It used to be a family trade. Used to be.
I leave Lissa to her sleep, stumble to the living room, down a hallway covered with photos of my parents: smiling and oblivious to how terribly it was all going to end. My feet pad along a carpet worn thin with the footsteps of my childhood and my parents’ lives. This was their home. I grew up here, moved out, then my house exploded along with my life. Now I’m back. They’re dead. And I’m Death. It’s pretty messed up, really. I’m pretty messed up.
My mobile’s lying next to a half-empty bottle of Bundaberg Rum.
I grab my phone and flick through to the right app, marked with the Mortmax symbol—a bracing triangle, its point facing down, a not-quite-straight line bisecting its heart. I open up the schedule: the list of all deaths to be in my region. Technically, I don’t need to look anymore; all of this comes from within me, from some deep knowledge or force gained in the Negotiation. Regardless, it’s reassuring to see it written down, interpreted graphically, not just intuitively.
It was definitely a death in Perth. One of my new guys, Michio Dugan, is on the case. There’s another, in Sydney, and two in Melbourne. A stall accompanies one of those. The stir that necessitated that was what woke me.
I close my eyes, and I can almost see the stall occurring. The Stirrer entering the body: the corpse’s muscles twitching with the invader’s appropriation. Eyes snapping open, my Pomp on the scene—another new one, Meredith—grimacing as she slashes her palm and lays on a bloody hand.
Blood’s the only effective way to stall a Stirrer (though I once used vomit), and it hurts, but that’s partly the point—we’re playing a high stakes game of life and death. No matter how experienced you are, a Stirrer trying to reach into the living world is always confronting. And my crew are all so green.
I feel the stall that stops the Stirrer as a moment of vertigo, a soft breath of chilly air that passes along my spine.
The Melburnian corpse is just a corpse again.
I dial Meredith’s number. I have all my staff’s numbers, though I rarely call.
“Are you all right?” I ask before she can get a word in.
She’s breathing heavily. My breath syncs with hers—it’s part of the link I have with my employees. “Yeah. Just surprised me.”
I wonder, though, if she isn’t more surprised that I rang her. I know I am. I must still be a bit drunk.
“Stalls get easier,” I say, though in truth they do and they don’t: a Stirrer is always a bugger of a thing to stop. “You didn’t cut yourself too badly?”
“No…Maybe…A little.”
They all do when they start out. There’s a good reason why we call our palms Cicatrix City. The scars that criss-cross them chart our passage through this job.
“Get to Number Four and have it seen to,” I say.
“I’m a long way from the office, maybe—”
“No maybes.” I’ve seen the schedule. Meredith’s a ten-minute drive from the Melbourne offices, at most. Every state and territory capital has an office, a Number Four, and medical staff on call. “I pay my doctors far too much not to have them see to you.”
“OK,” she says. “I will.”
“Good work,” I say, then worry that I’m sounding patronizing.
“Thanks,” I can hear the smile in her voice—maybe I’m not. “Thanks a lot, Mr. de Selby.”
“Mr. de Selby? That’s what they called my dad, and he didn’t like it either. Steven’s fine.”
“OK, Steven.”
“Now get to Number Four.” They’re all so new. It’s exhausting. “If I hear that you decided to tough it out I’ll be very pissed off.”
I hang up. Slip the phone in my pocket. Then open the bottle of Bundy and sip my rum. I’m all class, Dad would say.
Another five pomps and one stall, across the country, in quick succession. All of them done in time.
Five heartbeats gone from the pool. And another monster stopped.
It’s nothing, right? But I hear them all. I ache with their urgency and their passing. There are always new heartbeats as well. One of those falters after a few minutes.
Another successful pomp.
Life’s cruel. Life’s what you have to fear.
Death. All we do is turn off the lights and shut the door and if we need to bolt it, that’s none of your concern.
I briefly consider going into the kitchen, making a cup of coffee. But I don’t like spending time in there at all. Mom and Dad loved to cook; somehow the skill passed me by. And that space drives it home. Lissa and I eat a lot of takeaway.
What’s more, my parents were killed in the kitchen. That was where most of the blood was. I miss them so much. I miss their guidance, their laughter. I even miss their bickering. Their bodies, Morrigan’s Stirrers inhabited those. The last time I saw my parents as flesh and blood they were being used to try and kill me. That was how far Morrigan had fallen.
Yeah, the bastard was a regular puppet master. He still haunts my dreams. He was directly responsible for starting a Schism, and the deaths of almost every Pomp in Australia. Nearly killed me too. I wish I could say I’d survived because of my tenacity and bloody perspicacity. Truth is, I was lucky. Lucky to have Lissa around. Lucky to have brighter, more able friends.
Sure I’d beaten Morrigan at the Negotiation and become RM—on the top of the One Tree, the heart of the Underworld, where his and my future, our very corporeal and non-corporeal existences were decided—but even that had been more through luck than design.
Two months ago I was just a Pomp—one of many—drawing souls into the afterlife.
Now I’m so much more, and I hate it. Morrigan even killed my border collie, Molly Millions. Until very recently, I imagined seeing poor Moll out of the corner of my eye, several times a day. And every time I did, it knocked the wind out of me. Another casualty in the minefield that is my life.
I could try and sleep. But even if I did, I’d wake just as weary.
And the nightmares. They drive into me even when I’m awake. I close my eyelids for more than a second and there they rush, blood-slicked and cackling. I’m clambering and running over screaming faces. Torn hands clawing and scraping, and these aren’t the dead, but the dying, and they’re dying because of me. More often than I care to admit, I’m enjoying the madness: reveling in it. Sometimes there is the scythe, and I’m swinging that thing, loving its heft and balance, its never-dulling edge, and laughing.
No sleep. No rest. Not when that’s waiting. And a man shouldn’t wake with an erection after such a dream. How can that arouse me?
I dig out something doleful and rumbling from my CD collection. A little Tindersticks, some Tom Waits. Let the music dim down the roar of a nation’s beating hearts. But no matter what I choose tonight, the volume refuses to drown out the sound—and I don’t want to wake up Lissa. I sit there restless, Waits crackling along like bones and branches breaking.
I work on finishing the rum.
What the hell, eh? Drinking’s easy at any time once you start. Easier if the right music’s playing. Tim once told me that music was the perfect gateway drug. He’s not wrong. Finally the rum and the music start to work. Not a lot, but enough.
Twice I stumble into the bedroom to check on Lissa, and to marvel that I didn’t lose her when I lost nearly everything else, that she’s sleeping in my bed. All I want to do is hold her. There was a time that I couldn’t, when to touch Lissa would have banished her from me forever. I went to Hell and back to find her, I pulled an Orpheus Maneuver. Not even Orpheus managed that one, but where he failed, I succeeded. If one good thing has come of this, it’s Lissa.
She snores a little.
It’s endlessly fascinating the things that you find out about your partner when you can’t sleep. The sounds, the unaffected routines of their bodies. The way a person’s eyes trace their dreams beneath their eyelids. There’s more truth in slumber. Perhaps that’s why I feel so unanchored. It’s a space lost to me.
What a
whiny bastard I’ve become.
Sometimes Lissa wakes screaming from her own nightmares. She never tells me what they are, claims she can’t remember them, but I can guess.
There’s not much of the Bundy left come first light. And there’s been seventy-five more deaths, two of them followed by Stirrers stirring.
Seventy-five more successful pomps and two stalls and the day hasn’t even properly started.
I never wanted this. Nor was I supposed to have it.
For Death, it never stops. It’s a twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week sort of thing. When I was a Pomp, out in the field, I had thought I understood that.
Well, as it turns out—as it turned out for a lot of things—I’m completely clueless.
2
I’m making coffee, trying not to think about my parents (where they were sitting, what they were saying) when Lissa stomps into the kitchen. She’s dressed in her usual black: a neat blouse, a shortish skirt, and a pair of purple Doc Marten boots, at once elegant and perfect for kicking in the heads of Stirrers. Around her neck is a silver and leather necklace from which hang rows of black safety pins leading to a Mickey Mouse charm at the bottom. Early Steamboat Willie Mickey, grinning like mad. I can’t help but roll my eyes at that. Only Mickey’s smiling, though.
“Do you know what time it is?” she demands.
I shrug.
“Seven,” she says. “Someone switched off my alarm.”
I pass her a cup. Surely you can’t stay mad at someone who’s just made you coffee. I lean in to give her a kiss. Lissa screws up her face. “Christ, Steve. Just how much did you have to drink last night?”
I wince, slipping on a pair of sunglasses. It’s bright enough inside the house, and the cruel sun of a Brisbane summer waits outside. “Maybe more than was good for me.”
“More than was good for the both of us. Again. Try not to breathe in my direction, will you?”
Seven in the morning. The sun is already high and bright, the air-conditioning throbbing, like my head, though the hangover’s fading. One of the upsides of being RM is that I heal faster than I used to. Regional Managers are considerably harder to harm or kill than your average Pomp, though I’ve seen it happen. My predecessor, Mr. D, died beneath the wheels of an SUV, but by then he had lost the support of his Pomps. Most of them murdered. He looks pretty good considering all that, but you have to go to the Underworld to see him. I try and avoid it if I can.
I grab the car keys from the bowl on a table next to the front door. Lissa snatches them from my hand.
She glares at me. “Don’t even think about it. Turn off the aircon and clean your teeth. I’ll be waiting in the car.”
I’m quick about it. Lissa looks very pissed off. For no good reason, as far as I can tell. Hey, I haven’t been drinking that much lately. She offers the barest hint of a smile as I get into the car, hardly waits for me to sit down before we’re going. The little multi-colored Corolla’s engine bubbles along. This car predates air-conditioning. There’s a bead of sweat on Lissa’s lip that I find endearing. I reach over to touch it with my thumb, and she pushes my hand away. Ten minutes of silence. Out of the ’burbs and onto the M3 Motorway.
“You really should be practicing your shifting.” Lissa says at last. The traffic’s already creeping, the highway burdened with even more cars than usual; it’s a matter of days until Christmas.
“Yeah, but I like coming to work with you.” That’s only partly true—certainly not today.
Shifting hurts, I really haven’t mastered it yet, and I don’t like the pain. I’m sure I could handle it if it was the same sort of agony each shift, but it’s not. Sometimes it manifests itself as a throbbing headache, others as a kick to the groin, or a hand clenching my guts and squeezing. There’s usually a bit of gagging involved.
Lissa grunts. Changes lanes. I reach over to turn on the stereo and she slaps my hand again. This is the real silent treatment.
“What did I do wrong?” I shake my stinging fingers.
“It’s what you haven’t done,” she says, and that’s all I can get out of her, as she weaves her way through the traffic.
What the hell haven’t I done? It’s not her birthday. And we’ve only been together for two months, so there’s no real anniversary to speak of. I try to catch her eye. She ignores me, contemplating her next move. Changes lanes again.
We cross the Brisbane River on the Captain Cook Bridge, crawling as the Riverside Expressway ahead becomes anything but express: choked by a half-dozen exits leading into and out of the city. I can feel the water beneath us, and its links to the Underworld and the Hell river Styx—all rivers are the Styx and the Styx is all rivers. When I was a Pomp it was just murky water to me, a winding thread that bound and separated the city, east from west, north from south. Now it hums with residual energies, it’s like stepping over a live wire. My whole body tingles, the hangover dies with it—down the river and into the Styx, I guess. A smile stretches across my face. I can’t help it.
Lissa doesn’t seem to appreciate the grin.
She clenches her jaw, and swerves the Corolla into a gap in the next lane barely large enough. A horn blares behind us, Lissa holds the steering wheel tight, the muscles in her jaw twitching.
I settle in for one of the longest fifteen minutes of my life. The only noise is the traffic and the thunk of the Corolla’s tires as it passes over the seams in the unexpressway. I can’t find a safe place to look. A glance in Lissa’s direction gets me a scowl. Looking out over the river toward Mount Coot-tha earns me an exasperated huff so I settle on staring at the car directly in front of us, my hands folded in my lap. It’s as contrite a position as I can manage.
At last Lissa belts into the underground car park of Number Four, off George Street, pedestrians beware. She pulls into a spot next to the lift, turns off the engine and stares at me. “So, even after that drive you’ve got nothing to say for yourself ?”
“I—” I give up, look at her, defeated. I can feel another grin straining at my lips. That’s not going to help. Lissa’s eyes flare.
“Look,” she snarls, “we’ve all lost people that we care about, but you—”
“I’ve what? What do you think I’ve done?”
“Oh—I could just—no, forget about it.” Lissa yanks her seatbelt free, storms out of the car and is already in the lift before I’ve opened my door.
I have to wait for the lift to come back down. The basement car park’s full. I can see Tim’s car a few spots down. I’m last to work, yet again.
I could shift up to my office from here. But I don’t reckon it’s worth the pain.
The lift takes me straight up to the sixth floor. Everyone’s a picture of industry when the doors open, and no one gives me a second glance. Which worries me. Where are the usual hellos? The people wanting to talk to me? Why hasn’t Lundwall from the front desk hurried over to me with a list of phone calls that I’m not going to bother returning? I look around for Lissa. Nowhere. No one meets my gaze.
“OK,” I mumble. If that’s how everyone is going to play it … I mean, I haven’t come to work drunk in over a week.
I amble over toward the coffee machine in the kitchen. The tiny room empties out the moment I walk in. I don’t hurry making my coffee, then stroll into my office, taking long, loud sips as I go.
“Nice to see you’ve made it,” Tim says. Tim’s trying so hard to hold it all together. I used to be able to tell, with a glance, what he was thinking. Now, sometimes I can’t even meet his eyes. He’s developed movements, tics and gestures, which are wholly unfamiliar to me. He’s sitting on my desk—his bum next to the big black bakelite phone—carefully avoiding the throne of Death. I understand why. It exerts a pull. I’m sure he feels it, too. How it does it is beyond me, it shouldn’t. It’s not particularly imposing, merely an old black wooden chair. There are thirteen of these in the world, made for each member of the Orcus. Just a chair and yet so much more. I cannot stand in here without feeling the sc
ratching presence of it. I know I could lose myself in it, that I’m perhaps losing myself already. Sometimes I wonder if that wouldn’t be so bad. Then I wonder if that’s what the throne wants me to wonder. If a chair can really want anything.
In one hand, Tim’s clutching the briefing notes that I should have read about three weeks ago.
“Yeah, isn’t your office across the way?” I ask.
Tim folds his arms, says nothing.
“So who’s stealing paper clips this week?” I force a grin. Honestly, that had been a major issue last month. Paper clips and three reams of A4.
The door bangs shut behind me. I jerk my head around, and Lissa’s standing there, her arms folded, too. Ambushed!
“What the hell is this? Look, those Post-it notes on my desk are all accounted for.”
She’s not smiling. Neither is Tim. Christ, this is some sort of intervention.
“Do you know what today is?” she asks.
“The 20th of December.” Sure, I have to look at my desk calendar for that.
Tim snorts. Pulls the bookmark out of the briefing notes. A bookmark whose movements have been somewhat fabricated—damn, I thought he’d swallowed that one. He slaps the notes. “If you had actually read these, you’d have an idea, you’d probably even be prepared.”
“Look, I’ve got work to do. The Death Moot’s on the 28th and I—”
“Absolutely. What do you need to do?”
I shrug.
In a little over a week the Orcus, the thirteen Regional Managers that make up Mortmax Industries, will be meeting in Brisbane for the biannual Death Moot. With just two months in the job, I’m expected to organize what my predecessor Mr. D once described as a meeting of the most bloodthirsty, devious and backstabbing bunch of bastards on the planet.
“You’ve got no fucking idea, have you?” Tim says.
Lissa touches my arm. “Steven, we’re worried about you.”
Tim doesn’t move. His eyes are hard. I can’t remember seeing him so pissed off. “Mate, I like to have a drink as much as anyone, but I have responsibilities. And you do, too. To this company, to your staff and your shareholders, and to your region. You’re an RM. You’re one of the Orcus!”
The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy Page 27
