A Graveyard Visible

by Steve Conoboy

  Caleb stops at a grave, acts like he’s there to visit. Messes with the flowers, plucks at weeds. Reads the inscription.

  BELINDA SANDERSON

  1900–1964

  THE SUN HAS SET FOR NOW, MY DEAR

  BUT WILL RISE AGAIN WHEN YOU ARE NEAR

  The not-man, hair lank, clothes sodden, turns his head a fraction, as if hearing Caleb read the engraved words. There remains a fair bit of distance between them. A large measure. Enough for Caleb to be confident of escape in the event of a chase. He wants the not-man to turn around. He wants to see what it looks like. It is evidence. It is another part of the larger mystery. If he misses a part then he might not be able to see the whole picture.

  But the not-man is listening for him, and who’s to say it’s not listening to him? To the slamming of his heart? To the shudder of his veins? The straining of his lungs? The thoughts in his head? Caleb doesn’t know what the not-man is, what it’s capable of.

  Look at it shaking. Is that a symptom of cold, or of hunger?

  Caleb’s wondering about the distance between them. The not-man would have to run like a cheetah to catch him. The not-man might actually run like a cheetah.

  It’s turning. With slow, shuffling footsteps. Like it’s getting used to feet.

  A shout of pain, of anger. Caleb looks up over Belinda’s grave, up the incline of Daisy Hill. The shout was male, but that figure in the swooshing dress is Misha. He takes the excuse gladly, ducks low behind hedgerows, weaves through trees. Observing the not-man is one thing; being followed by it is not an experience he wants.

  It follows anyway.

  But Caleb quickly forgets the not-man as he jogs to the top of the hill. The shout is forming words now, not just noises. Threats, all aimed at Misha. He’s picked himself up, and he’s hobbling after her. Vic, red-faced and angrier than Caleb’s ever seen. He means every word he spits. ‘I’m gonna kill you, you little bitch! I’m gonna snap your legs off for this!’ She’s backing away, but not fast, like she wants to see his fury, like she wants the danger. A mouse taunting the cat. A crazy girl grinning at an enraged bully. A boy stalking a ghost.

  He’s losing track of who’s actually crazy.

  She is, she is, she is, look at him, he’s steaming, he means it, he’ll rip her to pieces.

  Vic is so focused on her that he hasn’t even noticed Caleb. He’s frothing at the mouth, telling her the ways that he wants to make her bleed. Pit-bull eyes, throbbing temples. Limping, throwing himself into each step. He’s going to lunge, and grab.

  And Caleb hates that.

  He runs at Vic, who’s still too focused to see him, and it’s clumsy but Caleb kicks, and it connects with the side of Vic’s left knee, and it’s a rough blow, feels gristly, and the bully boy howls like something important has snapped, and Caleb feels immediately sick.

  Whatever he has done this time cannot be undone.

  Vic totters, then crashes to the rain-drenched ground, clutching his knee, making an unbelievable noise through gritted teeth. Misha looks from Vic to Caleb. She is disbelief all over. In shock, she laughs out loud.

  Vic barks. There are tears dripping from his eyes, real tears, and he’s looking right at Caleb. ‘You are dead! I won’t stop until you’re dead!’

  Caleb turns to Misha and shakes his head – he’s not sure why, it simply happens – then walks away. He doesn’t wait or beckon her on, or sweep her away or any of those hero things (why am I thinking about heroes, this is nothing to do with heroes). He goes, because there’s a hot band around his chest and he’s in a world that’s stopped making sense. He doesn’t know where to go in such a world, but he goes, because listen to Vic. ‘I’ll smash your door in and kill you while you sleep, aaaaah God, I’ll get you both,’ and on it goes, so loud it must blanket the whole town, it’ll bring everyone out to look, and he really doesn’t want to be here for this.

  kill smash get you get you get you

  Oh God.

  Misha skips after him, around him, clutching the sides of her head in amazement. ‘There’s no way you did that! There is no way that was you!’ Caleb can’t bring himself to look at her. He’ll end up screaming with laughter. It’s already bubbling up as her energy infects him. And Vic keeps on howling, and it’s like she’s dancing to it. ‘That has got to be the craziest thing I have ever seen!’ The craziest? Seriously? After last night’s business? After Neuman?

  Why is she so damn funny?

  ‘You ninja’d his knee into the next life! Like, woop-pah!’

  It explodes from him, a great gale of laughter, rushing up and out and tearing at his throat and closing his eyes to slits, and he hasn’t felt like this since forever, and how can he be like this when he’s probably done someone terrible damage?

  As clearly as Caleb hears Vic swear, Vic hears Caleb laugh. Vic keeps hearing him, even when Caleb’s long gone. He hears that laughter ringing around his head when he eventually hobbles home. He hears it all night long as he lies motionless in the dark. He hears her too. He hears her loudest of all.

  64

  Gramps backs away from the bedroom curtain, nodding. It’s turned out almost the way he thought it would.

  65

  A fine drizzle is unusual this late in the day, at least according to this summer’s rules. It gives the world a hazy sheen. Metal slickly glistens. The air tastes of crisp grass. Droplets pepper their hair and clothing, streams of fine beads. Caleb sticks his tongue out and thinks he can feel the slightest chilly tickle. Misha tries to pinch his tongue between thumb and forefinger, startling him. She’s always doing weird stuff like that. His surprise makes her laugh again, yet up until an hour ago he’d never heard her so much as giggle. He feels himself flushing red as he fails to ignore how much he likes the sound. Hopefully the drizzle will cool his face quickly. Very quickly.

  Subject change. Now.

  ‘I shouldn’t have kicked him like that.’

  ‘Oh, come on, tough guy, don’t go all mushy on me now.’

  ‘I’ll be dead by the end of today,’ he says, swinging his bully-kicking legs. There’s a pretty good three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view from up here on the fort. They’ll see anyone coming and have plenty of time to climb down and run. Gangs intent on revenge, grandparents on the rampage, fathers out of patience. Any and all will be left behind. ‘He’ll hear about it and as soon as I walk in the house he’ll kill me.’

  ‘You’re so funny. He’s not going to kill you, is he? Not proper actual kill. Madmen and criminals do killing, not dads.’

  His legs swing faster. ‘Madmen can be fathers too.’

  A jaw drops so fast it’s almost audible. ‘What? Is your dad like a mad killer? Is that what happened to your mum?’

  It’s such an outrageous accusation that Caleb laughs. Again. Two laughs in one day, and both about grim stuff. Maybe there’s something wrong with him. Maybe Caleb’s the madman. ‘He didn’t… That’s not what I meant to say… It’s just that people aren’t always the way they’re meant to be, are they? Like if you’ve got a father, he’s meant to… I dunno, he’s meant to care, isn’t he? I mean, that’s the whole point, right? He’s meant to be interested and want to spend time with you and you’d have all these jokes together and…right?’

  She’s been watching him the whole time and her gaze doesn’t drop. ‘I wouldn’t know about any of that. No daddy, no mammy.’

  ‘So you’re saying I should shut up and stop moaning because I don’t know how good I’ve got it? Well, no, because that’s crap. Because I live with someone who hates me. He’d be happier if it was me that was dead instead of Mum. He looks at me like that every single day, like it’s a piss-take that I continue to exist, like it’s offensive that I take up air. If I touch anything in the house I’d better leave it as clean as I found it, like I’d never touched it in the first place. Like he doesn’t want any evidence of me being anywhere in the house. It probably helps him pretend I don’t exist, at least when he doesn’t have to actually look at me
. That’s every day, every single day, and it’s going to keep being every single day. Yeah, before you say it, I get it; you’ve got every single day of no parents at all. Well, take mine. Keep him. Him and his misery. Him and his endless rules. Him and his hate. Keep him and stick him.’

  She remains quiet for a minute. The drizzle cools him. Then, ‘Got that out of your system?’ He wipes his face rather than answer. ‘Something bad-ass got woke up inside of you. Nice rant!’ He doesn’t want to grin: he can’t help it. Seconds later he’s not grinning at all as Misha thumps him one in the shoulder. ‘That’s what you get for making assumptions about me.’

  ‘Ah God, that hurt! What you do that for?’

  ‘I told you. Don’t go thinking you know me or what I’m going to say. You will get the biggest thumping of your life, and you’ll deserve it. Lose the gormless look, it doesn’t suit you.’ She rolls her eyes when she sees that he is still confused. ‘You assumed I’d give you grief about who’s having the worst time when it comes to parents, right? Well, guess what? I’m over it. I learned how to deal with it long ago. They’ve been gone pretty much forever.’

  Here’s that time, the moment when he gets to ask what he wants to ask, what he’s waited to ask for months. ‘People say they were murdered. Some people do anyway.’

  ‘Those are the people who don’t bother to check around, do some investigating. Wouldn’t something like that be in the papers?’

  He clutches the journal under his sweater tight to his chest. ‘Yeah, it would.’

  ‘I knew you were the other kind of people, the ones who think. I knew you’d look.’

  ‘There’s others,’ he says, courage flourishing. ‘They say your parents did the murdering, then they ran away, leaving you behind.’ It feels okay to say these things out here in the rain.

  ‘They ran off without me? Does that make sense?’

  ‘Maybe they thought you’d slow them down.’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.’

  ‘Of course it does. I said it.’

  She feigns shock. ‘Oh my God, have you found a sense of humour somewhere? Caleb, I think you’d better give it back before it’s missed.’

  He wants to say something witty to follow that up, because then he’d be that little more cool. But nothing comes. He’ll think of it later, in bed, and he’ll kick himself for not being quicker. ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘Accident. Mum died straight away. Dad hung on for a bit. I ended up with Granddad. Living with Granddad is pretty much all I’ve known. He’s a whole different kind of problem.’

  Caleb remembers the opening of Gramps’s journal. Evelyn, her father, the bruises. ‘What did he do to you?’

  And just like that he’s aged her. He’s looking at a teen who can no longer hold the world up, and all she can do now is stand back and watch it fall. He’s scared again, and realises something. Gramps is wrong. They’re nothing like each other. Caleb doesn’t want answers, because when you get answers you have to do something about them. ‘He thinks he knows what’s best, okay? He thinks he knows what needs to be done.’ Misha raises her face to the sky and lets the fine rain douse her face. ‘Why me?’ she whispers. ‘Why not someone else, somewhere else, a thousand years from now?’ Her knuckles tap him on the back of the hand, and goose bumps shiver. ‘Lie back,’ she says. ‘Lie back and look up.’

  ‘Why? The stars won’t be out for hours.’

  ‘Caleb, the stars are always out. Do as you’re told.’ She lies back on the top of the fort, and it’s only a few moments before Caleb does the same beside her. The wooden slats of the roof are cold against his back. He’s worried now about the journal pages, hopes water won’t get all the way through his layers. It’s grey up above. No glorious depths of space, of jewel-sprinkled blackness that lures him outside at night to sleep in air. Just thick, miserable clouds. He doesn’t know if he’s meant to say anything, so he keeps his mouth shut. ‘It’s huge, isn’t it? The sky. Super huge. Enormous. But it’s even bigger than that. Really, look at it. Ginormous. Say it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look up at all of that and say ginormous. Just do it. And really look.’

  It feels like a ridiculous thing to do, embarrassing. A frown folds over his face, and she turns to look at him, expecting a response, and he doesn’t want her to see him frown, and the only other thing he can do is as she asks. He looks at the mass of silt-grey clouds, and he says, ‘Ginormous.’

  There’s a hint of a smile in her voice. ‘You’re not really looking.’

  He is. Of course he is. His eyes are open and pointing in the right direction. What else could he be looking at?

  ‘Say it again and keep looking.’

  Caleb opens his mouth and only breath comes out. He hangs over a vast and muddy froth, a churned-up mass of moors, softened by rain and earthquakes. He is miles and miles above it; he will fall for an age before thudding into those folds. A dizzy sickness plunges through his stomach. It goes forever, it seems, this clumping lumpy soup, and he can hardly bear to be dangling above it a single second longer, and yet the thrill is irresistible. Right here, he’s before the endless. Strange ships could cut through this sludge.

  ‘Now you’re seeing it,’ says a soft voice by his ear, and how has he not seen it like this until now? All those nights staring at stars, thinking about how many and how far, but there’s more to it than that. ‘It’s the second you stop thinking about it, that’s when it hits you.’

  ‘Yeah,’ is all he can say, because the movement of the land-sludge miles and miles below is making him slightly queasy. That, and the way Misha reads him, directs him.

  ‘There’s no one else looking at the same part of the sky that we are; no one else is seeing it from here. Not one person in this cursed town, no one else on the whole planet. That’s billions of people not looking.’

  ‘Some must be looking up.’ His words sound flat in his head.

  ‘A few. Maybe. But not at that, not from here.’

  ‘Yeah, and we’ll be the only ones on all the planets in the universe…’

  ‘We’re the only ones in the universe. There’s nothing on any other planet looking our way or at their own skies or watching TV or whatever.’

  ‘Nobody knows that for sure…’

  ‘I kind of do. But shut up. Those clouds, yeah? Behind them are your endless stars and empty planets and wasted space. Beneath them, this miserable planet and…and all these wasted lives. We think we’re so special simply because we exist, but look at it all. Look. It’s empty. The only rock in all of existence with anything on it is this one. We’re not meant to be here. We’re freaks. There’s no meaning to anything, so why get worked up about it? The way I see it, people get themselves all heated up thinking they can make a difference and that their life will be worthwhile, and then one day they realise.’

  ‘Realise what?’

  ‘They’ll die and the world will keep on like they’d never been around. They made a difference? The world kept moving on. They sat on their backside and did nothing? The world kept moving on.’ She turns to one side, leans on an elbow. ‘Parents die. Does the world stop and cry its eyes out? No. It spins the way it always does.’

  He doesn’t want to look at the sky any longer. He mirrors her pose. ‘Why are you being like this?’

  ‘Because you asked. You wanted to know about the problem with Granddad. What you saw, up at the graveyard. It’s called a Turning. It confuses evil souls that are taking over dead bodies. It slows them down. Stops them coming back so quick, if it can be done without any interruptions.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yeah. Now we’ve got a revenant running around that’s not really meant to be running around yet.’

  ‘That’s what Neuman is? A…’

  ‘…revenant, yeah. Souls aren’t like us when they come back. They’re…they’re like broken parts, the stuff that’s left once whatever happens in death happens. It’s never the good bits though. Always the rotten piece
s, the hateful stuff, the parts that like violence.’

  ‘That must make Vic a remnant.’

  ‘It’s revenant. And he’s like one, but still human. I can’t imagine how awful he’d be if he ever came back as one of them.’

  ‘Wow,’ says Caleb, feigning a shudder. ‘Vic Sweet with only the bad bits. That’s a genuinely horrible thought.’

  ‘Yeah. Horrible. I mean, I don’t want anything to do with any of this stuff. Turning bodies, chasing possessed people, messing with the fate of the world. It’s not for me. I’m not that girl. There’s no part of me that wants to be that girl. But Granddad thinks I am. I’m his family, I exist here and now, and he wants me to be like his apprentice, and it’s all so very important, and so what?’

  Caleb’s heart only rushes like this when he’s running hard. ‘Do you know what’s under your house?’

  ‘What do you mean? Caleb?’

  66

  The not-man shuffles too slow to keep up with them. It had lost them for a while and had done the only thing it could: stood still and waited. The rain, the chill, the shivers, it noticed none of this, waiting only for that boy and that girl.

  And, unblinking, it spotted them, and it slowly-slowly follows, badness at its core.

  67

  He sneaks her in because they need a dry place to read. They can’t go to hers, given that Caleb’s a wanted boy, and after the confrontation with Vic she doesn’t trust any of her hidey-holes. Wouldn’t Father have a fit if he knew that Caleb had a girl in his room? Of course, Caleb might have that fit first.

  Heating on, scooched up against the radiator, towels rubbing hair. The leather cover of the journal is damp in his hands, but the pages have mostly survived, flecked with only a little water along the edges. As long as he’s careful turning the pages it’ll be okay.

  She nods at him to read from the journal. Caleb does so quietly, knowing that Father is busy on the laptop, knowing they could be discovered any minute.