Whispers in the Graveyard

by Theresa Breslin

  She hesitates, glances back to me, then takes several steps forward.

  ‘The princess,’ I say, keeping my voice low and even, ‘the princess, with her long red-gold hair.’ I let my mouth round out the vowels as I speak. My tongue rolls on the sounds of the words. ‘The beautiful princess with her copper curls. Her hair was just like yours. Remember? And her loyal knights rode up to her castle gate. “You must come with us,” they said, “and rescue your father.” So early the very next morning, she saddled her favourite horse. The pure white mare with the silver star on its forehead, and as dawn was lighting the horizon, she rode out across the drawbridge . . .” ’

  I weave my web.

  I spin my dream.

  The child stops still again on the path.

  ‘Would you like to know where the princess rode off to?’ I ask her gently.

  ‘Yes, Solomon,’ she turns to me, ‘yes.’

  CHAPTER XXVI

  There is an angry buzzing in my ears, but I go on.

  ‘For many days and many nights the princess travelled westwards. Across the vast fields of waving corn, through tiny villages and hamlets . . .’

  The air around me shimmers in fury and the earth starts to tremble. Amy is in front of me on the path, her face uptilted to mine and open with wonder. I realise that it is one of my father’s stories that I am telling her, the sounds and the colours making music and rainbows inside her head.

  ‘. . . she galloped along the dusty road towards the far mountains.’

  The ground is shaking under my feet, but my voice is stronger and I take a pace or two backwards. Unbelievably, miraculously, Amy takes a few steps towards me, and I edge back again. Can I lead her out of the kirkyard like this?

  ‘The mountains were high and dangerous, with steep slopes covered in the winter-time with a soft, deep, snowfall.’

  Two more paces. The grass withers as I walk. Something stalks beside me, but its footsteps leave no trace of its going. I retreat and Amy follows. I must put some distance between us and this focus of power. I know that we can resist it better the further away we are.

  ‘As she and her loyal knights reached the gentle foothills the princess reined in her proud white mare . . .’

  ‘Did her horse have a name, Solomon?’ asks Amy.

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  What?

  Quickly. Quickly. What?

  ‘It was . . . it was called . . . Megan. Megan the Magnificent.’ My heart is thudding in my ears.

  ‘Solomon?’

  Someone has murmured my name.

  Shut it out, shut it out.

  ‘Solomon.’ Quietly this time. My eyes slide to the side. I cannot help it. To the direction of the sound.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  It’s Ms Talmur. Lifting her head, dazed and confused, gazing about her. My concentration falters.

  No!

  Behind Amy’s head I see the white ash gather, coming together above where the chest lies, lid open.

  NO!

  The vile green liquid of a suppurating wound is pouring out, bubbling up from below.

  ‘The horse . . .?’ Amy asks again.

  My gaze is transfixed beyond her. Hypnotised. Slowly she starts to turn her head.

  ‘Solomon!’ Ms Talmur speaks my name sharply. I snap round to look at her.

  ‘What is it you see?’ she demands.

  I see her still sprawled on the ground, unable to get up. I see . . . before I turn back, compelled to look towards the grave . . . I see something glitter briefly in the grass. Amid the strewn contents of her handbag a make-up mirror gleams.

  And it’s in my hand.

  There’s a roaring in my ears, in my head.

  ‘Look at me, Amy!’ And I hold the mirror up, above her, to reflect back whatever is forming itself behind her.

  The kirkyard itself is locked in the struggle. Earth and air tremble and shake. The mirror in my hand turns red-hot, and then the glass itself dissolves. It boils under my fingers and disintegrates. Scorches and burns my hand and I fling it from me.

  ‘Don’t leave me, Solomon.’ Amy is weeping and she has her arms clasped around my legs.

  I crouch down beside her and pick her up. ‘I won’t. I won’t,’ I say. But there is little hope. I have no strength left. Neither in my legs or arms, nor in my heart or soul. Ms Talmur is half-sitting but cannot get to her feet. The tombstones are toppling. There is a deep rumbling from below us in the bowels of the earth. And I know that we are finished.

  I sense the creeping decay move swiftly across the grass, smell the rotted stink of poison, taste the venom trickling into my mouth. It’s coming now. For all of us.

  And suddenly there’s a different sound. A bellowing noise that vibrates from the walls and rings off the marble slabs. It’s calling my name and rushing to help us. A great figure crashing up the long path from the main gate. Yelling its head off. Huge and clumsy and roaring like a lion.

  My dad’s voice, shouting at the stars.

  ‘Hang on, Solomon. Hang on. I’m coming, Solomon.’

  CHAPTER XXVII

  He reaches me just as the storm breaks with a crash above our heads. The electricity in the air fuses with a tremendous crack, then descends to earth in a blinding sheet, bringing a tree down beside us. The clouds roll grumbling together. There is the briefest pause, then rain pours out of the sky in a sudden grey deluge.

  ‘Hurry! Hurry!’ My dad lifts Ms Talmur and swings her up and over his shoulder, fireman-carry style. I am still standing, stupefied at the sight of him. Wet through in seconds, yet I hardly feel or see the downpour. My voice croaks out.

  ‘How did you know to come here?’ I ask, rain mingling with the tears on my face.

  ‘The teacher came to the house to see if you were there,’ he yells back over the sound of the wind. ‘I came out to find you after she’d left. Searched everywhere. Then I saw her car parked on the road outside.’

  ‘But . . . but how did you get in?’ Slowly my brain is starting to unfreeze, unlock itself from whatever icy grip was on it.

  ‘Padlocks are no bother to me,’ he laughs, one of his great big happy laughs. ‘I’ll show you how to do that one day.’

  Water is streaming down the tombstones, gathering in puddles, flowing along the paths.

  ‘Take the little girl’s other hand, Solomon,’ my dad shouts as he grabs Amy by one arm. ‘We don’t have much time.’

  What did he mean? He couldn’t know what was happening here.

  ‘Why?’ I yell. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘The river’s in spate. It’s running high because of all the rain. They’re trying to sandbag it, but it’s too late. Any minute now and it’s going to overrun.’

  I look back. Back to the wall, to the torn-down fencing and the wood behind. To where the river is, slightly to one side of us on the higher ground. And I knew now that the sound I had heard earlier was coming from there. The roaring of the water as it hurtled down from the rain-soaked hills. Every burn and stream choked and gushing with flood water. Carrying all before it. Small animals, trees, bushes, racing on to swell the flow. I can hear it now, above the gale and the sound of the wind tearing through the trees. Another noise, a surging pounding thunder which will not stay contained for much longer.

  I take firm hold of Amy and start to follow my dad. She whimpers and stumbles and I haul roughly on her arm.

  ‘Easy, son, easy.’ My dad grins at me across her head.

  I glance back quickly. ‘If that goes . . .’ I say.

  ‘I know, I know.’ He quickens his pace and takes longer strides.

  I do as he does.

  Always did.

  Try to copy him. Be as big. Be as strong.

  Never could.

  I make my legs move faster, stretch them out.

  And I do it.

  Tonight I do it.

  I am keeping up. We are running side by side.

  The water is everywhere. Rivulets are running across the gray
slabs, trickling among the carvings and the inscriptions, outlining their shape with a fleeting caress. My stones are weeping.

  I can feel a strange shuddering beneath us, as if the river has found a passage underground and is even now gushing under our feet. Immediately in front of us a headstone falls, toppling onto the path, blocking our way.

  MALEFICE.

  My head rings like iron struck by a hammer. We will not be allowed to escape. The gravel on the path scatters and the earth moves beneath us.

  ‘This place must be built on bog land. Watch your feet,’ my dad shouts.

  He steps across the fallen monument. I pick Amy up and clamber after him.

  ‘Right, Sol,’ he calls behind to me. ‘One quick sprint for the gate.’

  It’s lying open as he left it on his way in. I keep my eyes on his back, Ms Talmur helpless, slumped across his shoulders. He is through, across the road and heading for the higher ground on the other side.

  I am following. I see him getting smaller. Through the wrong end of a telescope. Smaller and smaller.

  My bones in my legs are heavy, the blood thickening and congealing in my veins. I am walking through mud. It’s round my ankles and pulling me down. Thick and green and pus-yellow. Dragging me under, reaching up, choking, smothering. The cloth from the stone urn is billowing above me, settling on my shoulders, draping itself across my face. Flowing down and around. Choking, smothering.

  The gate to freedom is in front of me, just out of reach, beyond my grasp. Slowly closing.

  ‘Dad! Help me!’ I shriek.

  There is an insistent murmuring in my ears.

  Lie down. Rest. Just for a moment.

  A whispering in my ear.

  Sleep. Close your eyes. Sleep.

  A soft breath on my cheek.

  Rest now, just for a second.

  A rustling hush inside my head.

  I sink slowly into the mud, slide gently down. Behind me, with a thunderous crash, the river burst its banks.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  On my knees, with my arms round Amy, I see death surging towards us. A wall of water is pouring through the dyke at the far end. White-flecked, dark and dreadful, nothing will stand in its way. It slows, but only for a moment, at the deep gouge in the ground under the wall. Crashing down into the bowels of the earth, swilling out the pit, boiling and foaming like fury.

  A hellish screech rends the air. A desolate wailing that reverberates off the tombstones, inside my skull and out and up to the sky.

  Like the cleansing of an underground sewer by flooding, the river has dispersed the contents of that grave into a million different atoms. The high-pitched banshee yell continues, long drawn-out, thinner, higher. The air shivers and splinters like shattered crystal.

  Then it’s gone.

  Into the silence.

  Trailing as an echo.

  Whispers spin off into the void. Plucked from all about us. Inside and out. Dispersed and dying, they fade to nothing.

  And suddenly the kirkyard is silent. And black night is racing at me.

  My head snaps back. Cold reality returns like the lifting of an enchantment.

  My father is shouting my name as he runs towards me. Ms Talmur is screaming. I gather Amy up and turn and run.

  The water hits me in the back with the force of a huge fist. I fall forward but keep a desperate grip of Amy. It’s over my head, blocking my nose and ears. I’m drowning.

  Huge mouthfuls of filthy liquid are being forced down my throat. I’m spluttering and gasping. I can’t see. Amy is almost wrenched from my grasp but I hang on to her. There’s a pounding noise in my ears, my fingers slacken . . .

  Then there are strong arms round my shoulders, pulling us up. Big hands grab my skinny wrists and start to haul me up the hill. I’m scrambling on my hands and knees.

  The water surges again and a great wave breaks over my head and the downpull drags us back. But Ms Talmur has Amy in her arms now and my dad has hoisted me out of the torrent, his arm around my waist. Now we’re struggling waist-high, and then we’re wading knee-deep in water. And then further up the slope it’s slopping round our ankles and we’re clear.

  We hang on to each other, laughing and crying. Amy stretches out her hands to me and I take her, and she wraps her arms round my neck.

  ‘Is she gone?’

  The question only I can hear.

  ‘For ever,’ I say firmly.

  We look down at the widening lake of water below us, with just the tops of the trees showing, and floating debris everywhere. Far back where the dyke and the rowan tree once stood do I see, or imagine, a silent whirlpool? A black spinning column of water being sucked down and down.

  If the rowan tree had not been cut down, would none of this have happened? I wonder. It is an ancient superstition, the rowan as a protection against evil.

  ‘Rowan tree and red thread

  Make the malefice dead.’

  Ms Talmur reads this out from a book to me one day, weeks later. ‘It’s a Norse legend,’ she says. ‘The rowan is supposed to have sprung from the feather of the bird which stole fire from the gods and brought it to earth. So the red berries were a charm against evil.’ She looks at me, and speaks quietly. ‘We were right, Solomon, weren’t we? There was something amiss in that graveyard.’

  I nod.

  ‘And it wasn’t just our imagination,’ she says slowly. ‘I began to think it was, you see. When both you and Amy had red markings on your skin, and were feverish, I thought it was because you had heard about the smallpox, and were worried about catching it.’

  No, I think. Not our own imagination playing tricks on us. Something else using our imagination against us both.

  ‘But it’s gone now, hasn’t it? Swept away by the flowing river?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I say.

  ‘And now that the place has been cleared, and everything relocated, it’s finished.’

  I nod. I’ve decided I’m telling no one about the chest. They might decide to try and find it. And it’s better where it is, undisturbed. They said the first workman ran off with another woman or something, and the second was drunk and fell in the river and drowned. But I know. So does Amy. They told her she had been delirious because she was ill, and had wandered off. Said she had a bad dream. We were in the hospital together overnight. She looked over at me when the doctor told her this. I smiled at her and she smiled back.

  When I got home the next day the whisky bottle was still sitting on the kitchen table. It was full.

  So he hadn’t drunk any that night when I’d asked him not to. Just as well. I wouldn’t be here now if he had. He must know that.

  He saw me staring at it as we both came into the kitchen.

  ‘I’ll try,’ he said. ‘I’ll do my best, but I’m not making any promises I can’t keep.’

  I took it outside our back door. There is a drain there beside the step. I dropped it down. The bottle crashed and the amber liquid ran away. I went back inside.

  He gave a big sigh. ‘Fancy a cup of tea?’

  CHAPTER XXIX

  ‘Let’s put the cards and books away and go for a walk.’

  Ms Talmur gathered up all my papers and drawings and shoved them away in a folder. There’d been something on her mind since our lesson started. My attention, not good at any time, made worse by her shifting restlessly about in her chair. The constant movement of her hands, fingers twisting through the ends of her hair.

  And always slow. Deadly slow. I look at the words on the page, at my crabbed writing carefully spaced out on alternate lines, and I know I should remember what they mean. I reach around inside my head and it’s not there.

  Then she tells me. Smiling patiently. And I recall that she told me that word yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that . . .

  Embarrassment and humiliation are on my face, a sour taste in my mouth.

  ‘It’s no good,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ she says firmly.

 
The words tremble on the page. I shake my head. The ragged black hole of despair widening in and around me. Rage rushing in fast to fill up the void.

  ‘No,’ I shout.

  ‘Did Sir Edmund Hillary give up on the slopes of Everest?’ she demands. ‘Did Captain Scott turn back? Did Columbus? Did Ezekial McGribbons?’

  I fall for it.

  ‘Who’s Ezekial McGribbons?’

  ‘I don’t know. I made him up, didn’t I?’

  I laugh and we start again.

  And again.

  And again.

  ‘Will it ever come right?’ I ask.

  She meets my eyes and doesn’t look away. ‘Not completely,’ she says. ‘When you’re rich and famous, don’t ever write out a cheque without having someone make sure that your numbers are correct.’ She laughs. ‘You’d be just as likely to put down 3,000 pounds as 300.’ She puts her hand on my arm. ‘But you CAN cope with it. Enough to get by. Remember it’s a difficulty, not a disability. You must move past it and get on with your life. Do what you want to do.’ Her nails are through the wool of my jumper. ‘You control it, not the other way around.’

  Rich and famous, I think. Lots of rich and famous people have my problem. She’s told me often enough. But I’m not rich or famous. I’m ordinary and it doesn’t help me a lot to know about them.

  She’s watching me. ‘You shouldn’t try to hide behind a medical diagnosis, or use it as an excuse.

  ‘There’s a theory that people with learning difficulties are compensated in other ways, their energy channelled somewhere else. Into the Arts for example. Like Cher and Tom Cruise.’

  ‘You think I could become an actor?’

  ‘You’ll have to find out for yourself. Search out your own particular talent.’

  ‘Supposing I don’t have any?’

  ‘Speaking realistically, you might not be specially gifted in one area, but your drawings have an unusual originality, now that you’ve stopped copying how other people hold their pencil. It might develop, I don’t know . . .’ She brushes her hair back from her face. ‘Please don’t think of it as winning or losing. You have to realise it’s not your fault. And it’s you that’s important. And for better or worse this is part of you, like the colour of your eyes or the shape of your nose.’