Last One To Die

by Cynthia Murphy

  Jess is lagging behind. I stop to let her catch up as Will ploughs ahead. She’s clutching her ribs and there’s a sheen of sweat on her forehead. The trees winding above us seem to knit closer together as the gloom settles around our shoulders.

  “You OK?” I ask.

  She nods but her eyes are welling up. “I just. . .”

  “What?”

  Her voice comes out in a strained whisper. “I just don’t think I can face him so soon. I’m sorry, Niamh.”

  “Hey, hey,” I try to shush her sniffles and she bites back a sob. “I get it. It’s scary. But, Jess . . . she’s my baby sister.”

  “I know,” she says, taking a deep breath. “I know.”

  “Hey, you two,” a voice hisses from the crooked gravestones ahead of us. “What are you doing?” Will appears from behind a tall, moss covered angel. It doesn’t have a head.

  “Have you found it?” I hiss back, wrapping my fingers around Jess’s, her palm sweaty in mine.

  “No, but we must be getting close.” He brushes a crooked headstone with one finger, moving clumps of moss away. “Eighteen fifty.” He points back the way we came. “The ones over there were a bit newer, and the ones further in tend to be older. They started from the inside out.” He glances at Jess. “Is she OK?”

  “No. She doesn’t want to see him.”

  “I don’t blame her.” He surprises me by speaking to Jess clearly and calmly, like she’s a little kid. “Hey, Jess? Why don’t you wait at the entrance?”

  “What?” Her eyes refocus on him. “No, you need my help, I. . .”

  “You will be helping,” he continues. “You need to go and call your mum and Detective Moran, tell them what’s happened. Can you do that for me?”

  “Great idea,” I agree, spinning her gently and giving her a push towards the entrance, itching to get to my sister.

  “Y-yes, OK,” she mutters, glancing back over her shoulder. “Are you sure?” Her mouth is set but her eyes are pleading with me to let her go.

  “Yeah, it’s a good idea. Just don’t tell them any of the, you know, weird stuff.”

  She nods. “Good idea.”

  I study Will’s face before giving Jess’s retreating figure one last glance. Maybe after all this, he is working with Tommy. Luring me deeper into the graveyard. He wouldn’t send Jess for the police if he was in on it, would he? Maybe he’s pulling a double bluff though, to get me on my own and. . .

  “Niamh?” He snaps his fingers in front of my face. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  I have no other choice.

  “This is it.”

  The sky has settled even lower now, so when we reach the mausoleum it’s covered in heavy, creeping shadows. The grey stone building rears up from tangles of brambles and dead, spindly bushes. Branches reach into the grey sky like knotted, white bones and I shudder, thinking of the dead face I saw through this window. I remember the letters scored into my mind’s eye after I woke up.

  N-I-A-M-H. R-U-N.

  Will heads around to the other side, his trainers crunching through the loose gravel. I wince, trying my best to walk weightlessly towards the columns that arch up and support the domed roof of the crypt. It’s the largest monument in this part of the graveyard. I can see how the weeping statue above the door was once beautiful, but eighteen decades of relentless London rain have sloughed off the finely-carved features. Now there’s nothing but a blank, empty face staring down at me.

  I approach the door. It’s made from heavy, greenish metal and a huge Fleur de Lis sits in the centre. A handle, I think. Small patches of orange flowers litter the ground around the doorway and my heart sinks as I think of the day Tommy taught me about flowers and their meanings. I think this is Butterfly Weed. I’ve seen it at home on Granny’s old farm.

  I wonder what it means.

  I turn my attention back to the door, where mottled green studs march up either side; it looks like it’s never supposed to be opened.

  So, of course, I push it.

  Nothing.

  “Anything?” I clap my hand over a scream as Will’s voice fills my ear.

  “Jesus!” I hiss. My heart is thumping out of all control. “No. It won’t open.”

  “Let me try.”

  I stand aside and watch as Will leans a scrawny shoulder into the door. I roll my eyes and leave him to it, picking my way around the opposite side. That’s when I see it.

  A window.

  It’s not in the same place and it’s higher than I remember, though I guess even creepy prophetic ghost dreams can be inaccurate that way. Everything else is the same, though. A square, deep-set window. Bars on the outside. Scratched, dirty glass beyond them.

  I need to see through that window.

  “Will,” I hiss. He pops his head around the corner, sweat beading on his upper lip. “Look.” I point to the window and he nods, lacing his hands together without a second thought.

  “Need a boost?”

  I brace myself on the wall, stepping into his knotted fingers. “Ready?” He nods and I push myself up, grabbing hold of a bar with my free hand. I can feel him struggling already. I let my eyes adjust to the gloom inside of the mausoleum and scan around for any sign of Meghan.

  “I can’t see her.” I hold on to the bars with both hands now. I crane my neck around to peer at a corner and see a foot. And that foot is attached to a body.

  But not my sister’s body.

  From my vantage point I can just about make out the male figure sitting in the corner, clutching a pile of rags in his arms, the way a mother would hold a new-born baby. I squint as Will wobbles precariously under me. I’m running out of time. Where is Meghan?

  A shaft of late afternoon sun bursts through the low clouds, illuminating Tommy like some kind of fallen angel. That is when I catch a glimpse of the curved, skeletal hands protruding from Tommy’s bundle.

  He’s embracing nothing but bones.

  My hand slips on the bar. Will can’t hold me any more and we fall. The crash of our two bodies hitting the ground rumbles through the graveyard like thunder. I spring to my feet, praying to Saint Anthony that Jess has reached the police, before remembering he’s the patron of lost things and not victims of crazed maniacs.

  The heavens open, sending huge torrents of rain down, fast and furious, plastering my hair and clothes to my skin immediately. I stride round to the doorway.

  “Help me!” I scream at Will, trying to make myself heard over the rain and readying myself to slam into the door. But I don’t need his help.

  Instead, the door creaks open from the inside.

  “You shouldn’t have come here.” Tommy fills the doorway, and it’s his voice, but not like I’ve ever heard it before. It’s dull and thick and . . . cruel. I’ve never heard him sound like that.

  “Meghan?” My voice is stronger than I thought it would be, and I’m glad. I can’t let him know how scared I am.

  “She’s here.” He backs out of the entrance and a shaft of grey light fills the little structure, the rain stopping as suddenly as it started. Meghan’s limp body is stretched out next to some kind of plinth, face down on the ground. I run towards her without thinking and pull her head into my lap.

  “Meghan!” I brush graveyard dirt from her smooth cheeks and shake her gently. She’s pale, too pale, and the crook of my arm beneath her head is starting to grow sticky and warm.

  “You monster,” I grind out, baring my teeth at him. “What have you done to her?”

  “She was making too much noise.” He says it almost casually, like giving someone a head injury to keep them quiet is the most natural thing in the world. “I had to shut her up.”

  I shake Meghan’s body gently, then a little harder when I don’t get a response. She protests against me, eyes rolling behind their lids. She’s alive.

  I take my eyes off my sister and have a proper look at Tommy for the first time. He’s more dishevelled than usual, filthy and haggard looking. It’s h
ard to believe that this is the same fresh-faced boy I thought I was falling in love with. Was this really my first love? Talk about tragic.

  He skulks back to the dark corner and sits down, in a world of his own, stroking the tattered cloth that holds who knows what inside of it. I chance a glimpse at the door and spot Will in the shadow of the doorway. Tommy hasn’t noticed him yet. I hold up my hand to stall him and he nods then ducks back, phone in hand.

  I need him to get Meghan out of here.

  Tommy is bent over his bundle. My eyes try their best to make out shapes and objects, but nothing is familiar to me. Well, one thing is, but I’m trying not to look at the open, empty coffin on the plinth above my head.

  “Meghan?” I press my lips to my sister’s ear, trying to rouse her. “Megs? Can you hear me? I need you to wake up.”

  “I can’t let you do that.” All at once, Tommy is standing over me, clutching the sides of the coffin now, his bare knuckles white against the aging wood. He didn’t make a sound. He’s looking down on me with sad eyes but there’s something detached about them too. Like this is nothing personal. “I told you,” he sighs. “You shouldn’t have come. You were finally safe.”

  “Safe?” My fury bubbles to the surface. I trusted him. I kissed him! “You killed Sara, attacked Tasha, Jess. That girl in the Underground?”

  “I never harmed you, did I?”

  “You’ve made my life a walking nightmare!” I seethe, reliving each and every moment of panic from the last six weeks in one fell swoop. “How dare you.” Tears are falling from my eyes now, splashing on to Meghan, smearing the dust on her face into thin grey rivulets. “How dare you do all this, and then tell me I’m safe.”

  “I’m sorry.” His voice is dull again, void of life, of expression. “But I had to do it. You don’t understand.” He begins to arrange the tattered brown flowers that make up an ancient funeral wreath at the head of the coffin, plumping them up. I squint to get a better look and bile rises in the back of my throat when I realize what it is.

  It’s hair. Human hair.

  I lay Meghan down gently and stand on wobbly legs as the memorials scattered around the crypt sharpen into focus. Wreaths, long fern-like wings and small pieces of hair braided into jewellery decorate the floor around the central coffin. The coffin itself is lined with moth-eaten velvet, clearly once red but now faded to the colour of a soft, rosebud lip. Small, stoppered bottles litter the interior of the casket, their thick, green glass nestled in the folds of threadbare material. “What is all this?”

  “Magic.” He almost smiles, as if this is funny. “Sorcery. Witchcraft, Mesmerism, Demonology. Call it what you like. But I told you, you won’t understand.”

  “Then explain it to her.” Will’s voice comes from the doorway. I look at him, urging him to stay back, but he shakes his head at me, almost imperceptibly. “She might understand, if you explain.” He begins to inch inside and I see that he’s getting closer to Meghan.

  Maybe this could work, after all.

  “Well?” I try to look interested as my skin crawls and the moisture drains from my lips. Who knew this would be when my acting skills came in useful? I turn back to Tommy. “Explain,” I say. “Why have you been doing this? Why have you been stalking me?” My voice drops. “I could have loved you, you know.”

  “I KNOW!” He roars, letting go of the wreath and smashing it to the floor in an explosion of anger, splinters of wood from the stand hurtling across the crypt. Will jumps in front of Meghan to protect her from the crash and pulls her limp body out of the way. Tommy throws another wreath and another and another, finally reaching for one of the small bottles. He snatches his hand back, as though the glass is hot and drops to the ground, his pale hands twisted in his hair. “I know,” he repeats, rocking back and forth. “But I had to do it, it’s the only way.” He crawls over to the bundle of bones discarded on the floor and lifts them up, ever so gently. They crunch and rasp together as he embraces them and I feel sick all over again.

  “The only way to what?”

  “To bring her back,” Will says. He takes a step towards the coffin, stepping around the strands of long-dead hair that now decorate it, like some kind of macabre party streamers. “You’ve been trying to bring her back all this time, haven’t you? You stole the grimoire and the tarot cards from the museum.”

  “They were mine,” Tommy mutters weakly.

  Will continues, ignoring him. “You were her secret love, weren’t you? The one she snuck down to meet the night she died.”

  “Yes,” Tommy chokes out.

  “Are you serious?” I look at Jane’s empty coffin and back down at the boy clutching her skeleton as though his own life depends on it. “But, how? I mean, you should be. . .”

  “Dead?” He gives a flat laugh. “You’re right. Many, many times over. But love can do strange things to you. Throw in a bit of magic and a mother with the lineage of a witch and it’s amazing what you can achieve.”

  I hear Meghan stirring behind me.

  “Niamh?” Her weak voice manages. I try to mask her, filling the mausoleum with my voice.

  “So you were lovers?” I inch around the coffin and move slowly to where he’s sitting. It’s a gruesome scene, seeing the object of my affection crying over a dead body, but if it keeps him busy, Will can get Meghan out of here.

  “We were going to get married,” he tells me, stroking a finger across one hollow cheekbone, like he once did to me. Twice, I realize, remembering the caress when I was trapped in the library. A shudder travels down my spine as I crouch in front of him and try to keep him talking. “That’s why she was meeting me that night. We were going to run away together. Elope.” The ghost of a smile tickles his lips. “We were so happy. And then. . .”

  “Then she had the accident.”

  He nods, a sob escaping from his lips as his clutch on the body tightens. “She’d hidden some coins, some jewellery, things we could sell, behind one of the machines. She went to get them and somehow she turned on the mechanism and . . . and . . .” He picks up a clump of hair from the floor and tries to place it on her skull, but it just slides back down into the dust. “She got dragged in.” He stares down at the body, as though he’s shocked it’s there. “And she died.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.” I try to sound sympathetic, but it’s hard when your fight or flight is screaming at you to get out. I take the chance to glance back at Will and see that he has a very wobbly Meghan up on her feet. My heart soars as he guides her through the doorway, and I quickly turn back and keep talking. “There was nothing you could do.”

  “I tried, don’t you see?” He gestures around to the odd collections stuffed in little nooks around the mausoleum, bottles and wreaths and jars shoved haphazardly into crevices. “The book told me I could bring her back.”

  “Who gave you the book?”

  Tommy gently readjusts his bundle of bones and, still cradling it, moves towards the central wreath. My eyes are adjusting now and I see the hair is looped and swirled around a small, brown book. Little shapes that look like stars are carved into the cover.

  “My mother.”

  I swear I can hear the pieces clicking together in my brain. “Your mother. She was Madame Josephine?”

  Tommy nods and picks up the book, reverently turning the pages. His action dislodges two pieces of ancient black card that flutter gently to my feet. I bend my knees and feel for them on the ground, refusing to take my eyes off of him. I find them and pick up the missing cards from the Tarot deck in the museum. Two more faintly gilded skeletons, one holding a skull and scythe and the other resplendent in an elaborate crown, grin up at me before they are snatched from my grip.

  “I need those.” Tommy places the open grimoire back on its stand and fusses with the placement of the cards. “The Empress,” he mumbles, “and Death. For love and new beginnings.”

  “But it never worked, did it?”

  “No.” He looks back up at me, something like pain in
his gaze. “It didn’t. And my mother died – I couldn’t go back and undo it. I’m . . . stuck.”

  “Stuck?”

  “In this body. And I won’t be able to move on until I bring her back, don’t you see? I knew I could do it this time, I just needed certain . . . items.”

  “Like what?” The words almost stick in my throat as images from the last few weeks parade in front of my eyes. I think I already know what he’s going to say.

  “The Tarot cards. Hair, for remembrance and renewal.” Sara’s poor, broken body flashes through my mind, the bald patches on her beautiful head standing out in stark relief as Tommy traces his finger along the parchment. “Fingernails.” Tasha’s bare, bloody nailbeds follow in the morbid slideshow my memories are creating. “For strength and sharpness of wit.”

  “Let me guess the next one . . . an eye?” I gulp. He nods, as I see the girl on the underground clutching her bloody face.

  “So she could see the world again.” He’s reeling the list off as though it’s a recipe he’s more than familiar with, one he’s followed time and time again. He doesn’t need the book. I wonder how many lives he has ruined trying to fix his own.

  “What else?” I ask, my own curiosity now taking over.

  “A piece of jewellery that was special to its wearer, for sentiment and an open heart,” he drones, his words muffled in the lace of Jane’s rotting gown. He looks up at me with wide eyes. “I got that one before I met you. I think, maybe, if I’d have met you sooner. . .”

  “What? You wouldn’t have done any of this?” He slumps back down to the floor and I see how pathetic and broken he really is. “So, where do I come into all this, then?”

  “You were the final piece. But I . . . I couldn’t do it.” He slams a hand on the floor and I choke on the dust that rises up around us, trying not to think about what I might be breathing in. “I knew that, this time, if I did it, if I . . . used you, it would finally work. Because I cared about you.” Tommy tries to stretch a hand towards me and I flinch away without thinking. “I couldn’t hurt you, though. I couldn’t use you.”