Death & Co.

by D. J. McCune

  There weren’t enough words in the world to describe the scene around them. They were standing in a narrow roadway, with dusty earth stretching away on either side. The earth was stained red as blood poured and dribbled from an endless mass of corpses. The sun was setting but even here in the Hinterland Adam could still hear the persistent crackle of gunfire. Hundreds – maybe even thousands – of souls stood shell-shocked over the wrecks of their own bodies while Lumen of every nationality began guiding them. Some souls were clinging together for comfort while others tried to scrabble through cloth-wrapped bundles of belongings, unable to grasp the fact that they didn’t need them any more.

  Nathanial’s face might have been carved from marble as he surveyed the scene. A tall, handsome, black Luman saw them and strode over to embrace Nathanial. ‘Brother, I thank you.’

  Nathanial grasped the man’s shoulders. ‘We’re glad to help, Zahir. But what happened?’ Luc and Adam exchanged glances. Zahir was High Luman of the West African Kingdom. Luman Kingdoms didn’t always follow political borders, especially when those borders had changed frequently over the centuries. The vast African continent was divided into seven separate Kingdoms, each with its own High Luman.

  Zahir’s face was calm but a small muscle pulsed in his jaw as he spoke. ‘These people were refugees. Many of them were leaving the towns and villages, trying to cross the border. There was a battle between government soldiers and their rivals. Those fleeing were caught in the middle.’ There was no anger in his expression, only a kind of weary sorrow.

  Nathanial swallowed hard. ‘That’s why so many are women and children, yes?’

  Zahir nodded. ‘There are many hundreds dead and more still dying.’ As if to emphasise his words there was a loud explosion further down the road and a chorus of screams. He nodded at Adam and his brothers. ‘I am glad you brought your sons. We will all be needed tonight. May the Light speed you, brothers.’

  As he walked away, Adam grabbed Nathanial’s arm. ‘We have to do something.’

  Nathanial looked startled but pleased. ‘We’re about to. I’m glad you’re so eager tonight. Let’s get to wo—’

  ‘No!’ Adam interrupted. ‘I mean do something about the soldiers. They’re still killing people! We have to make them stop!’

  Nathanial recoiled and Aron and Luc muttered something. Two nearby Lumen had come to greet Nathanial. They heard Adam’s words and exchanged horrified glances, before hurrying away as if embarrassed. ‘I’ll pretend you didn’t say that,’ Nathanial said softly.

  Aron was less tactful. ‘You are such a moron.’

  Adam turned on him. ‘You’re the moron!’ His heart was beating too fast. He turned back to Nathanial. ‘We could stop them killing all those people. We could just … appear in front of them or something. Scare them! We could pretend to be journalists! Make them think everyone knows what they’re doing!’

  Two spots of colour had appeared on Nathanial’s pale cheeks. ‘Have I taught you nothing? You know we cannot intervene! It is for the Fates to determine whether these people live or die. Our job is to help those who have perished.’ He turned away, ready to start work.

  ‘It’s evil!’ Adam hissed. His anger felt dangerous, like it might boil over into violence. He tried to take a deep breath but his lungs were too tight and his heart was thudding too hard. ‘It’s evil watching all these people die and not doing anything to stop it. If we don’t do anything then we’re as evil as those soldiers!’

  Nathanial wheeled around and gripped Adam’s shoulder hard. His eyes glittered. ‘If you want to help these people then do the job you were born to do and don’t try to change what cannot be changed.’ He whistled for the dogs and stalked away without another word. Aron shot him a disgusted look and followed his father.

  Luc stared at him with a kind of wary respect. He started to say something, then broke off. A disturbance of some kind had broken out amongst the souls. Those Lumen who weren’t already guiding began sprinting towards the scene from all directions.

  Adam felt drawn towards what was happening along with everyone else. He followed Luc towards the commotion. Female voices were shouting and the only women there were the dead. As he got closer he saw what was happening and his heart jolted.

  The souls of two dead soldiers were cowering together in the centre of a large group of furious women. One of them was screaming, her face twisted with hate. ‘I know you! You killed my husband and my son, two days ago! You burned our house and left us with nothing! That’s why we had to run!’ She began to sob.

  Another woman pushed through. She dragged forward the soul of a small girl, who stood chewing her thumbnail, terrified. ‘You shot my daughter!’ Her face was etched with horror and disbelief. ‘I screamed at you! I begged you, please don’t hurt her. She is a child! You shot her there in front of me! And then you shot me!’ She broke down and wept, while her child clung to her. There was an angry murmur of sympathy and disgust.

  The soldiers’ eyes darted from side to side. They made Adam think of cornered animals. Both of them were young and fit, but one had a stupid, brutish look about him. The other one had a certain wily cunning in his expression. He tried to take control of the situation, even here in the Hinterland. ‘I did not kill you, woman. You are mistaken. Get away from us!’

  There was a roar of fury from the women and they surged in. The man screamed in sudden terror, understanding at last that his gun wouldn’t save him here and that these women would tear him limb from limb if they could. Suddenly Lumen burst through the crowd and gathered around the men. They joined hands and a great ripple of light passed between them, forming a circle of golden flames. The women fell back, unable to breach it.

  Zahir stood in front of them. His sorrow was so naked and painful that Adam almost looked away. It quietened most of the women, apart from the one still holding her child. ‘Why are you protecting them? They murdered us in cold blood!’

  Zahir bowed his head. ‘My heart is bleeding,’ he said softly, so softly that it made the fine hairs on the back of Adam’s neck rise. ‘We are not the judges, only the guides. Each of you has a road to walk now but I believe …’ His voice faltered for a second, then grew stronger. ‘I believe that we will all make account for what we do. I send these men to answer for their actions.’

  There was murmur through the crowd, a mixture of satisfaction and disgust. The brutish soldier was looking all around, frantic to escape. He seemed relieved when one of the African Lumen stepped forward and quietly began reciting the Unknown Roads.

  The cunning soldier wasn’t convinced. ‘What do you mean, called to account? I was just following orders!’ His voice was high and cracked. ‘I won’t go! You can’t make me go!’

  Zahir stared at him and for just a second his eyes glittered. ‘No, I cannot make you go. I will simply tell you the way, as is my duty. But if you choose to stay – there is nothing for you here. Only the Hinterland.’ He waved around them. ‘Your Light will remain but only you can choose to walk through it.’ He began to murmur in the soldier’s ear but the young man shrugged his hand away and cursed him.

  Adam didn’t watch any more. There were souls everywhere – he had never seen so many in such a small area. More Lumen were arriving but the sound of shots, explosions and screams still pierced the veil between the physical world and the Hinterland. New souls kept appearing, faster than the Lumen could guide them. He was going to have to do his bit.

  And he did, for once without complaint. His resentment seemed small and petty, in the face of so much sorrow and misery. He watched Nathanial ask the mother and her child if they wanted to walk the Unknown Roads together and send them gently into their Light. Aron and Luc worked alongside some Lumen he recognised and many others he didn’t. Sam and Morty wove in and out of the souls, gently herding them together with a nudge of their noses. The soul of a little boy clung to Sam’s fur, resting his forehead on the wolfhound’s shoulder, and the big dog turned and licked his face tenderly.

/>   Adam sent four souls onto the Unknown Roads and when he was sick, he simply wiped his mouth and carried on, losing all track of time. Night had fallen swiftly and at last the sounds of gunfire were petering out. Some of the souls had been waiting for hours. They seemed shell-shocked by everything that had happened, grateful to give themselves into a Luman’s care.

  Finally the crowd had thinned. The Lumen from other parts of the world were clasping hands and saying their parting words while the African Lumen wearily finished guiding the last few souls. Nathanial came and stood with his sons, giving Adam a neutral look. Zahir approached them. ‘Thank you, brothers, as ever.’

  Nathanial nodded and said the traditional words between Lumen. ‘Our Light is your Light, brother.’

  Adam glanced at the young soldier, still standing by his Light, refusing to step through it. Zahir followed the direction of his eyes and his mouth set into a hard line. ‘He will go through. Sometimes they wait for a long time but in the end they will all go through.’ He shrugged. ‘I hope for his sake he will listen to the directions he is given.’

  The soldier saw Adam staring and glared at him. ‘What are you looking at?’ he spat. There was a sheen of sweat on his soul’s smooth, dark skin. His mind was still clinging to his physical memories, unwilling to accept that his life was over.

  Adam shook his head and turned away, feeling sick to his stomach. The soldier made his skin crawl. All he wanted to do was get out of here. And a moment later he gathered with his family and swooped for home.

  Fine drizzle was falling when they arrived back in the garden. They made a subdued group; even the dogs slunk towards their beds with their tails between their legs. It was the middle of the night, the darkest hours before dawn. Elise had left the kitchen light on and a flask of hot chocolate but none of them felt like drinking it. Nathanial shrugged off his camel-hair coat and gestured to his sons to follow him into the study.

  He switched on the lamp and perched on the edge of his desk while they stood silently in front of the bookcases. Adam could see that his father’s face was almost grey in the dim light, etched with exhaustion and something else. Nathanial looked at them each in turn for a long moment before he finally spoke. ‘I’m sorry you had to see that tonight.’

  They shifted from foot to foot, Adam and Luc exchanging uneasy glances. Nathanial never apologised for taking them on jobs. As far as he was concerned death was a part of life and as Lumen their lives were not really their own. They were only doing their duty.

  Nathanial cleared his throat. ‘I always knew that eventually I would have to take you on that kind of job.’ He gave a ghost smile. ‘Somehow an earthquake or a landslide just seems unfortunate. It’s nobody’s fault – there’s nothing personal in it. But tonight … A job like that is the very worst kind. I understand the temptation to intervene but that is not our role. All we can do is help the dead as best we can.’ He was careful not to look at Adam as he said this.

  Adam stared at the floor, feeling his cheeks burn. He could almost feel The Book of the Unknown Roads reproaching him. He tried to remember exactly what he had said to his father earlier that evening, gripped by a strange mixture of guilt and defiance. He had accused Nathanial of being evil, of ignoring the suffering of those being slaughtered; of being as bad as the soldier. He knew that wasn’t fair – but somehow it seemed almost as bad to stand back and watch an evil thing happening as it was to do it. Even thinking about the woman and her child sent a brief, hot flare of rage through him.

  Nathanial sighed. ‘It’s getting late. You should go to bed and get some sleep. You made me proud tonight, all of you. If there’s any justice there won’t be another call-out before the morning.’

  Aron and Luc shuffled towards the door, with Adam bringing up the rear. Just as Adam was about to leave the room he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned. Nathanial’s expression was more raw and unguarded than Adam had ever seen before. ‘I know how difficult it is to make sense of what happened tonight. This is something that all of us have to struggle with. There is nothing I can say that will make it any easier but I hope that in time you’ll learn that our laws are there for a reason. Sometimes there is a bigger picture that we can’t see.’

  Adam stared at him bleakly. He wanted to say something generous and sympathetic but no words came to mind. There was just a dark space there, full of the sound of women sobbing. His body felt different, as if a great weight was resting upon his shoulders, pressing him down into the floor.

  The worst thing was he knew it wasn’t just witnessing the massacre. Part of it was knowing that tonight he had lost some of his respect for his father – and he wasn’t sure if it would ever come back.

  Upstairs Adam flicked on the light and stared around his room as if he had never seen it before. There was his bed, with the faded blue duvet. There were the curtains, closed above the desk where his mobile lay. He had a sudden, brutal flashback and gasped at the force of it. Dusty road, dark green leaves, blood soaking into the ground and eyes staring at him, empty and dead in the physical world, stunned in the Hinterland.

  He was sweating, a cold film of it all over his body, and it made him feel dirty. In the mirror, he could see his shirt had reddish-brown bloodstains on the collar and front. A small crust of sick had dried in one corner of his mouth. His hair was stuck to his head and his eyes were like blue marbles in a saucer of milk. Nine hours earlier he had been planning to meet Melissa for his date.

  He dragged his feet over to the desk and stared at his mobile like it might explode at any second. Had she phoned him? Texted him? He didn’t think she was the kind of girl who would forgive and forget being stood up. Why the hell hadn’t he brought his mobile? Maybe he could have slipped away somewhere, into the undergrowth and sent a quick message … ‘Sorry, can’t make it, taking care of dead people in Africa …’ Yeah, of course he could have.

  He touched the screen and saw a new message waiting. There was only one. ‘Where are you?’ Then nothing. He imagined her tapping her phone, looking up and down the street on tiptoe, biting her lip a little. He imagined her puzzlement and disbelief and finally anger when she realised that he wasn’t coming. He had blown it.

  He crawled into bed and pulled the cover over his head, willing himself to sleep; keeping his life at bay for a few precious hours.

  Chapter 8

  When Adam woke up the next morning the whole world looked grey. He lay blinking for several seconds and realised he was still under the duvet. Worse, he realised that his alarm hadn’t gone off – he hadn’t set it the night before. He flung back the cover and gave a despairing groan at the time. He should have been in school half an hour before.

  Normally he would have sprung into action but instead he lay back in bed and pulled the duvet up to his chin. He should have been cosy but something was wrong. He felt flat and depressed. He couldn’t be bothered getting up. What was the point? Either he would have to go into school and face Melissa’s wrath or he would have to stay here and get sent on call-outs. It was, as Spike would say, a lose-lose situation.

  What could he say to Melissa to make her understand? He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes and tried to find some inspiration. The problem with his life was that he could never be totally honest with anyone. He was trying to live in two worlds without ever belonging fully in either.

  Sometimes he longed to tell his friends the truth about his family. He was tired of never inviting them round, telling constant lies. The trouble was it would be too easy to make a mistake – say the wrong thing, swoop in front of a visitor … and then the Luman world would be exposed. It was impossible for Adam to bring his two worlds together – but there were only so many times you could pretend your sister had measles or that workmen were wrecking the place.

  And what about Melissa – or any other girl for that matter? If he wanted to have a girlfriend he was going to have to bring them back eventually – except he couldn’t. How was he going to get round that? Never date anyon
e until he had left home? Pretend his whole family was dead? Tell lies for the rest of his life?

  In the end, this was why Lumen stuck together. They grew up together and married each other and had children together – because who else could possibly understand what they did? They were human beings but not the same as everyone else. Something about them was different.

  The scientist in Adam was always curious about what made him special. Why could he swoop and see the Hinterland when his friends couldn’t? Obviously the keystones were part of it but there was more to it. Was it genetic – something in his DNA? Or was it just that he had been taught from childhood to see the world differently? After all, his friends didn’t even know the Hinterland was there. Maybe the truth lay somewhere in between.

  He sighed. Whatever his problems were, lying in bed wasn’t going to solve any of them. It was time to get up and face the world – or rather both his worlds.

  When he walked into the kitchen Luc was already there, munching on a pile of French toast. He appeared to have upended an entire bowl of sugar over the top slice and was crunching his way through it with relish. He raised an eyebrow when he saw Adam. ‘Thought you’d have been away to playschool by now.’

  ‘Slept in,’ Adam mumbled. He threw some bread in the toaster and squinted into the fridge for inspiration. In the end he settled for a banana and chocolate spread.

  Luc set his knife and fork down with a sigh, obviously needing a break. ‘Ahhhh, breakfast of champions. You could do this every day if you stopped messing around pretending to be normal. As if anyone wants to be normal.’