The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy

by Trent Jamieson

  “Sorry,” Wal says, “sometimes this doesn’t work.”

  “Now you tell me.”

  The ground beneath me opens its great earthy maw and I’m enveloped in loamy darkness, and then I’m out, and once more in the whispering Deepest Dark.

  Lissa’s soul is a brilliance in the dark. It coruscates, and I recognize it immediately with a certainty that only years of pomping, and true love, can provide. Oh, how I love her. She’s my Lissa, and I’d go through Hell a thousand, thousand times to find her. And if I lost her I would do it again.

  I reach for her soul and it bites me, bites and scratches in a way that no light should. I yowl into the void, but I hold on. The soul is chaos in brilliant form. It is all that is love and hate, it is all that is passion and hopelessness, and madness. It is so definitely madness. But so is what I’m doing.

  I am holding her essence.

  I bring it to my chest and Lissa’s soul passes through me. It’s a fierce liquid pain, and one I’ve never known before, but there’s also a rightness to it and an intimacy that goes far deeper than what we shared when we made love. It spreads through my flesh, seeps into my bones.

  A Pomp is a gateway, a conduit, and that doorway can extend back to the living world. I don’t fight it, just let it happen. Until it’s over.

  At last, I release my breath.

  She’s gone. Again. I look up into the sky, where all the souls are flickering like stars, shining and waiting, waiting perhaps for the love that is life to call them back again. And I realize that this is what we’re fighting for, this aching brilliance. This is what the Stirrers want to destroy.

  And suddenly I’m scared, because it seems so fragile. I felt the essence of Lissa, held it in my hands, though already the clear memory of it is fading. My flesh cannot hold it, shouldn’t hold it. Life is longing, it isn’t certainty. That is what is most wonderful, and awful, about it.

  I take a deep breath in the cold. It’s time I went home. Time I faced Morrigan.

  32

  Do you think that did it?” I take a few jumping steps, to try and get the blood flowing. Dust lifts in a fine silvery cloud into the air.

  Wal sighs. “Hard to say. You’re mixing up the natural order of things, and while I’d be the first to say that nature and supernature could do with a kick in the teeth sometimes, it can be difficult.”

  “You’re saying that after everything I’ve done—after being macheted at, shot at, pushed off the branches of the One Tree and falling, falling, falling—that I still may not get home?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying, Dorothy,” Wal says. “You’re not even wearing any slippers, and if I remember correctly there is no place like your home, because it blew up. As I said, it can be difficult.”

  “Sure is,” whispers a dry old voice. I turn toward the sound and there is Charon. At last.

  He’s the tallest—why is everybody so tall in the Underworld?—gauntest man I have ever seen. Bones are barely contained by his skin and jut like bruised wings from his hollow cheeks. His fingers and wrists seem to contain a fraction too little flesh to enclose the meat and skeleton beneath.

  “Been waiting for you,” I say. You can’t pull an Orpheus Maneuver and not expect to talk to the Old Man. “Where’s the boat?”

  “That metaphor really isn’t appropriate anymore. Besides, I’ve got staff. They drive the hydrofoils, the UnderCityCats, for me.”

  “So how do I get back?”

  “My, you are a tubby bugger,” he says, swinging his hand faster than my eye can follow. He pinches my stomach with fingers hard as stone.

  “I’m not fat,” I say.

  “You’re a regular bloody buddha.” Charon shakes his head, and lifts up one of his wrists. “This, my matey, is size zero. You don’t get any leaner. Well, perhaps there are a few fashion models who do, but they’re on a fast track to this place. The world’s gone to fat, particularly the bits of it that exist on the back of the other bits. When did you last go hungry, Mr. de Selby?”

  I shrug. I’m starving now, in fact. I can’t remember the last time I ate.

  Charon isn’t one for silence, I suppose he gets plenty of it. “Yes, well, you’d know if you ever really had—”

  “So how do I get back?” This could go on for a while.

  “Hmm, it was you who interrupted me.” He frowns. “I had a peek at your dossier. It’s highly unusual for you, but these are highly unusual times. The Negotiation is going to be very interesting, I think, more interesting than any of those dickheads upstairs expect.” He pulls a packet of Winnie Blues from his pocket and picks out a cigarette. “Want one?”

  “I don’t smoke. Not when I’m sober, anyway.”

  The Boatman grimaces. “C’mon, this is the Deepest Dark. Indulge yourself.”

  I shake my head, and he puts them away. “Let me tell you though, you will—and sober too, that’s a total one hundred percent prophecy—or maybe you won’t. Now, back to the question. You don’t leave—”

  “I have to. I have to get out of here, there’s unfinished business.”

  “Funny, I meet a lot of people who say that here. It’s as though life owes you a neat ending,” Charon says flatly. “And once again you interrupt. You don’t leave, not all of you. You have to leave something of yourself behind.”

  “I’d not heard of that condition.”

  “Probably forgotten. It’s been a while since anyone’s done this—kudos to you on that, too, boyo. Think about it, even The Orpheus left something of himself when he tried to escape the Underworld.”

  “Eurydice,” says Wal somewhat irrelevantly.

  “Yes, your little arm face is right. Though obviously back in the day, Hell was all about cruel and unusual punishment. The Orpheus left his heart behind and so do you.”

  The Boatman coughs, and thumps his chest with a bony hand. The sound echoes loudly in every direction, booming back at us. I imagine that whatever beats beneath those ribs, if it beats at all, is dusty and ancient and probably needs the occasional jolt.

  “Well, not exactly your heart,” he says, once he gets his breath back. “I’m obviously getting metaphorical, you know, figuratively speaking. The Orpheus looked back. It saved his life though, because I can tell you if he hadn’t left Eurydice behind he wouldn’t have gotten back himself. The fellow was far too cocky.”

  “Cold comfort though, isn’t it?” I say.

  “This is Hell, this is the flaming capital of cold comfort, mate.” The Boatman looks down at his feet. He’s wearing rubber thongs. They’re huge, but his feet overhang them by a good three or so inches, and his long toes end in nails painted black. He crouches, picks at something beneath a toenail. “Besides, if you go back, what are you going back into? That blocked artery is still going to be there, or that embolism. It’s a revolving door for most people. Even Deaths aren’t afforded the privilege of immortality, just a very, very long existence. Until Schism time, that is. That’s how Deaths work.”

  I’m not in the mood for a long lecture. “Can I nominate what stays behind?”

  “No.” Charon lifts from the crouch and looms over me, bending down to regard me with eyes dark and dangerous. “Crikey, that’s just being cheeky.”

  I hold his bleak gaze. “So it can be anything?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like, say, the left ventricle of my heart?”

  “Always getting back to the heart. You’re heart-centric. There are a lot of other organs that are essential now, aren’t there? And, each of them, including the heart, would be covered under the word ‘anything,’ though it would hardly be in the spirit of the deal. Look, it’s a risk. But we can’t have the living, not even Pomps, coming here and expecting it to be easy.”

  “I never expected it to be easy.” The truth is, I hadn’t really had a clue about what to expect or, until Mr. D gave me the option, that it would be possible.

  “You’re in the Underworld, Steven. You’re not on The Price is Right, or jumping a
fence.” He scratches his head. “Well, it’s exactly like both, only the price of losing is death—the fence is fatally electric, probably has skulls painted all over it, or it’s made out of skulls.”

  Wal looks up at me, and rolls his eyes. “You’ve got to hope for the best, mate,” he says. His little wings flutter in that disturbing way that scrapes the bones beneath my flesh.

  “Yeah,” I say, “because everything’s been working out well so far.”

  “You sent Lissa back, didn’t you? And you’re still alive—well, sort of, if we ignore technicalities.” I look down at him, unmoved. “The other option, of course, is that you stay here,” Wal huffs.

  “In that regard,” Charon says, rubbing his long hands together, “we can be very accommodating. I’m much happier bringing people here than taking them back. It seems wrong. In fact, it doesn’t just seem wrong, it is wrong. That whole natural order of things, you know.”

  He’s right. There’s no point in arguing. I nod my head. “OK. Send me back, take what you will.”

  He grins. “That’s my job. Now, you know the deal.”

  “The giving up something?”

  “No, the other one.”

  “Which is?”

  “Don’t look back…and run.”

  And I want to argue the logic of that. After all, we just spoke about The Orpheus and his looking back, but it’s too late. Charon claps his hands, once. There is a deep booming sound that reverberates through my body so that I feel as though I’m some sort of living bell.

  Charon’s gone.

  The air feels and smells different, at once fresher and fouler. The scent of newly turned dirt. A warm breeze blows against my skin. Then all that’s gone and I’m walking down a metal corridor lit with the blue lights of the Underworld, my footfalls ringing loudly. I’m not walking toward the light, but through the light.

  I can smell doughnuts again, then something like burning tires.

  “What do you reckon, Wal?” My voice carries uncertainly through the air.

  The cherub is remarkably silent. I consider staring at my arm, but I’m not exactly sure what constitutes looking back. These rules can be extremely loose and terribly precise.

  Then something chuckles, and it’s not Wal.

  I remember Charon’s other advice. I run all right. The Underworld never lets you get too casual with it. I put on as much speed as I can, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

  I run through hot and cold spaces, wet and dry. The air alternately clings to me or pushes. This is the edge of life and death, both forces are tugging at me, even as I go. I’m hoping for some sort of tidal shift, that life will start to grow more potent, and soon.

  There are noises. Liquid, horrible noises, and scurryings, and more laughter.

  The blue lights flicker.

  I know not to look back, but that laughing… Something is drawing nearer, every footfall louder than the last one, every step faster than my own, and I’m no longer running, but sprinting, crashing down the hallway. Strobing blue lights line the walls. It’s as though I’m racing down a long, halogen-lit disco, only whatever is behind me is more terrible than anything a disco ever produced.

  It slobbers and howls. For a moment I think of Cerberus, the Hound of Hell, but then it’s cackling, and dragging bones or bells along the ground.

  I want to look back. I want to know what it is that will have me, to see if I’ve actually put any distance between us. The want is burning a hole between my shoulders, my skin is tight. The hairs on the back of my neck rise. But I keep my head down, keep sprinting until the tendons in my legs tear, until the muscles in my flesh burn.

  And then I trip over, and I’m sliding on the floor.

  It’s on top of me and over me, and it’s sliding into me, crashing into my mouth, my ears, my pores.

  I don’t scream until I’m back in the tower, but by then it’s too late. I’m standing woozily, naked and blood-stained in the cold.

  I know now why you can’t look back: you see what’s chasing you, and you may as well give up, may as well not bother running, because it is terrible and remorseless. Life, the living world, was what pursued me down that hallway. And it caught me, wrapped me in the mad vitality of its arms and flesh and showed me that it was as cruel as death ever is.

  And here I am, back in the land of the living.

  33

  Idon’t even get time to laugh, because a moment later souls start rushing and scraping through me. They’re zeroing in on me. It doesn’t hurt as much as it once did, maybe because I’ve been to Hell and back.

  All of a sudden I know that, other than Morrigan, I’m the last Pomp alive in Australia. Sam—well, her spirit—is here, looking extremely pissed off.

  “The bastard got me too, Steve,” she says. “They’ll be coming for you now. All of them.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Don’t be sorry, just get moving. He was fast. I was driving through the outer suburbs around Logan, heading toward the PA hospital. He shifted right into the fucking car.”

  I nod my head. “Apparently he can do that now.”

  “He said to tell you he has what you want. That’s all. Then he shot me. And here I am.”

  “Yeah, I’m so sorry, Sam.” I’m not sure what I’m sorry about. Everything, I suppose. But the words catch in my throat. Sam doesn’t deserve to be pomped by me, she should be the one still alive.

  “So am I,” Sam says, “but it had to happen. Mom died from a stroke, a series of them. I swore that I’d never die in bed but I never expected Morrigan to fulfil my wish. He was my friend. I’ve known him for nearly thirty years.”

  “He was everyone’s friend,” I say. “Don’s waiting for you.”

  “He bloody better be.” Sam frowns. “There’s something different about you.” She looks around the tiny interior of the iron tower. “Where’s Lissa?”

  Her words are little more than a breath, then Sam’s gone, too. I call Lissa’s name. Nothing.

  There is no one in the tower except for me now. The place stinks of old blood, and there is indeed blood everywhere—my blood. Oddly enough I feel remarkably sanguine. Whatever I had lost was replaced, though that doesn’t mean I am without wounds.

  Where I had cut to reach the portal arteries there are two thick nuggets of scar. They have healed, but they ache, and when my fingers find the rough cicatrices of my knife work, I have to grit my teeth with the pain. The tattoo of Wal is gone as well, and where it was there is nothing but pale skin.

  I’m shivering, and naked. My backpack has come with me but it and its contents are coated with mud—a final residue of the Underworld, perhaps. I scrape off what I can and quickly get dressed. My clothes are a little stiff, and my every movement hurts. I manage it. The cold has seeped into the fabric, and now it is pressed up against me. I feel like I’ve dragged myself out of icy water onto an icy shore.

  “Lissa.” I can’t feel her, and if she was anywhere nearby I would be able to.

  There’s nothing.

  I’ve lost her. I almost had her. We almost got a chance at a life together. I failed her and I failed my future. I sit in the tower, my knees pulled up to my chest, and sob.

  Finally, I get up, wipe my hands on my jeans and step out of the tower. There’s only so much grief I can allow myself. I am alive and I am still hunted. The storm’s passed, gone on to drench someone else, or has dissolved into the ether. And it must have passed a while ago. The air is dry again.

  By the tower is a bike, and on the bike, a note.

  If you’re reading this then you are most probably alive. Welcome back, Steven. Now ride.

  They’ll be coming for you.

  D

  My watch says it’s ten o’clock in the morning, Sunday. I’ve been gone since Friday. It’s one of those beautiful days when the sky is so eye-searingly bright that it’s almost beyond blue, and there’s a warm breeze coming in off the river. I want to take pleasure from it, but I can’t.

>   Besides, there’s little pleasure to be had. I can taste Stirrers, they’re filling my city. It’s as though the air has thickened with some sort of grease. A bleak psychic cloud smudges the city as heavily as any stormfront. Tomorrow, if not tonight, things are going to tip into Regional Apocalypse. But that’s not my biggest concern.

  I quickly run through my possessions.

  I’ve got Death’s key to Number Four and my knife. I’ve still got an mp3 with about two hours worth of charge, as well as my phone, around $2000 in hundred-dollar notes and a couple of twenties. Oh, and a bike.

  The world isn’t exactly my oyster, but I’ve looked Death in the face and that counts for something. Well, I’m going to make it count for something. This is going to hurt Morrigan.

  I ride out from under the cover of the trees and over the fallen-down fence, putting the iron tower behind me, then cycle into West End. It’s an inner-city suburb, but leafy and crowded with shops and cafes. Made up of detritus and dreams, there’s a vitality to West End, a sense of community. It’s old Brisbane with tatty finery and makeup. Maybe that’s why some of the shops are still open. People cling to whatever normalcy they can when the world falls down around them.

  Two Stirrers walk down Boundary Street. Both smile at me while I slide my knife down my palm. “It’s not going to make any difference,” one says.

  I stall them. It certainly clears the air here, though.

  I walk into the nearest cafe and order a long black from staff who may have served more disheveled customers, but not many. The coffee is scalding and it strips away a little of the cold within me. It’s far better stuff than they have in the Underworld.

  Lissa’s gone. There’s nothing I can do about that, except get angry.

  Coffee done, I buy a new shirt and a pair of black jeans, then a hat and sunglasses, to avoid attention and the increasing glare of the sun. I slip my old clothes into a bin.

  Then I insert a new sim card into my phone and call Tim. There’s no answer. I try his home number, it rings out. So does his work number. Morrigan has Tim without a doubt. I try Alex.