Earth, Air, Fire and Custard

by Tom Holt

  I would really, Paul thought, really like to see the manager. I have a few things to say about the way this outfit is run.

  ‘You did your best,’ said Mr Dao, somewhere behind him. ‘I knew you wouldn’t be able to accept, truly accept, until it was brought home to you in the most unequivocal terms.’

  ‘You aren’t the manager,’ Paul growled back, not looking round. (Because you didn’t: Benny had taught him that. Just like the living must never accept food or drink in the land of the dead.)

  ‘True. There is no manager, therefore it follows that I am not him. At least now you should’ve got hope out of your system.’

  ‘Go away,’ Paul said; and he knew he was being rude, and he didn’t care. ‘I’ve still got a second or two left, I can feel it. Come back later, when you’re entitled.’

  ‘As you wish.’ Mr Dao didn’t sound offended, just rather sad. ‘If you insist on it, you still have three minutes and twenty-seven seconds. I fear, however, that in the context of eternity—’

  ‘Say that again,’ Paul interrupted.

  ‘Three minutes and twenty-seven seconds. Twenty-four seconds now, of course.’

  ‘Mr Dao.’ Paul stood up, faced his interlocutor and smiled broadly. ‘Is the Bank still open? I want to make a withdrawal.’

  One minute, six seconds to walk to the Bank. Fifteen seconds to fill in the necessary forms. One minute, thirty-two seconds to walk down the corridor and down the stairs to the safety-deposit vault. Five seconds to find the box with his name on it, rip it out of the rack and tear off the lid.

  ‘Really, Mr Carpenter,’ said Mr Dao. (So I’m Mr Carpenter again, am I? Fine.) ‘Are you sure?’

  One second to say ‘Fuck you,’ to Mr Dao, three seconds to unroll the thin sheet of plastic from its cardboard tube and press it against the vault wall. One second to open it and say, ‘Home.’

  Piece of cake, Paul thought, as he stumbled through and slammed the door behind him.

  The door - the Acme Portable Door - slowly peeled off the back wall of his bedroom and landed in a heap on the floor. Piece of cake, Paul thought again, as his legs buckled under him and he collapsed on the bed, bounced twice and lay absolutely still, listening to the pounding of his real, functional heart. One whole second to spare. And to think, for a moment there I was starting to fret.

  His hands felt sticky. Well, they would, after all that, and it was also a miracle he hadn’t thrown up or wet himself. But it wasn’t that kind of sticky. Blood? He scrunched his fingertips across his palms: squidgy, but not like blood. Thicker. Purely out of curiosity, he lifted one hand and looked at it. Some kind of yellow slime; yuck. He wiped his hands on the duvet, shut his eyes and - because he’d earned it, he deserved it and now he was going to enjoy it, so there - he screamed.

  ‘Charming,’ said a voice.

  Never, not even in the ecstatic throes of terror or relief, a moment’s bloody peace. Paul choked off his scream and sat bolt upright. ‘You,’ he squawked, because of all the things he’d seen in the last twenty-four hours, this was the hardest to believe in. ‘What the fuck—?’

  ‘I brought you a piece of cake,’ said Mr Tanner’s mum, and she held out a paper plate on which rested a rather meagre slice of squished-up fruit and some crumbled white plaster. ‘Since you couldn’t be there for the party afterwards.’

  ‘Couldn’t be there,’ Paul repeated in a dazed voice, as though he was asking the voice from the burning bush, Hold on a second, tell me again, what was that bit just after Thou shalt not? ‘You horrible bloody lunatic, you killed me.’

  Mr Tanner’s mum grinned at him; smile and long, sharp teeth in roughly equal parts. ‘You’re looking well on it, I must say. Anyhow, I think it went off pretty well, all things considered. You missed the speeches, of course, Uncle Jerry went on far too long, but—’

  Desperately, Paul wanted to throw something at her or hit her with something, but there wasn’t anything within easy reach except a pillow and his pyjamas. ‘Did you hear what I just said? You fucking murdered me. I died. Did you know that? I actually died.’

  She nodded. ‘Well, of course,’ she said. ‘But I knew you’d be all right. That was the whole point, after all.’

  Trying to be hysterically angry with Mr Tanner’s mum was a bit like trying to put out an Australian bush fire by crying on it. ‘You’re mad,’ he said. ‘Completely out of your tree. How the hell could you know I’d be all right?’

  A click of her scaly red tongue, mildly reproachful, a sort of motherly don’t-do-that-dear unspoken rebuke. ‘I knew you’d be all right,’ she repeated, ‘and you are. I knew what you’d do, and you did it. What’s hard to grasp about that?’

  ‘You—’ There comes a point where you can be too bewildered to be angry. ‘How could you possibly know what I was going to do? I didn’t know until I only had three minutes left. I got out of there with one fucking second to spare.’

  ‘Really? But it was so obvious. You told me yourself, when Countess Judy got put away in Avalon, you’d taken the Portable Door and stashed it away in the Bank so nobody could ever get their hands on it again and misuse it for their own evil ends. And you knew perfectly well that the Door will get you into or out of absolutely anywhere at all. So naturally, as soon as you realised you were dead, you went to the Bank, got it out of your safe-deposit box and came home through it. Not exactly rocket science.’ She paused, then frowned at him. ‘You’re saying that wasn’t the first thought that crossed your mind, right?’

  Put like that, it did sound fairly reasonable. ‘I was confused,’ Paul said, just a smidgeon defensively. ‘Also bewildered and scared absolutely shitless. And—’

  ‘You panicked.’

  ‘No. Yes. Yes, of course I panicked, I’d just been killed by goblins. Goblins,’ Paul added bitterly, ‘in spandex catsuits and little white bunny tails jumping out of a cake. Whatever else I may eventually forgive you for, I will never ever—’

  ‘That wasn’t my idea,’ Mr Tanner’s mum said quickly. ‘That was our Dennis. Said he thought it’d appeal to your offbeat sense of humour, whatever that means. Anyhow, you got off lightly if you ask me. Cousin Howard and Uncle Tony had set their heart on a bevy of kissogram girls with obsidian daggers. I’m afraid he’s a bit unregenerate, my Uncle Tony.’

  ‘But—’ There was a whirlwind of questions inside Paul’s head, and for a long time he couldn’t pick out which one he really needed an answer to. ‘Why?’ he eventually chose.

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why did you have me murdered, you evil bitch? Just to see if I could escape? What was it, a bet or something?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. No, you had to go to the Bank to collect little Paul Azog’s christening present. That is, somebody had to go, and you’re the only person we could think of who’d be able to get back again.’

  ‘Christening present—’ Paul broke off and stared at her. ‘What, I was supposed to pick up some rotten little pewter tankard or something? Well, you’ve had that, because I didn’t.’

  Patient little sigh. ‘Yes, you have, silly. There it is, look, on the floor over there. Wouldn’t have been any need,’ she added reproachfully, ‘if you hadn’t gone and put it there in the first place. Your own silly fault, really.’

  Paul turned his head to look, just in case he’d overlooked something. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The door thing, stupid. The Acme Portable Door. Paul Azog’s prezzie.’

  All the rage and fury came back at once, like water gushing from a broken pipe. ‘But that’s - he can’t have that, it’s mine.’

  ‘Your own,’ Mr Tanner’s mum sighed, ‘your precious. Sorry, but you’re forgetting something, aren’t you? Like, how you came by it in the first place.’

  Paul opened his mouth, then shut it again. ‘I found it,’ he muttered. ‘In my desk.’

  ‘In the top left-hand drawer of your desk,’ Mr Tanner’s mum confirmed. ‘Where I left it for you. A loan,’ she added, ‘not a gift. And now y
ou’ve got to give it back. Sorry,’ she added, ‘but you should’ve guessed at the time. It’s a really, really powerful magical object, stands to reason it must belong to someone. And who else around here likes you enough to lend you something like that, when you really needed it?’

  ‘Yes, but—’ But what? Paul couldn’t think of anything to say.

  ‘And then, when you’d finished with it, you went and stuck it in the Bank, where nobody but you could ever get at it again. So,’ she went on, with a mild sigh, ‘it’s not like we had any choice in the matter. You put it there, you had to go and get it back. Thanks,’ she added. ‘Sorry for any inconvenience. Eat your cake, it’s not nearly as revolting as it looks.’

  Paul looked at the plate lying on the bed beside him. ‘No, thanks,’ he said stiffly, ‘it’s had goblins in it. All right, so it’s your Door, but why the hell couldn’t you have told me, instead of having me killed like that? Have you got any idea how close I came to—?’

  ‘Well, I can’t help it if you’re not nearly as bright as I assumed you were. And besides,’ she went on, ‘if I’d come to you and said, actually, that was my Door, can I have it back, pretty please? Do you really expect me to believe you’d have just meekly handed it over?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really?’ Mr Tanner’s mum looked at him. ‘I wouldn’t, if I’d been you. Absolutely no way in hell I’d have given it back without a fight. But there we are, probably just as well we aren’t all alike. Anyway, here’s the Door and no harm done.’

  ‘No harm.’ No harm, Paul thought; and he remembered for the first time what Mr Dao had told him, when he’d entrusted the Door to him for safekeeping—

  (‘I should warn you,’ Mr Dao had said, ‘that you will be able to retrieve it one time only; once it has been withdrawn from our keeping, the Bank’s standard terms and conditions clearly state that should you wish to return it to store, a standard administration fee will be payable.’

  ‘Oh,’ Paul had said, thinking: Aggravating, but that’s banks for you. ‘How much?’

  ‘A life.’)

  - Which raised the question he’d faced three months ago, when he’d decided to put the wretched thing safely out of harm’s way: was the Door the kind of thing that ought to be left lying around, practically begging every nutcase and psycho and wannabe Dark Lord to get his claws on it? Was it really a suitable present for a two-week-old baby, or wouldn’t a nice bear or a box of building bricks be more suitable? But Mr Tanner’s mum had strolled round, picked it up and tucked it down inside her profoundly intimidating goblin cleavage. Threat to civilisation as we know it or no threat to civilisation as we know it, Paul was buggered if he was going to try and get it back from there.

  Fine, he decided. Not my problem any more. ‘So that’s it, is it?’ he said, suddenly feeling very tired. ‘Because if you don’t need me for anything else today, I think I’d like to pass out from shock and trauma for a bit.’

  Mr Tanner’s mum nodded. ‘You go ahead,’ she said. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

  After she’d gone, Paul lay still and quiet on the bed for about ten minutes, then drifted into the kitchen to see if there was anything to eat. But the fridge was empty and so was the bread bin and the biscuit jar, and he didn’t have the strength to trail down the stairs and yomp the fifty endless yards to the corner shop. Nothing else for it, therefore, but to drive a stake through his finer feelings and eat the slice of christening cake. It was sticky, bitter and tasted disconcertingly of sulphur, but it was marginally better than nothing at all. He pulled a face as he crunched up the last scraps of icing - rather like eating the chalk out of the little wooden tray under the blackboard back at school - and then it occurred to him to wonder what was likely to be on the menu at Mr Dao’s place; nothing, followed by nothing with a null salad. The thought took away his appetite completely, and he lay on his back on top of the duvet (shoes still on; his mother would have had a fit) staring at the cracks in the ceiling plaster. Three times he’d been there now, not counting the banking trips with and without Benny Shumway. The first time he’d gone voluntarily, or at least intentionally, unable to see any other course of action, but driven by the absolute necessity of saving Sophie that overrode all other priorities. The second time had been a screw-up, a dumb misunderstanding by Ricky Wurmtoter, but even as the crossbow bolt had sheared through the tissue of Paul’s heart, he’d known that there was a way back, a get-out-of-jail-free card nestling in his sleeve lining. This time he hadn’t really believed he was dead until practically the last minute, and then there’d been a couple of lucky chances - the blood on the sword, the Portable Door in his safe-deposit box. For all he knew there’d be a fourth or a fifth time, and he’d find himself back in the land of the living by the skin of his teeth, thanks to some clever magic trick or prudently stockpiled artefact. But eventually, because of what he was and the terms and conditions governing his existence, a time would come when he’d be there and there’d be no way back; he’d be stuck there for ever; like hanging around an airport lounge for all eternity, parted from all his companions and possessions, nothing to eat or drink or read or do, waiting for a flight that had been delayed permanently. The time would come, and everything he did until then was pointless and stupid, building sandcastles in the face of the incoming tide.

  Paul thought of Mr Dao’s well-meant advice: please deposit all hope tidily in the receptacles provided, because you’ll be better off without. Wasn’t hope just another lethal addiction, starting as a jolt of something to help you through the day, developing into a habit, then a craving, then a slow poison? Hope binds the addict to his needle, nurturing the old lie that each beat of the heart, each lungful of air is a useful prevarication, keeping all options open. The truth was Mr Dao and the floor that was no floor and the sky that wasn’t actually there, and sitting watching stalactites grow and the slow drip from the leak in the roof gouging the Grand Canyon out of solid rock. When Paul had been a boy, he’d lain awake worrying himself sick about what would happen when the sun burnt itself out and the sky went cold, only a billion or so years from now. But he’d fretted unnecessarily, he realised, because whatever happened to stars and planets and galaxies, whether they burned up or crashed into asteroids or broke up into dust and got caught up in the drag of a dead gas giant, swirling for ever like the skirts of a pirouetting dancer, it’d make no difference at all. Mr Dao would still be there when all the stars had gone out and the whole skyful of flying rocks had eventually come to rest. Even if, by diabolical cunning and supreme sublime genius Paul outlasted the last little drop of water and grain of sand, he’d still have a reservation in the kingdom of the dead, a place assigned and waiting for him, a home to go to when the adventures were all over.

  Nice cheerful things to think about at three o’clock in the morning.

  At one minute past nine the next morning, Paul rang JWW and, knowing the drill, asked to speak to Christine, Mr Tanner’s secretary.

  ‘It’s Paul,’ he said. ‘Just to let you know I’m not feeling well, so I won’t be coming in today.’

  He could picture the stormy crease of her eyebrows. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘I died.’

  Pause. ‘You don’t sound very dead to me.’

  ‘I sort of got better,’ Paul admitted. ‘But it’s only temporary. Sooner or later I’ll have a relapse and then that’ll be it, kerboom, finito. So really, there’s not a lot of point me coming in, is there?’

  Christine wasn’t the sharpest serpent’s tooth in the kindergarten, but she could spot a rhetorical question when she heard one. ‘Have you got a doctor’s note?’

  ‘What? No, I haven’t. But you could ask Benny Shumway to check with Mr Dao at the Bank if you like. He’ll tell you that I’m telling the truth, and you can’t get more authoritative than that, can you?’

  But Christine wasn’t so easily fobbed off. ‘It says in the book you’re entitled to sick leave,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t say anything about death leave. Y
ou hang on there a minute while I go and check with Mr Tanner.’

  To Paul’s great surprise, Mr Tanner was prepared to let him have a day off; not just one, in fact, but the traditional three. If, however, he hadn’t risen again from the dead on the third day, he’d better be able to have a death certificate, a valid will and a little urn of ashes ready for inspection when he finally did condescend to show up, or the old cliché about a fate worse than death might suddenly take on new and startlingly vivid penumbras of meaning. At first, Paul was taken aback by this unexpected display of compassion; then it occurred to him that Mr Tanner might well be taking his orders in the matter from his mother.

  Three whole days . . . True, Paul remained painfully conscious of the fact that he was still squatting in a cell on Nature’s Death Row waiting for his rendezvous with the big chair, but even so, the thought of three days off - five, in fact, since tomorrow was Saturday, and even Mr Tanner couldn’t expect him to be dead on his own time - was enough to bring a huge grin to his face. As soon as he’d hung up the phone, he grabbed a sheet of paper and did some calculations. His finances were in their usual dismal state, but if he scrimped and saved for the rest of the month and made do with mousetrap cheese on plastic toast washed down with tap water, he could just about afford a little impromptu holiday. He could—