Afterworld

by Lynnette Lounsbury

  Dom sighed and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry.’ Somewhere inside him the words ‘She is dead’ flashed like those on his game console screen.

  ‘I know you are. And it’s not your fault at all. That’s why you are so different to your sister.’ She stood to leave. ‘And so similar to my daughter.’

  She left him there thinking about never knowing what had happened to someone, never knowing if they were alive or dead, never knowing how they died, never knowing if they had suffered. Never knowing was the real tragedy.

  He heard a sudden scuffle outside, whimpers and whispers and finally a short scream. Loud quick footsteps sounded beyond the door and the heavy voice of a man yelled in a dialect he couldn’t recognise. Angie responded quickly and with obvious fear. There was another strangled scream and this time he knew with certainty it was his sister.

  Dropping the can of soft drink on the floor Dom forced his feet into action and skidded through the door into the main room of the clinic.

  His heart double jumped. A man had an old rusted knife at Kaide’s throat and was demanding something of Angie who had her hands up in confusion. He was shorter than Kaide, but stronger and had her pulled backwards so that she was almost off balance. The knife, which at a second glance was actually a sharpened piece of corrugated iron, had already bitten into the side of her neck and blood was oozing softly down her throat and staining her T-shirt. Her eyes were terrified, an emotion he had never seen on her confident, open face. The man’s face was twisted into wild and threatening lines and Dom thought he must be after drugs.

  Angie spoke over her shoulder to Dom. ‘He wants medication for his daughter. She is ill and he wants something I haven’t heard of. I don’t really understand him.’

  She tried talking to him again and he became more agitated, pulling Kaide until she fell sideways in his grasp. Dom’s instincts took over and in a daze he grabbed something green near his foot and swung it in a neat tight arc at the man’s temple. There was a hollow sound as the plastic bucket struck and while it would not have hurt much it shocked the man into grabbing his face, and the makeshift knife slid across the side of Kaide’s neck and up her hairline and then dropped to the floor. Angie leapt forward and kicked it out of the way as Dom tried to pull Kaide from his grasp. The man kicked at him savagely, but his feet were bare so the damage was minimal.

  For a few seconds the three of them grappled with the man as Angie yelled for help and eventually a handful of local men bounded through the door, pushing the intruder to the ground and pinning him there.

  Dom pulled Kaide across the floor by her shirt until they were far enough away to avoid the flying kicks and punches of the small mob. Angie tried to stop the group from killing the attacker and eventually their pummelling subsided, leaving the man whimpering on the floor. She begged the men to leave him long enough for her to try and talk to him.

  She tried English. Hindi. A local dialect. Nothing. Finally one of the men in the group spoke to him in a different dialect and the man’s bruised face lit up a little. He spoke rapidly and desperately. After the translation was complete Angie walked quickly to a locked cupboard and pulled out a small box. She handed it to the man, but held onto it as he grabbed for it.

  ‘Do not ever come here again. You cannot threaten my staff. If you do I will call the police and you will go to jail. You will die in jail and your daughter will have no one. Do you understand?’ She spoke harshly, with menace etched into her face. He listened to the translation, nodded and bowed his tear-streaked head vigorously and bolted from the building.

  ‘What did he want?’ Kaide’s voice was strained from the hand that had been across her throat.

  ‘A type of steroid.’ Angie stood up, clearly shaken. ‘His daughter must have a kind of asthma that is very common around here. I think it’s from the insecticides on the food. She couldn’t breathe. She will probably die from it eventually.’ She rubbed her face, thanked the men and gave them all a can of soft drink. Dom realised Kaide was sitting silently against his shoulder. Barely moving.

  ‘You okay?’ he said.

  Her breathing was soft. ‘Yeah. Fine.’

  They sat together on the floor while Angie quietly washed her neck and taped it up.

  ‘Your tetanus up to date? That knife had seen better days.’

  ‘Yes.’ Another single-word answer. Very unlike his sister. Dom was worried.

  ‘I think we should go home, Angie.’ Dom turned to the doctor in concern.

  ‘I think that’s the best idea. Make sure she has a rest and if she has any symptoms of shock, get your mother to call a doctor. I’m sure there are some excellent ones in the compound.’ She sounded a little sarcastic.

  ‘I’ll drive,’ he told his sister and she finally perked up slightly, a small smile creeping onto her face.

  ‘Nice try, Dominic Mathers. I’m not ready to die just yet.’ She pulled the keys from her pocket and cleared her throat again, rubbing it gingerly. ‘Let’s go.’

  Dom was surprised to find it was dusk as they walked back to the car. The line of clinic patients had dissipated a little, though he could see at least twenty still waiting to see Angie before she went home. He wondered where she lived. If she ever really left the clinic.

  Their car sat gathering dust, a dozen children calmly waiting for them. Kaide paid them all a few dollars and said thank you for caring for the car. He noticed his hands were shaking. He wasn’t sure if it was a delayed reaction to the adrenaline or the sudden realisation that his sister had almost been killed. She sat for a moment before starting the car and when she spoke she did so quietly. ‘Thank you. That was pretty cool. You saved my neck.’

  ‘Most of it.’ He gestured to the bandage that covered one side of her throat and the red scratch that climbed the side of her face. She smiled and he relaxed. Kaide was always okay, nothing touched her; it was one of the ways Dom measured the state of the world. If Kaide was still smiling, everything was going to be fine.

  His relief was short-lived however, as she began the drive home in silence. His sister was rarely silent. She was wan, her face drawn and her teeth biting down onto her lip. She almost hit a small cart on the side of the road and barely acknowledged the anger of its startled owner. Dom touched her arm gently and she jumped.

  ‘Sorry, just wanted to check you are okay?’

  ‘Yep. Fine.’ She gazed blankly ahead, driving too fast for the narrow, busy streets. But then she always did. She turned to him for a second. ‘Don’t tell Mum, okay. She’ll never let me come back here. Tell her, tell her . . . I fell over some old tin and cut myself.’

  ‘That’ll freak her out almost as much.’

  ‘No it won’t.’

  She was as serious as he had ever seen her, lost somewhere in her own thoughts. He wondered if she had truly believed she was about to die. She might be re-evaluating her whole existence. He was worried, and he wished she wasn’t driving down some of the smallest, most crowded streets in the world while her attention was elsewhere.

  He settled his head back into the soft leather headrest and a question ran through his mind. Did her whole life actually pass before her eyes when she thought the madman was about to kill her? The curiosity got too much for him and he turned to her to ask. That was when he discovered that it didn’t. At least it didn’t for him. When he saw the heavily laden construction truck hurtling down the side street towards them, his only thought was that he didn’t remember seeing a stop sign and his only word was softly spoken: ‘Kaide?’

  3

  Dominic’s Hourglass

  0 Minutes

  When Dom pried his eyes open he couldn’t remember where he was. He wasn’t in his dorm room. Or in his room in India. He vaguely remembered the clinic. But he wasn’t there either. The air was filled with a dim mist and he was leaning against a stone wall, his legs out in front of him, his head hanging down onto his chest. He glanced up and around tentatively, feeling strangely unsafe and alone. There was no distinctive lands
cape to help him identify his location; the mist seemed fine, yet impenetrable. He felt the ground with his hand. Rocks and sand. He must be in India. He smelled the air, but couldn’t catch any of the fetid, rank heat of the place. It smelled empty. More accurately there was absolutely no smell at all. To his right he saw a large pool of shimmering water. In the half-light it had the appearance of mercury, almost too shiny to be water. He couldn’t see how far it extended into the mist, but it seemed likely to be a lake. He was beyond confused, and starting to panic. He tried to run his last movements through his mind. He had gone to India for the summer. Kaide was there. She was driving him. Where was she driving him? To the doctor? He fumbled through a messy sludge of thoughts. The doctor was sad, he remembered that. It had made him sad. And that was it. He was going to the doctor and he felt sad. Maybe he was having a dream after some weird medication. He pulled his legs up to his chest expecting them to be stiff and sore and was surprised to find they weren’t. Using the wall to pull himself up he managed to stand. As he swung his gaze to look more closely at the wall, he saw a girl.

  She was standing only a few feet away and had clearly been there all along watching him. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen her. He stared back at her and felt a sudden rush of fear. No matter how he searched his mind, or backtracked, he had no idea where he was or how he had come to be there. The girl seemed a little familiar, but not enough for any real recognition. She looked like someone he couldn’t quite pinpoint.

  ‘Kaide.’ The word sprang from his mouth and he wondered if he had said it already. Where was his sister? If he was in India, she should be somewhere nearby. They did everything together. The girl walked towards him. Dominic tried to study her face, but was distracted by her clothes. They were like something out of a computer game or a history textbook. She was wearing a tunic of some rough fabric, with a tight-waisted coat over the top and there was a long hooded cloak tied around her neck. Her head was uncovered and her hair, which reached so far down her back he could see it swaying around her hips, was braided and bound in several places by more fabric. Everything she wore was in muted, earthy colours and her face seemed dark and expressionless as well. Dark and difficult to read. But interesting, with slanted eyes like a cat’s. Even through his confusion and her stoniness he felt drawn to her.

  ‘Hello,’ he said tentatively.

  It was as if she had been waiting for a cue. She quickened her stride and soon stood directly in front of him. She stared, unblinking, into his eyes and spoke in a straightforward tone.

  ‘Dominic Mathers, I am Eva. I am your Guide. Are you ready to enter the City?’

  She waited. Dom wondered for a minute if he was dreaming. Everything felt very real, but nothing made any sense at all.

  ‘What city? I’m really sorry, but I have no idea what you are talking about.’ He paused, then added, ‘Do I know you from somewhere? How did you know my name?’

  ‘I’m your Guide.’ She shrugged as though this were self-explanatory and then sighed. ‘You don’t remember that last few hours do you?’ She gazed out into the mist and shook her head. ‘I hate this part.’

  Dom wondered if she was talking to him. She gestured with her hand towards the pool of water.

  ‘Go and see.’

  ‘In the water?’ He was becoming so lost his brain was hurting, throbbing down the side of his temple.

  ‘It’s not water.’

  He had started to walk towards the lake and turned back. ‘Not water? What is it then?’

  She stared at him. ‘It’s not water.’

  He wondered if she was capable of anything less cryptic and turned back to the lake. She was right. It didn’t move like water. It rippled, but not in the right way, more the way a movie screen might flicker and ripple. He looked down and almost fell in.

  It was like watching a scene from a skyscraper. Incredibly clear except for the odd ripple caused by the liquid, he could see what appeared to be Delhi. He leaned closer and the scene flew up to meet him, knocking him backwards off his feet.

  Eva smirked a little, but stopped herself. ‘The closer you are – well – the closer you are.’

  This time he crawled across the gritty, sandy shore towards the lake and looked down from a few inches above the liquid. Below him in clear detail was a street. It was lit up with flashing lights and there were people scurrying around a pile of rubble. As he peered closer the pile of rubble took the shape of an overturned truck, blocks of timber and cement, probably excavated from an old building site, strewn over and around it. A car was caught and crushed underneath one side of it, twisted into a shape that only resembled a car because it had tyres. There were medics trying to reach someone in the car. He could see a foot sticking out from under the car. He leaned closer still, his nose so close he could smell the very strange clean smell of the liquid. He could hear it sloshing, but he couldn’t hear the scene below him.

  ‘Don’t touch it!’ Eva cautioned firmly.

  The foot had on a red shoe – Converse.

  ‘Kaide,’ he whispered in horror. ‘It’s Kaide.’ He saw two medics dragging a long black bag towards the flashing lights of the beat-up old ambulance. A dead body. The bag wasn’t zipped shut and he could see the outline of a face, but couldn’t make it out.

  He glanced back at Eva who was leaning intently towards him, watching his face rather than the picture below. What was she waiting for? Was he outside some hospital and she was trying in some weird way to tell him his sister had been killed? Car accident. He played the words in his head a moment and had a flash of memory. The truck coming towards them. Hitting the side of the car. The car turning. Kaide falling beside him and his own body flying forward. It hit him.

  It was their accident. He could see the accident from above. He must be unconscious or in a coma or something. Some sort of near-death thing. He looked back at the body bag. The other driver must have died. He leaned again, turning his face so that he could get one eye as close to the liquid as was possible. The medics walked under a floodlight and light spilled into the open body bag. He saw the face – smears of blood on one cheek the only indication of any sort of trauma. But the eyes were open, clear and staring directly at him.

  He fell back onto the soft gritty shore at the edge of the lake, his breath coming in shallow gasps. He scrambled backwards to face Eva who stood silently, almost apologetic above him. Dom struggled to speak, fear catching in his throat, his eyes blurring with it.

  ‘It’s me,’ he managed. She nodded. He had another flash of memory. The words of his game screen flashing through his mind: You are dead.

  ‘I’m dead.’

  ‘You are dead.’ She nodded again. ‘Welcome to the Afterworld, Dominic Mathers.’

  4

  Dominic’s Hourglass

  0 Minutes

  Eva reached out a hand and when he didn’t take it, sighed and grabbed his hand from the ground, pulling him, with surprising strength, into a hunched standing position.

  ‘It’s getting dark and, believe me, you don’t want to be caught outside the City at night. There are things here that have never been imagined down there.’ She gestured with her head to the lake. She saw his face and softened again.

  ‘Sorry. I know it’s hard. We’ve all been where you are. You’ll get used to the idea. You have to.’ She pulled him by his hand and when she found this wasn’t effective, stood behind him and pushed him towards the wall. As they got closer he could see that the wall extended so far up into the misty, dark sky that he couldn’t see the top. Where he had been sitting was no longer wall but an empty gateway the size of a large house. It was a strange space, no hinges, no bolts – just a space where the wall had been. The frame around it was made of the same smooth stone as the wall, no lines or joins were visible, but carved into the stone above the space, still black and almost indistinct were the words, The Dead Know Nothing.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Dom pointed at the words.

  She almost smiled. ‘I think
it means everything you thought you knew about death is wrong. You’ll see.’ Her eyes scanned one last time around the darkening silver of the lake and into the murk of the trees beyond it. ‘We are supposed to wait for your Guardian, but I’ve been here for hours and no one has showed up so we’ll just have to go. I have a bad feeling we’ll find him at Giraldo’s.’ She pushed him again, this time impatiently. ‘Snap out of it. There is a lot to explain and I need you to listen to me carefully. We don’t have any more time to stand out here. The gate will close any minute.’ As they reached the threshold, a tall pale-skinned man gestured them through. He was dressed in the same style of clothing as Eva. Dom looked at his own jeans and shirt in a daze. This had to be a dream. It could still be a dream. He had a strong feeling that if he walked through the gateway it would all become real, and he hesitated.

  ‘You think I’m joking about what’s out here?’ Eva snapped. ‘Look!’ She gestured back towards the mist and Dominic saw glowing eyes, reddish ones that somehow managed to shine through the growing darkness. There was a low and menacing chuckle, like a hyena, and without another thought he followed Eva. There was a soft sound and when he turned the gate had shut and the wall was again a piece of smooth stone. He had the vaguest feeling of his ears popping, like a change in pressure. The laughter from the red eyes was cut silent.

  ‘Here. These are for you.’ She pulled a brown satchel from over her shoulder and placed it across one of his shoulders. He stared at it. The fabric was thick and new and beautifully stitched. Pressed into the front of the bag was his name, embroidered in bold, old-fashioned letters. He ran his hand over it and realised there was something inside. Opening the flap, he pulled out a heavy object made of wood and glass, a bottle of some sort. It was as though the bottle had been pinched in the middle, forming two smaller sections.