Read The Memory of Death for Free Online

back from the dead.’
    Tim ignores me. ‘One of you, yes, but … what's happening here … Come on, what do you think we are? Stupid? This has to stop. You have to stop.’
    ‘Lissa –’
    ‘Don’t bring her into this; she’s hurting enough.’
    ‘I want to talk to her.’
    ‘You’ve had your chance.’ He sighs again. ‘But you can talk to me. What happened?’
    ‘I woke up in the waves on a beach in Ballina. There was a guy –’
    ‘Which beach?’
    ‘Does it matter?’
    He taps his notepad with his pen. ‘The first one says he came from the Sunshine Coast; the second says he came from Brunswick Heads. Where did you come from?’
    ‘Shelly Beach.’
    ‘Ballina?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    Tim scratches something down on the pad. ‘And before that?’
    I shake my head. ‘Just the water and before that … Well, we won. There was the wave, that wave that went on forever. I remember saying goodbye.’ Her eyes, green and wild, and flecked with grey. I remember …
    Tim’s face is expressionless. ‘Yes. They’ve all said that.’
    But I’m not them, I’m me!
    ‘Tim,’ I say. ‘When did this start happening?’
    He puts down his pen. ‘I know what you think you are, or what you say you think you are. But you’re not. And because of that you don’t get to ask questions.’
    ‘But I am.’
    Tim looks almost bored. ‘No, you are not. The moment you walked through those doors, all sorts of silent alarms went off.’ Tim smiled. ‘We’ve got remarkably sophisticated since you … since he went away. Steven left the world a human, you’re not.’
    ‘What the hell am I? A Stirrer? Christ, don’t tell me I’m a Stirrer.’
    Tim scrawls something else on his clipboard. ‘No, you are not a Stirrer. You’re … you’re trouble. You’re something worse, something we can’t just stall, and banish back to the Underworld.’
    ‘Look, there has to be some sort of test. Something more accurate.’
    Tim winces. ‘Yeah, there is. It’s traumatic. I don’t know what you are, but we’re not monsters here: except for the monsters.’
    I raise an eyebrow; monsters on the payroll? Sure, I’d been something close, but … Tim grimaces. ‘It’s complicated. Look, I’m sorry, mate.’ I can tell he wants to say Steve, but he doesn’t. I can read him like a book and he knows it, and I can see that he knows it. He looks away from me.
    ‘Ask me any question,’ I say in a voice that has far too much pleading in it. ‘Anything that only you and I could possibly know.’
    Tim shakes his head. ‘We tried that first, it didn’t work. You all know that shit. Even the first one.’
    ‘The first one?’
    ‘Yeah, the one we really thought was you. It attacked Lissa.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Went at her with a knife. Like that was going to hurt her.’
    ‘A knife – he should have known better. Where is he? Which one is he?’
    ‘That one got away. It could be you. It could be one of the others, or it could still be out there.’
    ‘You’ve got to believe me.’
    Tim slaps a hand down on the table hard, makes me jump; the dude’s definitely been working out. ‘You, whatever the fuck you are, have to stop doing this. It’s cruel, this joke, this madness. Haven’t we been through enough?’ By the end he’s shouting, jabbing a finger in my chest. I don’t like seeing him hurting. I sit there and take it.
    He wipes at his face. ‘Enough,’ he says, to himself, I can see him reining the anger in. If there is one thing Tim can’t stand it’s being unprofessional. ‘Enough.’
    Tim drops back in the chair and gestures at a camera in the ceiling. The men who brought me to his offices walk in. They grab me; one of them holds my right hand to the table.
    ‘Sorry about this,’ Tim says. ‘And I’m really sorry if this proves me wrong.’
    I try to wrench my way out of their grip, but there’s no give in them. I might as well be encased in concrete.
    ‘Need to test if you possess a soul.’
    ‘Of course I