Afterwalkers

by Tom Becker

“Mathers isn’t the only one out there,” Jamie told her. “I think … I think Greg’s the same. Alive and dead at the same time.”

  Perhaps he should have expected them to be more surprised, but nobody in the room blinked. After fighting Mathers’s animated corpse, nothing seemed impossible any more.

  Liam gave Keeley a dubious look. “You heard Jamie. This isn’t a good idea, love.”

  “You helped us, didn’t you?” Keeley retorted. “You could have got hurt but you came anyway. So let us return the favour, love.”

  Defeated, Liam threw up his hands and let Keeley go upstairs to phone her mum. Jamie watched his brother pace across the front room, muttering to himself. Lawrence was a pensive shadow in the corner of the room, fidgeting as he stared down at his feet. He looked up to find Liam eyeballing him from across the room. The bookshop owner smiled weakly.

  Too late, Jamie realized what was going to happen. Liam marched over to Lawrence and grabbed his jacket with his good arm.

  “Hey!” cried Jamie. “What are you doing?”

  Liam had already bundled the protesting Lawrence out of the living room and was striding away down the corridor. Jamie ran after them into the kitchen in time to see his brother slam Lawrence up against the fridge.

  “Leave him alone!” Jamie cried. “It’s not his fault!”

  Liam ignored him, pressing his snarling face up against Lawrence’s. Jamie had never seen his brother so angry.

  “I want some answers, yeah?” said Liam, through clenched teeth. “You were the only who knew that fire would work on that thing in the field. How? What else do you know? It feels like everyone round here’s been keeping secrets but you’re going to tell me everything. ‘Cause I just saw a corpse come back from the dead to attack my dad, and I’m this close to losing it!”

  “You’re not losing it,” Lawrence said solemnly. “Though it might be easier for you if you were.”

  The calmness of his reply seemed to puncture something inside Liam. He relaxed his grip on Lawrence’s jacket, and allowed Jamie to pull him away. Lawrence adjusted his glasses and smoothed his rumpled shirt before continuing.

  “I can’t give you all the answers you want, I’m afraid,” he said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with your father and I can’t make him better. I can only tell you what I’ve managed to piece together since I moved to this town. Since I realized that there was something very wrong here, lying just beneath the surface.”

  As Lawrence took a seat at the kitchen table, Keeley appeared in the doorway. Seeing Liam’s angry glare, she glanced at Jamie, but he shook his head as if to say, Not now. Unusually for Keeley, she didn’t press the matter. Instead she quietly joined them at the table and sat down.

  “Go on,” said Liam.

  “It began a thousand years ago,” Lawrence told them, “with Aldus, the Viking who founded this town. Back in Scandinavia, he committed the deed that made his name – trekking to a distant barrow where a notorious and wealthy chieftain lay buried, and descending into its depths to plunder the hoard of treasure within.”

  “Right,” said Liam. “With you so far.”

  “Aldus never said a word about what happened in that barrow. But his actions in the following months tell us that something had taken place that had changed him to his very core. During the next Viking raid on Britain, Aldus turned his back on the raiding party and settled in what became Alderston with his hoard. He lay down his weapons and embraced Christianity. He never returned to his home country. The Norse sagas claimed that Aldus had been cursed as punishment for his act of desecration. By the draugr.”

  Liam frowned. “Drow-ger? Enlighten me.”

  “In English the name translates roughly to ‘afterwalkers’,” Lawrence explained.

  “Afterwalkers? Walking after what?”

  Lawrence looked down at his hands. “After death.”

  There was a long silence, and then Liam laughed aloud. “Please tell me you’re not talking about zombies,” he said.

  “Of a kind,” said Lawrence. “The Haitian zombi has become famous around the world, but many cultures have their own names for the undead. In Tibet they are called ro-lang, lurching corpses with seized-up limbs. In order to protect themselves the local villagers build their houses with very low doorways, because the ro-lang aren’t flexible enough to bend down and enter. There’s the Hindu vetala, malicious spirits who take possession of corpses, and the ghül of Arabic myth – a terrifying monstrosity that hunts graveyards feeding on the undead. And then there are the draugr.”

  Jamie leaned forward as Lawrence’s voice dropped. The bookshop owner had the whole room under his spell now.

  “The draugr are Viking undead,” Lawrence continued, “condemned to forever haunt the location of their death like guard dogs of Hell. The sagas describe them as hel-blár, ‘blue as death’, and cloaked in a terrible odour of rotting death. As you’ve seen, they are blessed with incredible strength. Their bodies become bloated and heavy – one of their favourite methods of attack is to crush their victims beneath their own body weight.”

  “I had a nightmare where that happened to me!” Jamie blurted out. “I could feel my ribs cracking in my chest.”

  Lawrence nodded. “Draugr can control the dreams and visions of the living. They can also control the weather.”

  “That’s the one thing that makes any sense,” Liam said gloomily. “The weather in this town is bloody awful. OK, so we’re talking about some pretty mean Viking zombies. But what are they doing here?”

  “It’s difficult to be certain,” mused Lawrence, “but I believe that when Aldus broke into the chieftain’s barrow he encountered a draugr. Although he managed to escape, he was cursed afterwards. Aldus brought the stain of the draugr with him to England, and they’ve been terrorizing Alderston ever since.” Lawrence turned to Jamie. “Remember the first day we met, when I told you about the history of this place? The fire that swept through the church after Aldus’s death, so fierce that the dead rose. The trial of Black Maggie for ‘bringing the dead back to life’. The Resurrection Men supposedly digging up Kitty Hawkins’s grave. The ghosts of wounded soldiers after the First World War. Do you see? Over and over again, the same pattern – the dead returning. The draugr.”

  Jamie nodded thoughtfully. It all made a certain kind of terrible, incredible sense. “What do the draugr want, Lawrence?”

  “They are driven by an insatiable hunger.”

  “Which is?”

  “Hate,” Lawrence said starkly. “The draugr hate humans to the very core of their soul, because they have the one thing they want the most – life. So the draugr hunt, and the draugr kill, and since anyone who dies at their hands becomes a draugr, the cycle continues.”

  “OK,” said Liam, blowing the air out of his cheeks. “Let’s pretend for a moment that this isn’t all insane. What’s Mr Redgrave got to do with it?”

  It was Lawrence’s turn to look confused. “Who?”

  “He’s a local criminal,” Liam explained. “A real bigwig. He’s been threatening us, making us do jobs for him.”

  “He’s the one who set Mathers after us,” Jamie added. “The thing you just saw in the fields.”

  He quickly told them about his conversation with Mr Redgrave in Roxanne’s office. Lawrence looked thoughtful.

  “I don’t know who this man is,” he said, “but if what he claims is true, and he does have some kind of control over the draugr, you’d do well to do what he says.”

  “But he wants Aldus’s hoard!” Jamie protested. “People have been hunting for it for centuries. You think we can find it overnight?”

  “I’m not saying it’s easy,” Lawrence told him. “But isn’t there something you’ve got to work on?”

  Jamie felt the eyes in the kitchen turn on him. Everyone was waiting for him. Counting on him. He took a deep breath. His mind was raci
ng so quickly the thoughts were elbowing and jostling one another for attention. If Lawrence was right, then Alderston’s inhabitants had been turning into draugr for centuries. And his description of the draugr matched exactly the visions Jamie had been having of Kitty Hawkins. But everyone agreed that Kitty’s death had been an accident – so what could have triggered her transformation?

  And then he had it.

  “The ring!” Jamie cried out. “Kitty’s ring!”

  Lawrence leaned forward, light shining in his eyes. “Go on,” he said.

  “You said you think Aldus was infected or cursed somehow when he broke into the chieftain’s barrow,” Jamie said quickly. “What if it was the treasure he found there? His hoard? George Rathbone gave Kitty an engagement ring but he swore he didn’t steal it, that his mum had found it. If the ring was part of Aldus’s hoard, and Kitty died wearing it…”

  “Are you saying you think Kitty Hawkins became one of these draugr things?” Keeley said sceptically.

  “I’m sure of it,” said Jamie. “So if we can find out where George Rathbone got hold of the ring, wouldn’t that give us a clue to where Aldus’s grave is?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Lawrence admitted. “But how do you propose to do that?”

  “Easy,” said Jamie, with a grin. “Check his diary.”

  “Wait a moment.” Lawrence stared at him. “Are you telling me you have George Rathbone’s diary?”

  Jamie nodded excitedly. “Upstairs – I’ll go and get it!”

  He ran to his bedroom and retrieved the diary from its hiding place behind the grating, bringing it down to the kitchen and laying it in front of Lawrence on the table. The bookshop owner carefully unwrapped the diary from the white cloth and began to pore over the pages.

  “Incredible!” he murmured.

  “So where did he find the ring, then?” asked Liam, almost unwillingly. Hurriedly Jamie began flicking through the pages. “Here it is,” he said. Lawrence cleared his throat and began to read out loud, in a deep, clear voice:

  “Alone among my possessions, the silver ring was untarnished, innocent of any criminal associations. It belonged to my mother, who stumbled across it in the woods near Lark Farm as a young girl…” He looked up from the diary. “You think this is a clue?”

  “It’s not exactly X marks the spot, is it?” Liam said dubiously. “One ring doesn’t necessarily mean—”

  “It’s not just one ring though!” interrupted Jamie. “Jack’s lucky coin!”

  Liam scratched his head. “Now I’m totally lost.”

  “Don’t you remember the cassette tape we listened to in the van – the one Keeley gave me, with her great-grandfather Frank on it? He said his best friend Jack came back from the dead after he had been injured in the war. Frank kept talking about Jack’s lucky coin, which he had found … yes, you guessed it, at Lark Farm!”

  “I thought we’d agreed that Great-Grandfather Frank had been suffering from a bad case of shell shock.”

  “After what you’ve just seen, you can’t believe that!” cried Jamie. “Frank was telling the truth – it all fits together! Jack’s lucky coin was from Aldus’s hoard, just like the ring George Rathbone gave Kitty. And they were both found in the same place – Lark Farm.” He tapped the diary excitedly. “That’s where Aldus’s hoard is!”

  The night sky above Lark Farm was a velvet sheet sprinkled with distant stars. As Jamie followed his brother up the hill towards the farmhouse he gazed up at the heavens, lost in thought. Had the stars looked the same for Aldus all those years ago, when he had left his warm feasting hall to go in search of a chieftain’s barrow? Had the night been as cold when George Rathbone stumbled out of the Royal Oak, drunk on grief and ale, to visit the grave of his beloved fiancée? Jamie felt as though he was walking in ancient footsteps, following the same dark and mysterious path. Only Aldus and Rathbone were warriors, in their own way: brawlers and thieves. Had their hearts drummed so quickly in their chests; had their breaths come in such quick, shallow gasps?

  “Jamie.” Liam’s voice, flat and low through the darkness. “We’re here. Stop daydreaming.”

  They were the first words his brother had uttered since leaving the Lodge. Jamie knew Liam was in pain, his left arm damaged by the draugr’s blow. Even if Liam refused to say anything, his occasional winces of pain told their own story. Keeley’s mum had done the best she could, bandaging the arm and giving him some painkillers, but without an X-ray it was impossible to tell whether anything had been broken. Jennifer Marshall had arrived soon after Jamie had brought down George Rathbone’s diary. She had taken charge with crisp efficiency, ordering them to take Sarge to Jamie’s bedroom, where she had patched up his head wound and examined him for further injuries.

  For as long as Jamie could remember he had been scared of his dad, desperate to please him and make him feel proud, but unsure how. But as he looked down at Sarge, now helpless and almost lifeless, Jamie felt an unexpected emotion flooding through his veins like hot water: anger. He didn’t care what kind of creature Mathers had turned into – Jamie wanted to find him and hurt him.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “I know how you feel, little bro,” Liam said solemnly. “Believe me. But first of all let’s get Redgrave off our backs – then we’ll take care of what needs to be taken care of.” He looked across at Jennifer Marshall. “If Jamie and I go out for a bit, is Sarge going to be OK?”

  Keeley’s mum nodded. “He isn’t in any immediate danger,” she told them. “He’s taken a nasty blow to the head and he’s in deep shock but I don’t think his injuries are life-threatening.”

  “What about you?” Liam asked. “Can we leave you here alone?”

  “Don’t you worry about us,” Jennifer replied firmly. “Us Marshalls can take care of ourselves. We’ll be fine indoors. It’s outside that’s dangerous at the moment. You just make sure that you look after each other.”

  Liam grinned. At that moment Jamie could see where Keeley had got her stubborn streak from. The two brothers went to work immediately. Rifling through Sarge’s toolkit, they selected some tools and put them into a rucksack along with a length of rope and a pair of torches. Liam also took a shovel with him – “might come in handy if we run into any more zombies,” he said, with grim humour. Keeley demanded that she come with them, but her mum silenced her with a single look. She contented herself with pressing the silver lighter Lawrence had flung at Mathers into a surprised Liam’s palm.

  “You might need this if you run into any more bad guys,” she said. “You didn’t have much luck with the shovel.”

  Liam nodded appreciatively. “Thanks, lov— Keeley,” he said, checking himself just in time.

  All the while Lawrence remained at the kitchen table, leafing reverently through George Rathbone’s diary. He had produced a small notebook from his pocket and was furiously scribbling notes. When Liam tapped him on the shoulder he looked up owlishly.

  “We’re off,” Liam told him, slipping the rucksack over his shoulder. “You learn anything else that might help us?”

  “Not yet,” murmured Lawrence, with a shake of the head. “But there are a couple of things here I’d like to cross-reference with some of my books. Let me take it back to Withershins now. If I find out anything useful I could call you with it.”

  “I’m not the one to ask,” said Liam. “It’s not my diary. Jamie?”

  Jamie bit his lip. For reasons he couldn’t quite explain, he was reluctant to part with the diary, even for one night. Then again, he wasn’t going to need it at Lark Farm, and Lawrence had just saved their lives. He nodded.

  “Thank you,” Lawrence said meaningfully, wrapping the book back up in the cloth Jamie had found it in. “And don’t worry – if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to take care of an old book.”

  Lawrence accompanied them as far as Withershins, softl
y wishing them luck as they parted in the street. Jamie looked up wistfully at the bright light burning in the window of the flat above the bookshop. He wished he could stay indoors, protected from the howling wind and whatever else lurked in the darkness. Every building they passed in Alderston was shut down for the night – the pub had closed early and Roxanne’s Cabs was empty, no lights on behind the blinds in the back office. It felt to Jamie like everyone in the town was watching him from behind closed curtains. Waiting.

  The ominous atmosphere didn’t improve as they continued down the lane into the countryside. Lark Farm had been forbidding enough in daylight – in the middle of the night, with its buildings cloaked in shadow, it looked like the lair of some kind of murderous creature. Jamie stayed close to his brother as they laboured up the hill and carried on past the farmhouse and the yawning maws of the barns. As he looked out across the field, Jamie shivered at the sight of the shattered scarecrow frame that had held up Mathers’s body. Everywhere he went in this town, there seemed to be reminders of death in one form or another.

  “Well, we’re here,” Liam said softly, the wind ruffling his blond hair as he looked around. “Don’t suppose that diary of yours left any directions to the barrow, did it? You know, walk twenty paces east as the crow flies and all that?”

  Jamie shook his head.

  “No,” sighed Liam. “I didn’t think it would be that easy.”

  Jamie scanned the horizon, deep in thought. Both George Rathbone’s mother and Frank’s friend Jack had found their treasures in the woods – which Jamie took to mean the thin line of trees running along their left-hand side. He led his brother across the field and into the small wood, and for half an hour they paced back and forth through the trees examining the ground for any unusual marks or features. It was cold, tiring work, and Jamie could feel Liam growing impatient beside him.

  And then, suddenly he saw it. No X marking the spot, no monument or headstone. Just a raised indentation in the ground between two trees, little more than a bump in the ground. Hardly a fitting resting place for a Viking King, the feared and legendary Aldus, the father of Alderston. No wonder generations of treasure hunters had failed to find it. Without George Rathbone’s diary to point him in the right direction, Jamie would have walked straight past it every time. But as he approached the small knoll Jamie’s skin was alive with goosebumps – he knew what lay beneath it. He could almost feel Aldus’s presence.