by Jon Jacks
*
Chapter 11
‘She was dead Chris.’
‘She can’t have been, can she?’
‘Chris, I know she was dead; there was this weird darkness around her, like the light had left her.’
‘Trick of the light. It was raining. It was night. Lights everywhere.’
He’s acting like he’s the one he’s trying to convince.
Like the driver protesting his innocence.
‘Dead; she was dead.’
I say it flatly, assuredly.
‘It’s not like you killed her or anything, Chris; just the opposite. You brought her back to life. Even amongst all the weird things that’s happened to me today, that’s the most amazing – most beautiful – thing I’ve ever seen!’
I reach out and touch his hand.
He’s trembling.
‘I…I didn’t mean to do it,’ he says tearfully. ‘I…I just wanted to do it, wished I could do it. Told myself, hey, it must be possible – look at the weird, unbelievable things that’s happened to Twice! There is another world we move on to – so that means, why should we move on if it’s not really our time? So I, well, sorta called her back, told her she didn’t have to go just yet. Her mum and dad – they’d miss her.’
I cup his hands in mine.
‘Chris; it was the most wonderful, beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!’
And then we both cry.
Crying because we’re so happy for a little girl who should be dead but, thanks to Chris, is now back home where she belongs
*
I reckon it’s time I visited my own gran.
Not that I want to.
Not that she wants me to.
But with everything that’s happened to Franky, well – I think it’s something I should do.
I don’t want my gran coming back from the dead!
Jake had told me not to worry about coming in throughout the day. ‘Getting cover for that’s pretty easy, as it’s mainly advertising work,’ he’d said.
He wants me in later, filling in for Franky.
Gran lives just a bus ride away. In her own ‘home’.
A nice, polite word for an asylum.
Yep, gran’s crazy; crazy as a box of frogs.
Mum and dad had to have her committed.
See why I don’t want her coming back to call once she’s gone and popped her clogs?
Worse still, she doesn’t like me.
‘Go away,’ she says as I walk to where she’s sitting by the window.
‘Hi gran,’ I say, beaming.
She stares beyond me.
‘That boy with you again?’ she says, her voice trembling with fear.
No, she doesn’t mean Chris.
She used to say that even before I started bringing him with me.
‘That boy; I don’t like him.’
‘What boy gran? There’s no boy there.’
Then she’d look at me like I was lying, like she was frightened of me too.
When I did bring Chris, it turned out to be a mistake.
‘The boy, you’ve brought him again!’
‘Nuh uh,’ I’d say with a shake of my head, bringing Chris closer to her. ‘See gran; he’s actually here. This is Chris. Not the invisible boy!’
She’d shrink away from both of us, her eyes wide like we were playing some dreadfully evil joke on her.
Of course, she could never forgive mum and dad for placing her in here.
Every time I visited, there’d be some variation of, ‘Your mum and dad; they must’ve sold their souls. Sold their souls to the devil! Only explanation, only explanation.’
Today, after finishing staring beyond me, she looks straight at me.
‘See that boy’s not with you today; good!’
She turns away from me, stares out of the window.
‘Still don’t want you here though!’
*
‘Where’s Franky?’
Just about everyone who comes into reception asks me this.
Obviously, Franky’s disappearance isn’t common knowledge.
‘You’re not Franky!’
That’s the more irritating version.
Like I’m sitting there not actually knowing that I’m not Franky.
Two girls I’ve never seen before come out of the door leading to the offices behind me.
‘Franky? Where’s Franky?’
‘Held up,’ I say for the umpteenth time. ‘She’ll be in later this week.’
‘What about the meeting?’ one of the girls asks, a dumbfounded, horrified look on her face.
‘Me; I’ll be attending it in her place,’ I say, trying to sound more confident than I feel.
They both look terrified.
Great! That’s a real confidence builder.
The girls pass through reception a number of times, carrying old coats, hats and coat stands. They bring them from out of the offices, taking them to the boardroom.
I take a quick, curious peek inside the boardroom. As I’d expected, the girls are placing the stands and coats against the walls, each one looking much as the stand and old coat looked at the time of my interview.
Today, however, rather than lying in shadow, the coat stand is brightly lit. As are all the new coat stands. Small yet incredibly bright lights hanging from the ceiling have been deliberately directed at each stand.
The light is so bright you can see every detail in the coats and hats.
You can’t mistake them for anything but coats and hats.
The girls peer back at me as they go about their task, looks of both disdain and puzzlement; How could she end up in Franky’s role?
Hey, I’m used to looks like that.
They bounce straight off me.
‘Oh, Twice!’
Hearing someone back in reception calling out my name, I spin round.
It’s Mary.
‘Isn’t it awful about Frank–’
I put a finger up to my mouth as I pull back from the doorway.
‘Not everyone knows,’ I warn her quietly as she gives me a surprisingly warm if tearful embrace.
‘And I’d been so looking forward to telling her not to worry about her gran!’ she whispers urgently in my ear.’
We move away from the boardroom’s doorway so the girls can’t hear us.
‘It was her gran who tried to warn her about something,’ I say.
‘I know,’ Mary says guiltily. ‘That might have been down to me!’
‘Because Franky’s gran was worried about how you died, you mean?’
‘Maybe yes; maybe that’s all it comes down to. But let me tell you, Twice – putting your body back on…’
She shudders, like it’s the coldest, clammiest, most horrific thing she’s ever experienced.
‘But I thought you wanted this job Mary…’
‘The job, yes – it’s a terrific career opportunity, don’t you think?’
She gives me one of her incredibly bright smiles, like she’s talking about a move up to a managerial position.
‘But that’s the only reason why I did it – move back into my body, I mean,’ she continues. ‘And even for me, it was an awful experience; so constricting, after that sudden experience of complete freedom. And I was so lucky in the way I died of course!’
‘I can’t see that getting murdered is lucky, Mary!’
‘Ah, but my body wasn’t damaged in any way, was it?
I’ve been wanting to ask this question for a long time now – so I can’t pass up the opportunity.
One moment Mary had been standing against the wall, surrounded by the weird garbage guys.
The next moment she was on the floor, dead, with not a mark on her.
&nb
sp; I’m hoping, too, that she tells me something that makes me feel a little less guilty about standing by while she was killed.
You know – that it was inevitable.
That I couldn’t have possibly helped anyhow.
‘How were you killed Mary?’
‘I think it was just that the dead pulled either the spirit or the energy from my body; I’m not quite sure. So, as I was saying, twice – my body hadn’t suffered any decay, or even gone into rigor mortis. It hadn’t even been lying around for long at all.’
She flounces and twirls around on her tiptoes like she’s modelling a new Armani dress, but I take it she’s really showing me how perfect her body looks.
‘It’s as perfect as any courier could hope for, really,’ she says.
Will it begin to decay? And if so, when?
That might be a question too far to ask her.
I let her talk.
‘Yet it was still awful for me to take possession of it once more,’ she says. ‘So how awful would it have been for Franky’s gran? Why would she do that just to tell Franky something she’d find out anyway – that I’d been murdered by the dead?’
‘So, if you’re thinking her gran can’t have been warning her about your death, Mary, how come you’re blaming yourself? Didn’t you say you think her gran’s warning might have been down to you?’
‘Well, yes, see; when you die, and your spirit leaves your body, it can be a bit of a shock, all a bit disorientating – especially if you’ve died suddenly, like in an accident or a murder, like me! You find yourself on the borders between life and the spirit world, right, wondering what’s happened, or what you should be doing, right?’
I nod; yeah, that figures.
‘Luckily, some spirits, see, don’t feel like moving completely on into the spirit world at first, especially if they’re still concerned for anyone back amongst the living. Now when Franky’s gran died, right, she finally found out what Franky’s job as courier was really about – so luckily for me, she was there to calm me down!’
‘But Mary, I’m still not seeing how you’re responsible for Franky’s gran deciding she had to warn Franky about something.’
‘Well, see, there’s something right at the back of my mind that says I told her something odd about my death – but do you know, I can’t remember what it might have been!’
*
Chapter 12
‘Well you know what Mary? I was there when you died! So I bet the odd thing you told Franky’s gran was that you said “you’re not dead” to the guys who killed you.’
It was on the tip of my tongue.
But I never said it.
What else could guys made of garbage be but the dead?
I’ve been invited into the meeting to fill in for Franky.
Seated on my side of the large table, there’s Jake, Matthew, the Minister – who, when he’d turned up, had been incandescent that ‘we’re using a novice at the most dangerous point in our relationship’ – and some other guy called Hugh who makes the minster appear calm and considered by comparison.
Seated opposite us are the dead.
They look odd, dressed in out-dated hats and coats, and formed mainly from shadows and plays of light.
As soon as we, the living, had taken our seats at the table, the lights had been dimmed.
‘Times like this,’ Jake had explained to me as he’d led me into the boardroom, ‘you let your imagination play any tricks it wants; we are inviting them to this meeting!’
As soon as I’d seen the images of figures within the coats and stands, the figures had stirred and moved.
Then the dead had calmly, silently walked towards the table, taking their seats.
The real stands and coats remained by the wall; obviously, once the spirits have been given a sense of form, they no longer need the reality that allowed the human mind to conjure up figures from nothing but shadows and light.
It was a long winded, quite frankly boring discussion, most of which I didn’t understand because – naturally – they assumed everyone around the table knew exactly how the relationship between the living and the dead worked.
Putting the odd pieces together, though, here’s what I picked up from the meeting.
These meetings have been going on for thousands of years, with only an elect few amongst the living either knowing of or being capable of talking to the dead. For, it happily turns out, most of the Nyxt have as much interest as we have in keeping the living world – well, living.
The Nyxt aren’t just the spirits of the dead – but also the spirits of those yet to be born!
For the Nyxt, an existence without the living world would be like our world without trees, animals, the sky.
But of, course, in the interest of feeling secure, there are always some people prepared to sacrifice such things.
*
As I head back into the alleyway, I see the little girl.
She dashes past me, clutching something else that her parents have sent her out to buy from the local shop.
She doesn’t see me, doesn’t recognise me.
She probably never realises that, for a brief moment, she was running along the borders between life and death.
Obviously, too, her parents remain blissfully unaware how close they came to losing her.
When I tell Chris, he’s angry.
‘How can you use a little girl like that? Don’t they realise she’d be dead if I hadn’t–’
He trails off, looks at me uneasily.
‘So,’ I say calmly, ‘you do admit she was dead – dead until you raised her back to life, Chris.’
He shakes his head.
‘No, no; it was a mistake. I didn’t mean to do it, Twice!’
‘Some mistake Chris!’ I chuckle uncertainly. I draw close to him. ‘You saved a young girl, Chris! A girl who’d be dead if it wasn’t for you!’
He shrugs, irately pulling himself away from me.
‘Can’t you see what will happen, Twice, if this story gets out? That I raised someone from the dead?’
‘It’s a gift, Chris. A miraculous gift!’
‘And what if someone comes here, wanting their loved one raised form the dead? What if I can’t do it again? I don’t know how I did it! What if I do it for some, but not for others? If someone’s diseased, old, or their body’s mutilated – how do I bring back life to those, Twice? They’ll be angry with me, Twice! And if I leave them dead, their relatives will and up blaming me for their deaths!’
‘We both know it’s possible, Chris. We both now know that there are other world’s beyond this one, that people – well, their spirits anyway, which is what we’re really talking about here – can move between those worlds.’
‘So what about you Twice? You’ve been accepted at this weird agency, that talks to the dead – why can’t you use your powers to raise the dead?’
‘Hah hah; because I’m still not sure what my supposed powers are supposed to be, for one. Because I wasn’t the one who brought a little girl back to life, for another.’
He takes my hands in his, bows his head sorrowfully, like he’s about to make a terrible confession.
‘Look, Twice, the real reason why I wanted to believe I could help that little girl comes down to, believe it or not–’ he gives an embarrassed little laugh – ‘well, it’s because I once knew of a little girl of that age who’d also died; and yet, I swear, she came back to life, just like that little girl did!’
‘And you were around then too? It was down to you?’
‘No, no; not down to me that time. To be honest, it’s how I heard it right?’
‘Ah, a story you mean?’ I say doubtfully.
‘A story that rings, true, know what I’m saying? Cos I’d heard she’d been killed, then later on I saw her alive.’
‘Okay, so what happened? How, according to this story, did she come back to life?’
‘Well, as you’d expect, her mum and dad were heartbroken – but I mean heartbroken to a point where they were being driven crazy. They couldn’t live without her. They wanted to be with her again. So they got drunk; then deliberately drove their car into a deep river. At full speed, so there was no chickening out at the last minute.’
‘So far, sounds like we’re going to end up here with three bodies.’
‘When it comes to the difference between life and death, Twice, a river can be an odd thing. How many times do you hear of people who are drowning and see all their past life flooding before their eyes once more? In most legends, it’s a river that stands as the boundary between the living and the dead, yeah?’
I nod in agreement. We’ve all heard of the Styx and Charon’s ferry for the dead at the very least.
‘As they plunge into the river, the parents aren’t sad anymore; it’s the most joyous they’ve ever felt since their girl died. “We’re coming to meet you darling!” they’re yelling.’
I raise my eyebrows, wondering just how the original story teller knows all these details; I mean, if the mum and dad die, how can anyone know what they were saying?
‘Did the girl hear them calling out her name? Had she been hanging around on the borders, worried for her mum and dad because they missed her so much? Who knows? What we do know–’
‘What this story tells us,’ I point out sceptically.
‘What we know is that her parents begin to lose consciousness. So perhaps it’s at this point, when they’re at the half-point between life and death, that their girl finally realises what’s happening. Because as they drift off, her mum and dad see what they think are flickering points of light in the water. But the lights are getting bigger, drawing towards them.’
He looks up at me, his eyes pleading – believe me Twice, this is true!
‘It’s the girl, swimming towards them. And a beautiful angel is there, guiding her.’
‘Chris, a lot of amazing things have been happening to me lately, but I’ve not heard anything about angels yet.’
He shrugs off my doubt.
‘They’re all so eager to hug each other once more that, somehow, working together, they manage to throw open the car doors. And somehow, too, they’ve conquered that barrier between life and death. They swim to the surface, letting the car sink, like it’s the lead weight of their old existence they’re leaving behind.’
I frown.
‘So…you’re saying they all survive?’
He nods, his face serious.
‘The parents hadn’t actually died, remember? They’d just got to that point where you’re hovering between the two worlds.’
‘But the girl – she was dead, right, and came back to life? Like you brought that girl back to life?’