The Memory of Death

He thought he’d return from Hell a hero. But things are never easy when your business is Death.

Steven de Selby gave up his love, his life, and his lucrative position as Head of Mortmax, the corporation in charge of Death. Then he found himself banished to the briny depths of hell. But hell has never held him before …

Now Steven’s back from hell, after escaping from the cruel Death of the Water, but he’s not sure how or why, or even if. No one at Mortmax trusts him, and he’s running out of time to prove he is who he says he is.

Steven is about to discover that hell really is other people, and the worst of them may well be himself.

My head strikes the ground, hard, and I bite my cheek; taste blood, get a lungful of water and I’m jerked backwards.

I cough. Roll over, and my knees click as I stand: bone scraping bone. There’s colour. Stabbing light, lending a hangovery intensity to my headache. And then there’s something that I realise is air. Its touch is such an unfamiliar sensation. So damn soft.

I try for breath, cough and try again. And this time my lungs billow. I can breathe. Ha!

A wave knocks me forward again onto my knees, and my fingers dig into the ground. Sand. Beach. A kid laughs somewhere, or screams (laughter and screaming, I know them both, laughter and screaming, screaming and laughter), and I cough up my guts, which amounts to not much more than a thin trickle of grey spit.

I squint, now on all fours, and try to take everything in. There’s too much.

Too much light. Motion. The world’s grown big again.

Gulls wheel in the sky. Beautiful, but the daylight burns. I drop my gaze from the sky to the shore.

One parent drags a curious child away from me, the kid’s heels leaving long trails in the sand. And then the kid spits at me. You’d think something monstrous had risen from the waves – and maybe it has. I snap my eyes shut. All I can smell is the sea. My lips sting, they have cracks the size of canyons; I could slide my tongue into them, if I could move my tongue properly. I taste salt, and bile. Water strikes my shoulders, pushes me forward yet again. Last time, it dragged me away, and there’s no guarantee that it won’t change its mind.

I have to keep moving or the sea will yank me back. And I don’t want that. Not with everything in front of me.

I heave myself to my feet, open my eyes again and shade them with my wrinkled hands. Half the beach watches me like I’m some sort of cautionary tale. No one offers to help.

Why would they?

My coat, the one that once belonged to my father, is heavy against my shoulders: stiff as lead. Dad had passed the coat on to me as a boy, and how I had yearned to grow into it. I was all grown up and working as a Pomp before it really fit, and even then it never fit me well. The last time I’d worn this coat I was so much more. I was the Orcus Entire: the Hungry Death incarnate. I’d wielded the stone scythe Mog. Something I’m sure my father would never have suspected (nor dared hope) I’d achieve. Yeah, I’d not really shown much desire for an executive position at Mortmax Industries; actually I’d barely shown a desire to put in more than the minimal amount of work there. Nor would he have even begun to imagine that I’d use Mog to sever the head of his best friend, Morrigan – a man who had become a god.

I’d been on a beach then too. And afterwards I’d leant on that scythe, weary from battle, and realised that I’d won. We’d won: my Pomps and me. We’d defeated our ancient enemy, the Stirrers, and their dark god. I’d felt pretty good about it all. Hey, I’d just averted a Global Apocalypse. But it didn’t last.

When you’re Death you know nothing lasts. But I never expected to lose everything so damn quickly. That was then.

Where the hell am I? Actually, I’m not in Hell at all, unless they’ve spruced the place up an awful lot. Hell’s all red skies, a giant Moreton Bay fig and the spirits of the dead glowing blue and forlorn.

This beach isn’t the beach of that last battle. No, that was on the Gold Coast. Different time, different light. And I’d been dragged from that victory to the deep dark Hell of the Death of the Water. We’d made a deal, to save the world, and he’d been unbending in his part of it. Mog, my powers, my life: all of it gone. And the world moved on.

Where’s Lissa?

Of course she’s not here.

She wouldn’t be. She thinks I’m dead. I thought I was dead. And yet I'm standing here. Get Out of Hell Free. Except no one gets out of hell free.

I’d learnt that the hard way when I’d performed an Orpheus Manoeuvre, with the help of Charon, and brought Lissa back from the dead. It was almost our first date. Lissa had returned the favour. I’m sure no one has done that to me this time. My memories were of death, but nothing after. And now, this too-bright beach, I focus on my boots, the leather as cracked as my lips, but at least they don't sear my eyes.

I stumble towards the shore, a few more shuffles, and pause. I get the feeling if I take another step, I’ll cross some threshold. The world seems to stop. Holds its breath with me. The water’s white around my boots.

‘Mr de Selby?’

I look up. A guy in a cheap grey suit, lips a thin slash across his face. Nose broken more than once. He’s dry, a metre from the edge of the shore, holding a towel over one arm. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be dry, and clean, and not crusted in salt.

‘Yes, yes.’ The words come thickly from a mouth still remembering how to shape them.

‘If you could just take a couple of steps forward, sir. Out of the water. I can’t help you, unless you get out of the water. I’ve no jurisdiction there.’

I blink.

He frowns. ‘The water, Mr de Selby.’

He’s right. I can’t stay here forever, and I’m not going back.

I take a few unsteady steps towards him. The waves suck at my boots.

There are too many gaps in my mind. Holes you could drive a ute through, while it’s doing donuts, wheels throwing up stinking smoke and further obscuring everything.

Then I’m out of the water, onto wet sand. A wave hisses away behind me. I half imagine I hear it call my name.

‘Close enough,’ the man says, yanking the coat from me; it drops to the beach with a slap, and I feel about ten kilos lighter. He drapes the towel over my shoulders. The humanity of that movement, the touch of another hand, makes me cry: a single sob that threatens to build to a weeping.

Until he presses the gun into my spine.

‘Mr de Selby.’ He doesn’t move the gun: its steadiness is intimidating. ‘Keep moving. I know how hard that must be, but you keep moving, Steven.’

It’s an old pomping technique. Use the punter’s name, get them focused on your voice and calm them down so you can send their soul to the Underworld. I’m not having any of it.

‘Why the gun?’

‘Guns.’ He points with his free hand to two men similarly attired in dark suits, fedoras (the sort of thing that couldn’t make you anything but conspicuous on a beach), standing on the edge of the dunes, hands empty but the way they move suggests that could change if I did anything. Not that I’m capable of doing anything more than staggering away from the water. ‘We are here to help you. This is just … insurance, Steven. I don’t know if you realise it, but you’re an incredibly dangerous man.’

Really? I used to be so much more than a man. Yeah, I’m dangerous – if a bone-deep desire to collapse onto the sand and never get up is dangerous then call me deadly.

He nudges me in the back gently, not that you can ever really be gentle with a gun. ‘Keep moving.’

Guns. My people, my Pomps at Mortmax, never really needed guns – except at the very end when it was open war – and they certainly didn’t wear cheap suits.

Pomps (short for psychopomps) were all about knives, our own blood essential to the execution of our job. You cut your palm to stall a Stirrer, your blood returning them to the Underworld. We wounded ourselves, not others. We didn’t offer death: we came after. We stalled, we pomped. We were the doors to the Underworld. We saw dead people and sent them on their way. It was good work, important work, and quite lucrative. Mortmax had invested wisely over the years - the dead have secrets and some of those secrets make money.

Guns and cheap suits. These aren’t my people; things can’t have changed that much. Except they have.

Another jab, less gentle. ‘Keep moving.’

‘Where are we?’

‘Shelly Beach, Ballina,’ the man says.

Ballina? It’s a small coastal town about ninety minutes’ drive south of Brisbane. Retirement capital of New South Wales: plenty of business for my kind. But nothing significant about it. Nothing that should have drawn me here.

‘No time for talking. One step after another, please. Everything will be explained, I assure you. Keep taking those steps, Mr de Selby.’

We make our way up the beach to a narrow path between two dunes. The man tenses. He knows, and I know, that if I’m ever going to make a break for it, it will be now.

But I don’t. I keep moving, let him guide me, because honestly that’s all I’m capable of doing. Maybe later, but there’s no fucking way I could manage a jog let alone the ducking and weaving sort of sprint that this would require. I can barely imagine it. This walking’s leaving me short of breath as it is.

There’s a chopper flying somewhere nearby, surely not on account of me. There’s the tinny scratching of someone’s car radio. Aerosmith, ‘Janie’s Got a Gun’. Yeah, well, that’s appropriate.

We reach the two men, and it’s all I can do to stand. I get a good look at their suits, both as cheap as the first guy’s. That’d never do for Mortmax. Those of us in the pomping trade prefer a nice Italian suit, or at the very least something tailored. These look like they were bought off the rack in the dark.

Neither guy says a word, and I can’t tell if they’re looking at me through their mirrored sunglasses or to the sea. A shadow passes over the sun; both men twitch. They’re not scared of me, that much I can tell. They guide me to a van, and I catch a glimpse of my reflection in their sunnies. I’m still me. A touch on the emaciated side, beard a bit patchy – if I get a chance to shave that off I will – but I look all right.

Let’s put it this way: I don’t look dead.

They slide open the rear door, and bundle me inside – they’re almost gentle, tears are welling again. Two of them clamber in with me; the other gunman gets into the driver’s side and starts the engine. I can’t see him: there’re no windows, just a small vent that allows a steady stream of cold air into the rear of the van. It stinks of sweat in here, accentuated rather than masked by cheap cologne … The price you pay for wearing a suit this far north and in summer, no less.

The first guy, the one who handed me the towel, jumps in beside him. The other follows and slams the door shut, a couple of lights flicker to life on the ceiling. Mood lighting at best. At least in here I don’t feel like my eyes are being scratched out of my head.

There’s a loud thump against the door. One of the men opens it again. Peers down. ‘Seagull,’ he says, and shrugs. ‘Just like –’

‘Shut it,’ Towel Guy snaps, voice rising in pitch. ‘Now.’

The car moves slowly through the car park, then there’s a revving of the engine, wheels screeching, the van shuddering. Obviously we’ve entered the highway. Towel Guy winces. I put on my seatbelt.

The other bloke shakes his head. ‘Told you I should've driven – especially after what happened last time.’

‘I don’t want to have a fight about it now,’ Towel Guy says. He looks to me almost apologetically. ‘Welcome back to the land of the living, Mr de Selby.’

The phone’s ringing. The black one in the middle of my desk, the one linked to the Underworld and the other twelve deaths – the Orcus, as they’re collectively known. I’m one of them, and I hate getting calls on that blasted thing. But we have a deal: if it rings, you answer, or it keeps ringing. Part of my duty as Death. I’m Regional Manager of Australia’s branch of Mortmax Industries; some things are my responsibility and only mine. The phone keeps ringing.

I pick up the handset. ‘Yes.’

‘
Something’s coming, Miss Jones. I can feel it,’ Faber Cerbo says. The guy isn’t into small talk, but neither am I. He’s the Orcus of the United States, a man rather too good at his job. When Steve handed out his power, all at once, and so quickly, I wish he’d conferred with me first. Not that he had much time, and, yes, I was sort of dying. But it’s one of many things I’d like to have a good hard talk with my ex about.

Just breathe, just breathe.
‘Like the last time?’ I keep my voice steady.

‘
Yes. Almost identical.’

My fingers play with the frayed end of the cord, where it’s been snipped off, less than neatly. Phones like this don’t need a line out; saves on line rental, though I’m sure that was never a consideration, or, knowing the Ankou before Tim, perhaps it was. Morrigan had been a master of efficiencies. ‘And why can’t I feel it?’

‘
Because you’re too close.’ That’s a bit of a slap in the face, but at least he didn’t say incompetent. The way things have been lately. Not many Stirrers (those invaders from the Under-Underworld had stuck mostly to their treaty, after the war) but a whole lot of other stuff. Messier stuff, the sort of things that me and my kind shouldn’t have to deal with. Thinning between the land of the dead and the living, statues coming to life, Dark Carnivals (all those clowns, shudder) and peculiar shops in the mall. Used to be we had only the dead and the undead. I miss those days.

And maybe I do feel it. I've had a headache all day.

‘
We’ll be ready,’ I say. 'We are ready.'

‘
Let me deal with it.’ Typical American: always meddling.

‘
No, this is for me and Tim to sort out.’

‘
I don’t think that’s wise.’

‘
Are you trying to tell me what to do?’

‘
I –’

‘
Don’t. This is our problem, and our backyard.’

I hang up the phone. Press the intercom to my Ankou, my second-in-command.

‘
Speak,’ Tim says.

‘
Enough of that,’ I say. He laughs; sometimes he is so like his cousin, Steve, it’s not funny. ‘Cerbo called. There’s another one.’

‘
Really?’

I glare at the intercom's speaker. Tim must feel that deathly gaze. ‘Bad, bad timing,' he sighs. 'We’ve had a bus and truck collision on the Pacific Highway. Nine dead. Traffic’s creeping and there are souls all over the place.’

‘
I know,’ I say. I can sense every death in Australia; I can hear every heartbeat and its cessation. It’s maddening, and when I think of Steve and how he’d held the whole world’s heartbeats in his head – the world pulse – I wonder how he managed. I heard those nine sudden deaths, felt their heartbeats stutter and fail. Those who die in car accidents are the worst, their souls in shock, their deaths usually so swift they barely have an inkling of what’s coming. Mix it with traffic, and you’ve got a dangerous situation for my Pomps.

Tim laughs again, dryly. ‘Of course you do. Of course you know, which is why –’

‘
This is urgent.’ I know that he wants to say that everything is urgent, and it is. But there are levels of urgency. ‘Tim.’

‘
I’m on my way, see you in a sec.’

I run a black nail over the left arm of the Throne of Death, the one with the skulls; they scratch and bump against my fingertips. The throne purrs, and the office suddenly smells of sandalwood, and honey. A happy throne is a good throne. I turn my head. The curtains are open wide, but I can’t enjoy the view.

Pity, it looks like such a nice day in Hell.