Death came to me as an eruption of magical rage in unfamiliar and rather dour surroundings. By my side were a close band of colleagues all attempting to prevent the end of the world, each in their own unconventional style. It was quite a spectacular way for me to blink out of Existence as it goes, and certainly one to earn me a high level of kudos.
In dire circumstances though, collecting accolades is as useless as spitting on a dead fish; it is hardly going to instigate a successful revival.
Everyone has to face Death sometime, otherwise there would be far too many heavy bodies lingering around, clogging up the balance of the planets and causing all manner of distortions to time and space and canteen opening hours. I always counted myself out of that equation though. After all, I am Death.
But as you will discover, I am not technically Death, I am just Grim Alfonso Reaper. Death is simply my profession. I may be immortal, but immortality can only last so long. It is best to think of it as a rechargeable battery; after a while it can still die. I do apologise for the depressing sound of it all. It comes so naturally.
Perhaps the best thing I can do is start at the beginning. Well, not quite the beginning. I’m sure I can sidestep a few millennia otherwise this could take rather a lot of time.
And as in so many cases, the one event I can pinpoint as the start of the saga involved a death.
Chapter I
Despite what many believe, death has very little connection with graveyards. People are not readily encouraged to crawl into their graves before they die, so therefore death tends to occur anywhere other than around the tranquillity of the many corpse gardens in the world.
However, there are always exceptions to the rule. I never like exceptions. I find one always leads to another until the whole system doesn’t know its metaphorical arse from its elbow. The collection of a soul on a tepid autumn day in Chattering Hill, on the very picturesque east coast of England, is the perfect example of such an exception.
Humans have a tendency to assume that death just happens. The soul departs, the body rots, all the usual misunderstood clichés of what is actually a much more complex procedure. It is never as simple as letting the soul run free wherever it pleases or we would in uproar. Death on the human side of things is simple, it is the paperwork afterwards that can become immensely time consuming.
Without wanting to sound too crass, my part requires a certain level of precise execution for everything to continue running efficiently. If only other things did not get in the way.
I should say that having almost infinite power over time does prove to be a great advantage when attempting to keep up with collections separated by millions of miles but occurring in the same second. If I had a similar power over the filling in of forms I would be an exceptionally happier bunny.
I arrived in Chattering Hill Cemetery a moment or two early, so found the time to admire the clean-cut grass and the well-kept borders. The leaves were a healthy, cheerful shade of brown, the prelude to those wonderful bare branches that do make me smile. I have to admit that my job does become me at times.
The only thing marring the picturesque sight was a mound of fresh earth and the gentle chish-chish of someone digging.
I had found my collection.
According to the List he was sixty five years old and had already suffered two minor heart attacks. Why he chose to take on the profession of gravedigger can only be marvelled at. I suppose some people don’t know when to take it easy. Well, not until they end up as another addition on the List then they have little choice in the matter.
I took a gentle stroll over to the side of the hole, arriving in time to hear a wheezing voice say, “Buggerit!”
The thing I like about this business is that little can really cause me exertion. Take for example my current situation; the recently deceased six feet in the ground already and me standing high above on the lip of the grave. Did I need to sink to his level? Vault majestically into the grave with him? No, all I had to do was hook him up with my scythe like a plastic duck at a fairground. Those games do entertain me so.
“Hey,” the recently deceased protested. “What’s this about? Gerroff. Wha’cha doing?”
Sometimes the old ones are the worst, full of energy that their aged body cannot allow them to release while alive. It reminds me of having a swarm of bees in a matchbox then opening it. Nothing more than a sudden release of chaos and a frantic attempt to cause damage to anyone nearby.
“I would suggest you calm down a little or you’ll –” I paused, thinking of how I could possible end the sentence. “– or you’ll…erm…not get your visa.”
The ending of the sentence matched the weakness of my voice, and despite making me feel like an amateur it, somehow had the desired effect. The old spirit stopped thrashing and focused on me. I quickly realised that he had not ceased his attempt to escape because of what I said. He had just seen me for the first time.
He looked me up and down, squinting occasionally, chewing on something even though his transparent mouth seemed empty.
“You look ill, mate,” he said without as much as a hint of irony.
“I think it is, as you would say, my pale complexion,” I said, taking a cue from many others who had passed comment on my anaemic appearance.
“Pale? You’d think you was dead.”
I paused, my dark gaze upon the recently gathered soul, as I waited for the bell to tinkle. It usually took a matter on moments.
With many spirits, death comes unexpectedly. What was once flesh and bone suddenly becomes lucid and free-flowing. Thoughts at the time of death can be retained or lost depending entirely on how death occurred and how violently the body was shaken before the soul departed. For some, only the memory of life essence remains, allowing spirits to recall the life they have just been dragged from for a certain length of time. That is how authorised hauntings are possible but I will come back to that later.
As I expected, the money disc dropped with a clang, and the gravedigger’s spirit did what I thought to be an excellent impersonation of a freshwater trout. His mouth opened and closed with exquisite accuracy of a fish’s movements, and the thrashing of his body as he attempted to detach himself from the tip of my scythe was a joy to behold.
“Is that your party piece?” I enquired.
“No it bleedin’ well ain’t,” the spectre screeched. “I’m tryin’ to get away from you.”
“Oh,” I said clearly disappointed. “You’re one of those.”
“I’m not one of anythin’. I’m just me and that’s just how I intend to stay, if I could just get off this bleedin’ hoo–waaugmph!”
I looked at the vacant space at the end of my scythe then lowered my gaze to the ground and beyond into the oblong pit where the gravedigger’s spirit lay sprawled in and around its former vessel.
The shade lifted its face from the dirt and peered wide-eyed at the body it had until recently occupied.
Once they leave their hosts, spirits manifest as nothing more than configurations of air and mist, held in shape by the homeless life essence that once gave them consciousness. They tend to find it hard to alight on anything without slipping through the surface and sinking inside it, hence why the gravedigger’s soul was now sitting inside his old carcass.
As I said though, there has to be an exception; or two in this case.
My scythe is one; fashioned of hellfire and stardust by Jimmy DeVil, the only item in creation to contain the essence of an immortal and the only one to have been premiered at the Dawn of Time, the Business of Life’s first major event way back in the day.
Then there is earth. Scientific explanations exist as to how they prevent souls from slipping through the soil and stone into Hell without going through the right procedures, but with my workload it is enough to know that the blueprints of Earth included clear instructions on creating some elaborate chemical in the ground that repels the spirits and keeps them trapped on the surface until business is done. I always preferred biology to chemistry.
So, for that reason, the gravedigger’s ghost found itself sitting in a hole six feet deep with only one way out.
“I think you need to calm down,” I said. “And perhaps you could use a hand?”
The shade of the gravedigger looked up at me with a frown that could have singed my eyebrows, if I had any of course. He turned his attention on his former body, casting an eye over the corpse whose face pressed against the cold metal of a spade and whose arse stuck unceremoniously skyward.
“I’m dead, aren’t I?” he said without looking up.
“Well,” I said, “Technically you are not. He however is.”
“So I’m dead then.”
“If it makes it easier, yes.”
“So what’s goin’ to ‘appen now then?”
“Well, would you mind letting me get you out of that hole first? I’m getting a crick in my neck.”
“Oh, yes,” the spirit said. “Erm, sorry ‘bout this. It was just a bit of a shock, mate.”
I lowered the scythe into the pit and raised the gravedigger’s ghost once again. I set him down on the grass by the grave and pulled the List from my robe. I rubbed my finger across the name at the top; Boris Morris.
“Quite a catchy name,” I said without thinking.
“’Ere, mate, I’m in enough of a pickle without you takin’ the piss. I’ve ‘ad that my whole life so I don’t want the bugger all the way through my death too.”
“Sorry,” I said, metaphorically biting my lip. “I tend to speak as I find.”
“We’ll say no more ‘bout it,” the spirit formerly known as Boris said. “So, now what do I need to do?”
“I just have a few questions to ask you then I will have you on your way.”
I quickly scanned the tick boxes that had appeared on the List next to the gravedigger’s name. Everything seemed in order.
“Do you have any known unresolved grievances against persons living or dead?” I asked.
“Old buggers like me don’t have grievances against anyone but the taxman and the government.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Why?” Boris’s spectre asked. “What happens then?”
“If you have a grievance then it must be resolved before you get your visa. The same rules apply to kept secrets, long lost lovers, and miscellaneous unfinished business.”
“In that case, no. None of ‘em.”
I put a cross in the box with my fingertip.
“Have you ever practiced Devil Worship?”
Boris raised an eyebrow. “What? With my arthritis? I could just ‘bout make it up and down the ladder in that grave there.”
I put another cross. A question not on the List formed in my thoughts.
Curiosity is the deadliest of all human traits that I have encountered and unfortunately been infected with. It can lead to all sorts of problems, but being around humans so often I sometimes cannot help but get involved.
“Why were you digging a grave at your age?” I asked.
“Well, I couldn’t not, could I?” Boris replied.
“I really don’t know. That is why I was asking.”
“Oh. I thought you’d be too busy to spend time chitchatting.”
“I make time,” I said.
“Well I guess you’d need to. So many places to get to quickly.”
“Erm…yes…and about why you felt you could not…er…not dig the grave?”
“Ah that. Well, there’s some jobs you just ‘ave to do. I mean, there are some jobs you’d die to do.”
“A rather unfortunate choice of phrase, if you do not mind me saying,” I commented.
“Yes…well…ah, you just ‘ave to do ‘em, you know?”
I often wish I could control my need to know things. It was so much simpler in the beginning when all they had to say was, “Ug.” Still I had opened the can now so it was only right to see what was inside.
“I don’t quite follow you,” I said. “Why did you have to do it?”
The look Boris’s spectre gave me sat somewhere between fear and disbelief. I had not failed to notice how quickly Boris had overcome the distress of his demise, but that is not unusual.
The memories of a soul are a bit like gloopy water in a sieve. Everything that goes in quickly slips out again, causing the newly dead to quickly forget the events following their demise. Their trapped life essence has a short memory span that retains pre-death memories for so long, but again the detachment of the brain causes these to begin fading from the moment of death.
“You expect me to pass up on this opportunity?” Boris’s ghost asked incredulously. “To dig this grave was what my life was leadin’ up to. I’ve dug graves all my life and finally I get to dig the big one. I just didn’t expect it would lead to the end of my life!”
I did not know it at the time, but my next question seemed to be waiting to be asked.
“Whose grave is so important?”
Damn curiosity.