by Cate Gardner
Although the door should empty onto the back alley or at least a side street, Katy found herself on The Strand and just outside the building's main doors. The usually busy thoroughfare, a main arterial road into and out of the city, stood silent, empty. She hadn't escaped. The doors opened. The dead began to file out, Glynn and Yarker.
She could run but she'd never outdistance them.
The dead knocked into her, attempting to carry her along with their tide. Katy's back slammed into a traffic pole. She turned and used it for purchase, fingers sliding against metal. She wrapped her left leg around the pole, pressed her cheek to it. At the front of the building, Amos flickered into view. He emerged slowly, an almost image pressed against grey stone until he sat as flesh and blood. Of course, he was one of them or something to do with them. He'd never been a man.
The last of the dead to leave the building, a woman with curly grey hair set against a youthful face, stooped and dug into Amos' box. He nodded. She removed something and headed in Katy's direction, a thin smile painted onto a taut face. The wind pulled at Katy, desperate to pull her away from the pole. If she could hold on until all the dead had passed, the world may resurge and she could go home.
It wasn't to be. The dead woman stopped at the pole, unaffected by the drag of the wind. "I'm Marcie Todd. I belong to him. You belong to him."
Marcie jabbed the sharp edge of a cocktail umbrella (no doubt what she'd removed from the box of things) into the back of Katy's hands-jab, jab, jab-forcing Katy to go. The dead carried her away.
SEVENTEEN
Katy. Katy. Katy.
The girl's name spun cobwebs within Isobel's brain.
"Katy, don't," Isobel whispered, lips cracking open. "Katy, don't. Katy, don't die… take Peter… piss me off."
One of the above.
Her left shoulder creaked forward, fingers sweeping arcs in the dust. Her head was full of dust. Felt like sawdust. She was a fake person. She couldn't be the Isobel who wanted to marry a boy named Peter. That girl had been all twinkly, happy and annoying. Giddy. This Isobel wasn't giddy. Head too full of dust to be empty-headed.
"Katy, don't."
Who was Katy? If only she could remove the fog from her brain. Dig in past eyeballs or stuff fingers up nostrils and pull out the truth of Katy. Despite its leaden weight, Isobel's arm lifted. She traced her cheekbones. Skin smooth, not rotten. The other dead weren't rotten either. Angry grey specimens.
Her hand couldn't ball into a fist. Fingernails could scratch though. Scrape the skin off a living girl named Katy. She didn't like Katy. She didn't know why.
"Katy, don't… stand and breathe all over me."
Their breath angered Isobel. She used to breathe. Or offer a lot of hot air as her dad had said. Isobel is full of hot air and we don't understand why Peter hangs off every breath. Peter loved her. She must have loved Peter once. Or the girl she was supposed to be had loved Peter. She must be a mannequin, a false thing. She couldn't recall crawling from her grave. She remembered the worms though.
The worms ate her memories.
EIGHTEEN
The dead and Katy arrived at a residential street with a community centre on the corner (within which the dead rioted), a disused dairy on the opposite side of the street and some boarded-up shops. Although this was the living world, it currently belonged to the dead to destroy as they pleased. Her body ached. The wind had almost torn her limbs from their sockets and the dead had crushed what the wind had failed to dismember. She was a broken puppet and the dead would never let her go.
Offering the night whoops, two dead men jumped from an upper window of the community centre. Although their legs snapped beneath them, the men pulled themselves up and readjusted their bones. They cut across the street to the dairy, first at a limp and than at a run. An abandoned milk float snarled behind rusting gates.
"Someone needs to put you on a leash," Katy shouted to the milk float and the dead. Tether them to their graves.
Only one of the dead didn't participate in the riot. Marcie. Separated from the pack, Marcie stood outside a house a little way up the street. Light glowed from the hallway of the house illuminating the stained glass fanlight, whereas the other houses in the street were in darkness. Almost in shadow, as if ink had spilled from the sky to blot out the places of no interest to the dead. Katy headed towards the house.
Marcie said, "Magic lives here. The world sees an empty space. That's all we are to them. However, we're cutting into the world, making their spaces emptier, leaving gaps for others to slip in. This was our world and will be ours again."
Katy rubbed the back of her hand. The skin stung from Marcie and the cocktail umbrella's attack. Her knee ached, reminding her of its injury.
"Who lives here?" Katy asked.
She'd never known the dead to be so lucid. She should head back to the community centre and try to talk to Glynn. But, she was leaving him. Better she continue into the blacked out parts of the street, hide within the dark until the dead passed on.
"The boy who left me."
Katy understood that motivation. If this dead girl fought to reclaim her man why had Glynn forgotten her? Perhaps he'd never loved her. Katy's stomach churned. Heart ached. Actual pain stabbed between her breasts. She never wanted to believe that. Marcie knocked on the front door.
"You should go. Scoot, flee, before I tear the house down on top of you."
"I won't let you hurt someone."
"Silly little girl," Marcie said, as though she were decades older than Katy.
"If you loved him in life, if you cared for him, don't hurt him just because you're dead and he isn't."
"I'm not the one who's supposed to be dead. He is."
Along the street, glass shattered. Smoke drifted, obliterating what the ink had not. Before Katy could question Marcie, the front door opened. Opened and then tried to shut almost as fast. Marcie jammed her foot in the doorway.
"Did you miss me, Andrew?"
I'm not the one who's supposed to be dead. He is.
"Who's there?" Andrew asked, standing on tiptoes and looking over Marcie's head. "Why won't my door shut? I should call the landlord."
"Seriously," Katy said.
"Would you believe he was in an amateur dramatics club? I so wish I hadn't wasted my life going to your performances."
Andrew heard that.
"I'm going to bury you here."
"Marcie, honey… We were good together, I'll admit, but you wanted me to live again. You prayed for this, several Hail Marys and one Our Father, and there isn't a day I don't thank you for it, even though you only gave me a half-life. Actually, I'm the one who should be angry."
Andrew winked at Katy.
"I'm going to crush you."
"So he's alive and you're dead but it should be the other way around. What sort of twisted plan is that?"
"Exactly," Marcie said. "Please leave or…"
Marcie's fist flew out and the cocktail umbrella scratched down Katy's face from beneath her eye to the corner of her lip. It gouged into skin. Katy hit out, knocking Marcie's hand aside. Blood bubbled on the end of the stick. Andrew took the opportunity to shut the door. Katy wiped her hand across her face; a streak of blood covered the back of her palm. Bitch.
"Look what you've done," Marcie said.
Marcie kicked at the garden wall. Kicked and kicked and kicked until a brick dislodged. She launched the brick at the window. Glass smashed, peppering the air before disappearing in the overgrown garden. Clearing a path through the broken window, Marcie climbed into the house. Katy knew she should hide within the dark until the dead moved on, but the idea a dead boy could live again intrigued her. Wrapping her jacket around her fist, Katy smashed the remaining shards of glass, knocking them onto the carpet, and climbed into the house. There were answers here.
The parlour walls slid in and out of ruin. One moment they offered cream flock wallpaper, the next soot-blackened walls. Katy trod between furniture and debris, the parlour landsca
pe in constant flux. The door lurched from its hinges, swiping against the wall, gouging at plaster and burnt paper. She headed towards the sound of Andrew's voice.
"You don't love me. Love isn't this rage. On the night we crashed, I was breaking up with you. We were breaking up with each other. But oh no, you don't remember that. Weeks in the hospital distorted your view of our past. We were and we are over."
Marcie stood with her back to the kitchen doorway. The kitchen alternated between burned-out shell and 1970s appliances. A soda stream hissed on the countertop.
"Did I haunt you? No. I may have been the dead one in our non-relationship but you haunted me. You should have let me be." Andrew looked over Marcie's shoulder to Katy. "You should let him be."
Andrew winked at Katy.
Marcie spun around. "I should kill you. Take your life and regain mine. You could be with your man all the time. You'd like that. I'd be doing you a favour."
"Didn't you hear me, Marcie? I don't want you."
"He doesn't mean it. He loves me."
"Yet he sounds so sure." Do not antagonise insane dead women. "Sorry. I wanted Glynn back. I thought you'd understand."
Behind Marcie, Andrew snorted and said, "This half-life isn't back. You think you can dig him up, stuff him back in his body and go out to tea. Four walls and remembering who you are, that's all you get. He'll still be a bloody ghost."
Marcie's shoulders sagged. She raged into the kitchen. The house began to shake. Plaster dust rained from the ceiling rose and paint peeled from blackened walls. In the kitchen, cupboards dropped to cracked linoleum. Wood blackened as unseen flames crackled up walls and across wood. Smoke billowed, seeping from the walls as if a dozen vents hid beneath wallpaper. Katy grabbed the stair rail. The house lurched forward. It seemed an impossible distance between the end of the stairs and the front door. Cobwebs draped from newel post to the wall. Katy pushed through them, tasting their silk on tongue and skin. The cut on her cheek smarted. Desperate for clean breath, Katy coughed against smoke, tried to waft it from her face. In the kitchen, Marcie and Andrew fought. The front door handle shattered within Katy's grip.
Digging her fingers into the hole left by the handle, Katy yanked at the door. Each jerk ached through her shoulder. The door fell towards her, almost knocked her over. It dropped with a crash. Katy clambered over the door, her heel cutting through rotten wood. She stumbled along the path. The weight of the house pressed against her back as if it was leaning against her, as if she were the only thing keeping it standing. Weeds tore at her ankles, desperate to tether her. Back on the pavement, Katy fell to her knees. The world was on fire. The world was falling down.
Peter emerged from the smoke. He dragged at her arm, trying to pull her into the road. Andrew's house offered the night a terrific scream, bricks and mortar fighting against each other. Katy pushed Peter off and stood. For a moment, she stared at the house and its terrific dance, swaying back and forth as though about to vomit its innards. The house collapsed in on itself burying Marcie and Andrew. Dust billowed, turning the night ash-white. The factory whistle cried, gathering its dead. They moved about her, brushing against her skin. Within the dust, Peter cried her name. Glynn didn't.
As the wind blew the debris of the house's collapse to a neighbouring street, Marcie and Andrew clambered from the ruin. They joined the other dead, their clothes neat and grey and their skin unmarked. What they had done to the world did not touch them.
Wiping dirt from his face, Peter emerged from the dust. "We should never have found them. No one should see their dead."
"But you haven't given up on Isobel."
She'd given up on Glynn; had been prepared to leave.
"I thought I could make her remember me. Now, of course, they won't let me leave."
The dead didn't get to keep the living any more than the living could keep the dead.
"I wish I could stop loving her."
Katy wanted to offer an Amen.
A fire engine sped around the street corner. Lights flickered on in houses along the street and people began to emerge. Where Andrew's house had stood there was now an empty plot. The dead had gone.
"They've gone on without us."
"And, I suppose that's the point," Peter said.
She couldn't argue with that.
NINETEEN
"Nobody escapes death," Yarker said.
He counted the numbers of his dead and counted again. The number was correct but their positions were not. Two of the dead sat together attempting to use the same mouse and the same screen. The correct number of dead but… Yarker shivered between the tables. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. In the hallway, he noticed her absence.
Yarker tapped on the reception desk-as though it was a coffin and he believed Isobel buried within.
He looked towards the emergency exit and the steps beyond. He'd not venture up there. He'd not ventured up there since the day he'd fallen to his death. He'd chased the only ghost he'd wanted to up those stairs. Said ghost had betrayed him and proved inhuman. Said ghost had kissed Yarker's forehead before dropping him several storeys; left his body broken amid a box of things Amos had claimed represented their connection.
The only connection here was death.
At least Yarker knew he had conquered that.
TWENTY
Katy had missed thirteen calls. She deleted the messages without listening to them, her mind fogged with other things. The Lego house remained where she'd left it on the third stair from the bottom. Peter picked up the Lego house.
"They left it for me. Some sort of warning, I think."
"I left it. Sorry. I thought it would persuade you to stay away from us, frighten you. Of course, there's no keeping us from those we love. We broke through the barriers of death. Go us."
Go them indeed.
"They're in their graves," Peter said. "We have to remember that. I don't know what they are."
"Not them," Katy said. Katy hoped.
"It's as if someone captured their image when they died and made puppets in their form."
"Puppets can't disappear."
Forget Glynn . She could chase him forever, waste away alongside him, and not win him back. Tears stung the cut on her cheek.
"He's gone," she said. She'd uttered those words a thousand times in the past thirteen months. She'd never believed them.
"We haven't escaped. As much as I'd like to think they're done with us, we don't get to walk away. Last time, Yarker dragged me back to the building. Knees, shins and elbows were raw for a week. This time," Peter said, shuddering. "Well they don't forgive the living for being able to walk away. Do you have any food? I've been living on scraps these past months."
Now he mentioned it, Katy found she was hungry and thirsty. She hadn't thought of food or drink when she'd been with the dead. She rubbed her belly.
"We don't think about our body's needs and thus they take us," Peter said.
"I'll make cheese on toast." She paused in the kitchen doorway. "Who's Amos?"
"Something malevolent, I expect."
The metallic owl buzzed in her jacket pocket, vibrating against her hip. She'd forgotten it was there.
"He's not on our side, Katy."
She dug into her coat, cupped the owl. "I never thought it would hurt more to see Glynn again. That I'd rather he'd remained gone forever. Does that mean I didn't love him enough?"
She didn't need Peter to answer. Of course, it didn't mean that. In the distance, the tobacco factory blew its whistle. Faint sound carried on a determined wind. Peter paled, steadied himself against the mantelpiece, Katy's heart quickened its beat.
"We don't escape them," Peter said.
Katy pushed aside the blinds and peered at the street. The dead faded into view, marching two by two around the corner of the street. Aside from the dead and despite the hour (five o'clock), the road was unoccupied. Katy dropped the blinds, allowing them to swish back into place.
"Have you considered rescuing Isobel when
the dead are occupied elsewhere? Assuming she needs rescuing."
Peter shook his head.
"If you don't try."
Shadows pressed against the window blinds. The dead amassed outside her house. They were at her door. They would destroy her house as they had destroyed those other places. It wouldn't matter that the property wasn't derelict. She'd stolen into their world. The gloves were off. The destruction of her things didn't bother Katy. It was the destruction of their things, of her memories with Glynn. He'd tear apart treasured items and not recognise a photograph or a sketch. For her, death had already taken the only thing that mattered. As Katy and Peter stole out the back door, windows shattered and the front door was ripped from its frame.
"We'll never get to the building before them," Peter said.
They needed transport. But on this side of reality, the only working vehicles were those in scrap yards or rusting on bricks outside houses and they were more interested in eating or crushing them than giving them a ride.
"Then we should start running."
It was a good three-quarter hour jog into town. By the time they reached Kensington, Katy's shins were already paining. A Hackney cab parked across two lanes, thus in the middle of the road, would not be the miracle it appeared. They approached with caution. The driver lay slumped across the steering wheel. Katy knocked on the cab window. The driver stirred and when he turned to look at them, she saw that his face was a shade of almost-grey. Taking a deep breath, Katy opened the back door and climbed in.
"The Strand."
The driver fired up the engine. He looked more embarrassed than confused at having parked across the lane and falling asleep at the wheel. As he turned the car in the right direction, Katy's right thigh pulsed, dancing against the seat. Hurry up. Peter drummed his fingers against his knee. Her house was small; it wouldn't take much to wreck. She should have at least saved her wedding dress and some photographs. She should have at least saved Glynn.