The Complete Afternet: All 3 Volumes In One Place (The Afternet)

by Peter Empringham

  He watched him stride across the sunlit square, with a confidence Jenkin felt he could never acquire. Slaven seemed to breeze through the milling crowd, workers heading back to their desks, tradesmen flitting from office to office, as though no one else existed. Jenkin always felt his own presence weighing awkwardly against him. He had felt, sitting outside the kiosk that despite their interest in each other, they had looked at the table at the end and wondered what the young man was doing, why he was there. Slaven cut into his light, stood by the table.

  “Do we need to be here?”

  “Not if you’ve got the information, no.”

  “Good. Let’s go. This juvenile jollity is driving me mad.” Slaven turned on his heel and started to march across the square. Jenkin took one more bite of his sandwich, picked up the drink, and followed, eyes to the ground, shoulders hunched.

  Marcel and Mary’s blinking awakening to the new day was in massive contrast to that of Jenkin and Slaven. Not having access to separate rooms, soft beds, flat screen TVs, a tiny kettle and some sachets of cheap coffee, they opened their eyes to a shaft of sunlight turning the corner of the house and thrusting into the attic room, and their noses to the fug of too many bodies in too small a space.

  Mary had lost the bed to the Reaper at three-card turnover, which in retrospect, wasn’t utterly astonishing. The cowled figure had taken over a hundred quid of A-Bay money from Marcel before the sleeping arrangements came up for grabs, and she should have thought that maybe ‘Cards with Death’ was not a game in which to expect success. She did, at least, get the chair, whereas Marcel was stretched on the threadbare carpet, his head under a shelf laden with a desultory book selection. Why, exactly, the harbinger of doom might be reading ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ had escaped her throughout the evening and was no clearer now, when she slowly opened her eyes and wished she could close her nose.

  Marcel was also awake, and staring at the ceiling, insofar as the bookshelf would allow. He turned his head as though he knew she had come alive, and looked at her, his eyes dark, face expressionless. The Reaper was flat on his back on the mattress in the corner, mouth wide open, snoring like a wild boar and throwing the occasional spasm. Whoever said ‘Death never sleeps’ hadn’t seen this particular incarnation.

  Mary sat forward. Her back was terribly stiff from sleeping in the chair. They would have to find some other arrangements if they were staying for any length of time. Marcel pulled himself to a sit and groaned, ranging his hand around and feeling his back.

  “Stiff?” she said. Marcel looked like a man who had just had his mind read and dropped his hands urgently into his lap.

  “Your back.”

  “Oh, yes. I feel like I’ve slept on a floor in really dodgy rental. On the other hand, I’m not on fire, so it could be worse.” She motioned for him to come over and he did, turning away from her so that she could slowly massage his back. He thought he might have died and gone to Heaven, but unlike others who have that thought, he knew it was utterly incorrect.

  “We’d better wake him up. We need to get on,” she said, her thumbs deep into his serratus posterior superior.

  “Mmm” he said.

  “We’ve probably got to get up to Rutland.”

  “I have no idea where that is.”

  “It’s sort of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire kind of area.”

  He gasped as she pressed harder.

  “You’re just saying words. I’ve been in France, and Hell. If they’re not in there I don’t know them.”

  She was pondering whether Cambridgeshire might fall into one of those categories when the Reaper spookily rose to a sitting position, and stared at them, possibly, because they could never actually see his face.

  For one who had given up drinking, the Reaper had made a good fist of swallowing a litre of whisky the night before, all in the interests, apparently, of ‘detection’. Mary had been talked into a couple of measures, Marcel had one and said it tasted like whisky, which made him sick. And it did. There had been no visible effort in the direction of finding their quarry. Whenever they raised the issue, he had tapped his finger against an area where his nose may have been, said something obscure, like ‘Where they be, that they are’, and chuckled. All of this convinced Mary that he had been listening to too much folk music.

  The hooded figure on the bed sneezed a couple of times and coughed in a way much too liquid for audience appreciation. Mary stopped digging into Marcel’s back and they both gazed fixedly towards the semi-upright figure hacking on the bed. It raised its head.

  “When do you want to find these two, then?” The Reaper said.

  “Well, now would be a good idea.”

  The figure on the bed coughed onto his sleeve, had a bit of a look at it, and then back at them.

  “Just clean my teeth, then, and off we go.”

  “Whoa!” Said Mary. “You know where they are?”

  “Well, I know where they were last night, so that’s not a bad place to start, is it?”

  “Why didn’t you say?” asked Mary, incredulous.

  “We were having fun.” The Reaper slid off the bed and stretched horribly.

  “That wasn’t fun.” Marcel had also raised himself and was flexing his back. It was like Gym of The Dead. “We were waiting for you to do something.”

  “Well I’ve done it. I’ll be back in a sec. Need a pee.” The Reaper swept from the room in a haze of gown and whisky fumes.

  “He’s useless, isn’t he?” asked Mary.

  “That’s the only way we could afford him.”

  “That’s it?” Marcel asked. “That’s where they are?” He stared across the road from the pub to an entirely nondescript hotel, The Maugham. It was late morning, though not very late, and the only other people in the pub were a couple of snack reps and a man with a purple nose drinking whilst waiting for the bookies to open. The Reaper, a non-drinker now, was on double Jagermeisters, claiming it was Austrian herbal medicine.

  The Reaper leaned between them, arm around either shoulder like an old friend, breath before him in a cloud of carbolic.

  “Well, where they were. Last night. I’m quite liking this. Thrill of the chase, and all that. Beats trying to bully old people into twenty year policies against prostate cancer.” Death had called in sick.

  Mary was the one who went across to check. Marcel looked okay, but may have become violent if he had not got the answers he wanted. The Reaper didn’t even look okay, and there was just the hint of him topping up the previous night’s alcohol to the point of silly giggling.

  She waited for a black cab to pass, and then walked on through the sunlight.

  “Wanna drink, Marcel?” asked Mort.

  “No, I’m fine thanks.” The Frenchmen was not ready to venture into new experiences of foulness.

  “Oh, go on.” The Reaper was sashaying worryingly, to ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ squawking from the pub’s speakers. “Here. Try this. You’ll love it.” He passed over what was left of his Jagermeister. Marcel took a sip and cringed. His throat spasmed as the liquid passed through.

  “It tastes like liniment, sandpaper, and mashed prunes. With grated glass following.” The Frenchman wanted to spit, but the exploded nose man was either staring at him or had died.

  “Does, doesn’t it?” The Reaper confirmed, joining incorrectly in with the song, to suggest that the only gift the African people would have this year was lime.

  “Is that what it’s supposed to be like?” asked an astonished Marcel.

  “Far as I know. You wouldn’t make something this disgusting by accident.”

  “I’ll have a double.” Said Marcel. The purple nose man pitched forward off his stool and measured his length on the floor, where he stayed. The Reaper, on the way to the bar, turned and gave Marcel the thumbs up. “Got him,” he said.

  Mary pinged the bell on the desk of the West London hotel.

  The lobby was deserted except for an Oriental family of several
, who were either having an enormous row or expressing their love for each other. She leaned over the desk as though it would make a difference, pinged the bell again, watched the oriental family hug, and stared at the appalling artwork.

  A beautiful slim blond girl appeared from a door on her left, face set in a pout, and lifted a slab of the reception desk in order to walk behind.

  “Ah,” said Mary.

  “Minute.” Said the girl, walking through another door and out of sight.

  Mary tapped her fingers on the desk, looked around, tried not to listen to the horrible facsimile of Jona Lewie blurting from a cheap sound system. She watched the family leave arm in arm, chattering noisily, and thought that must have been a minute by now, surely.

  The girl didn’t re-appear. Instead, a very tall young man walked out behind the reception desk with a sheaf of papers in his hand and began to look at something directly in front of her.

  “I-“ he raised a finger to stop her, peered at something on a desktop below her eyeline, and then looked up.

  “Welcome to Marm.” He said, with a lack of warmth so total she would rather have been out in the road.

  “Maugham.” She said, against her better judgement.

  “Maugham?”

  “As in Somerset.”

  “Somerset?” the echo stared at her for a moment and then his face briefly lit. He shot off to his right to a rack of tourist information, searched it with exaggerated concentration, and then plucked something out. He came back and proudly snapped it on the desk in front of her. It was a leaflet advertising the joys of Cheddar Gorge.

  “Somerset.” He said. “On tube.”

  “I don’t think so.” She turned the leaflet over and pointed out a small map of the South of England, which admittedly was smaller than most Tube maps. He shrugged, as though if it wasn’t on the tube it could be of no relevance whatsoever. She decided to get to the point.

  “I’m looking for Mr Slaven. Or Mr Furvill. I don’t know which name the room might be in.” He looked disappointed at not having the opportunity for further discussion of West Country beauty spots, but after a moment glanced down to his computer. His eyes flickered wildly around whatever information he could see, and he sighed and muttered as he looked, slammed some keys, looked, slammed. He made Geoffrey look like an IT specialist.

  “Slaven? You right?” He asked, eventually.

  “Yes, I’m sure I’m right.”

  “No. You write.” He gestured with his hand and gave her a piece of paper. In the biggest letters she could get on the page she wrote the name. He placed it before him and huffed and puffed some more, with a bit of slamming, then said.

  “315. Suite. Nice. Suite.”

  “Is he in?” The young man pummelled the keyboard again.

  “No.”

  “Do you have a spare key? I’m his wife, I want to surprise him.”

  “You have ID?”

  “No. Do you?” He created another swipe key.

  “Thanks Piotr. And don’t tell him you saw me. I’m going out to get him a Christmas present, as a surprise.”

  “Okey Dokey.” Said Piotr, and wandered into the back office.

  Mary was already on edge, having spent ten minutes snooping around someone else’s hotel room, when she first heard the sirens as she walked back across the lobby. She had an absolute conviction that Marcel and the Reaper had done something that called for police intervention. It was a relief when the vehicle that screeched to a halt opposite turned out to be an ambulance, until she realised why they arrive, and she scanned the road frantically before running across to the pub. The paramedics were crowded around a man on the floor, she couldn’t tell who. The only other person in the pub, on this side of the bar, was Marcel, who was holding a drink and playing an electronic Who Wants To Be A Millionaire game, with an apparent lack of success.

  “Marcel,” she said breathlessly, gesturing to the scene behind them. “Is it the Reaper?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Said Marcel, the blue light from the game lighting up his face in the dark bar. “Who played Darcy in the TV version of Pride and Prejudice? You can be my phone a friend.”

  “Colin Firth. What happened? Is he going to be alright?”

  “Yes! Oh, sorry, you were right. Who?”

  “Him!” she pointed to where the paramedics were frantically working on the figure on the floor.

  “Shouldn’t think so, he’s dead. I know the Reaper’s crap, but even he couldn’t cock that one up.”

  “You mean that’s not the Reaper?”

  “Course not. He arranged a job while we were in the area. This Jagermeister’s quite good once you get used to a numb palate.”

  Mary was craning her neck to see into the rest of the gloomy pub.

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s gone to the bog. Apparently the ambulance crews don’t react too well if he’s hovering over them while they defibrillate.”

  “Well, I can understand they might think they’re flogging a bit of a dead horse. Look, we should get out of here. Slaven and Jenkin are definitely staying over the road, I’ve had a bit of a look around their room. Bit nicer than where we’re staying.”

  ‘Ah,” said Marcel, draining his glass, “but think of the company.”

  She persuaded Marcel to go to get the Reaper, and between them they slid him past the now-despondent medical crew, and out into the street. On the shaded side of the street it was bitterly cold, and a breeze whipped up the black cloak around the spectral figure.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got a computer, have you?” she asked. The Reaper laughed, and didn’t need to supply any more answer. Mary hailed a cab and bundled the pair inside.

  By the time Jenkin and Slaven arrived back at the hotel, driven to distraction by delays on the Central line, the sun had long gone and the wind had risen to drive the temperature down. They trudged back to the hotel as the traffic volume increased, pestered by Christmas beggars augmenting the Big Issue salespeople outside, it seemed, every store.

  And by that time, Mary had bought herself a Macbook, thinking that since she was using Justin’s money she might as well go for something with a bit of style, found a café with a wi-fi service, and connected herself to Jenkin’s computer. The youth, aware that he was dead and only there for a few days, had been uncharacteristically lax with security, and she had easily been able to load the mirroring software while she wandered around the suite avoiding discarded underwear and the remnants of a couple of pizzas.

  She had just declined the offer to extend the warranty for three years when the machine pinged her to say that the computer in Shepherd’s Bush was in use, and she ordered another cappuccino as she settled down to watch every keystroke the boy made.

  Nineteen

  Marchant wasn’t really equipped to deal with whatever was going on in the Afternet. After the initial discovery of the untoward activity he had spent the next day or so watching what was going on with a mounting sense of powerlessness. He knew that the whole thing seemed to have come about because he had started A-Bay in order to make money, even though he had recognised that the money was essentially useless. It was the search for recognition that had always driven him, and without a broader appreciation of the world, he had always retreated to wealth as being the source of respect.

  Respect. Possibly one of the most over-used words in his twenty first century life. When anyone said ‘with all due respect’ you knew that there was none, when youths insisted upon respect from one another, it was demanded without being earned. Pointless violence against those deemed to have shown ‘disrespect’ was rife and required only a glance or a misplaced gesture.

  His businesses, in life, had been to generate money with the belief that this would buy him possessions, which would gain him respect. A-Bay would run rampant through the Afterlife, used by the dead and noted by the Gods, and his pots of cash would enable him to raise his arms and shake the coins and say ‘look, I did it’. Instead, it had been comm
andeered to arm a rising of the evil amongst the billions, and would be the route for them to enact who knows what violence on the others innocently trying to make their way through their terminal confusion.

  And to help him figure out how to stop this tide? Geoffrey. Justin glanced from his screen (which told a story of escalating purchases of anything that could be used to cause destruction), to the turnip picker, who after a brief show of concern, had retreated to his own televisual world, where he racked his brains to understand why there would be a Ministry of Silly Walks.

  Worse, for Justin, was his pending status as one to be consigned to Hell. He had wound through the many petty acts of malfeasance he had committed, the punitive way he drove his employees, the small betrayal of friends and family, the doors slammed on charity collectors. The mere fact that his status was subject to appeal reflected the smallness of his crimes against humanity; you couldn’t have Hell crammed with everyone who didn’t buy a poppy. He was confronting, inside, his failure to reach the zenith in any field, even that of wrongdoing. Perhaps the situation he had unwittingly brought about, he thought, as he noted the commission he would get from the howitzer someone had just purchased, provided the opportunity for him to swing the pendulum decisively in his favour.

  He needed to figure out, if he could, what on earth they may be up to, and where in the enormity of the spaces beyond, the ‘Fiends’ were looking to make their mark. There were a lot of them, so they had to be looking to take on a significant enemy. The overwhelming impression he had gained from his excursions into the afterworld was the sheer amount of space and the relative sparseness of the concentrations of population.