Deader Still

by Jordaina Sydney Robinson

  I remained where I was. “So there’s another level of the afterlife? Does this have anything to do with the death list? The main list I get my assignments from? Do you know how it’s created? How many levels of the afterlife are there?”

  As a facilitator of pre- and post-life affairs, I was given a list of haunting assignments every day. Sabrina’s department was given a complete list and they divvied it up between us facilitators, but I had no clue where that list came from. Sometimes assignments were as simple as move a piece of chalk. Sometimes it was move a handbag. And sometimes people tripped over that moved handbag and impaled themselves on a piece of cutlery.

  Charon stared at me for a long moment. He jerked his head towards the back of the bus, indicating I should move. I didn’t. He slapped his hand on one of the buttons on the dashboard and the doors juddered closed. I had to skip up the steps to avoid getting caught.

  He turned the engine over. “You’re being particularly obtuse this morning. What part of ‘pretend to be well-adjusted’ didn’t you understand?”

  “The part where I have to pretend with you.”

  Charon’s mouth kicked up at the corners in a small smile of what I thought was genuine friendship. He threw the bus into gear with a carelessness that epitomised his driving skills and careened through the traffic. And when I say “through” I literally mean through the cars and occasionally their drivers which was a distinctly unpleasant sensation. I’d asked Charon how the bus was able to pass through solid mass and he’d just shrugged. My guess was he didn’t know either.

  I settled myself on the luggage shelf and glanced down the dark, empty bus. It seemed like a metaphor for my afterlife. “How do I pretend to be well-adjusted? Get up. Go to work. Go home. Go to bed. Get up. Go to work. Go home. Go to bed. Get up. Go to work—”

  “Yep. And repeat, ad nauseam, until you die. Again.” Charon spun the wheel with one hand and the bus took a corner on two wheels.

  I clung to the baggage rail. “I might as well be dead if that’s my afterlife.”

  Charon laughed, a light and carefree sound. “Think that’s kinda the point.”

  I shook my head. “And I’d had such high hopes for today.” I adjusted my fringe and stared along the aisle of the bus. “So, who’s our first passenger, mon capitaine?” Focusing on someone else’s untimely demise might make me feel better about my own miserable afterlife.

  Charon grinned over his shoulder and, without looking, swerved a packed double-decker bus so we didn't drive through it's mass of living passengers. “I like it when you call me that. It makes me feel important.”

  I focused on his face rather than the disturbing speed with which the scenery was flying past the windows. “Yes, because being the only reason there is an afterlife is simply just not important enough. Such a pesky and frivolous responsibility.”

  He laughed and took his eyes off the road again as he checked the list, steering without looking. Maybe ten seconds passed before he glanced back up. It really freaked me out when he did that. Yes we could pass through solid mass, but if you happened to shortcut through a building, chances were you’d clip someone who was alive and have them pass through you, which was a distinctly unpleasant sensation. And if it were a busy call centre … ugh. He’d done that to me on purpose one time to win an argument. I’d spent the rest of the day curled up on the back seat making him bring me ice cream every couple of hours. I may have milked it just a bit.

  “For god’s sake!” I exclaimed and leaned over to snatch the sheet from him. “Will you watch the damn road, please? I can still die, y’know?”

  “Yeah, but on the upside you’d already be on the bus so you wouldn’t have to wait for me to collect you.”

  “That is not an upside.”

  Twenty minutes later Barbara Bubble was crying all over me. Charon, in his compassionate way, had turned the radio on so we wouldn’t be able to hear him sniggering at my discomfort and he could drown out the crying.

  “There, there.” I patted her back again with a stiffness that most people would’ve taken as a sign to get the hell off me. She didn’t. She sobbed harder and fisted her hands in the front of my jumpsuit. I detested weepy people. Anger I could deal with, but crying? Made me want to slap them. Though in all fairness it was her wedding day, and after all that preparation and planning she’d not even made it down the aisle.

  “What happened?” I asked, hoping if she were talking about it she’d stop wiping her mascara stained face on my clothes. And seriously, who in the world didn’t wear waterproof mascara on their wedding day? In my life-job as an event planner, it would have been the first thing I checked with whoever did her makeup. I looked down at the mess on my jumpsuit. This would not have happened if I’d been in charge of the wedding. Perhaps her death, but not the mascara debacle.

  Barbara lifted her head up to look at me. I focused on her tear stained cheeks by sheer force of will alone. Despite that, in my peripheral vision I could still see the skin stretched taut from where she’d broken her neck and her head had rotated full circle. My stomach churned. I pressed my lips together so as not to vomit on her beautiful, white wedding dress. Her eyes darted over my expression and she burst into tears again, burying her head in the shoulder of my jumpsuit.

  “There, there.” I patted her back with a sigh, wondering if I’d had tyre tracks or such obvious injuries when Charon had collected me.

  By the time my shift had finished and we’d dropped all fifty-two newly deceaseds at Afterlife Arrivals I was shattered. All had been criers. All of them. We’d had to drop them off in groups of five or six because any more than that on the bus at one time and the noise was unbearable. It had made the day a lot longer. By the time I made it back to the locker room I was covered in several different people’s mascara, more tear stains than I could count, a little snot and some vomit on the bottom left leg of my trousers, which I was trying very hard not to think about.

  I peeled out of my jumpsuit and dumped it inside out at the foot of my locker. Maybe if I asked Pam really nicely she’d wash it for me. Shoulders slumped in exhaustion, I twisted the key in the lock and waggled it. The lock was a little sticky from all the times people had picked it to shove dead bodies inside. Eventually the little click that signalled it was finally unlocked greeted me. I opened the door and reached inside for my spare uniform. My hand stalled mid-way.

  “Oh, come on!” I slammed the locker closed harder than I should. The latch didn’t catch with the force so the door bounced back open. The movement loosened the contents and a doubly dead ghost fell onto the floor with a thud.

  Chapter Five

  “Miss Sway.” Detective Johnson’s face broke into such a wide smile as he walked into the room I almost expected to hear something crack. “It’s been such a long time.”

  I returned his smile. Mine might have been fake but it was much prettier than his. “I was just thinking the same thing, detective. You look great. Have you been working out?”

  “You flatterer, you.” He wagged his finger at me; his smile didn’t falter. I could only assume his happiness was because he’d get to have another attempt at trying to pin a murder on me. Good times.

  Johnson nodded in greeting to Oz and Oz nodded back. It was all very manly. Johnson settled at the table facing us and opened a brown paper file. It looked exactly the same as the last murder file. It made me wonder how they didn’t get them confused. When I’d been alive, all my work files had been colour coded because I’d worked with imbeciles. If I were in charge here I’d use the same system. For the same imbecilic reason. I’d label everything so very clearly and use Post-its to detail file contents. Maybe I’d even stick a picture of the client, or in this case the deceased, on the front. I would make such a good policewoman.

  “So.” Johnson closed the file after over a minute of silent study that I’d used to mentally rearrange the whole police department into a more efficient and brighter workplace. He placed the file flat on the table and interlac
ed his fingers over it. “You found another body in your locker.”

  It wasn’t a question but I nodded anyway and gestured in his direction. “I’m glad you brought that up, detective. Who do I need to see about getting a different locker?”

  Johnson arched an eyebrow at me. “That’s what you want to talk about?”

  “Yes. Can that be implemented immediately? Also.” I pinched the side of my jumpsuit and pulled it away from me so the apple-sized bloodstain on my waist was clearly visible. I’d taken to folding my uniforms rather than hanging them up in my locker in the hope of keeping them out of the way of stashed, bleeding dead ghosts. I guess it had sort of worked. “This is the third uniform that’s been ruined by a murdered ghost stashed in my locker. I don’t know if you know this, detective, but blood stains. You just can’t get it out. Is there some way I can claim for this?”

  Johnson stared at me. “You want to claim for your uniform?”

  “Uh-huh. Oh, and for my new locker I’d like a combination lock, please, rather than a key lock.” Sabrina had told me they were harder to pick. Not impossible, just harder. I figured that might discourage the less determined ghost body dumper.

  Johnson flicked his eyes to Oz. “She wants to claim for her ruined uniforms.”

  Oz didn’t look at me. He stared straight ahead at Johnson. “I heard.”

  If he’d been staring at me like that I’d have been tunnelling for the hills. Oz lounged back in the plastic interrogation chair, arms folded and legs stretched out, but the air around him crackled with anger. I’d blown his whistle as soon as the body had settled on the floor. This time he showed up. And his reaction had been much the same as mine.

  “To be clear, you opened the locker and the body fell out? Again?” Johnson focused his attention back on me and laid his palm flat on the brown file. He leaned towards me. “This is starting to get a bit old, don’t you think?”

  “I do,” I said, nodding vehemently. “I very much do, which is why I’d like a new locker.”

  Johnson sucked a breath through his teeth. “I don’t really think a new locker would help. Do you?”

  I gave a sad shake of my head. “No. What I do think would help though is if you people did your jobs. That way there’d be no bodies in my locker and no bloodstains on my uniforms.”

  Johnson’s face shuttered down. “We do our jobs. We do them very well.”

  I sucked a breath through my teeth the same way he had. “Three dead bodies in my locker says you don’t.”

  “She’s got a point.” Oz leaned forward, forearms resting on the table, and Johnson, involuntary reaction or not, leaned back. “I’d like to know what the police department is going to do to keep my ward safe.”

  The door swung open and a masked black-jumpsuited man strode in. Ghosting Buster. The black burglar mask with GB embroidered in white on the bottom right curve and the black jumpsuit were intended to make them a faceless single entity of law enforcement. This masked figure, however, I recognised.

  “Officer Leonard. What a pleasant surprise.” It wasn’t that much of a jibe either. I much preferred Officer Leonard to Detective Johnson. Mainly because I thought Officer Leonard liked me better. Self-preservation and all.

  “Ms Sway. Always a pleasure.” Good to know he wasn’t holding that little matter of assault against me. “Officer Salier.”

  “Officer Leonard,” replied Oz.

  “Where’s your partner?” I asked, pointing to the empty space beside him where David, a psychic from my GA group, used to stand.

  Officer Leonard inclined his head. “He’s been … reassigned.”

  GBs were supposed to be anonymous. I didn’t know what happened if their identity was compromised but I figured it would be nothing good. I was fairly sure I hadn’t done anything to give away the fact that I’d known David but GBs were sneaky. And he’d not been in our GA meetings since we’d solved the last murder spree.

  “You didn’t kill him, did you?” I asked.

  Officer Leonard laughed. A full throaty laugh of genuine amusement.

  “Why do you care?” Johnson asked, narrowing his eyes at me as if sensing a nugget of information he might be able to somehow use against me. Or the GBs.

  “I liked him,” I said with a shrug and directed a pointed look at Johnson. “He never accused me of murder.”

  Johnson’s attention narrowed on me like a pinpoint laser beam. “I don’t recall him talking to you at all.”

  “Yes. That’s why I liked him.” I stressed to Johnson and then pointed to Officer Leonard. “You were following that, right? You didn’t need the extra sentence?”

  “No, Ms Sway, I didn’t,” Officer Leonard said and smiled. “And no, we didn’t kill him. But he’s no longer my partner.”

  “Yeah, I found his constant stream of chatter annoying too. So, your bosses are letting you run around on your own?” I gestured around the room, implying a much larger area and shook my head. “Just think how much trouble you could get yourself into.”

  “A fair amount I’d imagine, if I were so inclined.” Officer Leonard grabbed the spare plastic chair from beside Johnson. He flipped it around, positioned it next to me and straddled the seat. He rested his forearms on the back of the chair, his mouth pulling into his usual amiable smile. “But how about we talk about the trouble you have gotten yourself into, hmm?”

  “She’s not in any trouble,” Oz answered before I could respond with an awesome comeback that would have likely gotten me into more trouble. Or incriminated me somehow.

  Officer Leonard shook his head lightly. “Come, now, Officer Salier. You’re not still upset about Bridget’s brief stint of community service, surely? It could have been a great deal worse. She did assault me with a log.”

  I was tempted to argue that ten years of community service hardly equalled “a brief stint” and the log assault had been because I’d mistakenly assumed he was attacking Sabrina but I thought better of it. Especially since Johnson hadn’t choked on his tongue trying to force the GBs out of the room, and his investigation, as he had during my last body finding spree. I was thinking cooperation between departments didn’t bode so well for me.

  “I understand that. Thank you for your intervention in that situation.” Oz might have said “thank you” but the tone implied a different first word ending in k.

  Officer Leonard huffed a quiet laugh. Yep, he’d heard the other word too. He focused back on me. “Talk to me about the body.”

  “I opened my locker. It fell out. The detective is going to find me a new locker.”

  “Is that right?” Officer Leonard cast a glance over his shoulder at Johnson, who gave him an infinitesimal shake of his head. “It’s true you don’t seem to be having much luck with this one. Did you know Dr Watson?”

  “This is all in her statement.” Oz snatched the closed file from under the detective’s hand and slid it across the table to Officer Leonard. “I suggest you read it to save Bridget from repeating herself and the rest of us from wasting our time here.”

  Officer Leonard’s eyebrows inched upwards. “You seem on edge, officer. Is something the matter?”

  “Nothing other than that your professional ineptitude keeps placing my ward in danger. And I’m including you in that.” Oz nodded at Johnson.

  “Our professional ineptitude? You’re blaming us?” Johnson covered his heart with his hand as if shocked. I didn’t like this new Johnson. I couldn’t read his angle as easily. And I flat out didn’t like his new mockery.

  “Last time it took three deaths before Bridget handed you the killer. And she nearly died while doing so. How many will it take this time?” Oz’s hands were still loosely interlaced on the table, his posture was tension free and if you’d been looking in from behind the one-way mirror you’d have thought we were having a lovely chat. Inside the room, however, Oz’s anger was damn near suffocating me. And he was on my side. I was amazed the room hadn’t cleared out. If I could’ve gone, I would have.

&n
bsp; “I had a session with her once,” I said when it was clear Officer Leonard wasn’t going to respond to Oz.

  Officer Leonard’s attention jumped between Oz and me. When his eyes finally came back to me, there was a lot going on behind them that I couldn’t read. “Who?”

  “The Queen. Her and the Duke were thinking about renewing their vows and she was interested in having a bachelorette party. It didn’t happen in the end, which I suppose was just as well. I don’t know how the country would’ve taken to the Queen limbo-dancing in a hula skirt in Hyde Park.”

  Officer Leonard blinked. “What?”

  “Dr Watson? The third dead ghost to be stuffed inside my locker? I had a session with her. She asked lots of questions. I gave her lots of answers. Now I’m being assessed.” I didn’t throw Oz the pointed look I wanted to on the last comment, united front and all, but from the way his shoulders stiffened slightly I was sure he’d felt the jab anyway. He’d made me go to my session with Dr Watson so, from my perspective, being assessed was totally his fault. Not mine for not adjusting.

  “That’s right.” Officer Leonard wagged his finger in my direction without moving his arms from the back of the chair. “You must be angry about that.”

  “Seriously? Now you’re trying to pin this on me as well?” I shook my head and tutted. “I’m really disappointed. I thought better of you, Officer Leonard. Detective Johnson I expected it of, but not you. And all of this is already in my statement, so we’re done here?”

  Johnson didn’t answer. I very much got the feeling he was hoping Officer Leonard would say no. He didn’t. He nodded his head once, that darn amiable smile fixed in place. I stood, not bothering to try to sort out the bloodstained crumpled mess of a jumpsuit.

  “I’ll pick up my new locker assignment at the reception desk in the morning,” I told Johnson and then gestured to Officer Leonard. “I expect more from you next time. No more of this ‘pin a murder on Bridget’ game.”

  “I’ll try my best, Ms Sway,” he said, inclining his head almost apologetically.