by Tim Lebbon
UNTIL SHE SLEEPS
by Tim Lebbon
This eBook edition published 2011
by Generation Next Publications
www.GenerationNextPublications.com
Originally published by Cemetery Dance, 2002
© Tim Lebbon 2002, 2011
Cover and eBook Creation by Stephen James Price
LICENSING
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Nightmare
“Do you know the curse of Tutankhamon?”
Norris shook his head, scratched the back of his neck and hefted the sledgehammer. It was mid-morning already and all they’d done is fanny around in the basement – crypt, he supposed, but that sounded just a little too spooky – without actually getting any work done. And now James was wasting time coming out with this crap again. And although Norris could only ever admit it to himself, his colleague’s knowledge shamed him. James was twenty years his junior and barely out of school, but he knew an awful lot of stuff.
Most of it bollocks.
“Tootan-fucking-who?”
“Tutankhamon. An Egyptian king, buried with full honours. His tomb was excavated early this century and before long everyone—“
“Jimmy,” Norris said, knowing he hated being called ‘Jimmy’, “where do you get all this shit from?”
“A book I read once.” James shrugged, sort of embarrassed but secretly pleased as well. He read. He watched documentaries. And he had a good memory. Labouring was not destined to be his lot in life, he swore that to himself every night; yet but every morning he got up and went out to dig holes or shift bricks for another measly fifty quid. Perhaps it was because he really rather enjoyed blinding Norris with information. The old fart didn’t know his arse from his elbow.
“Well close your book, take your finger out of your arse and grab that pick-axe. This wall’s got to be down by lunchtime.”
James stood back and looked the wall over. For the tenth time that morning he had some doubt about what they’d been asked to do. “What if it’s holding the church floor up?”
“It isn’t.”
“But what if—“
“Vicar says the church has been here almost five hundred years. This wall’s less than three hundred years old. Says so in the church records.”
“Which are undoubtedly accurate and exact,” James mumbled, but Norris either did not hear or chose to ignore him.
The older man looked at the tall youth he’d been working with for a year and wondered – for the last time in his life, so it turned out – just what James was doing here. He was bright, he had ambitions, prospects, yet he barely earned his keep by digging in muck and sweeping up and knocking down old walls in damp, dark basements. Norris had used to think to himself that there was more to life than this. He’d not thought it for a long time now, because he was getting on and he feared he knew the truth of the answer, but for James … well, there was still time to make that statement come true.
What could be wrong in trying?
“Okay you lazy bastard, I’ll start.” Norris swung the hammer at the stone wall. Whoever built this all those years ago had evidently done so in a hurry – the stones weren’t well fitted together and the pointing in between, although thick and well compressed, was sloppy in the extreme. How the hell it had stood for three hundred years, God only knew.
The first blow punched a hole straight through.
They felt the old air gushing out, James thought as he watched Norris tug the sledge hammer from the hole it had made. And with it came the curse. The string of lights they’d hung from the old ceiling beams threw strange shadows at the hole, shifting slightly as if the whole wall had let out a startled gasp.
“Piece of piss,” Norris said. He hefted the sledge again and paused – only for a second, but long enough to be surprised – when he saw movement through the hole. What’s behind the wall? he’d asked the vicar. Space, the old goat had replied. Norris wondered exactly what he had meant; there seemed to be small lights floating in the blackness, stars swimming in a night sky distorted by heat, the blackness of the cosmos seen through the flames of a burning—
But where the hell did that come from?
“Been working with you for too long,” Norris mumbled as he swung the hammer again.
“What?” James hadn’t quite caught what his colleague had said. Something abusive, no doubt, a friendly dig hiding a subtle bitterness. He liked Norris but sometimes James thought the old git resented him his youth.
Norris aimed the hammer slightly to the left of the hole. A lump of stone shattered and shards flew, some of them pattering to his feet, others disappearing behind the wall and falling on something unseen. He swung again, knocked out the remainder of the broken stone. Again and a whole block came out, thumping to the ground behind the wall so that he felt its impact through his feet.
And then something else. The floor was vibrating, shivering as if a generator had started up somewhere or a million similar stones were hitting the ground a long way away.
“What’s that?” Norris asked. But he would never hear James’s voice again.
He looked at the hole and saw something strange. It was filled with water, its plane vertical as if it was the surface of a small pool viewed from above. He thought briefly of a fishing hole punched in the ice by Eskimos, but the depths beneath those holes disturbed him so he tried to purge the image.
The water cleared it for him. It cleared everything in a matter of seconds, because suddenly Norris was drowning. There was no surge or gush, he was not swept from his feet as the water poured into the crypt … it was simply there. And he was bobbing in it, sinking because he still held the sledgehammer, and whatever orders he sent his hand to open were lost along the way. He could not for the life of him let go. And it was for his life … he smoked, he ate badly, his lung capacity was not what it should have been … he opened his mouth to scream and breathed in the waters instead.
Hands held him down, although he could not see them.
As panic gave way to something worse, Norris managed to turn and look for James, see if the lad had managed to save himself, drag himself away to survive and live the life he should have been leading before.
But all around him was water. Above, below, left and right … and like a sea without a shore, he could see no walls.
“Norris!” James shouted. The old git was having a heart attack here underneath a church, banging holes in a wall built hundreds of years ago when none of them knew exactly what was behind it, what it held up, what it held back … he was having a bloody heart attack. “Norris! Fuck’s sake, mate!” He tried to reach out for the older man but found his hands slowing down on their way to him, slowing until he could almost not move them at all.
He pulled back and tried again. It was all wrong.
His movements slowed the nearer he got to the struggling Norris. It was as if he was trying to run through water. “Norris!” No water here, only the thick, dank air made thicker by fear. Real fear, because now there was something strange happening which James had no inkling of, all the books he’d read did no good down here, down here was real.
They felt the old air gushing out, and with it came the curse. There were no old Pharaohs in Whitgrove, he knew. But every country has its dark, nasty secrets.
James couldn’t reach Norris so there was only one thing left to do: run for help. He turned, then glanced back at the hole in the wall … something had grabbed his attention in there. A smell, a sound, a shadow seen in
darkness. And then, just as in all the worst nightmares and dreams, the impossible began to come true.
Horses ran through the small hole in the old stone wall. They galloped in a blind stampede, all of them wild-looking, unshod, eyes wide and mouths foaming as if they were fleeing something unmentionable. Six of them came through, eight, ten, and although the hole was only a few feet away they ran towards James, their hooves kicking up shards of broken stone. Their manes danced, waving slowly and softly like kelp in a gentle current, but their nostrils streamed snot and blood and he saw the muscles flexing beneath their hides as their legs pummelled down …
Impossible, unreasonable, James should turn and run but he could not move. It was a nightmare, a waking nightmare, he’d wake up soon and it would all be back to normal again, Norris would be shouting and James would smile and think of what could be—
The first horse knocked him flying. He would have hit the wall of the small basement had it not vanished. He kept skidding and bouncing along the ground, feeling his clothes ripping and stones slashing into his skin, pain breaking through the disbelief and making it all too real.
James opened his mouth to scream, but then the rest of the galloping herd bore down upon him, and their hooves crushed the cry as it rose in his throat.
At last the crypt was silent again. A silence so profound that, surely, it could never have been disturbed in the first place.
One
“Last one to the shop’s a pussy!”
“Or a cunt.”
“Yeah, a cunt!” Andy pushed down on the pedals, grinning as the breeze swept hair back from his forehead, and inside he laughed because he felt so good. He was way ahead of Stig – his friend’s real name was David, but Stig had been his nickname for so long that most people had forgotten it – and he would beat him to the shop, and he would be able to call him a pussy, and whatever they did that afternoon would be Andy’s choice.
He passed the apple orchard to his right and stood on the pedals, cycling up the small slope to the village shop. It stood at the T-junction of two roads, opposite the old cider factory. Time, financial constraints and giant international drinks conglomerates had closed the factory down three years before, but its associated storage sheds, offices and car parks still dominated the village and provided a dangerous playground for anyone foolhardy enough to force an entry. Andy and Stig had been in there a few times, but they preferred to make use of what the dead factory had left behind – the living orchards. With no cider presses to swallow the apples and no employees left to pick them, autumn had become a fun and profitable time for kids unafraid of a bit of hard work. Mr Howards at the local shop paid a fiver for each sack of apples delivered to his door, and last year Andy and Stig had gathered over sixty for him. One hundred and fifty quid each had bought a new bike and a load of books for Andy, and a couple of pairs of oversized trainers for Stig. For very differing reasons, the boys were already looking forward to this autumn. Andy needed some more books. Stig needed new footwear.
Andy’s new bike meant that he always beat Stig in a race, and always got to call him a pussy.
He reached the shop, skidded in the gravelled parking lot and sat astride his bike, watching Stig struggle up the slight hill. He closed his eyes for a moment and enjoyed the hot July sun on his face, wondering if they’d be doing this sort of thing next year – hoping they would – but fearing that maybe fourteen would be a little too old to go scrumping and riding bikes aimlessly and spending a long time, busy day doing nothing at all. Fourteen sounded a big step closer to all grown up.
“Pussy,” Andy muttered as Stig braked to a halt, panting and sweating and smiling.
“Could be worse.”
They both laughed. As always it felt good.
“How much have you got?” Stig asked. He held out his own offering toward the lunchtime feast. “I’ve got about three quid.”
Andy dug into his pocket and counted the change. “About four.” He tried to put on a posh voice but it came out as a bad impression of Prince Charles. “With seven pounds, my good friend Stig, we can purchase a veritable banquet.”
“A banquet to eat on the village green where Mrs Hopkins lets her dog crap,” Stig said. “Yeah, lovely.”
“All adds to the flavour, my young friend.”
“Flavour my arse!” Stig said, leaning over and shoving Andy from his bike.
Andy wheeled his arms and sent money flying across the gravel, but Stig was strong and he could not recover from the shove. He went sprawling. The bike scraped his bare legs, his elbows found particularly sharp splinters of gravel to smack down into, but he was still laughing when he scrambled to his feet. Perhaps in anticipation of the sweet revenge that would be his later, or maybe just from the fun of it all. Summer holidays were endless, and there was still five weeks to go.
Stig had already dropped his bike and was running for the shop.
Andy followed slowly, dabbing at the dribble of blood on his left arm. He smudged it across the skin and decided to let it dry there – it looked cool. Maybe if Rachel saw him later she’d notice the blood and think he’d hurt himself exploring the old air-raid shelter, and maybe she’d want to ask him about it and he’d get into a conversation with her and, well, take her to show it. He’d never actually been inside, but he enjoyed telling stories about it, like how the King of Bones lived down there now, his clothing made from the deconstructed skeletons of unfortunate kids who’d fallen in and never been found. The fact that there were no substantiated cases of missing children in Whitgrove detracted from his tale, but only when he let it.
Lunch purchased – pasties, chocolate, crisps, several cool cans of fizzy pear drink, an apple to throw at each other later – the two boys mounted their bikes and freewheeled down to the village square. There was a little green there –
spotted with Mrs Hopkins’s dog’s shit, true, but pleasant enough if it could be avoided – and a stream, and a few benches. A good place for lunch, because lots of the other village kids often congregated there.
And that meant girls.
Specifically for Andy, that meant Rachel Francis.
They whispered past the church, its grey stone walls still cold in the blazing sun, graves shunning the heat. Andy, trailing behind Stig now, let out a throaty growl.
“Piss off!” Stig said.
“I’ll swallow your soul, I’ll swallow your soul!”
“Oohh, really scary.”
“I’ll tear ours souls apart!” Another growl and Stig pedalled quickly into the square. Andy knew that his friend hated this sort of thing. Whenever they watched horror films together Andy would be surprised and shocked, but Stig was often downright terrified
As they braked to a halt by the green the automated church bell began ringing midday.
The square was all but deserted. Andy was a little disappointed – the blood was still dripping from his arm and splashing intermittent rosettes on the road – but maybe Rachel would turn up later.
Stig dropped his bike and stood staring up at the church clock. The bell was still ringing.
Andy dismounted, scanned the area they’d chosen for dog crap or ant nests, then dropped the carrier bag of food to the ground. After sitting he picked up a handful of small stones from the roadside and flung them at Stig’s head.
His friend turned, brushing grit from his hair, frowning. “Thirteen,” he said.
“Huh?!”
“Thirteen o’clock. The bell went thirteen times.”
Andy checked his watch. Midday. “What time you got?”
“Twelve.”
“Me too. Bell must be on the Fritz, it’s electronic, now. My mum always said the worst thing the vicar did was fire the bell-ringers.”
“Still …” Stig said, leaving the sentence hanging in the hot midday air.
They sat on the green and ate lunch. The grass had been cut that morning and the fresh tang hung in the air with no breeze to disperse it. Andy felt his arms and face burning but he
welcomed it. He had sun cream on, but his parents would tell him off later for not wearing a hat. This was the feeling of summer. Later, when the cooler evening came down, his skin would tingle and he’d be able to remember that day, and he’d know that there were weeks left – an eternity – of this school holiday. Five weeks. Thirty-five days. He wouldn’t start counting them down until there were only ten days left, when every morning because an important time-span in which to cram as much as possible. And that last weekend was always the longest and the shortest of times: long because from waking up to settling down to sleep, he was doing stuff; short, because there was only two days left until school started back. And then one day. Then none. Just a suntan and a scarred elbow to show for six weeks of fun. And maybe a kiss from Rachel.
This year, things were moving on. He was getting older and his priorities were changing.
Andy and Stig wolfed their lunch. The pasties went first, then the crisps and then the chocolate, already soft and melted even though they’d taken it from Mr Howard’s fridge. They’d been busy climbing trees that morning, and Stig’s little electronic speed-gizmo on his bike told him they’d cycled eleven miles; they were ravenous. They chattered as they ate, inconsequential stuff that means so much to just-teenaged boys, like whether Darth Maul could have taken Darth Vader in a scrap, or how big Jenny Begbie’s tits would grow this year, or whether Blur would ever really make a comeback and piss on Oasis’s chips.
A few cars and vans trundled through the square, one or two of them stopping outside the post office for a couple of minutes, but mostly the village was quiet. Many of the adults were in work, and those at home were either having lunch or resting inside from the fierce midday sun.
The boys finished their food, and they were just about to head off again on their bikes – Stig had suggested a ride up into the woods for a bit of scrambling – when the vicar pulled up in front of the church. It always made Andy laugh when Father Norman got into or out of his two-litre Mazda looking like a Reservoir Dog; he’d always thought vicars were supposed to drive boring Fords, but as his father said, one car is as un-Godly as the next. The vicar was wearing only trousers and shirt today, he hadn’t even put on his dog collar. He evidently did not see the boys sitting on the green, because Andy was certain he heard a mumbled curse as Father Norman dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. His armpits and back were soaked through, blacker than black.
