by Wood, Rick
“Yeah?”
“Will you… will you marry me?”
Jenny’s eyes grew wide. She shifted her entire body toward the woman she loved, clutching onto her hand.
At first she was astounded, then she was excited – then, she grew confused.
“But… how?” Jenny offered, flustered.
“How what?”
“How would we get married? Lacy, we’re gay.”
“They are starting to debate allowing civil partnerships in Parliament. Or, if not, we can go to Belgium, some-place in Spain called Aragon; they’ve even married same-sex couples in a part of Canada. We can travel.”
Lacy’s face grew vulnerable. She was still poised in that same position, looking up at Jenny, clutching onto her hand. Not only was her leg starting to ache, she had expected Jenny’s first words following her proposal to be more positive.
Then Jenny’s fluster faded to a grand, elated smile – and Lacy felt reassured.
“I…” Jenny shook in excitement, euphoria overcoming her. “Of course, Lacy. Of course!”
Lacy’s smile grew tenfold. She jumped up, as did Jenny, and they embraced in a close, tight hug. Jenny’s hands gripped onto Lacy; not just grabbed, but gripped – clutching her tightly, ensuring she would never leave from this position.
They pulled back for a moment to look each other in the eyes.
They laughed. Smirked. Rested their foreheads against each other’s.
Then they kissed. A long, passionate, loving kiss. Their first as fiancées.
“Oh my God, who do we tell first?” Jenny eagerly burst out.
“I don’t know! Our parents?”
“I’ve got to tell Derek, and oh my God, when Eddie finds out, he is going to flip –”
She froze.
For a fleeting moment, her positive demeanour dropped. She looked to the floor, bit her bottom lip, quivering ever so slightly.
Lacy grabbed Jenny’s face in her hands and forced her gaze to fall on her.
“We’re getting married,” Lacy emphatically reminded her. “Oh my God, when should we do it?”
“Well, we’ll obviously want to wait.”
Lacy paused, looking back at Jenny with clear perplexity.
“What?” she prompted.
“Well, the world is ending; obviously, we can’t do it yet,” Jenny insisted. “Besides, I’d want Eddie at my wedding, wouldn’t I?”
Lacy’s expression didn’t falter. Her eyebrows remained narrowed, her lips stuttering over what to say.
“But – what if he can’t be?”
“Why would you say that?”
“I just think –”
“Look,” Jenny interrupted, feeling an argument coming on. “Let’s just celebrate being engaged first. Then we can carry on with this, right?”
“Okay…” Lacy reluctantly confirmed, her irritation still obviously evident.
“Come here,” Jenny instructed, spreading a smile across her face, wrapping her arms around Lacy.
She held her loving partner close. Treasuring the moment, knowing it could all end soon.
13
21 January 2003
Clouds hovered in the sky, bearing a thickening grey omen overhead. They were ominous but reliably dense, somehow reminding Martin of his ma. They took him back to a thought, a hint of memory he had lodged in the depths of his mind, from when he was a child. He and Ma had just left the cinema; she could still walk and they were happy.
The clouds above had been a gloomy haze, fully formed, with the smell of fine rain in the air; but no rain falling as yet. His mum had just paused in the middle of a busy street, looked up, and smiled.
“What you doing, Ma?” his young boy’s voice had asked.
“I love the rain,” she had answered, smiling peculiarly at the threatening cloud constellations passing above.
She had always loved the rain, Martin remembered as he bowed his head.
“Fine,” Martin grunted, standing wearily in the middle of the church courtyard, his voice bouncing off the stone walls. “Teach me. But just don’t treat me like shit again, yeah?”
Father Douglas grinned a knowing grin, as if there was some deep knowledge or wisdom he was aware of, that Martin wasn’t. Like it was a joke Martin wasn’t party to.
“You see, boy, that’s the problem,” Douglas eagerly gesticulated. “All these things I say, that I shout at you, all I’m doing is echoing your thoughts. You have to think – is it really me you are afraid of listening to, or is it your own mind?”
Martin shrugged, sighing with sheer exasperation, looking around himself for imaginary answers.
“See,” Martin replied agitatedly, “what does that even mean?”
“It means your thoughts are too loud.” Douglas strode toward Martin, placing his hands upon Martin’s shoulders in a firm, passionate grip. “Shut them up.”
“How am I meant to shut my thoughts up? They’re just kinda there, you know?”
Douglas remained within inches of Martin, his hands resting resolutely upon the young man’s shoulders. His eyes willed Martin’s to understand, to react.
“That is why you can’t do it. That is why I’m not bringing this out of you, what you are is not reaching the surface.”
“I don’t –”
“Your mind is a mess, boy!”
A mess? Well what do you expect? I’m a homeless orphan forced half way across the world to be abused!
“I –” Martin stuttered, throwing his arms in the air, pulling out of Douglas’ grasp and walking around in an energetic fume.
“What? Speak, boy!”
“Stop calling me boy, to start with!” Martin cried out, turning to Douglas and flailing his arms in the air.
“What else?” Douglas smirked.
“What else?” Martin echoed in disbelief. “Stop telling me I ain’t shit; that I ain’t amounting up to nothin’.”
“That bothers you?”
“Yes! I have got nothing in the world, you prick. Nothing!”
Martin collapsed against the wall, ignoring the sharp pain of the solid stone banging against his forehead. He held in his tears, held them in as hard as he could, refusing to crack, refusing to give in.
“Stop holding it in,” Douglas demanded. “This is why you fail. Your emotions control you, you don’t control your emotions.”
“You make no sense!” Martin screamed at his mentor, flinging himself around, his voice reverberating around the courtyard multiple times.
“Let it out!”
“Let what out?”
“Why you are such a coward.”
“I am not a coward!” Martin fell to his knees, bowing his head, gritting and grinding his teeth, clenching his fists into tight balls of fury, digging his nails into his palms. “I have nothing, you hear me? I ain’t got no parents, no friends, no home, nothing. And you stand here telling me I don’t mean shit?”
His tears forced themselves out like bullets. His cries liberated from the pent-up rage that had boiled through him his entire life. Everything came soaring out: his dad, his mum, the accident, the death, the beating by Bandile, the degradation by Douglas, the beating up by his best friend, the exclusions from school, the constant defiance of anyone who tried to help him.
It forced its way out.
Then it stopped.
His tears ended. Evaporated. Turned to meaningless condensation.
Douglas crouched before Martin and placed an affectionate, caring hand on Martin’s back.
“How do you feel now?” Douglas asked.
Martin lifted his head, wiping his eyes.
“Better,” he answered.
“Good. Now this is out of you, you might just be able to think clearly. You might just be able to do something magnificent with your life.”
Martin nodded.
Martin smiled. Not a pretend smile he’d shown to teachers at school – a real smile. The first real smile he had given in years.
14
&n
bsp; 22 January 2003
Derek’s organisation made Jenny feel slightly inferior.
Across the entire far wall of his study was a giant pin-board, illuminated only by the powerful lamp light Derek shone against it in what was otherwise an unlit room.
This board displayed a map of the world, with pins on certain locations, led by strings to various pictures and notes of information that represented the different people on the list. The locations were all educated guesses for where these people could be – but Jenny was still impressed.
Most notable was the name of Stella Clutchings; that had a big red cross marked over it. The first victim of the heir of hell – or the ‘heir’, as Derek had taken to referring to him.
Jenny still referred to him as Eddie.
Because that is his name.
“So if we believe that the heir was here a matter of weeks ago,” Derek was saying, in the midst of one of his engrossed lectures of what they were to do, “Then the heir must be travelling to somewhere close in Europe for his next. Unless the heir’s powers are such that he doesn’t need to follow a logical pattern. After all, the heir would likely return to hell, making such an assumption redundant.”
“Why do you keep calling him the heir?” Jenny demanded.
She stood in the doorway of the room, hands on hips, blocking any light from seeping through from the hallway behind her.
“Why, because that’s what it is,” Derek paused, sneering at her without deliberately intending to. “It is the heir of hell we are facing.”
“No, it’s not,” Jenny exclaimed, taking a step forward. “It is Eddie.”
Derek sighed. He bowed his head and closed his eyes. He would need to consider how to approach this; Jenny was obviously hurting, and this was a struggle for her.
But so am I, dammit. I’m hurting too!
If they were to succeed in killing this demon, they needed to be realistic. He only wished Jenny could see this.
He raised his head, taking a calm, soothing tone; determined not to act irrationally or aggressively, ensuring this did not turn into an argument or a heated debate.
“Because, Jenny,” he began, “it is not Eddie we are facing.”
Jenny shook her head and looked away.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Derek continued, before she could interrupt. “I miss Eddie more than anything. But Eddie is dead. What this is, is no longer Eddie. It is a piece of evil that grew from within him, and destroyed him. We are no longer facing our friend.”
“You just don’t get it, do you?”
Derek grew irritable, and despite his better intentions, his irritation surfaced. He threw a stack of papers from his hand and turned toward her, jabbing his pointing finger into her personal space.
“What? What is it I don’t get, Jenny?” he spat petulantly. “That Eddie was a great man? That Eddie does not deserve this, that we love Eddie, that this is a bloody atrocity and we all would dearly love Eddie back? Or is it that I was the one who trained him, and helped him hone this thing inside of him, and if it wasn’t for me we wouldn’t be in this bloody mess of a situation?”
Jenny shook her head, waving her arms in surrender. “I’m sorry,” she told him. “Sometimes you’re just so black-and-white about this stuff that it doesn’t seem like you actually feel anything.”
“Oh, believe me,” he growled venomously through gritted teeth, “I feel everything. I just don’t go wearing it on my sleeve. Because what good will that do? One of us has to have our head on.”
Derek turned back to the map and rubbed his sinus. He rolled his sleeves up; a gesture Jenny knew as a sign of Derek’s petulance. His appearance was always immaculate, no matter what. Even now he was wearing a shirt, tie, and waistcoat. But for him to roll his sleeves up to his elbow and allow, even for a minute, one bit of scruffiness into his demeanour – that small, insignificant gesture indicated he was done with this discussion.
“So, what do we do now?” Jenny enquired, folding her arms. “I mean, what’s our next step?”
“Our next step is to reach the next person on the list. They are written in order of power. We need to recruit our army.”
“And where do we start?”
Derek picked up his list and read the next name aloud: “Jamile Arshad.” Tracing his finger across the string that led from this name to the map, he announced the location of the man they needed to recruit next.
“Canada.”
This made Jenny smile.
Canada was a place that had allowed a civil partnership. One of the first places, in fact. Somewhere she and Lacy could go to should they need to leave the country to get married.
Then she realised – Derek didn’t know. How could she not have told them?
“Oh my God, Derek,” she announced, grabbing his arm. “I haven’t told you yet. I completely forgot.”
“What is it?”
Jenny lifted out her left hand, revealing a gold ring with an impressive diamond perched upon it.
“What is this?” Derek asked, confused.
“We’re engaged!” Jenny cheered, waving her hands in the air in excitement. “We are getting married. Me and Lacy.”
Derek looked back at her with a muddled gaze.
“I mean, I know we might not be able to do it in this country yet, but they are debating it. If not, then there are other countries where civil partnerships are slowly becoming legal. I can’t believe I forgot to tell you about this! Aren’t you excited?”
Derek’s face bore no expression. He stroked his hand down his goatee, then, eventually, his eyebrows furrowed.
“Excuse my questioning,” Derek began, “but… is this the best time?”
Jenny’s happiness slid away like an upturned bucket of water.
“What?”
“I mean, that’s delightful, yes – but isn’t it a rather inopportune moment?”
Jenny’s jaw dropped. Her head shook despondently.
“I cannot believe this.”
“Forgive the impertinence, Jenny, I was just saying–”
“Well don’t ‘just say.’ And yes, I do think this is the right time. I think this is the perfect time.”
Derek dropped his head. He knew he’d said the wrong thing and guilt spread over him.
“And for your information,” Jenny continued, one hand on her hip, and the other jabbing a stiff, pointed finger in Derek’s direction, “I told Lacy this wasn’t the right time to actually have the wedding yet. I just agreed to get married. Because I love her. And if the world is ending, I would like that to be damn well known.”
Silence overcame the room. Derek closed his eyes, shaking his head, lifting his arms helplessly in the air as an indication of him being unable to justify his reaction.
“Jenny, I’m sorry –”
“Forget it,” she snapped. “Let’s just get on with it.”
She sat down at the desk, resting her head on her hand, crossing her leg and pulling an expression of disgust as if she were an insolent child.
Deciding it was best to just carry on, Derek continued to explain the plan.
Jenny didn’t listen to a word.
15
25 January 2003
The snowy mountain stood still beneath the clouds, puffs of white floating slowly like a mask of absence. The trees gathered together like soldiers led into the distance beyond the mountains; a jungle one could so easily lose themselves in.
Jamile Arshad had done so many times.
He loved living so near to Alberta, with its glorious mountains big enough to rival even God’s presence. Its smooth lakes remained blue, despite the pollution inflicted on so many of the world’s bodies of water. The trees, the grass, the snow, the humid moisture in the air, the rocks that led down to the water’s edge – it was heavenly.
It was magnificent.
And Jamile felt so lucky to have lived there his entire life.
When he had first discovered his gift, it hadn’t been easy. People had died attemp
ting to climb these mountains; although this number had decreased significantly with the recent knowledge of mountaineering most escapists had.
Still, it was a strange way to learn that you could communicate with the dead. Often conversations between Jamile and wayward mountaineers would take an entire afternoon of discussion before the mountaineers would realise they were dead.
This day was just like any other. Sat beside the water’s edge, he could hear a distant sobbing. When he looked over, a small boy wearing what looked like a private school uniform knelt by the edge. He wore shorts and, on a day like that, shorts were an unusual choice.
“My friend,” offered Jamile. “Are you not cold?”
The boy turned slowly, dumbfounded that someone might be talking to him. As he revealed his face, Jamile could see water dripping from his hair, a redness in his cheeks and an inquisitive, taken aback stare in his eyes.
The boy looked over his shoulder a few times, trying to figure out who Jamile might be looking at.
“Yes, I can see you,” Jamile grinned. “Strange, isn’t it? You’re ignored by everyone, so much so that when you’re not ignored, you kind of wish you were?”
The boy just gazed back at Jamile, stumped.
“Did you drown?”
The boy faintly nodded.
“I thought so. The dripping hair gave it away. Strange, really – that the way you die impacts so much on the appearance you take when you are dead.”
“I’m…” the boy muttered. “…Dead?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Jamile stood, placed his hands in his pockets and meandered down to the water’s edge.
“I have a gift, see,” Jamile continued. “I can see people like you. People who are stuck here. I can help.”
“You can help me?”
“Sure.”
“Can you… help me find my mummy?”
Jamile sighed and shook his head. “Afraid not. I can help you find peace, but your mother – that is one thing I cannot find, as it goes.”
“Oh. That’s a shame.” The boy stood beside Jamile and peered out across the lake, gazing at the same beautiful scene Jamile had gazed upon his entire life.