Yes. There’s a calm space there. The door closes, the wake subsides. Now, that wasn’t pleasant. Not one little bit.
I open my eyes a crack, Lissa’s still here, looking more substantial than she did a moment ago. I’m beginning to wonder why she’s sticking around. What exactly it is that’s holding her here? She reaches toward me, and then pulls back at the last second.
It taxes her, or whatever it is that is left of her. My body is trying to draw Lissa in, and no matter how much I don’t want it to, I can’t switch it off. I don’t even want to consider the effort it must be taking for her to resist the pomp. She grimaces and sits a seat away from me. The two nearest seats are empty.
“Your nose,” she says. “It’s bleeding.”
I grab a tissue from my pants pocket and wipe my face. Blood, and plenty of it. “Shit. Eric even pomps roughly. You OK?”
Lissa nods. “I’m OK. I’ll be joining him soon enough.”
“Both of us,” I say. “I’ve lost my one chance of getting in touch with Mr. D.”
“Not at all. I know how to bring Mr. D to you,” Lissa says. “It’s not very pleasant, and will be rather painful.”
Of course it will. Messing around with death offers that as a given.
“I need to go home first.” And I do. Dangerous as it is, I have to. “I can’t keep wearing this suit, and I can’t be walking around with this beard.” I lift my bloody paws. “And these need seeing to. There’s no way I’d be any safer at a hospital.”
I remember Wesley Hospital and shudder.
Lissa gives me one of her disapproving stares. “I don’t think you should.”
“I’ve got no other choice.”
And whether she thinks it’s a good idea or not, she has nothing to say about that.
10
The back door hasn’t been broken down or even tampered with, as far as I can tell, which is a good sign. And the brace symbol above the door is whole. Another good sign, literally, though it’s glowing even brighter now, but that’s to do with the increased Stirrer activity. I take a deep breath and open the door.
There’s another reason I had to come home, and she almost knocks me off my feet. That’s how pleased she is to see me, though not half as happy as I am to see her. I crouch down and give Molly a hug, scratch behind her ears, and apologize for her horrible treatment. She’s forgiving.
“Lovely dog,” Lissa says.
Molly is sniffing at my heels. She glances up at Lissa, isn’t fussed by her being dead. Seems if she’s good enough for me, she’s fine with Molly. I get Moll to sit then throw her a treat. “She’s my best girl, my Molly Millions girl,” I say, and rub her behind the ears again. She grins her big, border collie grin.
Lissa snorts. “Molly Millions, hah. You are a geek.”
“So, I like Neuromancer. Who doesn’t?”
“But, Molly Millions…”
I glare at her, then smile down at Molly. “I just had to make sure she was OK,” I say.
And I’m thinking of the time when I brought her home, the tiny bundle of fluff that she was then. Puppies, particularly bright ones, can be trouble but she never was. She grins up at me again, and I grab another treat from the bucket by the fridge. She catches it in one smooth motion, then crunches it between her teeth.
We walk through my place and Molly sticks to my side. I know it’s because she can sense how unsettled I am. I can tell no one has been here—there are no unfamiliar presences, and there’s certainly no stench of Stirrers. And Molly isn’t acting too weird. I stop in the living room.
There’s a photo of Dad and Morrigan on my mantelpiece.
Those two have been pomping as long as anyone at Mortmax, other than Mr. D. Both had graduated from Brisbane Grammar and both had had something of a reputation as hellraisers in their day. The stories I had heard from each about the other, and always without implicating themselves, were told with relish, and were usually accompanied with a lot of eye rolling from Mom.
Morrigan is family in the best sense: family you choose. I feel a twinge of worry for him. But that’s all I allow myself, I can’t wallow in grief and fear. There are walls building inside of me. I don’t know how sturdy they are, but I’m unwilling to push them too hard. At least I know that there’s an afterlife.
Dad and Morrigan both came from a long line of Pomps; they could trace their line back to the Black Death, but Dad’s focus had always been family. Not so Morrigan, death had been his life, and he’d risen in the ranks faster than any other Pomp in the business. He knew more about the processes than anyone except, of course, Mr. D.
But where Mr. D was aloof and, let’s face it, creepy as all hell, Morrigan was extremely hands-on. He’d set up the automatic payroll, all from Mortmax Industries’ accounts. Before then Mr. D had paid Pomps with checks, and those bastards always took a week to clear, partly because Mr. D’s handwriting was so bad, but mostly because banks like to take their time with other people’s money. Morrigan had also set up the phone network. Sparrows had been used prior to that. We still used them on occasion but only in trials and ceremonial events, and mainly to humor Mr. D who is decidedly old school. None of us enjoyed the sparrows that much, because they were bad humored at the best of times, and the process involved a little pain—a short message for a drop of blood, a longer one for an opened vein. Blood and pomping go hand in hand, from the portents to the paint used in brace symbols. And without blood you couldn’t successfully stall a Stirrer. But the sparrows were different. They insisted on taking it for themselves, and they were pretty savage about it. Like I said, old school.
Above all, Morrigan had actually done something that no other member of the organization had ever achieved: turned Mortmax into a profitable business. There’s no money in pomping, and it was the side businesses, the companies that Mortmax owned that made the money—a couple of fast-food chains, a large share in a mining collective. Once Morrigan had started working that side of the business our pay packets had all increased rather dramatically, which is how I can afford to live the way I do. It’s not that extravagant, but I can certainly afford to pay my mortgage and eat takeaway once—well six, maybe seven, times—a week.
Dad never really approved of the changes, though he was happy to take the pay rise. He used to say that pomping was for Pomps and business was for arseholes. I think he was quite shocked by how good he was at the business side of things. Mom often said he was merely proving his axiom.
“Great music,” Lissa says, and I lift my gaze toward her in the corner of my living room, checking out my neat racks of CDs. “The Clash, Dick Nasty, Okkervil River. Shit, you’ve got all the Kinks’ albums, and Bowie’s. Don’t you ever get your music as downloads?”
“Yeah, I’m eclectic,” I say as she follows me into my bedroom. “And I don’t like downloads, I want my CD art and liner notes.”
“I see, so you’re not quite geeky enough to do everything as downloads, and not quite cool enough to buy vinyl.”
Lissa is already digging around the bedroom. “And it’s a relief to see a little mess. Walking through the rest of your place I was beginning to worry that I was hanging out with a serial killer. A serial killer obsessed with peculiar bands, and science-fiction DVDs. A geek serial killer.”
“Thank you,” I say. “You really know how to charm a fella.”
Lissa grins and shrugs.
I grab a backpack and start throwing clothes from my floor into it. A cap, T-shirts, socks, underpants and jeans. Most of them are clean. There’s a bottle of water on my bedside table and I throw that in, too.
“What I like about you,” Lissa says, peering under my bed, “is that you don’t leave your porn stash lying around. Clothes, yes, but not the porn. Can’t tell you the number of dates I’ve—”
“This isn’t a date. Could you get out of there… please?” Her face is buried in my cupboard, and I’m trying hard not to admire her from behind. She’s dead. She’s dead, you idiot. And people are trying to kill yo
u. Now look the other way, dickhead.
Yeah, my inner monolog is pretty brusque. Sometimes it’s like a crotchety Jiminy Cricket; you know, a conscience that doesn’t whistle or sing, and is all bent up with arthritis and bitter at the youth of today. My inner monolog would write letters to the council and the local paper, complaining about apostrophe use. Heaven help me if I ever live to anything approaching a ripe old age. I’ll be a right pain in the arse.
I try to ignore it most of the time.
Lissa keeps checking through my stuff. “Aha! I knew you kept them somewhere, how polite.”
“I’m a real gentleman,” I say. Though my face is burning, I’m also wondering if Tremaine kept his stash lying around, and why I’ve never thrown mine out, because I can’t remember the last time I looked at it, other than yesterday. “Could you stop perusing my porn… please?”
“A real gentleman who likes Busty Trollops, eh?”
“That isn’t mine.” I push into the closet and Lissa steps out of my way. I reach past the DVDs and grab a thick roll of fifty-dollar notes.
“Hmm, you leave that much cash lying around? What, you expected to run into trouble?”
I shrug, but maybe I had, or maybe I just like the idea, and the somewhat philanthropic notion, that anyone who breaks into my house and makes it past the porn will get a lovely surprise. “Glad I did, though. Now, what else do I need?”
“For one, you’re going to need a knife—a sharp knife, sharper than the one you use on the job. A scalpel would be perfect. And you’re also going to need a pen, with the thickest nib you can find.”
“How about a craft knife? Got new blades and everything.”
Lissa raises an eyebrow. “What do you need a craft knife for?”
I shrug. “Crafty things.” I’m not going to start explaining my scrapbooking. Even I’m a bit embarrassed about that.
“Crafty things, hah! And this place is so neat, admittedly not the bedroom—but who has a neat bedroom? Even your dog looks neat. Just who are you, Mr. de Selby?”
“What are you talking about?”
She shrugs. I smirk back at her.
I’m packed—clothes, craft knife, pen with a thick nib (yeah, scrapbooking again), even some brace paint, which is my blood mixed with a couple of small tins of something I bought at a hardware store. After seeing those Stirrers on the Hill, I suspect I might need it.
I risk a shower, Molly standing at the door, a grinning sentinel. The pressure’s crap, and the hot and cold are sensitive, but I’ve mastered it over the years to the point that showers with regular pressure seem odd to me. Within a minute I’m enjoying the heat. Washing away a little of the terror. I even clean the morning’s blood from the glass. It’s an empty gesture but it makes me feel a little better.
I have a pair of tweezers in the bathroom cabinet, and under the steamy shower I pick the beads of glass out of my palms. There isn’t a lot of it, thank God, but it hurts. The blood washes away down the drain.
I don’t know how long I’m standing there beneath the water but I’m back to thinking about my family, and that starts to put me in a spin.
“Nice tatt.” I look up, and Lissa’s there leering at me. “Never got one myself.”
“Yeah, I live the cliché.” Most Pomps have tattoos. Mine is on my left biceps, a cherub with Modigliani eyes. It’s bodiless, with wings folded beneath the head.
It’s a cherub, but it’s a menacing, snarling cherub. Actually it’s downright creepy looking. I know it’s wanky; I had it done when I turned nineteen, had far too much money and way too much to drink. The bemused tattooist wouldn’t have let me do it except, well, Tim was there. Actually I think the whole thing was his idea. And he can be so persuasive. Thing is, I don’t remember him ever getting a tattoo.
That was before I decided on the path of single-income home debt, and I was heavily into Modigliani. And I liked the irony of it, drunk as I was. Despite what you see on Victorian era tombstones, cherubs have had nothing to do with pomping in centuries.
Most Pomps go for the hourglass, with all the sand at the bottom, or butterflies. Depends on how old you are, I reckon. We like our symbolism. Morrigan has a small twenty cent coin-sized skull tattooed on his forearm, and a flock of sparrows on his back, which extend to sleeves over his biceps. But he can do things with his that I’m incapable of—they’re genuine inklings. I’ve seen them break the cage of his flesh and go flying around the room.
Mom and Dad had been horrified at my ink. Going against the trend, neither of them had even a hint of iconography in their house, let alone on their skin. They’d always been a bit suspicious of my own interests in that area. Morrigan had talked them out of disowning me. After all, he had tatts too, so it couldn’t be too bad.
Thing is, Lissa isn’t looking at my tatt. I feel my face flush.
“A little privacy please,” I say.
“But we’ve already bonded over your porn collection. And Molly’s sitting there.”
“Out,” I say. “Both of you.”
“But you look so happy to see me. Well, I hope that’s because of me.” And she’s gone. Oh dear, part of me misses her, even if it’s rapidly deflating. She is dead after all. Molly turns tail, too, and I get the feeling that she’s laughing at me.
I rinse off the soap and begin the process of shaving off my beard. I only cut myself twice which means that my hands aren’t shaking as much as they were. Once done, I dry myself down and dress, quickly and somewhat timidly, feeling decidedly self-conscious. Once dressed I take a few deep breaths and work on my hair. My hands sting, but they’re glass-free.
No one’s come crashing through the front door. I’m careful not to pick up my phone. Maybe coming home was reckless, but I had to recharge. I needed this—I’m hungry, and I’d kill for a cup of tea. I boil the kettle on my gas stove, cupping my hands over the flame.
It’s gotten cold. I hate the cold, and I’ve put on a duffel coat that Lissa says makes me look like a thief. I’m tired; I can’t be bothered explaining that the coat was my father’s. He gave it to me when I was little. It used to be twice my size, then—height and width. The first time I could wear it without tripping over its hem was one of the happiest of my life. While I have this coat, I’ve still got something of my dad.
I set two cups down and ask Lissa if she takes milk or sugar. It’s an automatic gesture. She shakes her head.
“I’m not a tea drinker,” she says, and we both laugh. I open the pantry door, take out a Mars Bar, and start gulping down its various essential nutrients. I realize the last thing I ate was a Chiko Roll. I may actually manage to kill myself with my diet before someone gets me with a gun.
“One thing I can’t stand is noisy eaters,” Lissa says. “If you’re going to inhale that thing, at least do it quietly.”
“Anything else you don’t like?”
“I never really liked my job.”
I’m impressed by her segueing. “Well, quit.”
Lissa glares at me. “Aren’t we Mr. Glib.”
I’m feeling a little better. The kettle’s boiling, I pour the water into my cup. Mom loved her tea. The thought that I’ll never have a cup with her again takes the breath from me. I’m not sure I want it anymore. I put it back down and step away.
Lissa’s giving me a worried look, now. Is this the best that I can get? Concern from a dead girl? Someone who was lost to me before I even got to know her, someone who should be receiving that concern from me. What’s wrong with me? And here I am having a cup of tea.
“You’re scaring me a little here,” Lissa says.
“Mom,” I say, gesturing at my cup.
Lissa frowns. “Well, she wouldn’t want you to stop drinking tea, would she?”
I shake my head. I need milk for the tea. I drink my coffee black, but I take milk with my tea. Mom was very particular about that, even with tea bags—boil, then steep, then milk, but no sugar. Don’t get me started on that. I open my fridge.
“Shit.
”
There’s a bomb in there. A mobile phone, wrapped in a tangle of wires that is buried in a lump of explosive like a cyber tick on a C-4 plastique dog. And the phone’s LCD is flashing.
Lissa screams, “Run!”
I’m already doing it.
“Molly,” I yell, as I grab my bag in a reflex action that may just get me killed. I hurtle out the back door, down the steps and into the backyard. “Moll—”
I’m consumed by brilliance. A wave of heat comes swift on its tail. I’m lifted up and thrown into the bamboo that lines the back fence. Behind me the house is ablaze. A few moments later, the gas tanks beneath the house detonate. Molly, where’s Molly? I throw my arm over my face and weep. My house, the one I’ve been paying off for the last six years, is all gone. Fragments of my CD collection are part of the smoldering rain falling on my backyard.
I crawl back through the bamboo. It’s digging into me, there are shards of wood that are actually stuck in my flesh. I wrench myself out of the thicket, dragging my bag. Something whines.
“Oh, Molly.”
She’s broken. Her back is twisted at an angle that makes me sick with the sight of it. She tries to rise, even manages it for a moment. She moans and slumps back to the ground. There’s blood all through her fur.
I’m running to her side, and she looks at me with her beautiful eyes, and there’s terror and pain there. This isn’t fair. It isn’t fair. She doesn’t understand what’s happening. She tries to rise again. “It’s OK, girl,” I say, and I rest my hand on her head, and her breathing steadies a little. It’s the only comfort I can offer her. “Molly.”
I don’t know what to touch. I don’t know how to hold her, what’s not going to hurt her anymore. She’s shivering, and I stroke her head. “Molly, good girl.”
What’s left of my house burns, flaring up when something particularly flammable catches alight. My face is hot, and I stroke my dog’s head. Shit. Shit. Shit.
Molly takes one more shuddery breath, and is still. And she isn’t my Molly anymore. Something passes through me, gentler than a human, but it hurts regardless.
Death Most Definite (Death Works #1) Page 8