Halton Cray (Shadows of the World Book 1)

by N. B. Roberts

  ‘What do you do for a living, Seth?’

  He laughed. ‘Risk assessment, would you believe!’

  ‘Ironic.’

  ‘Yep. I never assessed anything so risky in my life, and I’m currently unemployed!’

  ‘What’s this crossing?’ I asked, spying a bridge up ahead.

  ‘59th Street Bridge. Takes us over to Roosevelt Island and on to Queens. The place we’re going is about seven or eight kilometres away.’

  I stared down to the roads below, before we got to the East River. I traced up the repetitive shapes of the apartment blocks and hotels, the square windows in their thousands. Soon my mind wandered, busy on the events of last night. It was some time before Seth announced –

  ‘We’re here.’ He cruised down a residential street and pointed out the window to a little park area. It was an odd little greenery, behind a high fence, snugly tucked between relatively tall apartment buildings on either side. We passed it and Seth turned at the end of the road.

  ‘Its rear entrance should be down here,’ he said, turning again into another street, which ran parallel to the first. ‘There it is.’

  We circled again, arriving back at the front entrance.

  ‘The law protects this place,’ he said, pulling over. ‘That’s why developments only surround it.’

  ‘But what is this place?’ I asked, my eyes tracing the diamond-wire fence along the sidewalk.

  Seth put on a Yankees baseball cap and tipped it down at the front.

  ‘One thing Thom asked me to find was a graveyard like this,’ he said, climbing out the car and heading for a central gate.

  ‘A graveyard?’ I muttered, following him.

  It was hardly recognisable as such from here, so overgrown and buried between the apartment buildings on either side. Once we trespassed on its soil, I saw the small crumbling tombstones hidden within the undergrowth. Some were unmarked, but others bore dates of the mid-eighteenth century.

  ‘The front access looks the best,’ he said quietly, moving through the pathless place. ‘It’s more overgrown for cover. See across the street? That building site won’t be lit up or occupied at night. And this thick canopy of trees above us will spoil the view from all the overlooking windows.’

  I realised something.

  ‘Did Thom actually tell you to find a graveyard? I don’t mean to be funny with specifics, Seth, but knowing Thom, if he said graveyard, he probably really meant a graveyard. This is no graveyard.’

  ‘Actually, he asked for a cemetery. I just said graveyard because I thought it was the same thing. What am I missing?’

  ‘The church. A graveyard is adjacent to a church. A cemetery isn’t.’

  ‘Wow. All the research I just did and that never came up. I didn’t think to look at differences in the names.’

  ‘So you’re sure Thom said he wanted a cemetery?’

  ‘He definitely said cemetery. In fact, we had quite a discussion on it. I was telling him that there’s only one remaining active cemetery on the Isle of Manhattan, which is out of the question, because it’s reserved for officials. I got a little carried away with everything I’d been reading up on.’ – Here Seth deepened his voice and mimicked a British accent. – ‘“Incidentally,” said Thom – you know how he likes to get shirty! “I didn’t ask you for a list of active cemeteries, but I suppose that was easy to misinterpret.” So I told him that cemeteries were no longer built here since the nineteenth century – and this is where Thom said, “You’re getting off the point. I don’t want just any inactive cemetery. I want an old relic of some former gravesite. A place long forgotten where no mourner will visit to weep over a loved one. Where no gardener will surprise us at dawn with his lawnmower and shears! I want so ancient a place, cut off from society; completely cast out of the minds of the twenty-first century, one overgrown and undervalued.”’

  ‘That sounds just like him.’ I smiled.

  ‘So, I went to find such a place,’ said Seth. ‘And having done some thorough digging – pun intended!’ He laughed. ‘I found this place, which qualifies for every requirement he gave. But this is the first time I’ve been here to see it. I brought my camera to get some shots too. No point in driving out here again if Thom doesn’t go for it. There’s only one question not so easily answered – but I couldn’t find out for sure whether so “antique a cemetery”, as Thom would say, really sat on hallowed ground. Even if a decrepit record exists in some vault saying, “last blessed in 1733”, I wouldn’t trust it.’

  ‘Neither would Thom,’ I said. ‘He’ll want to test it.’

  Seth took his pictures before heading back to the car.

  ‘So what’s in the boot?’

  ‘The boot? Oh, you mean the trunk. Here –’ he said, beeping it open.

  I looked inside and saw the shovels I’d predicted might be there.

  ‘What’s in the holdall?’ I pointed to a large blue bag.

  ‘Yeah, you don’t wanna know. Thom’ll show you later. It’s what I was getting earlier today. Listen,’ he said, closing the trunk, ‘Thom was telling me about what you witnessed last night. I think it was a good idea, you know, to take in a bit at a time, in order to accept these things. I kinda wish I had too.’

  ‘But do you really need to?’ I quizzed, as we got in the car. ‘I mean, considering you had a demon tenanting your body for months.’

  ‘I remember it like it was a dream, Alex – a bad one! It doesn’t exactly feel real. But yeah, it should make things easier to deal with, if I could accept that it happened.’

  ‘How did it happen?’ I asked, as he drove us back to the hotel. ‘Thom said it was through using a Ouija board, but he didn’t go into detail.’

  ‘Truth be told, Alex, I don’t remember that much about it. I know it was Halloween – of course! A group of us were going to a costume party, only it got cancelled. We ended up at my buddy Rhys’s place where we drank beer, got bored and decided to play the Ouija. Rhys had one in a closet although it was missing some pieces. We knelt round it in the TV room and used an upturned glass. Before even starting, this guy Carter, turns up the glass and shouts into it “We only want evil mofo’s tonight!” Carter’s always been a jerk. His sister, Ashley, refused to play because of that, considering what might make contact. The first thing the board spelt out was that we were all going to die at the hands of an evil rabbit. Carter’s costume was the demonic bunny, Frank, from the film Donnie Darko. Carter turned over the glass and told the spirit to eff-off.’ Seth shook his head as he steered the car round a corner. ‘I thought it must’ve been him pushing the glass, so that he looked tough shouting back. That’s when the glass began moving on its own, spelling out that it was coming to get him. Then the glass moved to the numbers on the board and began a countdown from ten. Carter was shouting at me to break the glass, but I didn’t wanna touch it. It got down to one before Carter grabbed it and threw it against the wall. It bounced off. He was physically shaking. He placed it on the table and the glass eventually shattered on its own. Ashley screamed from the kitchen. We raced in there. She pointed to the floor, trembling, saying she saw a black shadow roll across it.

  ‘I don’t remember anything else that night, Alex, or the next. Thom’s guess is that the spirit – after attaching itself to the glass – couldn’t get inside Carter, so looked for anyone else nearby and found a way to possess me. Next thing I recall, I was walking through Central Park talking to Johan. I’m pretty sure he approached me. I ended up back at his place where he talked about this guy overseas he wanted revenge on. But he wasn’t talking to me; he was talking to whatever possessed me, promising it things.’ He shuddered, his face becoming troubled.

  ‘So here sit two people who’ll never use a Ouija board again.’

  ‘You got that right,’ he said, as we arrived at the hotel.

  I text Thom a message to say we were all done and going out for pizza.

  ‘Might as well experience something good here on your first trip to New
York!’ Smiled Seth.

  ‘Is the pizza good here?’

  ‘Good? Did I use the word good? The pizza here is phenomenal, and even that might be an understatement. I think I missed this stuff more than my mom!’

  I found the choice of pizza toppings in itself phenomenal, and got out of having to make a decision by asking Seth to recommend something.

  It seemed the strangest night so far, and that’s saying something considering what I witnessed the night before. It was because of that that this was so strange. Sitting in a pizza place around the corner from the hotel, eating slices as if I was on vacation, and not a murderous adventure to deal with a sadistic vampire.

  ‘It’s seven-thirty,’ said Seth. ‘Thom text me saying he’ll probably come get us around ten. He wants to check out the cemetery tonight.’

  Thom text me the same, but added kisses and a comment that he hoped, one day soon, to take me out to dinner.

  Thom’s light raps on my door woke me just after ten. I’d dozed off after finishing The Body Snatcher. I opened my door and he came straight inside, throwing his coat on a chair. It reminded me about the myth of invitation.

  ‘You already invited me in yesterday,’ he said. ‘It’s true, I can’t enter without invitation, or at least, I can’t enter without suffering pain. – Alex, I’ve woken Seth already. He’s getting dressed and will wait in the car.’

  ‘Okay, let me just grab my–’

  Thom suddenly closed the distance between us and slid his arms under mine. ‘I want to spend time with you, Alex.’

  ‘I want that too,’ I said, tracing the hair-roughened skin of his forearms up to his elbows. ‘We just don’t have much of it right now.’ I ran my hands over the fabric of his sweater, up to his strong shoulders, until I could feel the cool skin at the back of his neck.

  ‘That’s why I knocked at Seth’s door first.’ He smiled. ‘So that I couldn’t hang around in here too long, with you distracting me.’

  I found that he was becoming too distracted already. His powerful hands found their way to the narrowing of my back, slipping under my blouse, where he pressed his smooth fingers to my bare skin beneath the rim of my jeans.

  ‘I want you, Alex,’ he murmured between caresses.

  ‘Then it’s a good job you’ve got me.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Did you see Seth’s photos of the cemetery?’ I asked.

  He gave me a knowing smile. ‘Yes. It looks promising.’ Then looking from my eyes to my lips he went to my mouth again with a sense of urgency. His hands, on a new mission, found their way to the gaps between my blouse buttons, where he pushed his fingertips through to stroke my skin hypnotically. I melted under his touch, but it didn’t feel right to go any further, not just now. After a few minutes of trying to calm his energetic kisses, I broke away once more.

  ‘It’s perfectly quiet too and abandoned.’

  ‘What is?’ His eyes had liquefied.

  ‘The cemetery!’ I exaggerated a sigh. ‘Let’s go.’

  He groaned and reluctantly followed me to the door.

  ‘So what happened last night? Did he leave his apartment?’

  He huffed. ‘He did. I’ll tell you about it on the way.’

  We got into Seth’s car and again I sat up front, because Seth didn’t want to feel like a taxi driver or a gooseberry.

  ‘I watched Johan’s place all day from a neighbouring rooftop,’ Thom began. ‘He was always agoraphobic, so appeared to have walled himself up in there. Soon as it got dark, he proved me wrong. The amount of potentials he passed on the street without batting an eyelid astounds me. I began to suspect he knew I was following and deliberately took me on a pointless pursuit. Then he hungrily trailed some teenagers, before police officers stopped them to check their ages. He moved on and after an hour of hunting in vain, he walked to Brooklyn Bridge. He took the walkway and I followed him on the shadowed underside, staying well back. He never crossed the bridge to Long Island, or walked as far as the first tower. I’m guessing it has something to do with that feeling I get myself, almost of hydrophobia, a fear but accompanied with a detestation of the water. He turned back to fully circle his apartment building, as an animal patrolling its territory.’

  ‘That’s another night he hasn’t eaten,’ said Seth.

  ‘And I don’t know how long he’s gone without before we arrived,’ Thom sighed. ‘But he’s certainly weak; he put his lights on again. That tells me he hasn’t been eating on a regular basis for some time. It’s affected his vision. I don’t understand why he doesn’t accost someone to feed in a secluded spot. He’s hungry. It makes no sense. I only hope he’s as weak when I attack.’

  I turned in my seat. ‘Thom, are you sure he didn’t know you were following him? You always notice when someone’s following you.’

  ‘That’s different; you’re human. I’m confident now he didn’t have any idea. I trained my senses, Alex, to seek out Death, as you know. Johan’s aren’t as keen as mine. Besides, I think he had as much faith in Seth to do the job as he lacked in me to survive it.’

  Thom was quiet as we drove over the East River.

  ‘Nausea?’ I asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘Doesn’t the Shockers affect you in the same way, since you dove into it after me?’

  ‘It affects me in a similar way, though not as acutely. The larger the body of water, the more it hurts. But I would dive into the ocean, Alexandra, if you belly flopped into it.’ He half-smiled.

  Even for that time of night, the roads were busy. Lights glowed all along the water’s edge, and below, bright orange waves danced on a black canvas. Most of the stars abandoned the city.

  Seth kept his mind off our dark task by acting the part of a tour guide, introducing us to his hometown. He pointed out his window to the left of the bridge.

  ‘See straight between those tramway cables, they’re framing a clear view of Big Allis on Ravenswood site. Her red and white smokestacks sprouting from Roosevelt Island.’

  He drove on, taking us east into the borough of Queens. The horizon cleared of tall buildings ahead, the sky slowly collecting its stars once more.

  We pulled up again outside the front entrance to the cemetery, and found it was also somewhat impenetrable to streetlamps.

  ‘Seth, this looks perfect,’ Thom approved again. ‘You’ve outdone yourself! Now did you get everything?’

  ‘It’s all in the trunk.’

  ‘Show me.’

  I followed them to where Thom pointed out what could be stored behind the driver’s seat. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘we’ll need the trunk free, except for those.’

  ‘Here –’ said Seth, handing him the blue holdall.

  Thom unzipped the bag and peered inside.

  ‘Excellent.’

  He zipped it back up and walking round placed it on the backseat. Seth left the two shovels in the trunk for now, but picked up a large cutting device. From the sidewalk, Thom patrolled the exterior of the cemetery, examining the fencing.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ I asked.

  ‘An ideal spot. Over there!’ He pointed. ‘Where the fence takes a turn into that recess. Yes – this will do. It leaves room enough for me to crouch here in the shadow of this wall.’ – He crouched there now. – ‘And I have a good view through the trees within, to that well-canopied section of the yard. So far, so good. But it’s useless if it isn’t consecrated. I must test it, and prepare for a visit to hell. The fencing here is rooted in the dirt, so should have the same effect on me if it’s blessed. I will merely touch this fence. If I’m still doing that for more than a few seconds, I’ll need you both to pull me back or prise my hand away, if you can.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Are you ready?’ He asked.

  I knelt down and kissed him. ‘Are you?’

  ‘For this? Not really.’ He forced an uncomfortable laugh. ‘It’ll be excruciating. But better than nothing happening at all.’

  �
��Ready,’ said Seth, crouching on the other side of him.

  Thom slowly placed his left hand against the fence. By the look of something like disappointment crossing his face, and by the way his fingers began to curl around the wire, I felt disheartened that the cemetery wasn’t blessed after all. Seth sighed deeply, having come to the same conclusion.

  I looked back to Thom to ask, ‘what now?’ but his face was not reporting discouragement at all. It was distress becoming agony. He’d frozen to the fence, locked onto it even, under the power of the place.

  ‘Thom?’ I uttered, grabbing his hand. I couldn’t prise it away. ‘Seth, help me! See if you can pull the fence away as I pull him back.’

  Thom’s eyes rolled back and the visible whites reddened. The pain in his face! Unbearable to look at while unable to free him. He moved with the fence as we tried to separate them.

  ‘I can’t straighten his fingers!’ Seth cried.

  Neither could I. Then I spied the cutting tool on the sidewalk, which Seth had brought. I grabbed it and began cutting the wire around Thom’s hand. I could only hope that once unconnected to that ground he’d be free.

  On snipping the last piece, Thom moved back instantly. I put the cutters down and flung my arms round his neck.

  ‘Thom, I’m so sorry! We thought you were–’

  ‘You’re sorry?’ he pulled back, his eyes still red and glistening. He enclosed me fully in his arms. ‘Alex, my little darling– I’m sorry! So very sorry!’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For the pain I’ve caused you!’ He pressed his cheek to mine. ‘I had no idea how much hurt I’d bestowed on my beloved.’

  I was about to tell him not to dwell on that now, but he muffled my words by smothering my mouth with his.

  Seth cleared his throat. ‘Guys? Uh, if you wanna go get yourselves a room or maybe I’ll just come back later?’

  Thom smiled, sighed with relief and released me. ‘I see Alex has made a start on where we need an opening. Seth, maybe you can continue making this hole larger. Large enough to fit yourself through.’