I’m still blinking away the cobwebs of our confinement. The afternoon light is as dazzling as illuminating.
‘You disgust me.’ He jabs a finger in my chest. ‘You shouldn’t be here, mate.’
I take a couple of steps back, and he matches them. ‘But I am.’
He looks to the other two with me, squints. And he drops his pint.
‘Jesus,’ he says, quiet and low. ‘None of you should be here.’
‘We’ve gotta go, buddy,’ I say.
And he punches me in the face. Once, and then again while I’m falling. It’s amazing that he doesn’t break my nose.
Okkervil and Clash rush in to push him away from me, but he’s snarling, swinging out at all of us.
‘You shouldn’t be here, none of you.’
They drag him to the footpath, and I get to my feet.
‘You!’ someone else yells.
‘Time to run,’ I say. And this time we do.
We sprint to the botanical gardens. The river draws us as it always does, you can feel it in your bones, that wide curve of brown water. Here in the shade, the city is almost bearable. And no blood seems to mean no mosquitos. Buildings rise to our right, the river to our left, and I feel we’re balanced in between. It’s a precarious thing, but balance always is – a moment before tripping, a moment before the fall. I don’t want to be here, I don’t feel comfortable in my own company. We seek out a secluded spot.
‘So, where to now?’ I ask them.
They’re struggling with the answer as much as me. Our old haunts in Toowong, leafy and near the city, and One Tree Hill. The river itself; perhaps we need to dive into its waters.
‘You,’ a voice whispers in my ear. ‘You.’ Darkness descends. ‘This is no game. And still you stand as though it is. We’re being played.’
Hands grab me around the neck. Strong, hard hands, and they start to squeeze.
My two buddies are hanging back. What the hell are they doing?
‘C’mon,’ I manage, though it comes out as little more than a whisper.
It’s enough. Clash leads, running around me, swinging a fist and connecting. Okkervil does the same. My assailant grunts, loosens his grip. I stumble forward, turn and look at … it takes me a moment, and now I understand the other Steves’s hesitation.
It’s a shadow.
A human-shaped shadow, limbs flailing around. A Steve-shaped shadow. Solid enough to be hit.
I gasp for breath, like I’m drowning again, clench my fists and join the scrum. The shadow form, well, it does what shadows do. Disappears, and I’m clanging heads with Clash. Hard. Back to the ground I go.
A few eye blinks, and some stars mixed heartily with splotches, and I’m being helped up by Okkervil.
‘You’ve gotta watch yourself, Suit,’ he says.
‘Suit?’
‘What else am I going to call you. You’re not fucking Steve, are you? And don’t pretend you’re not doing it too.’
I want to make a crack about onanism but I don’t.
‘He’s not fucking me,’ Okkervil says. And there we go.
And we’ll just see about who’s who, shall we. Doesn’t matter who we are, we’re a pretty defeated-looking bunch standing shivering in the botanical gardens. None of us has cash. Our closest allies think we’re the enemy.
I’ve never felt lonelier.
At least I’m the one wearing the suit.
I straighten myself up. There’s a handkerchief in my pocket; I wipe the blood from my nose. Pass it to Clash, he nods, wipes the blood from his nose, too. I’ll have to assume that all our blood is the same.
When I escaped from Hell, however I did that, I never expected to be thrown into Hell on Earth. Though is three Steven de Selbys really Hell on Earth?
‘What do you want me to do with this?’ Clash passes the particularly bloody handkerchief back to me. ‘Not my problem.’
I go to throw the handkerchief in a bin; it won’t come away from my hand. I have to actually tear it away. Hurts; I wince. I look at the handkerchief lying in the bin, and then we all say pretty much simultaneously: ‘We’re not meant to bleed.’
Where’s fucking Tim with his knife when you need him?
Maybe my presence has tipped the balance for good, if bleeding is a good thing. And it must be: blood is what stops Stirrers, it’s what the front door to Number Four demands. It’s important, and not only in the keeping-people-alive kind of way.
‘We bleed now,’ I say.
‘If it bleeds we can kill it.’ Okkervil thinks he’s funny. The fact that I don’t says something about me or him. I’m just not sure what.
Can’t say that I’m liking myself.
‘It’s not the end of the world. That was the year before last,’ Clash says, patting my back, as I stare across the city towards Number Four George Street.
Maybe he’s been in there long enough not to yearn for it. For me, Number Four had always been a home away from home. I’d grown up hanging around in its corners, waiting for my parents to come back from pomping jobs.
‘What do we do now?’
‘We could call Aunt Tegan.’
‘What’s she going to do?’ I say.
Aunt Tegan had never approved of the family business. She’d left the country as soon as she could. Moved to London.
She might actually be pleased with this current state of affairs.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been hunted by Pomps. In fact almost all my troubles had been with Pomps, now I thought of it. Ex-Pomps, Pomps who wanted to become Regional Manager or gods. Experience should have given me a deep and abiding fear of my own kind. But, that was it: they were my own kind.
Something howls down George.
‘That doesn’t sound good,’ says Okkervil.
‘No, a howl is never a good thing.’
I reach in my pocket for my knife.
‘Be great if we had the stone knives now,’ Clash says.
But we don’t. Tim has those knives, the Knives of Negotiation, hidden away. And, besides, I doubt they would even recognise me.
I’d killed with them. Become Death with them, and bound them together as the scythe Mog. But they were always so fickle.
A dark shape hurtles towards us, vaguely dog-like.
Clash and I pull free our knives, the silver shining in the late afternoon light. Okkervil picks up the nearest thing he can find, basically a handful of stones.
Then it’s upon us. Biting and snarling. It tears open my hand, and there is the peculiar sensation of flesh that is not flesh rebinding. It hurts for a second, but once again I’m not sure if it hurt because it hurt, or because I thought it should hurt. That kind of stuff makes my head spin.
I swing out with the knife, too late – it’s already past me, rushing at Clash and Okkervil.
That’s okay. We have the Hound surrounded. Clash drives his knife towards its skull. And the Hound closes its jaws around his fist.
I jab at its flank, and it slashes up at my gut with a hind paw. I’m bent over, gagging, when one of Okkervil’s stones hits me under the eye. I look at him and he winces.
Yeah, we have the beast surrounded all right. Clash screams; the Hound’s jaws look like they’re working their way through the bone. Okkervil manages to hit Clash in the wrist with his next throw.
I take a couple of unsteady steps towards it. Avoid another backward jerk of its legs. It’s less of a jump than a fall, but I wrap my arms around its shoulders and squeeze. Its muscles flex. And the next thing I know I’m on my back, eyes blinking, and Clash’s hand flies through the air and lands in my lap.
This time there is a definite spray of blood.
Okkervil is kicking out at the Hound. And it swings its jaws towards him, clamps down on his thigh.
My jacket's torn and spattered with blood.
Another dark shape crashes into view, leaps upon the Hound. There’s a flash of limbs and fire. A familiar face among the shadows. My face. ‘Run,’ it snarls at us. ‘
Run, you fucking idiots!’
Then it’s grabbing the Hound by the jaws, pulling them open wider and wider, and it’s like he’s opening the portal to a greater dark.
‘This isn't over,’ it says, and then it and the shadow Hound are bound up and swallowed by the dark.
And run we do. I’m going to get into shape very quickly, I think, if I’m not killed first.
*
The Hound’s disappearance strikes me as a sudden absence, a sensation like jolting awake in a dream. I stretch my mind, reach out into the world, and there is no doubt it is no longer here.
‘It’s gone,’ I say to Tim.
‘Did it work?’
‘I don’t know. Charon said it would leave when its work was done.’
Tim shakes his head. ‘I thought Steve would –’
‘But they’re not Steve, Tim. They’re not Steve. They’re copies. Pawns in some new game of the Death of the Water’s.’
‘I hope they’re just that,’ Tim says. ‘I’d hate to think of the pain that is coming their way if they’re not.’
Of course that is all they are. I’ve been down to the Death of the Water’s Kingdom. I’ve seen Steven’s shade. I called out across the dark and he didn’t hear me. He didn’t recognise me, but at those depths and in that darkness I don’t know what I was expecting. I wanted to touch him, to tell him that I loved him.
But I couldn’t – the Death of the Water wouldn’t allow it, and my power is such that I cannot challenge him, even as the slither of the Hungry Death inside me stirred to angry life.
Steve is down there. He is blind and alone.
Whatever these things are, they mock me. No matter what Charon says. They do not bleed, they do not feel, they are too damn smug.
I close my eyes. Concentrate, send my mind out into the city through my Pomps, and then I can see them. They are running, and there is a drunk on their tail. A drunk that looks as furious and foolish as any Death.
And then I feel the Hound again.
Ten
I don’t like the way Clash is breathing. The bleeding’s stopped at least, sopped up with a shirt snatched from a hanger at the front of a shop. He doesn’t bleed like a real person. I’ve got his hand in a plastic bag, another snatched thing. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved that it wasn’t my hand.
Okkervil is scanning the streets furiously. We all are.
Another hour, another drunk. A dozen birds. Even the air is angry at us. Twice tiny tornados have borne down on us, gyring, raging tubes of choking dust and bruising rubbish.
The mall was too obvious a place; instead we walked through Queensland University of Technology’s Gardens Point. Like most unis, it was loaded with CCTV cameras, but I think we avoided the worst of them.
The hardest part was not sticking out. Three identical triplets, one in a suit, one with a bleeding stump. Still, most people wouldn’t notice anything even when it’s shoved in their faces.
Dad used to say that was Pomp’s greatest defence, the damn stupid obliviousness of the general public. He liked to phrase it a little differently: most people don’t notice shit until it’s on their shoe, and then only after they’ve tracked it through their carpet.
Explains why people ignored Pomps for the most part, until they were directly involved with our activities – i.e. dead. Also goes a long way to explaining why the world is pretty much as I left it, even after a regional Apocalypse, a battle with Stirrers in Queen Street Mall, a near End of Days, and a giant tidal wave stalled on the Gold Coast that had receded back into the sea, taking me with it.
People lived their lives, and most of the rest of the world flashed by.
At best, it happened subliminally; at worst, it ate you.
*
The crows are harder to avoid. There are always crows, and where there are crows, Lissa can see me. She has her Avian Pomps, and they act as her eyes on wings. Crows, sparrows and ibises. I need to be wary of all of them. A dog snarls at us, growling as it yanks on its chain, its owner barely able to hold it back.
Roots lift and trip us up. Ants swarm over us. When we get to the river again, on the other side of the campus, fish leap out of the water. A swarm of bees attacks us, until we pass under the Victoria Street Bridge, and there in the shadows we quaver, and rest, wide-eyed as frightened children.
‘Well, that wasn’t very nice,’ I say.
It's early evening. The heat of the day isn’t so much fading as consolidating, sinking into the cement and stone, smothering the night air. You always think you know what that kind of heat is – that summer heat – but you forget until Brisbane reminds you.
‘We’re free for the moment,’ I say.
‘But, it’s not going to last.’ Clash presses the shirt tight over his stump. I don’t know how he’s doing it, but he’s holding it together somehow. Does that mean he’s the real me, or does it mean he isn’t? ‘Brisbane isn’t big enough for us to melt away. Lissa said she can’t hear our heartbeats; that’s got to work to our advantage.’
Okkervil nods at the nearest CCTV camera, a crow standing on top of it. ‘Too many of those around for my liking.’ I can’t tell which he’s referring to.
‘Last time I remember we didn’t have any CCTV connections. Plenty of crows and sparrows.’
‘And ibises.’ There’s one digging around in a bin nearby; it doesn’t seem to be paying much attention, but I nod to it and it gives me such a predatory look that I cringe. ‘Perhaps we should go somewhere else.’
Most of the crows are gone by now; the ones that we come across will most likely be Lissa’s. We keep moving, we should be okay.
Of course, the question is: where should we be moving to?
This time of day the traffic sounds like the sea meeting the shore, all sighs and roars and shifts of pressure. My ears pop with it.
Urgency bleeds out of everything, particularly the road. There, momentum gives way to a crawl. There’s an ambiguity, a gloaming-ish uncertainty that is as close as the living world gets to the undead. I usually like it. But not now.
We’re standing by a pay phone when it rings. Thing is, it shouldn’t be ringing – the handset is broken, and the box is curved in from the steady argument of a boot.
Okkervil looks at me. ‘You going to answer that?’
Everyone defers to a suit. I pick up the handset. ‘Hello.’
Someone clears their throat. ‘Steven, this is James. You have to be careful. There are things that you don’t know.’
‘And why should I trust you?’
‘Because I am a good man. I didn’t shoot you in the back, did I? If I’d wanted you dead, believe me, you’d be dead.’
‘You got people coming for us?’
‘No, but we have a possibility of help for you.’
‘And what might that be?’
‘Steve, in your situation I think I would have killed myself.’
‘Thank you for your candour.’
‘I don’t have time for anything else. Steve, I don’t want you to die. You and the others are going to need to get to the Underworld.’
Hmm, the easy way to do that would be to kill ourselves.
‘I thought you wanted to recruit us for something.’
‘That doesn’t matter now.’ James sounds exasperated.
‘Which one of us is the real Steve?’
‘That’s irrelevant also.’
My turn for some exasperation. ‘Maybe to you.’
‘Look, I have been reliably informed that the longer you stay here, the more dangerous things will get for you.’
‘More dangerous than they already are?’
‘Do you really want to be torn apart limb by limb?’
I look over at Clash. He’s on the ground, knees pressed up against his chest, probably hoping, as I’d hope if it was me – and it sort of is – that we’re not looking.
I think my silence is answer enough.
‘There are bikes down by the river, red Hondas. You�
�re to take those to … I’ve been told they will know.’
‘They?’
‘I don’t know. Just find the bikes.’
‘And what are you going to do?’
‘Hope you survive.’
‘And if I don’t?’
‘I suppose we’ll all just have to start again. Now, go and find those damn bikes.’
‘Are you sure you don’t know who the real Steve is?’
James has already hung up.
*
There they are, three red bikes beneath the expressway, the traffic thrumming above us. Road bikes that almost seem to hum with energy, like leaves caught in eddy in a stream, all too ready to be carried free. I’d wanted something like this as a young man, but could never quite justify it. Perhaps I’d feared the freedom they’d represented.
They draw us close. We’ve no hesitation left to us. I can’t trust James, but I certainly can trust my people to hunt me down. The bike I choose has a piece of chalk and a note.
Door: you will know soon enough what that means.
I slip the chalk into my pocket.
I look over at Clash. ‘You going to manage?’
He shakes his head.
‘Get on with me then, you annoying bastard,’ Okkervil says.
I could give these guys a big hug, but we don’t have time.
It’s been a long time since I’ve ridden a motorbike, but it’s surprisingly easy. These bikes almost ride themselves.
And then they do. Maybe they were from the moment we got on.
I try to turn left down George, but the bike takes me right. Go the magic, and all that. I turn to look at my compatriots; Okkervil and Clash shrug and we give in to the inevitable. The bikes take us onto the expressway and over the Captain Cook Bridge, the Brisbane River chocolate brown beneath us. I feel the crackle of its presence. I look over at the Kangaroo Point Cliffs; in the daylight they’re gorgeous, but now, in this in-between time, nudging into night, they’re flat, almost menacing.
There are more crows about too. High and circling. Not much we can do to avoid them.
And then the first one descends, snapping at my head. It misses, but there’s another. This one pulls up fast, lands on my shoulder and starts to peck. Hard.
The Memory of Death Page 5