here anyway? Why am I here?"
"Granger told me to leave and take you with me. I couldn't budge you though, so they drove us back here and brought you inside. Guess they figured it best for me to deal with you and it got the corpse out of his house."
"Smart thinking. How long has it been? Since you shot yourself? I mean how long since I died before you did it?"
"It's the next day. Mid-morning I think it was. I had to take the girls to school, make sure they didn't come into the living room, then Sasha came and told me things, so I shot myself. I was hoping it wouldn't take long as I have to pick the girls up later."
"Wow, you're one organized parent. Even dying won't stop you being on time for the school run."
"I'm a good mum."
"Sure are. The best." We grinned at each other, then began to laugh. It got hysterical soon after and it was several minutes before we calmed down.
"We beat death," said Vicky.
"We sure did. We beat it, and now we're back." A thought came and I didn't want to face it but knew I had to. "Did George and Penelope see? What did they say? Were they okay? Are they upset?"
"Arthur, you got killed and were made to be Death. Don't you think they'd be upset?"
"I guess."
"But they weren't. They aren't sad."
"Oh." It was a blow. I'd have expected at least a few tears.
"I didn't tell them, you idiot." Vicky punched me on the arm. It hurt.
"Oh, wow. Great. Um, how come?"
"Because I didn't want to believe it, and by the time we got back and I was thinking straight I had to take the girls, and then I spoke to Sasha and then I you know..."
"Shot yourself in the head?"
"Yes, that."
"Where'd you get the gun? You know I hate them. They're dangerous."
"I took it from Ivan. Had it a while. Just in case. Don't worry, it's locked away."
"Was," I said, staring at the offending lump of metal.
"Was," agreed Vicky. She picked it up, held it cautiously, and then left the room. Presumably to put it under lock and key wherever she stashed it.
Alone, I had a moment to reflect. I stared at the Death Book on the floor. It shifted, as if trying to return to a familiar place, then was still. I eyed it warily; I didn't trust it.
But I was back! The Hat returns, and boy was I glad.
I wondered what would happen now. Probably something very crappy indeed.
Bad Man
Vicky returned several minutes later clutching two steaming mugs of coffee. The smell was divine. It felt like several lifetimes since I last savored the wondrous brew. For a moment, everything felt normal as we sat and drank.
"Sugar?"
"Yep, two. Special treat."
"Mmm." I sipped on the sugary drink, smiling, then my eyes wandered to the book again. Vicky was staring at it too.
"This will be bad, you know that, right?" I asked.
"Of course I do. But what choice did we have?"
"I could have stayed and done my job. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad," I mused. "Maybe I'd have got used to it. But it was terrible, Vicky, truly terrible. I felt myself drifting away. I began not to care, to miss people, to have feelings. Empty inside. Just there to be Death, sign people out."
"Ugh, sounds miserable. And boring."
"There was a boy. I think if it was just the adults I could have handled it, but I forced my emotions to surface, to hold on to my humanity, and then a little boy came. He drowned. I had to sign him out. God help me I signed his life away." The words caught in my throat and I put my coffee on the table before I spilled it.
And then I was in Vicky's arms, and I sobbed for all the little children in the world who died, and was sure my heart was broken.
"It wasn't you. You didn't kill him, Arthur, he was already dead. There was nothing you could have done."
"Wasn't there?" I mumbled into her sweater. "I saved you, I saved myself, but I didn't save him." There was nothing to be said to that, and we both knew it.
We were alive. He was dead.
I was a bad man.
"At least you care," said Vicky. "That makes you good. At least to me."
I wasn't so sure.
A Call, and a Chat
When I'd run out of tears, at least for a while, and Vicky had made fresh coffee and after we drank it without me breaking down, I got my act together and called George and Penelope. They were worried, both asking questions about why I hadn't come home or answered my phone, and it was all I could do to not tell them everything. I would, just not over the phone.
I apologized, said the job got more complicated than I'd expected, nothing new there, and promised to be home in a few hours. The sound of their voices made me so happy, and sad too. Sad because one day we wouldn't be together, sad because everything dies, and sad because I knew I would screw it all up somehow.
Calls made, I forced myself to relax and checked on Wand who had been inexplicably quiet since my return.
"Why no big hello?" I asked as I brought him out.
"Figured you had enough to deal with," he replied, with what felt like a disinterested shrug.
"You do know what happened to me, don't you?" I asked, annoyed.
Wand sighed. "How many times do we have to go over this? I'm you, you're me. I know everything you know, and a whole lot more besides."
"So why the cold shoulder? Thought we were best buddies?" He was being weird. Normally he was hyped to be out and active.
"I'll tell you why, shall I?"
"Please, enlighten me."
"Because you screwed up big time and it's not just you who has to pay the price for your balls-ups."
"Hey, calm down. Look, I'm back now, and I wasn't gone long. All's well that ends well."
Wand squirmed in my hand, turned to face me. Impossible, yes, he was a stick, but he did it anyway. "You are so dumb at times. How can you be so dumb? You don't mess with this stuff, Arthur. You shouldn't have done this."
"Done what? Returned, you mean?"
"Yes. You should have put in your time, served your term, then we would have had hundreds, maybe thousands of years left. Another fifty lives maybe. Now you've messed it all up and there will be one hell of a price to pay. You stole the Death Book. Are you nuts?"
"Damn, thought you would be pleased. I figured you wouldn't want to spend hundreds of years without me, or get killed or used for firewood or something with me gone all that time."
"It doesn't work like that. However long it took, however long you were away, it would be a day at most here on earth. Time's different there, you know that."
"That makes no sense. I'd deal with people that died years and years after now, so how could I return to before they were even born?"
"Because it's the bloody afterlife, and Death is imaginary, and time works in mysterious ways over there and I don't know the answer. It's messed up, but to return after you serve your time there has to be a body to inhabit, so it would be no good you being all decomposed or cremated or anything, so you have to still be here. Meaning, time would hardly have passed."
"Gotcha. Figured it was something like that. I couldn't have faced it,
Wand. You have to understand. It was too much, I was slipping away, becoming him. Becoming Death."
"I know it's hard," Wand's voice softened, "but it was the right thing to do. I'll support you, but know that I don't agree with what you did. There will be no end of bad things happening because of this, and you do not screw with the natural order of things. This is bigger than us, and badder, and now we might never get to return once you die."
"How'd you mean? If I get killed I'll just have to be Death, then I'll be back."
"Doubt it. You broke the contract. There might be dire consequences."
"Damn, I hadn't thought of that." I'd assumed I would carry on where I left off, hadn't considered that I'd broken the agreement so maybe it was all null and void. Maybe my names on the other page had already disappeared.
"Just get ready. We're in for a wild time."
"Haha, I can feel you getting excited. Contain yourself until the time is right. How do you feel? Because right now I feel pretty awesome. All tingly and brimming with magic."
"That's because of where you were, who you were. What you were. You tapped in to the primordial nature of all existence and you still carry it with you. So yeah, feeling frisky."
"Good, talk later. And Wand?"
"What?"
"Sorry, but I had no choice. With Vicky there I had to do something. I had to bring her back."
"I know. But it was a bad move."
I put Wand away and mulled over his words. Thinking it best to check, I bent and picked up the Death Book. It was impossibly heavy and large yet at the same time just a thick, ancient leather-bound book. I went to open it but it was like the pages were glued shut. However hard I tried, it would not open. Guess it wasn't meant for this realm. Maybe nobody but Death could open it? There had to be a spell to gain access, but it was beyond me at the moment.
As I sat and held the book, I realized I had the most powerful artifact in existence in my lap. I held the lives of every single human being who would ever be in my hands. No crossing out the names meant they couldn't truly die. Sure, they might meet different forms of Death, and there were probably other identical books, but I knew deep down that they were all one and the same.
The symbol of death.
This was humanity's entire key to existence, to life and death, and I'd nicked it to save myself and Vicky.
It Begins
Distracted, it took a moment for Vicky's voice to filter through. I wanted to spend time with her, talk about what she'd gone through as I'd been understandably preoccupied. She must be feeling all kinds of weird, not to say confused, and very scared by what she'd done and what had happened.
"Vicky, can we have a chat? I can't imagine what you're going through, having done what you did, and maybe we should talk."
"What? I'm fine," she said breezily.
Maybe she was, maybe she wasn't. It was hard to tell. "Are you sure?"
"Yes. And as I was saying, there's a bloke at the door asking for you."
"Bloke? What bloke? You didn't let him in, did you?" I asked, panicked.
Vicky reddened at the cheeks and mumbled, "I told him to wait in the hallway."
"Idiot." I stuffed the book under the seat cushion and beckoned Vicky with my finger. "Sit on it and do not move," I warned. "I think we're gonna be in for trouble until this gets sorted out. It's the book," I whispered. "Nobody can die without it, not properly, and I'm unsure what that means. Probably something bad."
"Oh, right. Hadn't thought about that."
"Me neither. I think we screwed up."
"You did, you mean."
"Hey, if you hadn't come I would have probably put up with the job. But I had to bring you back. So it's your fault. And anyway, it was you who got me killed. So nah."
Vicky poked out her tongue and plonked herself down on the cushion. "Who's the spooky guy then?" she asked.
"How should I know?" I hissed, certain it would be nobody nice. "Stay put," I warned again.
I wandered from Vicky's large living room into the oversized hallway, pleased she'd settled the girls in a modest but still spacious house rather than the ridiculous mansion Ivan had originally bought for her. They had land and space to breathe but were still close to the city center and all the amenities. Damn, what was wrong with me? Why was I thinking about this now?
Because when I sensed things were about to take a turn for the worse, I often got distracted. I think it was a coping mechanism. Think nice thoughts rather than dwell on the bad things to come.
I focused, and I don't know what I expected to see, but it wasn't this.
"Bloody Vicky," I cursed, amazed she hadn't thought to give me more of a heads-up about the man who waited, seemingly patiently, in her hallway.
I slowed as I approached. The vibe he gave off intensified, and I felt more malevolence closing in from all directions. Not close, but it would arrive soon enough. A darkness, a bitterness, a soul-sucking oppressive destroyer of all the nice things in life.
He was well over six feet tall, wore nothing but a large black cloak imitating the garb I'd recently been the bearer of. His cowl was pulled back enough to reveal a large domed forehead, pale and smooth skin stretched tight so he looked how you'd imagine Death to appear if you got a glimpse. His dark eyes were sunken, cheekbones prominent, and yet his lips were plump and bright, an incongruous look I bet he hated because it spoiled the death-vibe.
"What can I do for you?" Damn, he was one of the dark ones. His lack of socks or footwear confirmed he was definitely a practitioner of the dark arts.
"Do you have it?" he hissed. "The book?"
"Sorry, wrong house. Try next door. Um, actually, don't. Another street maybe?"
"It is here," he whispered, his lips making him sound like Kaa, the snake from the Jungle Book. "I can feels it." Make that Gollum, much more sinister. If he said, "My precious," I wouldn't have been surprised.
"You are mistaken. I don't know what you're talking about."
"You know. I can feel the taint of death upon you." He adjusted his cowl to expose a shaved head. Intricate tattoos spiraled around his skull to help with his dark arts. I wasn't impressed, the stuff these guys got up to was gross and most died before they reached their forties because you do not mess with the dark side of magic and hope to remain alive.
"Just sleepy. Been a long night. Well, if there was nothing else?" I moved forward, pointed at the door. He didn't budge.
"I will have it. The Death Book is here in the human realm for the first time and I must have it. It called to me. I was deep in the Nolands when I heard its song. I must see the book. Death's own hands have turned the pages, crossed out the names of billions upon billions of souls, and I must feel that power."
"Trust me, it's not all it's cracked up to be. NOW LEAVE!" My voice boomed, charging the air with static. Death's hand reached from beyond the grave, beyond space and time, and powered me with the strength I'd held in that terrible place.
The door slammed open, denting the wall, the man was shunted back to the threshold, and a powerful wind tugged at him as he gripped the door frame so tightly the skin peeled from his fingers.
"You have seen. You have felt," he shouted through the raging torrent. "You're a believer."
"Oh, I believe all right. And you lot have it all wrong. There's nothing dark about it, nothing sinister. It's just the way things are. I said leave!"
He loosened his grip just before the door slammed shut and chopped off his fingers with their stupid black painted nails.
I turned back into the hallway and just in time. The door exploded in a terrible rain of splinters and glass as the guy stormed in, black cloak billowing dramatically, trails of purple smoke eddying around him. It converged above before it raced along the ceiling towards the living room.
I whipped Wand out and sigils flared bright white to counter the darkness as tentacles of writhing smoke slithered around my arm and others darted away.
The man cackled, spittle on his fat lips, as he
mumbled under his breath and lifted his arms. He wiggled stained fingers in a way I'm sure he thought was dramatic and intimidating but just made him look like he was having a funny turn.
"Show this dude what he's messing with," I told Wand as the power of the Quiet Place surged forth and erupted from Wand even as I spoke.
With utter glee, Wand spat a blackness of his own, of my own, at the guy's face. Three dots of pure emptiness chewed up the very air as they passed. They hit their mark, tiny points of utter nothingness, and continued to devour any matter they encountered.
He screamed, the tentacles disappeared, my arm was freed, and I ran up to him and grabbed him by his cloak.
"You weren't invited in this time," I snarled, then dragged him away as his face was eaten.
"I must have it. You don't understand," he whimpered, before an eye was entirely devoured and he screamed while he still could.
"Tough, it ain't yours." It wasn't strictly mine either, but he got the point.
I threw him out, thankful Vicky had a large swathe of lawn so no neighbors could see, then watched for a moment as the magic chewed through his skull and he died.
After the body stopped twitching, I made a call to the Cleaner. Hadn't needed her services for a while, but she wasn't one for chatting so it was strictly business and a brief conversation.
That sorted, I went back inside.
It would be a long day.
Time to Leave
"My door!" screamed Vicky as she charged into the hallway and stared in horror at the mess.
"I told you to stay in the living room," I shouted, panicked that someone would right now be breaking in and nicking the book.
"My door."
"Idiot." I ran past her and calmed once I saw the imprint of her tiny bum on the cushion and the book poking out from underneath. I grabbed it and then didn't know what to do with it. It was too large for my pockets, too bulky to just carry like this, so I dashed into the kitchen and grabbed a few old carrier bags from under the sink. Book concealed, I held the thin plastic handle and slowly relaxed a little.
Back out in the hall, I wasn't surprised to find two men cleaning up the mess, two more fitting a new front door, and the body already gone. The Cleaner stood outside a nondescript white van, quietly talking to another man. Damn she was fast.
