The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (26 page)

The desk is submerged in paper—scrunched up balls of it, rough
teetering piles of it, and all of it covered in Mr. D’s dense scrawl. Post-it notes fringe one side of the desk.

Mr. D catches me glancing at the papery chaos. “I never bothered with a computer for the real work.” He lifts a hand and Post-its flutter like jaundiced butterflies from the table toward his wrist. “Who needs one, eh? Though I do like my Twitter.” He reads the notes that he’d called to him, and frowns. “There are too many names I know on these things.”

I’m quick to forget about that, though. Something else has grabbed my attention. Mr. D really does have the original “Triumph of Death” on his wall. There are all those skeletons getting jiggy with the damned. Mr. D has always seemed a little too smug about this picture for my liking, but here it is, in all its splendor.

I walk up to it and shudder. Looking closely, I don’t see the Orcus in those skeletons, or Pomps, I see Stirrers. And I’m thinking about that impending Regional Apocalypse.

“Quite a piece of work, isn’t it?” Mr. D says. “I, um … procured that for myself a long time ago. One of the benefits of this job. Well, it was.”

“What the fuck is going on?” I ask, turning away from the picture. It’s bigger than I expected, and I can feel all those mad eyes staring at the back of my neck.

Mr. D sends the Post-it notes fluttering back to the desk. “Death and death and death, I’m afraid.”

There’s an almighty crack and the door behind him shudders. We both jump.

“Well, that was a big one.” Mr. D passes me my cup and saucer. His mind is already wandering to a new topic. It’s not just his face that jumps around.

“There are other spaces, other places, and they proceed endlessly, universes and universes. One day, death may not be needed. But we’re a long way from that.” Death sips his tea casually, even as the
door and bookcases shake. “I keep up with my reading. I like physics, I like the possibility that one day death will be irrelevant. After all, death is merely a transitional state. The body is devoured, and made alive again in all the creatures that devour it. And the souls of those gone are absorbed into the One Tree, sinking through it to eventually track across the skies of the Deepest Dark.

“Death’s job, Steven, is to shape the Underworld, to bring to it a neatness, a less savage afterlife. And that’s all I’ve ever done, managed my little alternate universe. Other RMs do it differently, but we’re all here to provide a peaceful transition, to make sure the dying continues as it should, and to stop the Stirrers. That’s the position Morrigan hungers for.”

I’m still a couple of steps behind. I think I always will be. “He killed you. How are we even here?”

“Think about it.” Mr. D taps his skull.

“I’m a Pomp—”

Death nods, and takes a loud slurp of his tea. Lissa would hate him. He also takes sugar. Mom would have hated him too. “Exactly. You pomped me here and I took you with me. Things are different for RMs—the manner of our deaths—particularly in such situations as this. We’re given some leeway. You being a Pomp meant I could use you as a portal to get us here. When that door they’re so desperately trying to break down does, things will become a little more… final. The rules are changing, Steven. I’m not the first RM of Australia, nor will I be the last unless, of course, we have come to that time when death is made redundant.” The door jolts, metal shrieks. Mr. D considers the door. “I’m quite certain that we haven’t reached that point yet, not even close. For one, you’re still breathing.” He finishes his tea and gestures toward mine, frowning. “You haven’t touched yours.”

Crack!

Mr. D turns toward the sound. “Don’t worry, we’ve time enough, believe me.”

The dark carried me here half an hour ago and Death made tea with all the speed of a man who has no idea of the concept of the word “hurry” or “apocalypse.”

I wish I could say that I share his lack of urgency, but I want out of here. And I want answers. “So what is Morrigan planning? To become the new RM?”

“Morrigan has always been extremely diligent in the application of his duties. It was only a matter of time before he wanted my job.” Mr. D shakes his head ruefully. “Something much easier to recognize with hindsight, of course.”

“So what can I do?” I look down at my cup.

“The first thing would be to get young Lissa Jones down from the tree.”

“But the rules …” I have no idea how I can even reach the One Tree, let alone rescue Lissa.

But if there’s a way … Mr. D better not be messing with me. I want Lissa back. I need her.

“Everything comes to a close, even the efficacy of paradigms, Steven. And besides, you must realize the rules are remarkably flexible. After all, you’re here having tea with me, aren’t you? Well, you would be if you actually had a sip.”

I can’t drink the tea. I’m too keyed up. “This hasn’t happened before, how can Morrigan—”

Mr. D laughs and regards me with his affably vicious eyes. “Of course it’s happened before. When these … Schisms occur there are no survivors, not if the new RM is doing his job. And let me tell you, I did my job most thoroughly.”

“Oh.”

Mr. D isn’t quite the friendly fellow he was a moment before, and I wonder who or what I am really locked in this office with. If you scratch the surface of any business you start to find dirt, I guess. But it’s disappointing. “So you…”

Mr. D nods his head. “Don’t feel sorry for me, de Selby. But I am pissed off. I didn’t see this coming. I knew it was inevitable, of course, but that hardly means I was expecting it, and certainly not from Morrigan. He was just too good. A stickler for the rules. A fellow always creating new efficiencies. I was lulled, Steven. I thought he had my back, not a knife pointed at it. I’d forgotten how it goes, you see.” He grins at me. “I was a very nasty man, Steven.”

Mr. D moves close and pats my back. “I still am, though I’d like to say I was an idealist, and I can assure you that I never dealt with the Stirrers. Morrigan is opening doors that should never be opened.

“Pomps are the front line in a war that has been going on since the Big Bang, between life and the absence of life. Ultimately it’s a war that we probably have no chance of winning. Our enemy is powerful. You don’t give Stirrers an edge, you
never
give them an edge. And certainly not now.

“Morrigan is very likely to discover that he won’t be RM for very long. Once enough Stirrers are through there won’t be anything living to bring over. Morrigan’s made death too efficient for his own good.”

I’m still a couple of steps behind, but I have to bring something to the conversation. “If you hadn’t sent those crows I wouldn’t have survived, and I would have lost Lissa sooner than I did.”

Mr. D turns his changeable face toward me. “Crows? I didn’t send any crows. I’ve had no control over my avian Pomps since Morrigan pushed me in the broom closet.”

“Well, if you didn’t, who did?”

“Crows like to see things out to their own conclusion. Perhaps they wanted to even things up a little. After all, my Schism may have been brutal—and it was, believe me, it was—but Morrigan has taken it to a whole new level. You shouldn’t deal with Stirrers. I don’t know if I can stress that enough. Absolutely no good can come of it.”

“So what do I do?”

“Well, first things first, be careful: you can die here. Morrigan is going to want to stop you, and his influence in the Underworld is strong. You need to find Lissa. Love’s far more powerful than you can believe, and you are going to need allies.”

He’s suggesting an Orpheus Maneuver. I thought they were impossible. They’ve certainly never worked before, as far as I know. Otherwise they’d have been named after something other than their most spectacular failure.

You can’t just go to Hell and back whenever you choose. It exacts a price. It demands pain and suffering. Bringing someone else back is even harder. Orpheus failed and he was the best of us. I can’t see how a Brisbane boy is ever going to better that.

My face burns. “What about my parents, would they make powerful allies?”

His eyes flare, and he jabs a bony finger at me. “Are you trying to bargain with an RM? Believe me, it doesn’t work.”

“Paradigm shift,” I remind him, and I feel pretty cool, eye to eye, with Death. Is he really Death anymore?

Mr. D chuckles. “Now that’s the spirit, but it would take a greater paradigm shift than anything we’re capable of to bring them back. Bigger than that of the Hungry Death of old.” My jaw drops at that. I’d always thought the Hungry Death was a myth, a scary story. “I’m sorry Steven, but they’re too far gone.”

“Thought it was worth a try.”

“Everything is. The Boatman Charon, now he’s the one you want to make a bargain with. Indeed, you’ll have to. Or Neti, Aunt Neti, but no, she’s probably best avoided for now.”

The door cracks, louder than ever before. We both swing our heads toward it. Fragments of the frame tumble to the floor. There’s not much left in it.

“One more thing. You’re going to need this.” Mr. D hands me a key. The metal is warm and oily, in fact it feels disturbingly livid. “It’s
my key to Number Four. The iron was shaped around the finger bone of the first death—the Hungry Death—so they say. I can’t be sure of that, but it’s old and powerful. Keep it on your person and Stirrers won’t feel you. Morrigan won’t change the locks. He can’t, not until every Pomp is gone. Make sure he’s never able to, Steven.”

The door cracks explosively and splinters strike us both. Dust fills the room—serious dust, the dust of the dead, and it’s heady stuff.

Mr. D’s grinning and then he coughs. “Take a deep breath, Steven. I’m sending you to the place beneath the Underworld, the Deepest Dark. It’s a short cut to the One Tree. You’ll feel it drawing you. There will be a bicycle there. I like bicycles. Just keep riding until that breath gives out.”

The mention of the bike startles me. I hope this one isn’t going to fall on me. Mr. D sighs. “There’s much about the nature of a Schism that Morrigan doesn’t understand. That’s about the only advantage you have. Once you find Lissa, you’re not going to be able to run anymore.” His shifting gaze settles on me, his face swims in the dust. “Things are going to get very nasty before the end, de Selby. And you’re going to have to approach them head on. I’m sorry, but you’ve not seen anything yet.”

I don’t know what to say to that. I
try
to say something, but my lungs fill with dust, and all I manage to do is cough.

Mr. D pats my hand, and smiles. “Finally, lad, for what’s ahead it’s best not to think about it too much. We all die in the end.”

And then I’m gone again.

T
he Deepest Dark is loud with the creaking of the limbs of the One Tree, but the sounds are carried to me through an air more viscous than air has any right to be. The vibrations of the One Tree judder through me. I am in the underbelly of the Underworld.

I’m crouching on ground knotted and ridged with questing root tips. Dripping from them like a luminous fluid are the souls of the dead, their time in Hell done. They slide into the air, first just as balls of light, but soon they take a roughly human shape—a life’s habit, a life’s form, is hard to undo.

Here, down is up and up is down. Above my head is the great abyss that all souls rise/fall into. What happens after, I’m not sure. Souls coruscate across the dark like stars, heading to places our words cannot encompass, because no stories come back from there. Nothing comes back from there.

For a while, despite my urgency, I am held by that sight. Captivated. The time will come when I’ll know it intimately—maybe soon—but not now.

The air crackles with the whispers of those long dead, coming down through the roots of the tree.

“It was only a cold. A passing that became passing.”

“Miss her.”

“Miss her.”

“Sorry, never finished before I finished.”

“And…And…And…”

“Sometimes it rains, and all I am is the rain. Can you feel me?”

“Here…Here…”

It is a tumbling cacophony of bad poetry. Maybe that’s what people are, ultimately. These chattering final thoughts, crowded and messy.

I lower my gaze and try and shut out the sound.

Here in the dark, I reach out, and my questing fingers find the bicycle that Death has somehow left me. “Yes.”

Yes, yes,
the bicycle echoes.
Ride. Ride.

I clamber onto the seat. I haven’t ridden a bike since I was twelve, but you never forget. OK, maybe you do. The bike shakes beneath me and I wrestle with the handlebars.

Care. Care,
it whispers.

Once I start pedaling, I’m in the groove. Easy. Sort of.

I ride in the darkness, the bicycle wobbling between my legs. The dark is a deep cold liquid pressure around me. My ribs complain, everything feels like it’s going to implode. My breath grows stale in my lungs. Suffocation looms.

I make the mistake of looking up into the dark again and see the souls there, drifting slowly, spinning and orbiting one another. Some are twitching but most are still, and they extend into the weightless abyss above.