The Secret Dead (London Bones Book 1) (28 page)

56

The murdered don’t die just once. They relive their deaths over and over until they can make sense of them. For some, there’s some tiny thing leading up to the event that is most significant; others, like Leslie, try to remove or prevent the pain of the end, by eating or self-medicating or learning to swim—whatever will stop it.

And a few run through the whole story with an entire cast of not-real characters, going through the events leading up to their deaths over and over again until they can find some rhyme or reason.

Rosa Brannick née Baranowski was in the latter category, and I’d snuck in at the end of the show. I had just enough time to think it was going to start again when the world crumbled around me. The rubble crashed to the ground, and the world flattened. Only the soot and the ash swirled upwards, blocking the world from sight. The earth shuddered under my feet. I sat heavily and dug my hands into the soil to try and steady my body. The ground hardened and spat them out again.

I looked down. I was no longer sitting on ash but rather on a warm pavement dotted with chewing gum. By the time the ash disappeared, it was clear that the world had reset, and I was looking at John Line Terrace.

It didn’t seem much different to John Line Terrace in the living world until you looked closely. Then you noticed that the newest car on the street wasn’t new at all and that the Elect Blair sticker in the window of number fifteen wasn’t brown and curling, and the colour of the bricks on number eleven were the colour as the rest of the road. The front garden hadn’t been paved over yet; yellow rose bushes lined its edges, dotted here and there with the type of annuals Stanley likes to call filling—petunias and pansies. Sweet peas clung to an iron pyramid in the middle. Not-real bees buzzed around them.

I picked myself off the pavement and dusted the remains of my clothes down. Now that I was no longer standing in the middle of an apocalypse, I felt a little out of place in only my bra and jeans, but the few dead that would notice wouldn’t care.

I pushed the gate open. It squeaked loudly in the silence. I mounted the steps and tried the front door. It was locked. There was a knocker shaped like a lion with a ring in its mouth, so I banged it twice—as loud as I could—and when I got no immediate answer, tried again.

Footsteps thumped down the stairs, and I found myself looking at the inquisitive face of a not-real Adam. He was wearing a pair of red shorts and nothing else and was so skinny his ribs were clearly visible on his bare chest.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Hi, is your mum here?’

‘
Muuuuum
.’

There was no response from the house.

‘Can I come in?’

Not-real Adam shrugged. I stepped through the door. Not waiting for the not-real boy, I made my way to the back of the house. The layout was exactly the same as Malcolm’s, but it was homier somehow. Family pictures lined the walls, but none were the studio style of Malcolm’s. These were favourites—snapshots of life at all the best moments: Adam aged around four opening a present, the contents invisible, but a look of awe on his face; Adam staring at a flock of pigeons and lost in thought. I stopped to look at a framed wedding photo. Rosa was visibly pregnant, but the looks on their faces told me this was no shotgun wedding.

A little clip-clip noise echoed from the kitchen. I followed the sound, which turned out to be Rosa chopping carrots. She stood at the kitchen counter, stopping every few seconds to scoop them into a simmering pot on the gas stove. Her blond hair was scooped up and tied loosely into a bun, but little wisps framed her flushed face. She paused briefly to wipe sweat from her forehead with her upper arm.

Not-real Neil stood at the opposite end, his arms in the sink. I couldn’t see his face, but his hair was longer and darker.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with him,’ not-real Neil was saying. ‘And every time I see Leslie, I know I can’t tell her. The man needs a padlock for his trousers... or what do you call it—a chastity belt.’

‘I don’t think they made them for men,’ Rosa said. She had a strong east London accent slightly tainted with something else. Her Polish parents, I thought. Rosa turned around and smiled at her husband. ‘Actually, weren’t they a myth?’

She finished with the carrots and reached to her left to grab a turnip, which she peeled rapidly in quick little movements of the knife.

But not-real Neil wasn’t finished. ‘I mean she must know he plays away. That whole debacle with the winged woman is a case in point. But his own wife’s sister is something else. And Jillie isn’t any better. Stupid girl. What on earth is she thinking?’

Rosa laughed. She dropped the remains of the turnip into the pot, then stepped over to her husband. She hugged him about the waist. ‘Oh, I don’t know. You Brannick men are pretty irresistible, you know.’ She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s their marriage. If Malcolm listened to you he would never have married Leslie in the first place.’

Neil grunted.

And then it was dark, and I was alone in the kitchen staring at the full moon through the window above the sink. The lights were off, but the sounds of voices drifted in from outside. I opened the kitchen door and stepped out into the garden. The other Brannicks weren’t gardeners, but someone in this family was. The garden wasn’t overgrown—there wasn’t a weed or nettle to be seen and the grass was neatly trimmed—but it did look wild around the edges, as if the gardener couldn’t decide what plants she wanted so settled for squashing them all in. Passionflowers tangled sunflowers which dominated tomato plants, heavy with fruit, which then rose above a carpet of forget-me-nots.

A square brick pond framed the end of the plot. A thick grille covered the top, and it was through this grille that a three-year-old not-real Alister was pushing a stick and pestering the fish. Not-real Adam stood next to him, arms folded, watching silently. He was older than when he’d opened the door, and while he’d grown taller, he didn’t seem to have grown wider—your standard preteen beanpole.

The adults—Rosa and not-real Neil, Malcolm and Leslie—clustered around a gas barbecue, and I got my first real look at a Leslie Brannick that wasn’t a photograph, a morbidly obese soul, or a blackened skeleton in a suitcase.

She was the taller of the sisters, and the slimmer. Whatever gene made Jillie stocky had missed out Leslie. She was thin and wiry with a sinuous quality that, if I hadn’t already known she was a shifter, would have made me wonder if she was. She wore a pair of cut-off jeans with a red V-necked T-shirt, and her short red hair had been gelled so it spiked up and framed her face. There was enough meat on the barbecue to satisfy the most hard-core carnivore—sausage, lamb chops, burgers, and steak.

Not-real Malcolm pierced one of the sausages with a knife and peered inside. ‘These are done.’ He looked around. ‘Where are the plates?’

Leslie said, ‘I’ll get them.’

Malcolm watched her long legs as she strode back to the kitchen.

‘Dad!’

Not-real Neil turned around at Adam’s shout.

‘I think Alister’s stabbed the yellow one.’

Little Alister stood at the side of the pond—not yet crying but with his mouth quivering in a way that suggested he might start bawling at any moment.

‘Let me see.’ Neil picked up a torch from the grass next to the barbecue and shone it down into the grille. I followed, wincing with each step on my injured foot, and peered into the pond. Dark shapes slid beneath the water. Neil put the torch closer, just above the water line. ‘I don’t see anything. I think it’s okay.’

A burst of laughter split the night air, and Neil’s head snapped around to see Rosa smiling at something Malcolm had said. He murmured something to her, and she turned around to look at Neil and burst out laughing again.

Neil dropped the torch and strode back to the barbecue.

And they were gone. The garden was dark and cold. Frost crunched under my feet as I made my way back to the kitchen door. Neil was watching the news alone. He stared at the screen, seemingly engrossed in a story about a man with a prizewinning cabbage.

I found Rosa in bed, blowing her nose. She looked awful. Her nose was raw, and her eyes were puffy and ringed with dark circles. She took a long last sip of something hot and medicinal out of a mug with a teddy bear on it, then stuffed toilet paper in both her nostrils and switched off the lamp on her bedside table.

This was it, I thought. This was the pivotal moment. Rosa’s autopsy had indicated nasal inflammation. This had to be the night she died. Sometime this evening, Moses Ogunwale was supposed to have poured petrol through the letterbox and set the house on fire, thinking his ill neighbour was already dead.

I sat down on the bed next to Rosa and pulled up my foot. Blood had seeped through the makeshift bandage, and the carpet was dotted with red where I’d walked.

The stairs creaked—Neil making his way up to bed. I looked up. He stood framed in the doorway. In his right hand he held a plastic milk bottle filled with liquid.

Rosa stirred. ‘Sweetie? You coming to bed?’

Movement behind Neil drew my focus. Adam stood in the doorway to his bedroom, his eyes wide. Neil felt something, perhaps his son’s gaze, and turned, but Adam ducked back into his room before Neil saw him.

Neil pulled the bedroom door closed, and I heard it click as the key was turned in the lock. It was only minutes before greasy smoke wafted under the door. I tried the door handle, but it was locked fast. Rosa sat up on the edge of the bed. ‘Neil?’ She didn’t seem concerned, just confused. The two plugs of toilet paper were still stuck in her nostrils, and I doubted she could smell the smoke. Rosa reached over, switched the light on, and squinted at her watch on the bedside table. ‘Neil?’ Rosa got up, tugged at the door, and when it didn’t open, banged on it. She began to panic. She slammed her shoulder against the doorframe, but it didn’t budge. The room filled rapidly with smoke. My throat began to itch.

Rosa stumbled to the window. She scrabbled at the lock, coughing as she did so. I reached out to her before I could think about it further.
Come with me.

My mouth opened to say the words out loud, but an image of my sister filled my head before I could get them out. Sigrid, alive, but not. Sigrid eating an imaginary sandwich. Sigrid, unaware of the cold and rain in the bus shelter. Sigrid lying in her own faeces.

What good would it do? I wanted to take Rosa with me and let her confront her murderer back in the living world, but all I’d end up with was yet another confused and screwed-up dead person in my menagerie.

I felt for the key around my neck and slotted it into the door. I purposely didn’t look back. Rosa was long dead, but it felt like I was abandoning her anyway.

57

I threw up in the bed. I lay back on the sticky sheet and tried not to cry and throw up at the same time. Something wet trickled between my toes in my left wellie. My foot throbbed and the memory of the skull gnawing on my foot returned. I took stock. Was I feverish? Hot? Did I suddenly have a craving for raw flesh?

No to all three, but it didn’t mean much. I feel so rotten the first few minutes after waking it would be hard to tell. The taste of vomit in your mouth is never appetising. I didn’t feel any worse than usual at least.

After a minute I pushed myself up on my elbows, shook my head experimentally, then sat up when no further nausea appeared. A stab of pain jolted through my foot as I touched it to the floor.

I pulled the boot off to see bright blood soaked through the sock. I hopped to the bedroom door, opened it, and hopped across the landing to the bathroom. I closed the door behind me and pulled the first aid box out of the cabinet. I pushed down the lid on the toilet and sat. I used the first aid scissors to cut the sock off scrap by scrap.

When my foot was finally desocked, I stood awkwardly on one leg and ran the foot under the bath tap. I gave out an involuntary gasp when the water hit and gritted my teeth. I held it unmoving until the water swirling down the plughole was only a healthy shade of pink and not thick with clotted blood and scraps of flesh. An entire tube of antiseptic ointment and a roll of bandages later, and I’d done everything I could.

I bumped into Stanley on the way out of the bathroom. He looked down at my foot.

‘What the hell happened to you?’

‘Harpies,’ I lied. ‘Bloody things.’

‘What? On your foot? I thought they usually drop from above.’

‘Usually.’

He frowned. Stanley’s known me my whole life. He tends to know when I’m lying. I pushed past him to my bedroom.

‘I’ve got a few phone calls to make.’

‘At this time of night?’

‘Yes.’

I shut the door firmly behind me. I pulled the tarp off the bed, rolled it into a ball, and dumped it into a plastic bag. I was still weak with nausea, and the thought of cleaning vomit off the thing was too much. Either I’d be in the lucky two percent, which meant I could do it later, or I’d be in the unlucky ninety-eight percent and it really wouldn’t matter.

I made up the bed with fresh linen, then sat, careful with my foot. I used the browser on my phone to look up the number for Neil’s employer. Elior Services had a twenty-four-hour receptionist. People don’t do stupid things with magic only during office hours.

‘Elior Services. Rachel speaking.’

I went for friendly. ‘Oh, hi, Rachel. How are you?’

‘Fine, thanks. How are you?’ Her voice was unsure, clearly feeling she was supposed to recognise my voice but with no idea who I was.

‘Oh, good, good. It’s Vivia from the Lipscombe Trust. I just needed to know if there were any major incidents anywhere between Christmas afternoon and Boxing Day evening.’

There was a pause as she probably tried to decide whether asking me if I was entitled to the information was going to be embarrassing. She gave in.

‘Let me have a look, but I bet there will be. We usually have a few over Christmas.’

‘Thanks.’ I waited.

‘Sure, there was a major curse gone wrong in Notting Hill. A whole block of flats turned to slugs. And just after one a.m., some idiot summoned a water sprite in Alexandra Palace.’

‘That’s the one. I assume Neil Brannick got rid of it?’

‘Uh, yes. He does all the water stuff.’

‘How long did it take to sort out?’

Rachel laughed. ‘Now that I can tell you off the top of my head. Thirty-two hours. You know why?’

‘Why?’

‘Because along with the water guy, we needed the elemental guy. And the elemental guy refused to work with Brannick unless he got paid extra. Fifty quid extra an hour to work side-by-side with Brannick for that long. I paid his invoice this morning.’

‘I’m surprised you’re still in business.’

‘Oh, we just pass the additional costs on to the council.’

‘Well, thanks, Rachel. That’s all I needed to know.’

I hung up. That gave Neil an alibi for Berenice’s murder. He might have murdered one of the women, but he hadn’t murdered them all. I yawned, and spots danced in front of my eyes.

I snuck the door open and peeked out. No Stanley in sight. I checked on Sigrid then hopped downstairs to the kitchen. I opened the fridge door and sniffed at an open packet of bacon. It didn’t appeal. I imagined ripping someone’s throat out, but it just made the nausea worse. So far, so good.

I made myself a cheese and pickle sandwich—only drunks can be bothered to make a feast after midnight—and ate it at the kitchen table with a glass of cranberry juice. Then, finally, I went to shower. I resisted the temptation to peel off the bandage and instead protected it from the water with a plastic bag. It still hurt like hell, but blood had stopped steeping through the material, which I took to be a good sign. I stood in the shower and turned the tap as hot as I could bear while I scrubbed myself down and washed my hair.

Finally clean, I dressed in a clean nightie and got into bed. I was exhausted, but my brain refused to shut down. The throbbing from my foot didn’t help. The bite mightn’t mean anything. It wasn’t a real zombie. No one had ever been infected by a ghost zombie before.
Yeah, but no one else is able to visit the ZDC in the underworld, even if they were stupid enough to do so.

And even if it was a proper zombie bite, I still had a chance. Not a big one, but a chance. Maybe I’d be in the tiny percentage who became a carrier instead of zombifying.

There were a lot of maybes. I refused to worry about it until I knew which way it would go. It wasn’t like there was anything I could do about it one way or the other.

Nevertheless, my last thought before I fell asleep was, ‘I better not wake up dead.’