Afterwalkers

by Tom Becker

  “Yeah, I thought so too.” Liam tossed the spoon back in the stew. “OK, so the cooking might take a bit of practice. Got to start somewhere though, eh?”

  “If I were you, I’d start with the takeaway menu.”

  “Cheeky monkey!” Liam gave Jamie’s arm a dig. He grinned. “Come on, let’s go see what’s on the telly.”

  They ate takeaway pizza in front of the TV, watching a football match together. Jamie barely followed the game, relishing the warmth as it melted months of tension from his shoulders. Liam chatted non-stop about the football, falling about laughing when one of the players missed an open goal. When the game had finished, he fished out the remote from down the side of the settee and turned the TV off.

  “Early night tonight,” he told Jamie. “I’m starting at the gym tomorrow morning. And we’re going to have to see about enrolling you in a school. Can’t have you sitting around on your bum all day while I’m out doing a honest day’s work.”

  “OK,” said Jamie, getting to his feet. Even though he was tired, he could have happily stayed where he was for hours. He looked around at the warm, brightly lit room. “Do you think Sarge would have liked this?”

  “Course he would,” Liam said quickly – maybe a bit too quickly. Jamie wasn’t sure he believed him. The people of Alderston might have given them a house, but Sarge had long since forgotten how to sit still. If he had been well, they would have probably been back on the road by now, navigating midnight motorways with cargos of illicit treasure. More than ever, that thought seemed like a terrible prospect to Jamie.

  He had reached the bottom of the stairs when he heard his brother call out his name.

  “It’s over, little bro,” Liam told him softly. “All of it. Time for a fresh start, eh?”

  Jamie nodded, and climbed the stairs to his bedroom. He closed the curtains quickly, preferring not to look at the graveyard. Would it always be this way, he wondered – a constant reminder of the terrors he had been through? Would he ever be able to look out at Alderston church and not think about Lawrence being crushed to death, or Mr Redgrave staggering down the road as the flames engulfed him? Jamie could feel the tiredness in his bones as he climbed into bed, but despite the lifting of the chill from his room, sleep proved elusive. He spent a restless night tossing and turning, nagged by an inexplicable doubt. It was nearly dawn before he finally tumbled into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.

  Jamie woke up feeling wearier than before he had gone to bed. As he brushed his teeth he saw the dark circles beneath his eyes in the bathroom mirror. Liam had already left for work: he’d left a note on the kitchen table calling Jamie a rude name, and a twenty-pound note in case of emergencies. Jamie poured some cereal into a bowl and ate breakfast slowly, staring out through the blinds over the window. When he had finished eating, he washed up the bowl and left it to dry on the rack. Then he put on his coat and shoes and went out to the back garden. It was mid-morning, a pale, defiant sun hanging low in the sky. Although it was still cold, the wind had lost its mean edge. Jamie pushed through the hedges at the back of the garden and leaned on the fence, looking out across the fields towards the wood at the edge of the Moss.

  It’s over, Liam had said.

  Jamie opened the door and walked over to the shed, threading his way through the rusty jumble of tools. His brother’s rucksack was where they had left it, stuffed inside a lawnmower. It gave off a guilty jangle as Jamie picked it up and slung it over his shoulder. Aldus’s hoard was all there, every ring and coin he had taken from the barrow, every bracelet. Every spearhead. Jamie and Liam had been at a loss for what to do with it. They could have sold it through one of Sarge’s contacts, but neither of them wanted to return to that world. They could have handed it in to a police station or a museum, but there would have been too many awkward questions. And more importantly, by taking the hoard out of Alderston, weren’t they risking taking the curse out of the small town and into the wider world? Who else might die with a ring on their finger, or a coin in their pocket, only to rise as a draugr afterwards? Jamie didn’t know, and neither did his brother. So they had left the cursed treasure in the shed. Jamie half-believed that Liam was hoping someone would come and steal it from them, removing the responsibility from their shoulders.

  It’s over, Liam had said. But it wasn’t, not with this still here.

  Adjusting the rucksack on his shoulder, Jamie hopped over the fence and started walking. The snow had lost its crisp certainty, squelching beneath his feet as he tramped across the field. In the distance, a flock of birds banked and wheeled as one, drawing out a wavering shadow across the sky. Instinctively Jamie knew he was following the same trail that Kitty Hawkins had taken two hundred years earlier, with a cold silver ring on her finger and her heart fluttering like a small bird.

  The past doesn’t go away here, Keeley had told him in the wood.

  Jamie moved like a sleepwalker, so wrapped in thought that he barely noticed his feet were already soaking wet. With every step the wood on the Moss grew larger before his eyes, tangled branches clawing their way up into the air. As the field petered out at the trees’ edge, Jamie stopped and looked back at Alderston, the comforting outline of the Lodge masking the graveyard on the other side. It felt as though he was standing on a kind of threshold, with the way ahead shrouded in darkness. Jamie took a deep breath, and entered the wood.

  The draugr are Viking undead, Lawrence had said, condemned to forever haunt the location of their death like guard dogs of Hell…

  The unnatural winter might have released Alderston from its grip but there was still a chill amongst the ageless trees. Branches shivered and dripped with melting snow in the wan sunlight. The ground was wet and slippery – once more Jamie thought of Kitty, dancing merrily through the trees, her mind lost in romantic dreams, her laughter echoing the empty wood.

  My Kitty drowned in the pond, Mr Redgrave had told him. The thing that came back afterwards wasn’t her. I killed it.

  Echoes from the past, all floating around inside of Jamie’s head. He was so engrossed that he almost walked past the bank; it was the sound of water streaming down the slope that made him stop. Only a week had passed since he had ignored Keeley’s warning and scrambled to the top of the bank, but it felt like a lifetime ago. The going was harder this time, Jamie’s feet slipping and sliding in the mush as he struggled over the top. He was out of breath by the time he had reached the top and looked down the other side.

  The thawing snow had not stripped the pond of its brooding atmosphere, even if the cradle of silence in which it rested had been disturbed by the loud trickle of running water. The water was still black as ink, a blank wasteland drained of light and warmth. As Jamie stood and watched, a chunk of snow fell away from the bank and slipped into the water.

  Look out, Greg! Donna had screamed. You’re going to hit her!

  Puzzle pieces, slowly sliding into place. Jamie had the eerie sensation of his mind becoming loose, like a hot-air balloon that had slipped its mooring rope. It felt as though he was looking down at a different Jamie, a Jamie he had no control over. From up in the air he watched as this Jamie edged down the slope to the pond’s edge, and then stepped into it.

  The water was so cold it made him gasp, so cold that it burned. Jamie gritted his teeth and waded on until the icy water lapped at his knees. His feet had gone numb. Somewhere in the corner of his mind, a voice was screaming at him to stop this craziness and get out of the pond, only to be drowned out by an eerie calm, a certainty that he was doing the right thing. Jamie needed to get to the heart of the pool, where he could leave the hoard so no one would ever stumble across it. The bottom of the rucksack was wet but it didn’t matter. He took it off his shoulder and opened all the pockets. Then he tipped the rucksack upside down. Coins and jewellery came tumbling out in a priceless silver waterfall, splashing into the pond and sinking slowly to its depths. Jamie waited until the bag was co
mpletely empty, checking the bottom to make sure no stray coins had become stuck in a nook or cranny. He let out a deep sigh, feeling a heavy weight lift from his shoulders. Now it was over.

  He turned to wade out of the pond, and the world exploded.

  A creature erupted from the water with a roar that ripped through the wood like a bush fire; a bloated monster with a sickly blue tinge to its skin and lank hair matted with twigs. Its eyes festered with sullen hatred like two open wounds. A grotesque parody of the beautiful girl it had been two hundreds years before.

  Too late, Jamie understood. Mr Redgrave had lied. He hadn’t killed Kitty. Loyal beyond death, he had covered for her, protected her. It was Kitty who had stepped out in front of Greg’s car and killed him; it had been Kitty who’d stood beneath Jamie’s window and gazed up with hungry hatred. It was to Kitty that Mr Redgrave wanted to show Aldus’s hoard, to prove that he was the best man. For two centuries she had dwelt at the bottom of this pool, a draugr tethered to her watery grave, only occasionally venturing forth to satisfy her terrible hunger. And now Jamie had walked straight into her lair.

  Kitty lunged at him with her arms outstretched; long, wicked fingernails slashed Jamie’s face. As Jamie stumbled backwards, he lost his footing and splashed down into the water. Kitty let out a triumphant screech and leapt on top of him, forcing him beneath the water with her bloated weight. The world was a confusion of bubbles and roaring water. It was a hopeless struggle – the draugr was far stronger than Jamie, slamming him against the bottom of the pond with ferocious force. Fighting for his life, Jamie managed to wriggle free, just enough to get his head above the surface and snatch a desperate gasp of air. Then Kitty dragged him back down again, her hands fastening around his throat and beginning to squeeze. Through the tears of pain Jamie could see Kitty’s mouth twist into a smile. He could feel the coins he had strewn across the pond bed beneath his back. For the first time Jamie felt a flicker of fear – not that he would die, but that the last thing he would ever see would be the draugr’s malicious smile. He was dizzyingly light-headed, dark blotches raining down in front of his eyes. Then his hands brushed against an object tangled up in the weeds. A blade. With the last remaining vestiges of his strength, the final bubbles of air in his lungs, Jamie snatched Aldus’s spearhead and drove it into Kitty’s belly.

  The creature let out an ear-splitting scream that deepened in pitch as it grew in volume, until a bestial, inhuman snarl rang around the wood. As Kitty released him Jamie broke the surface of the water with a splash, coughing and retching. The draugr was writhing in pain in the middle of the pond, clutching forlornly at her punctured stomach. Dark liquid was oozing from the hole where the arrowhead remained lodged – Aldus’s final strike against the dark curse the Viking chieftain had brought with him when he had first stepped foot upon the northern shores a thousand years earlier.

  As the draugr sagged, the hatred drained from her eyes, and for a brief second Jamie thought he caught a glimpse of the girl she had once been as her head bowed into the water. Then Kitty’s carcass sank slowly beneath the surface of the pond, and the wood toppled into an astonished silence.

  Jamie walked home.

  It was getting dark now, the road and the hedgerows melting into the shadowy horizon. Jamie wasn’t sure how much time had passed since the struggle in the pond. Hours, he guessed. He was very cold, and very tired, and it was hard to think straight. Every step required concentration. He had fallen over several times, and each time it was harder to get up again. Escaping the pond had used up his last reserves of strength; he’d clawed his way to the bank as Kitty’s lifeless husk sank to the bottom of the pond like a shipwreck. Jamie didn’t dare look behind him as he crawled away, forcing himself to his feet and stumbling away through the trees. He had no idea which way he was going. All he knew was that he didn’t dare stop. Then, without warning, the trees came to an end, and he found himself standing at the spot where, a lifetime ago, Greg’s car had ploughed into the wall. The road was empty. Soft birdcalls rang out in the fading light.

  Jamie’s sodden clothes had stuck to his skin, trapping him in a freezing embrace. Ice had set into the marrow of his bones and the chambers of his heart. His teeth were chattering so violently his jaws ached – whether because of the cold or the shock, Jamie couldn’t say. Probably both. His ribs were aching and his throat hurt, whilst his face was covered in long red marks where Kitty’s rotten nails had marked him. Although it hadn’t really been Kitty, Jamie told himself. She had died two hundred years earlier. It hadn’t been Kitty who had choked him with such dreadful strength, and tried to drag him to the depths of her watery hell. Surely she would be grateful to Jamie for ending her body’s torment. Even if he didn’t feel elation at having slain a monster, Jamie should have been relieved that he had somehow survived. But he didn’t feel anything except the numbing cold. Maybe feelings would come later.

  Streetlamps were flickering into life ahead of him, beckoning Alderston out of the darkness. On the hilltop, the church stood solemn and proud, as it had for nearly a thousand years – Aldus’s gift to the town that took his name, even as his hoard became its curse. But it was over now, finally. Was it? It was hard to be sure. Jamie really was very cold. It was tempting to stop walking and to curl up beneath one of the hedgerows out of the wind. Then Jamie thought about his brother waiting for him back at the house, and Keeley, and – unexpectedly – Sarge, watching on from the prison of his hospital bed and his shattered mind.

  Cresting the hill, he looked down Church Lane and saw the Lodge, its windows bright rectangles of light. The front door was open and Liam was standing outside by the front gate, anxiously scanning the horizon. He straightened up at the sight of his brother, folding his arms, his expression a mixture of anger, relief, and a little amusement. Then Jamie passed under a streetlamp, revealing his drenched clothes and the cuts on his face, his shivering, shaking body. Crying out with alarm, Liam flung open the front gate and came running up the road.

  Almost there now. Jamie walked towards his brother, each step taking him further beyond the reach of a cold, unforgiving past, and closer to where light and warmth, and the promise of tomorrow, lay waiting to claim him.

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  First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2014

  This electronic edition published by Scholastic Ltd, 2014

  Text copyright © Tom Becker, 2014

  The right of Tom Becker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him.

  eISBN 978 1407 14532 7

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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