Storm

I’d just reached the stile at the opposite end when the clouds peeled back, and what remained of Cliffstones was bathed in the moon’s merciless light.

Nothing familiar remained – not the playground, or the half-built village hall, or the little rows of fishermen’s cottages. The wave had slithered over it and smashed it in its wake. And as the gleaming light crept over the village’s remains, I couldn’t help but shiver. I’d perished down there. And now I was planning to go back?

What are you afraid of, Frankie Ripley – dying?

With a bleak grin, I hopped over the stile.

And then something odd happened. As soon as I reached Legkiller Road, my legs stopped working. Instead of walking, they just jerked back and forwards, like a toy running out of battery.

Confusion filled me on the quiet dark road. Would my body begin to shut down now? Perhaps the last twenty-four hours had been an accidental blip of consciousness on my way to proper deadness. Maybe I was like one of those chickens who ran about a bit after their head was chopped off – and if so, how much longer did I have before I died properly?

As these questions ran through me, a large pair of mustard eyes glowed in the darkness, accompanied by a rusty squeaking sound.

I frowned into the shadows. Terror drummed away inside my busted heart. Something was moving up Legkiller Road. Something large. Something crusty and pitted. And it – whatever it was – was heading right towards me.

When it was just a few metres away, the clouds parted again and bathed the huge object in a silvery light.

It was a shipwreck. Dripping wet, festooned with strings of seaweed, covered with a bumpy skin of molluscs. From its rusting hulk came the briny smell of saltwater and decay.

Oh God.

Had death come for me at last? Had the wave finally realised it was missing a body from its terrible haul and sent this ship to hunt me down and drag me back?

I frowned at the sopping vessel as it came nearer.

Oh.

It wasn’t a ship.

It was a bus.

But it was definitely still a wreck. A double-decker bus wreck. The glass in all its windows had long gone and, despite its creaky yet undeniably forward propulsion, all four wheels were flat. It didn’t even look like there was anyone at the wheel.

And as it lurched its way towards me, like a tipsy grown-up at one of my parents’ parties, I heard, faintly but unmistakably, the sound of children crying and wailing coming from its belly.

Which was obviously, as you can imagine, a really lovely, reassuring sound.

ALL I COULD do was stand and stare as the bus creaked towards me. The moon picked out every unsavoury detail. Its wheels were flaps of shredded rubber that looked like they’d last been inflated sometime around doomsday. There was a row of crabs clinging to the top of the bus, clacking their claws threateningly like stern Spanish dancers. Most of its side panels were clinging on by a nail. All it would take to blow it apart would be one windy day.

And on each deck, like eggs in a box, was a clutch of faces, all turned in my direction.

The wind howled around us.

I gulped. Should I shout for help?

But who would hear me? No one’s left.

The sound of slow, determined footsteps rang out from inside the wreck. A few seconds later, the warped front door flew open with a squeak and a bang. And in the doorway, bathed in the ashen January moonlight, stood a middle-aged woman in a shapeless beige suit, carrying a clipboard. She wore the biggest pair of glasses I had ever seen.

She glanced at the clipboard in her hands and stared at me.

I straightened my shoulders and returned her gaze.

Somewhere, an owl hooted.

A polite cough. ‘Perished in the Cliffstones tsunami of January the third?’ she enquired delicately.

‘Pardon?’

‘Perished in the Cliffstones tsunami of January the third?’

‘Was that what it was?’ I said. ‘A tsunami?’

She sighed. ‘Did you, or did you not, die in the Cliffstones tsunami of January the third?’

A bat slipped out of the mangled roof and shot into the night.

‘I guess?’ I said.

This answer seemed to satisfy her and she put a tick on her clipboard. ‘Frances Frida Ripley?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘How’d you know that? Can you help me find my fam—’

‘You’re my last pick-up,’ she said. ‘Time to get on board.’

I stared at her. ‘What?’

Through her glasses two leached, drained eyes regarded me.

‘On board the bus, duckie. For the Afterlife Club,’ she said. Her voice was as flat as the tyres on the bus.

‘The Afterlife Club?’

‘Yes, dear.’ She pointed to the front of the bus. ‘Read.’

The faded destination sign said: The Afterlife Club, for ages twelve and under. Enjoy death with friends, games and endless days out!

I’ve always been suspicious of exclamation marks and that one was the most desperate I’d ever seen. I eyed it warily, then glanced at the woman. ‘I don’t … understand … What?’

‘According to our records, you drowned when you were eleven years old, so this is the bus for you.’

But I had questions, starting with the faces visible through the windows. ‘Who else is on that bus?’

‘Lots of other children like you, picked up over the years,’ the woman said. ‘We’re quite full now, on account of the tsunami. Had to go down to the seabed for an unscheduled detour. Picked up quite a few new passengers. Bit inconvenient you weren’t down there, as a matter of fact,’ she added, pursing her lips in a way that reminded me of most of my teachers.

‘Um,’ I said. ‘Sorry?’

‘Quite unusual, your corpse wandering away from the site of death. Doesn’t happen very often. Only with the most difficult children, I’ve noticed. Bit of a troublemaker, are you?’ She looked at me thoughtfully.

I was only half listening, too busy with my own thoughts. If she’d been down on the seabed, trawling for Cliffstones children under the age of twelve, then …

‘Is my sister on there?’ I yelled.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Birdie. Well, her name’s Bridget, but we call her Birdie, because she’s constantly whistling. Bridget Ripley?’

My mouth was dry as the woman checked her clipboard.

‘I’m afraid not,’ she said finally. ‘No one of that name on the bus. She must have died properly. Younger, was she? Less … trouble?’

I nodded, unable to speak.

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ she said quite kindly.

I took a deep breath and waited for the pain to subside. My thoughts rattled like an out-of-control slot machine. If we were all dead, then …

‘Is this … heaven?’ I asked.

The woman turned and contemplated the barnacled wreck behind her.

From the top deck came the sound of shouting and arguing. Several snotty children in the lower deck had begun to whine.

‘Does it look like heaven?’ she said finally.

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘Not much.’

She sniffed. ‘You’ve got a funny idea of heaven, Frances, if you think it’s carting a disintegrating rust bucket around the world looking after a bunch of kids who never learnt any real manners while they were alive and apparently believe it’s too late to start now. Some death chaperones get to circumnavigate the globe with Patrick Swayze – now that would have been my idea of heaven – but oh no, old Jill from Canvey Island gets lumbered with the under-twelves, which most definitely is not a place of eternal peace, believe you me.’

‘But … why? If this isn’t … why am I still around? I can walk, talk, think …’

Blinking several times, she fixed me with those tired eyes. ‘This all gets covered on the bus. There’s a slideshow. I can sit down. Can’t you just get on and watch it?’

I jutted my chin out. ‘I don’t know anything about you. You’re stranger danger.’

Jill sighed. ‘Please?’

‘I’m not getting on that bus until I know more.’

She closed her eyes and her shoulders slumped. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Fine.’

‘WELL THEN?’ I said.

Jill pushed her glasses up her nose and they slid back down again.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘There are lots of reasons why people don’t properly die. But the most common one is that there’s a toodoo.’

I almost laughed. ‘Pardon?’

‘A toodoo. Hanging over you.’

‘Say it one more time.’

‘You’ve got unfinished business,’ she said firmly.

‘Huh?’

‘There’s something you haven’t done yet that you have to do. Hence, a —’

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘A To Do.’

‘That’s what I said,’ she said.

‘Like what?’

‘Gordon Bennett, Frances, how am I supposed to know? It might not be a big thing. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who forget to turn their kitchen appliances off. Have you left the gas on?’

‘I’m eleven years old.’

‘Oh. In that case, any homework you forgot to hand in?’

I thought for a while. From the top deck of the bus, I saw a boy I recognised from Year Ten. We waved at each other.

‘Maybe?’

The strange woman in front of me sighed. ‘Right, well, you think about that. Because the moment you do it, you can die properly.’

‘What if I can’t think of a To Do? What if there isn’t one? What if I’m an All Done?’

‘Well, another possible reason you’re still around could be that you’re a Difficult Button.’

‘Difficult Button?’

‘The ones that are too stubborn to totally pass over to the other side. Very common in this age group, actually.’

She threw a frustrated glance behind her, barked ‘QUIET!’ at the fierce row blossoming on the top deck over whose turn it was to sit next to the window, and flicked an eye-roll at me.

‘It’s all in the slideshow,’ she said hopefully.

‘Nope.’

Her eyes revealed a great deal of inner suffering. ‘Think of yourself as a button.’

‘Button?’ I said helpfully.

‘Now, think of Life as a shirt, and all the buttonholes as Death.’

‘Er,’ I said.

‘Now, normally, when a button – sorry, human – dies, they pass through the buttonhole easily enough, slip right through, and they come out the other side, and they’re properly dead. Or what we in the trade call “dead dead”. Everything’s gone: consciousness, spirit, soul, the whole shebang. They’re buried, there’s a funeral, everyone has a cry, then there are sandwiches, right? The normal way. The proper way.’

‘Okay.’

‘But if you’re a Difficult Button, what happens is, you don’t quite get through the buttonhole. You’re stuck in the midway point – one foot in death, one foot in life – causing an administrative headache. Anyway, it’s normally the stubborn, hard-headed, challenging types …’ she gave me a loaded look I didn’t appreciate, ‘who don’t die properly. They don’t fully surrender to death. In other words …’

I remembered, for a moment, how I’d told myself that the wave would turn back, that it wouldn’t really break over the harbour wall. Even as the water ripped Mum’s hand out of mine, there’d been a tiny part of me insisting, This isn’t happening, this isn’t—

‘… they resist. At the very point it matters most, Difficult Buttons do not accept death, and their consciousness somehow drags them into this sort of halfway house. An existence, without a proper life attached.’ The woman shook her head. ‘Therefore they’re stuck in the buttonhole. Honestly, why they don’t cover this in schools is beyond me.’

‘So, which one am I? A To Do, or a Difficult Button?’

Jill squinted at her clipboard and then back at me. ‘It’s not clear yet. You might be both. Between you and me, these files they send from the back office aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. I’m sure it will all be sorted out eventually. In the meantime, you need to get on the bus. You’re an unaccompanied minor, which means you’re not permitted to be dead by yourself. You need a guardian, and that is me, and you need a new place of abode, and that is the bus.’

‘I can’t be dead by myself? Says who?’

‘Says the ones in charge.’ Her voice was matter of fact yet also firm. ‘We’ve got a strict code of conduct to abide by, rules and re-ghoulations. You might be dead, Frances, but there’s no need to be reckless.’

I had another disturbing thought. ‘Are you … God then? Or …’ I swallowed, ‘the other one?’

It seemed for a moment that her pupils had grown oddly yellow, like the headlights on the bus. Yet her smile was kind and wise. Or was that just the moonlight rippling over her face?

My thoughts grew electric and wild, as if I’d started flicking through a private diary that I had no business in, and I was afraid. She regarded me a minute, and coughed slightly. Now she just looked like a middle-aged woman in a shapeless suit again, and I was surprised at how much of a relief that was.

‘Calm yourself. I’m Jill. I’m a death guardian. No one important, just an employee. Thirty-three years of service, thank you very much, ever since lung cancer did for me. Cigarettes …’ she fixed me with a longing look, ‘do kill you, as it turns out.’

‘So … where does the bus go?’

‘Everywhere,’ said Jill simply. ‘Well, anywhere there’s a children’s attraction, at any rate. This bus will take you around the world – not in style, admittedly.’ She shot it a rueful look. ‘But it does the job. We make a lot of scheduled stops on the way – lots of chances to get off and stretch your legs, and of course plenty of chances to go on rides completely free of charge. Theme parks, water slides, and of course the Harry Potter studios are very popular—’

‘How long’s the trip?’

‘It can be as little as a couple of months if you meet the obligations of your To Do, or a lot longer if you’re a Difficult Button and take a while to accept death. Spirits can take much longer to decompose than bodies. Whoever came up with the human race really didn’t think this part through and I’m sure this manufacturing snag is a matter of deep personal regret to them, even now. Now, how about getting on, duckie?’

I glanced at the mangled remains of the bus. Peered past it, towards what was left of the village in the moonlight. If my sister wasn’t on the bus, then there was only one other place she could be.

‘No.’

She looked at me wearily. Glanced down at her clipboard. Pushed her glasses back up her nose and fixed me with her eerie stare.

‘Honestly, Frances, I do hope you weren’t like this when you were alive. It’s exhausting.’

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