by Dave Turner
Dave walked down the alleyway until he reached the last door. He went to press the buzzer, but hesitated as he considered the ridiculousness of the situation. He had been brought here by a supernatural business card. It must be a practical joke. Gary had heard him talking in his sleep the other night, had printed a card out and had hidden it for Dave to find. But such an operation would require a sense of purpose and effort that Gary did not normally possess.
The intercom crackled to life.
'Dave Marwood?' asked the woman on the other end. Flustered, Dave pressed the button.
'Erm... Yes.'
'We've been expecting you.'
The door unlocked with an electronic buzz.
Maybe they have cheesecake, Dave thought hopefully. He pushed the door open and stepped through to the other side.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The office was cramped and uncomfortable. Desks and filing cabinets were jammed next to each other like a giant game of analogue Tetris. Sometimes, Anne would look longingly across the rooftops towards the gleaming air-conditioned towers of the City, but only sometimes. This was a vocation. A calling. Like a teacher, surgeon or those people that sell cupcakes on the Internet. She moved with a crisp efficiency. A quick check that the coffee was warm, a hand combed through her hair. She was ready. It was time.
The stairs creaked beneath Dave's feet like old men's bones. The air smelled of accountancy and failed start-ups. He arrived at a door and knocked three times.
'Come in!' Anne called.
Dave stepped into the small office. The watery winter sunlight splashed over the furniture, bathing Anne in its glow. Dave guessed that she was in her early thirties and overly attached to her cat.
'I'm Anne. Can I get you a drink?'
'Hello, I'm Dave. But you already know that. I'll have a coffee, please. Black.'
Anne poured him a cup from the pot and passed it over. Dave sipped the finest coffee he had ever tasted. He drifted away with thoughts of home and comfort. This was coffee beyond the skills of mortals.
'You found us, then?' Anne smiled.
'Yes. What have I found, exactly?'
'Perhaps we should go and see the boss?'
'Perhaps we should.'
Anne walked over to another door and rapped her knuckles on the frosted glass. She let herself in and Dave followed.
Death sat in a forest of Post-it notes and files. His feet were up on the keyboard of an untouched computer. A sign that read 'You don't have to be dead to work here but it helps' was stuck to the side of the monitor. Death was shouting into a telephone.
'I just want to know my bank balance... My mother's maiden name? I was born of chaos and pandemonium... What do you mean that's not what you've got on the computer? Right, mate. You're on my list.' Death slammed the phone down and took a long swig from a takeaway coffee cup. It was then that he noticed Anne and Dave.
'Oh, hello. You made it in the end.'
'I had a dream about you...'
'Let me stop you right there, Dave. The only way you could make this conversation any less interesting is if you were dreaming about showing me your holiday photographs.'
Anne stepped forward. 'I think somebody is having a bad day.'
Death sighed and picked up a newspaper from the desk. He threw it towards Dave.
'Humanity. I love you all, but you've really got to stop being wankers to each other. When will you learn? Whatever your gender, race, religion or sexual orientation, you're all as insignificant as each other. Lots of you are going to be very embarrassed when you find out there's no supreme being, no divine plan and we're all just making it up as we go along.'
Dave felt he should make an effort to defend his species.
'But people need something to cling to. Some order. Some reason.'
'Yes, everything happens for a reason,' Death said, 'but sometimes the reason is that life is cold, random and awful. Like telephone banking. I need a biscuit.'
'I'll warn you now,' said Anne, 'we're out of chocolate HobNobs.'
Death was enraged. 'What? The chocolate HobNob is humanity's crowning achievement.'
'I can go and get some if you want?' said Anne.
'No. Screw this. I can manipulate time and space. If anyone needs me, I'll be at Friday. Dave, Anne will give you the tour. I don't know what I'd do without her.'
Death disappeared, slipping through a gap in the fabric of reality.
'I'm sorry about that,' said Anne, 'He can get a bit grumpy.'
'What is this? I'm still in a coma in hospital, right?'
'You know those moments when you've seen someone nobody else can?'
'Hallucinations?'
'Death's mistakes,' she said.
Anne took the opportunity to get on with some filing while she waited for Dave to arrive at a conclusion. It was as though he was trying to work out the sixth character of an Internet password without using his fingers.
'Ghosts?' Dave finally asked. Anne nodded her head. His eyes widened as he looked her up and down. He reached out and prodded her with his finger. Anne looked cross.
'Please don't do that. A while back, it all got a bit too much for him. Some slipped through the net. He was all, 'Keith Richards is still alive? Bloody hell. Who did I collect in 1971, then?'. I was brought in to help with the paperwork.'
'Are you telling me ghosts are administrative errors?'
'In a manner of speaking.'
'And I'm here because...?'
'We're hiring.'
The conversation seemed to clog up Dave's brain. The words jammed themselves between the neurons and coated the synapses.
'I've already got a job. Thanks for the coffee, but I'm going to have to go now.'
Dave opened another door, but a wave of chattering and shrieking knocked him back. The noise and smell almost overwhelmed him. He staggered back and slammed the door shut.
Dave gasped. 'What was that?'
'That's the room of infinite monkeys working at infinite typewriters. They were left here by the last tenant.'
'What do they do?'
Anne picked up a bound stack of paper. 'Just a screenplay for an Adam Sandler movie so far. It's not much, but it's a start.'
Death. Monkeys. Drinkable coffee in an office. Dave realised that these were all figments of a deranged imagination. The only rational explanation for all of this was that he was heading for a spectacular breakdown. He had to get out. He looked around for another door and made his way towards it.
'But you've not even seen the Deathmobile,' said Anne in an attempt to make him stay. Dave stopped. He turned around.
'The Deathmobile?'
CHAPTER TWELVE
Anne opened the garage door. It rattled up into the roof to reveal a black Morris Minor. Anne gave the car's bonnet a quick polish.
'That's it, is it?' Dave asked, unable to disguise the disappointment in his voice.
'Get in,' she said, 'There's something I want to show you.'
They travelled in silence away from the choking streets at the heart of the city. Soon, the buildings began to shorten and spread out as if the world had relaxed and opened its belt a few notches.
After half an hour, they pulled into a car park and Anne killed the engine. Dave could see a forest steadily darken as the late afternoon light grew fainter.
'Come on,' said Anne as she stepped out of the car. Every nerve in Dave's body sang out a warning, yet still he followed. They headed deeper into the woods, the branches above their heads growing ever thicker. Anne moved with a practised grace, while Dave tripped over exposed roots and snapped twigs underfoot.
'In 1828, a young man and woman fell in love,' Anne whispered. 'He told to her to wait for him for a year, while he went off to find his fortune so that they could marry. She retreated to a cabin in these woods. A year came and went. When he didn't return, she threw herself into the lake just over there.'
'Wow,' said Dave, rather loudly.
'Ssh!'
They stepped
into a clearing, the forest circling them like an attentive audience. A beautiful young woman in a white dress floated serenely between the trees. An other-worldly light illuminated her path. Dave swore it came from within her. She entered the clearing and he could see clearly that she was, in fact, hovering. There was only mist where her feet should have been. Even with his limited knowledge of anatomy, Dave realised that wasn't quite right. He started to back away, but Anne gently placed a hand on his arm.
'It's alright to be freaked out the first time.' She stepped towards the spirit.
'Rebecca?' she asked gently. The creature that was once Rebecca turned its head towards them. Dave held his breath for fear that it might shatter the moment into a thousand pieces. Then his mobile phone began to ring. He took it out of his pocket and looked at the number. It was Melanie. Anne and the ghost of Rebecca looked over at him.
'Sorry. I need to get this,' he said sheepishly. He answered the call. 'Hello? Fine. You...? Oh. No. I just had a hospital appointment... That's tonight? Of course it is... No. Tonight's fine. Look, I'm in the middle of something. Sorry. See you later. Bye.' Dave hung up. 'Got a date tonight.'
Anne and the ghost of Rebecca looked less impressed than Dave had hoped and turned their attention back to each other.
'Are you friends of Jerome?' Rebecca asked.
'Yes. We'd like you to come with us,' Anne replied softly.
'I cannot. I must wait here for my love. He will return for me. He promised.'
'I know. He did return. The day after you took your life. You see, 1828 was a leap year. You forgot.'
This information hung in the air for a moment before Dave burst into laughter.
'What? That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard!' he said between snorts. Anne looked angry. Rebecca reacted to Dave's outburst by retreating into the forest.
'Don't go,' Anne said. 'We can take you to Jerome. You just need to take my hand.' She took a careful step towards Rebecca, her hand outstretched. Rebecca floated towards Anne, her fingers reaching for the warm touch of the living. An intense blinding light flashed when their fingertips met and Rebecca was gone.
From the passenger seat of the car, Dave stared at the darkness stretching out before him. He munched thoughtfully on a chocolate HobNob.
If Dave had learned anything from listening to Gary's convoluted analysis of everything from 9/11 to the moon landings, it was that the simplest explanation was usually the correct one. If he wasn't schizophrenic, and the CAT scans in hospital had shown nothing to suggest this, and he wasn't a vegetable in an intensive care unit, then this was the only remaining answer. Terrorists crashed the planes. People walked on the moon. He could see ghosts.
'This is what we do,' said Anne. 'We find the lost. We rescue those who were left behind. We bring comfort to those who are afraid.'
'You've been practising that, haven't you?' Dave asked between biscuit bites.
'A bit. Yes. Since you crossed over, you too are a link between this world and the next. You could only see them before. Now you can help them cross over. They were read-only, but now it's all rewritable. Sort of.'
'Why doesn't he sort it out?'
'I don't know. Pride?'
'So how did you cross over?' Dave made speech marks with his fingers and immediately regretted it. Partly because he thought it made him look foolish, but mainly because he dropped crumbs over the car's pristine interior.
'I don't know you well enough to talk about it.'
'Oh. Embarrassing, was it?'
It started to rain on the drive home. Dave watched the water on the passenger window. The streaks split, merged and ran down in paths that shimmered in the light of the approaching city. A thought had been playing hide-and-seek with Dave since they had left the forest.
'When I was a kid, there was this girl. Emily. We played together. Then we moved house. The last time I saw her, she was staring down from my old bedroom window as we drove off. I'd never seen anyone look so sad. Do you think she's still there?'
Anne just continued to stare at the road ahead.
Anne and Dave arrived back at Crow Road and parked the car in the garage. They ran to the shelter of the building, splashing in puddles pooled in the pockmarked road. As they climbed the stairs, they could hear music playing loudly. They entered the office and it was coming from behind Death's door. Dave realised that it was Blue Oyster Cult's '(Don't) Fear The Reaper'.
Anne knocked on the frosted glass and then marched in uninvited. Death was dancing to the music, his scythe a replacement for a guitar. Anne turned the music off and it was replaced with an awkward silence.
'Before you say anything, I've had a very hard day. Have you got a song named after you? No, I didn't bloody think so,' Death said indignantly. Anne placed the half-eaten packet of biscuits on the desk. 'Oh, bloody hell,' he shouted. 'Who's been eating these?'
'Yeah. That'll be me,' said Dave. 'Can I ask you something? Jesus rising from the dead. Was that one of your mistakes? I ask because I'm concerned that wars have been fought and millions of lives lost over what was essentially a cock up.'
'You take one day off for the Easter bank holiday and you never hear the end of it. And how do you guys commemorate the resurrection? By spending Bank Holiday Monday walking around DIY stores wishing you were dead too. Anyway, what are you still doing here? Haven't you got a date?'
'How did you...?'
'Do you really need to finish that question?' said Death.
Dave looked at his watch. 'Oh no. I'm going to be late.'
'Go. I'll see you soon.'
'You do know that saying stuff like that doesn't get any less creepy?' said Anne.
'Thanks for the biscuits,' Dave shouted as he sprinted out through the door.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It looked like rain, but it fell like stones. It stung Dave's skin as he made his way across the city as fast as he could. He found Melanie sat in a corner of the bar. Illuminated by the candlelight in her white dress, Dave was reminded of souls glowing in a dark forest. As he shivered and dripped water onto the stone floor, Dave truly felt that he was punching above his weight. He was soon warmed, though, by the wine, the fire and the company. So what if she was out of his league? Weirder things had happened to him that day.
'How did it go at the hospital?' Melanie asked as she poured the last drops from their third bottle of wine into her glass.
'What?' said Dave, confused. 'Oh. Yes. I don't think there's any permanent damage.'
Melanie pointed to her hairline. 'You wanna feel something permanent? Just put your hand there.' Dave leant across the table and, gently brushing away her hair, felt Melanie's forehead. 'You feel that little lump? St Paddy's Day. Dublin.'
Dave slumped back into his seat and thought for a moment.
'I got that beat,' he said as he rolled up the sleeve of his shirt, grabbed Melanie's hand and placed it on his arm. She rubbed his skin. 'Moron let his dog loose at a beach party,' he said. 'Bit right through my jacket. The dog. Not the moron.' Under the table, Melanie threw her leg over Dave's. She hitched her dress up slightly to reveal a dark scar against her smooth, pale thigh.
'Thresher,' she said proudly.
'Thresher?'
'It was an off-licence. New Year's Eve in Glasgow. A guy fell through the window. Shard of glass caught me.' Dave put his leg over Melanie's and rolled his trouser leg up. He rubbed a patch of rough skin on his calf.
'Glastonbury last year.'
'You were there?'
'No, I fell off the ladder trying to adjust the satellite dish so I could watch it on the telly.'
'You wanna drink?' asked Melanie. 'Drink to your leg?'
'I'll drink to your leg.' He looked at the empty wine glass in front of him. 'Shall we get another bottle?'
Dave swung his arm to attract the attention of a passing waiter, but knocked Melanie's full glass over. Time seemed to slow as he watched the dark liquid splash all over the table and onto Melanie's pale dress. She leapt up as if
an electric charge had been put through her chair. Panicked, Dave attempted to dab the growing dark stain with a napkin.
'What are you doing?' she yelled. 'Oh God. I'm going to have to get this in to soak. It'll be ruined.' Melanie grabbed her coat and wrapped it around herself.
'I'm so sorry!'
'It's okay. Accidents happen. Thanks for the drink. I'll see you at work on Monday,' Melanie said, already heading for the door. She walked out of the bar without looking back.
Dave decided to have that bottle of wine. Time flew by as he sat there alone and before he knew it, the bar was closing. He just wanted the night to end. Everybody thinks that they are the star of the story of life, but Dave knew that he was just a bit part; a minor character, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in the drama that was humanity. He had realised that throughout the day. Life wasn't a romantic comedy. Nobody learns a lesson. Life wasn't an adventure. Few have the chance to get the girl and kill the baddie.
He knew tomorrow morning would hurt, and not just from the hangover. He had to win Melanie over. He pulled his phone from his pocket. With his head and fingers like marshmallows, he punched at the keyboard. Drunken logic told him he should tell Melanie everything. No secrets. She would respect him. He wrote about ghosts and Death and biscuits.
Send.
He stumbled through the streets, battling the tide of Christmas party goers; wave after wave of drunk executives crashing against him. His stomach rumbled and he realised that he had not eaten since those stolen biscuits. He wanted to get some takeaway and a taxi back to his bed. The alcohol would keep the dreams at bay. A quick inspection of the contents of his wallet soon stopped those thoughts, until he walked past a pizza parlour. He had a brainwave. Actually, in his current state, he considered it a brain tsunami. The greatest idea ever. He double backed, entered the shop and slapped his money down on the counter.
'I'd like to order a pizza for delivery, please,' he slurred to the bored-looking shop assistant.
