by Cate Gardner
"We have to get out. Everyone needs to get out. Now."
No one turned or appeared to hear her words. She'd drifted into the alley between life and death. The match flared. A man at the next table pointed at the glow, as if that one thing transferred between worlds.
"You were like them once," Katy said. She turned to her friends. "I need you to trust me. Heck, you can have me sectioned after this if you want, but please leave the pub right now. Whatever happens please don't hesitate. Humour me."
Nathan and Daniel stood. However, Steph remained seated, arms folded.
"Bloody hell Steph, I lost my man not my mind."
Katy grabbed Steph's arm and pulled her from the booth. The match tasted liquor. The air whooshed. Now people screamed. Now they moved. With his good-old-perfect timing, Glynn finally looked at her, recognised her, and winked that old wink of his. If she didn't leave now she'd never escape, but now that he looked at her she couldn't run. Now Steph pulled at her arm until the crowd parted them and carried Steph, Nathan and Daniel from the pub. At the back of the pub, Yarker sat on a man, rode him as if he were a horse, pinning him in place. Glynn jumped from the bar into the melee.
"This isn't you."
He stopped in front of her. Chin to her forehead, looked down at her. His hands traced her wrists. Her fingers trembled. She'd waited so long to hold his hands again. Instead, his fingers traced her hips and then dipped into her pocket. He removed the blocks.
"And they all fall down."
Glynn dropped the blocks and crushed them beneath his shoe. Above them, the ceiling shifted.
"I loved you."
The pub windows shattered. Glynn grabbed her, twirled her around to shield her from the stab of glass. He hoped to save her. Instead, his act killed her. Katy's knees gave out first. Breath caught in her throat and refused to return. Glynn's arm remained around her. He'd come back to her. She had to believe that. Fire roared but it didn't matter now. What mattered, what would kill her, was the glass shard that cut into her heart.
"I don't want to…" she said, but then her head clouded and her first word on waking in a poorer, greyer world was "…die."
The ceiling fell, crushing her body and shielding it from her ghost eyes. Flames danced but she couldn't feel their heat. Ash rained, leaving her skin greyer. There was sorrow in Glynn's eyes. There was sorrow in all their eyes. This time, they followed her from the building as if she pulled their strings.
The world had changed. Where The Flats had stood there was now only dust and rubble. New dead walked amongst the ruin. Yarker gathered his old dead to him, leaving Katy alone. She didn't belong with them. Her place wasn't in an old building on The Strand, her death had seen to that. She was this old pub and The Flats. Emergency vehicles haunted the edges of the scene but they were nothing to her. The recent dead moved through the rubble, picking their way to her. They awaited her instruction. They needed somewhere to play with the rage that bubbled in their bellies. Their rage was her rage. They were as one. They were as her.
Katy walked by her dead (they followed her) and found Peter standing on a hillock of rubble alongside the ghost girl and her toddler. She'd lost a baby. It lived in the world, breathed and laughed and joked and played; left her behind. This made the ghost girl angry. It made Katy angry too. How dare the ghost-girl's daughter live on in the world when her mother was gone. She should have died with grief. They should all die with grief. She'd wanted to die once, when the man she loved had died.
Steph, Nathan and Daniel gathered about the broken jukebox. They danced on the records, smashing them, adding to the destruction. Katy called them to her. They turned and followed in a way they'd never have done so in life. They would make their home in the cinema. Settle in its rafters. From the roof, they would survey the streets for empty places, places where the dead fought against walls and windows. They would free them. They would free all ghosts.
From the rubble, Katy picked up a troll-like doll with a shock of green hair, a broken wristwatch, a strip of photo-booth pictures, a fountain pen, a dirt-brown teddy bear-things to keep the living occupied until they joined their numbers, until they became them. Amos waited at the cinema doors. She placed almost all her things in his box, knew he could haunt here and The Strand.
"I have no living," she said, "but they do. Bring them to us."
The one item she kept-the fountain pen. She would use it to ink 'The Bureau of Them, Us and You' on the skin of her dead.
THE END
Acknowledgements
I want to thank Simon Marshall Jones for once again taking a chance on a wee unknown and publishing her amongst titans. You make the prettiest books, dude. Lizzie Marshall Jones, for all the things she does behind the scenes. My boyfriend and beta reader, Simon 'the' Bestwick, whose ears ring daily with my cries of 'I've forgotten how to do this'. He soothes away my fears and locks me in my study. He doesn't know there's chocolate in here. Muahaha.
The extraordinarily talented Angela Slatter, who wrote a beautiful introduction to this book and is so brilliant and supportive to all. You rock. Huge thanks to David Chatton Barker for creating such a gorgeous and stand out cover and dealing with a demanding author. I hope my little story does it justice.
There are also people I want to thank in general, they may not have been involved with The Bureau of Them in particular, but they have been hugely supportive of my work and/or inspired me and/or are just awesome in general. In no particular order: Pauline Marie Gardner (my little mum), Jim 'Ginger Nuts' McLeod, Peter Tennant, James Everington, Rob Shearman, Priya Sharma, Ray Cluley, Elise Tobler, Ramsey & Jenny Campbell, Paul Kane, Marie O'Regan, Nate Lambert, Peter Coleborn, Eric Reynolds, Hannah Kate, Lee Thompson, Gef Fox, Joshua Reynolds, Michael Stone and Aaron Polson.
I apologise to everyone I've missed out. Trust me, I'm shouting your name at the walls now and hanging my head in my chocolate-covered hands.
Cate
About The Author
Cate Gardner
apologises for her fictional dead. They are an angry lot. The Bureau of Them is her fifth published novella. One day, she will graduate to novels, but would prefer that novellas staged a revolution and took over the literary world.
Spectral Press
Spectral Press is a British Fantasy Award-nominated small independent imprint publisher, issuing very limited edition signed and numbered single story chapbooks (on a quarterly basis) as well as occasional novellas, the Spectral Signature Editions of single-author collections and an annual Christmas Ghost Story anthology, all in a very high-quality presentation, and concentrating on the ghostly/supernatural end of the literary spectrum.
Website: spectralpress.wordpress.com
Find the Spectral eBook range on Amazon.co.uk
Find the Spectral eBook range on Amazon.com
