Ten Open Graves: A Collection of Supernatural Horror

by David Wood

  Suddenly the hands weren't there anymore and I went sprawling.

  He wasn't there.

  Four

  Help him up, Matthew.'

  The speaker's voice was like none I had ever heard. It was rough, gravelly yet strangely sexless. That wasn't what made it different, though. It cut through the other sounds effortlessly, commanding attention. But it had something else, some other quality that set it apart. In four words, redundant as they were with Matthew already helping me to my feet, it said: You imagine it, Declan, you imagine it and I am capable of doing it.

  Even as stood, I imagined a whole series of horrible acts, some of them simple extrapolations of the last hour, others way beyond even those on the depravity scale, and I never doubted that capability, not once. I was in way over my head. I felt sick.

  Matthew wrapped an arm around my waist to stop me from falling again. He helped me shuffle forward a few paces, leading me to the foot of a dais, a single step taking me up to the level of the speaker. My skin was crawling. His presence was physical enough to touch me; to wash over me. I felt its resonance, and despite all of the capabilities the voice hinted at, it was a balm. Matthew stopped so I stopped. Despite his supporting arm, I dropped to my knees, exhaustion dragging me down. I stayed that way for a long moment, head bowed, gathering myself.

  I lifted my face defiantly, it didn't matter to me that I had no way of seeing what- or whoever it was I stared at. It was only important that my head came up, that I showed them all that I was bowed but not broken, that I stared.

  I felt a cool hand rest on my forehead. This time there was a heavy sadness in the voice. 'Welcome home, son. It has been the longest time yet.'

  I shook my head. 'I don't. . ?' I let it hang because I didn't.

  'He doesn't know,' Matthew said for me. Ever reliable Matthew.

  The fingers tightened slightly, not biting but enough to become uncomfortable. It was if, for the slightest flicker of a moment I had eyes once more, but they were eyes that looked back into the past, not out into the tunnel. Memories that began inside the last hour and fanned back into childhood came to mind as easily as if I had just lived them. I saw my life condensed. I saw myself crash my first car, take a tumble from a conker tree, roll a joint, break my knuckles punching a fat kid in the fourth year, kiss those first female lips, a girl called Rachel who I tasted and never spoke to, she loved wet grass, I remember that, being seduced by Vicky ten years my senior and very much into me. My life flashing before what should have been my eyes.

  My immediate thought was: This is it. Now I really do die.

  But I didn't. I felt the fingers tremble under the influence of tiny currents as my memories chased through them. Felt the jolts as turning points hammered out the way life might have been. I had no idea my mind had stashed away so much junk over the years, things I thought I hadn't bothered remembering because they weren't worth remembering. Snippets of conversations from the playground when Doddsy had me by the throat begging for mercy. And other places. When Sasha said all of the right things in the terrapin's cloakroom and I'd wished I had, when Johnny Clarke told me they had voted Elliot in as Captain of the football team after a recount and I was out in the cold, when my dad bollocked me for nicking a tenner out of his wallet to buy 'Black Hole' stickers, when old Mr. Saggs, my physics teacher, pinned me up against the wall and slapped me for walking out of the exam hall an hour early, my paper still half blank, me wishing there really was a black hole so I could leap into it. Things that differentiated between me, Declan Shea, and any of the many John Smiths.

  Things that made me me.

  The images tumbled out of my mind and into whatever void was sucking them up. They distorted as pretty bodies dissolved the memories of the real girls, as real hatred entered the bully's snarl, as I justified my own pathetic reactions. And then I was gone. All that was inherently me transferred through those questing fingers for another to absorb. The violation was akin to rape, or at least my understanding of rape and its residue. I felt dirty. I felt cheated. I felt violated. More emotions than I could comfortably number and name seethed beneath my skin. Dark, horrible and black. Feelings I hated to think of as originating inside me. The hand hadn't retreated, so the speaker was most likely being inundated by those as well. And if he was, well, there was some cold comfort to be drawn from that.

  Then the hand was gone, the connection severed. My whole body sagged under the recoil of my identity snapping back into it. This time more hands than Matthew's kept me from collapsing.

  There was no defiance left. I wanted to see where I was, to see who held me, and beg them to kill me if that was their intention. This time I could recall Aimee's face with perfect clarity, and even she was shaking her head. The gesture was painfully mocking, my subconscious driving the knife home.

  'Why is it always this way?'

  'Nature, Malachi.' Matthew said with surprising finality. I found it difficult to imagine such harsh words coming out of his gentle mouth. I had hardly known him five minutes and already I was categorising him as an angel.

  'No.' I could imagine this Malachi shaking his head, refusing to believe much I as refused to believe. We shared something, at least. 'If it were nature's doing I could accept it. This is more. This is malice. This is hate. This is everything we should be standing against.'

  'You're reading too much into it, old man. Violence is nothing new. Shea's alive, at least, and I'll live.'

  'I don't doubt that, child,' Malachi threw Matthew's own inflection back at him. There was more going on here than the exchange of different philosophies. 'You have an uncanny habit of doing just that.'

  'And long may it stay that way,' Matthew agreed, guilelessly changing the subject effortlessly back to business. 'Five of Crohak's beggars attacked Shea as he attempted to cross the water out of the city.'

  'Five. . . Taking no chances, then. I should have anticipated something like this. I should have known. Did you recognise any of them?'

  'Only Sephuentes and Drake. The others were probably foot soldiers. Expendable should things get nasty. Don't beat yourself over the head with it, Malachi. We're none of us psychic, now are we? Mistakes happen.'

  Names for I assumed that was what they were rattled around inside my head, clattering and banging and making too much noise for me to think straight. Crohak, Sephuentes, Drake, even Malachi. . .

  'We don't have room for mistakes. We nearly lost him. Where would we have been then? Answer me that.'

  With them arguing, it was safe to assume neither of them was looking at me. I used trembling fingers to feel out the smoothness of the floor beneath me. Like the walls before, it was disconcertingly warm. Alive? I told myself to stop being stupid and concentrate on the job in hand. My covert explorations failed to reveal any cracks or protrusions that may have worked against what I had in mind. Every muscle tensed. I tilted my head, listening for breathing.

  Malachi hadn't moved since he pillaged my mind.

  Nervous sweat was coming out of the pores around my temples.

  My mouth was sandpaper dry.

  I was shaking as I set my palms firmly to the ground.

  I turned my kneel into a crouch.

  I tried to conjure an image of the old man as he might have appeared, standing in front of me. I kept it hazy on detail, needing only an outline. Once I had one fixed in my mind, I loosed an almighty shriek and pounced, arms wide, throwing myself at where he ought to be.

  Five

  It was like rugby tackling a lamppost.

  My head and shoulders slammed into the old man's midriff. Instead of folding double, Malachi staggered back a step and I fell away, clutching at my suddenly splitting skull.

  He laughed, not unkindly.

  Curling into a foetal huddle I felt the soothing balm of his touch once again, moving slowly over the plane of my head. It came as no surprise that the pain died instantaneously. It came as relief. He touched the empty sockets where I should have had eyes. I lifted my head and
felt his gentle kiss, first on the right, then the left.

  'Cleanse them and then bind them,' he said to Matthew. I started to protest before I saw the practicality of the move. Infection was still real, no matter what else was not. I lay still, allowing Matthew to bathe my face with water before securing a bandanna-like bandage across my eye sockets.

  I had so much I wanted to ask, and there were so many answers I didn't want to hear.

  They helped me to sit.

  'I made a fool of myself, didn't I?' I sounded dreadful, but all things considered I was prepared to forgive myself.

  'Probably,' Matthew agreed. I sensed he was smiling. I wished that I could have shared the joke without being the brunt of it.

  'Why don't you just kill me and get it over with.'

  I felt the extra burden ofweight as someone straddled my legs. Images of the Tin Man with his razored thumbs opening up flaps of skin with a surgeon's precision leapt to mind. I tried to tell myself death held no more fears. I knew I was lying.

  'If that is what you want. . ?' Matthew said flatly.

  I didn't have to think about my answer, the words were already on my lips:

  'No, it's not what I want.'

  Six

  And that was the breakthrough. Death wasn't what I wanted, not at all. I wanted a long life. I wanted new summers and to fall in love with Aimee all over again. I wanted to watch the leaves sere and fall from the trees. I wanted to listen to the radio and to build snowmen with children I hadn't had yet. I wanted to turn the clock back eight days and not get out of bed that Friday morning, not jam at the Jazz Club and not play cards into Saturday.

  I wanted time.

  I couldn't have all of those things, I understood that well enough, but I could have some small part of them.

  I could have time, what I chose to do with it was my choice.

  'I want to live. More than anything I've ever wanted in my life, I want to live.'

  'Welcome home, brother.'

  Just Who Is The Five O'clock Hero?

  One

  Matthew laid his hand on mine.

  'Aimee is well, brother.'

  'You saw her?'

  'Yes.'

  'Where?'

  'I walked with her to the bridge. She showed me where you fell. She showed me your blood on the pavement.'

  'Did you tell her that I was all right?'

  He drew back his hand:

  'I told her that you were dead. It is best she thinks so. I am sorry.'

  Two

  We argued round in circles. I lost my temper. I'm not proud of some of the things I said, nor the language I used, but no matter how I looked at it, it seemed that what I wanted counted for nothing to these people.

  I threw punches at Matthew when he tried to calm me – some connected, some didn't. Matthew didn't object. He didn't hit back either. He just held me, taking the punches as they came, and kept repeating:

  'I'm sorry.'

  I had no reason think that he wasn't, certainly there was enough anguish in his voice to suggest that his news hurt him almost as much as it did me.

  But almost wasn't good enough.

  I wanted him to hurt. I wanted him to suffer the same kind of loss I was suffering. It didn't occur to me that he had suffered his own losses, or that I had heard his story once before. I needed to see him hurt so I struggled against his embrace and threw my fists hoping that each time I connected I hurt him.

  Three

  Malachi forced us apart bodily, but unlike Matthew he wasn't prepared to take my swinging fists without some form of resistance. The first time I landed a punch he back-handed me a stinging blow across the face, and as a lesson he didn't take away the pain.

  'Stop acting like a fool and think, Declan.' Malachi's tone wasn't unreasonable, but like his fist it was unbending. 'Why would Matthew lie to you? What has he got to gain from telling Aimee that you are dead?' I didn't know. I had no idea, but he had to have some reason for trying to ruin my life. Something they wanted me for down here? 'It is not about your good,' he continued, drumming it into me. 'It's about Aimee's. Stop being selfish and start thinking about her for a moment. Think about what she has been through and when you have calmed down and grown up enough to start thinking rationally instead of with your fists, we'll talk. All right?'

  It wasn't all right, but how could I argue when I needed answers? 'Talk to me now, don't evade the issue by making me into some kind of insufferable martyr. Whatever you've got to say for yourself, I think I've earned the right to hear, don't you?'

  'Even if I thought you had it wouldn't matter. This is not about what I think any more than it is about what you think. It is beyond you and I.'

  More fucking riddles!

  'I'm sorry you feel that way, as I said. Calm down and we will talk.'

  With that he left me wondering if he had truly plucked the words out of my head or if whether he was an astute guesser.

  'Matthew?' I asked the darkness uncertainly, earning no answer. So I was alone. Did they expect me to wander? To attempt some form of escape? Odd that I was thinking in terms of escape from the den of my rescuers. . . Or did they expect me to sit still in silence and wait for their indulgence. They could go fuck themselves if they thought I was going to go crawling to them on my hands and knees.

  Very deliberately, I edged my way across to the solidity of the wall. I sat with my back braced against the warm stone manipulating baroque arpeggios around twelve bar blues without letting any of the sounds out of my head. I knew I was chasing after windmills looking for that flawless bridge, but in a way that made the exercise all the more fulfilling… like trying to finger-paint the world on a blueglass pebble or recite pi to the nth degree whilst calculating the square root of zero. Impossible tasks make good conundrums and good conundrums make even better distractions.

  I hadn't realised how desperately I needed a cigarette until then. I reached into my pocket for the old tin. Even blind, rolling a smoke was like second nature, my fingers moving from habit rather than directive. I lit up and savoured the drag. I knew my hands were shaking but right then I was in a world wholly inhabited by that roll-up and me, where there were no monsters, no bad guys, no heartache and no explanations.

  The music didn't stop me from thinking about Aimee. It didn't stop me from wondering. Suddenly, through one line, one lie, I was on the outside of her life. There wasn't a place for me anymore. No comfortable 'S' of warmth to curl around in bed. No hand to hold or arm to link. No smile to look forward to. Nothing to make me feel good about myself.

  There was pity in my thinking, plenty of self-pity, but as Malachi said, I had to think about someone other than myself for once, and I was. Aimee was more than just a shape to curl around or an arm to link. She was my life, my faith in all of the good things life is supposed to hold. She was my reason. Even when life as a muso was all I could think about, and the notion of groupies knocking down the stage door to get their paws on a humble pianist seemed like an amusing fantasy, she was my reason. I know it's corny, but she made me feel that maybe I was somebody special, made me think that maybe I did have something to offer. When she was around I felt lucky, I knew people looked at us, and I knew people saw past her ‘rebel without a clue’ image, and I knew the one simple thing that set us apart – watcher and watched. She noticed me. Maybe it wasn't incandescent, and maybe I didn't burn like an all-consuming fire, but when we met she noticed me. That, and only that, set us apart. Aimee looked and saw something that even I didn't know was there.

  And now, well, things were so very different.

  I felt some of the children settle next to me, and suddenly the world wasn't just that cigarette and me. None of them spoke though, for which I was grateful. I don't think I was in any kind of shape to engage in dialogue. Like I said, there was plenty of self-pity building up inside me, too. I set it against the music; always the music. Without it I honestly think I would have gone mad a long time ago.

  When Malachi finally broke t
he discordant series of notes cycling inside my head it seemed like I had won some small victory. I didn't feel any satisfaction, though.

  'Are you ready to listen?'

  The subtle change from talk to listen didn't go unnoticed but I let it pass, nodding. 'Yes.'

  'Good. Let me help you stand. I have brought a staff for you to lean on. We can walk as we talk. There is much you need to see.'

  'I'm blind,' I said, my voice laced with bitterness. It seemed like the thousandth time I had voiced this glaringly obvious flaw in my physiognomy. Did no one here listen?

  'You are,' Malachi agreed.

  'Then why do you keep insisting that there are things I need to see?'

  'Because, Declan, there are things you need to see.'

  'But I'm blind. I can't see.'

  'No. You're blind but if you wanted to you could see. Faith and medicine are very different things.'

  I gave up. Blind was blind was blind to me.

  'Whatever you say, Sancho.'

  I curled my fingers around the stave Malachi pressed into my hand and gradually leant more of my weight onto it, testing its tolerance. It didn't feel like any wood I knew. It felt more like stone, which was possible, if not likely, given our whereabouts. It was as stout as stone.

  'Tell him, tell him.' I heard the children whisper. They used the words like a taunt. The strange acoustics made it impossible to tell which of us they were taunting.

  Malachi said nothing. He started to walk away. I very nearly called out for him to wait, but I didn't. I didn't need the old man to support me, nor to guide me. So what if I walked into a wall? I wounded my pride and dented my nose, no big deal. No, I would follow Malachi and show him I was still my own man as I did so.