Afterwalkers

by Tom Becker

  “Careful,” he said firmly. “You might hurt someone with that. Come on – it’s time to speak to the man upstairs.”

  Keeping a hand latched around Jamie’s neck, Lawrence marched him behind the counter and through the beaded curtain over the doorway beyond. As they plunged into a dark staircase the smell of rotten flesh thickened, curdling the air. Jamie gagged and tried to run away through the curtain but Lawrence hauled him back, shoving him roughly up the steps. When they reached the door at the top of the staircase, the bookshop owner rapped three times on the wood before entering the room.

  It was as though someone had turned over a fresh page in a picture book of Hell. The room resembled an old-fashioned Victorian parlour, with thick drapes over the windows and ornate gas lamps turned down to a sombre orange glow. Two armchairs were positioned by the hearth, which was struggling to contain a fierce fire that threw out waves of crackling heat into the room. In the chair facing Jamie was a corpse in a three-piece suit. Its skin was the dark-blue shade of centuries-old bruises. Bloated flesh burst out through the seams of its clothing. The corpse’s eyes were closed, its head tilted back against the headrest. The smell of rotting flesh was as unrelenting as the heat, a noxious cloud of death choking and stifling the room.

  “Sit,” ordered Lawrence.

  Jamie took a seat in the free armchair, desperately trying to stem the rising tide of panic inside his chest. His brain was whirring, thoughts cartwheeling one after the other. All this time, Lawrence had only been pretending to be his friend. Whilst they had been talking in the shop downstairs, this corpse had been sitting here. It was insane. What did Lawrence expect him to do now – pretend to have a conversation with a dead body?

  The corpse’s mouth let out a long exhalation, like the opening of a sarcophagus. A blackened eyelid flicked open.

  Jamie let out a terrified yell and tried to leap out of his seat. Lawrence pushed him back down.

  “Manners, Jamie!” he chided him. “You can’t leave now – Mr Redgrave’s been dying to meet you.”

  Jamie stared at the creature in horror. Mr Redgrave shifted in his chair with a rattle and rending of flesh, his decaying mouth twisting into a grimacing smile. Jamie felt pinned against the chair, too frightened to run even if he could have moved his legs. The fire writhed in the hearth like an angry creature. Sweat was pouring down Jamie’s back, his stomach churning with the stench of decay.

  “What’s the matter, Jamie?” said Mr Redgrave, in the same gravelly rasp that had assailed Jamie down the phone line. “Never seen a draugr before?”

  Counting Greg and Mathers, Jamie had seen three. But they had been fresh from the grave, whereas Mr Redgrave’s features seemed to be crumbling under the weight of centuries.

  “As Lawrence says, my associates know me as Mr Redgrave, although you might know me by another name.”

  A burning coal fell down in the grate with a fiery thud.

  “I think I do,” Jamie said cautiously. “I think you’re George Rathbone.”

  It had to be. In life, Rathbone had been a criminal; didn’t it make sense that he would carry on in the same vein after his death? Even as he stared at the creature, Jamie could feel hatred and scorn emanating from him.

  The draugr’s dead eyeballs stared back at Jamie. No one spoke, the only sound in the room the spit and crackle of fire in the grate. Then the creature’s mouth opened and a wheezing chuckle spilled out.

  “Nice try,” said Mr Redgrave. “But wrong, I’m afraid. Rathbone is where he belongs, burning in Hell.”

  Jamie frowned. “But if you’re not George Rathbone, then who are you?”

  The draugr proudly adjusted his tie. “My name,” he rasped, through parched lips, “is Tom McNally.”

  Initially the name meant nothing, but as Jamie leafed back through the pages of George Rathbone’s diary in his mind, suddenly he remembered where he had come across it before: As we turned and fled from the hellish scene, Silas stumbled over Tom McNally’s body. The farm boy was lying beside the grave, his throat crushed like a stalk of corn…

  “The farm boy!” Jamie exclaimed. “You were the one who guarded Kitty’s grave!”

  Mr Redgrave inclined his head. “That I was. I promised John Hawkins no harm would come to Kitty while I still had breath in my body, and I kept my word. I gave my life in my attempts to keep her safe.”

  “You thought you were protecting her from George Rathbone and the Resurrection Men,” said Jamie. “The town thought they were going to rob Kitty’s grave but all George wanted to do was say goodbye to her. They weren’t the ones who killed you.”

  The draugr shook his head. “Rathbone wanted to, all right – and he would have tried had our paths crossed that night, but someone else took care of that before he turned up.”

  Someone else. Something else. The only thing that it could have been.

  “Kitty,” said Jamie. “It was Kitty Hawkins. She came back as a draugr and killed you.”

  “I didn’t know what a draugr was, then,” said Mr Redgrave. “How could I have known? How could any man be prepared for the dead to rise behind them? I had been so intent on protecting Kitty it had never occurred to me that I was the one needing protecting from her. By the time I realized what had happened, it was too late. She hit me with a shovel, and grabbed me in a grip so tight she squeezed the very life from me. The last thing I saw was the hatred in her eyes.”

  A series of hacking coughs assailed Mr Redgrave, and it was a minute or so before he was able to continue:

  “The first thing I remember … afterwards … was coming to in the coffin. A sudden jolt of panic, like a needle straight into my heart. Barely room to move, barely room to breathe. I screamed. Flailing blindly, like an animal, I shattered the coffin with my fists and clawed my way to the surface. I still remember the moment when I burst free from the earth, that first deep lungful of night air … it was only then that I realized that I had changed. I was consumed by hate, an unspeakable envy gnawing away at my insides. Looking out across the churchyard, I could see a light burning in the Lodge’s window, and I was overwhelmed by the urge to go towards it and hunt down the man within. But then I saw lanterns moving along Church Lane, the sound of laughter and voices as a party neared, and I hastened away into the shadows. Had I yet known the full extent of my powers, the night would have had a very different ending.

  “As it turned out, I never got the chance to settle my score with George Rathbone. The good people of Alderston took care of that for me. A mob went to the Lodge and pummelled him from this world with their fists and the soles of their boots. I watched from the fringes of the wood as they threw his broken body on to a pyre in the fields behind the Lodge and set it alight. There was no Christian burial for this Resurrection Man.”

  “But that’s not fair!” protested Jamie. “George Rathbone loved Kitty! It wasn’t his fault that the dead were rising, it was Aldus’s!”

  Mr Redgrave moved without warning, lunging forward and fastening an icy clench around Jamie’s wrist. “It was his fault!” he snarled. “He gave Kitty the ring! If he’d left her alone, then she wouldn’t have come back!”

  Jamie cried out and the draugr slowly relinquished his crushing grip, one finger at a time.

  “You found Kitty, didn’t you?” Jamie said quietly, nursing his wrist. “Afterwards.”

  Mr Redgrave let out a long, crackling breath and sat back in his chair. “After Rathbone’s death I hid out in the woods,” he said finally. “I wanted the townspeople to think that they had got their man, and I knew that I could no longer walk forth in the world amongst the living. It was in the woods where I saw her – standing by the edge of Black Maggie’s pond, gazing into the waters where she had drowned. The girl with the golden hair and the warm smile I had loved was gone, replaced by something altogether darker, but even then, with my soul blackened and consumed with hatred, with no beating
heart to feel love, I felt … something.”

  “So what did you do?”

  Mr Redgrave stared levelly at Jamie, his eyes like coals.

  “I picked up a rock and brought it down upon her head,” he said. “Again and again. I beat her until she couldn’t get up and then I set fire to her, right by the pond, until she was destroyed.”

  Jamie gasped. “But you loved her!”

  “I loved Kitty,” Mr Redgrave said hoarsely. “My Kitty drowned in the pond. The thing that came back afterwards wasn’t her. It was a monstrosity, a perversion. Destroying it was the only thing I could do.”

  The draugr sat back in his chair, letting out a long, stale sigh. “After that I couldn’t stay in the wood. I roamed the countryside, feeding on farm animals and the occasional lone traveller. For a long time I considered trying to destroy myself like I had Kitty. But I was filled with too much pride, too much rage. My mother always said that Viking blood ran in my veins – perhaps it was fitting that this is what I became, a creature of the Norse night. From somewhere within me I found the strength to carry on, to thrive even. I may not have been able to walk the streets in daylight, but I could haunt the twilight, the criminal underworld: back alleys and sidestreets, dark cellars and sewers. Near on three centuries of robbing and murdering – not bad for a farm boy.” Mr Redgrave laughed, a harsh retching sound that sprayed his waistcoat with flecks of spittle. “Perhaps George Rathbone and I could have been friends after all.”

  “I doubt it,” said Jamie, with sudden boldness. “I don’t think George Rathbone had friends. I don’t think he liked anyone, apart from Kitty.”

  “He didn’t deserve her!” the draugr snarled, slamming his fist on the armrest. “If only Kitty had loved me, everything would have been different. But now, if I can claim the Viking hoard, I can prove to her that I was the best man: better than Rathbone, better than Aldus even. The mortsafes were just about money, and a nice profit they would have made me, too. I may have been poor in life, but in death I have made my fortune many times over. The hoard is different. It’s a matter of pride.”

  Lawrence picked up an iron stoker from the fireplace and poked the fire in the hearth, his bald head gleaming red in the light. The bookshop owner had remained silent all this time. Jamie had been so wrapped up in Mr Redgrave’s story he had almost forgotten he was there.

  “What about you?” he asked. “How do you fit into all this?”

  “The same way everyone in Alderston fits in,” Lawrence replied calmly. “Family ties. My name is Lawrence Porter. My great-great-great-grandfather was Silas Porter.”

  Silas Porter. The Resurrection Man who had fled Alderston for his uncle’s farm in Yorkshire. Jamie’s head slumped back against the headrest in despair. Local history, trapping him again.

  “The story of Alderston and George Rathbone was passed down through my family,” Lawrence told him. “I always felt there was more going on than the official version allowed, and I was sure Aldus’s hoard held the key. During the course of my investigations I stumbled across Mr Redgrave, who persuaded me to move to Alderston and join forces. Believe it or not, I had my suspicions about Lark Farm being the location for the hoard but I couldn’t find any proof – and then you turned up. I was astonished when you showed me George Rathbone’s diary. That was the key to the whole puzzle. Once you had found it, all we had to do was sit back and let you do the hard work for us.”

  “Enough history lessons,” snapped Mr Redgrave. “Where is it, Jamie? Where’s my hoard?”

  “We-we didn’t find anything,” stammered Jamie. “We looked for hours but we couldn’t find the barrow. The diary must have been wrong.”

  Mr Redgrave twisted his neck to look over at the bookshop owner.

  “You believe him, Lawrence?”

  Lawrence slowly shook his head.

  “Me neither.”

  The bookshop owner stepped forward and handed the draugr the metal blade he had taken from Jamie. “He had this on him. I think he was planning to use it on me.”

  Mr Redgrave held the blade up to the light, inspecting it. “Marvellous,” he breathed. “There’s no mistaking the period – this is Viking craftsmanship, all right.” His ruined face snapped back to Jamie. “Now where’s the rest of it?”

  “I don’t have it,” said Jamie, trying to sound more confident than he felt. “Search me if you don’t believe me.”

  “Don’t bother,” Lawrence murmured. “The brother will have it. He fancies himself the brains of the operation.”

  “If you try and mess with Liam, you’ll be sorry,” Jamie said fiercely. “He’s not scared of you.”

  “He hasn’t met me yet,” rasped Mr Redgrave. “He will be. If I hadn’t sent Lawrence to protect you, Mathers would have torn your brother limb from limb. And both the scrap dealer and Greg are under my control. They are fresh draugr, their minds fogged and their wits dulled in the aftermath of death. But I have been dead for centuries; the afterlife holds no mysteries for me. My mind is clear, and my will is stronger than you can ever imagine.”

  Jamie shrank back in his chair with a mixture of fear and revulsion. At that moment he would have given anything – anything in the world – for Sarge to come crashing through the study door, demanding his son back. But Sarge was frozen in Jamie’s bed in the Lodge, his limbs locked and his eyes staring up at the ceiling.

  “I know your father’s beyond talking right now,” Mr Redgrave told him, as though reading his mind. “But I’m betting if he could he’d say he was proud of you, Jamie. You were the one who pieced it all together, not him or Liam. I’m only sorry that you’ll suffer the same fate as both of them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The draugr’s mouth twisted into a blackened smile, his eyes flicking up over Jamie’s shoulder. Too late, Jamie tried to twist round, only for Lawrence to clamp a sweet-smelling rag over his face. Jamie fought to tear it away but he couldn’t prevent the scent seeping into his mouth and nostrils. His head became dizzy; his limbs turned into lead weights. The last thing he saw was Mr Redgrave rising up from his chair, and then everything went sickeningly black.

  Jamie came to slowly, reluctant to leave the safety of his unconscious. At first it was all he could do to get his sluggish mind to remember his name, who he was. The ground was hard beneath his back, the cold ravenous and remorseless – an icy creature gnawing on his flesh and sucking the marrow from his bones. Jamie’s head was pounding from the drugged cloth Lawrence had forced over his face, his mouth as dry as sand. Groaning, he opened his eyes and sat up.

  A thud of cool earth fell into his lap.

  Jamie looked up, dazed, to see the night sky far above his head. He was sitting at the bottom of a rectangular hole, earthern walls surrounding him. A lantern was resting on the ground at the surface, casting a light over the iron bars criss-crossing the top of the hole, trapping him below.

  It was a mortsafe.

  Jamie’s breath caught in his throat, and his stomach gave a sickly lurch of panic. As he struggled to stand up, his head thumping in protest, another clod of earth came down from the surface, hitting his knee. Peering up through the darkness, Jamie could see movement near the lantern on the surface, a figure striding about the edge of the grave. His heart plummeted when their face moved into the light.

  Greg Metcalfe was digging into the earth, flinging shovelfuls of dirt and snow into the grave. Having come face to face with both Mathers and Mr Redgrave, Jamie thought nothing could shock him any more, but there was something particularly grim about the sight of a young draugr, his lithe frame unnaturally swollen and his smooth skin a sullen, seasick blue. The frozen ground should have been too hard to break but the draugr had the unholy strength of the undead in his arms, and he wielded his shovel like a Viking weapon.

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

  Greg ignored him, not even both
ering to look down. Jamie opened his mouth to shout again, only for a shower of earth to rain down into the grave, stinging his eyes and souring his mouth. He coughed, spitting out the dirt. On the surface Greg’s pale blue face was blank, devoid of any emotion, displaying no sign of pleasure or satisfaction, still less of pity or mercy. He just kept digging. The draugr was going to fill the grave, burying Jamie alive.

  “I’ll give you what you want!” Jamie yelled. “Anything! Go and tell Mr Redgrave! Just stop it!”

  Another shower of earth.

  “Someone HELP ME!” he screamed.

  It was useless, he knew. The whole of Alderston knew the draugr were abroad tonight and were huddled behind locked doors, their hands clasped in prayer or clutching a bottle of strong alcohol, counting down the seconds to morning. No one could hear him; no one would come to help, even if they did.

  The earth was raining down harder now, the sleety dirt freezing Jamie’s feet and ankles. Sobbing with terror, he began clawing helplessly at the walls, trying to dig his way free. He had been frightened before, terrified for his life, but he had never imagined it could end like this – a slow, icy suffocation in the middle of the night, alone save for his silent, hateful executioner. Jamie slumped to the ground, defeated, and cradled his head in his hands.

  Minutes passed, the time marked off by the murderous thump of damp earth into the grave. Jamie’s clothes were wet through and he was shaking with the cold, his teeth chattering inside his skull. He thought longingly about being indoors like the rest of the town, somewhere warm, with the TV on and something cooking in the kitchen. People talking and laughing; a family. Jamie was so lost in his daydream it took him time to realize that the rain had stopped falling. He looked up towards the surface to see that Greg had paused, his shovel in mid-air, and was looking away down the hill. Someone, it seemed, was coming.