“It must be there, though,” Sabrina said with a frown. “If he was informing or doing something that required a handler then his file should’ve been in your office.”
“Who’s Wallace?” Lucy slurped her drink.
“We don’t know,” Sabrina explained slowly with a glance my way that said maybe it wasn’t the best idea to have involved my housemates after all.
“Then why are we talking about him?” Pam asked, looking between Sabrina and me.
I snapped my fingers at Sabrina “They weren’t here for that bit.”
“We should definitely find out who this Wallace is if he’s going to kill Bridget,” Lucy agreed after we’d caught them up. “Where do we start?”
“Maybe you could ask your GB friend,” Pam suggested. “Sabrina’s already checking thirty or so people’s files for a mention of a brother or anything suspicious. It’s only fair that you contribute.”
“Thank you, Pam,” Sabrina said with a pointed look my way.
“She’s not checking them, Pam, because there’s training going on,” I said in a haughty tone, not at all happy with Pam’s implication that I wasn’t pulling my investigative weight. “And I could but he’s more of a taker than a giver. How about we focus on finding a way to subtly question the other shoppers for suspects in Jeremy’s murder and leave Wallace for another day?”
“That sounds like an acceptable plan,” Lucy agreed. “And we’ll know who Wallace is when he tries to kill you anyway.”
“This is true.” I wasn’t sure I liked how blasé Lucy was about my impending death.
“This seems like a good division of resources. Despite the training I’ll try and snoop something out while you all subtly question people for suspects in Jeremy’s murder,” Sabrina agreed.
“You mean like on the down-low? We can be covert operatives extracting sensitive info,” Lucy said before sucking up the remains of her lemonade through a straw. Where had they gotten the straws from? I hadn’t seen straws anywhere.
“We’ve been watching a lot of spy films,” I explained when Sabrina arched an eyebrow at me. “Okay, how about Sabrina gives us some pointers on covert questioning?”
“That’s a good idea,” Pam said. “How about we pretend we’re questioning Bridget and Sabrina can help us. Lucy, you go first. Show us your best covert you.”
Lucy smiled at me and slurped her drink. “Hi, Bridget. How are you?”
“I’m well, thanks, Lucy. How are you?”
“I’m good, too. Did you kill the dead guy?”
Chapter Eight
“Yay! I’m glad you’re back!” Sean clapped on his clipboard as I appeared in the tunnelling room.
“Do people not come back?” I asked.
“Don’t be silly. Everyone comes back.”
I was going to ask, if that was the case, why he seemed so excited about my return but then another induction leader appeared on a tunnelling circle three places over.
“Greg! I’m so excited you’re back!” Sean exclaimed.
“Sean! I’m so excited to be back!” Greg slapped Sean on the shoulder as he passed.
“Has he been away somewhere?” I asked. I was sure I’d seen him when we’d been walking the newly transitioned to their induction suite earlier.
Sean nodded. “Lunch.”
I nodded to myself. “Right.”
“Come on,” Sean beckoned to me with his clipboard and I followed him out of the tunnelling room.
“Who’re they?” I asked, nodding toward the sluggish queue of people on the right of the corridor.
“More newly transitioned,” Sean said in a stage whisper.
“Marsha? Hey, Marsha.” A beanpole of a man, with curly ginger hair, stepped out of the queue and jogged toward me. He looked familiar but dressed in a grey hoodie and black skinny fit jeans it took me a moment to place him.
“Magnificent Malcolm?” I asked and glanced around us to make sure we were in Afterlife Arrivals and hadn’t somehow stepped back into the alive world. “Are you dead?”
“Looks like,” he said. “Not quite what I was expecting. You couldn’t have given me a heads-up?”
I shook my head. “I couldn’t. And even if I could I wouldn’t have. Why ruin your life by telling you this was where you came when you died?”
Magnificent Malcolm looked around. “Doesn’t seem so bad to me.”
“How did you kick it?” I asked, because that made two mediums in two days.
“Car accident, I think.”
“I was hit by a bus. I feel your pain.”
“Do you remember actually being hit?” Magnificent Malcolm glanced over his shoulder as if checking no one was listening. “Like the exact moment?”
“Not the moment of impact. Why?”
Relief flooded Magnificent Malcolm’s face. “Oh, okay. I thought something was wrong with me. It’s weird but I can’t exactly remember the car accident. I’d done a reading. I was packing up my stuff. Then I was on my way somewhere. We were driving, someone else was there. Someone I knew …” Magnificent Malcolm shook his head again, then exhaled a relieved breath. “I thought there was something wrong with me. But if you don’t remember either then I guess that’s normal.”
“It’s probably not something you want to remember,” I said.
“I’m sure you’re right.”
“Do you remember where you were going?” I asked. Because even though Magnificent Malcolm remembered a car crash, which meant he hadn’t been murdered, my possibly paranoid brain thought it was a pretty big coincidence he was dead.
“No. I do remember the trip here, though. Coming to my senses on a bus.” Malcolm leaned closer. “With Charon. How cool is that? Although, he was less welcoming than I’d have imagined. And a bit on the snappy side.”
Sean cleared his throat to get my attention. “Oh, I’m sorry. Where are my manners? Sean, this is Magnificent Malcolm. He used to be one of the mediums I’d deliver messages to when I was a facilitator.”
“Nice to meet you, Sean.” Magnificent Malcolm extended his hand.
Sean checked around and quickly shook it before leaning in to whisper to me. “That wasn’t what I meant, Bridget.”
“What’s a facilitator?” Magnificent Malcolm looked between us. “And I thought your name was Marsha.”
“It’s Bridget but I couldn’t tell you that when you were alive in case you tried to summon me. And you should probably keep your questions to yourself until you’ve made it through Arrivals. They don’t like it if you ask questions.”
“But what if I don’t understand something?” Magnificent Malcolm asked. I was about to throw my hands up in an “exactly” gesture but Sean took hold of my sleeve and urged me away.
“Just don’t question it. Look vacant, get through Arrivals. I’ll find you once you’re through and help you settle in, okay? And do not let anyone know you’re a medium!” I hissed, suddenly aware that I’d already made that misstep by announcing it in the corridor.
“Oh, Marsha—I mean Bridget?” Magnificent Malcolm followed me along the corridor. “How does communication work here?”
“Communication? Why?” The sinking feeling in my stomach said I already knew the answer.
“I have a contact here,”
“Wallace?” I asked.
“Yeah, do you know him?”
“Bridget, we have to go,” Sean hissed and tugged on my sleeve.
“I can find him for you. What does he look like?” I asked.
Magnificent Malcolm shrugged. “Brown hair, brown eyes, average-ish looking.”
Well, that sounded like the description of every GB I’d ever seen. “What does he wear when he visits?”
Magnificent Malcolm shrugged again. “White suits like the rest of you. I’m not much help, am I?”
“Bridget!” Sean tugged on my sleeve again.
“What does he ask you? What does he want from you?” I asked.
“What’s going on here?” Officer Treble asked f
rom behind me.
I stepped back from Magnificent Malcolm and shook my head. “Nothing. He just keeps asking me if I’ve bought any fish fingers in a weird comatose sort of way.” I gave Magnificent Malcolm a subtle nod as a cue for him to ask.
“Did you get any fish fingers? I like fish fingers,” Magnificent Malcolm said in a decent impression of a zombie.
“You again? What are you up to now?” Officer Richards asked as he strolled up to us.
Sean stepped in front of me. “Nothing. This man just keeps asking for fish fingers.”
“Did you get any fish fingers?” Magnificent Malcolm asked again.
“Why do they always want fish fingers?” Richards muttered while eyeing Magnificent Malcolm.
“We’ll be on our way then,” Sean said, backing away and dragging me with him.
Neither GBs commented and Treble shuffled Magnificent Malcolm back into line. Thankfully, Magnificent Malcolm went without argument.
I wasn’t sure why it was important to me that he made it through Arrivals, or that no one found out he was a medium, but it felt important. I’d liked Magnificent Malcolm. He’d always been polite. He’d chat a bit whenever I’d visited him, not about important stuff but he’d made me feel normal for a minute. And I didn’t know why I didn’t want the GBs to get hold of him. It wasn’t like I thought they tortured people. Well, not in a physical way, just in a regular bureaucratic way with endless pointless forms. Although, if Wallace was a GB, chances were they already had their hooks into him.
“You can’t talk to people like that, Bridget.” Sean threw a backward glance at the queue while still scurrying us forward.
“Why?” I asked. “It wasn’t as though I spilled any afterlife secrets.”
“No, I mean, you can’t talk to that sort of people. They can be … unpredictable.”
“What sort of person is he?” I asked and glanced back over my shoulder to see Magnificent Malcolm keeping his head down. “And unpredictable how?”
“If he’s a medium then that makes him a double M,” Sean whispered as we rounded the corner. He stopped and peeked back along the corridor we’d come from as if checking no one was following us. “And they’re dangerous. A single M is bad but a double M?”
“What’s a double M?”
“A murdered medium.”
I frowned at Sean. “How do you know he was murdered?”
“How did you die?” Sean asked.
“I was hit by a bus.”
Sean tutted. “That’ll teach you to look both ways before you cross a road.”
“Not really, since now I’m dead traffic zooms straight through me.”
“But I bet you still take extra caution. Do you remember the bus hitting you?” he asked before I could challenge his first point.
“Not the moment of impact, no. I remember seeing it coming. And feeling like everything was moving in slow motion. And I knew I had to move but I couldn’t get out of the way. I remember watching some tramp try and give me mouth-to-mouth to get her picture in the paper. I remember Charon collecting me.”
“See!” Sean wafted his clipboard in my direction as if I’d proved his point. His point that he was yet to make. “Dying is a shock but the brain remembers. Not the exact moment of death but the seconds before. Unless the experience is too traumatic and the brain blocks it out.”
“Magnificent Malcolm remembered. He was in a car crash.”
“No, he assumed he was in a car crash because the last thing he remembers was driving somewhere.”
“Well, I assumed the bus hit me because the last thing I remember was it careening toward me.”
“Yes, but you have a clear memory of the seconds before and afterward.”
“So if you’re a bit fuzzy on your death details it means you were murdered?” I asked. I knew that if you didn’t remember how you died then you’d been murdered but I didn’t realise there were subtleties to it. Like, you could assume you died a different way.
Sean gave me a one-shoulder shrug. “There are exceptions, like in everything, but they are unbelievably rare.”
Well, shoot. That was two murdered mediums in less than a day. Wasn’t that suspicious? Magnificent Malcolm liked me, so surely he’d talk to me about Wallace if I could sneak back and talk to him. Before I could think of a good excuse Sean spun me around and placed both his hands on my upper back. He pretended as though I were super hard to move while gently nudging me in the direction of our induction room.
When I started walking he dropped his hands and walked beside me in his bouncy, happy walk.
“Why are double M’s dangerous?” I asked.
Sean sighed out my name. “Bridget.”
“Don’t you think it would be good for me to know so I don’t keep talking to him like he’s my friend when really there’s a crazy killer bubbling beneath the surface waiting for any excuse to pop out and mutilate me?”
Sean gave me a sidelong glance. “That does seem like a reasonable point.”
“So?”
“In general, they have more trouble adjusting than the average afterlife person because they’ve been peering into the afterlife for their entire alive life. So when they get here and realise it’s nothing like what they’ve been seeing they can feel cheated,” Sean explained. “And then, they’re usually drafted into the GBs or elsewhere and asked to keep using their gifts to observe the rest of us afterlife folks or peer into the next plane. They become disillusioned. Reasonably so, I guess. And then they get angry. And then they get crazy. And if they’ve been murdered on top of that? You know murdered people find it hard to adjust anyway, but if they’re murdered and a medium? Minimum safe distance would be never speaking to him again, okay, Bridget?”
“I have so many questions.” I held my hand up to count them off. “Where is the ‘elsewhere’ they could be drafted to? What are they looking at in the next plane? What are they looking at on this plane? How do they locate us? How do you know all this?”
Sean shrugged and did an odd side to side shuffle dance. “People don’t give me much credit so they talk about things they think I don’t understand.”
I watched him doing his little dance and tried to work out if he was really simple and regurgitated information he’d overheard without realising the weight of what it could mean or if he was really a super villain in disguise. And then, before I’d made up my mind, he jumped in the air and did some weird type of dance kick thing. He pulled a magnetic card from his pocket, swiped it across the door of our induction room and threw it open.
“How’re we doing, everyone?” he asked with extra pep as he bounded to the front of the room.
Twenty-nine of the thirty people in the room ignored Sean. They were all in their zombified-dead state.
“Well, these forms are pointless. I am absolutely not filling them out. I’m hungry. And I’m tired of being cooped up in this room,” Jeremy snapped. Clearly, he’d used the lunch break to regain his snarky composure.
“Aww, that’s too bad, Jeremy,” I said as I closed the door behind me, hearing the magnet snap back into place. It was really quite ingenious. When I’d died I couldn’t work out how they’d managed to lock us in.
“What are you going to do about it?” he said and it sounded more like an accusation.
I shrugged. “Nothing. You’re dead so you won’t die if you don’t eat and you can’t leave Arrivals until you’ve filled those forms. If it takes you a thousand years, then that’s what it takes.”
“I think what Bridget means”—Sean shot a pointed look in my direction—“is that form filling is fun! Don’t you love talking about yourself?”
“He’s got your number,” I said to Jeremy.
Jeremy scowled at me. He slapped his pen down on the table and folded his arms. “I refuse.”
Sean made a shooing motion. I sighed and walked along behind the back row until I got to Jeremy.
“Fill out the forms, Jeremy. The sooner they’re filled out the sooner you c
an move on to the next stage.” I picked up Jeremy’s pen and offered it to him.
Jeremy glanced from the pen to me. “What’s the next stage?”
“Queuing. Lots of queuing. Possibly days of queuing.”
“But there will be an express line for VIPs like me,” Jeremy said and I was so tempted to tell him there would be just to get him to fill the damn forms out. But there wouldn’t be. At least I didn’t think there would. And it really depended on what he meant by VIP. Maybe I could tell him that his contact Wallace could get him through the process much faster if he filled out the forms. Or if he gave me some information on Wallace so I could contact him.
By the time I’d worked all of these options through it was too late. The expression on Jeremy’s face told me he wasn’t going to believe whatever I said.
With the back of his hand, Jeremy deliberately pushed my hand that was offering him the pen away from him. “You have no authority to make me do anything.”
I leaned in closer to whisper. “Maybe not. But I can get my friend to come back and drop you into another volcano. Or maybe some shark-infested waters. Or an ant hill. Or a snake pit.” I looked over to Sean, who was watching me with narrowed eyes. I grinned at him and gave him a thumbs up. He grinned back at me and returned the gesture.
“Do it, Jeremy. Or you will not like the consequences.” I stood, placed the pen on the table and walked back toward a smiling Sean. It made me oddly happy that he was pleased with me.
“Okay,” Sean clapped on his clipboard as I hovered to the side, observing like a good trainee. “Now you guys might be a little surprised to hear this but …” Sean drew the word out as he looked around the room, “You’re all dead! Isn’t that exciting?”
“Okay!” Jeremy slapped his palm on the table. “Get me Wallace. Right now. I’m not sitting through this.”
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