Free The Memory of Death by Trent Jamieson

that I’ve ever really appreciated his naked bum resting that close to my face. ‘Called out my name in your voice.’
    ‘How do we avoid it?’
    ‘There’s no real avoiding it. Keep running or turn and face it. How do you lot know it means you harm anyway?’
    ‘It’s a vibe,’ I say. Wal raises an eyebrow. ‘Yeah, an “I’m going to cut you into tiny pieces” sort of thing.’
    Wal looks back over his shoulder. ‘You better run then.’
    We’re all panting by the time we reach the top of the One Tree.
    Mr D looks up from his book. Mr D, a man who had saved my life on more occasions than I could bother to count.
    ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he says.
    ‘Yes,’ we say.
    ‘I’d better call Lissa, then,’ he says, getting up from his chair.
    ‘No you don’t,’ I say, puffing up my chest.
    Mr D smiles, gestures at me and I fall on my bum. The other two and Wal snigger a bit.
    ‘And what are you going to do about it?’ he says. ‘All of you?’
    That stops them laughing.
    While Mr D is hardly effusive in his greeting, I understand why – after all, I could possibly be some sort of psychotic revenant. But, hey, Mr D was worse than that when he was alive. He can come across as an affable, avuncular sort of chap, but he is anything but; if you scratch the surface, what you get are holes into a darkness bleaker and deeper than the Underworld, when he’s not giving you all sorts of fatherly advice.
    He was once my mentor, the Death of Australia before me. And while you could accuse him of being a rather inefficient RM (there had been two Schisms tried on his watch, run by two of his closest friends and both those men were now dead) he was still, if not alive, then kicking.
    In fact he looked about to kick me, or run to his bicycle. He was a man very fond of bicycles.
    ‘We need help,’ I say.
    Mr D grimaces, puts away his book on a small case made of old bones, and splinters of the One Tree. He looks at his phone there on the top shelf, then shrugs. ‘I’d say that’s very obvious. There’s something not right about any of you. Like you’re all square blocks being booted into a triangular hole. Hmm, looking at you I feel almost like I’m staring at Stirrers. But I’m happy to see you, the bit of me that isn’t swelling with a killing rage.’
    ‘It doesn’t look like you’re very happy to see us.’
    ‘I prefer my de Selbys in the singular.’ At least he doesn’t look like he wants to kill us, despite what he says.
    ‘We’re not going to hurt you.’
    Mr D sniffs. ‘You already have. I should have been the first person you saw, the moment you returned from the Death of the Water. After all, you went against my advice, you dealt with the Death of the Water, and I bet you barely even glanced at the contract.’ He looks at each of us in turn. ‘One of you hardly even glanced at the contract.’
    ‘You were in my thoughts,’ I lie, and obviously not that convincingly. ‘And there’d never been a written contract, just a verbal one.’
    ‘That’s how he gets you.’ Mr D pats my arm. ‘Well, you’re here now.’
    ‘And I do need your help.’
    ‘Of course you do. Of course you do. Now,’ he says. ‘I have a theory about what you are. Or, at the very least, who.’
    ‘We’re Steven de Selby.’
    ‘If only it was that simple.’
    ‘You’re not meant to be here,’ someone says.
    ‘You’re not meant to be here.’ A whole host of someones.
    Mr D gives a surprised sort of grin, then turns. ‘And when were you going to tell me about this?’
    *
    The dead are all pointing at me, and Suit and Okkervil.
    Chaos.
    A man twice my size grabs at me. I push him away, turn to run; something else is gnawing at my calf and has got a damn good grip, and I trip, landing hard on my face.
    ‘You don’t belong here.’
    ‘You don’t belong here.’
    If I don’t belong here, where do I?
    Suit throws me the bag with the hand in it. My old hand. it's curled into a fist, I swing out, knock one of the