Damned If You Do (30 page)

I glanced back at him as I left. In the darkness, and in the way he slept so peacefully, I had a brief vision of him as a tiny baby, held in his mother's arms.

Tales from Tomb Town

I left the Agency and headed back to St Giles cemetery where, until recently, I had been comfortably buried. I wasn't afraid to walk around alone. I'd found some blusher and concealer on Pestilence's desk, and applied them to my face using the bathroom mirror. My general appearance wasn't a problem, either. Over the past week I had learned to walk upright, stop shuffling, and keep my mouth shut. I had even managed to control the bug-eyed stare that all zombies have.

On the way there, my brain untangled the mystery surrounding Hades' death. I would never know for sure, of course – I was no Sherlock Holmes, and I couldn't prove anything – but I had a clear picture in my mind of what happened.

*   *   *

It's late Saturday evening. Skirmish has just finished making a small poppy and honey cake. He leaves it to cool overnight on a wire rack, knowing that his roommate will find it the following morning … And he's right. Hades, always first in the kitchen on Sundays, is attracted first by the smell, then the texture, and finally the taste. He can't resist one bite, then two – then the whole cake is gone.

With the sun rising behind him, he sets off on his weekly walk across the meadow, bloated but satisfied. Skirmish, watching him from the rear window, waits until he's halfway towards the river then quietly opens the bedroom door. Careful not to wake anyone, he leaves the house through the rear exit and pushes his way through the tall grass in the back garden. Arriving at the kennel, he opens the door and frees Cerberus.

Maybe the hellhound hasn't been fed in two days, and it snarls at him from hunger. Maybe Skirmish sprinkles a few drops of water on its back to enrage it further. Maybe he's even removed an article of Hades' clothing from the wardrobe they share, and rubbed a little honey into it; and now he hands it to the dog and watches as the animal sniffs, then growls, then tears it to shreds. Whatever: he unlocks the iron gate, encourages Cerberus onto the street, and smiles as the dog's three heads turn towards him for instructions.

‘Go and find him, boy,' he says.

It seemed plausible. Who would suspect Skirmish? Even if they did, and they managed to connect him with the events I imagined, he could easily claim it was an unfortunate accident. Cerberus was the real killer, after all.

I tried not to imagine Hades' face as he saw the animal bounding towards him, knowing that he had the smell of poison on his breath. I tried not to feel his terror as he realized that his end had come. I tried not to hear his screams as those razor teeth sank into his belly.

But it was impossible. Your mind does what it wants to.

*   *   *

I was so absorbed in this speculation that I briefly forgot who and what I was; but the few people I met on the way to St Giles didn't give me so much as an interested glance, let alone the terrified scream I had feared on Monday. Their indifference made me feel alive again.

I crossed the main road, turned into the narrow paved walkway running alongside the church, and entered the cemetery. I was searching for my parents' graves, though my hope was that I wouldn't find them. The thought that they might still be living somewhere was a source of joy to me – but I needed to know for sure. All I had was a memory of the burial plot they had purchased, somewhere near the junction of the south and east walls.

I followed the narrow sandy path towards the iron gate at the far end, walking slowly, absorbing the rich and varied greens of the trees and plants, imprinting the colours of flowers on my memory, memorizing the rows of tombstones arranged like crooked teeth. But I didn't have the courage to head straight for the plot. Instead, I sat down on the damp grass a few yards from the clearing where Death and I had reassembled Thursday's client – the bearded man who had been mangled by a machine. I listened to the breeze, the cars passing, the distant sound of ringing bells. I heard a bird singing.

And I saw my father.

*   *   *

He pulled hard against the oars of a wooden rowing boat, drawing us away from an island into a broad lake below a weir. His arms were leathery and thick, like the African snakes I'd seen in books. He was laughing.

‘Tell me,' he said.

He let the oars drag in the water and began to rock the boat. Gently at first – but when he saw I was refusing to play the game, he caught the rhythm of the undulations and rocked it more violently, and for longer.

‘
Tell
me,' he repeated.

I couldn't swim, but I wasn't afraid. I knew he would rescue me if anything happened; and he knew how much I enjoyed it. I watched the muscles rise in his left arm as he pushed down on the left side; in his right as he swayed in the opposite direction. The oars chafed against the rowlocks and slapped against the water, sending sparkling ripples towards the bank where my mother stood watching nervously.

‘No more!' I squealed.

‘Then tell me.' He let the boat settle and looked me straight in the eye. ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?'

And I gave him the answer I had always given. The truthful answer.

‘I want to be like you,' I said.

*   *   *

The sun burned above the dark green trees, and the heat of the day dried the grass even as I sat upon it. I peered into the shadows beneath the chestnut tree, hoping for some sign – an absence of gravestones, or an undisturbed patch of ground. But the whole corner was locked in darkness. I could barely see my own grave lying between the two thick roots near to the wall.

I would have to move closer.

*   *   *

‘It's all right. Come over here … Sit down.'

I did as my mother asked, but perched cautiously on the edge of the bed, level with her feet. I had just cycled back from Amy's house, and the room was bright with moonlight. My mother sat up in her dressing gown, drinking a cup of chamomile tea, a white pillow supporting her back. A bloated hot-water bottle lay beside her, like a stranded puffer fish. I wondered why she needed it on such a warm night.

‘There's something I want to say to you.'

‘Mum—'

‘It's important.' She reached over and touched my hand with her own, resting her fingers on my thumb, stroking it gently. Embarrassed by the attention and physical contact, I stared through the window at the clear, black, night sky. ‘It's about you and Amy.'

‘Nothing's happened,' I lied. ‘We're just friends.'

‘That's OK.' She nodded. ‘But if something does – if you think you might actually live together…' I laughed embarrassedly ‘… just make sure you love her as much as I love you.'

Her words were excruciatingly personal. I had once adored her voice, the rising and falling tone, the emphases that made her unique. The sound of her had been as familiar and necessary to me as the rise and fall of my breathing, or the beating of my blood … But time shuffles the deck, and I couldn't bear to listen now: I was too old, too grown up. I wanted my feelings to be a secret.

I turned around, wanting to leave, and saw that my mother was gazing at me intensely, with the same powerful, unwavering love I had perceived as a child. And in the darkness of her pupils I saw the half-moon reflected, as I would see it reflected in Amy's eyes ten years later.

*   *   *

I stooped beneath the branches of the chestnut tree, noting that the mound of earth by my grave had already been replaced. The moss-covered headstone still remained, even though the corpse to which it referred was now walking amongst the living. The feelings of nausea and dislocation this provoked surprised me. It's hard to stand at your own graveside and remember the way things used to be.

I glanced across at my neighbour's grave on the far side of the tree. His stone rested at an odd angle to the ground, probably disturbed by a root. He'd officially died of natural causes, but had always maintained that his doctor had poisoned him. I think he was just trying to show off. Of the two people buried behind me, one had committed suicide, the other had been killed in a road accident. Par for the course. All three occupants of the plots to my left had been killed in war time: a bullet wound, a plane crash, a bomb. I knew nothing of the corpses immediately outside this tiny ring of satellites.

I knelt down and scraped the moss away from my headstone, but the inscription was too worn to decipher my name or discover any significant dates.

It was as if my whole life had been erased.

*   *   *

It was Christmas, and we were staying at a seaside hotel. My father and I were in the lift, travelling from the ninth floor to the lobby where my mother was waiting. I was seven years old, slowly emerging from the fantasy phase of childhood, learning not to believe everything he told me. But about halfway down the lift stopped, and before I could even begin to wonder what had happened, my father started to panic.

‘Oh God,' he shouted, ‘we're going to fall.' He paced from one wall to the other, then banged loudly on the doors. ‘Let me out! Somebody. Help!'

His terror communicated itself to me very quickly, and I began to cry. But he ignored me. He just paced back and forth, and banged on the door again, and punched all the buttons, and stamped on the floor, repeating over and over how we were going to fall and die. But I knew that he liked to play games with death, and after a few minutes I began to suspect that he was only teasing. I stopped crying, and sat down in the corner, watching him, admiring his acting. And sure enough, when the lift started moving again, he calmed down. He noticed me sitting on the floor, wiped the sweat from his brow, and knelt down to pick me up.

I laughed.

But he wasn't smiling, and it only took me a moment to realize he hadn't been joking after all. It was the first time I had ever seen him so upset, and a creeping tide of dismay swept over me. And in that moment of cold terror, I received three priceless gifts: a fear of falling, a horror of lifts, and a sense of panic in enclosed spaces.

*   *   *

I stood up. In the corner of the graveyard, in the shadow of the wall, I saw a single, white headstone above a fresh mound of earth.

*   *   *

I was a child when I left home at eighteen, though I believed I was an adult. I was still a child at twenty-one, when Amy moved to London. I was a child when I wandered the streets, and cleaned toilets, and swept roads, and waited on tables. I am still a child now, long after my death.

And I was a child when my mother walked into the restaurant where I worked, five years after I had last seen her. I was so childish, I didn't know who I was. I needed help – but I couldn't help myself, so I turned to everyone around me for the answer. But no-one else could help me, so I turned back to myself. But I couldn't help myself. And so I went on, whirling from one moment to the next, and never stopping. I'd spent half a decade trying to forge my own identity, but all I'd created was a stupid spinning top.

When my mother shouted my name across the room, I stopped moving. All the bonds that had been burnt or severed were renewed and reconnected; and as she grabbed my hand and gently rubbed my thumb, I knew who I was again. The feeling didn't last long – when I became a detective and moved into my own flat, I spun more wildly than ever – but for those few precious moments I felt that I had finally come
home.

And when I looked into her eyes, I saw a look of such compassion that I couldn't speak, and I waited for her to break the long silence between us.

‘I thought you were dead,' she said at last.

*   *   *

The inscription told me that my parents had been buried within a year of each other: my mother first, my father nine months later. I don't know the details of how they died. It could have been an accident. It could have been one of those emotive terms which are so common but so imbued with fear: cancer, stroke, heart attack. It could have been natural causes – they would have been nearly sixty when they heard the news of my death, and a few years had passed since. It could have been none of these. The only certainty was, there were no flowers on the grave, fresh or otherwise, and apart from their names and dates, there were only six other words carved on the headstone:

I GIVE IN
!
I GIVE IN
!

My father's parting joke.

*   *   *

I spent an hour at the graveside, digging up more fragments from the past, and considering why I'd felt the need for this visit. I eventually realized it was because I had wanted to say something to my parents which I hadn't had the chance to express while I was still alive. It wasn't that I loved them (love is no use to the dead); nor was it a desire to tell them I was alive again (they couldn't do anything about it, after all). It was just a single word.

I said it as I laid some wild flowers on their grave, which I'd plucked from the soil by the wall.

Goodbye.

In Corpse Code: a long, slow scratch.

Claustrophobia

Few people know when their life will end. Some prepare for it too soon, so that their minds give up long before their bodies. Some don't prepare at all, and are amazed to discover they aren't going to live for ever. But no-one gets it exactly right. I, for example, was absolutely convinced I was going to die when I fell from the roof and saw the ground rising to meet me; and I was utterly certain the agony would last for only the briefest of moments.

I was wrong on both counts.

The green and white awning of the bus station café broke my fall, along with my left arm. And that minor piece of luck kept me alive, and in severe pain, for another two hours.

When I consider what followed, I wish the fall
had
killed me. I remember nothing of the landing – I've always assumed that the awning saved me, but it could easily have been a misguided angel or a bored demon – but I do remember waking up some time later, unable to move, with violent stabbing pains in every part of my body.