The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy (76 page)

I get out of my throne and walk to the door.

The moment I open it, heart rates in the space beyond quicken, and not in a “happy to see me” kind of way. Tim scares them, but my presence can invoke a deeper back-brain sort of terror. And today I can really feel it.

I don’t like this reaction in my staff at all. Maybe it is partly exacerbated by my own anxiety. It’s hardly as if I’m a punitive sort of boss—even if HD would like to get swinging with the scythe. People cast furtive glances in my direction, and I try and smile harmlessly. Doesn’t seem to do much good though.

To everyone outside the offices of Mortmax International, I’m just a guy in a suit with great hair. Here, people know I’m Death, and some of them even understand what that means. I want people to treat me normally, but I suppose, when I think about it, this is how people would treat me normally.

I remember how I’d try and avoid my old boss, Mr. D—hey, the one that I am avoiding now—he made me very…uncomfortable. Sure, he liked to change his face a lot, shifting from skull, to splatter, to smiling middle-aged man in the space of seconds, and that was kind of threatening—Dad said the trick was to talk to his hairline, because it rarely changed—but Mr. D was never as powerful as I have become.

I stroll through the room.

HD feeds on the discomfort, like it’s a pack of pork rinds—light, tasty, and ultimately unsatisfying. It suggests we take out the particularly timorous ones now, like right now, they’re going to be no use in the coming war—and it’s ravenous—can’t it just kill a few?

I smile. Avoid eye contact. Let people get on with their work, and focus on my own.

There are things I’m frightened of too.

There’s a hallway that I don’t like to look down. That I like to imagine doesn’t even exist.

It leads to what used to be Aunt Neti’s rooms, and those rooms lead, via corridors, to all of Mortmax’s offices. My Ankous can all shift, so the corridors haven’t been used in a while, and Neti’s rooms are empty. Aunt Neti, guardian of the gates of Hell, was murdered. And nothing has come to replace her. That worries me. Maybe her
replacement’s waiting to see how everything pans out with the Stirrer god. Or it could just think that there’s no point.

When the entire population is thrown into the Underworld, and the living world itself becomes almost indistinguishable from the dead, who’s going to require someone to open the gate?

It could just be that whatever will replace her doesn’t like me: I wasn’t Aunt Neti’s biggest fan. And she certainly wasn’t mine. We had our differences of opinion. Ha, she hated me!

And all because I’d performed an Orpheus Maneuver without her. I’d used the agency of Charon instead. Like a lot of things, I really hadn’t known any better—and when you’re in Hell you take what you can get. Not that it would have mattered, she was really angry with Mr. D and since he was no longer part of the living world she had used me as a whipping boy. After all it was the second time that he had crossed her. The first time, he’d denied Rillman his own chance at an Orpheus Maneuver, and sent Rillman’s wife back to the Underworld.

Though I’d been shocked at Neti’s betrayal, I probably should have seen it coming. Everyone else must have, because through that betrayal Suzanne’s plans had been affected. Without it, I wouldn’t be the only member of the Orcus. I wouldn’t have crows bowing at me every time I go for a jog in the park.

And she really did terrify me. Her eyes (and she had dozens of them) were too hungry as they scanned my face. Her many hands too touchy-feely and pinchy, as though she were the witch in Hansel and Gretel—just waiting for me to be plump enough.

The door projects menace, and it’s far too silent. Though I didn’t like it at the time, I miss the occasional echoing cackle coming from Aunt Neti’s rooms—as she yelled at one of her game shows. That doorway is an eye, staring blankly out.

I’m safe. I have HD. I have Mog. I am Death. But regardless of that, I’m not comfortable doing this. It’s not like I’ve been Orcus for centuries. I haven’t forgotten what it is to fear: can’t even pretend that I have.

Last time I visited Neti I had my inkling, Wal, for company. But we’re not talking, or I’m not ready to talk to him, so he remains a tattoo stuck silently to my arm—keeping him there is a trick I picked up from Suzanne. Sure, I could release him—his irritation alone might be enough of a distraction—but I’m a big boy, some things you have to do by yourself. It’s time I engaged with that concept properly.

The door isn’t locked. I open it and peer into Aunt Neti’s parlor. The whole room used to smell of scones. Now it’s fusty and stale, with just a hint of the charnel house behind it all

The light is off.

I reach for the switch and something runs across the back of my hand.

I pull my arm away from the wall fast enough that my elbow clips my ribs. Winded, I check my fingers. Nothing, I reach around again. There’s a loud hissing. I hesitate. Did Neti have gas in here? Surely not. But I can’t just hover outside the room forever, and there’s no way I’m walking back into the office without finding what I need.

Either this light comes on, or I’m going to have to stumble through a dark and hissing room, feeling blindly around before me. Who knows what I’ll find, or what will find me.

You’d think Death could see in the dark. Nope. Not this sort of darkness anyway. This is cave dark. A bottom of the ocean, never touched by sunlight, blacker than coal sort of dark.

I take a deep breath.
One. Two. Three.

I reach around and flick the switch.

Right, then.

The walls and ceilings are carpeted thick with spiders.

A scurrying, writhing, hissing mass. Spiders and spiders and
spiders. Could be worse, could be cockroaches. At least spiders can’t fly. I step into the room, my boot crunches on the carpet. The hissing lifts a notch. I step very quickly back out the door, looking down at the floor. The carpet isn’t carpeted with spiders, just their leavings. That’s something at least.

Now, I’m a Brisbane boy, I’ve got no issue with insects. We’ve a hot and humid environment, and some of the shit I’ve seen flit and scurry through my bedroom window, well…if it doesn’t bite me, I don’t go crazy with my cricket bat. But spiders and cockroaches, both of them…yeah, not that fond. At least these ones aren’t the palm-sized wolf spiders that like to creep about the house, or the gigantic golden-orb spiders with webs that look strong enough to catch the occasional early-morning or late-night jogger.

No. These are tiny, thumbnail-sized and dark.

As Neti’s creatures, they obviously continue to bear me some ill will. Maybe I don’t need to do this. But Neti’s calendar is there, just a few steps away. I know it’s several magnitudes of overkill, but I summon Mog (HD argues that there’s nothing at all overkill about it).

“Hello. Hello.”

The Knives of Negotiation interlock, and become my scythe. There’s a familiar cold that runs through my fingers and into my arms.

I take a deep breath, as though I’m about to dive down and deep into something unpleasant, and walk towards the calendar. Strands of web brush my neck. Every step I take is attended to with a hiss.

“I’m not staying long,” I breathe.

The calendar is only partially covered with spiders. I’m as gentle as I can be in brushing them off. It’s a cute calendar: LOLcats—never really got them, can’t say that they make me LOL. And this is a death-themed one—where do people find this stuff?

I flip open the calendar to May (a kitten wearing pink sunglasses curled up inside a skull) and there it is. That date again, circled, with an “M?” written beside it.

The roof is getting lower. What does Neti have going on here? Then I realize what it is. The spiders, en masse, are sliding down on strands of web.

I drop to a crouch, knees cracking, and run, as quickly as possible in that position, towards the door. The spiders hurry their descent. I can hear their spidery little limbs extruding more web. I swear their little mandibles are opening and snapping shut in unison. I’m almost there when the door closes.

T
he first of the spiders crawl in my hair and down my neck as I yank at the door handle. Nothing, its edges are bound up in web. Another hard pull, one foot up against the frame, and the door doesn’t budge.

The biting begins about five seconds later.

Oh! This is enough!

I bat at dozens of the things as they scramble over me, scurrying under my shirt, and skittering down my front and back. There are so many of them that I can’t tell where one begins and the others end. It’s just a scrambling, furry, biting mass.

I swing my scythe about my head, the blade sings through the air. Around and around. All this seems to do is drop more spiders onto me.

The long snath of the scythe tangles in web.

I’d have been much better off with my Avian Pomps—they’d have had a feast, even if I’d have had to endure the sensation of spiders slithering down beaks and the taste of spidery guts.

The hissing intensifies. I’ve managed to piss off more arachnids driving them to attack. But HD is taking a great delight in all of this. The scythe describes arcs left and right. I make contact with a china vase. It explodes against the wall. Packed with spiders they drop in a black and shuddery ball at my boots. They don’t stay there, but scurry up over my shoes and into my pants.

Then I remember that I don’t need doors.

Dolt!

I shift into the hallway. I’m covered in web and spiders. I’m slapping at my hands and face. I roll onto my back. Spiders pop beneath me.

The biting grows even more vicious. I struggle to my feet.

Mog separates and becomes the Knives of Negotiation again. I stumble-rush down the hall. The spiders are crawling under my shirt, up and down under my pants. Boxers, why did I wear boxers? Something brushes against a testicle, that something quickly becomes many somethings. I try to shift, but this last sensation is too much: my concentration is shot.

It’s quite the exit from the hallway.

I nearly knock over Lundwall, my assistant, as I race across the floor for my office. He steps back, narrowly avoiding one of my blades. He’s holding a sheet of paper and flings it before him, shieldlike. The nearest blade neatly cuts it in two; wide eyes reveal themselves behind the cut.

“Mr. de Selby—”

I spin on my heel and glare at him, not that it’s his fault. Lundwall quails, and I feel terrible, but I’ve spiders in with my privates.

“Not now. Later, but not now!” I say, and slam the door behind me.

Right.

Sure, I don’t usually project much in the way of gravitas, never did, but that…that was ridiculous.

I strip in my office. If you can call the way I rip those clothes off stripping. More of a shredding really. Red welts are forming on my flesh, and the spiders haven’t stopped with their biting.

I’m mostly naked, slapping and scratching spiders from my flesh
(and there are always more of them, every time I think I’m done, my hands encounter another one or another dozen), when the door opens.

Lissa, back safe from PA Hospital. Thank Christ!

And half of Number Four can see me dancing with my underpants around my ankles. “Shut the door! Shut the bloody door!” I yell, yanking my boxers back up to my waist.

Lissa takes her time. If anyone has shot footage of this with their phones, and I end up seeing it on bloody YouTube…nope, no gravitas, anti-gravitas if anything.

At least I may have reduced the level of fear they feel around me now.

“Aunt Neti. Spiders,” I say. “Spiders everywhere.”

She’s smirking as I get my boxers off again, searching furiously for any hangers-on. “You know, traditionally it’s ants in the pants.”

“Really, that’s the best you can do?”

“I think I’m being very reserved. You’re always so entertaining.”

“Great, I’m glad.”

One of the little fellas scurries towards her. Lissa neatly stomps her boot down. “I never liked Aunt Neti, and the stuff she put you through—all because you offended her delicate sensibilities.” She stomps another couple of spiders into the carpet. “What the hell were you doing going into her rooms anyway?”