A Graveyard Visible

by Steve Conoboy

  I CALL THEM

  ‘I don’t believe you. You’re just saying that.’

  AM I REALLY?

  Stalling. The idea comes to Caleb that bluntly. The eight-ball is stalling. It is distracting him and upsetting him and doing whatever it can to waste time and stop him asking his questions. Caleb needs to put up his shield, the one he uses when Dad (dear dead Dad) is at his worst, when Dad tells (told) him that he should be up in that graveyard instead of Mum, that he’s a waste of every last minute, that Dad doesn’t know why he should give time and money over to a boy he never wanted.

  Dad might have done him one single favour. He’d given Caleb plenty of training in how to take torrents of crap and pretend he was still functioning fine.

  ‘If I ask a question, you have to tell the truth, right?’

  SHE HATES YOU

  ‘Answer me properly. You can tell all the lies you want, but if I ask a direct question, do you have to tell the truth?’

  A blank pause. Then, I ALWAYS TELL

  This could be a part of its games.

  ‘Are you dead?’

  LONG TIME DEAD

  That gives Caleb a peculiar thrill, excitement twisted with horror. He’s having a conversation with a ghost. ‘How long?’

  BEFORE YOU ALIVE

  An answer that’s not quite an answer. He will have to be careful with this politician. ‘What’s your name?’

  EIGHT IS NAME

  NAME IS EIGHT

  ‘No, what’s your real name?’

  A large question mark, flashing.

  EIGHT IS NAME

  NAME IS EIGHT

  ‘What was your name before you died?’

  NAME WAS MINE

  A feeling in Caleb’s gut. He peers out across the courtyards. There’s no one. A fine drizzle smatters the glass. ‘How long have you been in the ball?’

  DO NOT UNDERSTAND

  ‘Okay… How long have you been Eight?’

  TWO YEARS LONG

  ‘And Misha put you there?’

  GIRL THE GIRL

  This message flashes up repeatedly until Caleb says, ‘Alright, alright, I get it.’ He’s not sure why it didn’t occur to him until now. Some dumb part of him (the bigger part, he suspects) simply believed that Misha must have stumbled across the ball and decided to keep it. But she didn’t. She made it. She purposely made this strange and frightening creation.

  If there is a God, thinks Caleb, would He allow this to exist?

  HE DOESN’T CARE

  Caleb chooses to ignore that. Perhaps there are some questions he really doesn’t want the answer to.

  YES YOU DO

  YOU ALL DO

  More distractions, it’s all distractions with this insane ball.

  ‘What’s Misha doing?’

  BUSY RIGHT NOW

  Wrong question. Or rather, questions asked the wrong way. ‘What’s she up to at the graveyard?’

  LOOKING FOR ME

  Damn thing tells the truth, all right. It twists and turns to tell the truth it wants to.

  SHE’S NOT HAPPY

  Caleb has a vivid vision of Misha flipping her bedroom upside-down in the search for Eight. He’s not far wrong.

  And something’s coming for him, but Eight won’t tell.

  101

  Panic thumps its pulse behind her eyes. The room is throbbing, she can’t see straight. She knows she left Eight in her bedroom, she knows it like she knows her own heart, but it doesn’t matter how many times she goes round and round and round, there’s no sign of it. She keeps thinking of a part of the wardrobe she hasn’t checked, or a place under the bed Eight could have rolled to, and when she looks she remembers that she’s already looked here five, six, seven times. And she remembers Eight can’t be in any of those places, absolutely can’t, because she put it on the bed, right there, there, there damn it there!

  Granddad took it.

  That can’t be true. He hasn’t been in her room since she came home. She knows he hasn’t. She left her room to argue with him and shut the door behind her.

  Eight rolled off on its own, then. That’s the only explanation. But Eight’s never rolled anywhere of its own accord before. It’s done a lot of things, some very frightening, but never that. Eight’s been taken.

  No. She’s over-reacting. She tells herself this as she tears the sheets back off the bed, as she yanks everything off the shelves, as she starts screaming in frustration, as she yells at Granddad to keep out of it, to stay away, as she rips down the curtains and flings them aside, as she breathes too deep and fast, as she forces herself to stop because she’s making so much more mess. Never mind the room, she’s a mess. Tears spatter down her face. Skin glows hot.

  Granddad’s knocking gently on her bedroom door. ‘Misha, please, what’s wrong? Open the door, let me talk to you, we’ll just talk, no shouting…’

  She’s not interested in talking. She’s interested in the slick splinter jutting out from the window frame. The window in that frame is open. Not a lot, but enough to make her belly squirm. A closer look. Drying claggy blood.

  There’s only one boy stupid enough to do such a thing.

  She’ll kill him.

  102

  The thing that once was Neuman peels itself up out of a heap in a garden. It collapsed some hours ago on top of a bush behind a shed, drained. Sparks cough from her throat, scorching flesh. She senses a band of energy nearby. She senses someone familiar. She is drawn.

  103

  Morgan glances at the discarded and dying light-map on the ground next to her feet. There are minutes left before it will blink out for good. There’s a new pulse at the far side of the cul-de-sac. Stronger than the others. And moving.

  104

  TAKE ME BACK

  ‘Not until you start answering my questions properly.’ Caleb wonders if he could kick Eight around like a football. All the spinning might knock it so sick that it could start to behave.

  I’VE BEEN ANSWERING

  ‘Yeah, you have. When I ask the next question I don’t mean what’s the person doing right now. If you really can get in my head, then you know exactly what I mean.’

  SHE’S AFTER YOU

  SHE HATES YOU

  Caleb tries not to, but he can’t help thinking over and over shut up, shut up, shut up. ‘What were these people doing in the graveyard?’ Hard concentration to replace shut up, shut up, shut up with an image: dark suited people, an open grave, lights, a burst, a body lifted off the ground.

  TURNING THE CORPSE Small letters, reluctant.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  SLOWING THE SOUL

  SOMEONE IS NEAR

  SOMETHING IS NEAR Quick, quick, quick the messages come.

  ‘Slow down, I’m trying to follow. Slowing what soul?’

  ONE IN GRAVE

  ‘There’s no souls in graves. Only bodies.’

  NOT UP THERE

  Questions with tiny answers, answers leading to big questions. What should he ask? And how? ‘Are all the souls coming back?’

  THEY WILL BE

  SOON SOON SOON

  ‘Are the souls good?’

  SOME VERY BAD. Eight allows these words to slowly fade, then adds, LIKE THING OUTSIDE.

  105

  The light-map flutters and flashes like a battered laptop screen. Morgan misses a loop on the net she’s attempting to strengthen and it sags towards her, and it’s got no hope of holding anything in.

  No hope at all.

  She should run.

  She remembers all of Crosswell’s threats. Threats that were delivered as promises. Tags that mean she can run as far as she wants and will always be found.

  She looks down again. No map. That big jagged blip could be anywhere. Could be closer.

  A flicker. The light-map, taking a few last greedy breaths. All those blips, holding their positions, except one. Except that single one. It goes off the back of the map. Vanishes.

  Bartley’s over there.

 
106

  Caleb looks out across the grounds through one window, then another, then another. He’s watching for dead boys. None by the lifeless fountains, none creeping up the garden stairs. He goes to another side of the hall, squints hard at the trees. Difficult to see if there are any shapes that shouldn’t be there, especially with an imagination in overdrive. Branches blend in differing configurations, becoming nimble arms beckoning or slender legs walking. Caleb stills himself with long, steady breaths, holds his gaze level, focuses on the corners of his vision.

  No dead boys.

  No dead Vic.

  He knows they’re out there. But do they know he’s here in the hall? Are they coming? Has Eight summoned them?

  Or is that stupid ball stalling yet again?

  Caleb seizes it, squeezes, even though all that achieves is sore fingers. ‘There’s nobody out there! Just answer me. Why is he bringing them back?’

  IS MEANT TO

  BUT IS STALLING

  ‘Oh God, you speak in tiny riddles.’

  IS ALL TRUTHS

  THEY ARE HERE. The word THEY splits into triplicate and vibrates.

  Caleb ignores it. Let it throw up all the stupid nonsense it wants to, as long as in between it answers some questions. It’s a lot harder to ignore his cold spine, however. The skin down the middle of his back seems to be pulling away from something he can’t yet see.

  So easily it gets into his head!

  ‘Is Misha helping him?’

  NO, SHE RESISTS

  ‘But if she helped him… She must be really good if she made you, right?’

  SHE IS RARE

  Caleb feels that in every fibre. That’s exactly what she is. Rare. Forever endangered. ‘So if she wanted to, she could…’

  RAISE ALL DEAD. It holds the message so that he can read it again and again. RAISE ALL DEAD. Even after everything he’s seen, it’s just about impossible to make sense of.

  ‘Why would anyone want to?’

  THE HARD RESET. This is underlined twice.

  Caleb’s shoulders sag. He wishes he could crack this thing open and pull all of its words out and read everything in one go instead of this agonizing…

  A rattling window. Caleb throws himself into the corner, kicking up dust plumes. The ratta-tapping on the glass stops. Pounding, pounding against his ribs, the swollen tempo of his chest. Looks at Eight.

  HA HA HA

  The tapping starts again, a little harder, more insistent. An almost-there voice, too soft to hear clearly. Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap. Stops again.

  I TOLD YOU

  Caleb is stone. Won’t move. Can’t move.

  I DON’T LIE

  Tap-tap-TAP. Tap-tap-TAP, threatening to smash its way through. Joined by another set, in time, rhythmic. Hard bony knuckles. Tap-tap-TAP. Tap-tap-TAP. Both windows to his left, tap-tap-TAP, tap-tap-TAP.

  He could drop below ledge level and crawl. If he could get himself to move, if his dumb legs would budge. If…

  Tap-tap-TAP on the first pane to his right. Tap-tap-TAP on the next along. And another. And another. The hall fills with the sharp glassy sound. Caleb pushes back hard into the corner.

  HA HA HA

  A loud piercing crack. Bang-bang-BANG. Bang-bang-BANG. He dares to lean out, compelled to look. Fists bashing. A right fist on this pane, a left on that. One dead boy hammering away, two sheets of glass vibrating like the skin of a drum. And there’s a rasping chant in voices of dust. ‘Cay-leb! Cay-leb! Cay-leb!’ These dead football boys chanting for his blood. ‘Cay-leb! Cay-leb! Cay-leb!’

  He’s heard this before. A similar call. His panicking mind pushes that realisation away. It’s not important. Escape is.

  THERE’S NO ESCAPE

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Cay-leb! Cay-leb!’

  YOU DIE ALONE

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Cay-leb! Cay-LEB!’

  DEAD LIKE DADDY

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Cay-LEB! CAY-LEB!’

  DEAR DEAD DAD

  ‘SHUT UP!’

  A shard storm shatters the hall. Every window bursts at once, a torrent of glass flooding in. ‘CAY-LEB!’ Three shrill voices cawing for him above the rain of splinters, paper-pale hands reaching.

  Caleb runs, feet crunch-crunching, sprinting from the dead boys. The shards act like marbles underfoot and he slides and his legs are lifting sideways and he’s up in the air over those sharp slivers.

  Bloodless gasps of delight.

  He lands on a blast of pain; hard floor and cut skin, all along his side, all down his leg. No time to worry about how he suddenly feels wet at the hip. MUST GET UP. The message flips over MUST GET UP and over MUST GET UP as Eight rolls away MUST GET UP. Caleb slices his palms open as he boosts himself up. His left leg wails at his weight. He stoops to get Eight, stumbles, is sore-clumsy. The hall is electric-cold at his neck-nape. Anticipates strong-brittle fingers clamping on his shoulder.

  ‘CAY-LEB!’

  Slick and painful are his palms as he lifts Eight. MUST RUN NOW. Caleb’s already away, and he’s running senselessly, and he’s plunging deeper into Pernicious House.

  107

  Gramps perches on the end of his armchair, clutching at the journal. He doesn’t dare open it. He’s struggling to remember what’s on those pages. Everything’s going fuzzy in his brain again, a heavy fugue behind his eyes. What is in here that he wanted Caleb to see? There is Evelyn, yes, but there’s also something more.

  He could read it. But how soon after would he forget? Gramps can’t remember.

  He fancies some tomato soup.

  108

  She climbs out of the bedroom window while Granddad’s still prattling away on the other side of the door. He’s veering between warnings about kicking his way in, and pleading for a chance to talk without shouting. Always pleading. Help me, Misha. Help me.

  She doesn’t care about the old man and his wrong ideas. She wants Eight back, her only hated friend.

  The wind is riling itself up, the clouds are fattening. The graveyard feels unbalanced and wrong, like it’s heaving, like the soil under her feet is a tumbling ocean. She expects Daisy Hill to roll like a wave, roll right down over the town, bury it in coffins and dirt.

  She’d like that.

  Skirts swishing, she stomps downhill towards the gate, and from there she’ll head to Caleb’s and from there she’ll take what is hers.

  109

  The remains of Vic Sweet regard the girl with craving eyes, with deep-down need, a need that’s crossed a boundary from life into undeath and has grown stronger, fiercer in the crossing.

  He hates her.

  It’s one of the only things he knows, that hate. It burns coals in his guts, shovel after shovel. He knows it better than his own name. It flares and sputters so brightly that most other memories are gone.

  This time he will have her.

  She beat him, she beat him so badly, and that is one memory that sticks. He remembers looking into that Thing’s eyes, and he remembers dying, and he remembers that it’s because of her. The her he must have.

  Vic peels himself up out of the empty grave, clambers over the plumed piles of dirt, and follows.

  110

  He can’t remember the way. The window he broke at the back of the house, it should be easy to find! But his brain’s all crazy-static and back here the house is dark dark dark and the thick air vibrates with the echoing hoots of boys at play, boys hunting. They’re running through the halls and rooms around him. A door to his left is jammed. Shoulders it. Locked.

  ‘WE WANTED TO BE FRIENDS.’

  ‘WHY CAN’T WE BE FRIENDS.’

  Caleb’s panic-blind, bouncing off walls. His hip screams blood. Eight’s words strobe-light, blinding Caleb then plunging him back into darkness, then flaring again.

  GET US OUT

  flashing so fast the words blur together.

  Blam GET

  blam US

  blam OUT.

  ‘I’m tryi
ng!’

  ‘FRIENDS DON’T RUN AWAY FROM FRIENDS.’ A familiar voice, whispery-loud and furious. The game is coming to an end. They’re out-manoeuvring him.

  Kitchen up ahead. Must be. That’s how he got in! A boy-shape in there, coming at him.

  TURN TURN TURN

  ‘YOU’RE NO FRIEND OF MINE!’

  TURN NOW NOW

  And Caleb’s off down another foreign corridor, this one narrow like squeezed-in ribs. The ghost comes fleeing from the kitchen and there’s no way out that way now, and if he turns right a couple of times he thinks he’ll come to the front staircase and can go up but up, isn’t out, up’s further in, there are only windows and drops as an escape. Up is dead, but there’s nowhere else, nowhere, as he tumbles through rooms full of old hard furniture and

  trips

  spilling over

  tucking and dropping a shoulder to take the

  impact.

  His foot throbs worse than the time he ran into the sofa. He managed to keep hold of Eight this time.

  DOWN DOWN DOWN

  ‘Not the time for sarcasm,’ he snaps, and he doesn’t like the wobble in his own voice. It turns his nerves sickly.

  NO, IDIOT, DOWN

  Caleb can’t hear footsteps piling after him, but do ghosts have footsteps unless they want them? (It’s crawling across the ceiling towards me, crawling, crawling until it can drop down on my head.) Rushes of pain run up and down his left side.

  OPEN THE TRAPDOOR

  He can’t make sense of what he’s being told; he can’t see much in the windowless gloom.

  OPEN THE TRAPDOOR Eight repeats. One of the Os zooms in to fill the screen, turns solid white, becoming a torch. Caleb sees it, the metal ring he tripped over. A large square of pale floorboards, where once must have sat a rug. In that square, the trapdoor.

  DOWN DOWN DOWN

  The opposite of upstairs would be far worse than upstairs. But all of his options are gone. (The ceiling, the ceiling, there’s a dead boy on the ceiling!)

  Caleb hefts the trapdoor open, and it’s blacker than anything down there, and he scampers down the ladder, Eight under one arm, slipping on the rungs, babbling to himself. ‘There’s a way out, there’s a way out, there’s a way out,’ and up above they are screaming for him, absolutely screaming.