'Oh, none of that. Mr. D will do fine. The age of formalities is deader than I am.' He looked up at Dad. 'He's certainly your boy,' he said. 'Very brave.'
I didn't feel brave at all.
He looked back at me, and I saw something in his eyes, and it horrified me. There, reflected back at me, was a man on his haunches, face covered in blood, howling. And a knife: a stone knife.
I let out a gasp.
Death held my hand, his fingers as cold and hard as porcelain in the middle of winter, and he squeezed. 'What's wrong?'
'N-nothing.'
'Not yet, anyway,' Mr. D said, and he smiled such a dreadful and terrible smile that I have never forgotten it.
And I dream of it still, even when I don't realize that's what I'm dreaming of. Shit, that grin creeps up on me when I'm least expecting it. There was a bit of the madness of Brueghel's 'Triumph of Death' in it, though I didn't know that at the time, and something else. Something cruel and mocking and unlike anything I'd ever seen.
I have spoken to Mr. D since, and nothing like that has happened again. Of course, it doesn't matter anymore, but it did then, and it haunted me for over a decade. It's true, isn't it? You drag your childhood with you wherever you go. You drag it, and it sometimes chases you.
I wake, and then realize that I'm not awake. The sheets cover me, and then they don't. I'm naked, standing in the doorway, and they're out there, a shuffling presence, a crowd of wrongness rapidly extending through the country.
You need to hurry, Steven. I can feel every single one of them. They shouldn't be here. But of course they are, there's no one to stop them.
You wait out here, and it will be too late.
You have to call me.
I turn to see who is talking, and I know, and am not surprised.
Mr. D is a broken doll on the floor. He's a drip in the ceiling. A patch on the floor. He's smiling.
And then Lissa's there and she's gripping an axe. The smile on her face is no less threatening than Mr. D's, and it's saying the same thing. Death. Death. Death. In one neat movement the axe is swinging toward my head. I hear it crunch into my face and- I wake to dawn, feeling less than rested. My face aches and I know I've come from some place terrible.
'Not a good sleep?' Lissa's looking down at me.
The image of an axe flashes in my mind. It takes a lot not to flinch.
'What do you think?' I rub my eyes and yawn one of those endless yawns that threatens to drag you back into sleep. It's early, no later than 5:30, but I don't want to return to my sleeping. I don't want to slip back into those dreams.
'You talk a lot in your sleep, you know,' Lissa says.
'I have a lot on my mind.'
'And you drool all over your pillow.'
I wave feebly in her direction, then drag myself out of bed and stumble to the bathroom. There's a hell of a lot of blood in there, more blood than any portent has given me before.
I don't know where the blood comes from, even now. I've never found a satisfactory answer, which is fine, when most of the time it's only a splatter here or there. But this bathroom has more in common with an abattoir. I almost throw up.
'Come and have a look at this,' I say.
She's by my side in an instant. 'Oh, that's not good.'
'What the hell is going on?'
'I don't think Morrigan has everything under as much control as he would like.'
That's an understatement. I grab the showerhead and start hosing the blood away. I feel like some mafia hitman cleaning up after a brutal kill, only there's no body, thank Christ. It's gone fairly quickly but the stench remains and, with it, the feeling of things coming. A dark wave on the verge of breaking.
I shower, soap myself down, rinse and do it all again. Maybe fleeing the city wasn't such a good idea after all. But if that portent is correct there is a stir happening somewhere near, a big one.
'I have to do something about it,' I say.
'He may be able to track you, if you do.'
'My job is to facilitate death,' my voice sounds high and unfamiliar in my ears, 'not to allow murder, and if I don't stop this stir, I'm a party to it.'
'How many stirs do you think are happening now, right around the country?'
I glare at her. 'I know, but I'm near this one.'
23
I get dressed and take a drive.
It's easy to sense, more than ever. The Stirrer's presence is a magnet, and I follow the line of least resistance toward it. It's as though the car has a mind of its own. I barely have to turn the wheel.
Lissa's silent the whole way, and I don't know if she's angry with me or worried, maybe a bit of both.
We end up at the local hospital, almost in the center of Stanthorpe.
The staff there let me through when I raise one hand to reveal the scars criss-crossing it. They look harried and frightened. I guess that there have been a lot of things going bump, and then murderous, in the night lately.
One of the senior doctors meets me near the reception desk.
'I'm here to deal with your problem,' I say.
'Thank Christ. We've never had to wait this long.'
I can tell. Everyone here is strung out and weak. The Stirrer is drawing their essence away. There's a vase of dead flowers by the reception desk. The doctor looks at that.
'Not again,' he says, tipping the dead things into a bin. 'Keeps happening.'
And there's no stopping this, until I do something about it. Soon, the sicker, older patients will pass on, and more Stirrers will appear, and more life will be drawn out of the world. It's reaching tipping point and I'm gripped with a sudden urgency to get this thing done.
'Where is it?' I ask. I hardly need to, I can feel it.
'The Safe Room,' he says.
Out here in the regional areas it can take a day or so before someone is available to pomp a Stirrer. They don't make a big fuss about it, but most regional hospitals have ways of dealing with their Stirrers.
We walk through the hospital, descending a level by way of a narrow stairwell. With every step, the sense of wrongness increases. The air closes in, grows heavy with foulness.
Another senior doctor's waiting by a door. He mops at his sweaty brow with a handkerchief.
'We've had to lock the lower room,' he says, relieved as all hell to see me. 'This one is a bit more active than usual.'
I nod, hoping that I look more confident than I feel.
'This is too dangerous,' Lissa says again, though her eyes say otherwise. I'm doing the right thing, the only thing.
The door is marked in all four corners with the brace symbol. My Pomp eyes can see them glowing. They're lucky, Sam made these markings.
'Sam's alive,' I say to Lissa.
The doctor looks at me questioningly. He can't see Lissa, of course. 'Sam's one of my workmates. She's in trouble.'
This guy doesn't know the least of it. 'Yeah, we all are.'
My fingers brush one of the brace symbols. I swear and yank my hand away from it. 'Hot,' I say, blisters
