The Dead I Know (7 page)

12

The air in the dream room is hazy, acrid and burnt. Beneath the ringing in my ears I hear my own breathing. My heartbeat. The toe moves – a faint twitch – and terror swallows me whole. I run, but movement is beyond me. I scream, but make no sound.

‘You right, mate?’

The voice punched through and the scream from my nightmare slipped past my lips and into the reality of the day as a kind of yelp. My limbs suddenly started working and I flailed.

The voice persisted. ‘It’s okay, mate. You’re okay. Here, sit up.’

I was on the sand. The old man helping me wore running shorts and a fluorescent yellow singlet. His forehead was glossy with sweat, though full daylight seemed some way off.

‘Can you tell me your name, son?’ the man asked.

I nodded and rubbed my face.

‘Can you say your name?’

‘Yes,’ I croaked. ‘I’m Aaron Rowe.’

‘Do you need an ambulance?’

‘No, I’m fine.’

‘Where do you live? Should I call you a taxi?’

‘No,’ I said. I scanned my surroundings. Had I slept all night on the beach? I distinctly remembered curling into bed after my swim. Yes, I still wore pyjamas. I took a deep breath, shivered. ‘I’m staying in the caravan park.’

‘Here, take my hand,’ he said. His fingers were hot and smooth. ‘Let’s get you on your feet. The caravan park, you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that’s not far, is it?’

I shook my head.

The cold had made its way deep under my skin again. My teeth chattered. My legs threatened to cramp.

‘How’d you end up out here? You a sleepwalker?’

I didn’t answer.

‘My youngest son was a sleepwalker. Thought we’d lost him at one stage. Turned up in the linen closet. Would have been a laugh, but it was the neighbour’s closet.’

By the time we got to the pedestrian turnstile my limbs had unlocked. I thanked the man and apologized.

He held up his hand. ‘No trouble at all, Aaron. You might want to have a go at tying yourself into your bed. Worked for our Jason.’

He waved and jogged back along the beach.

*

The shower chased the ice from my limbs, but my core was slower to recover. Drug addicts on the beach had knifed people before. It would have been so easy to step around me and pretend I didn’t exist. Maybe he saw his son there on the sand? Perhaps the pyjamas were a giveaway? In any case, his kindness gave me something bright to ponder and breakfast tasted better because of it.

Mam whistled on her way to the toilet. I remembered the tune from my earliest days. It seemed an irreconcilable irony that she could summon that long-forgotten song but still called me David. That the light could fall brightly enough on that part of her mind but leave the can-opener in the shadows. I hadn’t even considered taking her to the doctor. Or maybe I had but dismissed it just as quickly on account of the complications that might arise. If Mam was having a bad day, she might impress the doctor so much that he’d lock her up. Getting Mam to the other side of town on a weekday was an arduous task and the doctor didn’t work on weekends, did he? Then there was the fact that Mam wasn’t physically sick, and trying to convince her she needed treatment risked the very pointy edge of her wrath. And until recently she’d had moments of strangeness in a powerfully lucid world. How the tables had turned. As if a fuse had blown or a bearing seized. Some part of me was still waiting for her to snap out of it.

13

I
TIED MY OWN TIE
. It took four goes but I remembered the knot and the effort now was to get the lengths right before I started looping and tucking. John Barton noticed, tilted his head, hitched the knot this way and that, and then beamed.

‘Well done, Aaron. You catch on quick.’

The coolroom stank. It was an evil brew of gas and decay. John Barton made a noise of mild horror, as if he’d remembered he’d left the stove on, then tutted when he found the source of the smell. Amanda Creen’s body had changed. Her perfect skin had blotched and discoloured; her eyes were sunken and black. The beauty of the day before was gone. Now she was the decomposing corpse of a person who had suffered a violent death. A bruised and wilted rose.

Her toe moved. I could have sworn it. I saw it from the corner of my eye and my dream flooded in unchecked.

I made a noise like Moggy and crashed into the trolley on my way out. I ran past the office and into the foyer. I pulled up, panting, in the bright sunshine just outside the front door. John Barton appeared two seconds later.

He grabbed my shoulder. ‘Aaron? You okay?’

I nodded quickly.

He seemed unconvinced. ‘Here,’ he said, and patted the edge of the concrete urn. ‘Sit for a bit.’

I did as I was told and eventually found a rhythm to breathe by.

John Barton stared. ‘What happened?’

‘I . . . I . . .’

‘Yes? Take your time.’

‘I . . . It was nothing. Just my imagination running wild.’

‘What happened?’

‘I thought I saw her toe move.’

John Barton nodded thoughtfully. He propped his buttocks on the urn opposite. He pointed towards the coolroom. ‘That’s the other ten per cent. The dark side of what we do. It can be a little . . . unhinging. Mess with your head. The suicides, the murders, the babies and the car crashes. Some of the things we see are truly horrible. There’s nothing —’

‘It wasn’t that,’ I interrupted.

John Barton blinked.

‘I didn’t sleep very well last night.’

‘I hope it’s not the work that—’

‘No. No, I . . . the work is satisfying. More than that. It’s what I want to do.’

John Barton exhaled. ‘If that’s the way you feel, then
we’ll nut it out. We’ll do what we need to do until you find your feet. It may take a while.’

I nodded, thankful.

He guided the conversation back to practical things. ‘After an autopsy, bodies tend to decompose very quickly. If we were to open her up we’d find her guts in a plastic bag. They take a slice from the major organs for pathology and stuff the rest back in no particular order. Short of pickling her in embalming fluid there’s not much we can do to stem the natural breakdown going on.’

When I looked up, he was watching me again.

‘You okay?’ he asked.

I gave him my most convincing nod. Short of pickling my head in embalming fluid, there didn’t seem to be much we could do with the natural breakdown going on in there, either.

‘Now, I have to go and ring the Creens. Somebody has to try and convince them they
don’t
want to see their beautiful daughter one last time.’

Before he left, he drove the hearse onto the grass and left me with the hose and bucket of cleaning gear. It was exactly the mindless job I needed. It gave the day some sunshine and purpose. I entertained myself with the notion that I was scrubbing and polishing the shadows from my own mind. The dream couldn’t reach me in that sunshine. Mam was fending for herself and I’d pick up the pieces when I got home if I had to. What I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me.

‘Aaron?’

I didn’t recognize the businessman until he removed his hat. It was the man from the beach.

‘It
is
you!’ he said.

I nodded. My defensive shields were down. This total stranger had seen me at my weakest. He’d also rescued me from my dream.

‘Twice in one day,’ he said, to fill the awkward gap. ‘How . . . extraordinary.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Your hearse?’

‘No, my boss’s.John Barton.’

‘Ah. Good man, John Barton. He’s lain to rest quite a few of our nearest and dearest. You’re a funeral director?’

‘In training.’

‘How . . . extraordinary.’

There were seagulls cawing overhead but they didn’t fill the hole I’d left in the conversation. I took words with my tongue and forced them out. ‘Thank you.’

‘What for?’

‘Your help this morning.’

‘It was nothing,’ he said dismissively.

‘No, it was something. It was very kind.’

He shrugged.

‘I could have been anybody . . . a drug user, violent criminal. Anybody.’

He chuckled.

Blood stampeded to my cheeks. I bent to polish the wheel rim.

‘In one of my previous lives I was a paramedic,’ he said quietly. ‘You develop a capacity to read situations like the body on the beach. And I told you, my son was a sleepwalker too.’

Thinking about it drew me right back to the breathless edge of the dream.

‘You’re not a paramedic any more?’ I asked, desperate for distraction.

He scoffed. ‘No. That was thirty years ago. I teach emergency care to nursing students at the university.’

‘Mam used to work at the university,’ I said. It was out before I had time to think it through.

‘Mam? Dr Mam Rowe?’

Of course he’d know her.

‘Aaron Rowe! Are you related?’

‘No.’ I couldn’t keep the sharpness out of my voice. I couldn’t keep the syllable from sounding like the lie it was.

The man looked confused.

‘She’s a family friend,’ I said. ‘Known her for years. She taught me how to read and write.’

‘Seriously?’ he said. Then his face softened and he replaced his hat. ‘Couldn’t think of a better tutor. I bet she taught you a lot more than that.’

I nodded, forced a smile.

‘She’s one of the brightest people I’ve ever met,’ he said. ‘Do you keep in touch?’

‘Oh, I still see her now and again.’

‘How is she?’

I tossed my rag at the bucket but missed. ‘She’s okay. She’s good. Lively as ever.’

‘That’s good to hear. When you see her next, tell her I said hello.’

‘I will,’ I said, even though I didn’t know his name.

‘Better get to work,’ he said.

‘Me too.’

‘Ah, the day’s too good for working,’ he grumbled, but he walked up the hill towards the university anyway.

‘Thank you,’ I shouted at his back.

He touched the brim of his hat and waved. ‘Any time.’

14

I
ASSEMBLED A COFFIN
for Amanda Creen. A white Crenmore Seraphim. I inserted a mattress but John Barton told me not to bother stapling the silk lining over the plastic. Mercifully, he dressed her while I was working in the storeroom. I held my breath as we lowered her in and he screwed the lid on tight. The air quality in the coolroom improved instantly.

Except for the sealed box, the coolroom was empty for the first time since I’d begun working. John Barton had me scrub and disinfect the floor and the walls and the surface of every bench and trolley in the place. Like cleaning the hearse, the work had an easy tempo and tangible results.

John Barton shook his head. ‘You clean as if you’ve been doing it for years.’

I have, I thought.

‘Not just
well
, but as if you have pride in the outcome. That is a rare and admirable trait and I thank you. How are you with a vacuum cleaner?’

I laughed. It flew from my mouth like a bird and John Barton smiled.

I vacuumed the office, the chapel, the foyer and the entry to the public toilets. I found a mop and bucket in the storeroom and cleaned the toilets, too. I vacuumed the display room and the viewing room as well. I picked up a JKB Funerals business card from the counter and tucked it in my pocket.

‘You’re a whirlwind,’ John Barton said, and I jumped. ‘A hurricane of clean. Can you handle a lawnmower?’

I dropped my shoulders, which made him smile, just a little.

‘After lunch, perhaps.’

Skye was in front of the bawling TV. She was still in her pyjamas – a pair I’d seen on the floor of her bathroom on my first day. She looked my way and wrinkled her nose with displeasure.

Lunch was a huge plate of Mrs Barton’s crustless sandwiches. I picked out the egg ones until I realized John Barton was hunting through the pile for the same thing and I’d taken the last. I offered it to him. He took it and stuffed it into his mouth.

‘I have a pair of coveralls that might fit you,’ he garbled. ‘Save your suit from grass stains. They belonged to your predecessor, who wasn’t nearly as tall . . . or as handsome . . . as you are but they’ll fit you better than mine would, for certain.’

I felt my cheeks grow warm at the flattery.

*

The coveralls were a perfect fit if I tied the arms around my waist and wore the crotch halfway to my knees. Worn like that they almost concealed my ankles. I put on earplugs, and safety glasses from the coolroom.

The mower in the garage was a newish petrol-powered beast that looked as if it had been cleaned and serviced as regularly as the cars. It started first pull and I was hardly surprised. I mowed the grass where I’d washed the hearse. I mowed the front lawn of the residence and – just as I thought I was finished – John Barton shouted that I should mow the backyard as well. It was bigger than it seemed. It stretched beyond the clothes line and around the side of the house near the lounge windows.

I became conscious of someone watching me and discovered Skye frowning from the lounge window. She was behind the curtain, holding the cat, and she brought a finger to her lips.

I pretended I didn’t understand.

She shushed through her finger again and I poked my tongue out at her. Her mouth formed an O, then she poked her tongue out, screwed up her face and shook it at me.

The next time I looked, she was gone. I only took my eyes off the grass for one second but still managed to hit something. The mower rattled and slapped and eventually died.

I found a skipping rope bound tight around the drive shaft. I popped my earplugs and lifted my green-spotted glasses onto the top of my head, then laid the mower on its side. The engine ticked and I knelt and touched the blades hesitantly.

Footfalls on the freshly mown grass. Skye’s bare toes.

‘They’re not even your coveralls, Robot,’ she whined.

‘Shouldn’t you be at school, dear Princess?’

She ignored me. ‘They’re Taylor’s. You have no right to wear them. Get them off and go and buy your own.’

‘Taylor doesn’t need them any more,’ I said.

She sighed and sat.

‘You’ll get grass on your pyjamas,’ I said.

‘So?’

The skipping rope had drawn incredibly tight around the shaft. There was a loose end, but pulling on it with all my strength had no result.