‘Well, he was very concerned, Ankaa, because, as he pointed out, logically, the afterlife must be endless. And he was panicking about getting there and being unable to find her amid the billions of other people.’
‘So?’
‘So I said that we could fix that for him … for a fee.’
I scowl. ‘We’ve never said we could do that before!’
‘I know, but the man’s rich, what does it matter?’
‘He’s not rich! He works at the Post Office!’
Cerberus cowers in the corner.
‘Look,’ she frowns. ‘I am doing my best. You know bookings have been low this season. I’m just working with what I’ve got.’
‘But it’s not fair …’
‘People come here looking for answers, Ankaa. They come here looking for answers, and we tell them what they want to hear.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘We are helping them, remember that.’ She wrenches the cupboard door open and hunts around for rose-water. ‘They are lost and we are helping. OK? Just do as I say.’
Trevor’s in pyjamas, Mr Henderson’s in a suit.
‘It was Rosemary’s favourite,’ he says, when I ask if he wants to change into something a little more comfortable. ‘I always wore it for our anniversary beach walk.’
‘Fair enough,’ I smile. ‘Time for a story before bed.’
Once there was a man who didn’t want to die.
He left his family at home and set out on a journey to discover a country where death did not exist. Whenever he crossed a border, he strode up to a citizen and said to them, briskly: ‘Do people die here? Do you bury them in the ground?’ And when the answer came back: ‘Of course!’ he walked away from them, quickly, marching to another country where, when he got there, he’d ask the same thing.
Then eventually, one day, when the man was much older, he discovered a strange place, which wasn’t on his map.
‘Hello,’ he said, to the first woman he saw. ‘Do people die in this country? Do you bury them in the ground?’
‘What’s “die”?’ the woman asked.
And the man’s face brightened. ‘It’s normally what happens at the end of someone’s life.’
‘People’s lives don’t end here,’ the woman said, looking puzzled. ‘There just comes a point when they hear a strange voice, and they feel compelled to follow it. They pack their bags and leave and, for some reason, don’t come back.’
The man jumped for joy. He bought a house for his family, and wrote a letter to them, asking them to come and find him in this new, exciting place. He hadn’t seen them for years, and had missed out on most of their lives. But, he figured, if no one died in this strange place, then they had lots of time to make that right.
They lived happily together, and many years went by.
Then, one day, the man’s wife sat up straight at the kitchen table.
‘Can you hear that?’ she asked.
‘Hear what?’ asked the man.
‘It sounds like my father.’ She stood, her chair clattering to the floor. ‘It’s my father’s voice, and he’s calling me. He wants me to come and find him. Where do you think it is that he is calling from?’
The man’s blood ran cold, as he realised Death had cheated him.
He hurried to the front door and bolted it shut.
He locked all the windows and smashed his wife’s phone.
‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘This voice is a trick. You must not follow it. Just pretend it’s not there.’
But his wife could not pretend. The voice was so loud, and her body felt so small. She cried and tore her hair. She searched for tools to break the locks. She kicked the door until her feet bled. Then she screamed and clutched her skull.
Soon, the man simply couldn’t take it any longer, for his wife was threatening to jump from the roof of their house.
‘OK,’ he said, his hands shaking. ‘But please just remember. Once you’ve found your father, you must come back home to me.’
He unlocked their front door, and his wife ran out into the evening.
He watched her pelt across the fields … and she never came back.
‘Did she call for him, though?’ Mr Henderson interrupts. ‘Later, years later, when it was his turn to die?’
‘Yes,’ I smile quickly. ‘She came back to get him. She clasped him by the hand and whisked him away.’
Both Trevor and Mr Henderson lie back with a sigh.
I tuck them in, hammer in the nails, and sing a lullaby.
Once I hear Mr Henderson breathing deeply, I open the bottle of rose-water and spray it through the air vent. I select different sounds of the sea, and put them on a loop. Then I filter these into his coffin through a secret speaker on the side.
‘There are different sorts of magic,’ Aunt Libby always tells me. ‘There is hope, and there is suggestion, and there is listening to the hurt.’
I hear footsteps running along the corridor outside.
Mr Henderson snores.
Yawning, I make my way out of the room. Aunt Libby’s upstairs, singing badly in the shower. I find Cerberus in the kitchen, his tail between his legs.
‘What’s wrong?’ I beckon, but he refuses to come closer. ‘Are you sulking because you’ve been left here all alone?’
He whimpers and moans, and then hides under the table.
‘Have it your way,’ I tut, turning towards the window, and I jump so violently the rose-water smashes on the floor.
Outside, in the dark, just inches from the house, are the red lights from the woods. But they’re moving on their own. They wave like a scarf. They flicker and they glimmer. They bang against the window, frantic on the wind.
‘Ankaa!’ Aunt Libby calls. ‘Did you leave the front door open?’
Then there are footsteps close behind me, and Cerberus is howling, and all I can smell is roses on the air.
Sea Devils
We spent that summer killing crabs.
‘They ain’t natural,’ Tabs said, eyeing their sideways walk through her grandfather’s monocle. ‘They’re bad, see. They gotta go.’
I took Tabs seriously. It was the way she chewed on old fishing nets, flossing all day so she’d have a smile fit to be in the movies with. I reckoned she could make it, see. Her hair was this black slate, a cloak for vampire fights, and the only reason she hadn’t sailed off to Hollywood yet was ’cause she was in love with Wayne Cross from school. He’d morphed his parents’ tractor into some kind of motorbike. Tabs said he was like a foreigner.
We went fishing for crabs twice a week and killed like we were warriors. Rolled our trousers up, peeled our socks off and tucked ’em into our knickers. We caught the monsters, standing barefoot, hauling in our nets.
The seaweed got stuck under our toenails and turned ’em violent green.
‘Wash ’em off – you’ll get gangrene,’ Tabs said, tipping a whole load of crabs into a veggie box she’d dragged along the sand.
I stared at my feet. ‘Will it make me a mermaid?’
‘It’ll give you two left feet,’ she grinned, ripping an arm off the nearest crab. ‘And then you’ll have to serve drinks at the church fayre instead of dancin’.’
‘I ain’t good at dancin’.’
‘Neither are these,’ she said, kicking the box. ‘Drunken devils, all of ’em.’