Death most definite sds-1 Page 5

  I shrug: avoid eye contact. Standard guilty son response. "I may have… indulged." Parents, even dead ones, know how to push the right buttons.

  "Look at me, boy. That's better. Son of mine, I worry about you." And he does, it's in his face, even if it is fading. It shames me a little.

  I want to hold him. I want to hold Mom. But I can't. The moment I do, they will go. "Dad… What happened? How?"

  He coughs. The spirit clings to these old habits. "It was fast, didn't even suspect, until it was over. We hadn't even finished breakfast. Just don't go over to our place. Promise me that."

  I nod my head, feeling sick to the stomach.

  "Same happened to me," Lissa says, and Dad turns toward her.

  "This is Lissa," I say.

  "Ah, Melbourne isn't it? The Joneses?" Dad asks, and then he catches me looking at him. "Never forget a face."

  "Particularly a young woman's," Mom says. She's as I remember her, in a sensible woolen jumper and pants, both mauve, both as neat as Dad's are crumpled. She's wearing (technically projecting) her favorite brooch: a piece of Wedgwood. There's a clarity and a calmness about her that she'd never had in life. That's over for her now, only the One Tree waits. There's still enough life left, though, to bring up these age-old arguments.

  Lissa turns a remarkable beetroot red.

  "Now, that's not exactly fair," Dad says, hands raised placatingly. "The Joneses are an old pomping family. Hardly any Black Sheep, too, I might add."

  "Not that old," Mom says. She looks at Lissa. "I was very sorry about your loss last year. Both parents, and so quickly."

  "It's all right," Lissa says. "We of all people know that."

  "Still-"

  "Leave off, Annie," Dad says. "She obviously doesn't want to talk about it."

  "I'm trying to be compassionate here, and you start on this. You're just uncomfortable talking about your feelings. And look at what that did to your son."

  "Please," I say wearily, though I really don't want an end to this. Mom and Dad can argue for as long as they want if it means I can still have them here. "This isn't the time or place."

  But there's no time, and only one place for them, and we all know it.

  "Sorry," Dad says.

  Mom nods. "Yes, he's sorry."

  Yet again, I'm waiting for the lights to change, on the corner of George and Ann Streets, the edge of the CBD. I can't move. Dead people who no one else can see, though their presence must be raising some hackles, surround me. I don't care. I don't want to share this space with anyone. There's a huge black dog barking madly across the road, its eyes firmly fixed on my posse and me. It strains on its leash, the dog's owner shaking her head with embarrassment, doing her best to stop it pulling her across the road.

  The living are stepping around us as though I'm stinking of urine and praising some cruel deity at the top of my voice, a vengeful one, obviously.

  The lights have changed a half-dozen times at least, but I'm not ready.

  I'm dazed.

  Various cousins and aunts and uncles, well their spirits at any rate, keep dropping by. Uncle Blake dressed in his golf clothes shocks me with how calm he is, dead or not. There's none of the bluster, the fire that made a lot of the de Selby Christmas parties so interesting. He just seems resigned. Aunty May grabs my arm, perhaps in shock at her death, and is pomped at once. There can't be that many Pomps left in Brisbane. The conversations are mainly like this.

  "Steve, oh, they're-"

  "Did you?"

  "Boyo, be careful."

  "Who's that? Oh-the Jones girl." (Am I the only one who doesn't know this girl and her family?)

  "Love, be careful."

  It's my younger cousins that hurt me the most. Too young, all of them. Too young. They sigh and moan as they pass through me.

  My Aunt Gloria looks at me sadly. "Just call Tim, will you? Promise me that. Let him know that Blake and I love him and that we always will."

  I think about what Morrigan told me. Maybe calling Tim isn't such a good idea. But I can't keep this from him. "He knows that already, Aunty G. He knows how much you love him."

  She gives me a look-the family look-a mixture of stern disapproval and dismay that only someone who truly loves you is capable of, and that engenders a kind of cold, chemical, panicky reaction in my stomach.

  "I'll call him. Once I sort this out." That last bit has become something of a refrain. But I don't think I'm ever going to sort this out. Then she pomps through me, and is gone.

  The lights change but I hover on the corner. All of this is really starting to sink in. I'm in serious trouble, half the Pomps I know are dead, and most of those are family. Now my entire living family consists of poor Tim and an aunt in the UK.

  "Are you all right?" I ask Mom, and she's looking at me with the eyes of a dead person. There's love there, but it's a love separated from life. I'm regretting that I haven't been around to see them outside of work in a while, and now I've promised to not see what is left.

  She blinks, looks at Dad, then back at me. "It didn't hurt, if that's what you're asking."

  "Absolutely," Dad says. "Whoever did it was a professional. Quick and painless."

  Of course it hurt, but they're trying to spare me that. I try and respect their pretense and play along, but I can't. Quick death is always painful, always dislocating.

  "Mom, I need to-"

  "You don't need to know at all. You want to." Her voice hardens. "Steven, you know the deal, we all do. I'm not happy with this, but it's happened."

  "But why? Why has it happened?"

  "If either of us had any idea, we'd be telling you," Dad says. "But we don't. You're going to have to find out, and even that may not save you. I had no inkling of this in the office, and I thought I knew everything."

  I think about the phones, the rise in Stirrers. Something had been coming. Maybe I'd even felt it before I first saw Lissa. It's easy to see that with hindsight. But that isn't going to help now. I will get to the bottom of this. If this is death most definite then I'm determined to understand it. I just-I just wish I felt a little more capable.

  Mom and Dad smile at me. Part of me is missing them already, and another part of me is so damn mad that I could kill someone. But there's no one, or thing, I can direct my anger at. Not yet.

  "We'll come with you for as long as we can," Dad says. "But…"

  "I understand," I say, though I wish I didn't.

  There's more dead coming through. Pomps and regular punters, drawn to me because the number of living Pomps is shrinking. I'm giddy with it and feeling sick at the same time. I've never had this many people to deal with.

  Pomping hurts. Each pomp is like a spider web pulling through my flesh. The silk is fine, but every strand is crowded with tiny hooks that snag and drag until they're through. It's more of a discomfort than a hurt, but with enough of them things begin to ache. I'm raw with the souls I've pomped.

  I've heard stories about the world wars, about the Pomps there, how it nearly killed them. So many dead rushing through. I lost a lot of great-uncles, most to the meat grinder of the front, but some to the job itself. I don't want that to be me.

  The lights change. Time to get moving.

  I'm moving down Roma Street, up and over the overpass, heading toward the Transit Centre, the underbelly of which is Roma Street Station.

  "You know I love you," I say to my parents. I'd said it nearly a dozen times in the walk between Ann Street and the overpass. I knew I didn't have much time; they couldn't stay with me forever.

  "Course we do," they say in unison, and like that, in the blinking of an eye, they're gone.

  The last contact I get is their passage through me. Such a swift pomp. I'm never going to see them again. I try to hold on, to keep their souls with me, but there's nothing I can get a grip on. All it does is draw out the hurt.

  The grief is almost paralysing when it hits.

  I'm right out in the open, not yet at the escalators sinking down int
o the station. I stop and hunch over, because this is agony. I'm not numbed by their absence, I'm hurting. A coughing sob shudders through me. I'm going to lose it.

  Just because I know what goes on in the afterlife doesn't mean I'm not missing my parents. I need time.

  But there isn't any.

  "Hey. Hey," Lissa says.

  "You're still here?"

  I look at her, and even that hurts me. She's beautiful, and I won't get a chance to talk to her in the flesh. My mourning tugs me this way and that. Have to slap myself. My cheek stings.

  Doesn't help.

  Lissa looks at me as though I am mad. There's pity in her expression as well, and that makes me more than a little angry: mostly with myself.

  She isn't gone yet. I'm not quite alone.

  I walk into the station.

  "Hey!"

  I spin on my heel, cringing. When's the bullet coming?

  "Your ticket!" The guard at the gate frowns at me, looking through Lissa, though I know how uncomfortable that must make him. It doesn't help that she then swings a tight circle around him. His face twitches in synchrony with her movements. At any other time it would be amusing to watch.

  "Yeah, right. Sorry." I dig my pass out of my wallet.

  He takes it from me. Nods. "Next time think about what you're doing." He pushes it back into my hand.

  I nod, too, smile stupidly, and walk through the gate into the underpass that leads to the platforms.

  "You have to be more careful than that," Lissa says. "You have to stay focused. Something like that may get you killed."

  "I'm doing the best I can."

  She's clearly not happy with my answer. But it's all I've got.

  I know where I have to go. The only place that I might possibly find some answers.

  It might also kill me. That's on the cards anyway. In fact, I imagine that's where this will all end up. I'm a Pomp after all. Death is what it's all about. Death is what it's always about.

  So I keep moving.

  7

  Are you sure this is a good idea? I mean the Hill…"

  I'm sitting in the train heading west along the Ipswich line, out of the city, my forehead resting against the cold glass of the window. People sniffle and cough all around me. The carriage is heavy with the odors of sickness: sweat and menthol throat lollies duke it out. It's flu season all right, I can feel something coming on myself-or maybe it's the last remnants of the hangover, combined with the ache of all those pomps.

  I pat my suit jacket. "At least I'm dressed for a cemetery. Do you have any better suggestions?"

  Lissa shrugs. I know she wishes that she did. So do I.

  "The Hill's the only place I might get some answers," I say. Problem is, the answers I'm after are just as likely to kill me as save me.

  I try Tim's work number. Can't get through. His mobile switches straight to voicemail.

  How do I tell him? I need to warn him. I need to tell him that his mother and father are dead. His voicemail spiel ends and I'm silent after the beep, working my mouth, trying to find words.

  Nothing comes. The silence stretches on. Finally: "Tim, I don't know what you know. But I'm in trouble, you too, maybe. You have to be careful. Shit, maybe you already know all this. Call me when you can."

  I hang up.

  Lissa stomps up and down the aisle. People shudder with her passage, burying themselves in their reading matter or turning up their mp3s. She's oblivious to it, or maybe she is taking a deep pleasure in the other passengers' discomfort, the dreadful chill of death sliding past life. I don't know. Our carriage is emptying out fast, though. I find her movement hypnotic. Her presence is tenuous and vital all at once. I've never seen a dead person like this. Nor a live one, if I'm honest.

  She catches me looking at her. The grin she offers is a heat rushing through me. My cheeks burn and for a moment my mind isn't centered on life or death. I'd thank her for that, if this was going anywhere but Hell.

  I've fallen in love with someone I cannot have. Someone who isn't really a someone anymore. How bloody typical. But even this misery is better than the ones that crowd around me, grim and cruel, on that train. At least it's bittersweet rather than just bitter.

  The train rolls into Auchenflower. The Hill's presence is already a persistent tingle in my lips like the premonition of a cold sore. Every place has a Hill, where the land of the living and the dead intersect. In Brisbane it's Toowong Cemetery. I know the place well. Used to picnic there with the family. Lost my virginity on its grassy slopes when I was seventeen. Mary Gallagher. Didn't last. None of my relationships ever had. I'm thinking of Mary as the train stops at the station. I don't even know what happened to her. Married, I think, maybe has a couple of kids. Robyn was just the last in a long list of failures.

  I get off the train, Lissa with me, and I'm sure everyone in the carriage behind me breathes a sigh of relief. The train pulls away, leaving a few people on the platform. All of them walk in the opposite direction to me. I'd find it funny, but the nearby Wesley Hospital distracts me. My perception shifts. There's an odor as unsavory as an open sewer coming from there. Something's going on in the hospital's morgue.

  Lissa drifts that way. Face furrowed.

  "You sense it too?"

  "It's not good." She coughs as though clearing her throat. "Something smells well and truly rotten, wouldn't you say?"

  "Stirrers, I think." I wonder if they're like the ones Morrigan described, different.

  "Nothing you can do about that now."

  Yes, but I don't like it. The air around there is bad and a kind of miasmal disquiet has settled into the building's foundations: an unliving and spreading rot. Someone hasn't been doing their job, I think. Who's left to do it? Who's going to sort this kind of stuff out? These things can get quickly out of control and then you're rushing toward a full-blown Regional Apocalypse. Think Stirrers and death in abundance. Civilizations tend to topple in the wake of them.

  I try not to think about it. Lissa's right, there's no time. I head in the opposite direction; take the underpass beneath the station and away from the hospital. If I get a chance I'll come back. I push the hospital to the back of my mind, where it settles uneasily. Nothing good can come of this day.

  My head is pounding again. Then a caffeine craving hits me all at once. It's a deep, soul-gnawing pit in my stomach. I'm tempted to swing into Toowong, casually order a coffee-a nice long black-and sit on the corner of High Street and Sherwood Road and watch the bus drivers try and hit pedestrians; tempted till it's a throbbing ache. Now, I'm hurting. The last time I remember talking to my living, breathing mom was over coffee. Both of us had been real busy, like I said-flu season.

  We keep moving through inner-city suburbia, up and down the undulating landscape of Brisbane, swapping the disquiet of the hospital for the jittering energy of the Hill. We reach Toowong Cemetery in pretty good time, though I have to catch my breath. Squat, fat Mount Coot-tha rises up before us like the great dorsal fin of a whale. My eyes burn as though there is suddenly too much fluid within them. Something else is straining to inhabit my vision.

  This close to the Hill, Pomps get flashes of the Underworld. I can hear the great tree creaking. I can even see it. This is why Mount Coot-tha and the cemetery were once called One Tree Hill. For a moment this other view stops me-the tree, a Moreton Bay fig, is spectacular, all sky-swallowing limbs and vast root buttresses. Then Mount Coot-tha's silhouette returns, marked only by blinking rows of transmission towers.

  A traffic chopper is flying low over the Western Freeway like some predatory bird hunting snarls and head-ons. As we climb the undulations that lead to the hill there's a hint of the city to the east, gleaming red in the afternoon sun. We're out in the 'burbs, the beginning of a vast carpet of houses that stretches almost to the granite belt in the west. Hundreds of thousands of homes. But here, it's old city, Brisbane's CBD isn't too far away. It's close to sunset and I'm still not sure what it is I'm doing. I circle around the bas
e of the Hill, keeping clear of the open areas, and staying as close as I can to the trees amongst the tombstones. The Hill has multiple nodes: connection points with Number Four. The Mayne crypt is one, but that's too obvious, with its ostentatious white spire and curlicues, and it's big and toward the top of the Hill-we'd be too easy to spot. I'm heading to a quieter node, near the place Tim and I used to sneak off to, to smoke.

  "Listen," Lissa says. She spins around me, gesturing at the lengthening shadows. I'd almost forgotten she was there. We haven't said a word since we edged into the cemetery. "I'm serious, listen."

  "I'm listening," I say.

  She shakes her head. "Not to me. To this, the cemetery."

  And then I'm really listening. I've never known a place to be so quiet. Where are the crows? Where are the chattering, noisy myna birds? There's not a sound, not an insect clicking or buzzing. Even my footsteps in the dry grass seem muted.

  "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," Lissa says, right into my left ear.

  I jump. "I never said it was a good idea, but it's the only one we have."

  "The only one that you have."

  "What's your idea?"

  "Head for the hills, not the Hill."

  "I promise, I'm being careful."

  "Is that what you call it?" She darts away from me. Runs up the hill and back again. In this light, she's a blue-stained smear of movement. She's back by my side in a breath.

  "Didn't even break a sweat," she says.

  "See anything?"

  "Nothing. But that doesn't mean they're not closing in."

  "You're making me paranoid."

  She swings her face close to mine, her eyes wide. "Good."

  I find the right tombstone halfway up the hill, a David Milde, RIP 1896. It's been a while since I've done this, but the spot recognizes me. The stone shudders, becomes something more than a mere memorial.

  "Watch yourself," Lissa says.

  I glance at her. This close to a node, her form is losing some of its clarity. "Maybe you should too."