A Graveyard Visible

by Steve Conoboy

  ‘What are you doing up here?’ booms the voice of the face looming over him. He cries out, tries to jump out of his quilt, head-butts the looming face, which lets out a girlish cry of its own. Caleb’s legs have quilt twisted between them, and he falls, falls towards the edge, the drop.

  His dizzy guts flip to the floor a split-second before the rest of him.

  A hand catches hold of the neck of his T-shirt, yanks him back to safety. Yanks hard. His feet are still a-tangle, and Caleb falls on top of his rescuer, flattens the girl. Air whuffs out of lungs. Caleb finds himself staring into Misha’s eyes.

  His breath won’t start, and her eyes are deep, and he’s only vaguely aware of the eight-ball on the pillow beside her, and it’s not until later that the three words in its smoky window will come to him.

  ‘You in the habit of squashing people you meet?’ she wheezes, and he leaps to his feet as if hauled up on violent strings.

  ‘What you on about?’ he flusters, sure his face is glowing in the dark, a fierce hotness. ‘You in the habit of giving people heart attacks and making them fall off the roof?’

  ‘You didn’t fall.’ She stands, giving him that weird unwavering look. ‘I saved you. That’s what happened just then. Right now. Where I grabbed hold of you and stopped you breaking your neck. And after that you said, “Thank you for saving me,” didn’t you? Oh, that’s right, you didn’t.’

  Caleb’s in a fuddle. He’d been busy lying under his quilt in fear, harming no one, bothering nobody, and now, seconds later, he’s upset this strange girl with no idea about how he managed to.

  His mum warned him in one of her letters that girls are trouble.

  ‘It’s gone midnight. Why aren’t you in bed?’ And why won’t his face cool down?

  That expression doesn’t leave her face. They’re in the same year at school, so how come he feels like he’s younger than her? ‘Been a bit of an exciting night and everyone in the graveyard is a tad agitated. Hey, in fact, I think you were there. You know, that whole thing you caused?’

  ‘I didn’t cause anything, you lot were the idiots digging up graves and throwing people in, and stop doing that sarcasm thing, it’s so annoying.’

  ‘Forgive me if I’ve hurt your feelings.’ She clearly doesn’t mean it. The curtsey is really, really doubly annoying.

  He runs a shivery hand through his hair, grabbing a little, pulling a little. His scalp prickles. ‘Just go home. Kids aren’t meant to roam the streets at night. It’s weird.’

  She’s whip-quick. ‘Just go indoors. Kids aren’t meant to sleep on garage roofs. It’s weird.’

  He wants to tear his hair out completely. Big clumps, rip and tear. ‘It’s not weird. It’s…’

  ‘It’s what?’

  ‘It’s what I do, okay? So drop it.’

  She shifts conversations like they’re building bricks she can click together any way she chooses. ‘You’re going to help me find Neuman.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Lights for eyes.’

  ‘No. No I’m not. I’m not doing anything with you. I’m going in, you’re going away.’ He starts gathering up his quilt. She snatches it away from him. ‘Hey, what—’

  ‘Listen, before I push you off the roof for real. Whatever you think, you were a part of what happened up there.’ She points to Daisy Hill. He can make out a small, flickering glow. ‘That thing wandering the streets is crazy. Bad crazy. Someone innocent could get hurt before my granddad and those idiots get their act together. We need to lead it back to the graveyard where we can deal with it properly.’ She picks up the eight-ball, shakes it. ‘Is this boy a coward?’ She stares expectantly at its small window. The only thing weirder than what Misha’s doing is the fact that Caleb finds himself eager to know the answer. It’s foolish. An eight-ball’s answers are random and have no bearing on reality.

  But still.

  Misha raises an eyebrow at the answer, then looks at him as if making a decision. ‘Hmm. I suppose I should have seen that coming.’

  ‘What? What did it say?’

  ‘Why? What do you care? I thought I was the weirdo who’s meant to go home.’

  It’s fortunate that the night’s air is cool, or his head might explode. ‘Why can’t you give me a straight answer?’

  ‘Why can’t you ask a straight question?’

  He shakes his head as if trying to clear it of a confusing dream. ‘I’m going in. You do what you like.’ He holds a hand out for his quilt. She drops it off the garage roof and onto the front drive. It’s the closest he’s come yet to screaming. ‘I can’t believe you just did that. If my Father sees that he’s going to kill me.’

  ‘He’s in bed, isn’t he? So how’s he going to see anything? All you’ve got to do is help me do this one thing.’

  ‘I don’t want to go back up there.’ Blunt and true.

  ‘You do, and I know you do, I know it.’ Funny how her eyes blaze fierce in the night, black lights in the darkness. ‘Your mum’s up there, and until we put this right those idiots with my granddad won’t let you back up there. In fact, if they find Neuman first, they’ll come after you next.’

  He’s not going to let this girl see him cry. He pushes past her to climb down off the roof. ‘None of this would be happening if you’d stayed away from me.’

  Her voice is cold. ‘That’s not quite true, is it?’

  36

  They haven’t spoken since leaving his house. They’re both in pyjamas and slippers, steering as clear as they can of the bright glow of lampposts. Very few houses have any lights on; all have blinds and curtains closed. So far, there’s only been one slightly drunk man to avoid, which wasn’t a problem for two nimble kids. Caleb’s heart races anyway. He has no idea what Misha’s home life might be like, but sneaking around the streets in the dead of night will mean big trouble for him.

  Dead don’t think dead.

  ‘You’re sure it went this way?’ she finally asks.

  ‘Yes,’ he whispers, ‘and keep your voice down.’

  ‘Why? I’m not the one worried about being found.’

  ‘I’m going home.’ He turns one hundred and eighty degrees. She grabs his hand and pulls him back. The fingers pressing against his palm give him a small warm shock.

  ‘Take it easy, I’ll whisper if it’ll stop you having a hissy fit.’

  It’s a full minute before either of them speaks again. Caleb rubs his palm with his thumb. ‘What had he done?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That guy you were burying alive.’

  Her laugh is loud, sharp. He’s sure that everyone in the street heard it. ‘That was my granddad! He can be a bit much, but I wouldn’t put him six feet under. Old swine would only find a way to get back anyway.’

  ‘So what was going on then?’ What he wants to ask is – What lie are you going to tell me next?

  Her humour comes and goes quickly. ‘You don’t need to understand any of that. Best if you don’t, really.’

  ‘So how am I meant to—’

  ‘You’re not meant to anything. You said yourself that you don’t want to get involved. So don’t. You couldn’t handle it.’ They reach a crossroads. A right-hand turn here would lead them to the shopping centre and the big supermarket. They catch sight of a flicker up ahead, and the death of an echo reaches them. ‘Straight on,’ says Misha, full of all the confidence that Caleb lacks.

  ‘Pernicious House is up this way,’ he says, swallowing the throb of his own heart.

  ‘Uh huh,’ she says, turning the eight-ball over and over in her hands. It is blacker than the sky and reflects the stars.

  ‘You take that thing with you everywhere?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I couldn’t take it in the bath, could I? That would be stupid.’ She tucks it under her left arm, the side furthest from Caleb.

  He shakes his head. ‘The way you carry on, it’s no wonder…’

  ‘What?’ She stops in the middle of the street. ‘No wonder what? Go on, spit it
out.’

  The heat returns to his chest. ‘Nothing. I wasn’t saying anything.’

  ‘Really? That’s funny, because I’m sure I heard your lips flapping about…’ The sound of metal in pain from somewhere up ahead cuts Misha off. ‘We’d better hurry,’ she says, giving him another of her many looks. This one, with pursed lips and wide eyes, tells him that he’s far from off the hook.

  Their pace quickens, slippers slapping on pavement. Houses come to an end. On their left is a high wall, some twelve feet, to their right, trees. The metallic wailing has ended, just out of sight around the road’s curve. The pair shift gear to a job, and Caleb can only wonder at his own stupidity. They’re practically running towards the mad monster from the graveyard. Towards it. What kind of idiot would do something like that?

  Me, he thinks. I’m that idiot.

  But he’s sure Misha is making some sense, even if she’s a bit dotty. Put things right, even if none of this is his fault. Show the suits he’s on their side, even if he doesn’t know whose side they’re on. Then they’ll all leave him alone. Then life can be normal again.

  Idiot.

  They’re at the locked wrought-iron gates of Pernicious House. Several of the iron bars have been snapped and bent to allow access. ‘In we go, then,’ says Misha.

  Caleb doesn’t want to go in chasing monsters. He doesn’t want to go in at all.

  He hasn’t been here since Mum died.

  The fountains are off. The lights are out. Darkness dominates. It has weight. He will have to push hard through it. Misha’s already stepped in. ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘You’ve come this far. Look, I’ll even ask Eight. Should Caleb keep going?’ She shakes the ball, waits for the answer. ‘Wow. Okay. Eight can be a bit rude sometimes. We’re old enough to make our own decisions, right?’

  Caleb laughs despite himself. Misha doesn’t laugh, just looks at him apologetically. It convinces him that their wavelengths are light-years apart.

  He steps through the broken gate.

  37

  ‘For the last time,’ says Crosswell, fingernails pressing into the meat of his palms, ‘you must have done it wrong, you must have!’ In the glow of the light-map his jowls take on a ghastly pallor, and his eyes look washed out and dead. It does nothing for an already unattractive man.

  ‘You were here too,’ says Grayson.

  A sausage finger points. ‘You were on the harmonics.’

  ‘And I was flawless. As always. I wasn’t the one arguing with a child.’

  ‘Don’t you talk to me like that!’ Crosswell has to draw in a long stream of air through his nose to calm the anger. ‘I wasn’t arguing with the brat, she was arguing with me.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with the map. The weave is solid. It’ll hold for as long as we want it to.’ He points into the map, to the miniature version of the graveyard. There are two white lights close to each other and, between them, something that could be an incredibly tiny version of a map. Around them, all around them in the miniature graveyard, are very dim blue lights.

  ‘If there’s nothing wrong with it, then explain this to me: why isn’t it doing it’s job? Why isn’t it showing Neuman?’

  38

  Pernicious House didn’t look like this when Mum brought him here, back when he was six. His blazing sun memories paste themselves over this after-dark alter ego. He’s free of Mum’s guiding hand, running for the first of the three spouting fountains. She shouts at him to slow down or he’ll fall in headfirst, and that sounds all right to him, and when he gets to the crystalline water, dappled with spray, he almost flips right on in. Bronze and silver wishes are scattered across the bottom and he wants to reach in and grab them all, but he’ll get his sleeve wet, and then he really will be told off. He wishes he had a garden with fountains in. And look at the house! It’s massive! It’s bigger than Mum said it would be, and more so! Tall columns and doors for giants to get through and dozens of windows and—

  ‘Are you coming or not?’ Misha’s halfway up the first flight of stairs. The front gardens sprawl across three levels, and there are more stairs before they reach the courtyards. He treads after her over gravel paths, stepping over foot-high hedgerows to cut corners.

  Pernicious House is a huge slab in the night. It looks years dead. It feels abandoned, hopeless. It’s a monstrous mockery, made to hold soulless creatures terrified of the light. ‘If that Neuman thing’s gone in there,’ he says, ‘you can just forget about it.’

  ‘We go where Neuman goes. We need her back.’

  ‘I won’t go in.’

  Misha walks on like she didn’t hear him. They’re up top now, crossing the courtyard, looking for open or broken windows. All sealed so far. ‘Can’t see any lights in there,’ she says. Caleb knows that she means Neuman’s eye-lights. ‘I think it’s gone around the back.’

  ‘Why would it want to get in here?’

  She shrugs. ‘Who says it does? There’s acres of gardens here. Neuman’s probably going to wander until she finds…’

  ‘Kay.’ A clear, strong voice at a distance.

  Misha jogs to the far corner of the house, Caleb trying to stay close, trying to show he’s as unafraid as this girl. ‘Coward’ is something he doesn’t want to be called more than once in a day. He expects her to stop at the end of the wall and peek carefully around the corner. Instead she goes right on round. Caleb doesn’t let himself think, he just follows.

  After all, if there’s anything round there, she’ll get it first.

  Where the front gardens are constrained by brick walls and iron fence, round here the landscape unfurls. The cobbled path is broad, the lawn is long and finely mown, and up ahead lie the stable to the right, fields of sunflowers to their left, and a forest opening up directly ahead.

  Twin lights flash between the trees as a figure shambles about. ‘That’s her!’ cries Misha. ‘Come on!’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ says Caleb in a panic.

  ‘Why? We want it to follow us!’ She goes running. Caleb doesn’t have the heart to shout after her that he doesn’t want any following, that he wants them to fail at this, that shouting and running around at this time of night is bound to cause trouble.

  He has to run after her. There is no time to think of a different plan, to find another way.

  Misha doesn’t pitch headlong into the trees; she takes the gravel path running alongside them. ‘Hurry up!’ she shouts at Caleb. ‘We need to get to the other end before Neuman!’ He tries to speed up. It’s frightening to run in this darkness. He could trip on a rock, run face-first into a low-hanging branch, get jumped on by God-knows-what.

  Neuman crashes through the trees like a bear. ‘Kay.’ A woman’s voice, twisted and deepened. ‘Kay.’ A demand of desperate hunger. ‘Kay!’ The twin lights slice through the trees, the silver-blue beams turning the trunks into brittle icy bones jutting out of seared dirt.

  ‘Whatever you do, don’t look into those lights!’ warns Misha. He’s too busy huffing air into his lungs to tell her that he already knows. Misha seems unaffected by the exertion. Where does she get such fierce energy?

  This place of languid sun-washed walks with Mum as she named the flowers and the birds then let him play while she sat and wrote, this cannot be that place, because here he is running for his life.

  His legs are burning. His lungs are exploded tyres. He won’t make it much farther. And the Neuman monster will get him.

  Misha cuts through flowerbeds, Caleb several paces behind. Neuman crashes through branches, stumbles out onto the path close behind him. ‘Don’t look!’ shouts Misha. Caleb won’t. He’s desperately trying to keep his feet.

  ‘Kay!’

  His skin shudders: that syllable felt like it was right down his neck. Just like that, he forgets his agony and knows he could run forever. Juddering spotlights transform the ground. There are dark squirming shapes beneath them that Caleb wishes he couldn’t see. They react to the lights, turn towards him.

  With th
em comes panic.

  Surrounded by night in the garden labyrinth. Neuman bellowing at his heels. Misha pulling away. Unknown hungry things reaching for him. I’m going to die screaming.

  Misha slows slightly. ‘This way!’ She veers left, getting slower. Is she tiring? Because this is the worst possible time! Caleb blasts past her – and the ground drops away. She reaches for him, but his knees have already buckled, and he rolls downhill through scratching undergrowth, tumbling end over confused end. He grabs for something to slow himself. All he gets is a sting.

  The fall ends with a splash. He lands on bruising stones, head under water, cold-shock lancing along his veins. He thrashes, kicking up plumes of water, firing off one of his slippers. A gasp floods his throat. It burns. He screams for air, gets more water. A hand grabs his hair, yanks him up to the surface, coughing and heaving.

  The hand doesn’t let go. Caleb grasps blindly at the wrist to shake it loose. He can’t clear his eyes. There’s light everywhere. He’s coughing up endless water. His legs are boneless.

  ‘Let him go!’ Misha screams from somewhere higher, and then Caleb finds the fight. Neuman has him.

  ‘KAY!’

  He can’t get free. He doesn’t mean to, but he looks up. No passing glimpse this time. Caleb looks deep into Neuman’s eyes.

  38

  Too much is what he sees. His brain falls into unconsciousness, three short words on repeat: LET HIM FALL.

  39

  Stumbling. Legs refuse commands. Head won’t lift. His only desire is to curl into a small ball. Someone drags him on, though. A very insistent someone who won’t let go. He feels like something’s thundered through him, a corrosive substance that swept into his system and left nothing undamaged. His breathing is weak; he can’t get enough air.

  Questions surface.

  He tries to ask one, but his lips are unfamiliar and his tongue is slack. It drains from his mouth in a monotone slur.