The Dead

by Gatward, David

  The only response he got from Arielle was a thin, black smile. She revved the Defender’s engine hard. Lazarus grabbed the handle above the door with one hand, the dashboard with his other. Arielle rammed the vehicle into first gear, released the handbrake, and accelerated hard. The engine roared, the sound shattering the peace of the wood and scattering wildlife. Lazarus heard the tires spin, then the Defender lurched forward down the road through the woods.

  The road was narrow, barely wide enough for the vehicle, and Arielle wasn’t letting up on the accelerator. The trees were a blur. Craig was bouncing around the back of the truck, finding it impossible to hold on. The side mirrors were lucky to stay attached, considering the whipping they were getting from branches. The road itself was riddled with potholes. It was all Lazarus could do to keep himself in the cab, never mind in his seat.

  Craig, having managed to pull himself forward, shouted, ‘Do you always drive like this?’

  ‘No,’ called Arielle through a wild grin. ‘I usually go faster.’

  She dropped a gear, whipped the truck round a sharp bend, sending the rear spinning out, and sprayed mud, grit and water into the air as the road dropped steeply away from them.

  ‘You’re insane!’ yelled Lazarus as he felt his stomach disappear like he was on a roller coaster. ‘Slow down!’

  ‘I know what I’m doing,’ said Arielle.

  They hit the bottom of a dip, and bounced back up the other side, the tires tearing at the road as they climbed a steep hill. Lazarus considered closing his eyes, but decided he’d rather see what was coming and prepare for it than have it turn up as a surprise.

  Round another corner they went, then the road was straight. It only made Arielle accelerate even harder. The Defender crashed through a puddle that breached the entire width of the road, then took off moments later as it hit a ridge. That moment of silence, as the vehicle grabbed air for a split second, seemed to last for ages. Then it hammered back to earth and chewed its way forward, ravenous for more.

  The track disappeared as Arielle launched them out of the wood. Lazarus was suddenly looking down a normal road. He didn’t feel relieved at all. Now on a smooth surface, Arielle was able to go even faster. Lazarus knew the Somerset roads as well as anyone. They had a reputation for killing and maiming.

  ‘Please, slow down,’ he begged, as they bounced round a hairpin.

  Arielle just looked across at him, her eyes dark. Ahead, a crossroads loomed. She didn’t even change gear.

  A few minutes later, they were back at Lazarus’s house. Craig was pale and shaken, Arielle as inscrutable as ever.

  ‘So, Lazarus?’ said Arielle. ‘Where do you suggest we start?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Because you’re his son and, like it or not, that means you probably know him better than anyone.’

  Lazarus didn’t want to admit it, but Arielle had a point.

  ‘We’ll start in the office,’ he said, striding inside, the front door slamming hard against its hinges behind the others. ‘If we’re going to find anything about where Dad is, it’ll be in there.’

  He pushed into the room first. It was cool and smelled musty, and when he flicked the lights on it felt like he’d walked into a room that hadn’t been occupied in years. It had the haunting stillness of a museum.

  ‘You check the bookcases,’ Lazarus nodded at Craig. Without even turning to Arielle, he pointed at two large filing cabinets. ‘See what you can find in there. I’m checking his desk.’

  ‘Pointless,’ said Arielle. ‘I went through that myself, remember? All I got was his diary and that was no use at all.’

  ‘You could’ve missed something,’ said Lazarus. ‘I mean, you’ve lost my dad, so I’m not sure I trust your observation skills.’

  Arielle didn’t reply, but Lazarus saw a faint smile crease her lips. After all that had happened, and the fact that he and Craig were still alive, he was beginning to see that perhaps she was on their side after all. OK, so he didn’t quite understand what side that actually was, but she was looking for his dad, seemed more than a little concerned about him, and was asking for their help. It was better than nothing. And a whole world better than being dead. He’d already been that, and it wasn’t something he was desperate to be again.

  For the next half an hour no one spoke. Sitting behind his dad’s desk, Lazarus went through every drawer, every file he could find. He’d been right about his dad – definitely anal. He found receipts stretching back years for everything from clothes to car repairs. Why hadn’t he thrown them away? They were useless.

  Craig didn’t fare any better. The books were just Tobias’s working library. If there was a book in the world on security or locks or bank safes, then his dad had it. It wasn’t something to be proud of.

  It was beginning to turn to morning now and a grey light was slipping in through the windows. When the light fell on Arielle, she looked ghostlike: a thin grey spectre in a long brown coat. The silence was broken when she shouted in despair and threw a file across the study.

  ‘You idiot, Tobias! Where have you gone?’

  ‘Something up?’ Lazarus asked.

  ‘All of this – it’s good,’ Arielle snapped, waving a hand around the room. ‘Too good. Your father was more than brilliant at what he did, Lazarus. No one would ever have suspected that behind this watertight façade he was also the Keeper.’

  Lazarus shook his head, trying to understand. ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘The problem,’ said Arielle, ‘is that if all of this is anything to go by, the chances of your father leaving any hint of his whereabouts are slim, to say the least. He lived and breathed his cover story. He’s spent years hiding the truth. What chance have we got of ever finding it?’

  Lazarus shrugged. ‘This is where his life was. This room. His work was his life. Well, his work and those stupid clocks you see all round the house. He loved those more than me, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Clocks?’ said Arielle.

  Lazarus nodded. ‘He was always fiddling with them, making sure they were keeping the correct time. In some ways it’s weird him not being here – he’s never been away long enough to let them start winding down so much that they stop.’

  Arielle walked over to a large clock above a fireplace in the far wall. ‘Tobias always was obsessed with keeping the right time,’ she said.

  ‘That one doesn’t work,’ said Lazarus. ‘He’s had it in his workshop I don’t know how many times and it just won’t go. Really pissed Dad off, actually.’

  Arielle stood back and Lazarus noticed something. Hadn’t there always been an old black vase next to that clock? It wasn’t there now. It wasn’t important, he thought, the disappearance of an ornament – it just jarred him, that was all. His dad was so meticulous about everything, it was hard to work out why it would no longer be there. But then perhaps his dad had just got tired of staring at it and got rid of it. Lazarus had never liked it anyway.

  Arielle cut into Lazarus’s thoughts. ‘Workshop? What workshop?’

  ‘It’s in the cellar under the stairs,’ said Lazarus. ‘But it’s just old clock parts and work benches. There’s nothing down there.’

  But he was talking to Arielle’s back. He chased after her, Craig not far behind, and found her outside the door to the cellar.

  ‘Down here?’

  Lazarus nodded and looked at the door. It was an unassuming thing, painted white and pricked here and there with holes from drawing pins. A few Post-it notes were stuck to it in places and occasionally caught the breeze that shifted through the old house uninvited. It was the kind of door behind which you’d expect to find coats and boots and a vacuum cleaner and little else.

  ‘Where’s the key?’ Arielle demanded.

  ‘No idea,’ said Lazarus. ‘Dad always had it. It’s not like I needed it, is it? I’ve never even been down there.’

  Arielle stepped back. ‘You’d better stand clear,’ she said.

  Lazarus an
d Craig didn’t get chance to ask why. Arielle had already raised her right foot and launched it at the door.

  18 Candle Glow

  The cellar door shattered like ice.

  ‘And just why the hell was that necessary?’ sighed Lazarus, having only just managed to duck out of the way of the flying splinters.

  Arielle didn’t answer. ‘Is there a light switch?’ she asked.

  Lazarus pointed inside the door. ‘Just there, on the right.’

  Arielle reached up and flicked the switch. A bulb zipped into operation. Its dusty glow lit a steep stone staircase that folded out of the darkness and led beneath the house. At the bottom stood another door.

  ‘And your father worked down here?’ asked Arielle. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘He said he liked the quiet of the place,’ Lazarus answered. ‘And he had it sorted so that it was at a constant temperature. Something to do with not affecting the workings of the clocks. Can’t say I really cared.’

  ‘You know, I’ve always wanted to go down here,’ said Craig, unable to disguise the excitement in his voice.

  Lazarus led the way. At the bottom of the stairs he opened the second door. Cool air shifted past them as they stared into a thick darkness.

  ‘No lights?’ asked Arielle.

  ‘Guess not,’ said Lazarus. Then he remembered. ‘No, there wouldn’t be. Dad was always buying candles for this place. Said he and the clocks preferred the atmosphere.’

  ‘So where are they then?’ asked Arielle.

  ‘Like I said, I’ve never been down here,’ said Lazarus. ‘We’ll just have to look for them. They must be here by the door, though.’

  ‘Your dad really is weird, isn’t he?’ said Craig.

  Lazarus turned to the wall and started to feel around for a hole or something where he guessed his dad kept matches and candles. But Craig found them first. Then, with a lit candle, he led the way into the workshop, lighting other candles on the way as they slunk out of the gloom, until the whole room was glowing like the inside of a lantern. It felt more than a little strange to stand for the first time in a room in the house he’d lived in all his life, a room his dad had used almost on a daily basis.

  It felt like a tomb, a windowless cave occupied by the corpses of clocks waiting for resurrection. The floor was well-worn flagstones, polished by years of use. A large desk was in the middle of the room, a half-mended clock in the center, its innards spilled out neatly like a perfect autopsy. A leather chair sat pulled under the desk. One wall of the cellar was given over to shelving; clearly labelled boxes filled the space, each containing spare bits of this and that for repairing timepieces. The wall containing the door was bare but for a jacket on a hook. The wall opposite the shelves was little more than a vast cage holding bottle after bottle of wine, many dust-covered, like they had been asleep for years – and they probably had. The remaining wall, the one opposite the door to the place, held only one thing – a picture of someone Lazarus knew all about but had no memory of. His mom.

  ‘Your dad was obsessed,’ said Craig, going over to look at the shelves of clock parts attached to the wall. ‘

  Arielle called over from a dark corner of the room, the cage of wine in front of her. Lazarus turned to see her holding a dusty bottle.

  ‘Tobias was a sly old fox,’ she said. ‘He’s got some seriously rare vintages over here.’

  Craig said, ‘But I thought your dad didn’t drink?’

  ‘Seems a lot of what I thought about my dad is total fiction,’ Lazarus replied. He sat down at the desk. Laid out in front of him on an oily rag were a few brass cogs and some other bits and pieces he hadn’t a clue about. ‘We’re not going to find anything down here,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘It’s just clocks, Dad’s hobby. That’s it. It’s pointless.’

  ‘We’ve nothing else to go on,’ said Arielle, replacing the bottle of wine. ‘If it’s not here, then …’

  ‘Then what?’

  Arielle turned to some books on a shelf and started to flick through.

  Lazarus nodded at the shelves on the wall by Craig. ‘You OK to look through those?’ he sighed. ‘Don’t ask what we’re trying to find. Just if you see something that doesn’t fit in a place dedicated to saving clocks, let me know.’

  Craig started to search. Lazarus turned back to the desk. Apart from the clock pieces, the desktop itself was clear except for a large church candle on one corner at least a foot high. Lazarus leant forward to light it, then moved on to the drawers. Those on the left were filled with yet more receipts, though these were all to do with clocks. They were dated and filed in order and Lazarus was struck with an urge to shuffle them all up. The drawers on the left were empty. The only other drawer was the one in the middle. It was slim and wide and when Lazarus gave it a tug it moved easily, the runners obviously well worn, and slid open to reveal, at last, a little hint of untidiness in his dad’s world. Pens jostled for position with broken pencils, a ruler and a small hardback book on basic carpentry skills. A tin of paperclips had spilt its contents and a couple of tins of small cigars lay open and half empty. This was another surprise – Lazarus didn’t know his dad had ever smoked. The rest of the drawer was given over to a fairly large collection of old Moleskine notebooks held together in bundles of three with brown twine.

  Lazarus pulled out one of the bundles and started to untie them, expecting to find little more than his dad’s notes on repairing clocks. But when he opened the first book and read the first page, he felt a shiver race up his back. He was looking at his dad’s diaries.

  For a few moments he wondered if looking in the diaries was a good idea at all. In them were the thoughts of someone he thought he’d known at least a little about; it turned out that he’d known absolutely nothing. He’d lived a lie and he was angry. Why hadn’t his dad trusted him enough to at least give him some idea of all this? He was tempted to burn the books with the candle flame. But curiosity eventually took hold and he opened a diary.

  Lazarus had no idea how long he’d been looking at the diary, except that when he looked back up, half the candle had disappeared and what he’d read in the pages of the book had changed everything. Time hadn’t just flown, it had disappeared with every word, paragraph and page Lazarus had read.

  ‘Lazarus?’

  Lazarus looked up to see Arielle and Craig.

  ‘What is it? What have you found? You’ve been very quiet.’

  Lazarus didn’t know where to begin, so pushed the question back. ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Just this,’ said Arielle and rested a box of papers on the desk. ‘It’s all in your dad’s handwriting, but it’s just research.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Notes on the Dead,’ explained Arielle. ‘He was a thorough man. He’s cross-referenced the notes to a pile of books I found over there, some of which are ancient. But it’s nothing out of the ordinary, not if you consider what your father actually did. Your dad just wanted to know everything about what he was dealing with, and if that meant finding out how to walk in the Land of the Dead to track down a particularly nasty customer, then that’s what he’d do.’

  ‘Walk there?’ said Lazarus. ‘You mean someone living can cross over, too?’

  ‘Even if it is possible,’ said Arielle, ‘you’d need a damned good disguise. The Dead would be on you like stink.’

  ‘If it’s all the same with you,’ said Craig, ‘I’d prefer to stay here.’

  ‘Anyway Lazarus,’ said Arielle, ‘what did you find?’

  ‘These,’ said Lazarus. He handed the book in his hand to Arielle, then reached for another and gave it to Craig. ‘Dad’s diaries. His real ones. He’s been keeping them for years. The earliest I’ve found starts just days after Mom was killed.’

  Arielle and Craig opened the books, flicked through the pages.

  ‘And if the person in those books is my dad,’ said Lazarus, leaning back in his chair, ‘then just who the hell have I been living wit
h all my life?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Arielle. ‘This is your father’s writing. I’d recognize it anywhere.’

  ‘I mean,’ said Lazarus, ‘that Dad’s about as emotional as a bag of chips. He doesn’t get excited about anything, show feelings, even to me.’ He reached into the desk and pulled out the rest of the diaries, thumping them down on to the desktop. ‘So tell me, Arielle, did you know that Dad cries every night thinking about Mom? Because I didn’t. And that’s weird, isn’t it?’

  Lazarus could see that Arielle still didn’t understand.

  ‘There are poems in here for God’s sake,’ he said, opening a page to one he’d read a few minutes ago. ‘And there’s stuff in here about me, too.’

  ‘Like what?’ asked Craig.

  ‘Like how proud he is of me and how much he loves me,’ said Lazarus. ‘Like how life without Mom is unbearable, that he couldn’t live without her, that he wanted her back. So why didn’t he just tell me face-to-face instead of writing it in a book in a cave, eh?’

  ‘Lazarus,’ said Arielle, ‘I know this is all a bit of a shock—’

  ‘Can you imagine it?’ continued Lazarus. ‘There’s Dad, dealing with the Dead, sending them back. Then he loses his wife and he’s got all this knowledge and power but can’t stop her dying, can’t bring her back? Seems a bit unfair, don’t you think?’

  ‘Lazarus,’ said Arielle, her voice calm and measured, ‘did you find anything that would tell us where your dad has gone? Anything at all?’

  Lazarus picked up one of the bundles of diaries and shook it in front of Arielle’s face. ‘Gone? He’s never been here! Ever! It’s like Dad died the day Mom was killed and he’s just hidden himself away down in this cave, refusing to get over it and move on. And no one noticed. Not even me!’

  ‘Look, Lazarus,’ said Arielle, reaching out a hand to him, ‘there’s nothing I can say. You dad was always quiet, always kept himself to himself.’

  ‘And stop talking about him in the past tense!’ yelled Lazarus, springing up out of the chair, knocking away Arielle’s hand. ‘He’s not dead!’