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 base 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.'
She raises a hand toward her face. 'Oh.'
The node would take her to the Underworld, if it could. But I'm in control here. I wait until Lissa steps back, and then I reach over and settle my fingers on the rough stone, wincing at the electric shock that strikes my fingers on contact. My teeth clamp shut, and I taste blood.
The cemetery is gone. I'm in Number Four. And it's not pleasant.
The air is alive with exclamations: bullet hard. The last thoughts of the dying, before the mind and body scatter.
There are other Pomps here. Not just Morrigan and Derek.
The first thing I feel are their deaths.
Each one smacks against me, and I try to hold onto them, and work through these errant memories. But it's no good. There's nothing there. Nothing of use anyway, merely pain, the unsuspecting howls of the executed. Jesus, I've been lucky to get even this far. For a moment I envy those gone, that it's over for them, that they're not left flailing in the dark. I concentrate, move through the muddy haze of dying minds and then: There are upturned desks, reams of paper scattered around them like the shattered stones of a stormed castle. Mainframes have toppled. And there's blood, every-fucking-where. My heart's doing 160 BPM easy. I almost drop out of the node then.
There's a man bent over, hacking up blood onto his yellow tie. He's wheezing, 'Fuck. Fuck. This is. Oh-'
Blood crashes in my vision as a bullet makes a crater in his chest. He lifts his head, and there's a moment of recognition, just a moment. The bastard even manages a scowl.
'Derek,' I say. Poor old officious Derek.
But he's dead; he falls almost gracefully onto the floor.
There are no answers here. I have to get out.
Then a head peers over the desk. Morrigan looks over at me, his eyes wide with terror. 'Steven, what on earth?'
'I needed to find out what was happening,' I mumble.
'Jesus, Steven, get away from the Hill!'
'Who's doing this? Can I-'
'There's nothing you can do. We're being slaughtered. They hit us hard, more people than we first thought,
