A Graveyard Visible

by Steve Conoboy

  There’s no one to be seen.

  It’s hard to tell from this distance, but he thinks the grave’s been filled in. There’s no way they’ve done that so quickly.

  No dirt-pile. No suits. No Misha. No torchhead monsters.

  Movement, bottom right.

  False alarm. Just an old man walking an old dog slowly. The same scene he’s stared at a gazillion times before. Except he’s seen what’s underneath. He’s seen the world with life blasted from it, with nothing left upon it but the cold hungers of dead things.

  His ear still rings from when Misha slapped him on it. If the slap’s real, then the rest is real, including that insane monster that shouldn’t exist, that burning sun wearing a human costume.

  Was that other world real? When those lights fired into his eyes, was everything he saw just in his mind?

  The old man with the old dog disappears out of view. There’s nothing but the breeze moving. Caleb sinks down to make a lower profile, and watches for the enemy, and wishes he’d never measured the graveyard.

  32

  Gramps watches his step and eases his way across the attic. There’s only a partial flooring up here. A foot in the wrong place will mean an awkward DIY job at the very least.

  The suitcase is up here somewhere, amongst all the other luggage, boxes, bags, and knick-knacks. When he finds it, he’ll have to be careful taking it down the ladder. He’s far from being a nimble young man. These days he’s just an old man with bad memories and worse enemies. But, as he roots around in dust and the stark light from a bare bulb, he remembers this much – it’s not merely old age that scrambles his recollections at inconvenient times. It’s not merely old age that’s eating at him.

  33

  He’ll give sleeping outside a miss tonight.

  But Caleb knows he won’t be able to get to sleep. And on those nights when he can’t sleep, his only hoped usually is to take his quilt out under the stars.

  Those stars, in that sky. How can he sleep under it ever again?

  He feels hunted, a rabbit cowering in its burrow. Nobody’s knocked at the door. The phone hasn’t rung. The enemy hasn’t come for him. He hasn’t seen them roaming the streets for clues. That doesn’t mean they won’t turn up. They must be asking Misha about him. She’s bound to tell them where he lives. She hates him.

  But if that’s so, then why haven’t they come for him by now?

  He’s been within these walls too long, breathing the same air over and over. It’s an evening that’s gone on for days. He’s sure the ceiling’s coming down on him.

  Out of the window he goes, dragging his quilt along with him. The base of his throat clenches to hold down the panic. He doesn’t want to be out here; he has to be out here. But he’s skittish, looking out for ambushes. He creates his quilt cocoon and lies down quickly, vulnerability driving him to snuggle down low. He thinks himself mad to be out here.

  It’s a little bit thrilling.

  This is how he imagines it would feel to feature on a Wanted: Dead or Alive poster, his face sketched in an evil distortion, a price underneath it. Going through every day wondering when the baddies will catch up with him or when someone will shop him to the baddies must make all the nerve-endings buzz…a lot like his are right now.

  The monster in a human suit. That doesn’t give him a buzz. That makes him want to cry. Up until now, life’s been a dull and occasionally awful experience in plodding through the hours, but at least there’s been no actual monsters.

  Until today.

  It can’t really exist. It can’t really be a monster. There must be another explanation. The sight of a man being buried had already scared him. Perhaps the fear had sent him briefly loopy. But if that was true, then why had Misha run away from the same thing? All his thoughts about that girl start with why. Like why am I thinking about her again?

  There’s a sound approaching, a rhythmic sound amongst the usual sighing of the deepening night. It’s a call. Someone calling out. Caleb lifts his head a few inches off the pillow, concentrates on the sound. It’s a single syllable, repeated at intervals. He counts, like he’s calculating the distance of an incoming storm. Ten seconds. Every ten seconds someone calls out the same thing.

  ‘Kay.’

  His throat is no longer flesh and saliva; it is dust and lava. He’s heard this voice already today, booming and crackling like an aged speaker, turned up too loud.

  ‘Kay.’

  Caleb’s been outside barely five minutes. He imagines the monster lying low all day, only coming out when it caught his scent in the air.

  ‘Kay.’

  Sinking down into the quilt, willing himself to be flat, Caleb tries to quiet his breathing. It’s far too loud. The rise and fall of his chest causes the quilt to whisper. Too loud.

  ‘Kay.’

  People must be able to hear that in their houses over their TVs. He knows it’s getting closer, but how close is it now? Around the corner? In the street? A few doors away?

  ‘Kay.’

  To Caleb’s ears that single word is booming. Hot tears bleed down the sides of his face.

  He’s desperate to take a look. The monster’s either far enough away that he can sneak a quick peek, or it’s so close (and it sounds like it’s at the end of the drive) that he needs to run and never stop.

  ‘Kay.’

  He rolls very slowly onto his belly, slides forward to the edge of the garage roof. Sliiiiiiiides, and what a thin, rasping noise the quilt makes on the coarse roof, the smallest of indistinct sounds that could give him away to the horrible thing in the street.

  ‘Kay.’

  A pair of searchlights sweep the road. They rove at random like beacons on a lighthouse gone mad, swooshing across the sea of tarmac. They are beacons that search for him. He should push back away from the roof’s edge, push away, keep flat and pray. But then he won’t know exactly where it is. And the movement might catch its…lights. (What happened to its eyes, where are its eyes?)

  The monster is five or six doors away, stops every few steps to scan around, and Caleb is rigid with fear.

  ‘Kay.’

  The loud monotone intonation never changes. It is insistent, yet patient. It will search onwards and forever. It is ceaseless. It is an engine for hunting. It’s almost at the end of next door’s drive, and its lights scour everything: pavement, cars, tarmac, walls, and gardens. All of these things, when the light hits them, are painted cold and stark. Flowers are withered and sharp. Vehicles are torture mechanisms made of cogs and needles. There are no bricks in the walls, only bones. Caleb hates looking at all of this, at the hidden dead world beneath the one he inhabits, yet it’s fascinating. It’s incredible. He bets no one’s ever seen anything like it.

  His mouth is dry like stone.

  The monster is outside his house. A demon summoned in a graveyard, loose in the streets. It stops, turns its beams on the front door.

  Does it know he lives here? It can’t, it can’t possibly. Unless one of the suits sent it. Or Misha did. (She didn’t she didn’t she didn’t.)

  ‘Kay.’

  It’s calling him out. It knows he’s here. It knows.

  It moves on. Left to right it searches, left to right.

  Caleb’s chest burns hot from holding his breath so long. He lets it out in a long tight stream, watching the monster walk away. It stops again two doors down, casting that phosphorous gaze over the neighbour’s house.

  ‘Kay.’

  Gradually it tromps away. Hunting.

  Caleb has no idea what he’s going to do about this. He doesn’t know who he can tell that will believe it. The only people who have actually seen it are the suits and Misha, and they’re all enemies, so he can’t turn to them for help. Well, the suits are definitely enemies. Misha is…difficult. He doesn’t know about her. Not at all.

  He doesn’t know about a lot of things lately.

  He really hates that.

  So Caleb lies incredibly still, telling himself to get u
p and get back inside before that thing returns, get inside and stay there for good, but he’s too scared to move quite yet, too outright jelly-bones terrified to twitch even a pinky. I’ll go inside in a minute, he tells himself, when it feels safe.

  But it doesn’t feel safe, and he doesn’t go inside, and sleep refuses to come.

  34

  There’s a packed bag tucked under her bed. It’s right at the back behind a box of books, where it’s unlikely to be seen and found. It’s not a big bag and there’s not a lot in it. A change of clothes. Some snacks. A notepad and pen. A book for long journeys and quiet nights. A small purse containing the small amount of money she’s saved or found. It’s more a short-term survival kit for getting through the first couple of days out in the big wide world, after which she should have a long-term plan in place. She organised it in case of emergencies, or if the urge to see whether or not the world has better things to offer became too great to resist.

  This might be an emergency.

  Surely Granddad will give up on her after this. From the sounds of things, Crosswell wants her head mounted on the spikes of the front gates.

  ‘You wouldn’t listen, would you?’ Crosswell bellows. As far as Misha’s concerned, it was pointless Granddad sending her to her room out of the way. She can hear everything, especially with that big idiot shouting like he’s dishing out orders on a battlefield. ‘Stupid old man! You can’t see the truth when it’s right in front of your face! The girl is an idiot. She’s never had a hope of being able to handle it. We’ve told you this over and over again and now this, now Neuman’s gone, and you still won’t listen!’

  Misha hates him. Really hates him. The kind of hate where, if he disappeared forever because something bad happened to him, that would be absolutely fine by her.

  ‘It’s you that doesn’t listen!’ Granddad this time, his temper lost. A tremor in his voice. Is it fear of Crosswell, or fear of his own temper? ‘It has to be her! It has to be her! How else can I say it before it gets through your thick skull?’

  Morgan next, purring like a cat, but still perfectly audible to Misha. ‘Now, now, let’s not get too heated. Crosswell makes a good point, if somewhat poorly. The girl clearly has no aptitude…’

  ‘She has a name! Use it!’

  A moment of silence. Opposing sides weighing each other up. Misha takes Eight down off the shelf, holds it close. Her only friend, blunt and true.

  Morgan continues, but with a bitter edge. She thinks men should only ever flirt with her, not shout at her. ‘Misha doesn’t possess the necessary skills. It’s not her fault, or yours. Look, a lot of people can’t paint, and a lot of people are no good at maths, see? Our Misha…’

  ‘My Misha was under extreme stress. It’s no wonder she couldn’t perform! She knows none of you has one little bit of faith in her. I asked you all for your co-operation, for your help, your trust, and you couldn’t do it. No, shut up; just shut your mouth, Crosswell. You are worse than a child. All of you, less than children. You bully a twelve-year-old rather than do what has to be done.’

  Misha snorts. If they are bullies, then they are not less than children. They are the same. Vic Sweets will always be Vic Sweets, and people don’t change, and life has no hope of getting any better. It’s all a big joke, and someone somewhere must be laughing, because if no one’s laughing, then what’s the point?

  Crosswell fumes. Morgan shushes him. ‘It’s not bullying, it’s trying to make a point. You’re wrong about her; it’s never going to work. You’re refusing to look at it from anyone else’s angle. What if you’re wrong?’

  ‘What if I’m right? What if I’m right and you lot have destroyed her confidence? Have any of you taken a second to think about that?’

  Misha shakes the ball. ‘Well, Eight? Have they taken a second to think about that?’

  An answer resolves itself in the window. Don’t be silly. Eight shakes itself in her hands, and three more words appear. Ask proper questions.

  ‘That was proper, you horrible old thing. There was a question mark at the end and everything.’ She understands what it really means, though. Eight knows her well. It’s hard for her to ask what she wants to ask. The question has caught its hook in her throat. It’s a very final question. It’s a path-changer, a bridge-burner. Difficult. She wants to and she doesn’t.

  Eight hears the question anyway. Not yet, it says, and the answer is both a relief and a disappointment for her. Running away would be easy, and hard. She trusts Eight like she’s never trusted anyone.

  ‘How long?’ she asks. ‘How long do we wait?’

  A while longer. Eight won’t be pinned down any more than that. She’s had it almost a year, and knows that pressing for more accuracy will only agitate Eight and lead to it going silent. It doesn’t like to talk in hours or days or weeks. So, while the shouting continues outside her bedroom, while Granddad, Crosswell and Morgan fail to agree on who’s most wrong, she decides to head out and hassle Grayson. The window slides up without a squeak, and she takes Eight with her. She likes the oddness of carrying Eight around, likes the way it confuses people. It’s heavy too. Good for hitting people. Not that she would. But she might.

  In pyjamas and slippers she tromps through the midnight graveyard, over dirt paths and muddy puddles, and very quickly her footsteps become squishy. Her autopilot almost takes her through the copse of trees, the one Neuman burst out of. Might not be the best idea at this time of night. There won’t be anyone there, but still.

  Still.

  She walks around. It only adds another thirty seconds to her journey. There’s Grayson sitting approximately where Neuman landed after being blasted back from the graveside. Misha considers the distance that Neuman flew. ‘You know,’ she says good and loud, making him jump, ‘the grave’s right up there, and Neuman hit the deck all the way down here, right?’

  ‘We’re busy,’ growls Grayson. He’s not a fan of surprises. Or Misha. Just like all the others.

  She acts like she didn’t hear him. ‘Wouldn’t you think that some bones would be broken? A lot of bones, maybe even the neck.’

  He doesn’t turn away from the Weave. ‘It’s late. Little girls should be in bed.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think it would be able to walk around, would you? Not with all those different bits of itself all snapped and busted.’

  He turns to glare at her. ‘She’s not an it. She’s called Neuman. She’s a person.’

  Misha shrugs like it doesn’t matter. ‘Is she? I mean right now. When she’s possessed. Because you can call it what you want, but that’s what it is. Do you think she’s still in there? If she isn’t, what will happen when you get her back? If you get her back. Don’t suppose you thought of that.

  Grayson hums a note but drops a loop, and snarls in frustration, and the whole construction shudders. ‘You’ve done enough damage for one night,’ he snaps. ‘Be somewhere else.’

  Eight says there’s nowhere else for me to be yet, she thinks, as she caresses the ball cradled in her left elbow crook. ‘Is that thing going to work?’ she asks, pointing at the complex weave of the light-map.

  ‘Yes, because you’re not involved in it, now shut up.’

  ‘By the time you’ve made it, you probably could’ve found Neuman the normal way. You know, walking around and asking if anyone’s seen anyone who’s possessed and had torches for eyes.’ She knows what he’s really doing. When it’s complete, the map should lock onto Newman’s position and help draw her back to the graveyard, no need to go hunting the streets and risking a dangerous showdown. Misha likes winding Grayson up, though. His shoulders are so tense they might rip out of his suit. She knows he’d love to slap her about, because she asked Eight, and Eight told her blunt and true.

  She’s got this urge to keep pushing until he does it.

  But she’s bored. All the grown-ups are very busy doing not much. Three in the house arguing, two out here weaving, none of them wanting her around. So she’ll go for a little lookey-about
herself. And perhaps things will get exciting. Perhaps she’ll find Neuman and prove to the grown-ups how much better than them this stupid little kid is.

  Besides, she’s never actually seen someone spirit-locked. Heard about it, all about it, but never seen before tonight. It’s fascinating.

  She walks off down Daisy Hill. Grayson doesn’t care enough to notice.

  35

  He is about to get the fright of his life.

  Two minutes before his nervous system jolts him with iced electricity, Caleb has his plan of action all sorted out. Of course he’s not going to tell Father, and of course he’s not going to approach Gramps about it. He’ll make an anonymous call to the police; say there’s a vicious crazy woman called Neuman walking the streets. Then he’ll stay away from the graveyard forever. He will. Even if that means never visiting Mum again. Then he’ll let Father answer the door at all times, no matter how much he shouts at Caleb to do it. Father already hates him, so a little bit of extra disobedience won’t make a difference. And if the suits do come knocking and convince Father he’s done something terrible, Caleb will take the punishment. Should Father insist that he talks to the suits or apologises, then Caleb will lock himself in his room and let the punishments mount up. Father already hates him. It won’t make a difference.

  That’s the plan. It’s all he can come up with. Not particularly heroic. Frustrated tears tremble behind his eyes. He won’t let them out.

  He’ll go to the nearest phone-box and make the call. Soon. He’ll go soon. He keeps catching the faintest hint of that repeated syllable, ‘Kay.’ It’s far off, and he doesn’t hear it often…but he doesn’t want to bump into that thing in the street. It runs. It wants to do something unpleasant to him.