Damned If You Do (4 page)

Death parked on a double yellow line outside the library, a depressing block of dirt-streaked concrete at the edge of the main shopping centre. He expertly applied a little rouge to his pallid cheeks, smoothed his hair with his bony fingers, then turned towards me. ‘When we get out,' he said, ‘look straight ahead, try not to shuffle, and keep your mouth
closed.
We don't want people seeing those teeth.'

We left the car and walked up a paved incline towards a distant crossroads. It was a warm, blue day and the city centre was alive with bodies. Against Death's advice I instinctively bowed my head, fearful that someone might notice the zombie amongst them, scream with terror, and rustle up a lynch mob. Even then, and despite my efforts to protect myself from this surreal carnival of humanity, details forced themselves upon me – details so vivid and so isolated, it was as if they were in colour while everything else was in black and white.

I saw shoes like strange fruit, in which thick laces burrowed and gorged themselves like worms. I saw clothes in colours and shapes which dazzled and nauseated me, flowing over the grey pedestrian precinct like a radioactive sewage spill. I saw faces with teeth like shining daggers; eyes like big, black stones; noses and ears like blobs of putty plastered into place; hair like a rash, or a rabbit's fur, or a raven's wing. I was exposed, everywhere: to the brightness and variety of skin colours and textures, to a constant crashing wall of sound, to the electric touch of living, breathing bodies, to the pungent smells of people and animals and food, and cars. And when anyone glanced, however briefly, at my face or clothes or body, I shrivelled to a speck and yearned for the comfort of the coffin.

The only way I could survive this onslaught was to focus my gaze on the gaps between the advancing ranks of living flesh; but as soon as I looked up and ahead, I noticed to my horror that Death had quickened his pace and had slipped into the crowd. I couldn't have followed him even if I'd known where he'd gone: when your muscles are withered and weak from so many years of inactivity, you forget what it takes simply to move, to ignore the body's complaints and keep pushing forward. Resurrection requires effort.

I knew that if I succumbed to panic my fear of discovery would be realized, and it took all my remaining strength to walk on into the unknown. Fortunately, Death hadn't gone far: I found him again at the crossroads, sitting on a public bench, behind a circle of people as bright and hideous as giant parakeets. The bench was one of several in a pedestrian area overhung by trees and overshadowed by an old church tower. He saw me, and patted the space next to him.

‘Sherbet lemon?'

‘Sorry?'

‘Have one.' He opened his fist to reveal half a dozen sticky yellow sweets, covered in furballs from his pocket.

‘No. Thank you.' I held up my three-fingered left palm for emphasis, and sat down. His presence calmed me a little; the oppressive mass of people seemed less threatening. ‘So what happens now?'

‘We wait.' He popped a sweet in his mouth and sucked loudly as he talked. ‘We don't ask why, or what the point is, or what else we could be doing – we just sit here.' He glanced at his watch and sighed. ‘Fortunately, she'll be along at any moment.' His eyes widened and he began to rise. ‘In fact…'

I followed his gaze.

*   *   *

Our client was a small, fair-haired woman with spidery limbs and a wiry torso. Her file told me she had dressed in black ever since she was eighteen; she was very organized; she hated cats; she drank orange juice on Sunday mornings; she had had only three lovers, and had married the last; she washed her face before her anus when she showered; she had cut her fingers catching limpets in a tidal pool when she was five; her eyes were earth-brown with a sea-green corona. She had scheduled her suicide for lunchtime so that she could finish her morning's work in the office and no-one would suspect anything. She had once deafened a man for two days by slapping him on the right ear.

She was forty-one years old.

She stopped a couple of metres away from us and gazed up at the church tower, the breeze ruffling her long skirt. She looked like a robot raising its mechanical head to the stars.

‘In some ways she's dead already,' Death remarked idly, as we watched her enter the tower and ascend the spiral staircase. ‘She's covered in dead skin. Her brain cells are shutting down by the million. Her hair is dead fibre, all her organs are withering, her cell structure is falling apart.' He paused to suck his sweet. ‘She's wearing the dead hide of a dead animal on her feet, dead wool from a dead sheep on her back, the dead product of a dead plant in her skirt. She's the ghost-image of a thousand ancestors, all dead. Her future is death, her past is death, her present is falling towards death … Makes you think, doesn't it?'

I took the question to be rhetorical. ‘Shouldn't we follow her?'

He shook his head. ‘She can't fall until it's
time.
'

I recalled her file again. In many ways, the pattern of her life echoed mine. She had experienced a happy childhood which had left her unprepared for the violent diversity of adult life; and after one catastrophic incident with a lover – I don't remember the precise facts – she had withdrawn so far into herself that she now found it difficult to engage with anyone. She existed, but she did not
live.

‘OK,' Death sighed, ‘this will only take a few minutes. Then we'll get some lunch.' He bought a couple of tickets from a bat-faced man at the base of the tower, and opened the door to the staircase. ‘Ninety-nine steps to the top – do you think you can make it?'

I breathed hard, and nodded.

He stopped at every window on the way up to reveal some trivial fact. More likely he was giving me a rest, for which I was grateful. At the first window: ‘I remember when this was still a church.' At the second: ‘They pulled down everything but this tower over a century ago.' At the third: ‘The bell rings every quarter of an hour.' The fourth: ‘Been here almost a thousand years.' The fifth: ‘Great view from the top.' The sixth: ‘It's seventy-two feet high – are you sure you're OK?'

We had turned seven circles in space, passing through alternating intervals of sunlight and shadow, before Death quietly announced that we had reached the summit. An archway led to a four-sided, crenellated parapet, with an old iron weather cock at its raised centre. The woman stood on the far side, gazing out over the low protective wall to the road below. The roof was deserted apart from the three of us.

*   *   *

The Life File offered nine basic reasons why she wanted to kill herself:

Her life had no focus.

At fourteen, she had imagined a future as a great poet and philosopher; failing that, she had wanted business success; failing that, she had wanted children. None of these conditions had been fulfilled.

Her parents had given her what she considered to be a stupid first name – one which had been a continual source of amusement to her enemies.

She considered herself to be unlucky in love.

She had always been attracted to the idea of a brief, intense life climaxed by a dramatic death. Her heroes had all suffered a similar fate. She couldn't claim to have enjoyed an intense life as such, but the dramatic death retained its appeal.

No-one had invited her out to lunch that day.

She had once read a book in which a character almost exactly like her had decided to throw herself off a tall building as a solution to all her problems. She shared the character's last name, and they were the same age.

She had an important meeting that afternoon for which she was unprepared. She had long suspected that most of the people in her department held her in low esteem, and that all of them laughed at her behind her back.

All of her close relatives were dead.

Personally, I thought none of these reasons justified suicide; and had I not been under contract, I would have suggested alternative solutions to her problems.

I felt a surge of despair, too. How could she so idly throw away something which all zombies yearn for and envy – life itself? When I was dead, this question would never even have crossed my mind; but as a zombie – as a newly enrolled member of the ranks of the
un
dead – it had a special significance. Fundamentally, though I sympathized with her reasoning, I couldn't understand her conclusion.

Then again, it was none of my business.

*   *   *

Death's lugubrious head filled the borders of my vision. He slipped another sherbet lemon between his teeth, then grasped my shoulders, and spoke in a whisper. ‘Listen carefully. Time is a circle. We intercept the circle as it is being described, but the interception must occur at precisely the right moment. If we make a simple mistake here it could have terrible consequences in a hundred, or a thousand, or a million years from now.' He frowned. ‘At least, that's what the Chief always says. Personally, I've never seen any evidence of it.' He shook his head to dismiss the thought, then handed me a scrap of scented lilac writing paper and the same black pen I had used on the contract. ‘Anyway – I'll do the deed, you write the note.'

‘What note?'

‘The
suicide
note.' He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘And keep an eye on the stairs – I saw a couple at the ticket booth who looked like they were ready to follow us up here.'

‘What should I write?'

‘You've read the file. You decide.'

He approached the woman cautiously to avoid signalling his presence. He needn't have bothered: she was single-mindedly preparing herself for the leap, and saw nothing but the image of herself falling. She eased herself gingerly onto the lower part of the parapet, into one of the crenelles, where she perched for a moment, swaying slightly. Her skirt flapped like a flag as she rocked back and forth, first leaning over the edge, then back towards safety. She removed her hands from the wall, stood up, and spread her arms.

I looked over the side.

*   *   *

I was sliding again.

My hand slipped from the window frame and I started to slide. I lurched forwards for the handle, but my fingers flapped uselessly against the greasy paintwork. For the thousand moments contained within that single first second, I felt I could stop myself; but my body slithered down the roof with increasing speed, over the grey slates, the steep slope accelerating the slide, the wind and rain whipping into my face. I slapped my hands and feet against the wet tiles, hoping to gain a hold, trying to slow the descent.

I let out a long, loud cry of terror.

*   *   *

She stood on the parapet, ready to fly, Death waiting silently behind her.

What should I write?

Everything that I had read and remembered in her file? The exhilarating urge for self-annihilation, the self-loathing, the horror? I knew of every blow she had ever received, every kiss, every handshake, every touch. Random images surfaced: her first lover suggested playing another game of Scrabble, and she wanted him to talk and to talk to him, and all he ever did was play games, and she had to play the game, let him control her, and follow his suggestions because she was terrified of losing him, and if she lost him the writhing hatred of her snake-pit stomach would destroy her, and she realized even then that he wasn't the one; and she was fifteen years old leaping in front of a car, and she said it had been an accident (but she knew that the lights had drawn her in), and the car struck her softly and tossed her aside and she felt no pain, but when she awoke so many people stared down at her that she felt ashamed and cried for herself; and they laughed at her when she couldn't climb the rope, her useless hands too weak to hold on, no technique, no skill, and the teacher shouted at her thinking it would push her upwards, but it only drove her harder into the floor.

The bell chimed the quarter hour.

She had never felt comfortable with being alive. It had always seemed like something that happened to her, against her will. She hadn't
asked
to be born.

But she could choose when to die.

*   *   *

My thoughts were disturbed by the echo of footsteps.

I listened. Steps, and voices, rising from the stairwell. I glanced towards Death. He was still standing behind the woman, who swayed as if she was about to faint. A murmur of attention rose from a small crowd gathering below. The people climbing the stairs would distract her, save her from herself. And a part of me wanted them to – but my instructions were clear. I tried to attract Death's attention by hissing. No response. I whistled quietly, using the sound of the breeze to disguise it. He might as well have been a gargoyle. I picked up a small rock and aimed it at his back. It flew over the parapet.

Someone in the crowd shouted: ‘Don't do it.'

The voices from the stairs grew louder.

The woman hesitated.

And I was standing on a balcony overlooking a deserted paved square. A narrow balcony, with a low wall made of yellow Cotswold stone. A thin layer of concrete, then seventy feet to the ground.

A woman was standing close by, gazing at the street lights in the distance. She was the same age as me. I had known her for a long time, but she hesitated before she asked. I knew that she was afraid of the answer.

‘Did you find anything?'

‘Enough,' I said.

She turned away. ‘I'm … disappointed. But thank you.'

I shrugged. ‘It's why I'm here.'

She laughed bitterly and walked back inside.

It started to rain.

*   *   *

There was a short, loud cry of terror, echoed by screams from below. I looked over the parapet and saw the crowd surging towards the southern end of the tower.

The woman had disappeared.

‘I thought she was
never
going to do it,' Death said gloomily. I hobbled wearily to where he stood and gazed over the edge. The woman had struck the pavement head first. Her body lay sprawled like a starfish on the seabed. Her head was cracked open.