by C. J. Tudor
She nods. ‘Marcus is a good boy.’
‘He thinks a lot of you.’
‘He’s my godson, but I suppose he told you that as well?’
‘Yes. I never realized you knew his mum –’
‘Ruth suffered terribly at school. I rescued her from the bullies one day and became something of a confidante.’
I think about the children I would see in her office. The ones she tried to help. It wasn’t much. But, in school, when you are scared and bullied, a small kindness is everything.
‘Anyway,’ she continues, ‘Ruth and I stayed in touch after she left school. When she had Lauren and Marcus she asked me to be their godmother.
‘I would look after them sometimes when she was working, in the holidays. We remained close, especially Marcus. He still visits me for tea twice a week. He’s a very smart young man and we share a lot of the same interests.’
‘Local history?’
Another thin smile. ‘Among other things.’
‘So you used him?’
‘He wanted to help. He doesn’t know everything, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘Oh, you have no idea what I’m thinking.’
‘Then tell me.’
I open my mouth and realize I have no idea what I’m thinking.
‘You read the folder?’ she prompts, taking a sip from her mug.
‘Most of it.’
‘Did you find it interesting?’
I shrug. ‘Arnhill has a grim history. A lot of places do.’
‘But most places aren’t as old as this village. People presume Arnhill grew up around the mine. Not true. It was here long before the mine.’
‘So?’
‘Why does a village grow up in the middle of nowhere?’
‘Nice views?’
‘Villages grow in certain places for a reason. Clean water, fertile land. And sometimes, there are other reasons.’
Other reasons. I feel a sudden draught. A cool waft of icy air.
‘Such as?’
‘Did you read the articles about the witch trials and Ezekeriah Hyrst?’
‘Myth, urban legend.’
‘But there is often a grain of truth.’
‘And what’s the truth about Arnhill?’
She wraps her hands around her mug. Strong hands, I think. Competent. Steady.
‘You visited the graveyard. You noticed what was missing?’
‘Children. Babies.’
She nods. ‘That’s what is obviously missing.’
‘Obviously?’
‘Arnhill has a grim history, as you said. A lot of death. But there are just ninety souls buried in the graveyard.’
‘Don’t they re-use old graves after a while?’
‘They do. But even taking that into account – and the fact that most people were buried in other churchyards after about 1946, or cremated in more recent years – there’s a shortfall. Put bluntly, there are not enough graves for the dead. So, where are they?’
I suddenly understand what she has done. She has led me here, slowly and carefully, taking the long road so I didn’t see exactly where we were going. Until now.
‘I think that they were taken to another place,’ she says. ‘A place that the villagers believed was somehow special.’ She lets the sentence hang for a moment. ‘And twenty-five years ago, I believe that you and your friends found it.’
Places have secrets too, I think. Like people. You just need to dig. In land, in life, in a man’s soul.
‘How did you know?’
‘I’ve seen a lot of young people in my time, here in the village. Seen them grow up, marry, have children of their own. Some never make it that far. Like Chris.’
I think about a soft thud. A ruby-red shadow.
‘He used to sit in my office sometimes. Before Hurst took him under his wing.’
‘I don’t remember –’
‘You were probably too busy scurrying past, hoping I wouldn’t tell you off for your untucked shirt, or for wearing trainers.’
I almost smile. The past, I think. Never more than a few careless words away. Except I don’t think any of Miss Grayson’s words are careless. She has spent a long time waiting to speak them.
‘A few days before he died,’ she says, ‘Chris came to see me. He wanted to talk to someone. About what you found.’
‘He told you what happened?’
‘Some of it. But I think there’s more, isn’t there, Joe?’
There’s always more. You just need to dig. And the deeper you go, the darker it gets.
I nod. ‘Yes.’
‘Why don’t you tell me?’
28
1992
Annie looked around the cavern, eyes huge hollows in her small face.
‘I followed you.’
‘No shit. What were you thinking?’
‘I wanted to see what you were up to. Are they skulls? Are they real?’ Her voice trembled a little. She clutched Abbie-Eyes to her narrow chest.
‘You have to go.’ I walked – hobbled – forward and grabbed her arm. ‘C’mon.’
‘Wait.’ Hurst moved to block us.
‘What?’
‘What if she blabs?’
‘She’s eight.’
‘Exactly.’
‘I won’t say nothing,’ Annie muttered.
‘See? Now let me get her out of here.’
We locked eyes. I’m not really sure what I would have done if Marie hadn’t moaned from the corner: ‘I don’t feel good, Steve. I want to go home.’
‘Stupid cow,’ Fletch spat, but it sounded half-hearted.
I saw Hurst debate with himself. He looked at Annie and me, then back at Marie.
‘Fine,’ he growled. ‘We’ll go. But we’re coming back. And I ain’t leaving without some mementoes.’
‘No!’ Chris spoke for the first time. ‘You can’t. You can’t take anything from here.’
Hurst advanced on him. ‘Why the fuck not, Doughboy? This is ours now. We own it.’
No, I thought again. You didn’t own this place. It might let you think so. Might even want you to think so. But that was how it got you. That was how it drew you down here. That was how it owned you.
‘Chris is right,’ I said. ‘We can’t take anything. I mean, what if someone asks where we got human bones from?’
Hurst turned to me. ‘No one tells. And no one fucking tells me what I can and can’t do, Thorney.’
He raised the crowbar again. I felt Annie flinch. I gripped her tighter.
A slow smile spread across Hurst’s face: ‘Give me your rucksack.’
Without waiting for a reply, he yanked it from my back and threw it to Fletch.
‘Let’s grab some booty. We can stick some candles in these and scare the shit out of people on Halloween.’
Fletch caught the bag and knelt to gather up some more skulls. Hurst returned to the wall and began hacking at it with the crowbar, gouging out bones in a frenzy.
Annie clutched my arm. ‘Abbie-Eyes doesn’t like it down here.’
‘Tell Abbie-Eyes it’s okay. We’re going, soon.’
She shivered against me. ‘Abbie-Eyes says it’s not okay. She says it’s the shadows; the shadows are moving.’ She turned sharply. ‘What’s that noise?’
There was no mistaking that skittering, chittering now. It was all around us. Not rats. Or bats. They were both too large. Too cumbersome. This was a brittle, busy sound. The sound of something small but multitudinous. A mass of bristling shells and scuttling legs.
I understood a moment before it happened. Insects, I thought. Insects.
Hurst stuck the crowbar into the rock, gouging at a stubborn bit of bone. ‘Gotcha!’
The wall exploded in a mass of shiny black bodies.
‘Fuck!!’
Beetles poured out in a glistening wave, like living oil. Hundreds of them. They swarmed out of the hole and down to the floor. Some scurried along the crowbar and up Hurst’s arms. He dropped t
he bar and started shaking himself, like he was doing some kind of crazy dance.
On the other side of the cave Fletch yelped. The skull he was holding swivelled in his hand and more beetles poured from the eye sockets and gaping mouth. The skulls on the ground shifted, pushed around by thousands of tiny insect legs.
Fletch threw the skull to one side and scrambled to his feet. In his haste to get up he dropped the torch. It hit the floor and went out, plunging half of the cave into darkness.
Marie screamed, shrill and hysterical. ‘I can’t see. Shit, shit, shit. They’re all over me. Help me. Help me!’
A scream welled in my own throat but I needed to think about Annie. She clung to me, paralysed into silence. I wrapped my arms around her, whispered into her hair.
‘It’s okay. They’re just beetles. We’re going to get out of here.’
I tried to shuffle us backwards, towards the steps, where Chris still stood, torch hanging uselessly from his hand, illuminating a small patch of moving ground. Beetles cracked and crunched under our feet. Snap, crackle and pop. I felt glad of my heavy boots, jeans tucked in the top, even though I could feel my swollen ankle pressing painfully against the leather. Annie whimpered beside me like a scared animal.
We were almost there when a figure charged out of the darkness. Hurst. In the glow of the miner’s light his face was sallow and slick with sweat. Panicked. And that scared me more than anything.
‘Give me your helmet.’
He grabbed for it, knocking me back into the wall. I lost my grip on Annie.
‘Get off me!’
‘Give me the light.’
He shoved me hard, smashing my head back against the rock. My skull clunked inside the helmet. I heard something crack. The light wavered, clung on tentatively and then faded to nothing. Blackness enveloped us in a dank cloak.
‘You fucking moron!’ I shoved Hurst away. Desperation clawed at my throat. We needed to get out of here. Now. ‘Annie?’
‘Joey? I can’t see you.’ Her voice was full of held-back tears. Still trying so hard to be brave.
I limped in the direction of her voice. ‘I’m right here. Turn on your torch.’
‘I can’t. I’ve lost it.’
‘It’s okay –’ I reached out my hand; my fingers glanced hers.
From the darkness, Marie screamed: ‘Nooooo!’
I felt a whoosh of air as something sliced past my face. I dived to the floor, landing hard on my elbow. The helmet flew off my head. Pain tore up my arm. But I didn’t have time to focus on it because right then I heard another scream, high-pitched, agonizing, terrible.
‘ANNIE?!!’
I scrambled across the ground, scrabbling among the hard shells and scurrying legs. My fingers brushed metal. Annie’s torch. I grabbed it, realized a battery was hanging out of the back. I shoved it in, flicked the switch and pointed the torch around.
My mind went into free-fall. My heart seemed to fold and expand and shatter all at once. Annie lay on the ground in a small, crumpled heap, still clutching Abbie-Eyes. Her pyjamas had ridden up, revealing thin, dirt-smeared legs. Her face and hair were both covered with something dark, red and sticky.
I crawled over to my sister and gathered her awkwardly in my arms. She felt so bony, all angles. She smelled of shampoo and cheese-and-onion crisps. Around us, the beetles that had been swarming everywhere had started to retreat, to dissipate and melt back into the walls, their work here finished.
‘It was an accident …’
I raised the torch. Hurst stood a few feet away, Marie clinging to his arm. The crowbar lay at his feet. I remembered the whoosh past my face. I looked back down at Annie, blood seeping from her head.
‘What the fuck have you done?’
Rage rose like burning black bile in my throat. I wanted to charge at him and smash his head into the rock until it was nothing but splintered bone and jelly. I wanted to take the crowbar and drive it into his guts.
But something stopped me. Annie. My ankle was still throbbing. It would be a struggle to get up those steps on my own. I couldn’t carry Annie too. I wasn’t even sure we should move her. I needed Hurst and the others to get help.
‘Give me something for the blood.’
Hurst fumbled the tie off his head and threw it to me. His face was slack. He looked like he was waking from a bad dream and discovering it wasn’t a dream.
‘I didn’t mean to …’
Didn’t mean to hurt Annie. Just meant to hurt me. But I couldn’t process that now. I pressed the tie against the wound on Annie’s scalp. It sunk in. Not good. Not good.
‘Is she dead?’ Fletch asked.
No, I thought. No, no, no. Not my little sister. Not Annie.
‘You have to get an ambulance.’
‘But … what do we tell them?’
‘What does it matter?’
The tie in my hand was sodden. I threw it to one side.
‘Fletch is right,’ Hurst muttered. ‘We need a story. I mean, they’re gonna ask stuff –’
‘A story?’ I stared at him. ‘For fuck’s sake.’
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Chris move. He bent down and picked something up from the ground. Then he shifted back into the shadows.
‘Tell them anything,’ I said desperately. ‘Just get help. Now.’
‘What’s the point if she’s dead?’ Fletch again. Fucking Fletch. ‘I can’t hear her breathing. She’s not breathing. Look at her. Look at her eyes.’
I didn’t want to look. Because I had already seen. She was just unconscious, I told myself. Just unconscious. So why weren’t her eyes rolled back? Why was her frail body already feeling colder?
Hurst ran a hand through his hair. Thinking. That was bad. Because if he started to think, started to worry about saving his own neck, we were screwed.
‘They’ll ask questions. The police.’
‘Please,’ I begged. ‘She’s my little sister.’
‘Steve.’ Marie touched his arm. I had almost forgotten she was there.
Hurst looked at her. Something seemed to pass between them. He nodded. ‘Okay. Let’s go.’
I looked at Marie, tried to signal my thanks, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. She still looked pale, ill. They all shuffled towards the steps. No one offered to stay with me, not even Chris. But that was okay. I didn’t want them here. Just me and Annie. Like it always had been.
At the bottom of the steps, Hurst paused. He looked like he was about to say something. If he had, I think I would have run at him and torn out his heart with my bare hands. But he didn’t. He turned silently and disappeared into the darkness.
I remained kneeling on the cold ground, cradling Annie’s limp body on my lap. I propped the torch up against the rock, like an uplighter. Squashed, dead beetles surrounded us. I could still hear the rest of them faintly, in the walls. I tried not to think about that. Tried to listen to the sounds of the others ascending. Tried not to listen to what was lacking.
She’s not breathing.
They weren’t going quickly enough. Faster, I thought. Go faster. After a while their stumbling steps grew distant. They must be near the opening now, I thought. Must be. Then it wouldn’t take them long to run back to the village, to a house, a phone box. To call 999. The hospital was a good twelve miles away but the ambulances would have lights and sirens and if they knew it was a child, if …
A sound. More like an echo. Distant but still loud enough to carry. CLUNG. Like something heavy dropping. CLUNG. Or a metal door slamming. CLUNG.
Or a hatch closing.
CLUNG.
I stared up into the darkness.
‘No,’ I whispered.
They couldn’t. They wouldn’t. Not even Hurst. Surely?
No one tells. We need a story. They’ll ask questions.
CLUNG.
And who would know? Who would find us? Who would tell?
I tried to rationalize. I might be mistaken. Maybe they had just closed the hatch to keep us safe, or
to make sure that no one fell in. I tried. I tried really hard to convince myself, but all I came back to was that heavy metallic sound:
CLUNG.
In that moment I understood things no fifteen-year-old should. About human nature. About self-preservation. About desperation. Panic rose in a tidal wave, filling my throat, making it hard to breathe. I clutched my little sister tighter, rocking her back and forth.
Annie, Annie, Annie.
CLUNG.
And now I could hear another sound. Skittering, chittering. The beetles. They were coming out of the walls again. Coming back for us.
The thought broke my paralysis.
We couldn’t wait here. Hoping for help that might never come.
We had to move. We had to get out.
I laid Annie gently on the ground and forced myself to my feet. If I put most of my weight on my left foot I could just about stand. I bent and lifted Annie under the arms, then realized I had no hands free to hold the torch. I dithered. The beetles skittered. I grabbed the torch and gripped it between my teeth. Then I picked up Annie again and staggered backwards up the first few steps, balancing myself against the rocky wall, dragging her limp body after me. She was slight, but so was I. Her hoodie kept hitching up, her soft skin chafing against the rough stone steps. I kept stopping to try and pull it down, which was stupid. I was wasting effort, and time.
I heaved her up three more steps. My ankle twinged. My head swam. I paused, tried to breathe, readjusted my grip. Then I stepped backwards. The stone crumbled beneath my heel. My foot slipped, my legs went out from under me. I was falling. Again. I held on to Annie, but with no way to break my fall my skull cracked hard against the rocky step behind me. My vision wavered and darkness folded in on me.
It was different this time. The darkness. Deeper. Colder. I could feel it moving, around and inside me. Crawling over my skin, filling my throat, burrowing right down into …
My eyes shot open. My hands flailed, rubbing and slapping at my head and face. I was dimly aware of things retreating. A whispering tide of glistening shells receding once more into the rock. The torch lay beside me, emitting a sickly, feeble glow. It didn’t have much life left in it. How long had I been out for? Seconds? Minutes? Longer? I was sprawled on the next-to-last step. My body felt oddly light. A weight removed.
