The Messengers by Edward Hogan

Author:Edward Hogan [Hogan, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7698-8
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2013-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

“You did what?” he said.

“I stopped it from happening. Well, Max stopped it, really, but —”

Peter smashed his fist into the desk, and I jumped.

“What’s wrong with you?” I said.

“Don’t you see what you’ve done? This could be a disaster. You don’t know what you’re dealing with. This is unknown territory! Every piece of knowledge that has been passed down points to the fact that death has an order.”

“Oh, garbage,” I said.

“It’s a stupid risk. We have to stick to what little we know. We have to play it safe. If Tabby taught me one thing, it’s that you can mess with life all you want, but you cannot mess with death.”

“Doctors do it all the time,” I said.

“No! You don’t know that.” He was on his feet now. “What if, when a doctor supposedly saves someone, it’s because that person wasn’t ready to die? That’s what I believe. That’s what I’ve learned from being a messenger: death is mapped out. You can’t reason with it, and you can’t stop it. It’s a force of nature, and it takes whatever is in its way.”

“That’s a cop-out, Peter. That’s just an excuse to sit back and do nothing. People can make a difference in the world. People can change things. We have a choice.”

“Who the hell are you to imagine that you have any control over life and death?” Peter said.

“Well, I obviously do, because I saved Kelly.”

“And at what price? At what price? Eh?” He crouched down to me, shouting in my face, and I wondered if he was losing it. After all, he just told me he’d spent time in an institution. “Do you have any idea about the consequences of what you’ve done?” he said.

“No. Do you?” I said.

“That’s . . . I . . .”

“You don’t, do you?”

“I . . . Tabby warned me about this. She said it was the unbreakable rule.”

“And you’re saying you never tried it? Not once?”

“Of course I didn’t! Tabby made it perfectly clear that —”

“Who was Tabby, anyway? What made her such an authority on everything?”

“Don’t you dare doubt her! Besides, the stakes are too high to mess about. You can’t just try things. My family —”

“But you showed Kelly the postcard,” I said. “You delivered the message. By your logic, nothing will happen to your family.”

“What about yours?” he said. “You have put the people you love in terrible jeopardy.”

For some reason, that made me snap. “The people I love are already in jeopardy! I’ve got a nervous wreck of a mum who won’t even talk to me. The bloody police are hunting down my brother like an animal. And God only knows where my dad is. As for me, if I have to spend the rest of my life as a murderer, then I’d rather be dead.”

Peter looked shocked. Good, I thought. I marched out of his hut and slammed the door.

That night, I sat with Auntie Lizzie in the living room. On the TV, detectives were gathered at crime scenes where the murders had already happened.

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