I type up a couple of emails, then text Lissa: Interesting morning, how about you?
No response. So I send another one, creaking backwards and forwards in my throne: Wish you were here. Naked.
No response. I play the crossword in the Courier-Mail – only cheat half the time.
Then I consider the paperwork on my desk. There's a whole bunch of stuff I sign off on.
A car accident on the Pacific Highway chills me with eight deaths. It's just a gentle chill, but their deaths come so suddenly – I worry that there is no one there to facilitate their way into the Underworld. That there is, and that it is done, brings a tight smile to my lips. A seventy-five-year-old woman in her garden in Hobart clutches at her chest and tumbles among her rhododendrons. Two children jump off a bridge in some northern New South Wales town: only one surfaces. Someone takes a hammer to their husband, claw end first. Death. Death. Death. And my people are close by at every one.
It sounds terrible. But there's life before those endings, and existence after. It's not the world ending, but lives. The world's ending, though… I need to find out more about that Stirrer god.
Still no response from Lissa, so while I work I follow her via my Avian Pomps.
A crow witnesses her stalling a Stirrer in the Valley – the corpse had somehow escaped the Royal Brisbane Hospital. She lays the body gently against a bench and makes a call. An ambulance will be along soon. They'll ship the body back to the morgue and it will be as though it never happened. She binds the wound in her palm quickly and efficiently.
A sparrow watches as she eats a kebab for lunch, sitting in a mall, just a few streets from where she lay the body down. I can almost smell the garlic. I want to reach out and touch her, and the sparrow, misinterpreting this desire, flies at the back of her head. I manage to convince it otherwise an instant or two before contact.
An ibis ostensibly digs in a bin as she attends an open-air funeral service and pomps a soul, that of an elderly gentleman, whom she charms utterly. I can see his posture shift from scared, to guarded, to a chuckling disregard as she reaches out to touch his arm. He is gone in a flash – I feel the echo of the pomp through me. And Lissa is standing there, on the very fringes of the funeral service, alone.
Lissa's the ultimate professional. She talks to the dead so easily. Knows how to bring them around from loss to acceptance. She is the best Pomp I've ever seen.
After a while, she walks up to the ibis. I stare at her through its dark eyes. 'Steven, I love you, but this is creepy. Don't you have work to do?'
I'm out of there in an instant, my face flushed.
I get out of my chair and, as I do every day about this time, pull open the blinds to the rear windows. These face the Underworld. My office is immediately lit with a reddish light. The One Tree isn't far away. Down below, the traffic of the Underworld moves slowly, in a stately reflection of the living world's traffic. The various bends of the river that I can see are busy with catamarans and ferries. Traffic, cars and buildings are almost identical to the living city, except everything is that little bit ornate. Mr D says that's his fault. I haven't bothered to change it, yet. I'm not sure how, but I'm certain it's a lot of work.
With the blind open, the sunlight and unlight battle it out over my desk. They're equally matched. Where they strike my desk there's a patch of gloom, neutralised only when I turn on my lamp. I've read that the living and the dead worlds occupy the same place, but I don't really understand how that's possible. I prefer to think of them as two skins of the same onion.
A shrill screech startles me. I flinch, then glance over at the window leading to Hell. Someone's hanging from a harness and cleaning the glass from the outside with one of those big plastic squeegees. He's slowly sinking into view. This is a first. He's a big fella, pale skin, long black hair pulled back into a ponytail, a strong jaw marked with stubble. The harness digs into his shoulders. What is a living person doing in Hell?
He waves, I wave back.
Then he pulls out a gun and fires. It's such a casual movement that I hardly notice it. Don't even react until it's done. My stomach flips, I throw my hands in the air, and stumble backwards, then catch my balance on the back of a chair.
The window stars, but doesn't implode. You have more than double-glazing when your office faces Hell.
Through the fragmentation of the glass, I see the 'cleaner' frown.
I look at the door; I'm much further from it than the window. If I run that way I'll probably get a shot or two in the back and, while I'm at it, lead him into the office. Enough people have died in here this year already. It seems clear that he's only after me – and if this is about me, I want to keep it that way. Besides, I've taken bullets before and survived them easily. I lift up a chair. Not the throne, that weighs a bloody tonne.
He fires again. The window shatters this time, glass going everywhere. The bullet thwacks against the wall behind me. Alarms sound throughout the building and the One Tree's creaking intensifies to a dull roar now there's no glass to block it out. Hell has entered the building.
My arm tingles, then burns. Wal extrudes from my flesh. He pulls the most impressive double-take I have ever seen, his wings fluttering madly.
'What the hell?'
'Gun!' I shout. 'Assassination attempt!'
'Right, then. Shouldn't you be running the other way?'
'Shut up and help!' I yell.
I charge towards the gunman, the chair gripped in my hands as though it's some sort of medieval weapon. Here's a guy with a pistol, and me with something that I bought from IKEA. My boots crunch over glass, a big chunk of which slides through the side of my shoe and into my foot. It should hurt more, and it will, I'm sure, but right now all it does is make me angry.
I jab the chair at his head. He leaps back with all the grace of a gymnast. Fires again.
Misses.
But not quite, my ear stings. I resist the urge to slap a hand over the wound. It hurts more than the last time I was shot.
Wal's already buzzing around the bastard's head, and the gunman slaps him away easily, but Wal is back just as fast.
The gunman arcs out on the end of the rope, a pendulum packing a pistol. As he hurtles back in, I hurl the chair at him. He struggles to weave out of the way and the backrest hits him in the head with a sickening crunch. He swings in, then out, and in again, hanging limp.
I hobble over to him and reach out, but suddenly he falls, a long tail of rope following him. I peer down into the Underworld and watch him tumble, his limbs twitching. It's a bit of a mess when he hits. The mess itself is gone a moment later, back to the living world. He wasn't from the Underworld, that's for sure. Someone's just received a very nasty, splattery surprise.
'Watch it!' Wal yells. 'There's someone on the roof!'
Who the hell is that? I swing my head up – stupid, stupid, that's the best way to lose your face, but I have to look – and someone ducks for cover. But I catch a glimpse of the stork-like beak of a plague mask.
I jerk back in from the window, and shake my head at Wal, who grimaces and then shoots up past me, hurtling towards the roof. He's gone a moment, before swooping back. He tears past me and hits the carpet hard, but is back in the air almost at once.
'Shit,' he hisses. 'That hurt. Not enough Hell here for me to fly properly.'
'Did you see who it was?'
'Oh, yeah, I'm all right. And no, I didn't, they were gone.'
Then the first bastard's soul arrives, lit with the bluish pallor of the dead. I'm the nearest entity capable of pomping him. I should have expected him.
He blinks – like the dead do, and his death was more sudden than most – surprised, perhaps, at who he's ended up with. He snarls at me, his every movement a blur, as though he can't find traction here. There's a terrible weight of anger in him. It's holding him here where his lack of flesh can't. I try to use it to my advantage.
'You're not going anywhere until you tell me who sent you.'
'Yo
u'll find out soon enough.' His voice is quiet, controlled, and then he's running at me, a final act of defiance, and one I'm not expecting. I can't stop the pomp from happening. He tears through me, a scrambling fury of claws. This fellow didn't expect to die, and he's mad about it, but not enough to betray his boss. In fact, I can tell he blames me. After all, I didn't die and I was supposed to.
Well, he doesn't have my sympathy.
The pomp is painful, but fast, then he's gone, and I'm left standing, feeling dizzy. Rubbing at my limbs. No one should die with such rage inside them. It leaves me hurting, and angry. Dissatisfied on every level.
'You really should clean up in here,' Wal says, picking up another chip packet.
'Don't you start,' I growl.
My mobile chirps. I drag it from my pocket. It's a text from Lissa: Of course you do.
What?
My office door swings open and Wal slips from air to arm. The ratio of earth to Hell has shifted in earth's favour. There are shouts, another ringing alarm, and Tim and a couple of the bigger guys from the office rush in. They look at me then at the broken glass. All this mess. It's the first time I have a real excuse for it.
'Naked.' I lift the phone up in the air. 'Of course!'
'What the – Steven, are you right?' Tim demands, then his eyes widen. 'What the fuck happened to your ear?'
Oh, I'd forgotten about that. I reach up and touch it. My fingers come back bloody. I'm aflood with wooziness. Jesus.
'Someone just tried to kill me. And a second someone killed them, from upstairs, on the roof – Hellside, but you should check the real roof, just in case…'
Tim looks at the men with him, nods, and they run off. Leaving him, me and the phone.
I sway near the broken window. Perhaps I should move away from that drop. 'Sorry about the mess.' And then I remember the glass in my foot.
'Watch your step,' I say, as darkness swallows me.
8
I' m rushing through the creaking, mumbling dark. Knives whisper and flash around me, winding and slashing at each other. In their wake, smoke trails and bodies fall where there were none – as though the knives have knitted their victims' existence and demise in the same instant.
My boots crunch on ash and bone.
A man gibbers on the hill. He sees me, comes rushing down. I stand and wait, uneasy, my belly cold. But I will not run. I recognise him at last.
Morrigan.
'You didn't think you had it that easy, did you?' he says.
The earth is a mouth, a great swallowing mouth. Morrigan tumbles and is gone.
I am rushing through the dark. The knives a circle of stone around me.
A hand closes on mine and I can't get free.
Another hand, and then another grabs me. Someone pulls out my index finger, and cuts. Severs the digit from the palm.
'One by one. That's how it works.' It's Morrigan again. He brings his face close to mine. 'You never should have won. The job's too big for you. Your feet are too small for the boots you're clomping in.'
I push him away. He slashes out with a whispering knife. Another finger falls. I'm awake. I check my fingers.
All there.
Someone is stitching up my foot. There's that uncomfortable sensation of skin being pulled tight, without the pain. Not that I want the pain, but my body is all too aware it's going on somewhere, that trauma is being had whether I can feel it or not.
I'm lying on a bed in Brooker's room, which has to be the best fitted-out sick bay in any workplace in Australia.
'I don't remember Mr D ever getting into this sort of trouble,' Dr Brooker says, looking at me over his glasses. Brooker's work as Mortmax Brisbane's physician usually means the occasional bit of stitch work, a few prescriptions and a lot of counselling. He's very rarely in Number Four – which is what saved him during Morrigan's Schism – but he's available most of the time. I've known Dr Brooker since I can remember, before memory, in fact. He was the attending doctor at my birth. Yeah, and I get about as much sympathy from him as anyone in my family would have given me. I suppose I could take that as a compliment. I called him the 'good Doctor Brooker' once and got a cuff under the ear. His mood hasn't exactly improved since.
I grimace. 'Mr D had been doing this a century or two before you were even born. He'd gotten the trouble out of his system.'
'Nevertheless… you really need to concentrate on your job, not this messing about with guns. People always get hurt.' He jabs a gloved finger at my foot. 'You're an RM. You're not about hurting people.'
'He had a gun. I had a chair, and believe me, he ended up much worse than I did. Ouch!'
Brooker harrumphs and pulls a stitch tight. 'Keep still. You were much better when you were unconscious. You'll be all right. Quite frankly, I don't know why anybody even bothered trying to shoot at you. Waste of time – you can't be killed that way.'
'Maybe they just wanted to see if they could hurt me?'
'Well, they can hurt you all right.' He smiles broadly. 'But not as much as me if you don't keep still.'
'Where is everybody?'
'Does this look like a party to you?' Brooker rolls his eyes and finishes his stitching with a neat knot – he's done an awful lot of those over the years. 'They're waiting outside, where I told them to wait.'
Yeah, I might be RM, but in this room Brooker is king.
I clear my throat softly. 'Can I ask you something?'
Brooker looks at me. 'Shoot. No pun intended.'
'Did Mr D ever talk to you about his dreams?'
Brooker shakes his head; I can tell he thinks the question has come out of left field. 'Steven, I hardly ever spoke to him at all. Don't tell me you thought otherwise. He was a peculiar man.' Brooker squints at me. 'To be honest, I like you much more.'
I don't tell him that Mr D is still very much around.
I remember how Mr D died. Bones crunching as the SUV rolled over him. He certainly ended up in a lot of trouble. But then again for the majority of us that's all we can expect. Time and the world are hard and grinding. Bones and flesh are soft.
'Now, these dreams… '
I sigh. 'They're nightmares really. Nasty as hell nightmares.'
'Everyone has bad dreams,' Dr Brooker says. 'Particularly in your job, and mine.'
'That's not the problem,' I tell him. 'It's just that I rather like them.' My face flushes.
'How much?'
My face is burning. 'A lot.'
'Hmm.' He squints at me like I'm some kind of thermometer. I don't know what sort of reading he gets but after a while he turns away. 'Don't get caught up with dreams. Sometimes that's all they are.'
We both know that isn't true. Brooker looks worried. 'See me in a day or two – this really isn't my specialty. Now isn't the best time, you've been through a bit of trauma. And I'm sure that hasn't helped.'
'It'll heal,' I say looking at my foot.
'I wasn't talking about that. The way all this happened – the way you became RM, and the betrayals you faced – none of it was good. Steve, I lost a lot of dear friends that week. You lost more than that. It takes its toll.'
But is that really a good enough excuse for the number of times I've shown up at work drunk? Or just not bothered to show up at all? When you don't sleep there's an awful lot of time you can spend drinking, even if it's not filling up the hole left by all that loss, and the guilt that I'm letting those nearest to me, and equally wounded, down. Which, of course, leads to more drinking. It's how I've dealt with all the major dramas of my adult life.
Home and work, everywhere I look there are gaps. Reminders of friends and family gone, snatched away by the chaos of Morrigan's Schism. And as for the work itself, I don't know how to lead people. Where do you learn that? Where do you pick up all the arcane and complicated tricks required in the running of a business like mine? Despite Tim's notes there's no manual. I have Mr D, but I don't know what questions to ask, and he isn't that great at answering the ones I do. I'd suspect him of being
deliberately evasive, except he's always been that way.
And Lissa. Where do you go after what we've shared? Surely happiness of the forever-after sort is deserved. I'd settle for a few years of it, but there's no prospect of that. We've a dark god coming.
Suzanne's offer is looking very attractive. Maybe it's not too late to fix this. To be what I need to be.
Brooker works in silence for a while, cleaning then binding the foot. 'All done,' he says at last. 'You'll need to sit on your chair for a while.'
'My throne?'
'Don't start putting on airs and graces. When I was a kid we called the shitter a throne.' He sighs. 'But that's the one. It'll heal you much faster than you can on your own.'
There's shouting outside. It's an achingly familiar voice, an achingly familiar heartbeat, even if it is racing. My ears prick up. Dr Brooker grins. 'I'll just get her for you.'
The door flings open and nearly bowls him over. Dr Brooker doesn't even bother calling her on it. He knows better than to get between us. She's in her usual black get-up: a Mickey Mouse brooch on one collar of her blouse. I don't get the appeal of Walt Disney characters – give me Bugs Bunny any day – but I'm so happy to see her.
'Are you OK?' Lissa asks. She grabs me tight enough that my ribs creak.
'Yeah, I am.' I groan in her embrace. 'Well, I think I am.'
Brooker nods. 'He's fine.' He's already packing up his bag: good doctors are always in demand. 'As far as I know, nothing can really hurt him, just slow him down a little.'
'Define hurt. My foot's throbbing!'
'Well, the glass was part of Number Four, I'd say that's why it hurts you so much.' He rubs his chin thoughtfully. 'Or it could be that your body is still getting used to what it has become. The pain may just be old habits dying hard.'
I wish they'd die a little more easily.
Lissa pulls back, looks at me, and winces. Oh, I'd forgotten about the ear. It starts to sting, but now no more than a scratch might. The top of the ear is already growing back.
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