The Boy in the Cemetery

by Sebastian Gregory

  Over the course of the next couple of days Carrie Anne was ordered to stay in her room, except for toilet breaks. She obliged and kept a vigil by her window, searching for the figure she had seen staring back. Her mother came and went with meals and as the sun went down once again, she only moved when her mother silently tucked her into bed. She heard her parents talking in the evening from their room.

  “Where did we go wrong with her?” her father asked.

  “I don’t know,” her mother replied.

  Carrie Anne’s heart sank; she would have cried but she had no tears left. She did, however, have a cemetery.

  Chapter Five

  The next day at the breakfast table Mother served peppered scrambled eggs. Carrie Anne sat down slowly, still sore from the blisters on her skin. Father was already sitting there, tucking into his food. Pieces of eggs stuck to his beard as he forked white chunks into his mouth. Mother sat at the table between them.

  “You will have a bed tonight; it’s being delivered today,” Mum said.

  “Thank you,” Carrie Anne replied politely. She picked at her eggs; she never felt hungry nowadays. Every mouthful was a chore.

  “School today,” her father added without looking up from his eggs.

  Carrie Anne nearly choked on the meagre piece she had put in her mouth. She had expected and hoped for more warning. For Carrie Anne, school was a terrifying place. Her last school had been a day-to-day exercise in humiliation. Pamela Malone and Susan Daniels made her school life very uncomfortable. At one time they had been friends, the three of them together, that was until their lives changed and went in different directions. Pamela was considered beautiful with long blonde hair; Susan had dark hair and a smile that sparkled. They grew and formed an interest in boys and make-up and all things that come with early adolescence. However, Carrie Anne did not share their newfound, growing sense of wonderment. She became more deeply withdrawn and stopped interacting with friends and peers alike. One time on her way home, Pamela and Susan and a few others waited for Carrie Anne. It was Carrie Anne’s eleventh birthday; a teacher had mentioned this to the class, so unknown to that same teacher the class prepared a surprise, thanks to Pamela and Susan. As Carrie Anne turned the street corner to her home, a mob of school children had formed and she was pelted with flour and eggs. She fell to the ground sobbing as the barrage continued for what seemed like for ever. The children laughed and pointed, but none more so than Pamela and Susan. From then on Carrie Anne didn’t speak to teachers any more.

  “So I want you to put in some effort to fit in; I want this to be a good experience for you. Do you understand?” her father asked.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “Good, good; remember to make your mother proud,” he continued. Her mother smiled in agreement. However, in truth Carrie Anne had other distractions. The stranger in the cemetery, the bone chimes, the stone angel cleaned to pristine condition untouched by time. No matter how her father hurt her, she had the cemetery and its secrets to explore. She would not do anything that would lead her to be taken away from the cemetery. Even if that meant keeping her father’s secrets.

  “Shall I get dressed now?” she asked.

  “Yes, I’ve put your uniform in your room,” her mother said.

  Carrie Anne looked at herself in the mirror and brushed her hair into a tight ponytail. A pale girl with dark eyes looked back at her. She looked disinterested and lifeless. Her new grey school uniform was oversized and loose-fitting. The blue stitched logo sat over the left breast pocket. It was a tree with a large river running underneath. Above was the school’s name: “River Wood”.

  They are going to hate you. They are going to see you for what you are and then everyone will know.

  Carrie Anne had mixed feelings about the day ahead. She had mostly struggled at school, not that she wasn’t intelligent; academically she was above average. However, she had been turned from an outgoing friendly child to a closed young woman, confused and lost by her father’s past indiscretions with his daughter. She thought there was no one in the world who felt the way she did, and did not have the luxury of finding another like her. For the sake of the family, as it had been drilled into her over and over again, she would not speak of it. She had left her previous school with no friends and no one to miss her. She doubted anyone would notice she was gone. There was one, however. Miss Sally Clouston, a younger school counsellor did question Carrie Anne’s behaviour and loneliness. She had short boy hair and an open and enthusiastic way about her. There was always a spring in her stride and a smile on her face. Carrie Anne had spoken with her a couple of times, the conversation kept light, however Carrie Anne began to trust her and just when there was a glimmer of hope that she may be released from her life, she had been made to start again, running with her parents so her father would not face prosecution.

  The morning weather had settled back to cloudy and dim. Carrie Anne’s mother wore a blue coat and matching headscarf that made her look a lot older than she was. She insisted on holding Carrie Anne’s hand. In turn Carrie Anne allowed herself to be led. Mother walked briskly in the cold morning. She had never learnt to drive and preferred to walk where she could. As they left the house for the first day of school, Carrie Anne felt her father’s eyes piercing the back her neck, watching from the bedroom window as they left. There were other children making their way to school in the morning exodus. Some caught sight of Carrie Anne holding her mother’s hand. They whispered to one another or laughed or resorted to knowing glances. Carrie Anne would have been embarrassed except she was side-tracked when nearing the school that was only a few streets away; she spotted the entrance gates to the cemetery. They walked past on the other side of the road by the hilly woods that the houses surrounded. The trees cast dark shadows over the pavement as they walked along. The familiar black railings of the cemetery held back overgrown bushes that reached through with barbed and spindly arms. The gates themselves were chained together and a sign was bolted to the metal: “Condemned. Keep out.” And on the yellow sign there was smaller writing, legal threats and warnings no doubt. Beyond the gates a gravel pathway overgrown with nettles led into the forest of grass and graves. But it was the iron name cut into the archway—“Dark Wood”—that excited her, for now she had a name, rusted but still visible, for the place she longed to explore.

  They arrived at the school, a lego like square of brown brick buildings. Through the school and the chaos-filled corridors of students. Laughing, fighting, yawning. Carrie Anne watched for a moment and envied them, living their normal lives with mundane worries. Their only problems would be getting to class before a teacher spotted them, or who fancied who this week. Her mother had left her finally at the school gate and she had made her own way through the daunting school entrance.

  “I’ll be here at three-thirty,” she had said, “to take you home. Remember: try and fit in.”

  Carrie Anne sat on a red plastic chair outside the headmaster’s office. River Wood secondary school was identical to every school she had ever been in. Corridors of wooden floors and inspirational posters about learning and after school activitys.She would have thought about it more but a secretary came from her office and announced the headmaster would see her now. The headmaster was younger than most headmasters, and had a ginger bear and curly hair to match. He wore a black T-shirt and grey suit. The headmaster introduced himself as Mr Henderson but said she could call him Martin. He sat behind a cluttered desk covered in papers and pens and files. Around the walls were various framed certificates, and a large window lit the room and looked out onto a playground. A cup of “best teacher in the world” coffee made the room smell stale. Martin leant back in his black leather chair as he spoke. His feet were very nearly on the desk.

  “So, Carrie Anne, welcome to the River Wood high school, part of the three woods communities, made up of River Wood, Dark Wood and Hillside Wood. I see from your file you live on the Dark Wood estate. Have you explored much yet?”

/>   Carrie Anne shook her head in response; she felt her cheeks flush from the attention. The headmaster waited a moment for more information. When none was forthcoming he carried on.

  “Well, I am sure there is time for that. Our town has a rich history. The river used to be a trade route some two hundred years ago; you can still see what remains of the docks. And of course we have the old cemetery; that was closed years ago, too full you see. The council are still arguing about what to do with those still buried there; some say it’s haunted.”

  There was a flicker of interest from Carrie Anne, but she hid it. The cemetery was hers and hers alone.

  “OK,” Martin concluded. “I’m sure you are eager to get to class. Let’s get learning, shall we?”

  Classes had already begun when the headmaster took Carrie Anne for a tour of the school. There was the odd student who quickly moved to where they were supposed to be when they saw the headmaster. He was obviously very proud of the school and pointed to achievements displayed on the walls and also areas he thought might interest her. Carrie Anne heard none of it; anxiety was rising within. There were thoughts in her head that didn’t belong there.

  They will not like you,

  They will not accept you,

  They will know what your father did and they will blame you.

  Carrie Anne felt hot and her heart pounded against her ribs. At that moment she wanted nothing more than to be dead and be done with it. If she was showing outward signs of her desperate unease the headmaster didn’t mention it. He concluded the tour at her new classroom and led her inside. The faces of the others turned to her as the headmaster introduced Carrie Anne to the class. Her head felt like she had just jumped off a roundabout and was still spinning from the experience. The teacher smiled and showed her to a seat and small desk. The old lady teacher had an old wrinkled and to Carrie Anne exaggerated. Her eyes were dark pins and her teeth yellow and sharp. She wore tweed or possibly the skin of children. When the door closed as the headmaster left, it was like a prison door slamming and locking her in. This made the window the only means of escape from the judging thoughts of the rest of the class. She considered jumping through it and letting the fall and the glass shards soothe her. The old teacher asked everyone to be nice. She then followed by having the class take out their notebooks. Carrie Anne was struggling to concentrate and her ears were ringing with a high-pitched sound. Through the tempest she wondered why no one was trying to help her as the panic attack carried on.

  The teacher pressed a button on the laptop on her desk and the interactive whiteboard lit up. There at front of the class were the words “Dark Wood Cemetery” and all of a sudden her panic subsided to a memory and the teacher began to speak.

  “OK everybody, with the excitement of a new pupil over, let’s go back to the subject of local history. Here is everybody’s favourite abandoned cemetery: Dark Wood.” She smiled as she emphasised the last word, making it as spooky as possible.

  “Dark Wood Cemetery is an abandoned Victorian cemetery in the three woods district of London, England, consecrated by the Archbishop of in 1859 and condemned in 1968. The ground on which the cemetery stands was originally purchased by John Lovesey in 1856, the Vicar of the nearby River Wood Church. This served as an overspill as disease and violence of the time was generating more corpses than the original grounds could cope with.

  As she spoke, the teacher clicked the keyboard and the pictured changed. Carrie Anne was enthralled.

  “The first burial at Dark Wood was of a one -year-old girl named Ester Marie Marsden in 1857. She is, in keeping with the tradition of the era, the ‘Angel of the Cemetery’. Can anyone tell me how she died?”

  The class went silent. Carrie Anne spoke; she remembered the angel headstone.

  “Consumption,” she said, her voice confident and hardly croaking.

  The teacher smiled. “Well done, Carrie Annie, it was indeed consumption or as we know it nowadays: tuberculosis.

  “Since its loss as a legal grounds of burial, London Council have done little to maintain the cemetery and it has fallen into neglect, save for the efforts of a conservation group the Friends of Dark Wood Cemetery, who campaign to have the cemertey declared a protected conservation area. “On the evening of 3 June 1862 the cemetery was the location of a destructive and vicious riot by angry London citizens.This was due to accusations that the Reverend John Lovesey and his aid Isaac Mathews were neglecting to bury corpses, and instead selling them to the city’s local hospital for use in dissection and medical experimentation. The rumours were proven false, although there were also talk of Satanism—and Lovesey and Mathews were instead fined by the city for reusing graves in order to save space.. However, the saga did not end there when seven days after the court decision the two men—Lovesey and Mathews—were found wandering the cemetery completely insane. Both men had lost all of their wits and in Mathew’s case his hair. They both died exactly one month later in the asylum.”

  The class was silent.

  “So any ideas what may have happened to unfortunate Lovesey and Mathews?”

  The teacher waited expectantly. “Anyone?”

  Carrie Anne knew she had seen it that night from her bedroom window, looking back at her. She was confused at first but now she understood those eyes. They were old, from something that had resided in the cemetery for a long, long, long time. They had kept watch and protected the dead from those who would exploit them. Carrie Anne wanted to know more and her want for knowledge overrode her feelings of panic.

  “Could there be something living in the cemetery?” she asked.

  There was a gasp that Carrie Anne didn’t hear; someone stifled a giggle.

  “How do you mean, Carrie Anne? Like an animal?” the teacher asked.

  Carrie Anne’s throat became dry and she realised she had accidently become the centre of attention.

  “Like a person?”

  The class burst into fits of laughter, making Carrie Anne jump with the sudden uproar. The teacher tried to restore order but the class were too far gone and they humiliated Carrie Anne with a barrage of laughter. “Can I go to the toilet, please,” she quietly asked and without waiting for a reply she stood up and nearly tripped over her desk, stumbled and was out the door. She ran down the unfamiliar corridor as the class continued to ridicule her in fits of uncontrolled laughter.

  Chapter Six

  Sarah Miller was fourteen years old and had lived a troubled life. Her father was a drunk and violent and her mother a drug addict who wasted any money they managed to scrape. Two years ago she had been taken into foster care when her dad went to prison and her mum into hospital. In that time Sarah enjoyed shoplifting, bullying, fighting and smoking weed. She was moved from foster home to foster home as each of the well-intentioned foster parents failed to cope with her behaviour. Her last foster home reported to social services that their beloved dog, a pug called Russ, had gone missing. They reported that Sarah never really liked the dog and they were worried she may have harmed the pet in some way. Sarah protested her innocence but as she left to go back into another care home, she did mention to her one-time foster family there was a strange smell coming from the drains. Sometime later Russ had been found in a pipe where he had been forced. After her latest bout of shoplifting and ASBO breaking, Sarah was told by the local authorities to stay in school and out of trouble or else she would be facing time in a young offenders’ institute. So she had begrudgingly made an effort to conform.

  Sarah Miller’s only friend was Michael Miller, her cousin. He was also fourteen and although his life had not been as troubled; he was fast growing into a nasty piece of work. His father had walked out on him when he was two, leaving his mother to bring the boy up. His mother had a never-ending stream of boyfriends who did not have a positive effect on Michael. They mainly showed him how to take a beating and the value of hatred. He and Sarah would spend a lot of time together, each one daring the other into more and more elaborate acts of random violen
ce.. Their reputation began to precede them and people soon learnt to avoid the Miller cousins. Today they had both come into school. Sarah was by far the larger of the two and held sway over her thinner, weaker cousin Michael. Sarah was heavyset from eating junk but also would be called big-boned. Her hand-me-down uniform stretched to contain her. Both cousins had long, jet black, grease-filled hair. Under her right eye Sarah had a home-made tattoo, which was supposed be a star but resembled a blue ink blob. Michael’s nose was disjointed from a past break, courtesy of his cousin in retaliation for his tattooing skills. The pair had made their way into the girl’s bathroom, safe in the knowledge that everyone was in class and they could smoke a joint or two without being disturbed. That was until Carrie Anne came in, crying. She was distraught and didn’t notice the cousins until she was washing her face and looking at herself, bleary-eyed, in the mirror. The cousins stared in disbelief, wide-eyed and with newly rolled drugs drooping from their mouths. But their disbelief only lasted for so long and Sarah Miller moved with a speed unexpected of someone her size. Before Carrie Anne realised what was happening, her face was being pushed up against the mirror and her hands held against her back.