The Life of Death Read online

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Lucy Booth was born in Suffolk, then moved with her family to Solihull, Cyprus and Lymm in Cheshire, where she attended Manchester High School for Girls before studying Behavioural Sciences at Nottingham University. On graduating, Lucy moved to London to pursue her career as a freelance producer for adverts and music videos.

  In 2011 Lucy was diagnosed with breast cancer resulting in surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Undaunted, Lucy not only continued working and writing her blog (lucifersboob.blogspot.co.uk) in a typically forthright and humorous fashion but felt the urge to write a novel. The Life of Death is the result.

  In 2014, the aggressive cancer returned. However, Lucy was determined to live her life to the full and to finish her novel.

  Lucy was funny and brave and an inspiration to all who knew and loved her; she never allowed her cancer to define her and remained upbeat and positive until her last days.

  Lucy died in August 2016, aged thirty-seven.

  The Good Man at the Hour of Death

  When from this life Heaven calls the Just away,

  Serene he does the pleasing call obey.

  Of all offense he finds the conscience clear,

  And all is Hope and nothing to fear.

  Thomas A. E. Chambers (1724–1789)

  CONTENTS

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Acknowledgements

  Supporters

  Copyright

  1

  I HAVE LIVED THE LIVES OF MORE SOULS THAN I can count. My husbands have loved me, scarred me, cherished me, scared me. I have outlived them all. My children have feared me, welcomed me, run to me and run away. I have caught them all.

  I am there when you are born. When you cross the road. When the live wire frays in a Bakelite plug. I am there in the hospital canteen, by the frozen pond, in the carbon monoxide fug of a terraced living room. I am waiting, with open arms and solace.

  I am Death.

  Traditionally, in literature, art, songs, I am depicted as a man in a shabby, hooded cloak with my scythe poised to cut you down. I am to be feared, run from. But that’s not the truth, that is not my raison d’être. How are you to know the real me, after all? You only find that out in your closing seconds, when you’re searching for your final embrace, your final act of love. At the point of death, when the physical body grunts and pants, when it seeps and oozes, when it screams and sighs, my presence brings calm. Eyes clear and wounds heal. Pain dulls and the fog lifts and in those final moments there is an undreamed-of peace. For I am there to carry you through those last moments, through the screaming and the seeping, through the fog, and deposit you softly, gently on the other side. And when you get there, with few exceptions, you are glad to see me. As you fall into the deepest and most dreamless of sleeps, and slowly, quietly, you fade to black.

  As for the real me, I am fat, thin, dark, fair. I am tall. I am short. I have a plump welcoming bosom and the gnarled, age-spotted hand of an eighty-year-old. I am the woman you most want to see in those final seconds you live on this earth. I have been wives, daughters, best friends. I have been a beloved nurse, a primary school teacher. Your first love. I am the ultimate mother.

  I am Death.

  Lives are given to me – I never take them. Never. Even in the most accidental situations, in those final seconds you give yourselves up to me. But there are the exceptions – the murdered few who are taken deliberately and agonisingly. Too early for their short lives. And those, those my friends, are the ones selected pains-takingly and ruthlessly by Him. And if it’s you, if you’re the chosen one, it’s always the same. I can only stand and watch as He spins the wheel of chance and picks their fate. I can only watch as He pulls the trigger, holds His long fingers around your throat, twists the knife in the wound, etches your name on the bullet in the chamber. I stand by, ready to pick up the pieces, and I come for you when He is spent. You claw at me, scream, sob. Desperation takes hold of you and I am helpless. I hold you, whisper what words of comfort I can. I cradle you, rock you, gently shush and hush you until you realise the inevitability of your position and succumb to me. Cosset you while you calm yourselves and wait to face that which is unavoidable. Until eventually, slowly, quietly, you fade to black.

  And who is He?

  He is the Devil.

  In 1590, I sold my soul to the Devil. I was twenty-three.

  2

  I WAS BORN IN 1567 IN THE TINY VILLAGE OF Tranent, clinging to the fraying skirt hems of Scotland as they dragged into the icy waters of the North Sea. My name was Elizabeth. Elizabeth Murray. Lizzy, Lilibet, Bess. The Devil was all around us in that remote spot, lashing the shores with whipped-up tempests and slicing us to the bone with the Arctic winds. But while the others could wrap up, turn their backs to Him over the whistling winds, He had chosen me and from that there was no escape. Where I went, He would undoubtedly follow. I was marked – a livid red birthmark scoring the soft skin below my right ear and curling into my neck. A question mark etched into my skin. I found refuge in the dark – when the flickering light from open fires disguised my disfigurement and I could hide in the shadows. Refuge in the dark, and among the women of my family.

  We’d gather on the kirk green late into the long summer evenings, huddled in the shadows of the squat, thick-set stone church, backs turned to the wind and driving rain. The walls were at least six feet thick and when we were there we were safe. Me, my sisters, my mother, my aunts. It started small – just we six – before more women from the village joined us and we would gather nightly to swap tips and exchange advice, gossip about the local men, offer a friendly ear in a hostile world.

  I had a talent for a poultice. Bring me a lame horse and he would walk; an infected finger would soften and bend under my care. I heard the whispers from the village – we all did. ‘Witchcraft’, ‘Devil’s Child’, ‘Dark magic’, flitting past our ears and floating in the air to be netted and pinned like fragile butterflies by those who believed. And we’d laugh – laugh at those men who feared and revered us in equal measure. Who had their own meetings by firelight to ‘free their midst of evil’, flames dancing in their eyes, shadows carving canyons into weathered faces. Only a day later they would appear at our doors, heads hanging, eyes cast to the floor and feet scuffing the dirt as they mumbled out requests. A lame mule; an angry, red, swollen eye, weeping and oozing; a third stillbirth in the family in as many years. They were torn between their contempt for us and their need. And that made them despise us all the more.

  So when the King’s men came to rid the country of witchcraft and magic, there those same men stood. Eyes once more turned to the floor. Toes once more scuffing the dirt. Names mumbled, fingers pointed towards crofts, and faces turned away from women bundled and pushed ahead of men dressed in metal, their rich fabrics saturated with colour in the harsh light bouncing from the sea. Faces turned away from me and the women who would join me on those long, late nights on the kirk green. Faces turned away as we were bundled a
nd pushed into dank dungeons dripping with slimy moss to await a trial – accused of nothing more than helping and healing. Accused of a knowledge the men would never understand. Accused of witchcraft and a devotion to the Devil.

  I am strung up in that freezing cell. Shackled to the wall and strapped into a witch’s bridle – the metal prongs jabbing into my cheeks and the spiked iron bit tearing welts into my tongue. For days I hang there. When my body sags under its own weight, under the exhaustion of night after night without sleep, the spikes bite into my tongue and pain jerks me upright and awake. The whistles and whispers of the wind begin to sound like voices. Until, after an eternity hanging in the dark and cold, those whistles and whispers become a voice. His voice. Charming and cajoling; curt and cold. Chipping away at me amid the drips of my prison. Chip, chip, chip. Drip, drip, drip.

  I first see Him through the gloom, sitting in the corner of my cell. Long legs stretched out in front of Him, head leaning back against the cold stone wall. His skin is alabaster white, creating a soft halo that shines unnaturally clean in the midst of the squalor. His nose is turned up at the smell of stale excrement, at the faecal streaks that smear my legs. His clothes are those of a gentleman: well-cut, rich fabrics, with a long dark cloak wrapped around His thin shoulders to keep the cold and the damp at bay. Even the rats that use that wall as a channel between their nests and the outside world give that incongruous figure a wide berth. Though we’ve never met before, I recognise Him as soon as I see Him. As soon as I hear that voice.

  ‘You know they’ve said it for years, don’t you?’ He examines His fingernails, blunting the torn edge of one against the rough fabric of His woollen trousers. ‘Jem Porter says you sold your soul to me when you were ten. Thomas Mortimer says you came out of the womb with the Devil in your eye.’

  I know what Jem Porter says. And Thomas Mortimer. And Francis Miller. I know what they all said. The hushed whispers when I was small, rising to sideways comments in the street as I grew into a woman, became open jeers and shouts in the street in these last few years. Open jeers and shouts echoing down empty lanes, sly jabs in dark alleys, mucus hawked from the back of throats to land in globs at my feet. I know what they say for I have heard it since birth.

  He stands, then crosses my cell to peer out of the tiny barred window level with the street outside. He steps back as the stinking piss of a passing horse splashes through the gaps, keeps His distance as the cartwheels that follow closely behind churn urine and dirt into mud to send it splattering into my hole. ‘Listen to them out there. Calling your name. “Bring us the Witch!” “Death to the Witch!” “Devil Woman!” That’s you, Lizzy – you’re the one they’ve come to see. And they won’t be happy until you’re dead.’

  I know that too. I know I am going to die, and I know my death is the one thing that will sate those men. I have heard the cries, the hoots of a crowd baying for blood. Smelled the stench of burning human flesh long after the screams for mercy have died down. Sensed the crowd whipping themselves into a bloodthirsty frenzy of death.

  ‘It’s a shame to die so young, isn’t it, Lizzy? What are you? Sixteen? Seventeen?’

  I try to answer but my tongue is pinned by metal spikes, and all I can manage in reply is a long spool of drool that drips to the floor.

  ‘Where are my manners?’ He draws up to His full height and strides across the cell towards me. ‘Asking you questions when you have no hope of answering?’ He draws one long finger down my cheek then cups my chin and raises my eyes to meet His. Wipes away the saliva that leaks from the corner of my mouth with a cold thumb. ‘And, without even explaining why I’m here.’

  He tuts to himself, before standing back to fold His arms across his chest and contemplate me, His head cocked to one side.

  ‘It’s simple, Lizzy. Quite simple. All I want is your soul. What’s the harm in that, eh? If you’re going to die anyway? And you are going to die, Lizzy, make no mistake.’

  I don’t hear any more. Once more pain overwhelms me and my mind closes itself to the horror around. The cell fades to darkness as I lose consciousness, and hang lifeless from my shackles once more.

  I have no idea how much time passes in that tiny cell. It could be hours, days, weeks. Time has lost all meaning. Jarring my head against the metal frame as I come round suddenly. The first few seconds always, always unexpected. Happy moments of innocence before my vision clears and the clarity of my situation swims into focus.

  When I do wake, it is to the sound of names being called. Eliza. Agnes. Mary. Margaret. Names of the women of my childhood who are being summoned to their end. Alice. Jane. Katherine. Names that are called first by the warders, to be echoed by the guards who accompany them to the marketplace. Names that are picked up by the waiting crowd and cheered and whooped as shrunken figures shuffle past. Names that fade to wisps on the air, replaced by animal yowls and guttural howls as flames lick skywards and the Devil is chased from within. And when I wake, He is there. Sometimes He sits. Sometimes He paces the smooth flags. Biding His time and waiting for me to wake. Sometimes I see Him standing at the barred window of my cell. Breathing in deeply to savour the smell of burning wood, the stench of burning flesh. And when He senses my body rallying, my mind awakening, He is there to continue His pursuit, His relentless pursuit, of my soul. He can be charming, wheedling when He wants to be. Dropping His voice and smoothing my hair back from my face. Soothing the ache as the damp from the sodden walls seeps deep into my bones.

  But for every ounce of charm, He can be curt. Petulant. Pulling on the chains that bind my hands, my feet. Making me shriek with pain, whimper with fear. Squeezing my cheeks in His hands until the metal of the hood scrapes against my teeth. Hissing into my ears, spitting my name. ‘You can make this stop, Lizzy. It doesn’t have to be this way, Lizzy.’

  This is done to break my spirit, to tatter my will, to exhaust my body, to win my soul. And it works, let me tell you. It works. When He is kind, I want nothing more than to make Him happy, to win Him round. And when He is not, well, I would do anything to once more make Him so.

  As those names are called, those names as familiar to me as my own, as I drift in and out of consciousness, dragged sharply back to reality by the searing pain, I notice some changes in Him. With each name called, a graze. With each breath of acrid smoke, a bruise blooms hyacinth blue on that pale cheek. With each scream from the funeral pyre, a wince and a clutch at ribs. These deaths are affecting Him. Physically hurting Him. For although He is the Devil Himself, He is somehow not immune.

  Darkness sweeps through the cell, plunging me once more into a night of the deepest black. My head nods, sending spasms of pain through my ravaged body, and I tumble into blackness once more. Safe from pain, safe from the reality of my surroundings.

  When I wake, He is there. A new day, a new start. He is renewed, refreshed. His skin shines alabaster white, with not a trace of a graze to betray the pain He has suffered. And His pursuit of my soul begins again with relish. ‘Where is the harm, Lizzy? What loss is it to you?’ He chips. ‘It is all I ask, Lizzy. One soul when you have your very life to thank me for.’ And I listen to His beseechings, I acknowledge what He says. But His questions raise some of my own. Where is the harm? What loss would it be? Do I really have my life to thank Him for? For He is the Devil, and surely things cannot be as simple as He suggests.

  With the rising sun, the names come flitting through the window as more of my family and friends are led to their fate. And as the screams reach us, so the pain they inflict upon Him becomes ever more evident. A ruby drop of blood weeps down a sharp cheekbone. The white of an eye bleeds red. Breathing becomes laboured.

  I cannot be sure, but these deaths and their proximity to Him have a profound effect.

  Mid-afternoon and I awake from my pain-induced slumber with a start. I am numb. Pain has softened. My body is rallying. He is standing by the barred window to the cell, shoulders straight, body pulled upright. Without turning He speaks.

  �
�I need you, Lizzy.’ He leans forward to peer into the street. ‘I sensed you wake. I felt you rally. And I knew.’

  ‘What?’ I breathe, through crushed lung and bloodied tongue. ‘Knew what?’

  ‘We are one, you and me. You have seen the damage these deaths inflict upon me. You have seen the pain I suffer.’ He turns to face me. A shaft of sunlight highlights His glowing skin. Skin that is white, clean, unblemished. His breathing is steady, no longer labouring under the cracked ribs suffered by this morning’s cull. ‘When I sensed you rally, when I felt your strength giving me strength of my own. I knew. We are linked, you and me. We are one.’

  ‘But I will die. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But I will leave. And you cannot save me from that.’

  ‘Oh, but Lizzy, I can. You will die, as you say. A mortal death. But give me your soul, Lizzy, and I can reward you with eternal life. And, what’s more, an occupation for that life. To fill those endless years, that yawning eternity of life without life.’

  ‘What will this entail?’ I stammer. I feel my body weakening, and as it does I see the ruby tear once more track its way down smooth skin.

  ‘Allow me to show you, Lizzy. Tomorrow. For tomorrow is her time, isn’t it, Lizzy? Your mother’s? Tomorrow I will show you your role and you can agree or disagree with what you feel. But please note, Lizzy, I need you. And we are for ever to be linked. From that you cannot escape.’

  With that, pain floods my body and I collapse against the unforgiving upright of the iron form that holds me. He shrieks as a gash opens on His chest and blood seeps through the rich brocade. The darkest black of the subconscious takes over to support me and soothe me until once more wakefulness will take hold with its inescapable pain.

  Behind closed lids I hear Him speak. Soft. A whisper on the stagnant air. Warm hands cup freezing feet where they hang above the cold stone floor.