Read The Dead I Know for Free Online

breathing.’
    My job was to greet the mourners and hand them a copy of the service for the late Mr Arthur Terrence Dean. I didn’t do much greeting but I did hand out the programs. The photocopied picture gave him the most evil-looking skin and his mad-scientist glasses made the overall effect a bit cartoonish. The body in the coffin wore the same glasses.
    The bereaved took their seats and I stood at the back of the chapel, my damp hands clasped in front of me. I could see the backs of their heads but their eyes were on the celebrant at the lectern, above the coffin. Flamboyant in purple and green, he made the rotund John Barton look like a swimsuit model.
    ‘We’re here to bid our farewells to Arthur . . . Arty . . .. Terrence Dean. To celebrate his life and lay him to rest.’
    Why was my own heart hammering so loud? Could the tall man in the back row hear it?
    It wasn’t the still body that unmanned me. It wasn’t the flowers or the solemnity of the occasion. It was the people. The seething sea of emotion that filled the room to the rafters. The reddened eyes and the quiet sniffles, the hands held tight. They were each marked with the disease – . the unmistakable symptoms of grief – and the very air I breathed was infecting me.
    I hung there like a tortured animal through the whole service, shivering when it got the better of me, feeling faint and waiting for the final blow.
    It came from a lady in the front row. It came as John Barton discreetly pressed a button in the wall beside meand the coffin sank out of sight. The woman sobbed. I felt the wall of the dam breaking and I ran. I hit the door on the way out. I ran onto the street. I didn’t stop running.

8
    I T WAS THE DREAM . It was as if that room full of people were all tearing at the sheet in my nightmare. They were going to uncover the foot, the leg, the body hidden there, and I didn’t want to know, didn’t want to think about any of it. I wanted to tuck it all back down and get on with my life. Perhaps I could concentrate my efforts in the coolroom? John Barton could teach me to dress the bodies and I could be his man behind the scenes.
    I ran all the way back to the van.
    The annex smelled burnt. There was blood on the floor. Slick, dark blood, its colour distorted by the green light from the fibreglass panel in the ceiling.
    ‘Mam?’
    No answer.
    More blood on the floor of the van. I sprinted to the shower block, straight into the women’s toilets.
    ‘Mam?’
    ‘Aaron?’
    She was in a cubicle. The door was locked. The air was rank.
    ‘Are you okay?’
    ‘Yes, I’m fine. I had a little accident.’
    ‘Open the door.’
    ‘I’m fine.’
    ‘Please open the door.’
    The latch clicked.
    She sat with her underwear pulled tight between her knees. She was scrubbing at a smudge of brown with a fistful of toilet paper. In the harsh white light of the toilets the blood on her hands was purple.
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘Little accident, that’s all.’
    ‘What’s that on your hands?’
    ‘What does it look like?’
    ‘The purple.’
    ‘Oh, beetroot juice. I couldn’t find the . . . thingy. I used something else. Can’t a person have a bit of privacy these days?’
    ‘What the hell’s going on in here?’ came a harsh woman’s voice.
    I spun to see the toothless woman from van 57 standing in the doorway of the women’s toilets, armed with a towel and pink cosmetics bag.
    ‘Mam’s had an accident. I was just —’
    ‘You were just getting the hell out of here, you pervert.’
    I ran back to the van. Smoke now billowed from the annex door. I ducked in and found a frypan on high heat,the contents smoking and blackened beyond recognition. I flung it on the gravel outside, opened all the windows and turned on the fan.
    I stumped out to wait for the smoke to clear. The frypan had warped. I could see purple in the half-moon of food that wasn’t carbonized. Fried beetroot.
    I sat on my bunk in the annex until the air in the van was