The Memory of Death (6 page)

It’s a long dark corridor down which we creep, rather more blindly than I would like. Dark because the light bulb above us blew when I flicked the switch. Things scurry behind us, chitinous-sounding things. Neti’s rooms terrify me. There’s something hateful about them, something dark and cruel. I touch one wallpapered wall, only to feel it flex beneath my fingers.

I’m so relieved when my hands find the door.

‘Ready?’ I say.

‘I was born ready,’ Clash says.

Okkervil sighs. ‘We’ve all seen the same movies, Clash.’

I lean against the door, and it springs open. And I stumble into Hell.

‘Watch your step,’ Okkervil says. Clash sniggers. I am intolerable.

But I’ve never been so happy or more horrified to be out of there.

The temperature drops away. The sky is ruddy above us, and in the near distance, a suburb away, through the neat streets of Hell, the great root buttresses of the One Tree creak.

We’re standing in a garden of dead flowers near a major thoroughfare of Hell. Delightful, relatively.

‘I think …’ Clash says. ‘Damn, it’s happening.’

He groans, and clutches at his arm. The transfiguration can be a bit painful, just like getting a tat. Wal tears free from his flesh with a loud
thuck
ing noise. I glance at my arm: my tattoo’s still there, damn it.

I look over at Clash – his hand's grown back. This is Hell after all, weird shit happens.

Wal coughs, spits. ‘All I can taste is salt. What the –’

Clash looks pretty smug, validated. Sometimes I hate myself.

Wal flits between us. ‘So, you three, what’s the story?’

‘The usual,’ Clash says. ‘Escaped the Death of the Water’s Hell through means unknown. Then we’re chased from the land of the living by a Hellhound.’

‘Oh, and apparently we’re evil now,’ Okkervil says.

Wal squints at us. ‘Don’t look evil to me. Then again, three pairs of beady eyes staring at you, that’s disconcerting.’

‘Disconcerting is a type of evil,’ Clash says.

‘It's good to see you,’ we say.

Wal shakes his head. ‘Wish I could say the same. I was working on a story for my blog, gotta keep up the content.’ He puffs up his chest. ‘Nice to be all corporeal again, though. I missed this place, and you – one of you, anyway. A little …’

We say nothing and Wal laughs. ‘The more the merrier, I suppose.’

I gesture at the One Tree. ‘Do you think he’s in?’

‘Of course he is, what else does he have to do?’

Mr D, my previous boss. We’d had issues, but he’d saved my life several times over. He lived in – well, on – the One Tree, right at the top. Best view in all the Underworld; from the city across the mountains all the way to the dark and angry waters of the sea of Hell.

‘You’re not allowed here,’ the dead man says, and I realise that this opinion isn’t something confined to the living world. Where the hell do we belong then?

Another dead figure turns towards us. And another.

‘Look,’ I say. ‘I’m just passing through. I’ve been here before. I used to run the joint.’

The dead man seems to hesitate; I’m holding my hands out in a conciliatory way, looking as harmless as possible.

He smiles at me, and then tries to tear out my throat with his teeth. Clash kicks him in the chest. Okkervil grabs him around the chest and throws him to the ground, and those jaws keep snapping.

There’s a whistling hole in my throat. I put my fingers to it, nearly faint dead away. But I manage to keep upright. Clash looks at me, and I don’t like his expression. I know when I’m trying to hide how worried I am.

‘Doesn’t look good,’ I wheeze.

He pats my hand. ‘You’ll be right.’

Not exactly. Hell isn’t the place for things turning out all right.

I shake my head. Then remember the hand I am holding in the plastic bag. ‘What do I do with this?’

‘Keep it,’ Clash says. ‘You’ll never know when it’ll come in handy.’

Another snort from Okkervil.

‘You’re not allowed here,’ someone cries in the not too distance.

We look at each other. Then towards the One Tree.

‘We need to get up there,’ I say.

Wal grimaces at the dead soul approaching. ‘And fast,’ he says.

We run through the streets of the Underworld Brisbane, heading towards Mount Coot-tha and the great buttress roots of the One Tree that are planted there. Okkervil takes the lead; Clash and I alternate leaning on each other.

We’re attacked twice more. But we manage to break free, leaving a bunch of angry dead in our wake.

By the time we’re starting the climb up the steep steps, there’s quite a few behind us. Quite a few hundred winding around the trunk of the one tree. I swear they’ve got more wobbly. There’s no rail, just trunk on one side, drop to basement of Hell on the other. In Hell the worst has happened, so no one really cares about the safety of a set of stairs. OHS has become irrelevant.

I stop at the beginning of a particularly steep rise, and look back. There’s a darkness following us up the tree, just behind the undead. We move fast, but they’re moving faster, getting nearer. I can almost hear what they’re saying. Not that I need to.

Wal flies back to get a better look, hovers there a moment, then shoots back to us.

‘It’s you, or something like,’ he says, flicking a handful of sweat from his brow. He doesn’t sit on my shoulder, and I feel a stab of jealousy. Not that I’ve ever really appreciated his naked bum resting that close to my face. ‘Called out my name in your voice.’

‘How do we avoid it?’

‘There’s no real avoiding it. Keep running or turn and face it. How do you lot know it means you harm anyway?’

‘It’s a vibe,’ I say. Wal raises an eyebrow. ‘Yeah, an “I’m going to cut you into tiny pieces” sort of thing.’

Wal looks back over his shoulder. ‘You better run then.’

We’re all panting by the time we reach the top of the One Tree.

Mr D looks up from his book. Mr D, a man who had saved my life on more occasions than I could bother to count.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he says.

‘Yes,’ we say.

‘I’d better call Lissa, then,’ he says, getting up from his chair.

‘No you don’t,’ I say, puffing up my chest.

Mr D smiles, gestures at me and I fall on my bum. The other two and Wal snigger a bit.

‘And what are you going to do about it?’ he says. ‘All of you?’

That stops them laughing.

While Mr D is hardly effusive in his greeting, I understand why – after all, I could possibly be some sort of psychotic revenant. But, hey, Mr D was worse than that when he was alive. He can come across as an affable, avuncular sort of chap, but he is anything but; if you scratch the surface, what you get are holes into a darkness bleaker and deeper than the Underworld, when he’s not giving you all sorts of fatherly advice.

He was once my mentor, the Death of Australia before me. And while you could accuse him of being a rather inefficient RM (there had been two Schisms tried on his watch, run by two of his closest friends and both those men were now dead) he was still, if not alive, then kicking.

In fact he looked about to kick me, or run to his bicycle. He was a man very fond of bicycles.

‘We need help,’ I say.

Mr D grimaces, puts away his book on a small case made of old bones, and splinters of the One Tree. He looks at his phone there on the top shelf, then shrugs. ‘I’d say that’s very obvious. There’s something not right about any of you. Like you’re all square blocks being booted into a triangular hole. Hmm, looking at you I feel almost like I’m staring at Stirrers. But I’m happy to see you, the bit of me that isn’t swelling with a killing rage.’

‘It doesn’t look like you’re very happy to see us.’

‘I prefer my de Selbys in the singular.’ At least he doesn’t look like he wants to kill us, despite what he says.

‘We’re not going to hurt you.’

Mr D sniffs. ‘You already have. I should have been the first person you saw, the moment you returned from the Death of the Water. After all, you went against my advice, you dealt with the Death of the Water, and I bet you barely even glanced at the contract.’ He looks at each of us in turn. ‘One of you hardly even glanced at the contract.’

‘You were in my thoughts,’ I lie, and obviously not that convincingly. ‘And there’d never been a written contract, just a verbal one.’

‘That’s how he gets you.’ Mr D pats my arm. ‘Well, you’re here now.’

‘And I do need your help.’

‘Of course you do. Of course you do. Now,’ he says. ‘I have a theory about what you are. Or, at the very least, who.’

‘We’re Steven de Selby.’

‘If only it was that simple.’

‘You’re not meant to be here,’ someone says.

‘You’re not meant to be here.’ A whole host of someones.

Mr D gives a surprised sort of grin, then turns. ‘And when were you going to tell me about this?’

*

The dead are all pointing at me, and Suit and Okkervil.

Chaos.

A man twice my size grabs at me. I push him away, turn to run; something else is gnawing at my calf and has got a damn good grip, and I trip, landing hard on my face.

‘You don’t belong here.’

‘You don’t belong here.’

If I don’t belong here, where do I?

Suit throws me the bag with the hand in it. My old hand. it's curled into a fist, I swing out, knock one of the dead backwards. Try and get another swing in and hands close around my throat. I'm yanked away by … me. The ragey, shadowy me. The dead fella at my calf gets a good chunk of meat, and that doesn’t feel good at all.

‘Don’t trust any of them,’ Rage Steve says, to himself, to me, I'm not sure, I don’t think he is either. ‘Least of all this fucker.’ And he pushes me from the guy chewing on my calf, and I can breathe again. Seeing spots. My leg is bleeding from the bite wound.

‘You’re making me angry.’

‘Why?’ I say.

‘That's my favourite T-shirt, and you’re about to get your blood all over it.’

No it’s not, maybe it is. I don’t know.

There is death all around us, angry death, and Rage Steve only has eyes for me. Why do I always get the crazies as a dance partner?

‘Time to die, Clash,’ my shadow says.

The other two are down, smothered in biting dead. It’s just me and him.

‘I can take you,’ I say, getting my fists up, keeping my face protected. He punches me in the gut.

Maybe not.

I gasp like that fish in the video to Faith No More’s ‘Epic’, trying to breathe, just flopping and flapping uselessly. Rage Steve kicks me in the throat.

‘One of us got the rage,’ he says. ‘And rage trumps everything.’ He swings out a boot again, only someone is holding him by it. Someone very tall.

‘Enough,’ Charon says. ‘Enough.’

He lifts Rage Steve by the foot and whistles.

Somewhere not that distant, a Hound howls. And the dead still, their eyes dim. Charon gestures right and left, and the dead walk to the edge of the branch and tumble away. A lemming-like fall of death.

The other Steves crawl towards me. The closer they get, the more pain I feel.

‘Good,’ Charon says. ‘Now I have your attention. Listen up.’

‘Let me go,’ Rage Steve growls.

‘Then listen, and I will. You’re all Steven de Selby, but only bits of him, fragments. You need to come together.’

‘And how do we do that?’

Charon whistles shrill and loud. The Hound bounds onto the branch, its gaze flicking from each of us and back again, as though it isn’t sure where to start, its big jaws slavering. Honestly, I don’t want to be bitten again, ever.

‘With the glue,’ Charon says.

Charon lets me drop. I hit the branch of the One Tree, grunt and lie there a moment. It feels almost good not to be in constant motion. Charon wiggles a finger at me. I feel the anger building again.

‘Calm down,’ he hisses at me. ‘Calm down.’

The Hound growls.

‘I will run and I will hide,’ I say.

‘The Hound cannot be hidden from,’ Charon says. ‘The Hound is you. It will bind you together. I made it to find you and to bind you, but you had to run away from it, didn’t you? I thought you liked dogs.’

‘Why did I attack Lissa?’ I know why; I think I know why. I can feel all that hatred in me. All that rage. Didn’t I save the world? Didn’t I give up everything, and who came for me?

No one.

‘You were unstable. The rawest emotions came from the sea first. There was, putting it mildly, a lot of bitterness there. But twice now you’ve saved your brothers; even angry, you’re not that bad.’

‘I’m not doing it,’ I say.

*

‘I’m not doing it,’ Rage Steve says, and I recognise the sullen tones. They’re as childish and selfish as I ever get, and that is something of a relief. Still, he turns and walks away.

‘It’s not just your choice,’ I – we – say.

‘Fuck you all,’ Rage Steve says.

I do, we do, the only thing we can. We tackle him. Heads clang together, there’re grunts of pain and I think Okkervil is winded, but we hold him and we don’t let go. The Hound doesn’t hesitate – this time it comes in for the kill, and I only hope that Charon wasn’t lying.

Its eyes flash. Its jaws snap, blood flows. It is the cold change coming, welcome then regretted. We struggle, all three of us for a moment, and then the pain subsides – only to be replaced by something raw and pure, and I feel a scream bunched unevenly in all my throats. Our eyes close. Hearts beat as five, the Hound and us, then one. And we’re remembering a thousand things I didn’t even know that I had forgotten.

The first time we saw her in the Wintergarden food court. The first time we touched her. The first time she smiled. The smell of my father’s cologne, the way the waves crashed against the shore. A storm of bicycles. We’re remembering friends lost, family snatched away, my dog Molly – yes, I do like dogs. Our house exploding, my first pomp (I was ten). There’s a knife fight on the top of this tree; there’s a Death whose face changes to suit his mood, and it’s a shuttling temperament. There’re betrayals, and death, there is always death. And those fucking memories bring me to my knees.

I open my eyes. There’s only me. Just one Steven de Selby standing on that mighty branch of the One Tree. Clash and Okkervil are gone, only their clothes remain. I straighten my rather torn and bloody suit. I feel –

‘You!’ Lissa shouts, and I jerk my head to the left, then drop, which is the only thing that keeps my head on its shoulders.

She’s holding the Knives of Negotiation. And I know they could chop me up. I’ve used them, up here, before. I used them to become RM. I never expected that Lissa would wield them against me. But the top of the One Tree is a place of ritual and violence. She holds the knives expertly; they’re sharp angles of death and they’re describing cruel geometries at me. I don’t want to bleed again so soon.

‘Hello,’ they whisper. ‘Hello.’

I scramble backwards.

‘Wait,’ Charon yells. Lissa ignores him.

‘Right,’ Lissa says. ‘Just you and me. The Hound wasn’t enough. But I am. I will bring you death – that is my job.’

  ‘It’s me,’ I say, and I pull my knife from my belt and yank it down across my hand. It bleeds.

‘Is it?’ Lissa looks from the hand to me, to Mr D and Charon, both men hovering back. Wal is fluttering between us, his hands raised.

Mr D nods. ‘Yes, it is.’

Lissa lowers the knives and they grumble. I can’t help smiling.

‘I’m back. I’m back,’ I say. ‘And I forgive you.’

Lissa’s lip curls into a snarl. ‘You?
You
forgive
me
!’

‘I’m back, I can put things right.’

‘You were the one who put them wrong,’ Lissa says. ‘Things have changed. Neither of us are the same anymore. And there you are, offering forgiveness.’

I take a step towards her.

‘Steve, you’re an ignorant bastard.’

‘But –’

‘I still can’t hear a heartbeat,’ Lissa says.

‘Does that mean I’m dead to you?’

Lissa shakes head. ‘It means you aren’t you. You’re not my Steve.’

Her Steve. My face flushes.

Lissa looks at me intently. ‘See, I don’t understand how that works. Your heart isn’t beating – you’re not alive, you’re not dead.’

I want to reach out a hand and touch her, but her face says no. So I don’t.

‘Neither are you.’

Lissa seems almost wounded by that. ‘I know what I am. I know what you made me. My heart may not beat, not in the way that it used to, but I know the difference between living and dead. And you’re neither, Steve. You’re wrong, and not in a good way. Even now, looking at you, you’re wrong.’

‘Trust me; you’ve trusted me before. I’ve trusted you.’

‘And where has that got us?’

I remember again the first time I saw her. The first time I felt a burst of something that was more than lust. She’d been dead, and not dead, and I’d never felt more alive.

Her first word to me:
run
.

And we hadn’t really stopped running since. We’d fought Stirrers, we’d died for each other and found rebirth in each other’s arms. Lissa had forced me to grow up because I suddenly realised that I’d had to, that she deserved the best that I was capable of. Except growing up had only made things more complicated.

‘I really thought I would have you forever,’ she says.

‘We don’t always get what we want. But …’ I reach out a hand towards her, despite the knives.

‘No, and a thousand times no!’ She disappears, shifts right out of there. Leaving me, Wal, Mr D and Charon on the great branch of the One Tree.

Wal passes me a tissue, pulled from somewhere. I press it into my bloody palm.

‘I don’t think you should have said that whole “we don’t always get –”’

‘Really?’ I glare at him, and Wal glares back.

‘So where do we go from here?’ Wal asks, changing the subject.

‘You have to come with me,’ Charon says. ‘This isn’t over with. Not yet; the worst is still to come.’

‘What can be worse than this?’

*

I’m buzzing, there is so much me. I haven’t felt this, well, this Steve-ish until now, and I suddenly realise what I’ve been missing. There’s an energy, a joyous energy, that you can only ever notice when it’s been absent, like coming out of a terrible flu. I clench my hands into fists, punch at the air and laugh.

‘I’m Steven de Selby,’ I say.

‘Yes, you are,’ Charon says. ‘But we need to get you to Neti’s rooms fast.’

‘Why?’ And then I’m bending over, coughing, and I can taste blood.

‘You’re unstable. There’s more binding to be done.’

‘What if I don’t want it?’

Charon flashes me a smile. And reaches out a hand. I look at it, and he sighs.

‘Better to get it over and done with, believe me.’ He gestures behind me. ‘Or you could deal with that if you like. I could only stop the first wave.’

Wal’s face is a big ‘O’ of horror.

I turn around.

The dead are standing on the branch, walking slowly towards us. ‘Not allowed here,’ one of them says.

I can see that the walking dead are about to become the running dead, and then the biting dead. All the sorts of not-suitable-verbs-for-dead of which I’d rather not be on the receiving end.

‘Call in your Inkling!’ Charon yells above the cries of the hordes. ‘You’re going to need all of you for this.’

I draw poor Wal back onto my arm and grab Charon’s hand. ‘Let’s get going then.’