Ten Open Graves: A Collection of Supernatural Horror

by David Wood

  And I didn't know what I had done to deserve it.

  Three

  You might have guessed by now just how fond I am of imagery. For me, so much of what I see is what I am. More so now than before, but it has always been an influence lurking somewhere in the background, sometimes to the extent that, unconsciously, I chase an image that really ought to be there when there is nothing near at hand but good old fashioned muck and magic. I'm a great believer in things making sense if you stare at them forcefully enough, like those damned stupid 3-D pictures that are supposed to trigger our 'magic eyes' by looking like Mandlebrot explosions of garish colour.

  I stare and I stare, and if I don't see… well, I'll own up to being as stubborn as an ass. I knuckle down and stare all the harder, perversely sure that it is my own stupidity obscuring a perfectly plain solution. Not the most technical concept of enlightenment, but nowhere on my c.v. does it say the word philosopher.

  So I came off the bridge and walked the same path of decay, looked at the same sights, and thought about the few insights Malachi had allowed me to share, but this time as I walked I took notice of things. I saw the children on the streets and not far away the cardboard boxes soaked through, and I wondered just how many of them were homes to youngsters who had nowhere else to retreat, nowhere safe and warm. Nowhere homely. This time I felt something more than pity or disgust. I felt a fledgling kinship with those kids, too.

  I felt shame as I remembered the times I had brushed past some of the faces in the main streets of the city. Main streets or mean streets? I recognised my own mistakes, my own stupidity, being taken in by the misinformation about 'rich' beggars coining it in left and right in any town like Newcastle. Blagging the locals out of cash for a coffee and retiring from a good day's work with more to spend than I could earn in a couple of nights’ brisk piano playing. I felt the knot tighten inside my stomach and recognised how physically sick I felt, shocked by my own weakness.

  Weakness is the wrong word. The kids out here were not living rough because it was good, or because it was cool. They were running away from something, something frightening enough to make them think there was no way to turn back, no way to go home, or if there was the cost was too great, the risk beyond measure, the reward too small.

  Walking this time, I felt wretched. I passed the rank and file of boxes, forcing myself to look beyond the mask of shadows those poor kids drew about themselves in place of blankets, forcing myself to see. To really see. And looking, I realised something else. I had lost my fear. Their rags did not intimidate or revolt me, or send me running. I wanted to offer the kids something, and all I could think of was shelter. A place to go where they had a chance of dealing with their own ghosts without having to worry about where the next mouthful was coming from or how thin their coats were with winter drawing in.

  There had to be somewhere like that in the city. There simply had to be. I hadn't seen any posters advertising a refuge but I couldn't believe that people didn't care, not with the big myth of the friendly North and the salt-of-the-earth Geordies.

  Then I remembered the mission on Prudhoe Street, red bricks opposite the brewery, but I couldn't for the life of me remember if it was a refuge or a paying hostel like the YWCA around the corner.

  I put my fingers to my temples, trying to massage the ache out of my head, but it refused to go away.

  Back there I had told Malachi I wouldn't fight for him, and I had meant it. I wouldn't raise my hand, fist, gun, sword or stone for him, not in violence. Not the way I thought he wanted. Piano players don't make the greatest vigilantes, I would have thought that was obvious. We don't tote guns particularly well and we don't put the frighteners on people unless you count duff notes in smoky bars as frighteners. Speaking for myself, if I tried to swing a fist in anger I'd probably end up knocking myself senseless. Sugar Ray Shea I'm not.

  That didn't mean I was going to lie down and let the Oz Parasites and whatever other nasties the night held trample all over me. Oh no – there had to be another way and right then I had the makings of an idea that refused to go away.

  Remember that lousy television programme with the talking car? Of course you do. Every week this trite little monologue voiced over the introduction, talking up the Robin Hood-like characteristics of the hero and every week I tuned out, forgiving myself for enjoying that kind of pulp fiction. But maybe that little monologue had a point, maybe one man could make a difference.

  And if he could, surely the measure of the man was how big that difference really was.

  Four

  By lunch time I was knocking on God's door, hoping he had the answer or at least another piece of the jigsaw puzzle.

  I'm normally the first person to call a spade a spade. Part-time religion like my own is unadulterated hypocrisy, riddled with about-faces and blind eyes. True faith if I ever had it is something I let slide a long time ago. I was the original good Christian gone bad, as dear brother Ciaran liked to remind me, but things are seldom that black and white. I'm forever admitting that I am less than one hundred percent virtuous, but sex, drugs and jazz aren'tfrequently talked about subjects because the link between them, if there is one, is fairly tenuous. No, there's still that miniature bell inside my head that thrills to the music of a higher purpose. A swift, sure hand to guide me where I need guidance, to stand back and allow me to make my own mistakes when I need to make them, to allow me to disbelieve when I need to disbelieve. Most of all, to allow me to disbelieve because if I have to think about it I'm thinking about dying and that makes me scared. Being gone forever, an eternity of nothing, empty of thought scares me shitless.

  There I was, and all I had to go on were the dwindling recollections of that strange map I had fallen into. It didn't occur to me just how insane my stream of thought must have been back then. I pictured the gold filaments crackling with energy, life, and the churches that tapped that vein as best I could. And that memory was the best place I had to start, of that much I was certain.

  Even then I couldn't simply walk up and demand God's ear. I loitered, looking at the patchwork of sandstone and soot and the copper crenulations of St. Thomas's Church, searching inside myself for courage that this time was not there.

  I know I've said it before, and I imagine I will say it again, but there's no harm repeating it: I was surrounded by people and yet totally and utterly alone. Nameless bodies spilled out of the Metro station to queue by the out-of-order traffic lights and join the mass of random motion that was Northumberland Street in bloom, but not me. The schizophrenic duality of this little patch of Newcastle couldn't fail to hit home. An oasis of stonework two hundred years old, forced to batten down the hatches and ride out the turbulence that seems to be epitomising the last few years of our millennium. Far from at peace and I imagined, content just to survive.

  That was a feeling I could freely identify with.

  Not only were the red doors shut against the warmth of the day, the metal gates across them had been secured by heavy duty motorcycle chains, and they were a damning indictment in themselves.

  The duality wasn't wholly external; oh, that it could have been. I was as much an anomaly as the world around me. As much of an oasis. There was both bitterness and anger inside my skin, warring like opposing armies on a battlefield of corrupting flesh. Part of me ached with the need to strike out, strike back, to do something, stop being a passenger. Another part of me was deeply scared and wanted to bury its head beneath the paving slabs and hope the whole damned thing just picked up its luggage and passed me by. All of me, heart and soul, wanted to pick up a telephone and call Aimee.

  But no part of me wanted to open that door.

  I put it off as long as I could. I sheltered beneath the wings of the Dark Angel. I knew the statue had a real name, Angel's Wings Balancing Swords And Justice or something equally obscure, but to me it could only ever be the Dark Angel. A statue like the Angel didn't need frills. It was dark and menacing and imposing and striking and beautiful all at
once, and it said more than: 'I'm here to honour the dead.' It said: 'I'm here to avenge.'

  I had seen a charcoal sketch of it by a local pavement artist and fallen in love at once. Before then, I'm not so sure I had even noticed the Angel, tucked away as it is. But that day, I had walked away from it happy to carry on with my own life, but it hadn't walked away from me. I just had to have it, no matter that I didn't have the money to pay for it, so I nagged Aimee until she did her trick with the cash points and plastic and I had to practically force myself to bite my tongue when she insisted on wrapping it up for Christmas. It wasn't christened the Dark Angel until it was hanging over the fireplace in the music room and that was when it took on an aspect all of its own. Ask me and I would swear that picture changed the way I played.

  And then I started brooding about everything that was on the wrong side of the river for me now; out of reach and suddenly beautiful, everything I wanted because I couldn't have it. We all want something beautiful in our lives, we all yearn, but most of us already have that something. It isn't until it's gone that we realise just how beautiful it was.

  A sign in the street outside said 'Christmas cards for sale.' It took me two minutes to work out what was wrong with that – namely that Christmas was still seven months away. Next to the sign a busker was tuning up his acoustic guitar. He was something to take my mind off going inside so I settled down beside him. Smiling, he offered me a harmonica and I couldn't very well say no, so I started tentatively blowing what I hoped was the opening of John Lennon's Working Class Hero, waiting for my new found friend to catch up with my train of thought.

  He was good, that boy. Better than good. He didn't just catch up, he took the reins and left me to sing what I had started. For a few minutes we were a pocket of rhythm in the tidal swell of disharmony, not strong enough to stem the tide but not caring either, just playing and enjoying it for its honesty.

  We played a few together, none of them classics after they had received our treatment but all of them fun. Moon Dance, Hey Jude and Blinded By The Light ala Asbury Park. People passed us by, some listening, one or two singing along as they went by, a few smiles, most not even registering our impromptu skiffle. No one slowed to drop a few coins in his open guitar case. For a short while I had joined another hard life, but this one, at least, brought a few smiles along the way.

  When I pushed myself back to my feet I dropped a handful of shrapnel into the case and bowed my head.

  No matter how much I might have wanted to, I couldn't keep putting it off indefinitely. Even with the main doors barred, a small side door into the sacristy suggested hospitality. So I knocked. I didn't just walk in as I might have done on other days, other occasions. I went as far as the sacristy door, knocked and waited, not sure what to expect. The knot tying itself inside my stomach was surprisingly similar to anticipation, expectancy. I couldn't understand it and yet I couldn't help but think of it in the same vein as excitement. A rush. A hit.

  Five

  The vicar opened the door.

  In doing so, however, he answered none of the questions I might have hoped his presence would answer. Assuaged none of the guilt I felt weighing me down. There was no mystery to the ordinary man that greeted me. And he wasn't holding one of the corner pieces of my ever fragmenting puzzle.

  'May I help you?' He asked quizzically. I must have been a sight for sore eyes

  My God, my eyes. . . Too late, I remembered my eyes, raised my hand quickly to cover them, praying he hadn't seen what I knew he must have

  'Come inside,' he said quickly, unshaken but obviously recognising my discomfort or perhaps sensing there was more to this than first impressions might have lead him sensibly to believe.

  His parish could not have been an easy one to minister to. Not in this part of the city. I guessed the vicar took me for some beaten member of one family or another, caught up in the violence of Newcastle's underbelly. That was fine for now. There were families I wouldn't want to tangle with, bad families well known to everyone who lived within the city limits and a damned sight more who lived outside them. If he thought that that was indeed my misfortune then maybe, just maybe, I could turn my wounding to my advantage.

  I played out the subterfuge, taking his hand with a grip weak enough to suggest I needed to be led into his sanctuary. Our footsteps were surprisingly soft, subdued, their echo not as cold nor as hollow as the high vaulted ceiling ought to have produced.

  The sacristy was surprisingly warm, certainly warmer than my memories of Sunday School chapels might have led me to expect. I noticed the white enamel of the pipes paralleling the length of the compact little recess. A centrally heated church. I shook my head. All of this in the name of progress. . .

  'Sit down, son.' He said, guiding me with concerned hands. 'Do you want something? A drink?'

  I nodded, 'A drink.' I said, looking at my benefactor for the first time without my hand there to obscure my vision. He was young, surprisingly so really. Attaching a quick mental tag I put him in his mid-thirties. No older, certainly. He had long hair for a man of the cloth, just short of shoulder length and blonde, neatly parted in the centre without hanging like the lank curtains long hair often became on men, and a fine beard that couldn't hide the gentle set of his features nor the cold comfort of his dog collar. His body, like his demeanour, was lightly put together. A gust of wind might have knocked him over, but even on this cursory inspection he struck me as the kind of man who would dust himself off and get up to get blown down all over again, and keep on getting up and being blown down.

  A good man to have in your corner. I needed someone like that. Someone who would keep on getting up for me or die trying to make it back to his feet. I reached out to him but he was already away, his back to me. He disappeared through the door to his private chambers, leaving the door wide long enough to hear a snatch of unholy country-rock coming from inside, and came back with a brandy that tasted so good when it hit the back of my throat part of me was sorely tempted to take the Lord's name in vain; the part of me that still remembered what a good shot of liquor did for the system and didn't give a damn about liver failure.

  'I need a cigarette,' I said then, expecting his rebuke but instead he nodded indulgently, offering me a coffin-nail of his own from a pack of Royal Lights. I took one and lit up, tasting the nicotine and identifying it as nectar. Ambrosia. I felt no shame taking a drag in church and assumed that was an indication of just how far I had slid.

  Purple votive candles were lit and doing penance or whatever it is they do for the soul they burn for, their smoke acrid, their scent sickly.

  He was waiting for me to speak but I didn't know where I was supposed to start. It was a big conversation, and it was a mad one, and I didn't know how I was supposed to broach it. I could have let the silence drag, but that would have made it worse for both of us. 'This place,' I said, opening my arms to embrace the pulpit and the aisles and the altar on the other side of the dividing wall, as well as everything my arms weren't wide enough to encompass, 'This city, is dying.' Having said that much I didn't know where I was going; where I could take the conversation after an opening gambit like that. What could I tell him that could get my message across without having me recount impossibilities even I was starting to doubt? I wouldn't have blamed him if he had thrown me out of his church for blasphemy like that, so I opened my mouth and let it come out any way it wanted:

  'Look at the streets; you've walked them, you've seen everything I have. Look at the cracks in the pavement and tell me what you see crawling out of them. You're not blind. You can't tell me you don't care. That you turn a blind eye. . . Homeless kids sleeping rough and risking more than just the cold where they doss down. . .' I couldn't bring myself to say anything else, not then. Visions swam up inside my mind. Stronger and more potent than memories. I wanted to turn and run from them but I couldn't. I felt myself becoming annoyed. I wanted to say it so right… to get my message across and make him help, but the words were wrapped up
in a little bundle of rags that my fingers were not nimble enough to unwrap.

  'Are you all right?'

  'No,' I said, and I wasn't. 'Maybe that's the problem. Maybe I feel guilty because even though I'm not all right I am a damned sight more all right than the kids out there. They shouldn't have to live like that. No one should. Shit, they should be growing up, going to school and worrying about how uncool it is to fall in love with their teacher, not trading access to their bodies for some bastard's cheap fucking thrills.'

  I lashed out at the wooden back of the pew in front of me, slamming the flat of my hand into it in frustration. 'Shit.'

  'I don't mean that,' He paused uncomfortably, hoping I might guess his unsaid meaning. I couldn't make it easy for him; unlike Malachi I couldn't read minds. I waited. 'Your eyes?' There, he said it and we could both carry on. My eyes.

  'I was jumped,' I lied, silently apologising to the Big Fella for my little white indiscretion. This once I guessed he wouldn't hold it against me. 'They don't hurt. They probably look a lot worse than they are. I bleed a lot. Always have. Something to do with my blood cells.' I explained, massaging my hand.

  'If you say so,' he said, unconvinced. 'Did you see who. . . hit you?'

  'Not well enough.' I said quietly, frightening myself with the intensity of my answer. The depth of feeling beneath it. 'There were three of them. . . tramps, I think. Or at least they dressed like tramps, but that's all I saw.'