by A. J. Kirby
‘Dick only went and smashed it off one of the gravestones,’ said Twinnie. But he didn’t sound too disappointed. ‘What’s that on your arm?’
Lion was only too happy to tell them, and as he did so, I got this terrifying vision of what was going to happen. I knew what they were going to do, probably even before they did.
‘Bully stuck his hand into the grave,’ said Lion. ‘That’s dead-body juice all on his arm.’
‘Dead body juice is blood, Lion,’ I corrected him, wearily.
‘Whatever. You got all shit on you from sticking your arm in there. And all for a ciggie,’ said Lion.
‘I did. Let’s go back up to school now. If you’ve smashed-up the skull, there’s not really any point being here, is there?’
Twinnie cocked his head and looked at me. I could see his mind working. The wheels of his one-armed bandit spinning round. Soon, they would all come to a stop, and there’d be a payout. And that payout would be paid directly to poor little Tommy Peaker.
‘Let’s see what happens when we stick Tommy’s hand in there,’ said Twinnie, finally.
‘Yeah!’ roared Dick. ‘Or why don’t we make him put his tiny little cock in there. See if that goes all mouldy like Bully’s fingers.’
Twinnie gave him a withering look: ‘You can go fiddling about with Tommy’s cock if you want. Me, I reckon we stick his head in.’
Lion and Dick grabbed Tommy’s kicking legs and held them still. Twinnie still had one hand clamped around the lad’s collar and one in his hair. They yanked him up off the ground, making it look very easy. There was nothing to Tommy after all; we’d seen his caved-in chest in PE once, when he was made to exercise in only his shit-encrusted y-fronts; teacher said that he’d heard the ‘forgotten kit’ excuse too many times to care any more. And Tommy’s legs were kinda knock-kneed too. And about the thickness of one of my arms.
There was nothing to him, and he didn’t have the strength to fight back. They lifted him up, spun him around a little bit, just to get him nice and dizzy, nice and frantic, and then they lowered him down again, head-first into the rapidly widening hole in the grave. Tommy screamed, but it came out all muffled, like he had a mouthful of grave-dirt inside him or like he was down the bottom of a well, shouting up at us.
They pulled him back up. His whole head was purple, either from all the blood rushing into it after the way they’d held him, or from that other stuff; the stuff that had coated my arm. The stuff that I could still see traces of, underneath my fingernails.
‘That’s enough now,’ I said, or think I said. My head was spinning. It was head loss, but not how I’d ever experienced it before. This was a loss of control that felt like an out-of-body experience. Like I was looking down on the five of us in that leaf-strewn, litter-choked graveyard and there was no way I could step in and alter the course of history. I felt at once old and young, at once dead and at once alive. It was as though the whole universe had collapsed in on itself and was dying.
Nobody paid any attention to me, so I figured that they’d not heard my remonstrations. They were laughing too hard now. Screaming abuse at Tommy Peaker, driven wild by their desire to inflict more agony.
‘Look at his face!’ yelled Twinnie. ‘He’s turned into a fucking blackberry.’
‘Let’s do it again, let’s do it again,’ shouted Dick.
And for once, they all listened to him, or were already going to do it anyway. So I stood back and watched, as helpless as Manky Mark, as they Dairylea dunked him into the death-juice filled grave. And I swear that I felt the earth move under my feet. It felt like Tommy, the earth which surrounded him, the grass on which we stood, were all being sucked into something down there. We were feeding the appetite for misery of something far larger than ourselves and there was only me that knew it.
They pulled him out again. Now I could no longer make out the features on Tommy’s face. It was as though his face wasn’t there any more. But still the three of them did not sense that they’d taken it too far. No: something other than themselves was driving them on. They were pawns in some game that was far greater than themselves, the shit-hole school, the decaying town, the mills, everything.
They are processing him, a voice in my head told me. Chewing him up, and spitting him out like he’s nothing. Processing him just like they used to with the workers in the mills…
I stared down into the hole in the grave. Saw something massive moving in there. Saw the hole starting to get bigger again. Big enough to fit a small boy’s body in now.
Twinnie saw it too: ‘Let’s put his whole body down there; see what happens.’
‘Turn him all-blackberry,’ agreed Dick.
Lion just had this blank look on his face like he was faraway somewhere else, just like I was. But he gripped Tommy Peaker’s left leg with a strength that nobody had yet felt the full force of. And Dick grabbed on to the right leg just the same. Twinnie was holding on so hard to Tommy’s hair that big chunks of it were starting to fall out now, and the poor lad’s collar was no more. The cut on his neck had turned into a wide, gaping gash now, but nobody cared. Only I could see it, I think, underneath all that purpling.
There were no whoops of joy as they lowered the whole of Tommy Peaker into the grave. The burial was conducted with the solemnity that history demanded. Only after, when he was inside, all curled up into a ball, did anyone speak.
‘Let’s cover him up,’ whispered Twinnie. ‘Kick some of the dirt back over him. Only for a bit, like. Just to see what happens.’
Everyone readily agreed. Dick started shovelling up great handfuls of muck and chucked it down onto Tommy’s prostrate body. Lion kicked more in. Twinnie took off his shoe and started using it like a bucket.
And gradually, they covered him up. Gradually, as the dirt rained down, there was no more of Tommy Peaker to see. And he never screamed once. Perhaps he thought that once this was over with, once we were back in cold, grey reality, we’d all experience some kind of gigantic turnaround, realise what we’d done, and all the bullying would end just like that.
Twinnie levelled off the earth at the top of the grave just as we heard the first of the police sirens. His face blanched. All of our faces blanched.
‘I’ve gotta get out of here,’ he said. ‘I’m already on my last warning with them fuckers…’
And he was off, leaping over old graves, breaking all known records for running the gauntlet. Soon Dick was careering after him, more clumsy in his progress, but still making up good ground. Lion and I stood over the fresh grave and looked at each other. A massive, unheard scream passed between us. Within it was the agony which said: what have we done?
And then I saw the reflection of blue flashing lights on Lion’s face. He must have seen them on mine too, because he offered me this completely helpless shrug and then bounced away after them, running faster than I’d ever seen the fat bastard run in any of the football games we’d ever played.
I was left, standing over the grave of Tommy Peaker.
Would he be alive in there? Could he be alive in there? Would there be breathing space in there along with all that mud?
A policeman shouted at me. He was already trying to squeeze himself through the bars of the gate, I saw, but was too fat to fit. Too many years sat on his arse in the Choke, drinking lager along with everyone else in the town. Police and criminals alike.
‘Oi!’ he shouted again. ‘What do you think you’re doing in there? This graveyard is private property. You’re trespassing. And you’re skiving school. Wait there!’
I realised too late that I was running too. Away from Tommy Peaker’s grave, away from what we’d done, away from everything. And I knew I’d be running for a long time to come.
We’ll go back though, I thought to myself as I ran. We’ll go back later and dig him up. Nobody but us will know about Tommy. The police won’t find out about what we’ve done. They’ll just think it was kids messing about. They won’t even bother to follow up on us… They won’
t bother going over to the grave right in the corner of the yard. And they certainly won’t stop to notice that it looks like fresh dirt has been pushed over the top of it. And Tommy won’t call out for help. He knows better than that. He knows better than to invite trouble by grassing. He’ll be okay, he’ll be okay, he’ll be okay…
But he wasn’t okay and we all knew that there wasn’t any point going back to dig him up.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Satan’s spell”
Everything in the graveyard was under cover of the fallen golden leaves from the now bare sentry trees which flanked it; guarded it, even. It hadn’t been autumn earlier, and I had absolutely no idea when or how it had changed, but change it had, and we were now in Cutter Street cemetery on the day we’d buried Tommy Peaker alive. Somehow, despite it being a scientific impossibility, I knew we were back there, me and him, and we’d almost reached the end of my journey.
‘Right now, your dad is putting the finishing touches on his evening meal,’ said Tommy. ‘He’s pouring the beans out of the little pan that he always uses for soup or beans – never anything else – and onto his toast. He’s done the toast under the grill, Bully. He hates toasters, doesn’t he? Thinks that they don’t do the job properly. And the smell of toast under the grill always reminds him of better times, when there were four of you in that house on Hangman’s Row.’
I knew what Tommy was doing; he was making sure that I knew that he could be in more than one place at the same time. He could occupy two (or more) quite separate periods, one twelve years ago and one now – if there was a now – and he could reach between the folds of the two, and drag back whatever prey he fancied.
‘Now he’s picking up the tray from the side of the fridge. It’s a funny tray that, Bully. It’s got a sort of cushion thing underneath so that it’s more comfy on your knees. He bought it up at the second hand shop up on the main street, when he couldn’t stand sitting at that empty kitchen table any more. Now he sits with only the fucking television for company, eating his beans on toast and not even noticing what they taste like.
When he finishes his food, he’ll think, ‘I’ll just give myself five minutes’ and he’ll put the tray on your mother’s empty seat and close his eyes for a bit and try to remember what it felt like to have you on his knee, listening to the rhythm of his beating heart. But he can never last the full five minutes. He always feels something nagging at him. He thinks that he’ll go to rack and ruin – go purple if you will – if he doesn’t get the washing up done.
So he’ll slipper his way down that hallway and back into the shabby little kitchen and he’ll run a full bowl even though he’s only got about three things to wash. And its always the same order he washes it all in; first the cutlery, when the water’s boiling hot and it will keep the fake-silver looking sparkling; then the plate which will have traces of bean juice in it; then the wooden spoon he’s used to stir the pan; then finally, when the water’s already messed-up, he’ll wash that stained little pan that he only uses for beans and soup.
It’s a sad little life he has now, Bully. I don’t think he’d be that gutted if we brought him back here so he could get a proper five-minutes in that nice retirement-grave that I just showed you. Shall I go and get him now, or shall I let him do the washing-up first? I reckon he’d hate it if he left the house messy, don’t you? He’d reckon people would think that it was a bad reflection on him, and in some mad roundabout way, on his wife – your mother – even though she’s been dead twenty years now.’
‘Is there nothing I can do to save him?’ I asked, blinking back the tears. My eyes stung. I felt that if I just reached out, I could touch my dad and smell the ripe smell of his Barbour jacket and hear the now haphazard beating of his once strong heart.
‘Death is a terrible thing, Bully,’ he said. ‘But the process of death starts as soon as we are born. From the moment we pop on out into this world, we’re rotting away. In Newton Mills, it’s even more pronounced, this living-death thing. They call it the purpling. Old Burt told you about the purpling, didn’t he? When you went to him with the guilt after you’d been released from hospital after your fall at Grange Heights…
And the purpling will never stop here. It’s embedded in the very bedrock of the town in which we live. It’s ingrained in the gorge and flows in the river. It is the very material from which they made the dome for the library at that fucking school. It’s in the beer and in the drugs and in the Dorchester and Greys. Dorchester and Greys, Bully? I can’t believe you made them your ciggie of choice. What a goddamn waste…
So, in answer to your question; no, there’s nothing you can do to save him. Not in the long term.’
‘In the short term?’ I gasped. ‘Is there anything I can do in the short term? Would it help if I went to the police now, or whenever we are, and confessed to what we’ve done?’
‘I suppose that might have helped, once upon a time,’ sighed Tommy. ‘And it would tie up everything ever so nicely. But that time has now long passed. I’m afraid that I want blood. I want to wring every last drop of blood out of every last one of you. Thoughts of revenge are burning holes in me, Bully. You’re too polite, or too scared to comment about my appearance, but really? Look at the fucking state of me…’
I looked at him. He was right; he was getting worse and worse by the minute, as though the oxygen in the air was poison to him. His face was more skull now. The eyeball that he had so tried to pop back into the socket had long given up the ghost somewhere along the line. He was a one-eyed, bone-skinned, walking-talking freak show now, it seemed.
‘What do you want from me?’ I yelled, half-standing, grabbing at his collar.
And suddenly, I saw the fear in Tommy’s eyes. The total, utter goddamn desperate fear that lay within him.
‘I don’t know,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t know. I just wanted you to feel how I’d felt for so long…’
‘I do feel that way!’ I shouted. I was making a breakthrough, I could sense it. There was a way that I could turn this all around. There was a way that I could save myself and make everything right and make everybody…
Tommy punched my hands off him and shook his head as though trying to clear away the doubts or cobwebs in his head. More of his skin and flesh flew off him. And then he picked me up like a baby in his giant arms and started to carry me off in the direction of the corner of the graveyard. He beat away the thick bushes and revealed my fate to me; the grave in which we’d buried him twelve years ago. And I wasn’t even surprised. I’d known this would be my punishment all along. I deserved it.
Tommy sensed my resignation and dropped me on the floor next to the grave. I took in the fact that it looked exactly the same as when the three of them had put him in there. He hadn’t bothered completely emptying this grave. Just left enough space to fit me in, before he could start shovelling the dirt back over me.
‘Get in,’ he ordered.
I climbed to my feet. For some reason, I was not half-footed any more. I was completely able-bodied. Completely able to walk over to the hole in the grave, dangle my leg over it and then drop myself in.
‘Good; very good,’ said Tommy, clapping his hands together in a terrible imitation of a fourteen-year-old’s excitement. One of his thumbs fell off, such was the force he was using. ‘Get yourself all the way in there.’
I still had two hands touching the sides of the hole, but most of me was inside it, feeling the mud compact around me and little slithery things starting to get to know my feet and legs. Starting to take little bites and tasters. Dinner was served for those grave-insects.
‘If I do this, will you promise to leave my dad alone?’ I asked, taking one last look at Tommy Peaker’s face.
‘I will promise, Bully,’ he said. ‘But only because I’m tired like you now. If I had more energy I’d go for him, but I’m getting so tired now.’
As if to emphasise his point, he flopped down onto the floor and sat by the grave cross-legged like we used t
o sit in assembly. Absently, he started fidgeting, just like he always used to. When he went to pick his nose though, it simply came away in his hands. Then, one of his jug ears slipped off his face and landed in his lap.
‘There’s not much time,’ he said. ‘At this rate, I’m not even going to have the strength to bury you. Now can you please get in there?’
I suppose I could have fought against him. I suppose I could have raged against the dying of the light. But to be honest, death was ready for me, and I was ready for death. And if there was one thing good I could do with my life, it would be to end it all and let Tommy finally have a minute’s peace.
‘Good. Good,’ said Tommy, as I let first one and then the other hand loose from the edges of the hole. As I let myself fall off the precipice and into nothingness. As I fell, as each meaty fistful of earth rained down on me, I remained quiet as the grave. And I empathised at last. I empathised with Tommy and how we’d made him feel. I suppose you could call it an epiphany, but it was too late. Far, far too late.
I was drowning in mud and leaves. Falling into hell or that great maw which was at the epicentre of Newton Mills and everything that ever happened there. I could hardly see anything of the graveyard at all now, let alone Tommy Peaker. But I got the funny feeling that he’d already gone. He’d already disintegrated. And I knew he’d gone when the first of the concrete was poured over me. When the graveyard started to become a car park. When my head was finally, after everything, lost.
THE END
Biography
Writing fiction to suspend belief in skint reality is Andy’s stock in trade. He has had short stories featured in a wide number of publications, including anthologies (Legend Press's Eight Rooms, Nemonymous 8: Cone Zero & Nemonymous 9: Cern Zoo from Megazanthus Press, Graveside Tales' Fried: Fast Food Slow Deaths) print journals (Sein und Werden, Skrev Press, and Champagne Shivers) and webzines (New Voices in Horror, Pumpkin, The Second Hand, US Short Story Library, and Underground).
