by Chris Mawbey
“Such as?” said Mickey. Now that he’d rested and been fed Mickey began to feel defensive. He didn’t know what was really happening to him. He wanted answers but he didn’t want to start pouring his heart out to this stranger.
Pester shrugged. “Anything. You must have hundreds of questions about what happened today, where you are and what’ll happen from now on. You’ve probably got a lot of mixed emotions about your situation as well.”
“You mean the fact that I’m fucking dead,” snapped Mickey. “Helped here by you, if I remember right.” He remembered Pester in his guise as a fake paramedic and how he had turned off the drip in Mickey’s arm.
“You couldn’t be saved,” said Pester flatly. “It was your time to die.”
“So you thought you’d help me along?”
“You could look at it that way,” said Pester. “I don’t normally get involved with the living side. But I was told to make sure that you got over here quickly and safely, and then make sure that you completed your journey.”
Mickey pondered what he’d been told. “What normally happens then?”
“When someone dies they arrive over here, at one of the start points, like you did. They’re met by a guide, like me, and go on their way.”
“So why would you be sent after me?” Mickey asked.
“No idea,” said Pester. “We don’t get told things like that.”
“Who by?”
“Those in charge.”
Mickey accepted the answer without question. He could tell he wouldn’t get any more from Pester on the subject. But he also got a sense that Pester was holding something back. Maybe be was even lying.
“So who was the other guy?” said Mickey. “The one with the sunglasses.”
“Ah, that was Mr. Jolly,” said Pester. “He’s like me. He’s a guide, but his job is to persuade people to take a different route; to a far more unpleasant destination.”
“Why would anyone take up with him if they end up worse off?”
Pester laughed. “He can be very persuasive, our Mr. Jolly. But he doesn’t tell them the truth about where they’re going. He was waiting at the hospital to try to catch you. He won’t have taken too kindly to the fact that I got to you first.”
“It was some kind of race to get to me, was it?” Mickey said.
“In a way, aye, it was,” said Pester. “It looks like we were both told to get you get over here and help you on your way. Now that you’re over here with me, Mr. Jolly will do what he can to get to you.”
Mickey’s smile was grim and humourless. “Well, as I’m already dead, he can’t use that threat against me.”
“Don’t be so sure of yourself,” said Pester. “Aye, you’re dead – but you can still be killed over here.”
Mickey didn’t have a clue what Pester was talking about. He just stared at the guide.
Pester explained. “If you lose an arm here, it stays off. The limb won’t grow back. If you lose your head your body will lie where it falls. It’ll rot and decay but your mind will linger on unaffected.”
“What about cuts and bruises?” said Mickey.
“Nothing heals over here,” Pester replied. Your body is dead. While it stays intact it’ll be ok. Any injury will start to fester though. Eventually your body will fail and your mind would be stuck where you lie.”
“Great,” said Mickey. He thought things over for a few seconds. “Thanks for the warning. So, what are you and this Mr. Jolly? Angels or Devils?”
“Do you believe in God then?” said Pester.
“No way,” Mickey replied. He almost spat the words out.
“So why do you use those names then?”
“Dunno,” said Mickey. “I guess it’s just words to show the difference between good and evil.”
“Hmm,” mused Pester. “You’re pretty close with the good and evil idea between Mr. Jolly and me. But do you know which one of the two you’re with?” He gave out a low chuckle that made Mickey shudder.
When Mickey didn’t offer an answer, Pester continued talking, “You say that you don’t believe in God. Why not?”
Mickey thought his answer through before replying, “When I was at school we were taught that God is good. If that’s true then I’m fucked if I know what good is. No God that was good and loved his people would have allowed my Mum to suffer the way she did.”
“You don’t think there was a purpose behind it?” said Pester. He threw another stick on the fire and watched Mickey’s expression by the growing firelight.
“Mum always used to tell me that everything happens for a reason,” Mickey replied. “I can’t see any reason for what she had to put up with though.”
“Was your Ma a religious person?” Pester poked at the fire to spread the embers around. The fire grabbed greedily at fresh twigs and branches, the flames leaping in joy at the treat.
Mickey enjoyed the increased warmth from the fire and the opportunity to talk about his Mum, even though it hurt him.
“Yeah,” he replied. “She was very religious. Mum would go to Church as often as she could. He didn’t like her going though. Sometimes he’d stop her from going. She told me that she prayed for me every time she went. When he left us she went to Church whenever she wanted to.”
Pester wondered if he could see moistness in Mickey’s eyes. Maybe so or maybe it was just a trick of the light.
Mickey’s voice seemed thicker when he spoke again.
“Mum said that she needed to pray for me a lot. She said that I was a good boy but my soul needed all the help she could give it. I just laughed at her and told her that I could look after myself. I believed that there was nothing after we were dead, so my soul was ok.” He looked around him into the impenetrable darkness. “I guess I was wrong about that.”
You were wrong on quite a few counts, thought Pester. He thought about enlightening the young traveller about a few of these. It was late though and Pester wanted them to cover as many miles as possible the following day. Putting Mickey straight could wait for another time. He should have enough opportunities to fill Mickey in with all the things that he needed to know.
Pester watched Mickey for a while. The young man seemed to be lost in thought. He also looked exhausted. No more talk tonight then. Let the boy sleep. Tomorrow was likely to be long and testing. Pester was encouraged by how well Mickey had handled the events of the day so far. He’d seen far worse from people in the past. There was always the possibility that Mickey might have a delayed reaction. Pester was sure that there would be some kind of outburst. There nearly always was. He preferred the histrionics to happen and be over with early on. It was out of the way and dealt with then. He found it was always more difficult if someone lost their heads a few days into the journey. The further they’d gone the worst the consequences were if the traveller fell off the rails. It usually happened when one of the inevitable obstacles presented itself.
People always found it tough to cope when they made an association between the fact that they had left the mortal realm but still had trials to face in this one before their final journey could be completed.
Sometimes Pester was able to help the traveller to calm down and find a way forward. For those that he couldn’t well, he never really knew what happened to them after that. Pester suspected that the difficulties just multiplied for people after they left him. He’d lost quite a few this way. None of them would have completed their journeys. It was possible that some were still wandering around in the wastelands beyond this valley. It was more likely that they would have become prey to some of the beasts that prowled around the starting points.
For others though, their journeys would end when the realisation of the magnitude of what lay before them became too much to bear. For these the end would come when they simply sat down and waited. Hunger would overcome them and their bodies would fail and decay. Their minds would be trapped in the shells of their bodies. When the flesh had atrophied and only bones remained, the mind would still be co
nstant. Though he didn’t really care for his charges, Pester had an element of sympathy for some of these – especially those who had battled bravely but ultimately found the challenge too much.
There were stretches of the path ahead that had many such shrines dotted along them, like cairns along a mountain path. Pester had been guide to some of these and took time to pay a little respect to those he knew who had tried their best and failed.
Something roused Mickey during the night. He was surprised that he’d fallen asleep at all, even though he was exhausted. In the distance Mickey could hear the growling of the beasties, as Pester had called them. They still sounded hungry but seemed to be some way off and so didn’t unduly bother Mickey. He thought of his Mum, alone at home. Someone would have told her by now. She would probably have been to see his body. He wondered if she’d been able to get to sleep. He felt guilty that he’d fallen asleep when she was probably lying awake trying to come to terms with what had happened. Tears welled up in Mickey’s eyes and spilled down his cheeks. They were still flowing when sleep crept up un-noticed and reclaimed him.
Chapter 4
The morning dawned with Mickey feeling stiff and aching all over. He was used to waking up in a warm bed, wrapped in a duvet. He’d spent the night on bare ground with his jacket as a pillow. It took a few moments for him to realise where he was – and what he was. The knowledge was a hammer blow. The first thought that followed this was that his Mum would be waking up in an empty house. She would be starting the rest of her life alone. Mickey’s spirits sank as he worried about how she was coping this morning. How quickly after waking up would she have remembered that she was completely alone? Her husband deserted her and now her only son was dead.
Mickey slowly climbed to his feet and stretched. His bones creaked and cracked bringing some small relief to his aches and pains. Pester was already up and about. It seemed that he had been up for some time as he was ready to break camp.
“Eat this,” Pester said, offering Mickey some meat that he’d put aside the previous evening. The meat was cold and greasy and Mickey reluctantly accepted it. The meat took some chewing and Mickey struggled to swallow it. He felt sickened at his Mum’s plight and the tough meat did nothing to help settle his stomach.
“Are you ready to go?” Pester asked when it looked as if Mickey had finished eating.
Mickey nodded and threw the remains of the meat to one side.
“Make sure that you’ve got everything,” said Pester with a mischievous grin. “We won’t be coming back this way.” He set off along the valley floor. Mickey looked around himself. His only possessions were the clothes he was wearing. Pester was gone though, making a brisk pace. Mickey had to trot to catch up with his guide.
“Where to now?” he asked Pester.
“That way,” Pester replied, pointing straight ahead. He was smiling again.
Mickey didn’t rise to Pester stating the obvious. “What’s there?”
“Your destiny.” This time Pester’s smile was gone.
Though the sun rose in a cloudless sky the day gained no heat. It wasn’t cold, the weather just - was. Mickey could think of no other way to describe it. The temperature was the same as it had been over night. Mickey soon became hot, but it was through exertion not the sun. He stripped off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder.
“So, you were into armed robbery then?” Pester said, making conversation by labouring a point from the previous day.
“What? No,” Mickey replied. “I didn’t ... It was...” He trailed off. He didn’t want to go into details of why he’d been in the bank.
Pester laughed. “What did you do then – when you were alive?”
“I was a student. I was doing a Master’s in Politics and Law.”
Pester laughed again. “Studying the law and died breaking it. I like that.”
The two men lapsed into silence. They had been walking that way for what seemed like hours when Pester called a halt.
“Your first experience is coming up,” said Pester.
“My what? Where?” said Mickey. “I can’t see anything. The whole place looks the same as it has all day.”
“There’s nothing to see yet,” said Pester, “but we’re getting close.”
“What’s going to happen to me?” snapped Mickey. “What do I need to do?”
“Don’t know,” Pester replied taking a sip from his water bottle.
“Don’t know?” said Mickey. “You said you were my guide. So come on, guide me a bit here.”
Pester sighed. “I am guiding you but I don’t know what’s coming up. It’ll be an episode from your life and it’ll be soon.”
Mickey sighed himself and took a sip of his own drink. He was careful with the water, as Pester had warned him.
How could he prepare himself for something that he knew nothing about? What use was this Pester guy as a guide if he couldn’t help?
“How many of these episodes, or whatever you call them, am I going to have to face?”
“That depends on you,” said Pester. “It depends on what your life was like and how you handled things.”
“Thanks for nothing,” muttered Mickey. “Some help you are.” He corked his bottle, slipped it back into his coat pocket and started walking again. This time it was Pester who had to quicken his pace to catch up.
After another mile so of silent marching the roof of a building came into view. The ground started to slope downwards making more of the building visible. Mickey stopped dead.
“That looks like my old primary school,” he gasped. “What the fuck is that doing here?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” said Pester. “We’ll be going in.”
“Going in?” said Mickey. “Won’t people think it a bit odd that two strange men are wandering around the school? It’s the sort of thing that gets you arrested you know.”
“Don’t worry about that,” smiled Pester. “No-one’ll know that we’re there.”
“Well, in that case if I don’t go in, they won’t miss me,” said Mickey. He wasn’t sure why but he felt apprehensive about walking around his old school – whether anyone knew he was there or not.
“It’s your choice,” Pester conceded. Something in his tone of voice bothered Mickey.
“But?”
“But if you don’t go in there’ll be a consequence for you.” Pester raised a hand to stop Mickey asking any more. “Don’t ask. I don’t know. But all decisions have a consequence over here, one way or another.”
Mickey shrugged and started walking. He felt that he was in enough of a mess as it was; making things worse for himself didn’t seem a very bright thing to do.
As the Victorian School House came into full view it brought back a flood of childhood memories. A lot of these were good ones – some though were not so welcome. Mickey began to think of things that had long been buried. The tall, vaulted and panelled windows and gabled ends always made Mickey think of the place as more of a chapel than a school. The classrooms were high ceilinged and had huge cast iron radiators that always gurgled and growled like some huge emphysemic beast waking up. Big as they were, the radiators had never been able to chase the cold from the classrooms in the deepest of winters and the class, teacher included, had had many lessons wrapped in coats and scarves.
Mickey stopped walking again. What was he thinking? The place had been on its last legs when he had started there over fifteen years ago. It had been pulled down and replaced by one of those prefabricated modular things soon after he moved up to senior school.
“This place has been pulled down,” he told Pester.
“Ah, but this will be a memory from your life when the school was standing,” the guide told him.
“So I’m going to have to relive something that happened to me – is that it?
Pester remained silent. Mickey trawled his brain for something major that happened while he’d been there. Nothing came to mind though. He’d only just turned eleven when he left
the school. What could have been so important about at kid at that age?
Chapter 5
Mickey and Pester stood in front of the school gate. To the left, a high brick wall topped with blue coping stones ringed the playground. On the right hand side stood the main school building. It looked every bit as formidable and indestructible as Mickey had remembered it as a child. A lower wall, topped by iron railings, framed a small garden between the boundary and the school building.
“Don’t you have any idea at all what’s going to happen?” said Mickey. He was trying to look and sound chilled but could feel speckles of sweat on his forehead. The sound of children at play only made things worse.
“Not a clue,” said Pester happily. “It was your life, not mine. The only way you’ll find out is by stepping through that gate.” He indicated the way forward. “All I do know is that for your first and last episodes you’ll just be a witness. You’ll actually take part in all of the ones in between.”
You’re enjoying this you bastard, thought Mickey. He briefly thought about backing out and facing the consequences. Pester hadn’t actually said so, but Mickey had a feeling that things could go badly for him if he didn’t see this through. He walked into the playground.
Mickey expected kids to stop and stare at him or for a teacher to come over and challenge him about why he was there. Everyone ignored him though. As children came close they seemed to swerve away automatically, as if deflected around him.
“Don’t worry. They can’t see you,” said Pester.
“I’ll take your word for it,” said Mickey. “But it still feels weird. What am I supposed to be looking for?”
“How about a younger version of you,” Pester suggested.
Mickey scanned around the playground, concentrating on the areas he remembered frequenting most as a child.
“There,” he said, pointing. “There I am. Fucking hell, this is creepy. It looks like I’m going for a piss.”