Chapter 1
Chapter 1 — Where She Woke
When she opened her eyes, the first thing she noticed was a faint metallic smell. Her vision was still blurred, and her right hand lay beside her face. Dried blood covered the back of it, dark enough to look almost black, caked between her fingers and around her nails. She pushed herself upright. Her sleeve slipped back, revealing the same dark red stains across her wrist. Her clothes were worse.
Blood had soaked into her clothes from her right shoulder across her chest. A broad, dried stain covered her stomach, with smaller spatters along her waist and trouser legs. Several strands of hair clung to her neck, their ends stiff and matted together. Her shoes were mostly clean, apart from a small patch on the outside of the left one. She stared at herself for a long moment before checking her body. Her shoulder was unhurt. Her chest was intact, and she could find no wound in her abdomen. The blood seemed to have appeared from nowhere. Even when she pressed hard against the worst of the stains, she felt no pain.
“Where am I...?”
Her own voice sounded unfamiliar. When she looked up, she found herself on a long street she did not recognise. Tall trees lined both sides of the road, their branches shifting gently in the breeze. Beyond them stood pale houses with open windows and no cars parked outside. A bench occupied one corner, and an old streetlamp stood unlit beneath the shade. The sky was bright, though there was no sun to be seen. The whole place was too quiet.
Now and then, someone passed in the distance, but people rarely spoke to one another. There were no engines, no music spilling from shops, not even the sound of birds. A breeze came down the road at exactly the right temperature, making it difficult to believe she was in danger. That calm only confused her more. She knew what a street was. She knew blood meant injury and that a person could die from losing too much of it. All the ordinary facts remained, but whenever she tried to remember anything about herself, she met a bank of white fog. She could not recall the date or where she had come from. As for why she had woken here covered in blood, she could not find even the blur of an image.
She got to her feet more easily than expected. Her body felt light, without any of the stiffness that should have followed lying on the ground for so long. She was about to examine her clothes again when an elderly voice came from beside her.
“Awake, are you?”
She spun around. An old man sat beneath a tree, his battered wheelchair beside the bench. He wore a grey shirt under a dark brown coat, and his hair was almost entirely white. Deep lines crossed his face; he looked well into his seventies. His hands rested calmly on the armrests. Then her gaze dropped, and she froze. Only half of him was there.
Below the waist, there was nothing. His clothes ended naturally beneath his abdomen. There was no blood, no wound in the process of healing; half the wheelchair seat was simply empty. The sight was strange, though not gruesome. The old man followed her gaze and looked down at himself.
“First time seeing that?”
She quickly looked away. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Everyone stares when they first arrive.” He sounded unconcerned, even reaching down to straighten his coat.
After a moment’s hesitation, she asked the question that had been pressing at her since she woke. “What is this place?”
“The Stillworld.” The name meant nothing to her. He seemed accustomed to that response. “It’s where the dead come. The Hall of Departures is up ahead. All new arrivals have to report there.”
For a moment, the air itself seemed to slow. “The dead?”
“That’s right.”
“You mean I’m dead?”
The old man raised his eyes and studied her from her blood-matted hair to her stained trousers. “Looks very likely.”
Her hand went instinctively to the side of her neck. She held her fingertips there for several seconds and felt nothing. Her wrist was the same. She had not noticed before, but although her chest rose and fell faintly with each breath, there was no familiar heartbeat beneath it. It was an oddly distant discovery.
Fear was slow to arrive. Her mind felt numb instead. She understood what death meant, but now that it had happened to her, it sounded like somebody else’s story.
“This is really the afterlife?”
The old man leaned back in his chair and considered it. “I’ve been here a long while, and I’ve yet to see anyone wake up the next morning and announce they came to the wrong place.”
She looked down the street. Shadows moved slowly with the wind. In the distance, someone sat on a bench reading. A woman emerged from one of the houses carrying a basket and paused at her door to smooth her skirt. Without the old man’s explanation, the place might have been a small town where life simply moved at a gentler pace.
“Why do I look like this?” She looked down at the blood. He did too.
“People tend to bring a little of their final moments with them. Some arrive soaking wet. Some come in hospital gowns. Some look worse than you.”
“Is this my blood?”
“Couldn’t tell you.”
“How did I die?”
He spread his hands. “Wrong person to ask. I wasn’t there.”
She wanted to press him, only to realise she had no other clue to offer. The old man pushed at the wheels of his chair, preparing to leave.
“Go to the Hall first. They’ll register who you are, where you came from, and where you’re meant to go next.”
“Wait.” His chair stopped. “What’s your name?”
He looked back. “Why?”
“I can’t keep calling you ‘old man.’”
“We probably won’t see each other again.”
“You could still tell me.”
“I don’t want to.” He turned away with brisk finality.
The blunt answer left her speechless. He rolled several yards down the road, then seemed to remember something and pointed toward the far end.
“Keep going this way. When you see a white gate, you’re there. Don’t wander off.”
“Thank you.”
“And stop checking your pulse.” Her hand had found her wrist again. The old man watched her. “You’re dead. Feeling for it won’t bring it back.”
This time he truly left. His wheelchair moved slowly down the road and soon disappeared behind the trees. She waited until the faint sound of the wheels had faded, then set off in the direction he had given her. At first she kept glancing at the blood on her clothes. As she passed more of the dead, however, she began to understand that a sight which would have caused screams among the living was ordinary here.
A man in a suit walked toward her, drenched from head to foot, water dripping steadily from his cuffs. He made no attempt to dry himself and even waved to someone he knew across the road. Beneath a tree, an old woman in a hospital gown sat with a blanket over her knees, discussing with another woman when a certain flower ought to be pruned. A young woman emerged from an alley with severe burns covering the left side of her face and a grey cat asleep in her arms. The cat, at least, was whole and seemed perfectly comfortable.
Everyone here appeared to have accepted the shape in which they had arrived. She did not even know who she was.
After two blocks, the road divided. The old man had told her to keep straight, but neither branch looked more direct than the other. There were no signs, and the distant buildings were half concealed by trees. She stood at the fork for some time, unable to decide.
“Are you going to the Hall of Departures too?” someone called from behind her.
She turned. A young man was walking toward her. He looked about twenty-five, with short black hair that had fallen slightly out of place. He wore a grey T-shirt, dark trousers, and an ordinary pair of trainers. He was tall and looked surprisingly well. There were no wounds on his face, no visible trace of his death. Compared with everyone else she had seen, his cleanliness was almost conspicuous.
He stopped a couple of paces away. “I’ve been following you for a little while.”
She frowned. “Following me?”
“I should explain that. I wasn’t trying to stalk you.” The words came quickly. “Someone told me this road led to the Hall. Then I saw you heading the same way and thought following someone who looked as if she knew where she was going was the safest option.”
She glanced at the fork. “And now?”
“Now I suspect you may not know either.” He smiled at his own admission. “So I thought I’d ask.”
“I only just arrived.”
“So did I.” His eyes dropped briefly to her clothes, then returned to her face. “What happened with all the blood?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Where are you hurt?”
“I couldn’t find a wound.”
“With that much blood?” He clearly did not believe it. His gaze passed again over her shoulder and abdomen. “You checked?”
“Yes.”
“Does anything hurt?”
“No.”
He drew his brows together, as though more questions had already formed, then stopped himself. “Never mind. I suppose none of this is useful now.”
“Why not?”
“Because everyone here says we’re dead.” He examined one of his own hands. “Postmortem examinations probably aren’t my department.”
For the first time, she looked at him properly. “You’re a doctor?”
“Emergency medicine intern.” Then he added, “At least, I remember being one.”
That made her pause. “You remember your life?”
“Most of it, I think.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m Theo Mercer. I’m twenty-five, and I work at a hospital. I remember where I live. I remember people. I just can’t remember why I’m here.” He looked down at himself. “And as you can see, there isn’t even any blood on me.”
“You don’t know how you died?”
Theo shook his head. “No. I checked myself over a minute ago. No wounds, no pain, and my clothes are fine. If something serious happened, you’d expect it to leave some kind of mark.” He glanced at her again. “You and I don’t exactly match.”
She followed his gaze to her chest. “The old man said everyone keeps some trace of their last moments.”
“Someone told me the same thing.” Theo put his hands in his pockets. “Which leaves me with two theories. Either I died in an exceptionally tidy way, or somebody here has made a mistake.”
“The afterlife makes mistakes?”
“Who knows? We haven’t even found out whether the Hall makes you take a number.”
She gave him another look. He seemed unaware of how much he had already said and turned to study the roads instead.
“The left side is wider. The right has more trees. The person I met said the Hall was large, and if its gate is white, we’re more likely to see it from the open road.”
“The old man mentioned a white gate too.”
“Left, then?”
“All right.”
Theo nodded. “Good. At least if we get lost together, we can come back together.”
They took the left-hand road. At first they managed a stretch of silence. It did not last long.
“Did you wake up recently too?” Theo asked.
“Yes.”
“How much do you remember from before?”
Her pace slowed. “Almost nothing.”
He turned toward her. “Not even how you died?”
“No.”
“Your family?”
She tried, but no faces came. Her mind was not entirely empty. She recognised tables and chairs, knew what a city was, and understood what the word family meant. The part that belonged to her had been lifted out cleanly.
“I can’t remember.”
Theo was ready with another question, but the look on her face stopped him. “Sorry. I ask too much.”
“You do ask a lot.”
“Occupational habit.”
“Are all doctors like that?”
“If you don’t ask the right questions in the emergency department, things go wrong.” He sounded entirely reasonable. Two seconds later, he smiled. “Though I suppose neither of us is in any immediate danger now.”
It was a strange joke to make here. Their eyes met. Theo looked away first and cleared his throat.
“All right. That wasn’t funny.”
They continued. A pale building had begun to appear at the end of the road, still distant, its entrance partly hidden behind the trees. Theo studied it until he seemed satisfied.
“That should be it.”
“I think so.”
“By the way.”
She looked at him.
“I told you my name.” Theo pointed at his own chest. “Theo Mercer.”
“I heard you.”
“So what’s yours?”
It was an ordinary question. She stopped walking.
Her name. Something people must have called her thousands of times, something she must have said just as often. She searched her memory and heard nothing. Theo waited, his easy smile fading.
“What is it?”
She looked at him. “I can’t remember.”
“Your name?”
She nodded.
The wind moved between them and lifted a strand of hair stuck to her shoulder. The white building remained at the end of the road, silent and still. She lowered her eyes to the dried blood on her hands.
“I don’t even remember what I’m called.”
