51
an old man telling an old story he’ll never tell again. He sits sometimes as he talks, but it’s never long before he’s back at the window, looking towards a graveyard in which a girl is brimming with frustration. The standing man bothers him, and the bother makes Caleb anxious.
‘Happiness is not a constant, Caleb. It sits on a tide, comes and goes. I suppose it stops happiness getting too familiar and taken for granted. It has to be appreciated when we have it. Evelyn and I, we had such a time together, always chatting and laughing and making nonsense jokes, and she’d always let me steal a single kiss before we parted. I carried that happiness onward through the night and the day before we could be together again. But Evelyn? She had to go home, and home was the graveyard.’
A stone thuds against Caleb’s heart. He wants to stop the story and go home. This Evelyn woman is not Grandma. He doesn’t need to know.
‘Her mother died when she was very young, and it made her father a hard man. He worked hard, spoke hard, hit the bottle hard, and hit her hard. Donald Landy sent the better part of himself to the grave when his wife passed on, and there was nothing but bitterness to replace it. Evelyn didn’t dare breathe one word about me anywhere near him. He would have come looking for me and most likely killed her, or near enough. And I quickly came to learn that he had the kind of friends who could make his problems disappear.’ Gramps chuckles, the way old people do at things that aren’t funny. He looks like someone who’s never been on the shore when the tide comes in.
He’s at the window when he tells the next part, restless. ‘Secrets wriggle, Caleb. They’re lively buggers. They want to be out and away. Wriggling like worms.
‘The first hint that something was wrong was a bruise where her jawline curved to her throat. It was the size of a thumb. She explained it away easily enough, so I didn’t think much of it. After all, she was the wonderful Evelyn. She wouldn’t lie; she wouldn’t keep anything from me. I suppose the signs went back even earlier than that. Any enquiries I made about her home life were always avoided, and she had nothing to say about her father.
‘Then one of the boys, Eddie I think it was, took me to one side for a chat. She’d been getting knocked about by her old man and the rumour, which was spreading fast, was that Mr Landy had grown tired of her promiscuous ways and had taken to teaching her a hard lesson whenever he suspected her of disobeying him. Now, things were different back then. Meddling in a family’s business was frowned upon. And people thought that a girl who went on like that had it coming to her. Nobody wants a daughter who brings them shame.
‘Me? I couldn’t believe it. My Evelyn was true to me, I was sure of it. And Donald might be her father, but that didn’t mean he should lay a hand on her.
‘You see how a young man can be filled with a sense of righteous justice?’
Gramps comes away from the window and spins the numbers on the locks of the suitcase. His fingers struggle with the small barrels. The case yawns open. There are books, folders, tubes, a broad metal implement. From the middle of the stack of books he pulls a leather-bound string-tied journal. He doesn’t hand it over straight away, but holds it and flexes the cover. Caleb is glad. He doesn’t think he wants it. A journal locked in a suitcase he’s never seen before cannot be meant for him.
‘The rest of it’s between these covers. It’s probably best if you hear it in my voice from back then.’ He sits between Caleb and the case, blocking the boy’s view of things he’s sure are private and for others. ‘Your father’s of no help in what’s coming. You know that. I’m losing my mind by degrees. You know that as well. It’s sad that the best advice you get is from your mother up on that hill. But while I’m with it, you must listen to me. It’s time to stay away from that graveyard. Well away. It’s turning. It’s turning to bad.’ He points to the window, to a spot in the graveyard. They both know without looking that there’s someone still standing there. ‘That’s not a man. Not any more.
‘Read, and I’ll make tea.’
52
12th April
If things turn out badly, I know you’ll find this eventually, Mum. I’m sorry, but I got into something I never saw coming. You can’t hide this away or destroy it, even if you don’t believe it. You’ll have to find someone who’ll know what to do with it. I think you might need to be careful whom you ask in this town.
You must promise, and you must be careful.
Evelyn asked me to stay away, because of the way her father is, but after what I’d heard, I couldn’t. I hadn’t seen her for days. I had to know.
I climbed the fence, sneaked over to the house, peered through windows until I found her, sitting on her perfectly made bed, surrounded by old books, very old books.
She looked up. Pardon the language, Mum, but that son of a bitch had blackened her eye.
Evelyn was not pleased to see me.
53
She’s gone again.
He got two hours out of her this time. Granddad sighs so deep he can feel his soul sagging. He’s the oldest of the Belvederes and the entropy is carving big holes through him. He has nowhere near the energy he once had, nowhere near. The others won’t admit it, but they aren’t much better off. If only for her youth, they need Misha. Her vitality, her unblemished power.
‘I need a two-minute break, Granddad,’ she said, and stepped outside, and she cast a look at him before the door closed, and both of them knew she would not be taking a two-minute break. Darkness will fall before she returns.
It’s long past time for him to give up on her, Crosswell is right about that. But Granddad knows he can’t. He knows that, if Misha had the focus and self-control, she could have prevented the Neuman incident single-handed. He knows this because he has seen, but Misha has forgotten.
So many hopes for the future. How have the elvederes become so few?
Well, he’s not like Crosswell, and he won’t give up, even when he should. He puts away the book he was showing Misha, pulls out another slender volume. It is called The Inherent Dangers of Soul Dominion.
54
Evelyn flipped closed the books before I could get a clear look at the pages, and waved me away. She looked frantic, but after seeing the state of her eye, there was no chance of me leaving without a lot of answers. I was so indignant and outraged, so sure of my ability to settle some scores and put matters right.
Oh, Mum, what have I got myself into?
I stood firm. Angry, she drew her curtains. I rapped lightly on the glass with my fingernails, not loud, but steady, just so she knew I wasn’t going to go away. I thought she’d leave me tapping, but she eventually gave in, whipped open the curtains, cracked the window to speak. The books were piled up on the floor.
‘Who did that to you?’ I asked. She said I needed to mind my own business and go back home before I was seen. Her anger was gone, replaced by terror. I’d never seen her face without a smile before. I offered my hand, told her to take it. She nearly did, so nearly. And if she had? Oh, we would have ran so far and so long that this would all stay behind us forever, and you know, I would never have asked her a thing. I would have left it all in the past. I’ve never seen fear like it. The tremor of her lips.
She did not take my hand then. She shook her hand instead, and so took the path that leads me to write this. ‘You can go,’ she said, ‘and if you go it’s fine. I’m not your responsibility. This isn’t your fight.’
Well, of course it was. I had already chosen.
If she wasn’t coming out, then I was going in.
55
A fine drizzle chills her face and peppers her hair as Misha makes her way to the hollowed-out tree. She needs to be out of reach for a while. She’s given Granddad’s lessons more effort than she’d intended to, she actually really tried, and she listened, and she understood, she always understands, but she’s just not sure, and it’s so much to think about that her head gets all crowded, and Eight! Eight’s no help at all. She wants to smash Eight sometimes. S
he wants to get Granddad’s sledgehammer from the shed and bring it down on Eight with all her might. Stupid Eight and its stupid answers. One blow and she could do away with them all.
She might also get to see what’s inside that damned thing once and for all. A little peek at Eight’s innards.
The ball will know she’s been thinking like this, and won’t like it. Misha climbs into the hollow guts of the tree and tells herself she doesn’t care whether the stupid thing likes it or not. Tucking her legs under herself, leaning so as the left side of her face presses to the tree, she convinces herself that Eight can throw a huff if it wants and she just won’t care.
Except the last time it got upset… The words it spat against the window, one after another, more and more spiteful, violent. A stream of promises. A torrent of vile warnings, each image bloodier than the last. It stopped abruptly, leaving Misha wondering if she should dash outside and dig a hole and bury the horrible monster. Eight heard what she was thinking.
YOU
DARE
flashed across that screen, then nothing more, even though she watched it for hours, sitting there on her plump quilt. She watched, and dared not think much of anything.
And if Eight wants to act like that again, so what? Let it. Words are words, nothing more. They can’t do harm. Misha’s heard them all. Eight’s curses. Vic Sweet’s spouting mouth. Crosswell when he drops his above-it-all mask. Town gossip. Letters posted. Graffiti on the walls, the gravestones. All words. All hate.
Every day. Every single day.
It all washes off.
It’s Granddad’s eyes she can never shake off. He’s so sure he’s right, that there is no other way. The Turnings, the interference, she doesn’t want any part of it.
All she wants is alone.
‘Here you are, you disgusting little ghoul.’
Her guts turn inside out, hollowing like this tree. The only escape from here is past that voice. Vic Sweet’s voice.
56
‘Tell me it all,’ I demanded. ‘I’m not leaving until you tell me everything, so you might as well start now.’ She shushed me, shut the door, and dragged me away from any windows.
‘If he comes back early and finds you here he’ll kill you, and no one will find what’s left.’ We argued back and forth about who would kill whom and what Donald could and couldn’t get away with, when she came to a decision. She seized hold of my hand and led me through the house, to the scullery, to a trapdoor in the floor. She handed me a lantern and said, ‘You won’t be able to go back after this. You’ll want to, but it’ll be too late.’
The words dried up in my throat. If I had spoken my voice would have cracked, and I suspect my courage would have snapped too.
Down we went. Thirteen stairs. I counted to keep calm. It was a struggle to hold my lantern steady whilst my brain conjured up a dozen grim discoveries that could be waiting for me. What had Donald been up to? What could drive a man to punch his own daughter in the face?
As it turns out, Donald’s been a very busy man. The original basement walls are all gone. There are tunnels. A lot of tunnels. I don’t mean ones you have to crawl down. You can walk along these.
Evelyn led me into one of them, her fingers warm in my chilly hand. Our lanterns cast out a lot of light, but still the tunnel trailed away into darkness. The air was uncomfortably dank, hard to breathe. I almost immediately broke out into a sweat. I won’t lie, Mother. I wanted out of there. I had no doubt in my mind that it was a bad place. I could feel that this underground maze stretched out far in front of me, I could feel it under my skin. I had to press on, though, didn’t I? For Evelyn.
We soon came to the first of the branches. She led me into a kind of chamber, within which stood rows of mud columns, carved out with care. There was a hole cut into each at chest height. I knew right away that above each of these columns there’d be a gravestone.
Evelyn held up her lantern to one of those holes.
57
Caleb lowers the journal to his lap. Gramps is watching, no, studying him as if waiting to see what reaction might come. Caleb can’t be sure exactly how he looks, but he feels pale, like his skin’s been dusted with cold chalk. ‘The place in this journal…it’s that place over there, right? That graveyard.’ Gramps nods. ‘And Evelyn’s house? It’s the same house that’s there now, right?’
‘No,’ says Gramps, and Caleb almost goes light-headed with relief. ‘The old house got knocked down. A new one was built in its place. Not the same house. But the same spot.’
‘I know the girl who lives there.’
‘I know you do. Cup of tea?’
Caleb nods, and feels like crying. He feels like it doesn’t matter what he does, the spiral will pull him down further.
Down, down, down.
58
Huge, he swarms into the tree. No chance of getting around him. She tries anyway. Vic’s gorilla arm swings out, sweeps her up, pulls her in. He stinks. It’s a guttural stench, unwashed menace. ‘You’re going nowhere,’ he growls in her ear.
59
It took me a few moments to work out what the lantern was illuminating. It was round, it glistened. The top of a human skull. I’d never been so close to a dead body. I recoiled. It only took two short steps backwards for me to hit the column behind me. I felt a rush of claustrophobia, sure that the walls were narrower than they’d been a minute earlier. ‘What is this?’ I asked.
‘Every grave is like this,’ she said. ‘He’s made his way around every single grave.’
‘But what is this?’ I asked again. I didn’t want to sound so desperate, so panicked, because Evelyn had given me a way out. My own insistence had brought me to that gleaming skull, not hers. I hadn’t taken her warning seriously. I had thought myself to be the big man. It was time, then, to play the role, but it wasn’t easy, not with the walls constricting and the thoughts of tons and tons of dirt crashing in on us.
My stomach turns to think of it.
A door slammed above us. It was Mr Landy, of course, full of beer and bellowing for Evelyn.
We ran.
60
Pinned to him, his hand awful against her, Misha screams, tearing the sound up from her very roots. He cuts the sound off with his other great paw, and here’s her chance. She swings down with her fist, and the air whuffs out of him as he doubles over. She’s off, scrambling out of the tree, heartbeat at maximum.
If Vic catches her now, she’s dead. Really dead.
61
The urge won’t go away. It’s an anxious prickling at the base of his throat. That Misha girl, she’s awful and dangerous and she might not know that the bed she sleeps in stands above some weird labyrinth created by a madman.
‘Gramps, I’ve got to go…’
The old man’s already nodding. ‘You’re me through and through, God help you, lad. Take the journal. When you’re done, we’ll go through the rest of the suitcase. There’s no other way but one step at a time with something like this.’ Caleb snaps the journal shut, gets to his feet. ‘And stay out of that bloody graveyard. There’s nothing good left in that place.’
Caleb leaves behind an untouched cup of tea and no promises.
62
Her feet have perfect memory. She has known this terrain for a whole childhood. No need to think, to pick out a route. Misha can simply go. She flees past row after row of gravestones, uphill, towards the top, muscles already burning. Over the summit lies the trick, an end to the chase.
Vic is powerful, thumping after her. A steam train. A red fury.
Faster. I must be faster.
63
He’d heard Gramps perfectly clearly. How could he not? Caleb knows exactly what he was told and he understands it completely. There’s an awful lot wrong with that graveyard and its occupants, but Caleb’s known that for a while now, and it hasn’t yet kept him away.
Besides, he’s made no promises.
Why pretend? He could easily avoid the graveyard for the rest of
the day. Easily. He’s got dozens of places to go. Loll about in the playground. Mooch around the school field. Laze around in his bedroom. Drift around town. He could do the same thing tomorrow and the day after. He could do it the day after the day after, and day after day, and while he was in the playground he’d climb to the top of the fort, sit cross-legged and stare up at Daisy Hill. On the school field the kids would have a kick about as he thought of things coming out of graves. Up in his bedroom the window would always be there for him to gaze through – that window and its irresistible view. Drifting through town, he’d be pulled round in ever-decreasing circles, drawn by the gravity of dead people and monsters and mysteries and Misha.
There is a measure of time between Caleb now and Caleb passing back through those gates. Does it make a lot of difference if that measure is a week or a day or an hour or a minute if the end result is the same? Caleb has an unfinished story of horror underground, he has experience of a midnight chase, he has measurements, he has a peculiar man who Gramps says is not a man to investigate, he has all of this and he cannot let any of it go.
That’s why he goes straight from Gramps’s house to the graveyard, because he’s going to do it anyway, no matter what. There is no hope of stopping now.
He looks back to see if Gramps is watching, but he’s not there.
Through the gates once more, he turns right. Gravel crunches as he heads towards the man who might not be a man. The crunching noise of his footsteps seems very, very loud. He steps off the path, padding softly over soaking wet grass. The not-man is over there, not far off, facing away from Caleb. It looks like he’s shivering.
A Graveyard Visible Page 10
