by John Marsden
‘Bingo,’ you yell.
But Bingo takes no notice. He’s never seen so many bones in one place in his whole short life. Before you can do anything, he is in among them. Bones are flying everywhere. You’re screaming at Bingo to come away, but finally you give up. Whatever bad things are going to happen, they’re going to happen now, nothing more you can do about it. But it seems like nothing bad is going to happen. Bingo’s lying on the floor, chewing a large leg bone, with a blissful expression on his face.
You stay there for a while, watching. In that time Bingo works his way through a scapula, a clavicle and half the rib cage. Seems like he’s taken care of your problem. As you leave quietly he’s just starting on the other leg.
Good boy, Bingo!
ell, fine then,’ you say, ‘go away then, I don’t care. I can look at them myself, I don’t need you.’
To your secret pleasure she does stop. You don’t really want her to go away. It’s more fun exploring when you’re with someone else.
‘I was only joking,’ you say. ‘Can’t you take a joke?’
She shivers. ‘Not round here,’ she says. ‘This place gives me the creeps. These graves . . . I wouldn’t live here for a million bucks.’
You wish she wouldn’t say things like that. It makes you feel very uncomfortable. You try to keep the conversation moving.
‘So what are the graves?’ you ask.
‘The people who built this house,’ she says. ‘Back in 1889. They were all found dead in their beds one night. No-one knows how they died. And people say that every September 13, on the anniversary of their deaths, their bodies rise from the earth here and walk again.’
‘What?’ you gasp. ‘September 13!! That’s tonight!’
‘I know. And that’s why you won’t find any kid from this neighbourhood out of their houses after dark tonight.’
You’re so shocked you go to sit down. Then you realise you’re about to sit on one of the graves, so you quickly stand up again.
‘I . . . I don’t believe you,’ you say. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts.’
But you look around nervously as you say it.
‘OK,’ says Stacey. ‘If you don’t believe in ghosts, I’ll meet you here at midnight tonight, and we can see if anything happens.’
You look at her in horror. Is she serious? Oh oh, bad news: looks like she is! What are you going to do now?
ou feel you should get out of the car but when you try the handle it seems to be stuck. There’s still no sign of Stacey. You’re getting worried and, to make things worse, it’s all you can do to stay awake. It’s getting harder by the minute. You pinch yourself, slap yourself in the face, hit yourself over the head, then start biting and kicking yourself. If you could have kicked yourself in the butt you would have. You don’t stop till you’ve given yourself a black eye, a broken tooth, and a mass of grazes and lacerations. Now you really are awake, no doubt about that. You’re hurting badly, but at least you’re awake.
You peer through the windscreen, trying to find some clue to what’s going on. These days it gets dusk early, and already the light is fading. As you stare you notice for the first time how the murk and dirt on the glass seems to form shapes, the way clouds looked like castles or elephants or sheep, when you were a little kid. Only these shapes don’t seem nice and friendly. They seem dark and forbidding. And then you notice they’re moving. It’s like you’re watching a movie. The shapes are getting wilder, like they’re out of control. They’re swirling around and mixing together and chasing each other. They’re black and grey and some of them seem to have patches of red, almost like eyes. And tails, little dark pointy tails, they seem to have them, too. You try to find your voice, to yell at them to go away, to yell for help maybe, but your voice just isn’t there: your throat seems blocked, like your tonsils have swollen and filled it. Something flies past you in the car and you grab your own throat in horror. It’s like one of these dark little demons has left the windscreen and is loose inside the car! How is this possible? Then there’s another, and a third, whizzing silently through the car, zigzagging past you at high speed. You catch a glimpse of little red eyes, mean and narrow, as one of them comes straight at your face and only swerves away at the last moment. Aaaaagghhhhh! This is terrible! What can be happening? What can these horrible things be?
You feel a little pricking sensation in your hand and looking down you see to your terror that one of them has actually landed on your hand! You scream this time: your voice has come back now. You shake your hand to get rid of the foul thing and it zooms up past your face. Desperately you try again to open the door of the car, but it still doesn’t work. Your stomach feels like one of these creatures has got inside it and is wriggling around in there: that’s how scared you feel. This is the most frightening experience of your life. The worst thing is the terror of not knowing how it will end. The car is full of these ugly little monsters!
ou watch in awe as the great man belts through another number: this time ‘Viva Las Vegas’. But as he reaches the end he starts to fade again. He begins a third song, ‘Wooden Heart’, but he’s definitely getting thinner. You think he’s going to disappear, right in front of your eyes, but then you realise things are going to be more complicated than that. He slowly reaches out with his right hand as he sings the second verse. It’s Stacey that he’s reaching to and, to your horror, she reaches out to him. The misty white hand, laden with rings, touches and holds Stacey’s solid brown hand. And, right there in front of you, Stacey starts to disappear! Yikes! Horrifying but true—she’s starting to fade away. Her arm becomes more and more transparent. Then her body. It’s happening so quickly you can’t think of what to do. But you’ve got to do something! In another minute Stacey will be gone: gone with Elvis to some mysterious place from which she may never return! You look around frantically. On the floor of the car is a large bottle of Coke. You don’t like wasting Coke but desperate times call for desperate measures. You grab the bottle, shake it up as hard as you can, then take off the lid and aim it at Stacey.
Wow! The effect is sensational. A spray of foam and Coke showers over her. You can hardly see her for a moment. It’s like she’s having a bubble bath. With fawn-coloured bubbles. They’re fizzing and sizzling and dripping all over her. She’s coughing and spluttering, trying to wipe them off. But at least she’s let go of Elvis’ hand. You glance into the back seat. Elvis has completely disappeared. At last Stacey has her eyes open. What a relief. It seems like the worst is over. You sit back smugly, waiting for Stacey’s grateful thanks.
But, instead, she screams at you. ‘What did you do that for?’ she yells.
‘I saved you,’ you answer indignantly.
‘I didn’t want to be saved,’ she wails.
‘You didn’t?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘I love Elvis. I’d have gone anywhere with him.’
‘But you don’t want to leave here,’ you say. ‘Imagine it. You’d have to give up school, and homework, and cleaning your room, and hanging out the washing, and loading the dishwasher, and unloading the dishwasher . . .’
You start to realise why Stacey is so upset.
‘On second thoughts,’ you say, ‘any chance of getting Elvis back? Do you think he might take us both?’
ave you ever stood in a butcher’s shop and watched the butcher mincing meat? It comes squeezing out from the mincer in long slow red worms that look like spaghetti made of entrails.
Have you ever seen a cook slicing liver? The knife glides through the dark raw meat, as a little blood oozes from it. It feels warm and sticky and soft, as though it’s still alive.
Have you ever seen a dead cat on the road, all squishy and red, with bits of its guts coming out its mouth?
And what about in Science, when the teacher gives you a sheep’s eye to dissect? As you make the first little nick with the scalpel a grey liquid comes squeezing slowly out. Even as you cut the eye open it still seems to be looking at you.
I thi
nk you’re getting the idea. I think you’re starting to realise how you feel as you see bits of liver and entrails and eyes and blood and guts floating away from you in the moat. Bye bye, Stacey! Bye bye, Mrs Cunningham!
ait just a sec,’ you say. ‘My parents have paid for this house, you know. It’s cost them a fortune. I reckon I’ve got as much right to be here as you have.’
Well, now she’s really mad. Her eyes are going like hazard lights and steam’s coming out of her ears. ‘How dare you,’ she squeals. ‘How dare you speak to me like that. It’s typical of you younger generation. Don’t you have any respect? Why, I must be two hundred years older than you.’
‘You sure look it!’ you say rudely.
You get a little nervous then because she gets so angry that her head actually lifts off her shoulders again. ‘You fool,’ she screams, ‘you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re dealing with forces way beyond your primitive understanding . . .’
Suddenly bells ring out. ‘What’s that?’ she gasps. ‘Is it midnight already?’
The sound of the clock striking really scares her. She listens trembling, counting the chimes. There’s six of them and, when she realises that, she relaxes again. But the clock gives you an idea. When she turns to you again and starts ranting and raving and threatening, you merely turn to an old clock that’s behind you and wind it up. She breaks off her abuse and says suspiciously, ‘What are you doing?’
You don’t answer; you turn the hands of the clock to a few seconds before twelve. A moment later the chimes begin. One, two, three. ‘Stop, stop,’ she screams. Seven, eight, nine. ‘No, no!’ She covers her ears. Ten, eleven, twelve! There’s a terrible gurgling howl from Esmerelda, a howl of freezing wind through the attic, and suddenly she’s gone.
You and your parents have a good peaceful time living in the old house. Despite the wild stories the neighbours tell you, you’re never troubled by ghosts or spirits or poltergeists. There’s only one thing your parents don’t understand: why you demand to have every clock in the house changed so they strike twelve times every hour. They think you’re crazy, but you’re so insistent on it that they eventually give in, just for the sake of peace and quiet.
And that’s why you all live happily ever after!
orgive us, for we have wronged you,’ Stacey cries as she crosses her arms on her chest and goes peacefully to her death. ‘Yes,’ echoes her mother, ‘we have been very wicked, and we are getting no more than we deserve.’
They both disappear under the water.
You turn to your mother. ‘So end all evildoers,’ you observe.
In the water there is a sudden bubbling and up come bits of intestine and a severed ear, then more shreds of human flesh and globules of bloo . . . oh sorry. I just don’t seem able to help myself. Sorry.
uddenly there’s a ripping sound above your head and you drop violently, about a metre. You don’t have to look, you know what’s happening. The rotten old guttering is tearing off above your head. ‘Aaaahhh,’ you scream into the wild wind. Why did your parents have to buy this derelict old house? Why couldn’t they have bought a nice brick-veneer flat on the ground floor of a nice new building? No, not your parents! They always have to do it the hard way.
There’s another great ripping noise and you drop two metres this time. Hey, you just had a good idea! If there’s enough guttering along this roof and it keeps tearing off at this rate, it’ll lower you to the ground, metre by metre. Sounds good, huh? You might just get out of this alive after all!
ell, I don’t know,’ you say. ‘That doesn’t sound such a smart idea to me.’
‘Look,’ she says, ‘you’ve got to live in this house for years to come, right? And you don’t want this hanging over your head for all that time, right? So now’s your big chance to find out what’s really going on. So I’ll meet you at a quarter to twelve, right?’
You look up at the sky and down at your feet and all around the garden. There’s no answers there, nothing that gives you a clue of what to say to Stacey. But she’s waiting for you. She’s tapping her foot impatiently. So you open your mouth.
‘Er . . . yes, OK then,’ you say.
Oh no! Did you really say that? Have you completely lost your head? Because there’s a very good chance that you’ll lose your head tonight. You’ve done some stupid things in your life—teaching your baby sister all the swear words you know was one of them—but this has to be the most stupid yet. This is a PB: a personal best.
Stacey is walking away happily. ‘I’ll meet you at 11.45, in front of the sheds,’ she calls back over her shoulder. ‘Bring a torch, OK?’
All the rest of the day you’re worried sick. You don’t dare tell your parents what you’re up to, but you can’t eat tea and you can’t concentrate on what anyone says to you. Your imagination keeps dreaming up horrible pictures of the worst things that might happen.
Your new bedroom is still a shambles because you’ve hardly started unpacking. After a long search you find your alarm clock, which is buried in a tea chest that seems to be mainly full of your dirty washing. You set it to 11.30 and get into bed without bothering to change. Your parents come in to say, ‘Goodnight.’ ‘Are you all right, dear?’ your mother wants to know. ‘You don’t seem your normal happy self tonight.’
You feel so tempted to tell her the truth. But you don’t.
‘I’m fine,’ you mumble.
They go and you lie there in the dark wishing you could think of an excuse not to turn up.
Gradually you do fall asleep, but when you do it’s almost worse, because you dream of skeletons and corpses and fun stuff like that. You toss and turn for a couple of hours, then suddenly you’re awoken by a devil banging his pitchfork against a big gong . . . no, it’s a fire alarm . . . no, it’s a school bell . . . no, no, it’s just your clock ringing its little heart out.
You grope around in the dark looking for it, wanting to kill it. It takes about three minutes but finally you find it and turn it off.
By now you’re completely awake. You put your shoes on and go downstairs. You get to the front door and slide it open. It squeaks and creaks all the way. A rush of cold air makes you shiver. It’s dark outside, so dark. You sneak a glance at your watch. Yes, one minute before 11.45. You can’t hang around here. Having come this far you might as well keep going. You take a deep breath and head outside.
You step carefully across the holes in the verandah. Your eyes start to get used to the light. You go down the steps without breaking your neck, then you walk gingerly along the path. The gravel makes little crunchy noises under your feet, like when you’re chewing on peanut brittle. Nothing seems to be moving; there’s no wind, no cars on the road, no possums in the garden.
You get to the sheds. There’s no sign of anyone, and especially no sign of Stacey. Will she turn up? You stand there waiting, waiting, waiting. Waiting and watching.
t takes ten minutes, but at last it gets you there. The storm eases and beneath your feet you see the ground getting closer and closer. Finally, with one giant rip of metal, the last length of guttering pulls off and deposits you gently outside your front door.
You’re alive! You’ve survived! It’s hard to believe, but you’ve actually snatched yourself from the jaws of death. You look around and breathe in the fresh sweet air. It never smelt this good before. Life sure seems wonderful!
A moment later your mother comes around the corner of the house. ‘Hey, Mum,’ you say ‘you’ll never guess what just happened . . .’
‘Oh good,’ she says, ignoring what you’re trying to say. ‘You’ve pulled all that rotten old guttering down. Well done.’
And off she goes.
Another moment later your father comes around the other corner of the house.
‘Hey, Dad,’ you say, ‘you’ll never guess what just happened . . .’
‘Oh no,’ he says, ignoring what you’re trying to say. ‘You’ve pulled all that guttering down, right in the middle of a rainstorm.
Very clever. You’ve probably flooded half the damn house. Well done.’
And off he goes.
‘So I’ll put it back up again,’ you shout after him, matching his sarcasm with some of your own.
‘Good idea,’ he yells back over his shoulder. ‘Do that.’
‘Grrrr,’ you mutter, going off to get a ladder.
ome on,’ you say, ‘I’ll introduce you.’
You walk towards your mother. ‘Oh, there you are, dear,’ she says, ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
‘Mum, this is Stacey,’ you say, turning to introduce your new friend.
‘Well, well,’ your mother says. ‘You’ve made a friend already. That’s nice.’
Stacey flashes some metal at your mum.
‘Now, tell me,’ your mother says, ‘these white crosses. I didn’t notice them before. Perhaps Stacey can tell us what they are.’
‘She already has, Mum,’ you say. ‘And I don’t think you’re going to like it.’
‘Oh, look,’ Stacey says, ‘what I told you, it mightn’t be a hundred per cent . . .’
But you’re so anxious to tell your mother the story that you ignore Stacey.
‘You see, Mum,’ you rush on, ‘the last three owners of this house have all died here! These are their graves! And no-one knows how they died! The last one was found on Christmas Eve, dead in the cellar, and the door was locked from the outside. Mum, we’ve got to get out of this place, and I mean now!’
‘Oh really, dear,’ your mother says. ‘You always did have such an over-active imagination.’ She’s bending to look at the graves.