My life doesn’t flash before my eyes. Maybe that’s because I haven’t had enough of it yet. Fourteen is no age to die, after all, but then I guess Mary knows all about that.
No, all I can see, as G-force drags my eyelids back and makes my cheeks flap, is the top of a DazzleTV van in the square below as I race towards it like an incoming missile.
They’ll be needing a new van.
I wonder if even my purple specs will survive to identify what caused the crater. Probably not.
I manage to close my eyes just before I hit.
But then…
I find myself opening them again.
At first I can’t see anything other than grey, and I wonder if that’s all there is to see after you die. Then I realise that it’s the grey of the TV van I’m looking at. The surface of it is literally one centimetre away from my nose. I look down at my body, and find I’m hovering in the air!
But I don’t even have time to say ‘huh?’ before I’m racing skyward again, like a crazy replay of my fall, only in reverse. My purple specs get dragged off my face, but I manage to grab them as I rocket back up into the night sky…
… and find myself being lowered, with surprising gentleness, through the hole in the tip of the ice pyramid at the summit of the Shard.
In a moment, I’m standing back on the concrete platform again, my legs trembling. After a few goes, I get my purple shades back on.
‘Daniel!’ Simon swoops over to me, and round and round. ‘Oh, thank the Hereafter! I didn’t know if she could stop you in time.’
‘S-s-she?’ I manage to say.
Si stops swooping.
‘Mary,’ he says. ‘She was the only one with the power to break your fall.’
I look up at Mary. She is hovering above my reunion with Si, giving me a strange stare I can’t understand.
I hear a squeal and see that Stacey – the cage of ice reformed around her – is clapping.
‘Weirdy boy fly again! Weirdy boy fly again!’
‘But…’ I say, trying to work this out. ‘Mary’s also the one who just blasted me off the building.’
Mary drops lower, until she’s floating in front of me.
‘Is it true?’ she says. ‘What your friend Simon says? That you know how a ghost can take over a living body?’
My purple specs almost fall off again.
‘What!?’
‘Daniel, I had to tell her something!’ Simon is grinning desperately. ‘I had but moments, and so… I told her.’
I can’t believe my ears. So this is why she saved me?
‘When you help ghosts over to the Hereafter,’ Mary continues, ‘they pay you with their memories? Is this true?’
‘Well, yeah,’ I say. ‘Not all of their memories, obviously. Just a few useful skills or experiences.’
‘But what if they did give you all of their memories?’ Mary is getting closer. I don’t like the glint in her eye. ‘What would happen to you?’
I switch on the grin. I’ve often wondered this. How much of other peoples’ memories could I take on before I stop being myself, and become, well… them?
I have no idea. But I also have no intention of finding out. That’s why I keep it simple: one ghost helped = one memory paid. Job jobbed. And cheap at the price too, considering what I do for them.
‘Look, thanks for saving me and all that, but you’ve got the wrong end of the stick,’ I say to Mary. ‘I know how I get paid to help ghosts, yeah? But I don’t know how to get you into Stacey’s head.’
‘But I don’t want to get into Stacey’s head,’ says Mary, dangerously sweetly. ‘Not any more. You were right all along. She’s just a little child. Whereas you…’ Mary’s eyes light up with glee. ‘You are near full-grown. And a boy!’
‘Er, yeah.’ I manage to keep the grin in place somehow. ‘Last time I looked. Unless something’s dropped off with the cold…’
‘I felt such freedom when I dressed as a boy,’ Mary continues, in a dreamy voice. ‘Now I can put on the ultimate disguise. Your body is the body I need. And you even know how to give it to me.’
‘Woah, let me stop you there!’ I’m backing away. ‘Hey, Si – thanks mate!’ I call over to where Simon is floating.
‘Forgive me, Daniel!’ he wails. ‘It was the best I could do. But at least I managed to buy you a few more seconds of life. Now you can have one of your amazing plans.’
‘I will live again,’ Mary croons, advancing towards me. ‘And this time, I will be a boy! A slightly sickly looking one, it’s true, and with stupid hair…’
‘Oi!’
‘… but a boy all the same. I will be free!’
‘Look, Mary…’ I say, backed right up against the ice sheet at the edge of the platform now, with nowhere else to go. ‘I can still fight you, you know. If you try to get into my head. I can still resist.’
Mary laughs. She’s so close, and crackling so brightly, that I have to close my eyes even behind my shades.
‘You can always try,’ she says.
I let my shoulders sag. I mean, who am I kidding? Mary is gaining power by the minute, whereas I’m exhausted after everything I’ve been through. What chance do I have against her?
So much for coming up with an awesome plan. I see Simon’s still looking at me expectantly, but there’s nothing I can do, not now Mary’s made up her mind. Except, maybe there’s one thing…
‘Okay, Mary, okay,’ I say, putting my hands up in defeat. ‘But if I let you do this, then you don’t need Stacey anymore, do you? You can let her go.’
Mary shrugs, then snaps her fingers.
An arc of electricity dances over Stacey’s ice cage, destroying it in a cloud of glittering ice particles.
‘Oooh!’ says Stacey holding her hands out to catch them.
There’s a ‘hmmm hmmm HMM!’ sound, and I see that Venn and Ned are still prisoners of the ice too.
‘And the others?’ I say. ‘You’ll let them go as well?’
‘It is already done.’ says Mary.
A second arc shatters the ice that’s holding Venn, and then Ned. Venn falls in a heap, but springs to his feet.
‘Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!’ he cries, half hysterical. ‘Ohmygod! Ned, are you getting this? We are going to be rich! Please say you’re getting this!’
Ned staggers over to him, the camera still on his shoulder.
‘Yes sir, I’m getting it, all right,’ he says. ‘I think I’m finally getting it loud and clear.’
Ned takes the camera off his shoulder and brings it crashing down onto Venn’s head. Venn hits the concrete, out cold. Then Ned drops the power pack and cables, scoops Stacey up in his big bodyguard arms, and dashes off down the stairs to safety.
Mary doesn’t even turn round to look at any of this. Her eyes are boring into mine.
‘Relax, boy,’ she says, lifting one hand to reach for my face. ‘Just think of this as your payment for helping me, that’s all. I’ll try not to make it hurt.’
The tendrils of power creep over my scalp once again.
I hold up my finger to say one last witty thing that will stop all this madness and put the world to rights. But I don’t even get the first word out. With a flash of light, Mary starts to fry my brain.