The Dead Have No Shadows (5 page)

The morning dawned with Mickey feeling stiff and aching all over.  He was used to waking up in a warm bed, wrapped in a duvet.  He’d spent the night on bare ground with his jacket as a pillow.  It took a few moments for him to realise where he was – and what he was.  The knowledge was a hammer blow.  The first thought that followed this was that his Mum would be waking up in an empty house.  She would be starting the rest of her life alone.  Mickey’s spirits sank as he worried about how she was coping this morning.  How quickly after waking up would she have remembered that she was completely alone?  Her husband deserted her and now her only son was dead.

Mickey slowly climbed to his feet and stretched.  His bones creaked and cracked bringing some small relief to his aches and pains.  Pester was already up and about.  It seemed that he had been up for some time as he was ready to break camp.

“Eat this,” Pester said, offering Mickey some meat that he’d put aside the previous evening.  The meat was cold and greasy and Mickey reluctantly accepted it.  The meat took some chewing and Mickey struggled to swallow it.  He felt sickened at his Mum’s plight and the tough meat did nothing to help settle his stomach.

“Are you ready to go?” Pester asked when it looked as if Mickey had finished eating.

Mickey nodded and threw the remains of the meat to one side.

“Make sure that you’ve got everything,” said Pester with a mischievous grin.  “We won’t be coming back this way.”  He set off along the valley floor.  Mickey looked around himself.  His only possessions were the clothes he was wearing.  Pester was gone though, making a brisk pace.  Mickey had to trot to catch up with his guide.

“Where to now?” he asked Pester.

“That way,” Pester replied, pointing straight ahead.  He was smiling again.

Mickey didn’t rise to Pester stating the obvious.  “What’s there?”

“Your destiny.”  This time
Pester’s
smile was gone.

Though the sun rose in a cloudless sky the day gained no heat.  It wasn’t cold, the weather just - was.  Mickey could think of no other way to describe it.  The temperature was the same as it had been over night.  Mickey soon became hot, but it was through exertion not the sun.  He stripped off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder. 

“So, you were into armed robbery then?” Pester said, making conversation by labouring a point from the previous day.

“What?  No,” Mickey replied.  “I didn’t ...  It was...”  He trailed off.  He didn’t want to go into details of why he’d been in the bank.

Pester laughed.  “What did you do then – when you were alive?”

“I was a student.  I was doing a Master’s in Politics and Law.”

Pester laughed again.  “Studying the law and died breaking it.  I like that.”

The two men lapsed into silence.  They had been walking that way for what seemed like hours when Pester called a halt.

“Your first experience is coming up,” said Pester.

“My what?  Where?” said Mickey.  “I can’t see anything.  The whole place looks the same as it has all day.”

“There’s nothing to see yet,” said Pester, “but we’re getting close.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” snapped Mickey.  “What do I need to do?”

“Don’t know,” Pester replied taking a sip from his water bottle.

“Don’t know?” said Mickey.  “You said you were my guide.  So come on, guide me a bit here.”

Pester sighed.  “I am guiding you but I don’t know what’s coming up.  It’ll be an episode from your life and it’ll be soon.”

Mickey sighed himself and took a sip of his own drink.  He was careful with the water, as Pester had warned him. 

How could he prepare himself for something that he knew nothing about?  What use was this Pester guy as a guide if he couldn’t help?

“How many of these episodes, or whatever you call them, am I going to have to face?”

“That depends on you,” said Pester.  “It depends on what your life was like and how you handled things.”

“Thanks for nothing,” muttered Mickey.  “Some help you are.”  He corked his bottle, slipped it back into his coat pocket and started walking again.  This time it was Pester who had to quicken his pace to catch up.

After another mile so of silent marching the roof of a building came into view.  The ground started to slope downwards making more of the building visible.  Mickey stopped dead.

“That looks like my old primary school,” he gasped.  “What the fuck is that doing here?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” said Pester.  “We’ll be going in.”

“Going in?” said Mickey.  “Won’t people think it a bit odd that two strange men are wandering around the school?  It’s the sort of thing that gets you arrested you know.”

“Don’t worry about that,” smiled Pester.  “No-
one’ll
know that we’re there.”

“Well, in that case if I don’t go in, they won’t miss me,” said Mickey.  He wasn’t sure why but he felt apprehensive about walking around his old school – whether anyone knew he was there or not.

“It’s your choice,” Pester conceded.  Something in his tone of voice bothered Mickey.

“But?”

“But if you don’t go in there’ll be a consequence for you.”  Pester raised a hand to stop Mickey asking any more.  “Don’t ask.  I don’t know.  But all decisions have a consequence over here, one way or another.”

Mickey shrugged and started walking.  He felt that he was in enough of a mess as it was; making things worse for himself didn’t seem a very bright thing to do.

As the Victorian School House came into full view it brought back a flood of childhood memories.  A lot of these were good ones – some though were not so welcome.  Mickey began to think of things that had long been buried.  The tall, vaulted and panelled windows and gabled ends always made Mickey think of the place as more of a chapel than a school.  The classrooms were high ceilinged and had huge cast iron radiators that always gurgled and growled like some huge
emphysemic
beast waking up.  Big as they were, the radiators had never been able to chase the cold from the classrooms in the deepest of winters and the class, teacher included, had had many lessons wrapped in coats and scarves.

Mickey stopped walking again.  What was he thinking?  The place had been on its last legs when he had started there over fifteen years ago.  It had been pulled down and replaced by one of those prefabricated modular things soon after he moved up to senior school. 

“This place has been pulled down,” he told Pester.

“Ah, but this will be a memory from your life when the school was standing,” the guide told him.

“So I’m going to have to relive something that happened to me – is that it?

Pester remained silent.  Mickey trawled his brain for something major that happened while he’d been there.  Nothing came to mind though.  He’d only just turned eleven when he left the school.  What could have been so important about at kid at that age?

Chapter 5

Mickey and Pester stood in front of the school gate.  To the left, a high brick wall topped with blue coping stones ringed the playground.  On the right hand side stood the main school building.  It looked every bit as formidable and indestructible as Mickey had remembered it as a child.  A lower wall, topped by iron railings, framed a small garden between the boundary and the school building.

“Don’t you have any idea at all what’s going to happen?” said Mickey.  He was trying to look and sound chilled but could feel speckles of sweat on his forehead.  The sound of children at play only made things worse.

“Not a clue,” said Pester happily.  “It was your life, not mine.  The only way you’ll find out is by stepping through that gate.” He indicated the way forward.  “All I do know is that for your first and last episodes you’ll just be a witness.  You’ll actually take part in all of the ones in between.”

You’re enjoying this you bastard, thought Mickey.  He briefly thought about backing out and facing the consequences.  Pester hadn’t actually said so, but Mickey had a feeling that things could go badly for him if he didn’t see this through.  He walked into the playground.

Mickey expected kids to stop and stare at him or for a teacher to come over and challenge him about why he was there.  Everyone ignored him though.  As children came close they seemed to swerve away automatically, as if deflected around him.

“Don’t worry.  They can’t see you,” said Pester.

“I’ll take your word for it,” said Mickey.  “But it still feels weird.  What am I supposed to be looking for?”

“How about a younger version of you,” Pester suggested.

Mickey scanned around the playground, concentrating on the areas he remembered frequenting most as a child.

“There,” he said, pointing.  “There I am.  Fucking hell, this is creepy.  It looks like I’m going for a piss.”

A much younger version of Mickey Raymond was walking up the slope of the playground towards a low roofed building.  At the end of the building closest to Mickey and Pester was the entrance to the girls’ toilets.  The boys’ toilets were at the far end of the building.  Separating the two conveniences were a couple of storerooms.  The elder Mickey remembered that these contained P.E. and maintenance equipment.

“Perhaps you should follow him to see what happens next,” said Pester.

“Is that an instruction?” asked Mickey with an air mischief in his voice.  Though it sounded as if he was having sport with Pester he was really just stalling.  He still didn’t feel comfortable with this and seeing himself a dozen or so years younger didn’t help.

“You know it isn’t.”
Pester’s
rebuke was gentle.  “It’s your choice.”

Mickey shot Pester a look then started to walk across the playground.  Despite what Pester had told him, Mickey was deliberately cautious not to walk into anyone.  The children were never at risk of collision with Mickey or Pester though.  They always veered away, as if by design, whenever they came close to the two strangers in their midst.

“Jeez, Mrs
Rai
looks young,” gasped Mickey.  He indicated a teacher who was on patrol in the playground.  “I always liked her when I was here.  I could really fancy her now though.”

“She’s probably in her mid forties, with treble chins, by now,” suggested Pester. 

“Would you still fancy her like that?”

Mickey’s covetous smile faded.  “No, probably not.  Thanks for shattering that illusion for me.”

Pester chuckled.

The two men turned the corner of the toilet block and walked up to the long open passageway that led to the entrance.

Young Mickey had already gone inside.

“Fuck off you,” someone shouted.  The voice sounded vaguely familiar.  “No.  Wait.  Come back here.”

Young Mickey was standing just inside the toilet block when Pester and the elder Mickey caught up with him.

The toilets smelled strongly of piss and the disinfectant blocks that looked like pineapple chunks.  The dead Mickey smiled as he remembered how the drain on the urinal was prone to back up – especially when it had some help from the boys.  He looked into the trough to see that it was almost full of amber liquid and his smile broadened.  The caretaker would soon be up to his elbow in little boy piss cleaning the drain out.  Mickey couldn’t remember the caretaker’s name but he did remember that he’d been a miserable old bastard.

At the far end of the toilets a small Asian boy was trapped by two older boys.  Elder Mickey knew the Asian boy on sight – Young Mickey was yet to learn his name.  The
spectating
Mickey also remembered the name of one of the older boys but couldn’t recall the identity of the other one.  He knew what this scene was though, and how it would end; but he still couldn’t see the relevance of it.